The Freedom Affair. Jean-Luc Nancy on the Concept of Freedom in Kant and Heidegger

The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy has examined the problem of freedom in Western philosophy at length. His most penetrating account can be found in The Experience of Freedom. In this book, Nancy is primarily in dialogue with Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling and Martin Heidegger so as to subsequently develop his own conception of freedom. Although several papers have been dedicated to The Experience of Freedom, they barely elaborated at full length these relationships to Nancy's thinking on freedom. In our paper, we discuss Nancy's conception of freedom in the way he dialogues with Kant and others. Because today we can no longer fall back upon a first principle or an origin as the source and thus guarantee of everything, we are placed radically before our freedom and therefore our responsibility, Nancy argues. We are ourselves free to be responsible for existence.