The Perfection of Freedom

The Perfection of Freedom seeks to respond to the impoverished conventional notion of freedom through a recovery of an understanding rich with possibilities yet all but forgotten in contemporary thought. This understanding, developed in different but complementary ways in the German thinkers Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, connects freedom, not exclusively with power and possibility, but rather most fundamentally with completion, wholeness, and actuality. What is unique here is specifically the interpretation of freedom in terms of form, whether it be aesthetic form (Schiller), organic form (Schelling), or social form (Hegel). Although this book presents serious criticisms of the three philosophers, it shows that they open up new avenues for reflection on the notion of freedom; avenues that promise to overcome many of the dichotomies that continue to haunt contemporary thought--for example, between freedom and order, freedom and nature, and self and other. The Perfection of Freedom offers not only a significantly new interpretation of Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, it also proposes a modernity more organically rooted in the ancient and classical Christian worlds.

""David Schindler has written a profound book on freedom. Through his penetrating analysis of Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel, he offers us nothing less than an alternative to the modern notion of freedom as freedom of choice . . . The Perfection of Freedom wears its erudition lightly in a compelling display of philosophical thinking and re-visioning that will take us beyond modernity by going through it.""
--Cyril O'Regan, University of Notre Dame

""This is a work marked by impressive erudition and steady, lucid thoughtfulness about the nature of freedom as perfection . . . Schindler looks to some of the great thinkers of classical German philosophy: Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel in particular. The result is a very engaging and illuminating defense of a richer notion of freedom. The scholarship is impressively informed on the historical side, matched on the systematic side with sustained insight into the issues at stake.""
--William Desmond, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven


D. C. Schindler is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Humanities at Villanova University. He is the author of Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth (2004) and Plato's Critique of Impure Reason (2008).