Freedom and Perfection: German Debates on the State in the Eighteenth Century.

This paper explores eighteenth-century German debates on the relation of freedom and perfection in the course of which Kant works out his juridical theory. It contrasts the perfectionist ideas of political activity in Christian Wolff and Karl von Dalberg (a historically important but neglected figure), with Fichte's program in The Closed Commercial State (1800), distinguishing logics of political intervention. Examining insufficiently recognized aspects of the intellectual context for Kant's distinction between happiness, right and virtue, the paper demonstrates Fichte's (problematic) application of Kantian ideas of freedom to political economy and contests current interpretations of the politically disengaged character or attenuated modernism of German political philosophy in the Enlightenment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]