Karoline von Günderrode on Human Freedom

ABSTRACT This essay examines how the engagement with Spinoza that resulted from the pantheism controversy shaped the philosophical outlook of Karoline von Günderrode. I focus on her Spinozist view of human freedom and contend that she understands freedom as a form of self‐determination that does not require the capacity to do otherwise. Both Spinoza and Günderrode believe that we are free or self‐determined when we exist according to the necessity of our own nature. Yet in her dramas Günderrode raises an epistemic problem for this Spinozist view of freedom, namely, how do we know that we exist according to the necessity of our own nature? On Günderrode's view, possessing this kind of knowledge is a condition for the realization of freedom. Her plays and dramas explore the possibility of external and internal criteria for knowledge of our own freedom, but Günderrode ultimately favors a historical or narrative criterion. To know that they exist freely, individuals must be able to recognize the affinity of the present with the past and discern how their actions contribute to a developing historical process whose end is the vitalization of the earth.