Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

After elucidating Kant’s notion of moral freedom within the context of his ethics, I examine Schiller’s “The Bride of Messina” (Die Braut von Messina; 1803). I focus first on Schiller who, contrary to Kant, associates suicide with the Kantian notion of moral freedom in order to save freedom from blind necessity. While Kant explicitly condemns all forms of suicide as violations of the moral law and affronts to the freedom on which it depends, Schiller depicts suicide in “The Bride of Messina” as an outward manifestation of man’s assertion of freedom from the forces of nature (or, in Schiller’s terminology, “Naturkräfte”) which, in this tragedy, take the form of fate and inclination. Ultimately, Schiller’s overall tragic project is meant to awaken in the spectator a consciousness of moral freedom, and suicide is used an effective vehicle for such an awakening.