Political origins of the kant's concept of freedom in prussian feudalism

This thesis analyses the concept of freedom in Kant's philosophy based on the social history of political thought approach developed by Ellen Meiksins Wood, focusing on the social material foundations in Prussian feudalism. Unlike the prevailing literature on Kant's philosophy, the concept of freedom is not evaluated solely through intellectual texts; instead, it is considered in relation to the historical contingencies brought about by the practices of the absolutization process in Prussian feudalism and the questions these practices sought to answer. To this end, the power structure of Prussian feudalism is assessed within the framework of the production relations, land structure, and ownership practices of the period. As a response to the crisis of feudalism, the Hohenzollern dynasty entered a process of absolutization, collaborating with local land-owning nobility (Junker). Through the bureaucracy established as a result of this collaboration, feudal appropriation activities continued. In this process, to balance the power of the Junker nobility within the state, the practice of a service nobility, who held bureaucratic positions as servants of the monarchy, emerged. Unlike the traditional nobility, who were primary appropriators, this class, differing in their income-earning practices, was organized around concepts such as merit and education (Bildung) in determining the interests of the monarchy and the direction of the absolutization process.The inability to diversify production activities as a result of the cooperation with the traditional nobility during the transformation of the Prussian State, which retained its feudal identity, slowed the formation of a capitalist bourgeoisie. The absence of a capitalist bourgeoisie fixed the urban middle-class (Bürgertum) of Prussian society as beneficiaries of the derivative of the feudal appropriation income provided by the state. The continued feudal character of property relations in Prussia indicates that the debates of the period were also of a feudal nature. Thus, the power structure within which Kant developed his concept of freedom cannot be said to have a modern character. This suggests that Kant's concept of freedom does not refer to modern democratic individual freedom. From a standpoint of its formation, it is possible to consider the concept of freedom as a privileged claim of the Bildungsbürgertum, a class that sustained their production and reproduction by intellectually nourishing the service nobility and participating in the feudal transformation process of the state.