In his 1786 review of Johann Schultze’s Elucidations of Professor Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1784), Pistorius criticizes Kant’s concept of transcendental freedom as it is represented in Schultze’s work. Given the expository aim of Schultze’s work and Pistorius’s claim that some of the objections he raises have already been addressed in his review of Kant’s Prolegomena, it is reasonable to presume that Pistorius generally took his criticisms of Schultze to apply equally to Kant. Pistorius observes that Kant’s solution to the Third Antinomy rests on transcendental freedom’s supposed independence from temporal conditions; however, Pistorius maintains, transcendental freedom – qua the capacity to begin a state from itself – presupposes temporal conditions insofar as these conditions are implied by the concept of beginning. Thus, the concept of transcendental freedom is supposedly internally consistent.

In “On Intelligible Fatalism in the Critical Philosophy” (1794), Johann Christoph Schwab levels several accusations against C.C.E. Schmid’s doctrine of intelligible fatalism. First, whereas the Leibnizian-Wolffian determinist can hope to overcome the forces opposed to freedom insofar as these are natural and alterable, the intelligible fatalist cannot hold any such hope because the intelligible forces opposed to freedom are immutable. Second, insofar as Schmid acknowledges a sensible matter given to the rational being, he seems committed to two kinds of obstacles to reason’s self-activity: sensible and intelligible obstacles. This supposedly makes Schmid’s view inferior to the Leibnizian-Wolffian account, which posits only one sort of obstacle to freedom. Lastly, Schwab claims that intelligible fatalism abolishes the concepts of blame and imputation. Thus, concludes Schwab, the Leibnizian-Wolffian conception of free will is superior to that of intelligible fatalism.

In his 1794 volume Contributions to the Correction of Previous Misunderstandings of Philosophers, Karl Leonhard Reinhold outlines his theory of free will, which emphasizes the agent’s capacity to choose in conformity with and in opposition to the moral law. Reinhold’s account can largely be seen as a response to Schmid’s conception. Thus, Reinhold considers the Schmidian notion that freedom consists in the self-activity of reason and that reason’s failure to effectively determine the will is due to intelligible obstacles. According to Reinhold, such a conception of free will abolishes moral imputation since merit or blame would be reducible to the absence or presence of those obstacles. Furthermore, Reinhold emphasizes the necessary independence of the will from both the faculty of desire, which supplies the matter of volition, and reason, which supplies the form by means of a formal normative standard, the moral law. As independent from these two faculties, the will is free to choose for or against the moral law. Reinhold maintains that only then can the normative necessity of that law be absolute.

In his “Some Remarks on the Concept of the Freedom of the Will, posed by I. Kant in the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of the Doctrine of Right” (1797), K.L. Reinhold is incredulous that Kant could restrict free will to moral action after having previously emphasized the applicability of freedom to immoral action for the sake of moral imputation. Reinhold takes issue with Kant’s distinction between the will and the power of choice. According to Reinhold, the distinction is incoherent insofar as Kant defines freedom of the power of choice as the ability of pure reason to be practical, which seems to pertain to the legislative will rather than the executive power of choice. Reinhold interprets Kant’s conception of this freedom as precluding immoral action and claims that this would abolish the moral law’s normativity. Furthermore, Reinhold treats Kant’s denial that freedom of the power of choice can be defined as the capacity to choose for or against the moral law and Kant’s apparent declaration that the possibility of deviating from the moral law is an incapacity. If the possibility of deviating from the moral law were an incapacity, then, Reinhold maintains, the moral law would be impossible.

In On the Grounds and Laws of Free Actions (1795), F.C. Forberg responds at length to Leonhard Creuzer’s skeptical concerns with Kant’s account of free will. Forberg observes that theoretical reason demands that the activity of free will be conceived of as determined by a sufficient ground in accordance with a law. By contrast, practical reason demands that we presuppose that freedom pertain to both moral and immoral action. Whereas Creuzer is skeptical that these demands can be reconciled, Forberg argues that their compatibility is secured by the Critical philosophy. Forberg maintains that the principle of sufficient reason threatens freedom only if the relation between ground and what is grounded is temporal. However, if the principles which ground actions are intelligible and therefore atemporally related to actions, then the ground itself can be conceived of as within the subject’s control. Moreover, whereas laws of nature command natural powers on the condition of a temporally preceding cause, unconditional laws of intelligible powers are not bound by this condition. Thus, there is no demonstrable contradiction in positing that an intelligible power could be subject to an unconditional law and nevertheless possess freedom to act in conformity with or contrary to that law.

In his Skeptical Reflections on Freedom of the Will with Respect to the Most Recent Theories of the Same (1793), Leonhard Creuzer avows his skepticism with respect to freedom of the will. His skepticism applies equally to our moral psychology and to proper philosophical treatments of free will. According to Creuzer, philosophy has fared no better than common sense in adjudicating the dispute on free will. He discusses the purported inadequacy of pre-Critical treatments of free will by thinkers such as Crusius, Leibniz, and Spinoza, and maintains that the Critical philosophy has not succeeded in resolving this perennial dilemma but has merely determined the problem more precisely.

In his Eleutheriology or On Freedom and Necessity (1788), Ulrich is concerned with the prospect of the concept of transcendental freedom carving out conceptual space between necessity and chance. He notes the ingenuity of Kant’s restriction of natural necessity to appearances and his attempt to locate freedom in a sphere independent of temporal conditions. However, the denial of natural necessity to things in themselves does not entail that the intelligible character is not necessarily determined in a way independent of temporal conditions. Ulrich presses this issue with respect to those instances in which pure reason does not effectively determine the will, i.e. with respect to immoral action. He asserts that there either is a ground sufficient for the exercise or omission of reason’s efficacy, or not. If there is such a ground, then reason is necessarily determined and Kant is ultimately a determinist even with respect to the intelligible character. If there is not, then whether we act morally or immorally is the result of chance, which is irrational.

In “On the Two Kinds of I, and the Concept of Freedom in Kant’s Ethics” (1792), Johann Christoph Schwab treats Schmid’s claim that the sensible self is grounded in a supersensible I, which parallels Kant’s distinction between the empirical and intelligible character. Schwab echoes Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s charge that such a supersensible posit is guilty of an illicit extension of the categories beyond the sphere of possible experience. Moreover, Schwab maintains, even if this supersensible posit is granted, nothing could be predicated of it and yet Schmid makes several claims about it, e.g. it is the ground of all our actions, it is the ground of space and time, it is unalterable, etc. Schwab concludes the essay by taking issue with Schmid’s claim that on the Leibnizian-Wolffian view, the determining grounds of action are entirely beyond the agent’s control. In response to this charge, Schwab appeals to the Leibnizian-Wolffian conception of spontaneity and claims that the determining grounds of free action are contained within the agent itself.

Ludwig Heinrich von Jakob claims in his 1788 “On Freedom” that we know we are free by virtue of our self-consciousness. Drawing broadly on Kant’s doctrine of the fact of reason, Jakob asserts that freedom is a fact. However, Jakob does not claim that this fact is furnished by consciousness of the moral law. Instead it is immediately given through inner sense. This supposedly parallels how we know that a body is distinct from us because our consciousness of it as given through outer sense entails that it does not belong to our self.

Ephrem the Syrian is one of the two most important fourth-century Syriac writers.1 He was born ca. 307–309 in the Roman city of Nisibis (modern-day Nusaybin in Turkey) and was likely raised as a Christian, having close relationships with the city’s bishops from his youth. He was a member of the îḥîdāyê (“single ones”), a group within the larger Christian community whose members devoted themselves to asceticism and celibacy without forming a distinct monastic community. This was a pattern of Christian living that was peculiar to Syriac-speaking regions. Ephrem also served his community as a teacher and perhaps also as a deacon. Above all, Ephrem was a writer: he wrote in multiple genres, including biblical commentaries and metrical homilies (memre), but he is especially known for his hymns (madrāse), about 400 of which are extant. In 363 Ephrem relocated to Edessa (modern-day Urfa in Turkey) when Nisibis, on the border between the Roman and Persian Empires, was ceded by the Romans to the Persians, prompting Christians to emigrate.

We first learn of Irenaeus in a letter he carried to Eleutherius, bishop of Rome, from the churches of Vienne and Lyons which were seeking a peaceful resolution to the Montanist controversy.1 The letter introduced Irenaeus as an esteemed presbyter in their community. By the time Irenaeus returned from his embassy a severe persecution (ca. 177 CE) of the churches in Vienne and Lyons had claimed the lives of many, including that of Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons. Irenaeus was installed as his successor.

Tertullian’s On the Flesh of Christ offers a defense of the reality of Christ’s human body and the sufferings that he experienced during his time on earth. The work, written around 206, roughly in the middle of Tertullian’s literary career, was directed against alternative views prevailing among some Christian groups concerning the body of Christ. The Christians who held these views are now called docetists. They believed that Christ only seemed to have a human body, and that his sufferings and death were consequently not real. Tertullian’s attack on the docetic perspective targets three influential figures of the second century who had questioned the reality of Christ’s body in different ways. The first of these is Marcion, treated in chapters 2–5, who denied the reality of Christ’s birth and flesh. Second is Marcion’s disciple Apelles, treated in chapters 6–9, who believed that Christ did have flesh during his time on earth, but that he had not really been born. Finally, in chapters 11–16, Tertullian addresses the views of Valentinus and his followers, who granted the reality of Christ’s birth and body, but suggested that his flesh was not human.

A number of letters of Timothy Aelurus survive in Syriac. These reveal Timothy in a more pastoral and less polemical light, as these letters are generally written to support miaphysites throughout the Roman Empire in the midst of not only their struggles to maintain their faith but also their challenges in creating a miaphysite church. One such letter was written to Claudianus. Identified as an abbot and priest, nothing more is known about him. The heading of letter (which is not part of the original letter) claims that it was written in exile from Chersonesus. If that is correct, then is dated to 464/5–475. Toward the end of the letter Timothy mentions a small treatise he wrote when summoned by the emperor (presumably to Constantinople). If this happened under Emperor Leo, it supports the dating of 464/5–475. But such a summons is otherwise unattested. If the summoning refers to when Emperor Basiliscus called Timothy to Constantinople in 475, the letter must have actually been written after his exile in Chersonesus and thus must be one of his last extant works before his death in 477. No other evidence helps to decide the issue.

Hilary of Poitiers was one of the premier theologians of the Latin West in the fourth century, along with Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo. In 356 he was banished at a synod at Béziers for his support of Athanasius and the Alexandrian bishop’s “anti-Arian” program, and exiled to Asia Minor for four years. Here Hilary became far more knowledgeable about the theological debates rocking the church, and his own theology was decisively shaped by the encounter. He was particularly influenced by the Homoiousian theology of Basil of Ancyra. Hilary attended the Council of Seleucia in 359, which promulgated a broadly Homoian creed that was given official approval, under the auspices of Emperor Constantius, at Constantinople in January 360. During his exile in the East he penned a number of theological works, including On the Trinity, against Homoian theology. Shortly after the synod in Constantinople he returned to his homeland, where he worked against those who supported Homoian theology. He died in 367 or 368.