Moderne Selbstbestimmtheit – Postmoderne Unbestimmtheit

“My role […] is to show people that they are much freer than they feel” (Foucault) – Postmodern philosophy appears quite often with an explicitly freedom claim. This is surprising because we tend to associate this normative focus on freedom more with modern than with postmodern philosophy. Does this indicate a previously undiscovered continuity between the two currents of thought? The study examines this question on the basis of two paradigmatic positions: Immanuel Kant as a representative of modernity and Michel Foucault as a representative of postmodernity. As a result, it becomes clear that these two positions present virtually contradictory conceptions of freedom: While modernity tries to think of freedom as self-determination, postmodernism sees freedom in indeterminacy.