Saitya Brata Das rigorously examines the theologico-political works of Schelling, setting his thought against Hegel's and showing how he prepared the way for the post-metaphysical philosophy of ...Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida.
Andrew Bowie's book is the first introduction in English to present F. W. J. Schelling as a major European philosopher in his own right. Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, surveys the whole of ...Schelling's philosophical career, lucidly reconstructing his key arguments, particularly those against Hegel, and relating them to contemporary philosophical discussion. For anyone interested in German romanticism and the development of Continental philosophy, this is an invaluable source book. The cogent and subtle argument of this book fills a major gap in our understanding of modern philosophy, in which Schelling emerges as a key transitional figure.
This paper is focused on F. W. J. Schelling's view of freedom during the period of the Freiheitsschrift (1809) and related works. It is argued that the standard way this has been understood may be ...too simplistic. On this standard interpretation of his view, evil is made a matter of free choice by the agent, but where the choice does not concern individual actions, but the choice of the agent's essence in an atemporal act. As a result of this choice, it is argued, Schelling can then make evil imputable. By contrast, I argue that for Schelling freedom does not involve choice, but necessity, but in a way that is still internal to the agent and hence non‐coercive, and thus in a way that remains free and makes evil imputable. How Schelling comes to have this view is considered, and some responses are given to ways it might be challenged both interpretatively and philosophically.
The unconscious, cornerstone of psychoanalysis, was a key twentieth-century concept and retains an enormous influence on psychological and cultural theory. Yet there is a surprising lack of ...investigation into its roots in the critical philosophy and Romantic psychology of the early nineteenth century, long before Freud. Why did the unconscious emerge as such a powerful idea? And why at that point? This interdisciplinary study traces the emergence of the unconscious through the work of philosopher Friedrich Schelling, examining his association with Romantic psychologists, anthropologists and theorists of nature. It sets out the beginnings of a neglected tradition of the unconscious psyche and proposes a compelling new argument: that the unconscious develops from the modern need to theorise individual independence. The book assesses the impact of this tradition on psychoanalysis itself, re-reading Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams in the light of broader post-Enlightenment attempts to theorise individuality.
There is a classical paradox in education that also affects the epistemic virtues: the paradox inherent in the demand to develop general strategies for training persons to be free and creative ...individuals. This problem becomes particularly salient with respect to the epistemic virtue of creativity, the more so if we consider a radical form of creativity, namely, genius. This paper explores a historical constellation in which rigorous claims about the standards for knowledge and morality were developed, along with a highly influential notion of genius: the philosophy of Kant and of immediate post‐Kantian philosophers. The paper shows how in this historical moment came together a new notion of “science,” a theory of “genius” and of virtues, and an analysis of the promises and difficulties inherent in educating a virtuous or creative individual. In this constellation of ideas, there also emerges a potentially fruitful account of how to teach intellectual creativity.
The Conspiracy of Life offers a series of meditations on the philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling (1775–1854), a great—and greatly neglected—philosopher of life. Rather than construing him as a loopy ...mystic, or as an antiquated theologian, Jason M. Wirth attempts to locate Schelling as the belated contemporary of thinkers like Heidegger, Derrida, Bataille, Irigaray, Foucault, Deleuze, Levinas, and many others. As such, Schelling is already at the central nerve of current discussions concerning the crisis of truth; the primacy of the Good; the ecstatic nature of time; the nature of art; deep ecology; the world as an aesthetic phenomenon; comparative philosophy; the possibility of non-dialectical philosophy; radical evil; the haunting of philosophy; and the possibility of a philosophical religion.
Schelling’s unfinished novella/dialog from the early years of his turn to philosophy of spirit presents arguments for personal immortality, but in a narrative form. Characters that represent nature ...and mind try to rescue the usually equanimous Clara from psychological crisis occasioned by her husband’s death and consequent intellectual perplexities about personal survival. Their arguments illustrate Schelling’s reformulated Spinozistic metaphysics: expressivism. On this theory, a
or creative essence manifests in both physical and psychic dimensions but is itself nothing other than the connection between the two. Clara, doctor, and pastor symbolize these three functions while their personae fashion arguments that psychic and somatic phenomena can never be separated, hence that death must signify a transformation into a more spiritual psychosomatic mode of being. The arguments are problematic at best, but the narrative invokes Romantic tropes such as the limits of conceptual language, the possibility of a natural style of communicating philosophy, and reference to then contemporary ‘empirical’ phenomena such as clairvoyance and hypnotic sleep. The unfinished character of the piece reinforces the impression of ineluctability of the self, which seems to exist only in diaspora as nostalgia or anticipation.
During the first decade of the 19th century, F. W. J. Schelling was involved in 3 distinct controversies with one of his most perceptive and provocative critics, A. K. A. Eschenmayer. The first of ...these controversies took place in 1801 and focused on the philosophy of nature. Now, Berger and Whistler provide a ground-breaking account of this moment in the history of philosophy. They argue that key Schellingian concepts, such as identity, potency and abstraction, were first forged in his early debate with Eschenmayer. Through a series of translations and commentaries, they show that the 1801 controversy is an essential resource for understanding Schelling's thought, the philosophy of nature and the origins of absolute idealism.