F.W.J. Schelling
1775-1854 · German · Metaphysics, Philosophy of Nature, Philosophy of Mind, Aesthetics, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Mythology, Ontology, Philosophy of History
Philosophy, accordingly, is nothing other than a natural history of our mind.
At eighteen, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was already publishing philosophy. A prodigy at the Tübingen seminary where he roomed with Hegel and Hölderlin, he raced through Kant and Fichte and arrived at a question that would haunt him for six decades: how does a world of living, self-organising nature fit inside a philosophy built for a detached, legislating mind?
Topics F.W.J. Schelling addresses
- Naturphilosophie
- nature as productivity
- the absolute as identity of subject and object
- the point of indifference
- intellectual intuition
- aesthetic intuition as the highest organ of philosophy
- the conscious and unconscious in artistic genius
- ground and existence in God
- the dark ground
- freedom as the capacity for good and evil
- positive evil as inversion of principles
- the unprethinkable
- positive philosophy vs negative philosophy
- the Ages of the World
- the rotation of potencies
- philosophy of mythology
- philosophy of revelation
- self-organisation of matter
- polarity and the potency-series
- magnetism, electricity, and chemical process as potencies
- sensibility, irritability, and formative drive
- the history of self-consciousness
- the break with Fichte
- willing as primal being
Questions to put to F.W.J. Schelling
Nature as Productivity and Self-Organization
- What do you mean when you say nature is productivity rather than product?
- How does self-organization ground reality more fundamentally than mechanism?
- What's the difference between your view of nature and vitalism?
- How do polarity and potency work in your philosophy of nature?
- Why can't Kant and Fichte account for nature as autonomous?
The Absolute and Identity Philosophy
- What do you mean by the absolute as the identity of subject and object?
- How is your identity philosophy different from saying everything is just the same?
- What's the structural X in every judgment, and why does it matter?
- How do Naturphilosophie and transcendental philosophy relate to each other?
- What made you break with Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre?
Art and Aesthetic Intuition
- Why do you call art the highest organ of philosophy?
- How does the artist's conscious activity coincide with unconscious productivity?
- What's the difference between aesthetic intuition and intellectual intuition?
- Can philosophy really be completed by art rather than concepts?
- What does the work of art accomplish that discursive thought cannot?
Freedom, Evil, and the Dark Ground
- What's the distinction between God's ground and God's existence?
- How is evil a positive force rather than just the absence of good?
- Why does freedom require this dark ground within God?
- What do you mean when you say willing is primal being?
- How did Jakob Boehme influence your thinking about the ground?
The Ages of the World and the Unprethinkable
- What is the unprethinkable, and why must philosophy begin from it?
- How do the three potencies structure the eternal past?
- Why did you never finish the Ages of the World project?
- What's at stake for you in narrating the genesis of the manifest world?
- How does the rotation of potencies generate time and history?
Positive Philosophy: Mythology and Revelation
- What's the difference between negative and positive philosophy?
- Can any a priori system really account for the fact that anything exists?
- How does mythology unfold as a necessary process of consciousness?
- What makes revelation free rather than necessary?
- Why did you turn to mythology and religion in your late work?
Converse with F.W.J. Schelling on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in F.W.J. Schelling's own writing, cited to the page.