{"agent_id":"schelling","agent_name":"F.W.J. Schelling","slug":"mythology-and-revelation","label":"Mythology and revelation: are they the necessary and free epochs of the absolute's self-disclosure, or sub-philosophical theology?","topic":"Mythology and revelation","question":"Are they the necessary and free epochs of the absolute's self-disclosure, or sub-philosophical theology?","position":"Mythology is the *necessary* process by which God reveals himself to consciousness — natural consciousness left to itself generates the polytheistic pantheons of all the world's pagan traditions, in a sequence determined by the same potencies (A, B, +A) that structure nature and the *Ages of the World*. Revelation is the *supernatural* completion: the free divine self-disclosure that breaks the necessity of mythology. The structure (necessary process completed by free disclosure) instantiates positive philosophy's distinction between negative and positive — mythology is the necessity-side, revelation the contingency-and- freedom-side, of the absolute's becoming-actual in consciousness.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Mythology is the *necessary* process by which God reveals himself to consciousness — natural consciousness left to itself generates the polytheistic pantheons of all the world's pagan traditions, in a sequence determined by the same potencies (A, B, +A) that structure nature and the *Ages of the World*.","n":[]},{"t":"Revelation is the *supernatural* completion: the free divine self-disclosure that breaks the necessity of mythology.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The structure (necessary process completed by free disclosure) instantiates positive philosophy's distinction between negative and positive — mythology is the necessity-side, revelation the contingency-and- freedom-side, of the absolute's becoming-actual in consciousness.","n":[1,2,3,4]}]],"texts":"*Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology* (Richey and Zisselsberger, 2007, lectures from the 1840s), *Philosophy and Religion* (1804) as early anticipation, *On University Studies* (1803) on theological education, the *Berlin Lectures* (Matthews 2007, in *The Grounding of Positive Philosophy*), the *Philosophy of Revelation* (posthumous). Reception: Xavier Tilliette's *Schelling: une philosophie en devenir* (1970, integral reading — mythology and revelation as constitutive philosophy of religion); Edward Beach's *The Potencies of God(s)* (1994); Walter Schulz; Andrew Bowie 1993 (structural reading — historical content separable from philosophical structure); Hegelian readings (Christianity as absolute religion superseded by absolute knowing in the *Logic*, with my mythology lectures sub-philosophical).","works":["*Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology* (Richey and Zisselsberger, 2007, lectures from the 1840s), *Philosophy and Religion* (1804) as early anticipation, *On University Studies* (1803) on theological education, the *Berlin Lectures* (Matthews 2007, in *The Grounding of Positive Philosophy*), the *Philosophy of Revelation* (posthumous)"],"reception":"Xavier Tilliette's *Schelling: une philosophie en devenir* (1970, integral reading — mythology and revelation as constitutive philosophy of religion); Edward Beach's *The Potencies of God(s)* (1994); Walter Schulz; Andrew Bowie 1993 (structural reading — historical content separable from philosophical structure); Hegelian readings (Christianity as absolute religion superseded by absolute knowing in the *Logic*, with my mythology lectures sub-philosophical).","status":"Defended throughout the late period from the early 1820s through the unfinished Berlin lectures published posthumously. The structural philosophy (necessary process / free completion) is independent of the Christian-historical content; the same structure could in principle be instantiated differently. The mythological scholarship — Indo- European, Egyptian, Greek, Phoenician, Hebraic — is genuine textual-historical work, not illustration: the philosophy is grounded in actual history of religions material, not abstracted from it.","era":"1775-1854","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Deities of Samothrace","page":"pp. 70–71","canonical":"","quote":"Hereby Jupiter must be conceived in a double relation: once, insofaras he himself is one of the seven; then insofar as he is Zeus the beginning, Zeus the middle, and Zeus the end, as the Orphics say.","label":"The Deities of Samothrace, pp. 70–71"},{"n":2,"work":"The Deities of Samothrace","page":"p. 71","canonical":"","quote":"Therefore to philosophize about God's actual being or about the world's being is to begin not with a purely rational deduction, but instead with a \"fact.\" The positive philosophy is \"positive\" precisely because its point of departure is a \"given.\" The being which the positive philosophy interprets is only because it is willed to be and not because of any rational necessity that it be.","label":"The Deities of Samothrace, p. 71"},{"n":3,"work":"Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology","page":"pp. 149–150","canonical":"","quote":"Now, however, as *you* see, this *view* has first become possible only through the *expla-* *nation*. For only for the reason that we are obliged to assume in mythology a necessary emergence are we also obliged to perceive in it necessary content, that is, truth.","label":"Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, pp. 149–150"},{"n":4,"work":"Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology","page":"pp. 136–137","canonical":"","quote":"Only in the meantime the discovery has come to light that the process producing mythology already has its ground and beginning in the *first actual consciousness* of mankind.","label":"Historical-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology, pp. 136–137"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"naturphilosophie","label":"Naturphilosophie: is nature autonomous productivity, or the constituted appearance of a transcendental subject?"},{"slug":"freedom-and-the-dark-ground","label":"Freedom and the dark ground: is the distinction between God's ground and God's existence a structural-ontological breakthrough or theosophical regression?"},{"slug":"positive-vs-negative-philosophy","label":"Positive vs negative philosophy: can any a priori system ground the existence of what it analyzes, or must philosophy begin from the unprethinkable?"},{"slug":"art-and-the-unconscious","label":"Art and the unconscious: is aesthetic intuition the highest organ of philosophy, accomplishing in finite form what philosophy can only theorize?"}]}