European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 4, Page 731-745, December 2021.

Among the different interpretations of the philosophy of Schelling, there is no doubt that the ones developed by Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers played a prominent role within the most recent Schelling scholarship. Both Heidegger and Jaspers focused on Schelling’s discourse on freedom, pointing out the fundamental incompatibility of its key elements, i.e. ‘ground’ and ‘existence’, as well as the fallacious conception of Seynsfuge that emerges from it. Moreover, Heidegger argues that Schelling’s ontology ultimately falls back into traditional metaphysical subjectivism, (...) ignoring the question of Being as such and in fact paving the way to nihilism. Similarly, Jaspers criticizes Schelling’s arbitrary account of the relation between freedom and existential being and his misleading conception of transcendence. However, I argue against Jaspers that Schelling’s discourse on freedom must be read as a philosophy of immanence, which aims at maintaining the concreteness of the concepts and at avoiding any form of transcendence. Consequently, I also argue against Heidegger that not only does Schelling’s discourse successfully show the compatibility of ground and existence, but that Schelling’s understanding of the ‘subject’ does not comply with Heidegger’s notion of ‘metaphysical subjectivism’ and is immune to Heidegger’s criticism. (shrink)

The Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom is the most coherent form of Schelling’s attempt to describe the absolute system or the system of freedom. For the first time in the twentieth century, with Heidegger’s careful reference to his treatise on freedom and his repeated commentary in 1936 and 1941, the importance of this treatise in the history of Western thought became apparent. Heidegger focuses on Schilling’s thinking, especially with Schilling’s treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, research (...) into the formation of the system, and the question of the possibility of a system of freedom as a question of the essence of being. Schilling bases his research on the system of freedom on a correct ontological basis in order to transcend formal freedom as an independent determinant of mechanical causation and to achieve the true definition of freedom as the ability to do good and evil. And after proposing the inadequacy of formal freedom in the idealist systems before it, it introduces the real and living concept of freedom as the ability to do good and evil. Heidegger demonstrates the independence of the Schelling system in comparison with the Fichte and Hegel systems, and his innovations in response to issues such as evil, freedom, identity, and the relation of being and “is” are most evident in the metaphysical realm of the will; however, remaining within the metaphorical framework also prevents Schilling from approaching the question of the truth of existence. Schilling’s important issue is the elimination of the opposition between freedom and necessity, which, in his view, is the focus of philosophy. For this reason, the discussion of freedom is at the heart of the system in its true sense, and in his opinion, his dissertation is for the first time the design of a system based on the idea of human freedom. The possibility of a system of freedom must be created in accordance with the principle of identity, which does not ignore the meaning of the relation of theology. In Schelling’s Heideggerian interpretation of the principle of identity, the priority of ontological issues in matters of theological nature such as all theism is given more importance and the question of all theism as a question of the system to the question of “is” and how to connect the structure of beings as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Heidegger’s interpretation of the concept of the system of freedom according to Schelling with emphasis on the ontological distinction between ground and existence. This study seeks to answer these two questions: how does the design of the real concept of freedom open the way to explain the ontological foundation of the possibility of evil and the possibility of freedom in the system? Also, how does the distinction between ground and existence lead to Schelling’s main goal in resolving the conflict between system and freedom? Moreover, according to Heidegger, to what extent does this distinction arise from Schilling’s metaphysical and subject-centered thinking? (shrink)

In this thesis I show how the challenges of producing a philosophy of history responsive to the negativity of the world benefits from working through the difficulties of G. W. F. Hegel’s systematic philosophy. By revealing the powerful and intricate ways that Hegel gives an illegitimate primacy to thought we can better appreciate the obstacles that face a philosophy which places new emphasis on the nonconceptual whilst recognising the genuine role of the concept. In the first half of this thesis (...) I reconstruct the important criticisms levelled at Hegel by F. W. J. Schelling and Theodor W. Adorno. I argue that both their criticisms illuminate our understanding of the metaphysical status of Hegel’s thought and expose the surreptitious means by which Hegel overextends the concept. The value of Adorno’s and Schelling’s reading of Hegel is also due to the fact that they do not cast aside Hegel’s ambitions as mere fantasy. Rather, they provide important insight into the goals philosophy should be striving towards—even if we cannot be as confident as Hegel in their imminent achievement. In the second half I reconstruct Schelling’s and Adorno’s philosophies of history in light of their criticisms of Hegel. The core problem addressed is how unwarranted optimism – entailed by the idealistic operation in Hegel’s theoretical philosophy – is to be eschewed whilst also avoiding a lapse into unwarranted pessimism. I argue that, while both Schelling and Adorno make important advances in this direction, Adorno’s philosophy of history is better able to make sense of both the prevalence of unfreedom in history and the ways in which we can respond to this situation. (shrink)