Counteracting a widespread interpretation of Schelling’s project of a philosophy of nature as anti-Kantian, this paper claims that Kant’s doctrine of the schematism plays a central role in the emergence and development of Schelling’s project. My argument will be structured in the following way. First, I will discuss Schelling’s reception of the schematism in his Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature of 1797, especially as regards his association of it with Kant’s dynamical conception of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations of (...) Natural Science. Relying on this reconstruction, I will argue, secondly, that Schelling brings together a central issue of the Critique of Pure Reason (the objectivity of pure concepts) and the overall problem of the Metaphysical Foundations (the transition from pure philosophy to empirical sciences) by addressing the issue of a schematism specifically related to outer sense. Thirdly, I maintain that this issue is at the core of the overall argument developed in the Ideas, where it appears in the form of a schematism of “materiality as such”. Finally, I suggest that the notion of a schematism of materiality as such offers a useful key to understanding the unfolding of Schelling’s project between 1797 and 1800. (shrink)

In this article, we present for the first time Schelling’s early critique of absolute idealism within his middle metaphysics (1804–1820), which has great relevance and influence on the subsequent course of German philosophy, and, more broadly considered, on later systematic thinking about the categories of unity and duality. We aim to show how Schelling defends a form of metaphysical duality, from 1804 onwards, without relapsing into a stronger Kantian dualism. In this sense, our author rejects both the dualism between nature (...) and spirit, necessity and freedom, as well as the monist-immanent metaphysical stance later associated with Hegelian panlogism. Against Hegel, Schelling increasingly vindicates the reality of the finite and degrades the infinite to mere ideality in a movement that resembles later existentialism. Furthermore, we defend Schelling against the accusation of irrationalism that sections of Hegelianism formulated against him and present the concept of infinity without the notion of totality, which he thinks of, much like Fichte, in the light of the concept of an ‘infinite task’. Schelling’s later criticisms of Hegel are shown to be influenced by his early idealist critique of the period at hand. (shrink)