After a long period of neglect that began in his lifetime, why has Schelling reemerged as an important philosopher, germane to contemporary concerns? In the first part of this essay I offer a brief history of Schelling’s early descent into obscurity and gradual ascent back into the light of philosophical relevance. In the second and final part of the essay, I offer a brief survey of the current Schelling resurgence in the English speaking reception of Continental philosophy.

The naturephilosophical challenge can be posed not merely to postkantian philosophy as an episode in the history of philosophy, but to the postkantianism that remains foundational for contemporary...

Any religious worldview, understood in the sense that ‘life has a purpose’, has to face the problem of evil. The problem of evil has been particularly intensively discussed in the Aristotelian–Scholastic–Christian tradition. The most popular solution has been to deny that anything truly evil actually exists. It is hard to conceive why an omnipotent and perfectly good God would allow evil to appear. Yet, Western culture has been and still is full of imagery of absolute demonic evil. I suggest that (...) this strained dialectic could be best approached by radically rethinking the nature of evil and the theological context in which it has traditionally been thought. In his middle period works, Friedrich Schelling offers a pantheistic framework which gives extensive resources for thinking about evil. Schelling’s account is well balanced and innovative at least in two respects. It does not explain away the inscrutable presence of evil, but it neither completely renounces theoretical speculation of the origin of evil. Second, Schelling’s metaphysics anticipate Nietzsche’s fundamental critique of the ‘life-denying’ character of Western metaphysics and ethics. However, while sharing much of the critical aspects of Nietzsche’s thought, unlike Nietzsche, Schelling does not end up in atheism and moral relativism. (shrink)

What Schelling calls “philosophy of nature,” does not merely and not primarily mean the treatment of a special area “nature,” but means the understanding of nature in terms of the principle of Idea...

This paper examines the controversy between Franz von Baader and Schelling as it takes place in Schelling’s lecture course Das System der Weltalter. This particular instance of their disagreement involves Schelling criticising Baader for his notion of the biblical Elohim as divine proxies. The paper first provides a background to Baader-Schelling philosophical feud before examining Schelling’s remarks against Baader in the System der Weltalter. Then, Baader’s writings on Elohim are looked into in the light of their connection to Baader’s conception (...) of creation as falling-away and Baader’s source for interpreting Elohim as proxies, including Saint Martin and Kabbalah. Thereafter, Schelling’s criticism of Baader is analysed and interpreted in the context of the System der Weltalter. The paper aims to achieve several things: to show the presence of distorted kabbalistic influence in Baader and its discussion in Schelling; to revise Koslowski’s view on Baader’s creation narrative by pointing out how Baader’s Elohim/divine proxies function to form a rather dualistic relation between God and creation; and to interpret Schelling’s convoluted and difficult reply to Baader displaying that at stake between the two thinkers were questions of God’s ineffability and freedom as well as God’s involvement into creation. (shrink)

Schelling’s “Bruno” provides a provocative illustration of his conviction that early modern science has adopted a radically flawed and impoverished concept of matter, and therefore of nature. The “Bruno” has been read as a settling of scores with Fichte, with whom Schelling had recently quarreled, and as a critique of Kant’s idealism. I propose to look at how the dialogue reveals Schelling’s developing understanding of pantheism, as reflected in the arguments he borrows from Giordano Bruno and then transforms. “Bruno” is (...) a dialogue with four interlocutors, and ranges widely. I will discuss two central sections, in which the two main roles are played by Bruno (Schelling) and Lucian (Fichte). Lucian begins by restating their agreement in an earlier section of the dialogue that when it is considered in the light of the supreme idea, the distinction of knowledge and being is untrue, a tantalizing claim. He then goes on to pose the question of how it can be possible to understand the departure of the finite from the eternal. (shrink)

In my essay, I analyze Schelling’s and Rosenzweig’s commitment to the narrative philosophy as a unique method of telling a philosophical story. I want to understand what such “philosophical story” means and how it differs from the conceptual approach, here represented by Hegel. I also want to see how it connects with Schelling’s another project continued by Rosenzweig, of doing “positive philosophy”: in what way does positivity imply narrativity? Is this a necessary implication? And, last but not least, I want (...) to explore the theological dimension of the narrative project. I perceive Schelling’s, and then Rosenzweig’s goal as an attempt to oppose Hegel’s double manoeuvre of sublation – of temporal contingency and religion – by returning to the narrative which recovers the actuality of both elements and sees the necessary connection between them. The living experience of history is strictly linked to the religious stories telling the life of the “living God,” who is emphatically not the “God of the system.” Theosophy and its narrative way of creating a suspense and then inscribing it into a metaphysical drama which plays itself out on the arena of history reveals the deep connection between living historical temporality and religious imagery. (shrink)