Mysticism in Schelling’s 1801–1802 Writings

Abstract This chapter argues that Schelling’s works of 1801–1802 successfully address two worries concerning his mysticism: first, that all talk of the absolute is meaningless, and second, that absolute cognition is irrelevant to the system-building projects of philosophy. Schelling draws on the tradition of negative theology to render his mysticism compatible with certain kinds of substantive discussion about the absolute, in accord with one strand of Neoplatonism and with contemporaries such as Maimon and Jacobi. Moreover, in his notion of exhibition, Schelling presents system-building as guided by insight into absolute unity. Schelling’s notion of exhibition is based on an analogy with geometrical construction as well as a repurposing of Kant’s notion of schematism. Schelling’s description of the relation of finite things to the absolute as one of participation connects the distinctive notions of grounding unity and systematicity advanced here to Platonism.