Mysticism in Schelling’s Plato-Notebooks of 1792–1794

Abstract This chapter advances an interpretation of Schelling’s Plato-notebooks of 1792–1794 as demonstrating his commitment to a kind of mysticism. Schelling endorses the view found in the Ion and various other Platonic dialogues that poetry, divination, prophecy, and other human activities require a divine power. He extends that account to include philosophy. Philosophy, according to Schelling, requires both “divine dispensation” and techne. Accordingly, philosophical wisdom cannot reliably be transmitted from teacher to student, since there is an element of divinely granted inspiration which cannot be communicated discursively. This view that both divine, intuitive insight and theoretical knowledge are essential to philosophy persists in Schelling’s work throughout this decade. This chapter concludes by showing how the distinction between intuitive insight and theoretical knowledge survives in Schelling’s 1801–1802 identity philosophy.