Schelling's Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel

Abstract This book presents and evaluates the late philosophy (Spätphilosophie) of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) across a wide range of issues, extending from the relation between pure thinking and being, to the philosophy of mythology and religion, to the theory of history, to questions concerning the philosophy of nature and freedom. Simultaneously, it discusses Hegel’s treatment of similar issues, and systematically compares the two thinkers. This is the first time, in an English-language publication, that these two major German Idealists have been compared in such detail along such a broad front. The book begins with three chapters exploring the development of Schelling’s thinking concerning transcendental philosophy, nature and teleology, human freedom, and the meaning of history, from his earliest publications up to his middle years. Against this background, the book then presents Schelling’s distinction between “positive” and “negative” philosophy, the defining mark of his late philosophy. It explores his theory of pure a priori thinking (negative philosophy) and his account of the transition from negative to positive philosophy. The major components of Schelling’s positive philosophy, including his conception of “un-pre-thinkable being,” and his theories of mythology and revelation, are then discussed. Throughout these later chapters, a comparative assessment of Hegel’s approach to a comparable range of issues is sustained. Schelling emerges as a philosopher who traced his own highly distinctive path through the thicket of problems bequeathed by Kant, and whose systematic responses to these problems still merit serious consideration as alternatives to those of Hegel.