Reason as Consequent Universal: On Thinking and Being

Turning to the later Schelling, this chapter shows how Schelling regards reason itself as a matter of fact rather than as a self-founding truth of reason. There is not being because there is reason or thinking, but there is reason because there is being. Reason is thus only explicable through a historical, rather than rational, account of its emergence from non-reason. Reason is thus a contingently eternal matter of fact, something which eternally is but could have never been, consequent upon pre-rational being. Schelling does not fall prey to irrationalism, but he does ask why there is reason rather than unreason. Reason too is something for which an account must be given.