System des transzendentalen Idealismus

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Horst D. Brandt (Editor), Walter E. Ehrhardt (Contributor)

In dieser Schrift begründet Schelling 1800 in methodischer Strenge das Programm seiner Philosophie, d.h. die Notwendigkeit der Zusammenführung von Natur- und Transzendentalphilosophie.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Metaphysics, Germany, German Literature, Theory

311 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1800

About the author

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German Idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend. Interpreting Schelling's philosophy is often difficult because of its ever-changing nature. Some scholars characterize him as a protean thinker who, although brilliant, jumped from one subject to another and lacked the synthesizing power needed to arrive at a complete philosophical system. Others challenge the notion that Schelling's thought is marked by profound breaks, instead arguing that his philosophy always focused on a few common themes, especially human freedom, the absolute, and the relationship between spirit and nature.

Schelling's thought has often been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world. This stems not only from the ascendancy of Hegel, whose mature works portray Schelling as a mere footnote in the development of Idealism, but also from his Naturphilosophie, which positivist scientists have often ridiculed for its "silly" analogizing and lack of empirical orientation. In recent years, Schelling scholars have forcefully attacked both of these sources of neglect.

Reviews

[Erick · Rating 5 out of 5]

So this is the fourth book I've read by Schelling. I really haven't read them chronologically; actually quite the opposite. I read the Philosophy Of Mythology first; then his Philosophy Of Human Freedom; then his Philosophy Of Nature, and then this work. I've liked all of them to a degree. Schelling's system developed over time and in the course of a number of works. When he wrote the System Of Transcendental Idealism, he was still very much a disciple of Fichte and this is evident when one reads this book. Much of his thought here depends on Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. Basically, it's a discourse on dichotomous notions of being. Taking the basis from Fichte's system of the "I" and the "not I", Schelling investigates the bridging of opposites, e.g. self/not self, finitude/infinitude, limitlessness/limitedness, unconsciousness/consciousness, passivity/activity, subjectivity/objectivity, etc. A lot of this was investigated in Fichte's works related to the Wissenschaftslehre (loosely translated as the "Science of Knowledge/Knowing"), which I am very acquainted with. I purposely read Fichte thoroughly before reading this work. Both writers seek to make subjective being actively objective in an idealistic manner, rather than in a realistic or empirical manner.
To go over this work in detail would make this review overlong and isn't necessary. I recommend that people who are interested in Schelling, German Idealism, or philosophy in general, read it. I gained a lot from it. I actually probably liked his investigation of art at the end of the work the best. I've also come to appreciate the role that Schelling and Fichte played in the development of psychology as a science. It's hard not to appreciate how much of the ground work was laid by them.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kant talks at you while Hegel gives his reader poetry in motion. Schelling in this book bridges the two in such a way that the twain meet.

The self of the self awareness, the part where nature meets our freedom in such a way that the subjective within us realizes the objective outside of us where the intuitive melds into the intuited and the space where every determination is a negation (Schilling uses that Spinozian in this book but doesn’t credit Spinoza). He’ll have the finite pretend to understand the absolute and ceaselessly becomes until it knows. Schilling is onto something and gets close. Read this book before you read Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit since this book was meant to be understood on its own terms while according to Hegel nobody understood him except for one person and Hegel would even claim that person understood him incorrectly.

Irony is jealous of authenticity. We live in a paradox wrapped in a riddle and peel the wrapping off till we get to the center of an onion where nothing resides except for remnants of expectations from our experiences. Descartes’ primal error is assuming a world away in order to get the certainty of the self. Schilling follows Kant and makes ourselves about ourselves (about the self of the self awareness). It will take Heidegger to give us present-at-hand, ready-at-hand, and dasein leading to being-in-the-world such that the they, ambiguity, distractions, and attunement leads us away from authenticity and he does not assume the world away and makes us (i.e. dasein, that which takes a stand on its own understanding) part of the world. Schilling still atomizes us into monads but dances around it by making the subjective an objective by objectivizing the subjective while giving primacy to the self. He almost gets where Heidegger will take us but gets distracted by the absolute.

If it’s not obvious, I found this book incredibly fun to read. Hegel must have too because I think Schilling channels Hegel better than Hegel at times and he wrote it before Hegel wrote his opus. I wish I had a class assignment which required me to write a 20 page essay on what I thought about this book. It would be a fun assignment and at the end I would be able to articulate at least to myself why this book is such a vital book today (hint: there are interesting connections to the ‘measurement problem’ in physics that reside in the first half of this book and could be flushed out by somebody smarter and not as lazy as me, and there is ‘being in time’ and ‘being in space’ related to essence and accidents, there’s a Henri Bergson Creative Evolution connection that seemed obvious to me but not to Wiki, and there are other multiple intriguing lines of thought that are worthwhile in themselves).

[Campbell Rider]

i hate it when people are like "wtf don't blow your idealist philosophy all over my baby" like bitch first of all it's not idealism it's like some other shit. plus scientists don't even know the ramifications of its hazards yet. mf hoe

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review has been expanded and updated and published here: https://brentthewalrus.com/2022/10/13...

It only took me two and a half years to finish this book lol. I blame COVID-19…

Really enjoyed this but it definitely wasn’t easy. I understand Schelling’s development much better. The majority of the book is discussing his three epochs of the emergence of self-consciousness through sensation, intuition, willing and ultimately self consciousness. The driving force for this is what he calls productive intuition. It’s productive because it’s active (actu). Schelling made a big deal about how all nature is not passive or an object to be studied but is active in his philosophy of nature. It’s intuition because it’s a form of knowledge but not because it’s conscious because it’s not, as we don’t reach self consciousness until the last stage. In this it’s something like a blind mechanic albeit it’s purposive.

His philosophy of nature published before this and his transcendental idealism he eventually synthesized (Fichte criticized him in this for Schelling misunderstanding the objective side of his “productive intuition.” as if it has to have a separate system and was not the same mechanism of the ideal). Schelling would publish Presentation of my Philosophy a year later which essentially was the start of harmonizing his transcendental philosophy and his philosophy of nature. He would attempt to fully flesh his metaphysic in Ages of the World.

He also fixed his Absolute Identity problem of the Absolute (A=A) which he used to ground the objective and subjective. Hegel criticized Schelling in this also (“The night on which all cows are black”) in his “Presentation” a year later he fixed the ontology of his Absolute (A²=A+B etc. Etc.) to have a implicit divisions in unity which lead to synthesis. Actually Schelling discusses this thesis, antithesis, synthesis dialectic in his Transcendental Idealism well before Hegel did. His system which just not fleshed out the way Hegel systematically did but we all know how that story goes.

He ends discussing how his system relates to ethics, history, and art. You can see him lay the foundation for his “three periods” which he lectured on and fleshed out in history of philosophy of mythology. Which, incidentally enough, he only did after he changed his understanding of the role of art. Schelling used Art originally as the heuristic mechanism whereby the infinite becomes objectified. The dualism of self conscious man is overcome and the original primordial unity is displayed objectively through art or poetry. Schelling calls this “genius” and is the highest form of productive intuition which is in stark contract to Hegel who saw philosophy as the highest form. Schelling would publish works on his philosophy of art a few years later, although eventually art was replaced by Myth. Mythology ultimately becomes the tool for Schelling whereby the Absolute is manifest.

Good insights on what Schelling calls imagination. I much prefer the later Schelling than this early Schelling, which I find much to Fichtean (All consciousness is constitutive of God, the primordial self=Absolute and the Absolute=the primordial self). Later Schelling has a more fleshed out theogony and a little more distinction/separation in his ontology of God and Man. Nevertheless I will admit I thoroughly enjoyed reading this classic work of German Idealism.

I would recommend this to any student of Schelling, German Idealism, or those looking to understand how we got from Kant to Hegel (hint, you have to read Spinoza, Fichte, and Schelling). Would not recommend for the casual reader or those with interest in philosophy but have not done the contours and basics because this isn’t light reading.

10/8/2022 -b

[Aung Sett Kyaw Min · Rating 3 out of 5]

System is a bit all over the place but in the best way possible. It is irreverent, audacious yet sincere in its ambition to amplify the already seismic shock of Kant's retroengineering of the transcendental machinery responsible for self-conscious cognizance from out of conceptual-sensory representings (i.e. possible experience). But while Kant was willing accomodate some measure of givenness in his system Schelling here sets out to deduce from the whole transcendental machinery of the Self not only the form of intuition but its matter as well. The objective is but the activity of the subjective progressively extrojected and ossified until it turns into the familiar thing-in-itself, owing to the infinite tendency of the Self to objectify its own activity. For what else is the Self but infinite activity--a knowing that is at the same time a form of being, asks Schelling. With the deduction of this permanent activity of knowing that fully and directly coincides with being (the reciprocal conditioning of form and matter that constitutes the absolute point of departure for any system of knowledge worthy of the title), Schelling has ostensibly found a work-around for Kant's ban on the applicability of 'intellectual intuition' to finite beings such as ourselves. The Self IS none other than intellectual intuition in that it exists only in its act of knowing itself, pulling itself up by its own epistemological-ontological (ideal-realist) bootstraps. But intellectual intuition is not synonymous with self awareness as such. At the end of intelligence's odyssey as chronicled by System, we come to the realization that knowledge is both apriori and posteriori from the standpoint of [productive] intuition, and that the painful contradiction between the ideal (intuitant, subjective) on one side and the ideal-real (intuiting, objective) is a real limitation only for the philosophizing consciousness. Yet this contradiction can never be resolved once and for all because it is the very condition of possibility of individual, finite empirical consciousness. Only partial intuitions can be attempted, for Schelling is quite emphatic that the whole of the Self can never become transparent to the Self in one stroke, condemned to ape but never reiterate the absolute, unconscious synthesis of time immemorial...

[Güis Guerrero-Enterría · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este es un libro fundamental para entender el idealismo alemán. Además está escrito en un alemán exquisito. Que buenos escritores había en este grupo de colegas en esta época.

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Schelling's reconstruction of Fichte's theory of consciousness via absolute identity is fantastic. While his discussion of many of the Kantian categories were very good, his attempts to deduce space, magnetism, and gravity were absurd.

I was not impressed by his argument that self-consciousness is only possibly through a recognition of the wills of other intelligences within the objective world, although the way in which it influenced Hegel's "master-slave dialectic" is clear. He significantly tempers Kant's categorical imperative by discussing the limitations of freedom, both in limitations of human nature and restriction via other wills - the remnants of Kant's "moral law" is the phenomenon of "choice". He seems to have a racist motivation for this - diminished natural talents can restrict freedom and hence individuality, and he claims that we can observe an individual's talent from the shape their skull. Yikes!

His discussion of law & the state is very Liberal, in that the state is required to maintain the possibility of Freedom in a world with conflicting wills. He introduces the distinction between "first nature" and "second nature" which I had thought was due to Hegel, but he seems to flip-flop regarding whether the social nature operates via laws like original nature does. Perhaps society has laws but the creation of states is a necessarily imperfect craft? He views state constitutions in a surprisingly pragmatic way, saying that a perfect & moral system of law still does not prevent collapse.

His discussion of the philosophy of history/progress seems essentially Kantian, but with greater emphasis on how inconceivable it is that individual self-seeking is compatible with the realization of a harmonious and moral world-order. He invokes the metaphor of the hand of God/Providence, reminiscent of Smith's "invisible hand". He waxes very poetical in this section, talking about the never-to-come Revelation of the Absolute Identity of the Subject and Object (for if it were fully revealed we would lose our Freedom and cease to be collaborators with God). But he seems to contradict himself when he dreams of a Third Age of the World, still to come and impossible to predict, whereby all past history will be shown to have been meaningful.

The final section, on the Philosophy of Art, basically lays out Kant's 3rd Critique, making its role in Kant's grand structure very explicit. Schelling explains how the art-object, created by the man of genius and giving its observer a blessed tranquility of mind, reveals to us the possibility of the very providence/absolute identity which was impossible to see in the workings of history. He redeems this otherwise stodgy section by discussing, in a way Kant does not, how the genius of the artist actually requires practice and technique, rendering the seeming unity and purposiveness of the art-object into a miracle analogous with the way that Unconscious Nature gives rise to Consciousness.

[Àlex Prats · Rating 5 out of 5]

Durillo

[globulon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was happy to find this as an e-book at google books, particularly at the price compared to the usual for this sort of academic book.

I wanted to read this after reading Coleridge's "Biographia Literaria". I found some parts of the book very rewarding. I focused primarily on the beginning and the end. The earlier parts discuss the first stages of the deduction of the universe from the original principle. I thought this stuff was pretty interesting. Past a certain point though the derivation seemed to be pretty empty speculation. Even fairly early on I had the feeling that some of the arguments weren't truly enlightening but were sort of sophistical tricks to prove theses that he believed in. It seems to me that a truly compelling philosophical argument isn't just to achieve the result of proving some thesis. That sort of argument really is usually pretty useless except in certain domains like logic. Rather the best argument should really reveal something deep and interesting about the subject that thus compels agreement. Still, I found the general picture that was being presented interesting. I have a strange fascination with idealism. In some ways I have a very strong feeling of "How could anyone really believe that?!" but at the same time, that very outlandishness has somehow attracted me for a long time to continue to study it.

The other part that I focused on was the ending which details a theory of art. Again, I think there are many would argue that such theorizing of art from such high level general principles is useless. I have some real sympathy for that argument but at the same time am irresistibly drawn to it nonetheless. This part was too short for me. I would have really enjoyed reading more in this vein. Unfortunately, Schelling's "Philosophy of Art" goes off in a totally different direction that I found pretty useless. The basic idea here is that the work of art is the highest approach to the general unity of the entire universe as it is the conscious fusion of the universal and the particular in a way that maintains the poles at the same time as showing the unity. Philosophy is inferior as it subsumes the particular under the universal and treats the unity in abstract terms. I think there's really something pretty interesting in this way of looking at art, the general metaphysical picture and all. I realize this view makes me a leper in pretty much every circle intellectual or otherwise :)

[Kexuan Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book years ago and the re-reading is almost as impressive. Schelling was then still a half prestige of Fichte then: he still set the self as the supreme principle in this book. However, the difference was there: for Schelling it is always the Absolute that is of concern, and this book was like an experiment to fathom how far the Fichtean pavement from thinking to being can go instead of affirming a priori that the subjective idealism of Fichte was the only feasible project. Instead transcendental philosophy has to be completed by natural philosophy, which is proved to be somehow isomorphic to the former. Even in his transcendental deductions Schelling toned down Fichte's egomaniac aspect in focusing more on how the will can be restricted by other individuals.

There are several opposite categories that are significant throughout the book and may incur confusions:

Real self: the self in consciousness. It is outgoing and limited to be an object.

Ideal self: the unconscious self that sets the limit. It is self-reverting and objectifying itself by limiting, in order to know itself.

For the self: for the real self.

For us: for the transcendental philosophers. They have the obligation to find out the dynamics of the real and the ideal self that constitutes the objects that are present to the real self. The real self is not aware of that before the last stage.

Then everything will be quite smooth. Schelling can be far-fetched sometimes (like his way to deduce that there are exactly three dimensions in the space. He could there at most say that there are AT LEAST 3 degrees of freedom for the space for certain concepts to be intelligible, but he was too cursory to assert that there are only 3 dimensions. Neither do I find his deduction of the space as extension persuasive), but it is still one of the best introductions to philosophy. I can hardly find a second book that covers almost all significant philosophical issues in less than 300 pages, and in which everything is united in a supreme principle.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

To read what feels like forcing yourself through a thorny bush, bleeding along the way, carving out a path through the thick and the sharp, in order to advance your understanding of philosophy, only to find that the conclusion states that the work of art is much higher than philosophy, seems like one large, elaborate, arduously worked out prank. Compared to Fichte, this work seems only to contribute with a few sections by attempting to deduce objectivity and our transition toward it through the most convoluted manner. Nevertheless, one gets a powerful (though quite dry) sense of negative thinking and transcendental method here.

[olenius]

це просто піздєц

насправді "філософія мистецтва" класичних німців зовсім не та філософія мистецтва до якої ми звикли. ЦЯ філософія мистецтва сприймається ніби ти 400 сторінок плачеш і пишеш математику в сьомому класі (завдання з двома зірочками**), а останні 20 сторінок - автор турботливо витирає твоє засмаркане і заплакане лице своїм мереживним жабо і дарує блокнот з натюрмортом

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very difficult book, in my opinion no less than Hegel's Phenomenology, although it starts off being quite promisingly accessible, which made me realize that Hegel in many ways is Schelling 2.0. The Phenomenology is basically an exposition of the themes in this book witg similar scheme of journey of consciousness, but more profound and total. Even the Hegelian concept of dialectics is already present in Schelling.

In many ways their philosophies are similar. Schelling's is like Spinoza with more emphasis on nature as intelligent, intuitive, mysterious, a kind of romantic interpretation of the Enlightenment concept of nature as deterministic machine. As a result, he viewed humanity and intelligence as evolving from nature, whereas Hegel's is more systematic, with emphasis on spirit behind reality and all kinds of knowledge.

How does the first conscious being come out of matter? Schelling solves this problem thus: nature is the manifestation of an intelligent spirit which is on a journey to evolve itself to higher mode of being. Of course, people like Dawkins will cry religion, which is why Schelling was increasingly irrelevant throughout late 19th century, but this way of thinking has surprisingly made a comeback in many pro-environment movements, and surprisingly modern philosophers such as Bergson and Zizek.

All in all, a book which you can tell there is profound thinking behind it, but is in many places too speculative and obscure. He spent pages going over abstract conceptual frameworks (e.g. the self is not object or being, but an act). The problem of self-consciousness (e.g recognizing ourselves in the mirror) occupied him for many chapters. He goes like "how is it possible that we are at the same time the object and the subject? Where is the thinking?" and so on. In many ways he is a predecessor to the problems that are faced by general AI (such as self-driving car recognizing each other), it is indeed a profound problem, but without the benefit of science and computing, the speculation does not get anywhere. Many of the subtleties went over my head, but if you are looking for a philosophy of nature which is rigorously argued, here is one for you.

[Socrate · Rating 3 out of 5]

„Întreaga cunoaştere se bazează pe concordanţa dintre ceva obiectiv şi ceva subiectiv. - Căci se cu­noaşte doar ceea ce este adevărat: în mod general ade­vărul este însă admis în concordanta dintre reprezen­tări şi obiectele lor. ”

„În cunoaşterea noastră putem numi natură totali­tatea a ceea ce este pur obiectiv: în schimb. totalitatea a ceea ce este subiectiv se numeşte eu sau inteligentă. Cele două concepte se află în opoziţie. La origine inteli­genţa este concepută numai drept cea care reprezintă, iar natura numai drept cea care poate fi reprezentată: prima drept ceea ce este conştient, a doua drept ceea ce este lipsit de conştiinţă. Dar în orice cunoaştere este necesară o coincidenţă a amîndurora (a conştientului cu ceea ce este în sine lipsit de conştiinţă): sarcina este de a explica această coincidenţă”

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Die Kunst ist eben deswegen dem Philosophen das Höchste, weil sie ihm das Allerheiligste gleichsam öffnet, wo in ewiger und ursprünglicher Vereinigung gleichsam in Einer Flamme brennt, was in der Natur und Geschichte gesondert ist, und was im Leben und Handeln, ebenso wie im Denken, ewig sich fliehen muß. Die Ansicht, welche der Philosoph von der Natur künstlich sich macht, ist für die Kunst die ursprüngliche und natürliche. Was wir Natur nennen, ist ein Gedicht, das in geheimer wunderbarer Schrift verschlossen liegt. Doch könnte das Räthsel sich enthüllen, würden wir die Odyssee des Geistes darin erkennen, der wunderbar getäuscht, sich selber suchend, sich selber flieht; denn durch die Sinnenwelt blickt nur wie durch Worte der Sinn, nur wie durch halbdurchsichtigen Nebel das Land der Phantasie, nach dem wir trachten.” (Ausgewählte Schriften 1, Suhrkamp, 696)

[ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eines der beeindruckendsten Bücher, was die dialektische Entwicklung anbelangt. Das Ganze ist wie eine vergleichsweise abstrakte, inhaltsarme Variante des Hegelschen Systems, hat diesem in jedem Fall offenbar als Steigbügel gedient. Wir finden hier aber auch schon die Hegelschen Probleme, etwa der starke und sogar ausdrückliche Formalismus der Methode. Dennoch, Schelling meint sich hier noch immer im Rahmen Fichtes, geht aber nicht nur vom subjektiven in den objektiven Idealismus über (nicht zum ersten mal), sondern führt die Deduktionen viel gründlicher und formenreicher durch, als Fichte das noch leistete. Ein ganz großer Wurf, von dem jeder Dialektiker noch heute lernen kann.

[Beansism · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much like Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, the first half of this book is mindblowing, but the other half is like drudging through mud just to finish. Schelling, on the other hand, was clearly much more developed than Fichte and left him in the dust.

[Chris Nagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

The butler, who is also the non-butler, did it.

[Mohamad Gheisari · Rating 5 out of 5]

رساله ای خواندنی با ترجمه ای شیوا و فلسفی

[Maxim · Rating 5 out of 5]

All roads lead to Hegel, fortunately Schelling includes.

[Matteino Polizzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interessante

[Oakley C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

How does one review an entire system that is in so (relatively) slim a volume?

First, I might note that by the time you are at the bitter end you may be so cognitively vexed that any talk regarding the real "stuff" of life (aesthetics, ethics) can be difficult to tether let alone intellectually indulge. The epistemological and metaphysical weight of the vast majority of this book (part three is the true meat and marrow of the work what with its various "epochs" traversing all the way from "original sensation" to "the absolute") is so rich that threading the needle to "practical reason"–which is still wholly presented in terms of epistemological construction, as it were, and not as "concrete" moral philosophy–becomes quite impossible for a low quality of mind such as my own.

Is this a "weakness" in Schelling? Far be it from me to declare it thus, however, one wonders if Schelling might have been slightly more Kantian in this regard and published separate volumes on ethics and especially on aesthetics within the same system. But, of course, if you know but one thing about Schelling it is that he absolutely did NOT stay in one place for very long. This book, it appears, must stand alone (so to speak). Thus, I will not only be rereading this whole thing sooner than I'd like to think but will have to spend much, much more time on the last two parts on their own (but that might not work as, with so much Teutonic philosophy, one has to have it ALL in mind to make any hay of the "parts").

A final comment, and perhaps one that is almost a tautology–if you've not suffered through, and somewhat enjoyed, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason than little in these 275+ pages will make any sort of sense. No, I know no German but it is clear that Schelling often replicates Kant's lexicon en masse ("intuition" along with "a priori" or "synthetic proposition" abound and have a very precise meaning) and you NEED to know WHAT those terms mean. He does explain them, in his own way, but there is a clear (and justified) assumption that you KNOW the elephant in the room on a first name basis. Again, this should be obvious but for the odd duck out there that somehow stumbles upon Schelling BEFORE Kant (hey, it's the internet age, who knows?) you have been warned.