Bruno: or, On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, 1802

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

From the Introduction: "In the summer of 1801, Schelling formed the idea of casting his new system or 'identity-philosophy' in the form of a dialogue."

Genres: Philosophy

269 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1802

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

[Kexuan Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a complete, although sketchy presentation of Schelling's Identity Philosophy, but considering that Schelling's 1801 and 1806 presentations of his system have not yet been translated, it is the most significant text for English readers to understand this phase of Schelling's philosophy. The critique of Fichte permeates the whole text. For Schelling Fichte failed to understand the absolute identity between being and consciousness and tried to submit the former to the latter. This leads to a philosophy that absolutises what is only finite, namely, the consciousness and thus desacralises nature into a mere tool for practical concerns. This does not mean that Schelling will reject Fichte's legacy completely and apologises for some "objective truth" independent of consciousness. Rather, he proposes a conversion of the soul from the consciousness to the absolute through intellectual intuition. Schelling's account of intuition is interesting: he asserted that intuition itself involves a self consciousness. One may ask whether a baby before one's self-consciousness can intuit anything since even before one's self-consciousness, one has a storage of experience that eventually define the capabilities of "I" when one's self-consciousness is gained. This, however, might not be a problem for Schelling, since the baby's individualisation has already posited an opposition and one's achievement of self-consciousness might be for Schelling a higher phase of one's representation of the absolute identity. So the potentiality is always there. The opposition between the gravity and light reminds me of Simone Weil and in his discussion of natural philosophy, Schelling did refer to the body's rejection of light and turning into non-being, a theme that will be expounded in his more famous essay on human freedom.

This is one of the apotheosis of philosophical speculation, rivalled only by Plato's Parmenides and Sophists, Plotinus' Enneads 6.2-6.3 and Kant's chapter 76-77 of Critique of Judgement, as far as I read. Schelling distinguishes idea from concept in this book and I believe that it is Platonists' original doctrine. I do not know why Hegel attributed the prejudice to identify Idea with a mere universality to Plato, Plato refuted this himself in Parmenides. Plotinus says that the Ideas always escape from human sights. I do not think mere abstraction can escape human sights easily and can only interpret Platonists' doctrine of Idea as that of Schelling: the Idea as the supreme concreteness.

[Zijin · Rating 5 out of 5]

BRUNO. Then what hope is there for attaining philosophy for those who search for it in logic?
LUCIAN. None.

[suso · Rating 1 out of 5]

se salvan pocas proposiciones vaya basurote

[Cristian Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parece que es muy profundo. Pero en realidad es muy difícil de entender.

[Artemisa Bravo Rueda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Demasiado oscura. Quizá sea una necesidad para poder tratar "el absoluto"; pero la realidad es que esta obra se acaba haciendo pesada y enrevesada (para mí) en muchos puntos.