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Schelling's Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel
Recent decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of interest in German Idealism in the English-speaking world. However, out of the three leading thinkers of the period directly after Kant--Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel--Schelling has received relatively little attention. In particular, the distinctive philosophical project of Schelling's late period, beginning in the 1820s, has been almost completely ignored. This omission has impaired the overall understanding of German Idealism. For it is during the late phase of his work that Schelling develops his influential critique of Hegel and his definitive response to the central problems post-Kantian thought as a whole.
This book is the first in English to survey the whole of Schelling's late system, and to explore in detail the rationale for its division into a “negative philosophy” and a “positive philosophy.” It begins by tracing Schelling's intellectual development from his early work of the 1790s up to the threshold of his final phase. It then examines Schelling's mature conception of the scope of pure thinking, the basis of negative philosophy, and the nature of the transition to positive philosophy. In this second, historically oriented enterprise Schelling explores the deep structure of mythological worldviews and seeks to explain the epochal shift to the modern universe of “revelation.”
Simultaneously, the book offers a sustained comparison of Hegel's and Schelling's treatment of a range of central topics in post-Kantian the relation between a priori thinking and being; the role of religion in human existence; the inner dynamics of history; and the paradoxical structure of freedom.
This book is the first in English to survey the whole of Schelling's late system, and to explore in detail the rationale for its division into a “negative philosophy” and a “positive philosophy.” It begins by tracing Schelling's intellectual development from his early work of the 1790s up to the threshold of his final phase. It then examines Schelling's mature conception of the scope of pure thinking, the basis of negative philosophy, and the nature of the transition to positive philosophy. In this second, historically oriented enterprise Schelling explores the deep structure of mythological worldviews and seeks to explain the epochal shift to the modern universe of “revelation.”
Simultaneously, the book offers a sustained comparison of Hegel's and Schelling's treatment of a range of central topics in post-Kantian the relation between a priori thinking and being; the role of religion in human existence; the inner dynamics of history; and the paradoxical structure of freedom.
338 pages, Hardcover
Published December 2, 2022
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December 11, 2023Happy to have finally finished this!
This book is relatively short but quite dense, a lot of deep exegesis of late Schelling with an eye toward comparing him to Hegel. Much of the comparison occurs later in the text, and it is of a limited kind. The three main comparative points I would identify are Religion, Freedom, and State/Politics. All are very well-explored. In some sense this is the necessary counterbalance to the fairly impoverished comparison Marcuse writes in the otherwise brilliant Reason and Revolution.
I will say there are a few things about scope that confuse me a little about this book, though not necessarily to its detriment: the "confrontation" of Schelling with Hegel is rather limited, as I mentioned, and occurs in ~3 or so chapters for the most part. This is not negative, since where the confrontation occurs it is quite fruitful, but the book is for the most part exegetical of later Schelling. I don't mind this, but it makes me wonder who this book is for. I suppose those who are interested in Hegel but hadn't explored Schelling much? Luckily, I fall into that camp, and for me it was pretty great, but I'm just curious how big of a niche that would be.
The comparisons don't just stop with Hegel, in fact Dews surprises with a really interesting comparison with Sartre's conception of Being and Nothing, which not only brings out the latent idealist in Sartre (not to say Sartre IS an idealist, just to point out how much he owes to the tradition), but makes me appreciate him as a philosopher all over again. There is also a very interesting interpretation of Schelling as proto-Freudian in many regards, and I noticed a special emphasis on this in regards to Schelling's writing about myth. Here I thought there could be an opening of a revisiting of Schelling's views on mythology through the lens of Adorno and Horkheimer, and the myth of enlightenment.
The authorship is really great, extensive sourcing is appreciated, and Dews deals with the German material well. A few minor drawbacks occur that are editor/publisher faults, where there are obvious sentence errors (I notice words switched in sentences when they should be in a different order, or prepositions are missing, etc., etc.).
Overall, I quite enjoyed this, as one could judge by my splurging thoughts. This certainly has me looking at Schelling with a more appreciative eye than before, and I can see a great deal of fruitful avenues into reading him.
This book is relatively short but quite dense, a lot of deep exegesis of late Schelling with an eye toward comparing him to Hegel. Much of the comparison occurs later in the text, and it is of a limited kind. The three main comparative points I would identify are Religion, Freedom, and State/Politics. All are very well-explored. In some sense this is the necessary counterbalance to the fairly impoverished comparison Marcuse writes in the otherwise brilliant Reason and Revolution.
I will say there are a few things about scope that confuse me a little about this book, though not necessarily to its detriment: the "confrontation" of Schelling with Hegel is rather limited, as I mentioned, and occurs in ~3 or so chapters for the most part. This is not negative, since where the confrontation occurs it is quite fruitful, but the book is for the most part exegetical of later Schelling. I don't mind this, but it makes me wonder who this book is for. I suppose those who are interested in Hegel but hadn't explored Schelling much? Luckily, I fall into that camp, and for me it was pretty great, but I'm just curious how big of a niche that would be.
The comparisons don't just stop with Hegel, in fact Dews surprises with a really interesting comparison with Sartre's conception of Being and Nothing, which not only brings out the latent idealist in Sartre (not to say Sartre IS an idealist, just to point out how much he owes to the tradition), but makes me appreciate him as a philosopher all over again. There is also a very interesting interpretation of Schelling as proto-Freudian in many regards, and I noticed a special emphasis on this in regards to Schelling's writing about myth. Here I thought there could be an opening of a revisiting of Schelling's views on mythology through the lens of Adorno and Horkheimer, and the myth of enlightenment.
The authorship is really great, extensive sourcing is appreciated, and Dews deals with the German material well. A few minor drawbacks occur that are editor/publisher faults, where there are obvious sentence errors (I notice words switched in sentences when they should be in a different order, or prepositions are missing, etc., etc.).
Overall, I quite enjoyed this, as one could judge by my splurging thoughts. This certainly has me looking at Schelling with a more appreciative eye than before, and I can see a great deal of fruitful avenues into reading him.
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