Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling Knight ( born January 27, 1775 in Leonberg, Duchy of Württemberg, † August 20 1854 in Bad Ragaz, Canton of St. Gallen; knighted in 1812 ) was a German philosopher and one of the main representatives of German Idealism.

2.1 Classification of his work
2.2 Philosophy as a science of reason
2.3 Natural Philosophy

8.1 Primary texts
8.2 secondary texts
8.3 Forums and societies
8.4 bibliographies

Life and work

Youth and studies

Schelling came from a long-established Swabian pastor's family. The father of Joseph Friedrich Schelling, first pastor and deacon in Leonberg, from 1777 teacher at the Higher Seminar of the monastery Bebenhausen, was a distinguished Orientalist. The intellectual milieu in Schelling's parents' house was dominated by the Protestant mystic and pietistic inwardness of Swabia Johann Albrecht Bengel fathers and Friedrich Christoph Oetinger and should not remain without influence on Schelling's later philosophy. Schelling first attended the Latin School in Nürtingen, then the Protestant monastery school in Bebenhausen. The Schelling regarded as intellectually precocious learned there besides Greek and Latin and Hebrew, Arabic and modern languages with the older students. Here Schelling was very marked among other things by his uncle and teacher Nathanael Köstlin, the later Schelling taught.

With a special permit Schelling 1790 could be included in the Tübingen Evangelical pin that belonged to the university at the age of just sixteen. There he studied Protestant theology together with Friedrich Hölderlin and Georg WF Hegel, there was a very fruitful spiritual friendship (the " Tübingen Three "). The ideas of the three were mainly influenced by the spiritual world of theological education and the enthusiasm of the French Revolution. Your revolutionary spirit is reflected in the so-called elders System Program of German Idealism (1796 /97), is represented in the next thoughts to freedom and criticism of the state and the idea of a new mythology. In addition to studying the philosophy of Kant, it was mainly the writing On the doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Moses Mendelssohn the Lord of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, exerted great influence on the thinking of the three. This text and the following pantheism was the philosophy of Spinoza in the German language, albeit as a scandal, known in earnest. Schelling's engagement with Kant is already in his master's thesis in 1792, a treatise on the origin of evil. The philosophy of Spinoza was primarily due to Schelling's philosophy of identity early and strong influence. Even Schelling sat until 1812 repeatedly dealt with the teachings of Jacobi.

In his philosophical beginnings Schelling was also greatly influenced by the philosophy of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who was then teaching in Jena and a style similar to Kant subjective idealism represented. The proximity to Fichte's thought comes in his early work from I as Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditional in Human Knowledge ( 1795) expressed and intensified by the common Jena period. 1801/ 02 however, there was a break with the philosophical mentor spruce, which is documented in the correspondence between the two. After completing his theological studies in 1795 Schelling first went as a private tutor to Stuttgart, in 1796 to study at the University of Leipzig, where he studied until 1798, mathematics, natural sciences and medicine, and thus laid the foundations of his natural philosophy. During this time he visited his compatriot Schiller in Jena, made about this the acquaintance of Goethe (1796 ) and published his first natural philosophical writing with the programmatic title ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797 ).

In August 1798 Schelling traveled to study the local art collection to Dresden. Here came the first contact with the circle of early Romantics to the brothers August Wilhelm and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Friedrich Tieck and Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. 1798 only twenty-three, with the support of Goethe was appointed associate professor in Jena.

Research and teaching

Jena

From 1798 Schelling was professor at Jena beside Fichte, who, however, already in 1799 on charges of atheism (see spruce) lost his professorship there. 1799 Schelling published his first [n ] design to a system of natural philosophy and created the System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), in which Schelling natural philosophy and transcendental philosophy represented as equal basic sciences. He also issued a journal of speculative physics ( 1800/ 01), in which the representation of my system of philosophy (1801 ) was published - the fundamental work of his identity philosophy, a philosophy of the absolute, which is heavily influenced by Spinoza.

According to Fichte's departure from Jena began an exchange of letters between Schelling and Fichte, but from 1801 onwards it came to philosophical alienation and the correspondence ended 1802. The dispute relates to the concept of nature, the concept of intellectual intuition as well as to the relationship between transcendental and natural philosophy. Spruce, the only that I know as a subject, criticized Schelling's notion of a subject- stick nature, a kind naturans. Also there can be for him next to the transcendental philosophy not mean equal natural philosophy as the basic science of philosophy.

From 1802 collaborated with Schelling, Hegel, both gave the journal Critical Journal of Philosophy out ( 1802-1803 ). In 1802, the Socratic dialogue Bruno or about the natural and divine principle of things ( 1802) appeared. In the same year Schelling holds his lectures on the method of academic study, appearing in 1803, with the target direction to provide the separated branches of research on a unified philosophical foundation.

Würzburg, Munich, Erlangen

1803 Schelling was appointed to the University of Würzburg. In addition to the font Philosophy and Religion (1804 ) and the system of the entire philosophy and natural philosophy there arose particular ( Würzburg lectures), one of the masterpieces of the philosophy of identity.

1806 Schelling went to Munich, where he joined the Bavarian civil service, a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and remained until 1820. During this time, Schelling had no academic teaching. In Munich it comes to collaboration with Franz Xaver von Baader and Johann Wilhelm Ritter. The exchange with Baader, then the best connoisseurs of theosophical philosophy of Jacob Boehme, now shows to be very fruitful for the following Schelling's Freedom and World Age philosophy. In Munich, the so-called freedom face developed philosophical inquiries into the nature of human freedom and the related objects ( 1809). From February to July 1810 Schelling holds in Stuttgart in the house of Eberhard Friedrich Georgii in front of a private little circle of listeners lectures, Stuttgart private lectures. From 1810, he worked for years in the philosophy of world age, which should be a great philosophy and theology of history, but was never completed.

1820-1826 Schelling lectured as visiting professor, with no fixed teaching load in Erlangen. It was here that the initiative philosophiae universae ( Erlanger lectures) in which Schelling for the first time outlined a philosophy of mythology and thus the distinction between negative and positive philosophy.

In 1827 he was appointed a full professor at the newly established University of Munich, where he gives lectures to 1841 (his second time in Munich ). In Munich, he runs in 1826 with Georg Friedrich Creuzer, August Neander, Christian August Brandis and Victor Cousin. From 1835-1840 Schelling was the philosophy teacher of the Crown Prince and later King Maximilian II Joseph of Bavaria. In Munich, the period of Schelling's later philosophy begins.

Berlin

1841 Schelling was called to Berlin on the vacant chair of Hegel. There he taught, especially the philosophy of religion (published as Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation ). In the former metropolis of Hegelianism his appearance was considered the last major University event. On 15 November, he stopped there and read his inaugural lecture in the winter term " philosophy of revelation." Among the listeners were located next to high government officials, military officers, university professors, Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Engels, Jacob Burckhardt, Savigny, Steffens, Trendelenburg, Leopold von Ranke, Alexander von Humboldt and other influential intellectuals of the 19th century. For different reasons, both right-and left-wing Hegelians alike are looking forward to his lectures. But soon disappointment spreads and interest in Schelling's lectures decreases. So writes Kierkegaard, who initially was pleased with Schelling talk of "reality" disappointed. "I 'm too old to listen to lectures, as well as Schelling 's too old to keep them " The postscript of some lectures on the philosophy of revelation Schelling was without consent, coupled with its fierce criticism, published by Heinrich Eberhard Gottlob Paulus his enemy. Ironically, it is well that it is this Paul's postscript that read the students of philosophy in the Suhrkamp edition today as Schelling's Philosophy of Revelation. Schelling then retired from teaching back, but remained and continued to work in Berlin, where he received the Order Pour le Mérite was awarded for Science and the Arts on 31 May 1842.

The summer of 1854 he spent at the spa in Bad Ragaz in Switzerland and died there on 20 August 1854. There is also his tomb (1855 ) by Georg Friedrich Ziebland. " The first thinker of Germany" reads the inscription under a bas-relief Schelling shows the midst of his disciples. Maximilian II of Bavaria " put his beloved teacher this monument ."

Family

After his appointment to Jena in 1798 Schelling wrong permanently in the house by August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife Caroline. Caroline (1763-1809) was an unusual and emancipated woman who did not meet the then extremely conservative image of women in the least. She was the daughter of the Orientalist Johann David Michaelis, the former teacher of Schelling's father. Caroline was a writer, was considered a muse of early romanticism and her house was also a meeting place of the early Romantic movement. Between Schelling and twelve-year- old Caroline, a great love, which meant that Caroline divorced in 1803 by August Wilhelm Schlegel, with the support of Goethe and on 26 June of the same year in Murrhardt (Württemberg ) married Schelling developed. Schelling's father dared the two. For Schelling Caroline was also the muse, wife, assistant and talk to. When she died on September 7, 1809, to typhoid fever, Schelling fell into deep mourning. On the obelisk her tomb he was on the right side the words fit: " God has given me, the death can not rob me ." The sadness is reflected in the philosophical dialogue font Clara. Or On the relation of nature with the spirit world (1810 ), with the Schelling its meditatio mortis and Consolation of Philosophy written.

After the death of Caroline the daughter of her best friend, Pauline Gotter (1786-1854) began a correspondence with the lonely Schelling. This came the two closer and on June 11, 1812 Schelling Pauline married in Gotha. The marriage produced six children: Paul Heinrich Joseph (1813-1889), who studied law and later was a professor in Erlangen, Karl Friedrich August (1815-1863), who studied theology, was vicar and the editor of the Complete Works of his father was, Clara (1818-1857), who married the historian Georg Waitz, Julie Friederike Wilhelmine (1821-1885), who married the Prussian government officials Karl Friedrich Hermann von Eichhorn, and Ludwig Hermann (1824-1908), the later Prussian Minister of State was.

Philosophy

Classification of his work

The older Schelling Research ( Kuno Fischer, Wilhelm diaper band ) tended to adopt a number of completely different systems in transition of Schelling 's thought or as Horst Fuhrmans a " turning point" to determine the "outside " came from and did not take place through internal development. Because of this supposed mutability Schelling was also called " Proteus " of philosophy. In contrast, the newer Schelling research emphasizes more the continuity of its basic insights that had persevered in transition. Such amusing motif is by example seen in freedom. The usefulness of a periodization is discussed and questioned in the research again and again. Such attempts are not only the unity of the thinking path in question, but also fall differently depending on the conductive aspect ( natural philosophy, anthropology, philosophy of religion ) the interpretation of. Following the issue of the change of the system is also speculated repeatedly about a "failure " of Schelling.

Despite the difficulties of periodization you can not help but order a division of the work. This is the least problematic, if this is based on the chronology. So following classification seems to have a certain unanimity in research: the phase of early philosophy (1797-1800), the phase of the philosophy of identity (1801-1808), the Freedom and World Age philosophy (1809-1827) and the phase of the Philosophy of Mythology and the revelation of Philosophy ( 1827-1850 ). Roughly divided often spoken of the early (1797-1809), the middle (1809-1827) and late (1828-1850) Schelling. All of this subject to the above-mentioned problem.

Philosophy as a science of reason

In the first period he builds on spruce. Here Schelling appears as spruce, dominated by the desire to present the philosophy as a science of reason. In the second period, in which it is his own words returned to Kant, Schelling, however, sees philosophy as a " mere rational knowledge -border positive science ". Both periods have in common the effort to systematically derive the whole of science from a single principle, but with the difference that this principle in the first period (philosophy = science of reason ) as within reason itself located ( immanent, rational ), the consequences of necessary and are therefore of reason alone achievable, in the second period (philosophy = positive science ), however, located as beyond and above reason ( transcendental, übervernünftiges, " immemorial " ) is considered, the consequences of "free" (ie, of the will and not wanting dependent, as well as fail to take place could end ) and therefore only "experience" (History and revelation) are recognizable.

Natural philosophy

In Schelling's system of philosophy ( in the first period ) the creative I after Johann Gottlieb Fichte's original theory of science is made the supreme principle. After removal of the Kantian thing-in- itself in Fichte design the ego is the only real, through its internally discordant, restless translated and back -transcending activity, the totality of knowledge as the only reality is concluded, therefore, his system is idealism. However, while Fichte conceives the self as an individual based on the personal human consciousness, Schelling conceives it as a general or absolute, with one ( the natural form ) unconscious creative production - the real nature - and one ( in the spirit form) consciously creative production - the ideal spiritual world. Both ( the ideals of the real ) are but as a "side" of the same ( absolute ) I identical in its root. The deduction of the entire natural being ( natura naturata ) from the Absolute as (unconsciously ) -creating reality principle ( natura naturans ) is the subject of natural philosophy (1797 /99), " have turned over a new leaf in the history of philosophy " by which Schelling wants. Mentioned here is also the universal perspective that reflected in the reception of Brownianism eg.

The deduction of the entire spiritual consciousness content, as contained in the three consecutive fields of art, religion and philosophy ( = science ), from the Absolute as creative (after the awakening of consciousness ) Ideal principle makes the philosophy of mind or of the system of transcendental idealism (1800 ) made, by which expands and shifts Schelling Fichte's weighting in the mind - nature relationship to nature as a cause. The fertilized through the study of Spinoza and Bruno's conception of the intrinsic identity of the real and ideal sphere as merely two different views of the same absolute forms the content of the so-called. Philosophy of identity. Schelling developed this doctrine first in the " Journal of Speculative Physics" (1801 ) then - mixed with the Platonic doctrine of ideas - in the conversation: "Bruno" and in the "Lectures on the method of academic study " (1802 ). To explain the identity of subject and object, it assigns - similar to Spinoza - the mind completely into nature and holds it up as a self- self-conscious - Will nature: According to nature is "unconscious " ( = in natural form) creative spirit, the activities of the living elemental force in nature that is " unconscious " mental activities. As the knowledge is nothing dead, so nature is not a rigid existence, but continuous life. Every single human and natural product produced by the always active rhythmic play opposite - on the one hand unlimited translated (positive, substance- imaging ) and on the other hand, continually limiting (negative shape forming ) - forces that continue to evolve to new levels. As primordial forces of nature work the infinite expansion and the contraction constant effective pursuit, from their mutual voltage matter ( as the first product of the principle of nature ) arises. The former force appointed by Schelling, due to their space- penetrating capacity as light ( figuratively and not synonymous with optical light ) and represents the positive, cloth key factor of matter represents the second, the negative shaping factor he called his compacted due to capacity as severity (again, in more comprehensive sense than the earthly gravity). Both forces are compared with the analogous awareness activities of the ( empty ) looking and of ( certain ) feeling, from their mutual tension the first brainchild, the intuition arises. As from intuition all higher products of consciousness life ( concept, judgment, final ) by continued mental activity - as potentisations - emerge, this is done in accordance with the potencies of matter from the real life of the universal or absolute I (world I ): By continuing nature activities develop all the higher natural products ( natural process of inorganic, organic nature of life, consciousness). The conclusion and completion of this process is conducted using the highest natural level ( in humans) awakening consciousness, in which the date (as in the somnambulistic sleep ) unconscious, but functional active -been nature spirit ( the universal soul ) itself, the only real, the object of his intuition ( of ideals ) makes. But this begins on the part of himself ( as a human being in the universe ) itself erschauenden absolute a new, the natural process analogous mental process: During the First the Absolute from stage to stage until the most perfect natural product (for humans) collects, at the Second developing in embodied people, so even a part of nature become ( verendlichte ) Absolute to consciousness of itself as the Absolute ( his own infinity and freedom ). Based on the nature of the mind and soul of the world represents a Schelling panpsychistische worldview.

As the course of the first process is the history of nature, the incarnation, so that of the second world history, the deification, at the end, as Schelling (1802 ) puts it, " will be God." The phases of this development (analogous to the steps of the process of nature: inorganic, organic, human level ) run so that the Absolute initially ( objectively ) in the form of visible nature (real, visible gods; paganism ) looked at, it (subjectively ) in the form of the invisible Spirit (ideal; invisible God, Christianity ) felt, finally, as one with the knower is known (as subject and object ). This should at the same time the three forms of revelation of the Absolute - to characterize - ( beginning with Schelling's philosophy) ancient, medieval and modern - art, religion and philosophy - and the three main periods of world history. These are (definitely pantheistic ) shape his philosophy of Schelling is in the second period ( as decided ) been denied. While it was originally supposed to make his entire philosophy, he sets it now - not without violence - a true integral but subordinate part of the whole organism of science down: Since one God, who is going to be after the saying of the early Schelling only "at the end " Although can be thought of as the end and result of our thinking, but not as the result of an objective process, it follows that the previous rational philosophy (his included) is in a misunderstanding about yourself by stretching all proven by it ( presented Gottwerdungs ) process as a real, while it is only an ideal ( in the mere thought walking in front of him ). The result of purely rational philosophy, which he now referred to as negative, so not really, but a mere thought-entity ( not the real God, but only the idea of God ) is; the real world as it is, makes the task of philosophy whose understanding can not come from a mere thought, but only from an objective principle (from the real God, not from the idea of God ) be understood. Thus Schelling returns to the in his critique of the ontological proof expressed by Kant for the existence of God principle that the existence of non " herausklauben " leave from the pure thoughts.

While the negative philosophy God only "at the end " concludes as a principle, is the positive ( which the first only provides the means ) this especially early " to " principle: God is the absolute Prius, whose existence can not be proved or demonstrated are needs and which has no necessity, that can be forced by anything, a world spawn. The world is therefore ( from Allah ) should only be regarded as a result of a free act and as such ( on the part of philosophy ) only as the subject of a ( non-rational, but ) empirical knowledge. The task of the positive philosophy Schelling sees it, " in a free thinking in documentary episode is not in the experience Occurring as the possible, as the negative philosophy, but as the real " show. The " documents " of Revelation - as the experiential Shared from God, the Prius all experience - are you given as a guideline for their derivations. Since no with the existence of a divine creator of the actual world of all experientially given facts of revelation faithful history seems to be more inconsistent than the existence of evil and evil in the world, so it is understandable that the shift in the philosophy of Schelling with its (1809 appeared ) begins investigations into the nature of human freedom, to which he has claims to be prompted by the writings of the Christian mystic and theosophist Jacob Böhme, who exercised considerable influence on him. In his investigations, which can be read as an attempt at theodicy, Schelling, the question of the origin of evil and the justification of God tries to answer in light of the evil in the world: The cause of evil neither God comes into consideration yet a second being next to God. The evil is rather to an act of man, the fall back. Before Schelling carries the doctrine of original sin, which he developed in line with Kant's doctrine of radical evil, he explains how the people, the assets can come to evil: man is independent of God in that he is in what in God not God himself, that is, in nature in God or in the ground. In humans, this will act as a self-will, which is subordinate to the actual will of God, the will of love. The fact that the man of his task is not sufficient to mediate the creation with God, and in a perversion of this order wrong the will, evil is possible. The reduction of our featured by illness and death in the world, the original unity with God begins in the human awareness as divine except theogonic, Gods ideas generating process in the mythologies of paganism, in Schelling's view of the philosophy of mythology. After overcoming the mythological process by the freest of God's act sprung and the received Christianity humanity become revelation as mediated restoration of the people and all of creation in God, the purpose of creation is achieved. In Schelling's Philosophy of Revelation, this is the final and the crowning of the whole system in the recovery of a - different from the so-called natural religion - philosophical, ie, free and true spiritual religion.

Influence

Among others, by Schelling, Hegel, Baader, Ernst von Lasaulx, Ludwig Schöberlein, Karoline von Günderrode, Troxler, Steffens, Gorres, Bernheim, Lorenz Oken, Spix, Windischmann, Schubert, Solger, cousin, Nishida and especially influenced Martin Heidegger.

In England, he also acted on the poet and literary critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the poet, literary and art critic Sir Herbert Read, among others

Jürgen Habermas and Paul Tillich treated Schelling's philosophy in their dissertations. Tillich is mainly influenced by Schelling's late philosophy.

Schelling influenced Gotthard Günther (1900-1984), who developed a multivalent " polycontextural logic " with a complex system network to model self-referential processes of life. In his philosophy ( Schelling's philosophy of nature he thematized in his last lecture in Hamburg), he examines, inter alia, - On the basis of cybernetics - the feedback processes between subject and object: " At this point it should be emphasized that it is not right really to speak of two causal chains - a sprung in the inanimate object and the other in the living - and therefore, because all living systems are originally emerged from precisely the environment from which they have then shielded itself. In fact there is only one causal chain, sprung out and spreading through the environment and reflected back into this environment through the medium of the living system. "

Among the representatives of the so-called positive disciplines outside of science learned the medical Rösch leaves, Marcus, Friedrich Joseph Haass, Carl August von Eschenmayer, among the lawyers of the legal philosopher Ms J. steel and the Romanist Puchta suggestions from him. Also, the first major economic theorists in Germany Friedrich List was influenced by him. His economic theory of the productive forces, and which borders from the value theory of Adam Smith, suggestions received by particular Schelling's philosophy of nature.

Schelling as a scientist

See Schelling's system of chemistry.

Works

About the possibility of a form of philosophy at all (1794 )
From the I as Principle of Philosophy or on the Unconditional in Human Knowledge ( 1795), (online, PDF, 440 kB)
Treatise to explain the idealism of science teaching (1796 )
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797 )
From the World Soul (1798 )
System of Transcendental Idealism ( 1800)
About the true concept of natural philosophy and the proper way to resolve their problems (1801 )
Philosophy of Art (Lecture ) (1802/1803)
Lectures on the method of academic study (1803 ) ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )

Philosophical inquiries into the nature of human freedom (1809 )
Clara - On the relation of nature with the spirit world. A conversation fragment (From the handwritten estate, probably 1809-1812 )
Ages of the World (1811: there are other versions of this document),
Representation of philosophical empiricism (1830, known only from the estate ),
Philosophy of Mythology (Lecture) (1842 )
Philosophy of Revelation (Lecture) (1854 ).
Philosophy of Art (1859 ) ( digitized and full text in German Text Archive )

Revisions

Lectures on the method ( method of teaching ) of academic study. Hrsg.v. Walter E. Erhardt. Meiner, Hamburg 1990. ISBN 3-7873-0972-1
The diary. Edited by Hansjörg Sandkühler. Meiner, Hamburg 1990. ISBN 3-7873-0722-2
System of Transcendental Idealism. Edited by Horst D. Brandt and Peter Müller. Meiner, Hamburg 2000. ISBN 3-7873-1465-2
Philosophical inquiries into the nature of human freedom and related items. Edited by Thomas Buchheim. Meiner, Hamburg, 2001. ISBN 3-7873-1590- X
Journal of speculative physics. Edited by Manfred Durner, 2 vols Meiner, Hamburg, 2002. ISBN 3-7873-1694-9
Bruno or the divine and natural principle of things. A conversation. Edited by Manfred Durner. Meiner, Hamburg, 2005. ISBN 3-7873-1719-8
Philosophy of Revelation. Edited by Manfred Frank, Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Science 181, 1977, ISBN 3-518-27781-2.
Historically, critical edition, 40 volumes ( Series I: Works, II: estate, III: letters ). Edited on behalf of the Schelling Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences v. Thomas Buchheim, Jochem Hennigfeld, Wilhelm G. Jacobs, Jörg Jantzen and Siegbert Peetz. From man - Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1976 et seq, ISBN 978-3-7728-0542-4
The age of the world, with an essay by Slavoj Žižek, in Laika -Verlag as Slavoj Žižek / Frederick William J. von Schelling: abyss of freedom, ISBN 978-3-942281-57-7

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