457.002
Instructor: Adrian Johnston
Time/s: R 2:00-4:30
Room: HUM-518
Along with Immanuel Kant, J.G. Fichte, and G.W.F. Hegel, F.W.J. Schelling is one of the towering giants of German idealism. In Schelling’s late teens and early twenties, he enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in German-speaking intellectual circles with his first publications in the mid-1790s. Initially a Wunderkind protégé of Fichte, Schelling soon became critical of Kant’s and Fichte’s brands of transcendental idealism toward the end of the 1790s. In 1801, he openly broke with his former mentor Fichte. Schelling’s developments of his robustly realist and naturalist philosophies of identity and nature in the late 1790s and early 1800s put him at odds with Kantian and Fichtean idealisms, with their anti-realism and anti-naturalism. Moreover, the Schelling of this period collaborated closely with, and exerted a significant influence upon, the young Hegel. Arguably, Schelling’s early intellectual itinerary involved establishing a new phase in the unfolding of German idealism, with him and Hegel representing systematic challenges to the subject-centric perspectives of Kant and Fichte. In this seminar, we will focus on the first decade-plus (specifically, 1794 to 1806) of Schelling’s long philosophical career (lasting right up until his death in 1854). Attention will be devoted primarily to his philosophies of identity and nature and the issues they raise apropos the legacy of Kantian critical philosophy. Texts we will cover include: Schelling’s early Fichtean essays (1794-1797), writings on Naturphilosophie (1797-1806), System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), “Presentation of My System of Philosophy” (1801), Bruno dialogue (1802), Philosophy and Religion (1804), and Statement on the True Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to the Revised Fichtean Doctrine (1806).