Wednesday 27 January 2016

Andrés Quero-Sánchez, „The Head and Father of True Philosophy“: Schelling‘s Philosophy of Identity and Plato’s Understanding of Being – A Political Approach


Here the introduction to the paper that Andrés Quero-Sánchez delivers today at the Max-Weber-Center:
 
Schelling’s ‚Philosophy of Identity‘ – what exactly is that? The classical answer to this question is a merely historical one, by stating that this term designates Schelling’s philosophical achievements from 1801 –that is to say: from his Description of the System of My Philosophy– up to 1809, when, after having moved from Würzburg to Munich in 1806, he started an (at least to some extent) new period in his philosophical development with his Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom. Now – what are the central theses or even the one central thesis of this philosophical period (1801–1809)? It is surely not easy to answer this question. Scholars have been looking for an answer by analysing the differences existing between the writings of this period and those of the previous one, which, as is well known, came about under the influence of Fichte’s Theory of Science, constituting the so-called ‚transcendentalphilosophy period‘ of Schelling’s philosophy.1 The assumption was here that Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity is primarily to be seen as a particular development, maybe as a misunderstanding, of Fichte’s Theory of Science. We have to see the origin of Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity therefore, so it seems, in the context of the Philosophy of German Idealism, not only because of the influence of Fichte’s philosophy as mentioned before, but primarily because of the impact of Kantian philosophy on the young Schelling during his first philosophico-theological studies at the Tübinger Stift. As Wilhelm G. Jacobs wrote: „Schelling had taken the beginning [of his philosophy] from Kant“.2 Of course, we know, on the one hand, of the crucial role that Plato’s dialogues had played during Schelling’s early studies at the Tübinger Stift, with some of Schelling’s papers and notes on Plato as well as a relatively long commentary on Timaeus having survived from that time. Should we not speak therefore of a ‚Platonic beginning of Schelling’s philosophy‘? The dominant thesis states, however, that the young Schelling was here interpreting Plato from a Kantian point of view.3 On the other hand, we know of the crucial role mysticism had played in Schelling’s early education, with his parents being strongly influenced by Swabian Pietism. Schelling’s first publication, the Elegy Sung at Hahn’s Grave (Elegie bei Hahn’s Grabe gesungen) (1790) was dedicated to one of the most important representatives of Swabian Pietism: Philipp Matthäus Hahn, whom the young Schelling personally knew. Some scholars tried to emphasize such a ‚pietistic substratum‘;4 they did so, however, only with regard to some aspects of Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature as well as to some passages in his Philosophy and Religion (1804). Mystical influence is, of course, especially palpable in Schelling’s writings from 1809 onwards: Franz von Baader, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Jakob Böhme, as well as, which I think I have managed to show in the years past, Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler and the Pseudo-Taulerian Book of Spiritual Poverty. 5 As far as I can see, no scholar, apart from Kurt Leese in his Hamburg PhD under Ernst Cassirer, published here in Erfurt in 1927,6 and –if I may– myself in some recently published studies,7 has ever seen any important relationship between, on the one hand, Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity and transcendental Philosophy, and, on the other hand, mysticism.

It is important to emphasize, however, that I am not claiming that Schelling’s philosophy is based upon an irrationalistic ground, but rather that mysticism –at least if one understand it in the way Schelling did (and I think this is actually the right way to understand it)– presents itself a rational structure, especially a particular (!) conception of reason, which, strictly speaking, cannot be called ‚a particular‘ one, since ‚absolute reason‘ as a revitalisation of what I‘d like to call ‚mystical reason‘ is presupposing the neutralization of ‚particularity‘ as such. I will try to show in what follows, first, to what extent the understanding of reason which is characteristical of Schelling‘s Philosophy of Identity should be considered a revitalisation of ‚mysticism‘ (Chapter II: ‚Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity‘). [...]. [...]. [...]. Thirdly, and finally, I will discuss how far such a mystical understanding of reason –the one, as I said, constituting the Philosophy of Identity– was already shaping Schelling‘s early reading of Plato’s dialogues at the Tübinger Stift (Chapter IV: ‚Schelling’s Early Reading of Plato‘). By doing so, I am suggesting that Schelling’s Philosophy of Identity is not a particular development or a misunderstanding of Fichte’s Theory of Science or of Kantian philosophy, but rather Schelling’s development of his own philosophical position, which was from the beginning strongly influenced by mysticism and played a determinant role even with regard to Schelling’s understanding of Plato, Kant and Fichte.

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