Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling(1775-1854) - German philosopher. He was close to the Jena romantics. Starting from Johann Gottlieb Fichte, he developed the principles of the objective-idealistic dialectics of nature as a living organism, an unconsciously spiritual creative principle, an ascending system of steps ("potentials"), characterized by polarity, the dynamic unity of opposites. The method of discerning this unity is the intellectual intuition inherent in philosophical and artistic genius.
Art is the highest form of comprehension of the world, the unity of the conscious and the unconscious, theoretical and practical activity (“The System of Transcendental Idealism”, 1800). The Absolute is the undifferentiated identity of nature and spirit, subject and object. Through the self-dividing and self-development of the absolute, its self-knowledge is realized. The source of evil is the free falling away of man from the absolute; Following J. Boehme, Schelling considered the presence of a “dark foundation” in God as a prerequisite for this.
Happiness is a state of passivity. The happier we are, the more passive we are in relation to the objective world. The freer we become, the closer we get to sanity, the less we need happiness.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born January 27, 1775, Leonberg, near Stuttgart. Died August 20, 1854, Ragaz, Switzerland.
Education, meeting with Fichte
Schelling's father was a linguist, theologian and a prominent figure Protestant Church in Württemberg. All this predetermined the interests and hobbies of the son. In 1785, Friedrich, having received his primary education, enters the Latin school in Nürtengen, a year later he is transferred to the seminary in Bebenhausen, and in the fall of 1790 his five-year studies at the theological institute in Tübingen begin, where he establishes friendly relations with Hegel and Hölderlin. In 1792 Schelling defended his master's thesis on the interpretation biblical myth about the fall. In 1793 he meets Fichte and falls under the influence of his ideas.
Friedrich Schelling mastered Fichte's ideas of science and published a number of works in the Fichtean spirit: "On the Possibility of the Form of Philosophy in General" (1794), "I as the Principle of Philosophy" (1795), "Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism" (1795). True, already in the last work a number of tendencies are revealed, from which Schelling's original philosophy subsequently grew. It shows the author's interest in Spinoza, and later Schelling said that he saw his merit in combining Spinoza's "realistic" theory of nature with Fichte's dynamic idealism. The process of creating Schelling's own system intensified in 1797, when "Ideas for the Philosophy of Nature" was published. The Ideas were followed by On the Soul of the World (1798), First Sketch of a System of Natural Philosophy (1799), Introduction to a Sketch of a System of Natural Philosophy (1799), and A General Deduction of the Dynamic Process (1800). At the same time, Schelling is working on a refined version of Fichte's science of science - "transcendental philosophy".
All knowledge is based on the correspondence between the objective and the subjective. - For only the true can be known; truth, generally speaking, must be posited in accordance with the representations of their objects.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
Jena romantics in Munich
Becoming in 1798, on the recommendation of Fichte, Schiller and Goethe, a professor at the University of Jena, he taught courses on transcendental philosophy, and in 1800 he published the famous System of Transcendental Idealism. During this period, important changes take place in Schelling's personal life. After moving to Jena, he enters the circle of Jena romantics, communicates with the Schlegel brothers and Novalis. Friendship with A. V. Schlegel's wife Caroline - the "muse" of the Jena romantics - turns into love and after a break with Schlegel, leaving Jena, Schelling and Caroline get married in 1803.
In 1803 - 1806. the spouses live in Würzburg, and then move to Munich, where Friedrich Schelling gets a place at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and in 1808 becomes the general secretary of the Academy of Arts, subsequently organizes a number of interesting exhibitions and holds this position until 1823. In the last years of his stay in Jena, Schelling together with Hegel published "Critical philosophical journal”, which replaced Schelling’s Journal of Speculative Physics. In this "Journal" in 1801, a work appeared that marked a turn in the philosophical work of Schelling (and he also tried himself in fiction: in 1799 he wrote a free-thinking poem: "The Epicurean Views of Heinz the Stubborn", poems under the pseudonym Bonaventure; earlier, Schelling was also credited with the novel " Night Vigils" by Bonaventure, but its authorship is doubtful): "Exposition of my philosophical system." Here Schelling begins a decisive departure from Fichte and presents the system of absolute identity (subjected to sharp criticism by Hegel in 1807), the doctrine of the absolute, cleansed of unnecessary elements that prevented its full development in previous works.
F. Schelling proves that the difference between subject and object, ideal and real, exists only "in the phenomenon", in the individual, while "in themselves" they are identical. Friedrich said that the "Exposition" opened a series of publications on "ideal philosophy". But he made attempts to rework his natural-philosophical ideas, the philosophy of art, etc., in the light of the new concept. and Religion" (1804) and "Philosophical Investigations on the Essence human freedom". This treatise, published in 1809 as the first volume of his Philosophical Writings, was the last significant work published by Schelling himself. In the autumn of the same year, Carolina died unexpectedly.
New family. "Philosophy of Mythology" and "Philosophy of Revelation"
True freedom consists in agreement with a certain holy necessity, perceived by us in the cognition that comprehends the essence of reality, for the spirit and heart, bound only by their own law, voluntarily affirm the necessary. If evil consists in the discord of both principles, good can only consist in their perfect unity, and the connection that unites them must be divine, for they are not united conditionally, but completely and unconditionally.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
Having recovered a little from the shock, Friedrich Schelling reads in 1810 a popular course on his philosophy - the so-called "Stuttgart Private Lectures". At the same time, Schelling began work on World Epochs, which lasted several years. The work on the "World Ages", which deals with the self-revelation of God, coincided with a new turn in his life. In 1812 he marries Pauline Gotter and soon becomes the father of a large family. Continuing to work intensively, Schelling gradually comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to supplement his former philosophy with a “positive part”, which should include the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation.
In 1821, in Erlangen, Schelling read the course "Philosophy of Mythology" and prepared for publication the work of the same name. In 1826 he received an invitation to a professorship at the newly formed University of Munich, and in 1827 he became president of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In the same year, he begins lecturing at the University of Munich with a course on the "History of new philosophy” and continues with “World Ages”, “Philosophy of Mythology” and “Philosophy of Revelation”.
In the 1830s, Schelling regularly read The Philosophy of Mythology, The Philosophy of Revelation, and The System of Positive Philosophy (since the winter term of 1832). In 1840 Friedrich Schelling was invited to Berlin. M. Bakunin, S. Kierkegaard, F. Engels were among the students of the famous course on "Philosophy of Revelation" in 1841. Schelling continued to read courses on the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation until 1845.
Results
Freedom is the only principle to which ... everything is built, and in the objective world we do not see anything existing outside of us, but only the internal limitation of our own free activity. Being in general is only an expression of inhibited freedom.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
In the last years of his life, Friedrich Schelling returned to the problems of "negative" philosophy and prepared manuscripts of his unfinished works for publication. Shortly after Schelling's death, his son K. F. A. Schelling published his father's collected works in 14 vols.
By nature, Friedrich Schelling was a very emotional person and, on occasion, could get personal. Emotionality is felt in his works. Schelling sometimes teetered on the verge of philosophy and poetry, philosophy and theosophy. He was greatly influenced by the mystical theories of J. Boehme and F. Baader. In the early period, he recognized the dependence on Fichte's ideas, in the later period he emphasized the significance of a number of provisions Kantian philosophy. He considered Hegel his student, who, however, distorted and worsened the principles of his system. Schelling's philosophy is the constant renewal of the same intuitions in a variety of contexts. She symbolizes eternal newness. philosophical thought, the impossibility of once and for all to solve the "limiting" issues.
Natural philosophy
Recognizing the correctness of Fichte's teaching about the priority of activity over static being, Schelling at the same time sought to fill the gap in Fichte's science of science, consisting in the excessive psychologization of this activity. Fichte's exceptional attention to the human ego turned into a virtual disregard for the natural sphere. Fichte reduced nature to an abstract non-I as an instrument of moral perfection. He did not seem to see that it was a complex organism, formed by the interaction of many different forces. And Schelling proposes to look at nature the way Fichte looked at the human ego. At one time, Schelling believed that this step simply expanded Fichte's science of science. In fact, it led to a fundamental change in Fichte's ontological model. Duality now became an internal quality of being. One way or another, but Schelling said that it is wrong to see in nature just a frozen object or a set of such objects. Nature - let "sleeping", but still a spirit. It is not only a “product”, but also a “productivity”. It is inherent in the original unity of these two opposite moments. At the initial level, nature finds itself in opposition to light and matter. Light acts as a primary ideal principle, a kind of "world soul", matter - real. Matter at this level is reduced to gravity. The combination of light and matter leads to a "dynamic process" that occurs through the "potentiation" of gravity. A special, namely, magnetic attraction arises above universal gravitation.
Magnetism passes into the phenomenon of electricity, with the help of which Schelling wants to explain the sensually perceived qualities of the world. The movement from the inorganic to the organic testifies to the victory of the ideal over the real. In the organic world, matter loses its independence and is reduced to the role of an instrument for life. Schelling speaks of the ladder of organic beings, the progress along which corresponds to the ever greater subordination of matter to the life form. Friedrich showed a willingness to consider the formation of organic matter in terms of evolution, although he was not inclined to extend the principle of development to the inorganic world. At the same time, he was confident in the heuristic value of natural philosophy, or, as he also called it, "higher physics." Higher physics, according to Schelling, does not grow out of experience, but is constructed a priori by the philosopher, albeit on the material of experience.
Blessed is he who has chosen the goal and the path
And sees the essence of life in this
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
transcendental philosophy
In The System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling emphasizes that natural philosophy is only one of the two main philosophical sciences. It starts from the objective, nature and discovers the ideal in it, approaches the boundaries of the spirit, and maybe even crosses them. True, he later clarified that if natural philosophy passes from nature to spirit, then it should no longer be called natural philosophy, but “philosophy of the spirit” or ideal philosophy. The whole system can still be called natural philosophy, but we must not forget that this name is given only for its first part. One way or another, but the movement of philosophical thought can be started not only from the object, but also from the subject - in order to deduce the object from it. This path is chosen by transcendental philosophy.
The first truth of transcendental philosophy is the fundamental proposition "I am I" or "I exist." Both of these theses express an act of self-consciousness in which the I makes itself an object and identifies the I contemplating itself with the contemplated I. The contemplated I is I as an object. Everything objective is limited. In order to limit itself, the I must carry out a limiting activity, and this limiting activity must limit another, “objective” or “real” activity of the Self. This means that the Self contains two oppositely directed activities, ideal and real. Self-consciousness is possible only when they coexist. But they cannot exist without a third activity that connects them and at the same time prevents them from destroying each other. This third activity is the actual act of self-consciousness.
But such a mobile balance of opposite activities is conceivable only in the form of infinite progress. And Schelling does indeed say that the transcendental philosophy concerned with its reconstruction is "the history of self-consciousness." Its orientation is given by the fact that in the limiting case, the contemplating I of self-consciousness is completely identical to the contemplated I. However, at first this identity is not present. The Infinite Self reveals itself to be finite, limited, and therefore passive or sensing something, not-Self. This is the first era of self-consciousness. Further movement gradually reveals this not-I, or object, as I (which corresponds to the deduction of various levels of organization of matter, similar to those that were derived in natural philosophy). Already the first epoch ends with productive contemplation, i.e., the understanding of the I of the fact of its activity in a passive, at first glance, sensation. The next epoch of self-comprehension of the I ends with the self-representation by it in the form of reflection, i.e., pure thought. The third epoch reduces the ego to a free act of will. This means a transition from theoretical to practical philosophy. Freedom can only exist if there are other subjects whose movement towards an ideal goal gives rise to human history. But historical process reveals itself as a necessity that opposes the free decisions of the Self. In order to finally realize itself as an infinite Self, the Self must somehow conceive the identity of freedom and necessity, the conscious and the unconscious. And art helps him in this.
Freedom is the highest in us and in God.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
Philosophy of art as an organon of philosophy
Friedrich Schelling interprets art based on the intuitions of Kant's Critique of Judgment. A work of art is a product of genius. On the one hand, genius acts consciously. He sets himself certain goals and owns the appropriate technique. But his creation outgrows this conscious design. There is always more to it. And this additional element comes from the unconscious activity of the genius. It is this activity that allows him to put infinite meanings into finite sensory images. Genius brings the infinite into the finite, but the infinite, embodied in the finite, is nothing but beauty. Combining the finite and the infinite, the conscious and the unconscious, the beautiful work of art is therefore the objective expression of that same identity which is the ultimate goal of the philosopher's aspirations (this identity is also expressed in the expedient products of nature, but "not from the side of the ego"). That is why the philosophical interpretation of the phenomenon of art and aesthetic contemplation itself can serve as an "organon", that is, an instrument general philosophy, which comes to this identity with the help of "intellectual contemplation", i.e. from within, on the part of the subject, and that is why it needs objective confirmation of the correctness of its conclusions.
The doctrine of God and the basis of his existence
The absolute identity of freedom and necessity is possible only in the absolute I, the Absolute, which cannot be confused with the individual human I. Reflecting on these topics, Friedrich Schelling comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to build a theory of the Absolute or the Divine as such, a theory devoid of psychological or natural philosophical shades. In doing so, it proceeds from the previous scheme. God is an infinite activity that strives for self-realization. This striving gives birth to God as an object to himself. It itself exists even before this generation, before the divine self-consciousness. Therefore, it can be called the dark basis of God, existing in God himself. And Schelling compares the generation of God as an existing one with bringing out of darkness into light. Divine self-consciousness is God as mind. The duality of divinity requires the existence of some unifying principle, "baseless" (Ungrund), in which the dark and light principles are present without confusion and opposition, and which manifests itself as Spirit on a higher level.
All this dynamics of the generation of God from within himself cannot be interpreted as a real process in time. Therefore, it can be said that in God the enlightened mind triumphs from eternity over dark strivings. But in man it is quite different. In him, these beginnings are separated, and he can choose between good and evil. Its purpose, however, is to constantly drive out evil by rational action. On this path, a person renounces "willfulness" that draws him to the periphery of the universe and returns to the primordial center of being, that is, to God.
Those who do not love their neighbors live barren lives and prepare a miserable haven for their old age.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
"Positive" philosophy
Soon after the appearance of the work Philosophical Investigations on the Essence of Human Freedom (1809), where the idea of the overtemporal dialectic of a personal God had already been voiced, Friedrich Schelling came to the conclusion that a radical restructuring of his entire philosophy was necessary. In his early works, he proceeded from the idea of a gradually realized assumption of the absolute identity of the ideal and the real. It, Schelling believed, is unattainable immediately and that is why it must go through a series of steps corresponding to different levels of organization of the material and spiritual world. With this interpretation, he could consistently deduce all these levels. The final point of these deductions was the concept of God. But Schelling faced a problem: does the logical movement in this case correspond to reality? If so, then this movement can be interpreted in a historical sense and speak of an evolving God who becomes God only at the end of the whole process.
However, the doctrine of God evolving in time contradicts Christian dogma, to which Schelling now began to treat much more carefully than before. This means that thinking, with all its formal correctness, cannot fully correspond to being. There is always something that eludes him. That something is being itself or existence. Obviously, the philosopher must find approaches not only to the essence of things, their "what", but also to their existence. Philosophy, logically reconstructing the essence of things, Schelling proposes to call "negative", and that which deals with existence - "positive". The latter cannot be purely logical. There must be an empirical element in it, but not in the usual sense of the word, since what is usually called experience is itself permeated with logical constructions. Rather, it can be called "empirical apriorism." It aims at being beyond reason and sense experience, the prius.
This circumstance immediately gives it a sublime and deeply personal character, corresponding to the nature of the personal God, which this being turns out to be. After all, it is God who is the transcendental basis of existence. The task of positive philosophy is precisely to confirm the divinity of being with the help of historical analysis. This historical analysis should be directed to those phenomena in which God reveals himself to man, namely mythology and Revelation. Mythology is also a revelation of God, but imperfect, devoid of the internal unity of the divine principles, dispersed in polytheistic ideas. Nevertheless, it prepares a monotheistic Christian Revelation, in which the trinity of divine potencies in their timeless subordination and unity is clearly revealed, and also - through Christology - the mystery human nature and the essence of man's proper relation to God.
Schelling emphasizes that for all the difference between negative and positive philosophy, the second does not exclude the first, but rather presupposes it. Negative philosophy ends with the concept of the Absolute, while positive philosophy reveals the concept of a personal God. True, this does not mean that it must necessarily follow the negative one. Positive philosophy can develop on its own. And only from the perspective of positive philosophy, Schelling believes, can one adequately interpret freedom as an inalienable property of God. After all, negative philosophy subordinates everything to logical necessity, depriving itself of the means of understanding free action. And without understanding its nature, it is impossible to answer the main question: “why is there something at all, and not nothing,” i.e., to understand the creation of the world. Schelling interprets creation as a falling away of the world, in which man is also involved, as a necessary product of the internal dialectics of divine potencies (“able to be” - “forced to be” and “must be”), which in turn is the free self-discovery of God.
Beauty is infinity expressed in a finished form.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von
Influence of Schelling's ideas
The early philosophy of Friedrich Schelling played a key role in the formation of the speculative method and the basic ontological attitudes of G. W. F. Hegel and contributed to the gradual departure of J. G. Fichte from psychological idealism. Many of Schelling's ideas were adopted by the Jena Romantics. Schelling's natural philosophy had a definite influence on the development of natural science in the 19th century, although some scientists resolutely rejected it. The late "positive" philosophy of Schelling influenced S. Kierkegaard. True, Kierkegaard believed that Schelling had never been able to radically restructure his system. Nevertheless, Schelling's doctrine of existence gives reason to consider him as a forerunner of 20th century existentialism. Schelling also had some influence on Protestant theology in the twentieth century. There was also great interest in Schelling in Russia. In particular, Schelling influenced P. Ya. Chaadaev, the Slavophiles, and also the formation of the religious philosophy of V. Solovyov. After a certain decline, in recent decades, interest in Schelling in the scientific community has again increased.
The Schelling Society was created, new materials from the rich manuscript heritage of the thinker are periodically published. However Friedrich Schelling still remains one of the most enigmatic philosophers in the history of European philosophy.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling - quotes
Happiness is a state of passivity. The happier we are, the more passive we are in relation to the objective world. The freer we become, the closer we get to sanity, the less we need happiness. 
All knowledge is based on the correspondence between the objective and the subjective. - For only the true can be known; truth, generally speaking, must be posited in accordance with the representations of their objects.
True freedom consists in agreement with a certain holy necessity, perceived by us in the cognition that comprehends the essence of reality, for the spirit and heart, bound only by their own law, voluntarily affirm the necessary. If evil consists in the discord of both principles, good can only consist in their perfect unity, and the connection that unites them must be divine, for they are not united conditionally, but completely and unconditionally.
Freedom is the only principle to which ... everything is built, and in the objective world we do not see anything existing outside of us, but only the internal limitation of our own free activity. Being in general is only an expression of inhibited freedom.
Blessed is the one who has chosen the goal and the path And sees the essence of life in this.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born in 1775 in Leonberg in the family of a Protestant pastor, studied in 1790-1795. at the famous Württemberg School in Tübingen. Just like his older fellow students - Hölderlin and Hegel, Schelling was inspired by the pathos of freedom in the philosophy and literature of that time. He secretly read Spinoza, Rousseau, Klopstock and Schiller. Of the political events of that time, the French Revolution had the greatest influence on him, as well as on his friends, and of spiritual phenomena, the philosophy of Kant. Under the influence of Kant's criticism, he completed his divergence from theology and the church.
While still in Tübingen, as a nineteen-year-old student, he wrote his first philosophical treatise, "On the Possibility of the Form of Philosophy in General" ("Ober die Moglichkeit einer Form der Philosophic liber-haupt"), thanks to which he gained fame as the innovator of German philosophy after Kant. Of a number of his subsequent treatises, the most important are the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (Philosophische Briefe uber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus), written in 1795, and the Ideas of the Philosophy of Nature (Ideen zu einer Philosophic Natur), created in 1797 A series of his treatises on natural philosophy begins with "Ideas in the Philosophy of Nature". As a representative of natural philosophy, in 1798 he was invited by Goethe as a professor at Jena. In 1801, Schelling helped Hegel become an assistant professor of philosophy in Jena. In 1789, Schiller was also invited to the University of Jena (as a professor of history), and thanks to the efforts of Friedrich Schlegel, a “romantic circle” appeared in Jena, which included Tieck and Novalis. Thus. Jena at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries becomes the most significant center of spiritual life in Germany. From here proceeded multilateral cultural, philosophical and scientific impulses.
Schelling outlined his philosophical program in the introduction to the Ideas of the Philosophy of Nature. Philosophy and science of that time strove, on the one hand, for subjectivism (Kant) and, on the other hand, for pure objectivism (Newton). Both areas of philosophy and science are engaged in proving how that which forms the unity of the worldview, that is, the subjective and the objective - the ideal and the real, the finite and the infinite, is excluded. From this arises the "need to philosophize", i.e., to reconcile the disintegrated opposites and thus create a "true philosophy". Examples of such a philosophical synthesis in the past are the views of Spinoza and Leibniz. Both reconcile the ideal and the real, the finite and the infinite. An indication of the finite and the infinite as moments that must be connected (i.e., the infinite cannot be understood as transcendent, out of the world) is also Schelling's worldview concept, marked by pantheism.
The introduction to the Ideas contains another thought which is very importance. The "need to philosophize", excited by the one-sided fixation of one or the other in the definition of the absolute, is not our human need. It is embedded in the theological structure of the absolute ground of things, which thereby achieves an impersonal self-consciousness. This is the difference between the cognition of the philosophy of the New Age, understood as a human action in relation to an object, and cognition, understood by Schelling as a cosmic action in which the basis, the principle of the world, realizes itself.
Although Schelling emphasizes the equivalence of opposing moments that belong to the absolute, nevertheless, a number of motives for the introduction to the "Ideas" indicate the priority of the ideal, spiritual moment. This is manifested in the emphasis on the autonomy of the I (thanks to the consciousness of the I stands above things) or in the assessment of the philosophy of Leibniz, which came closest to the required synthesis. The philosophy of Leibniz is a philosophy of the spirit, a philosophy that animates all reality.
The introduction to "Ideas" has more general character. They are followed by the treatises On the Soul of the World (Weltseele) (1798) and The First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (Erster Entwurt eines Systems der Natur philosophic) (1799). In them, Schelling expresses the idea that it is not enough to know nature as an object of the natural sciences. The natural sciences supply only the material that philosophy must think up, formulate what the results of science signal, but which scientific methods unprovable. Let us give examples of these studies of Schelling. Schelling, in his natural-philosophical works, is guided by the conviction that the principle of "polarity" and "gradation" dominates in nature. The principle of gradation is that nature is understood as a system of steps, and the lowest step is always the basis for the highest step. Since each step arises as an alignment, as a temporary release of tension between the two members of the polarity, both polar forces reappear in a "metamorphized form." The fact that the lower serves as the basis for the higher explains much of the nature of the natural process.
Mention should also be made of his interpretation of the organism, in which he proceeds from the polarity of irritability and receptivity. Schelling emphasizes at the same time that the external impulse does not only serve to satisfy the needs of the organism, but above all to ensure that the organism emerges from a state of indifference into which it would otherwise fall. The purpose of nutrition is the constant kindling of the life process, but not its maintenance and growth, which, of course, are also due to nutrition. In order to give at least an approximate idea to readers of Schelling's method of interpretation, we will cite a fragment from the "System of the Philosophy of Nature": means nothing more than the general organization of matter in ever narrower areas of kinship. Further, all the specific attractive forces in the universe are determined by the initial differences within the world matter: the cause of gravity in each individual world body, and finally, the fact that, in addition to gravity, each world body is also affected by a chemical effect that comes from the same source as gravity. action, the phenomenon of which is light, and that this action causes the phenomena of electricity, and where electricity disappears, a chemical process, against which, in fact, electricity - as the elimination of all dualism - is directed. Since nature is understood as a system of steps, the analogy expressed by Schelling in the thesis that the fundamental polarity is subject to constant "metamorphosis" plays a large role in these reasonings. Here is a small sample of this kind of reasoning: “The plant is the same as the lower animal, and the lower animal is the same as the higher. The same force operates in the plant as in the animal, only the degree of its manifestation is lower. In the plant, the generative power has already completely lost what is still distinguished in the amphibian as excitability, and in the higher animal as susceptibility, and vice versa.
One element of this exposition is the teleological point of view. Thus, the goal of ascent to the highest in nature is the need to "become an object for itself as a whole." And although this point of view is contained in Schelling's natural philosophical treatises, it rather belongs to the next stage of his philosophy.
On the basis of an analysis of three natural philosophical treatises, it might seem that Schelling's specialty is the natural philosophical exposition of nature. The following treatises, however, show that Schelling understood natural philosophy as the development of one part of a system, the second part of which is "transcendental philosophy" with the ego as its subject. Schelling's "System of Transcendental Idealism" (1800) is an indicative and most developed work in this direction.
The introduction to this work explains in great detail the concept of Schelling's philosophy as a system of two complementary "philosophical sciences". Cognition always has two poles: objective, or nature (the first pole), and the certainty of the Self in relation to itself (the second pole). If we proceed from nature, then at first it seems that nature is completely autonomous in relation to the Self, for "the concept of nature does not contain the existence of the concept of intellect." The reflection of nature, however, leads us to the fact that the “necessary tendency” of nature is “spiritualization”, interiorization up to man, and regularity is understood as something ideal: “... the more regularity penetrates into nature itself, the more this cover disappears, the the phenomena themselves become more spiritual, and then they disappear completely.”
On the contrary, if we start from the Self, then at first it seems that the Self is self-sufficient. In the Self, however, there is not only a tendency to gradation, i.e., to self-consciousness, to which the path runs through sensation, perception, representation and reflection, but also a tendency to objectify oneself, which manifests itself in the practical behavior of a person, in history and art. Transcendental philosophy thus shows how the objective arises from the subjective and forms a second philosophical "science" that complements natural philosophy, which directs nature towards reflection of itself, towards man, i.e. towards "reason".
Schelling shares the same idea with Fichte that both self-consciousness and awareness of the external world cannot be explained only on the basis of noetic acts, but the beginning of consciousness consists in action in relation to the world. Schelling, however, is talking about the autonomously motivated consciousness of the individual, while Fichte puts the greatest emphasis on the still not conscious behavior of the instinctive I. In "idealizing activity" (in creating a project of behavior) and in the subsequent "realizing" action, for him (i.e., intellect. - Auth.) becomes really objective. If the Self did not act in relation to the world, the "world" would not exist for it, because consciousness is aware of the world only because it directs its will to it. Thus, both self-consciousness and consciousness about the world are embedded in behavior in relation to the world.
Based on the fact that due to my action regarding this world something arises that did not exist in the original world, one can speak of two worlds, the first, given without human participation, and the other nature transformed by man (“artificial works”). This second world, in which "conscious and free activity, which is in the objective world (i.e., in nature. - Auth.) only in glimpses, is objectified, lasts to infinity." A hint of signs of freedom in nature concerns the life process of an organism, which, according to Schelling, is already approaching the autonomously motivated activity of a person.
Through the influence of people on the outside world, people also influence each other. A person who awakens to consciousness due to autonomous activity in relation to the external world would fall into an unconscious state if there were no influence of other intellects on this world, and thereby on it: "... the continuous interaction of intelligent beings" is "a necessary condition for consciousness" .
The desire to show that in the social process, which is based on human autonomous behavior, a hidden regularity dominates as the "objective" side of this action, led Schelling to create an essay on the philosophy of history - part of the "System of Transcendental Idealism". History, according to Schelling, is constituted by the relationship between the unconditioned individual, on the one hand, and historical necessity, on the other. The first task of history is to explain how “out of freedom itself, when I think that I am acting freely, the unconscious must necessarily arise, that is, without my participation, something that I have not conceived, or, to put it differently, as against this conscious activity, i.e., freely determining activity should become unconscious activity and arising on its basis unintentionally - and even against the will of the actor - something that he himself could not realize of his own free will ... ”.
Here are expressed two theses of Schelling's philosophy of history. The first thesis: although all individuals act "freely", i.e., indeterminately, something arises in their activity "which we never intended and which freedom, left to itself, would never do." According to Schelling, for historical development“progressiveness” is characteristic, manifested in the fact that it develops towards the bourgeois “legal law”, the meaning of which is “guaranteed freedom” (meaning freedom in the sense of bourgeois guarantees). From this point of view, history can be defined as "the gradual realization of a legal law". From the gradual approach to the goal of history follows its periodization according to individual epochs. Our "free" behavior becomes a "necessity" that gives direction and value to the story. Already in antiquity, the great representatives of the spirit pointed out that our "free" behavior in a mysterious way, under the influence of a force superior to us, turns into a pattern.
The second thesis concerns what causes the transformation of our autonomously motivated activity into a general pattern that stands behind the objective course of history. Schelling, while correctly posing the question of the essence of history, cannot find an adequate answer regarding its regularity. Only Marxist philosophy, with the theory of classes and class interests, has answered the question of how it is possible that the majority of members of a certain social group act in more or less the same way.
Schelling, based on his pantheistic orientation, under the influence of Spinoza, projects conditions that cause a similar behavior of the set various people, on an impersonal deity, which he calls "eternally unconscious", "absolute will" and on which "all intellects are, as it were, applied." He also speaks of a "single spirit", which "broadcasts in all" and "brought the objective result of the whole into conformity with the free play of individuals...". Schelling strongly rejects the personal nature of this transpersonal force. This “absolutely identical cannot, however, be conceived as a personal being, and it is no better to consider it as something completely abstract.”
There is a certain duality in human behavior because people act on the basis of their personal motivation, and at the same time their actions become part of a higher intention, "stretching like a fabric woven by an unknown hand in the free play of the arbitrariness of history."
The concept of "identical" in the "System of Transcendental Idealism" is used to denote the basis of reality in general. "Identity" as the basis of reality means that in consciousness and history, on the one hand, and in nature, on the other, we meet with the same basis of the world and with the same structure of the basis, which can be expressed in terms of "the cause of oneself" and "self-creation". By "self-creation" Schelling understands the circumstances when nature and consciousness are understood as an ascent, as "progressiveness" towards higher creations. A certain analogy between nature and the human world is that the basis of reality in both cases appears as a combination of the unconscious and the conscious. Nature creates unconsciously, but in its products we see traces of reason, and this is manifested in the laws of nature, in the direction towards the highest, towards man, that is, towards reason. The human world, on the other hand, creates consciously, but something arises from it that no one intended, that is, again something unconscious. The "organ" or instrument for checking whether the conscious and the unconscious belong to each other is the philosophy of art. The artist creates consciously, but his products contain more than he has invested, and this is due only to the fact that art manifests that "unchanging identity that cannot come to any consciousness."
Schelling's big step forward is that he moved from Fichte's thesis - I (the unconscious and impersonal) is the basis of the world - to the thesis that the basis of the world is that "identical" that manifests itself in nature and in human mind on the one hand, in history and art on the other. The fact that Schelling speaks of the animation of nature, which manifests itself in a direction towards the higher and towards man, and in the fact that the guiding reality is the organism, and not inanimate nature, testifies that he understands nature not materialistically, but nevertheless as independent of consciousness. Schelling seeks to balance the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real, the finite and the infinite. Objectively, of course, the ideal moment prevails because the absolute is understood as being aware of itself in human cognition. His pantheism is ideologically significant; it also occupies an important place in the history of dialectics.
The "System of Transcendental Idealism" already uses the term "identity" to characterize the basis of reality, which is "radiated" by nature and artificial creations, but is not knowable. It is known only indirectly. In subsequent treatises of the so-called identical period, to which Derstellung meines Systems (1801), the dialogue Bruno (1802) and the Philosophy of Art (Philosophic der Kunst) (1803) belong , an attempt is made to interpret the basis of all reality. In treatises immediately preceding the "identical" period, the basis is called "subject-object" (because it has two forms of existence - subject and nature), later it is called "absolute identity", in the dialogue "Bruno" - "idea of ideas", "absolute substance", etc. Schelling expresses the emergence of the new in the subsequent period in the introduction of "Exposition of my system of philosophy." Until now he has spoken from the standpoint of two philosophical sciences, proceeding from two opposite directions, while now he wants to speak from
the position of what both sciences were heading towards, i.e., from the position of the foundation itself. He calls it "absolute identity", which in relation to nature and history is their "being in itself", or "beingness". "Beingness" must take the form, on the one hand, of a subject or history, on the other hand, of "objectivity."
In both forms of existence, polar factors operate - the subjective, or cognitive, principle and the "objective" principle, and in the form of the subject, or history, the subjective principle prevails, and in the object, or nature, the objective principle prevails. Therefore, we perceive in nature the structures of "reason", while in the sphere of subjectivity we see the objectification of the subjective. Schelling presents this arrangement of reality in symbols as follows:
On the left side is objectivity with the relative identity (unity) of A as a subjective principle and B as an objective principle with the predominance of the objective principle. On the right side is subjectivity as a relative identity of the subjective and objective principles with the predominance of the subjective principle. AA is a formula of absolute identity that expresses the absolute basis of things. With the AA formula (or a similar "identity of identity" formula), Schelling expresses that the absolute basis remains itself in its forms, which are called potencies. The concept that human knowledge is self-knowledge of the absolute beginning is one of Schelling's key concepts, and it is already present in the introduction to the Ideas.
Schelling, who likes to use terms taken from mathematics, calls the degrees of nature potencies. The lowest potency that resolves the opposition of attractive and repulsive forces is matter; the realization of the attractive and repulsive force is called "gravity". Therefore, one of the central concepts of Schelling's natural philosophy is "strength". Orientation to the concept of force in the explanation of nature determines the "dynamic" understanding of nature. According to Schelling, nature is “the beginning of reality”, and not reality itself, that is, nature is the cause of itself. Another meaning of "force" is that each "reality" can be explained as an "alignment" of opposing forces. Finally, Schelling speaks definitely of a "dynamic process" to which magnetic and electrical phenomena and chemical processes. A central place in the dynamic process is attributed to light, which is characterized metaphysically as "the ascent of absolute identity into reality." The dynamic nature of magnetic, electrical and chemical phenomena is justified by the fact that they are modes of "attachment" that exist at every point in the universe and are the result of a relative identity between attractive and repulsive forces. The dynamic process occurs because bodies with different "attachment" tend to equalize the differences between themselves. All bodies are potentially magnets - they can be defined as "metamorphoses of a magnet". The Exposition of My System of Philosophy is dominated by a construction reminiscent of a natural science exposition, but it is a “dynamic” construction that works with a scheme of opposing forces, always balancing only temporarily, and then - at the highest level - re-emerging.
Thus, Schelling created a dialectical version of the natural scientific explanation of nature. In this interpretation of development from lower to higher, however, he did not understand "higher" or more complex as the result of a previous internal process.
Schelling directly points out that his enumeration of potencies must be understood not as a chronological history of nature, but as its "reason", that is, its general structure. This thesis also plays a large role in Hegel's philosophy. This is not about polemics with the theory of development, but rather about emphasizing that the angle of view from which this philosophy of nature is considered is dictated by the position of understanding nature as an arena for the struggle of polar forces and the ascent from lower structures to higher ones, and not a strictly historical position, for which at that time there was no empirical material.
“The System of Transcendental Idealism” and “The Statement of My System of Philosophy” are treatises in which the pantheistic tendency of the convergence of the world of nature and man is noticeable: “The force that spills into the mass of nature is, if it concerns being, the same force that manifests itself in the world, only there it must fight against the predominance of the real, since here it is with the preponderance of the ideal. For forces, the upward action is accentuated, the higher is explained as the result of mutual collision and connection. On the contrary, the next work of the "identical period" - the dialogue "Bruno" - is characterized by a more metaphysical approach, and above all, an emphasis on the influence of forces from above, from the spiritual world.
In the Bruno dialogue, Schelling leaves the method of constructing the universe, which was similar to constructions in the natural sciences, and conducts an internal division of the “ideal” side of the beginning of all things into “infinite concepts”, as well as a division of the universe itself. "Concepts" correspond to Aristotelian "forms" and are "infinite" because they are "patterns" for many individuals, arising or perishing; the maternal, “accepting” principle corresponds to matter. Both principles descend further to individual things that are finite because they do not adequately realize the infinite concepts that are their beginning. The possibility of cognition of this internal structure is due to the universal structure of “similarity” that permeates the entire universe. This is the significance of Schelling's most characteristic inspiration, i.e., his "ideal realism" (although in this too the predominance is on the side of the ideal principle). The idea, like other "absolute identity", is the beginning of the paternal principle (infinite "concepts" realized in nature) and the maternal, "accepting" principle, due to which new concept becomes pantheistic (as the title of the treatise already indicates). However, there is a noticeable shift towards idealism in the worldview sense, as well as towards the idealistic method of interpretation. If in the former concept the absolute was the unity of the subjective and the objective, the ideal and the real (with a preponderance of the real in nature and the ideal in the human world), then the current absolute is understood more idealistically. Already here Schelling departs from the greatest achievements of his early period, that is, from the emphasis on the "objective" or "real" factor, which is now weakened, and also from the dialectical conception of the dynamic process. His new concept is devoid of what will become the strength of Hegel's position, i.e., the accessibility and dialectic of categories, the theory of historical development and the cognizing idea, which develops and moves, negating itself, towards greater concreteness.
The dialogue "Bruno" is nevertheless important for understanding the methodological beginnings of the history of Schelling's philosophy. The opposition between idealism and realism, which, according to Schelling, arises from the one-sided fixation of the ideal and the real elements, forms "the greatest opposition in philosophy." The mutual development of this opposition, resulting in the reconciliation of the contradiction in Schelling's philosophy, must be traced throughout the history of philosophy. This principle makes Schelling one of the founders philosophical history philosophy (before there was a history of philosophy as a collection of views without their development). Schelling wrote only part of the history of philosophy - the so-called "Munich lectures" in 1827, called "History of modern philosophy" ("Geschichle der neueren Philosophic").
In the next period, Schelling tends to theosophical speculations. For the first time, this tioaoe direction can be identified in the Philosophical Studies of the Essence of Human Freedom (Philosophische Untersuchungen liber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit), written in 1809 and consisting of three large treatises - Ages of Peace (Weltalter), Philosophy of Mythology" ("Philosophic der Mythologie") and "Philosophy of Revelation" ("Philosophic der Offenbarung"). In this study, Schelling accuses rationalist philosophy in that she answers only the question "how?", and not the question "what?", i.e., he accuses her of not paying attention to the principle that contributes to the fact that things are. Rationalism allows the individual to arise from general entities, but it cannot explain how real individual things arise from the latter. Although this critique is correct - in particular Schelling's critique of Hegel in The History of Recent Philosophy - it contains many ponderous arguments, because it was carried out from positions that replace rationalistic idealism with irrationalism, voluntarism and theosophy.
Politically, Schelling moved further and further away from the progressive ideas of his youth. Therefore, the reactionary Prussian "romantic" king Friedrich Wilhelm IV soon invited him to the University of Berlin (1841), where Schelling had to counter the growing influence of Hegel's pantheism. This mission of Schelling brought him, however, a well-deserved defeat. The campaign against Schelling involved senior Hegelian philosophers and members of the young democratic opposition. The young Engels also took an active part, writing a newspaper article, Schelling on Hegel, and two anonymous pamphlets. Discredited, Schelling refused lectures. However, almost at the same time (October 3, 1843), Marx wrote in a letter to Feuerbach about the "sincere aims of the young Schelling."
Schelling was born January 27, 1775 and died August 20, 1854. He found both the 18th and most of the 19th century, he lived and acted in completely different eras. He studied even before the French Revolution, found the ideas of freethinking, he himself was inspired in many ways by them, then he became disillusioned with them, joined German romanticism, which sought to overcome the limitations of French education; but later romanticism ceased to suit him. He also lived at a time when completely different philosophical systems began to enter the arena, when the thinkers of Europe began to try to rethink philosophy anew. Schelling, on the other hand, remained true to the old values and preached classical philosophy in the middle of the 19th century, for which he was largely misunderstood. They demanded new ideas from Schelling, but he continued to stand on the old positions. This, perhaps, is the tragedy of Schelling's life, who in his life knew glory, and honor, and ridicule. So Schelling died, if not forgotten, then as a philosopher no longer interested in anyone.
A few words about Schelling's life. He was born near Stuttgart. His father was a clergyman, a deacon of the Lutheran church, and he dreamed of seeing his son as a pastor. First, Schelling studies at the theological seminary, then enters the theological department of the University of Tübingen, where fate brings him together with two people. Schelling, Hegel and Hölderlin, later a famous German romantic, live together in the same room in a student hostel. This student friendship influenced the views of each of these thinkers in many ways; They maintained their friendship for a long time, although their creative paths diverged significantly.
While studying at the university, Schelling suddenly reads "Criticism pure mind"Kant understands that it is not theology that attracts him, but philosophy. He begins to study philosophy, in 1793 he meets Fichte and, under his influence, begins to create his own philosophy, trying to overcome the shortcomings of Kant's philosophy from the point of view of Fichte's philosophy. One of his first works - "On the possible form of philosophy", "I, as the principle of philosophy" (1795) - already in its very title one can see the enormous influence of Fichte. But already in his next work "Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism", written in the same 1795, a departure from pure Fichteanism is visible. Schelling notes that Fichte's sharp attacks on dogmatism, on Spinozism (in Schelling's terminology) are rather one-sided. He is trying to combine into some single system both Spinoza's dogmatism and Fichte's criticism.
In 1795, Schelling graduated from the university and for some time worked as a home teacher. At this time he lives in Leipzig, writes a number of works devoted mainly to the philosophy of nature. It is here that the change of orientation takes place - Schelling understands the limitations of Fichte's philosophy and tries to combine it with Spinoza's dogmatism. Works of this period: "Ideas of the Philosophy of Nature" (1798), "On the Soul of the World" (1798).
At the request of Goethe, the University of Jena invites Schelling to the post of professor of philosophy. He taught for a long time at the University of Jena, and this period is considered the most fruitful in Schelling's life. He writes one of his main works - "The System of Transcendental Idealism" (1800), "The Exposition of My Philosophical System" (1801), "Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Beginning of Things" (1802). At the same time, together with his youthful friend Hegel, he began to publish a philosophical journal, which appeared over the course of several years.
In Jena, Schelling also meets other romantics - the brothers August and Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis and Tiek, sharing their romantic ideas. A fairly close circle of romantics is formed. However, August Schlegel's wife, Caroline, fell in love with Schelling and divorced her husband. Schelling marries Carolina, relations between friends, of course, are upset. Schelling and Carolina live quite amicably, they love each other. But in 1809 Carolina dies, and this year becomes a turning point in Schelling's life.
After the death of his wife, Schelling practically does not write works, at least not as much as before. If up to that time Schelling practically did not talk about religion, and his works contained atheistic and even materialistic views, then after 1809, both in the works that are published and in the drafts, it is clear that Schelling is increasingly inclined to believe in the immortality of the soul, and in a later period, he finally becomes a Christian. He believes not only in the immortality of the soul in the Platonic sense, but also in the immortality of the whole person.
In 1841, Schelling moved to Berlin to the post of head. Department of Philosophy (before that he lived in Munich, where he was president of the Academy of Sciences). In Berlin, he begins to teach the course "Philosophy of Revelation", in which he tries to formulate new philosophical and religious views. Europe has already missed Schelling during his long silence. The first lecture, which he began to give in Berlin, gathered a huge audience. Having heard that Schelling was beginning to read a new course of lectures, people from different countries- came Bakunin from Russia, Kierkegaard from Denmark, Engels. And how great was the interest in Schelling, so great was the disappointment; there was practically no one at the subsequent lectures. Only the most obedient students continued to go. Schelling himself, by the reaction of the listeners, saw that his course was rather raw and unfinished. An even greater blow was the publication of Schelling's course of lectures, which one of the students dared to publish his notes without asking the permission of the teacher himself. Schelling was angry, he begins to sue this student, but the lectures are already out. Schelling, in frustration, forgotten by everyone, soon dies.
General characteristics of Schelling's philosophy
Schelling's entire philosophy is usually divided into several periods. The first period is called the philosophy of nature or natural philosophy. The second period is transcendental idealism. The third is the philosophy of identity. Then - the philosophy of art and, finally, the philosophy of revelation. Although Schelling himself claimed that he did not have any evolution, but there was a gradual scrupulous development of the ideas that Schelling expressed in his first works. Indeed, such sharp contradictions as, say, in Kant between his pre-critical and critical periods, we do not encounter in Schelling.
The main idea of Schelling, which is found in almost all of his works of the early, middle and late periods, is as follows. The main discovery of Kant and Fichte is that they created a system of transcendental idealism. For the first time, they explored truth from the side of the subject. But what is truth? Truth is an adequate reflection of reality cognized in the subject, i.e. in other words, truth is identity, the coincidence of subject and object. This classical understanding truth comes from Aristotle, and most philosophers, with a few exceptions, say, Hobbes or Kant, considered the concept of truth (coincidence, identity of subject and object) to be just such. And since the subject and the object are identical, then, consequently, it is possible, by investigating the objective world, to deduce the subject from it. And, conversely, by engaging in transcendental philosophy, i.e., by investigating the "I", pure knowledge, one can deduce the objective world from it.
In the first period of creativity, Schelling, as it were, tries to make up for the shortcoming that was in the philosophy of Kant and Fichte. Too carried away by transcendental philosophy, Kant and especially Fichte, in whom "everything is I," reduced everything to the subject. But this is only one side of the identity of subject and object. In his critique of Spinozism, Fichte forgot about the second part of this identity - that knowledge can also be derived from the object, the subjective world can be derived. Therefore, in his philosophy, Schelling tries to reconstruct the subject based on nature. This is precisely the meaning of his first period, the period of the philosophy of nature.
In the second period, especially in the work "The System of Transcendental Idealism", Schelling tries to approach the truth from the other side and seeks to deduce nature from the subject.
In his next work, An Exposition of My System of Philosophy, Schelling moves on to the next stage of his evolution - to the philosophy of identity. He tries to show what is truth, what is the identity of subject and object. Exploring the system of identity, Schelling, carried away by the ideas of the Romantics, understands that the identity of the subject and object exists in a certain absolute, reminiscent of Plotinus' "single" or "maximum" of Nicholas of Cusa, completely unattainable for rational human cognition. The Absolute is revealed in the aesthetic creativity of a genius. Schelling writes "Philosophy of Art", in which he sets out his understanding of the nature of genius. He writes that in the beginning there was art, poetry, then some rationalistic forms - mythology, philosophy and science - began to be isolated from poetry. And at the heart of everything lies the direct experience of the unity of the absolute - poetry.
Schelling further develops this concept and, analyzing the absolute, which for him is becoming more and more synonymous with God, especially after his personal tragedy, he understands that the absolute lives its own life, that it is not just some kind of impersonal beginning, but is a personality, and he can exist only by revealing himself to someone. Therefore, the next and final stage of Schelling's philosophical evolution is the philosophy of revelation.
As we can see, Schelling was indeed not entirely cunning when he claimed that he did not have leaps, but that there was a smooth development of the same principles. The Schelling of the "philosophy of revelation" and the Schelling of the "philosophy of nature" are one and the same Schelling. His misfortune was not that, according to Engels, "he made an evolution from materialism to theism", but that in the 40s of the XIX century, when philosophers tried to say goodbye to classical philosophy, when not only the ideas of Spinoza or Kant, and even the ideas of Hegel in the West were of little interest to anyone, positivism was in vogue, the works of Nietzsche and Marx were soon to appear, denying all classical ideas about philosophy, Schelling still defended the old understanding of philosophy.
Schelling is also interesting for us because he was the first European philosopher who had a direct influence on Russian philosophy and culture. We know that Lomonosov studied with Christian Wolff, a student of Leibniz; the ideas of Kant and Fichte penetrated into Russia. But Schelling exerted an influence that was immediate and incomparable in scope to that of Kant or Leibniz. At the beginning of the 19th century, there was more and more interest in Schelling's ideas. The first Russian consistent Schellingian was D.M. Vellansky, who translated some of Schelling's works into Russian. Schelling's follower was one of the teachers of the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum, teacher A.S. Pushkin, A.I. Galich, later - Professor of St. Petersburg University M.G. Pavlov. One of the Decembrists, G.S. Batenkov, once recalled: “Even during the tedious campaigns of the French war, the three of us - Elagin, myself and a certain Paskevich decided to transplant Schelling to Russian soil, and in our youthful minds his ideas merged with our comradely humor We began to express ourselves in new distractions easily and pleasantly.
In the 1920s, three Schellingian philosophical journals were published: Athenaeus, Mnemosyne, and Moskovsky Vestnik. The latter was published by Pogodin, the editor of "Mnemosyne" was Odoevsky, Venevitinov, Kireevsky, Shevyrev, Koshelev collaborated there, along with Kuchelbecker, Khomyakov, Pogodin. Stankevich began with enthusiasm for Schelling, from whose circle came Belinsky, Bakunin, Aksakov, Samarin. Apollon Grigoriev, the famous Russian poet and philosopher, was also a great admirer of Schelling; in particular, his quote: "Schellingism penetrated me deeper and deeper - unsystematic and boundless, for it is life, not theory." F. Tyutchev, who lived in Munich for a long time as an employee of the Russian diplomatic mission, was personally acquainted with Schelling; his poems were also written under the influence of his ideas. V.F. Odoevsky, under the impression of a conversation with Schelling, wrote: "Schelling is old, otherwise he would surely have switched to Orthodox Church", i.e. those ideas that Schelling expressed in his works of the late period of revelation were clearly perceived by many as ideas close to Orthodoxy. And Schelling himself spoke quite unflatteringly about Protestantism, considering it to be some intermediate stage on the path to true Christianity.
Philosophy of nature
It is based on an attempt to overcome Fichte's transcendental idealism, and Schelling proceeds from Spinozism, i.e. from dogmatism. Dogmatism, according to the definition given by Fichte, and Schelling completely agrees with him, proceeds from the existence of the external world as an axiom. Just as a physicist studies nature without doubting its existence, without asking philosophical questions - whether nature exists or not, whether it is knowable or not - so for Schelling's "philosophy of nature" the existence of nature and its knowability is an axiom. Therefore, the philosophy of nature, according to Schelling, must proceed precisely from such an understanding of nature. The difference between physics and philosophy lies only in the fact that physics investigates matter, forms of motion, while philosophy rises to more general questions. Schelling called philosophy the Spinozism of physics, because, on the one hand, it is the doctrine of nature, just like physics, and on the other hand, it is not just physics, but philosophical physics, speculative, not oriented towards experimental knowledge. It does not study the connection between the movements of bodies, but explores where this connection comes from, why the world has such a form, and not another, why it is three-dimensional, and not two-dimensional or four-dimensional, etc. Since nature is known, then, therefore, truth exists . And since truth is the coincidence of object and subject, it is by nature possible to ascend to the subject. Therefore, nature is presented to Schelling not as something soulless, not as the triumph of death, not as some immovable matter. In his early works, he writes that the soul is “poured” in nature, or, as Tyutchev wrote under the influence of Schelling’s ideas: “It’s not that you think of nature, it’s not a cast, not a soulless face; it has a soul, it has freedom, it has love, it has language."
The main principle from which Schelling proceeds in his understanding of nature is the principle of the unity of nature. This principle was for Schelling one of the most consistent heuristic principles; he was convinced that everything natural phenomena connected to each other. These ideas of Schelling had a very serious influence on contemporary physics. Say, at that time the phenomena of both electricity and magnetism were already discovered. The well-known Danish physicist Oersted, under the influence of Schelling's ideas, tried for a long time to find the unity and connection of these phenomena. It was thanks to his conviction that electromagnetism was discovered.
Schelling viewed nature as living and creative, not soulless and motionless. In nature itself, two aspects can be considered: 1) nature as something created, something ready, as something that the experimental physicist cognizes; Schelling here uses Spinoza's term "natura naturata" - created nature. 2) Nature as productivity, as the subject of this creation ("natura naturans"). Therefore, nature can be viewed from two sides - as an object, as a product, which is considered by the natural sciences, and as a subject, as productivity, something that is considered only by philosophy. Nature is one and therefore the product and productivity in it coincide, but, coinciding, they nevertheless limit each other. This limitation and the coincidence of two opposites according to Schelling is the basic principle of considering the whole of nature. All nature consists of these kinds of poles; as an example, Schelling, in particular, cited the poles of a magnet, which exist, complementing each other; or acid and base in chemistry, plus and minus in mathematics. Engels calmly rewrote these examples in his work Dialectics of Nature.
Opposites arise in nature, contradictions - this is the first postulate of natural philosophy. There is an opposite driving force development of nature, this is the mechanism by which productivity exists. There is an alternation of various phenomena, inextricably linked with the unity of nature, identity, which in the end is the identity of opposites.
Schelling does not stop there and tries to consider how matter arises from the principle of productivity. The secret of productivity lies in the convergence of forces. Schelling sees three main forces in which matter manifests itself - magnetism, electricity and chemistry. Schelling calls these three concepts the categories of the original construction of nature, with the help of which nature produces itself from itself. Subsequently, Schelling will find the same construction both in organic nature and in higher rational nature. Schelling needs these three forces in order to substantiate the existence of three-dimensional space. Magnetism is a force that acts only in a straight line; it provides one-dimensional space. Electricity, accordingly, provides two-dimensionality, and chemistry gives the third component of space; thus the volume arises. In the end, out of chemism, the next stage arises, irritability, organic nature arises. There is its own evolution - from irritability, sensitivity arises, from sensitivity - sensations, from sensations - thinking and then thinking nature and, as a result, a cognizing subject. Schelling considers the first task of the philosophy of nature fulfilled - he showed, as it seems to him, how the subject arises from the philosophy of nature. This does not convince me and seems rather forced.
Transcendental idealism
No less strained, although closer to the thoughts of Kant and especially Fichte, are the ideas expressed by Schelling in his system of transcendental idealism - the philosophy of the second period, where he shows how an object arises from a subject, demonstrating the second side of identity. Here, for understanding Schelling's teaching, the term "intelligentsia" is important, which means not what we are used to putting into this word, but some carrier of intelligence, a substance that can think. Intelligentsia is that which has the property of intellect. It is clear that it is precisely the intelligentsia that Schelling studies in transcendental philosophy. If the philosophy of nature, natural philosophy proceeded from the fact that for it the axiom is the existence of an objective external world, then transcendental philosophy proceeds from another axiom, from the certainty that only the subject, the "I" exists. Therefore, the basic principle of transcendental philosophy is the principle of skepticism. It was this line that all the philosophers of antiquity unconsciously developed when they tried to doubt the existence of the external world. This turn was especially radical in René Descartes. As Schelling shows, this is only one part of a true philosophical system.
Transcendental philosophy begins with a general doubt and, as a result of this doubt, comes to the conviction of the existence of only the subject, only the thinking Fichtean "I", or Kant's transcendental mind. Here, at first, Schelling argues in the same way as Fichte argued in his time. If for a person the only certain reality is "I", then the philosopher in transcendental philosophy begins with the position that "I" posits "I". "I" thinks and contemplates only itself. But the "I" contemplates itself as limited, and in this limitation of itself it understands that there is some "not-I". If there is a "not-I", then, then, it affects the "I", and since there is nothing other than the "I", then this "not-I" is an affirmation of the "I" by itself on the part of itself. That is, "not-I", the object of knowledge arises from the very same subject, from the very knowing "I". Therefore, the "I" contemplates itself as sentient (when it is recognized that there is still a "not-I"). Therefore, the next fact that the thinker, the transcendental philosopher observes, is no longer a fact of contemplation, but of sensation - sensation of the objective world. That is, there is an idea of the external world.
At the same stage, Schelling explores the second section of transcendental philosophy - practical philosophy. Transcendental philosophy is a philosophy consisting of two parts: theoretical philosophy, exploring knowledge, and practical philosophy, exploring free, i.e. moral activity of man. In the subject both cognitive activity and moral activity coincide. But the laws that scientists learn and freedom contradict each other. This is an obvious contradiction between freedom and necessity, so it can be resolved in a higher philosophy.
This philosophy can be based on principles that transcend human mind. Such a teaching for Schelling is the principle of pre-established harmony. Schelling highly appreciated Leibniz and all his philosophy. He wrote: “Whatever work of Leibniz I take, whatever phrase I read, a huge thought is visible everywhere. And there is no such work in which Leibniz would not state his brilliant vision.” In overcoming the contradiction between freedom and necessity, the concept of goal-setting arises - pre-established harmony exists for the sake of some goal.
Goal-setting, which Kant spoke about in the Critique of Judgment, is again found in the subject, i.e. the philosopher again, as if leaving the subject to resolve the contradiction between necessity and freedom, returns to the subject. In general, Schelling pointed out that this circle in philosophy is not a vicious circle, but, on the contrary, a sign of a real system of philosophy, for the truth of the system lies precisely in the fact that philosophy in its last point returns to its starting point from which it started. . That is, a true system must always be an all-encompassing, cyclic, circular system.
Philosophy of Identity
The unity of goal-setting, free and cognitive activity is formed in the subject, in the "I". The "I" thus turns out to be a unity that transcends ordinary rational cognitive activity. The unity that exists in the "I" includes the identity of opposites - reason, freedom and purpose. Therefore, a higher principle manifests itself in a person. This is precisely the creative work of a genius who can find in his "I", in his intelligentsia, principles that surpass the human mind. An artist, a genius always creates without understanding where the source of his creativity comes from, without understanding the mechanism by which this creation takes place. In fact, the existence of a genius proves that the human "I" is a much more complex system than it was imagined by thinkers like Descartes, who reduced the entire human "I" to only rational cognitive activity.
Therefore, if we, together with Schelling, see unity in the subject, then we must necessarily come to the existence of a special cognitive ability with which the genius creates. Schelling calls this ability the familiar word "reason", understanding it not in the Kantian sense, for which there was no difference between reason and reason, but in Platonic, more precisely Neoplatonic. As we remember, the difference between reason and reason is found for the first time in Plato, although Plato himself did not develop this topic in detail, which was done by Plotinus and Nicholas of Cusa. These thinkers saw in the mind an activity that exists in time, obeys the laws of formal logic, and therefore operates on the basis of the “either-or” principle, the principle of the prohibition of contradiction.
Reason ascends to timeless truth, to eternal truth. Therefore, the mind can transcend all these contradictions and contemplate, see the truth that embraces all the diversity of the world, all contradictions. It is with this mind that the genius, the creator, thinks, and the person who is at the stage of not just scientific, but at the stage of religious knowledge, thinks about what Schelling will talk about in subsequent works.
Schelling, in subsequent works, more and more objectifies the unity of the human "I", realizing that the subject and object, which he previously derived from each other, actually form a unity that exists not only in man and nature. This unity is absolute, in which the subject and object completely coincide. That is, it is an absolute that exists indistinguishably, but splits in the process of its own life, incomprehensible to us, into subject and object, into what we directly observe. These are the thoughts of Schelling in the period of the philosophy of identity.
Schelling thinks more and more like a Christian philosopher, and the problems that now concern Schelling are no longer so much problems of Spinozism or transcendental idealism. These are problems that have always interested Western Christian philosophy - the problems of the existence of evil in the world (theodicy), freedom and grace.
philosophy of revelation
Schelling, in his transcendental idealism, like Fichte, makes the "I" the principle of all philosophy. But the "I" is an active principle and, above all, a moral one. The activity of the "I" consists in choosing between good and evil. "I", above all, free, and freedom is the ability to good and evil, the ability to choose between good and evil. And therein lies the greatest difficulty, writes Schelling in Philosophical Investigations on the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Subjects, that evil either really exists or does not exist at all: either a Manichaean solution to the problem, or a truly Christian one, which evil does not exist. But if evil really exists, then the concept of God, an all-perfect and all-powerful Being, is actually denied. And if the reality of the existence of evil is denied, then the reality of freedom is denied, for the freedom of man consists in choosing between good and evil; if there is no evil, then there is no freedom. Both options turn out to be dead ends, including for theology, because if evil exists objectively, then God allows the existence of evil in the world. Or, if evil does not objectively exist, then freedom, as a choice between good and evil, exists only as an illusion, real freedom does not exist, and therefore not a person, but its Creator, is responsible for the evil that exists in the world, i.e. God. This means that in any case, and with that, and with another option for solving this problem, God is responsible for evil.
Further, Schelling argues, everything positive in the world comes from God. Therefore, if there is something positive in evil, then it also comes from God. This argument was made by Augustine. Augustine understood how evil can exist without a substantial basis. An example of rotting is a tree dies, and rotting is possible only when the tree exists, i.e. there is good. If the tree is rotten, there is no good, then, consequently, there is no rotting process, i.e. no evil. There is no evil as such, it is only a diminution of good. Schelling also considers another version of the solution: if the positive - that is, that which exists - is good, and evil exists as a diminution of good, then, consequently, there is some being in evil, i.e. that which exists in evil, and that is good. Where does that, in which the essence of evil exists, a certain basis of evil, come from? Again, an insoluble problem arises, for it turns out that evil must necessarily have some basis in itself. Moreover, a certain force manifests its existence in evil. It is, of course, less perfect than the power of the Divine, but, nevertheless, it still exists. Therefore, if everything that exists is from God, then it also exists from God. God is the Creator of this evil force.
Schelling tries to honestly consider all possible variants of the problem of the existence of evil in the world and comes to the conclusion that none of the existing solutions can suit us. Therefore, he tries to comprehend it from a different position. It is clear that, as Schelling writes, the position of philosophical idealism, i. Fichte's philosophy is a departure from the solution of the problem of evil, because for philosophical idealism nature does not exist at all, therefore there is no activity at all "in something".
Schelling argues as follows: God is an omnipotent and all-encompassing being, therefore there is nothing outside of God. But God exists, therefore, the basis of His existence must also exist, a certain nature in God. But there is nothing outside of God, therefore nature, the basis of God's existence, exists in God Himself. It turns out some contradiction: the basis of the existence of God is not by definition God, but exists in God, therefore it is God. Therefore, this nature in God is inseparable from God, but nevertheless it is not God.
The essence of God is life. In our world, things move, but the principle of their movement cannot be in the things themselves, it is in God, therefore the formation of things comes from God. But God is an all-encompassing Being, therefore He gives birth to everything and in the end Himself, so there is no final unity in God. For Himself, God exists as a kind of will, and what He generates is His idea of Himself, is His Word, is the Logos. This idea of God about Himself exists in a certain spiritual beginning, i.e. in Spirit.
With these arguments, Schelling tries to philosophically substantiate and come to the real necessity of existence. Holy Trinity. God presents Himself in some action, i.e. in the Mind, in the Word, creates and represents something else, and the action of the mind is always in division, therefore the creation of a single world by God is impossible without the existence in this world of the principle of divisibility, the plurality of things. But the plurality of things exists only in unity, as in a seed. Therefore, things that exist in the world always have a double nature, a double beginning. The first is that which separates things from God, shows that they exist, speaking in the usual language, a creature, and not a Creator. The other beginning is the one that shows their creation, that they exist in God, exist in His basis. The principle of Schelling's philosophizing, consistently pursued by him, is the presence of some foundation in God, a foundation that manifests itself in things. Things can exist because in God himself there is His basis, that in God there is not God Himself. Therefore, things can exist in God and not be God. They therefore have a dual nature.
In man this dual nature manifested in his freedom. Due to the fact that man is produced from the basis of God (because man is not God), he contains a beginning relatively independent of God. But this beginning, unlike nature, is sanctified by the light of the Divine Logos; this beginning is Mind, Light. But the selfhood of man, which is the spirit, the mind, nevertheless differs from the essence of God, for it comes from the Divine basis, i.e. different from God. Therefore, a person, on the one hand, has everything from God in himself, and everything that he does, he does by the power of God, on the other hand, he comes from this foundation in God, therefore he can create that which does not have a Divine origin, .e. do evil. Therefore, the human will acts, on the one hand, in nature, and on the other, it rises above nature. Therefore, this self, i.e. the will of a person can differ both from nature and from the Divine light, i.e. Mind and Will, inextricably linked in God, can be separated and different in a person. Therefore, a person does actions that are not subject to any reasonable comprehension, immoral actions. Thus, the ability to do evil arises.
The rather complex logic of Schelling can be perceived in a new way when studying Russian philosophy, and then the eternal problems that worry us all will become clear.
Schelling Friedrich Wilhelm
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling - one of the most prominent representatives of the German classical philosophy . In 1790, at the age of 15, he became a student of theology at the University of Tübingen (together with Hegel and Hölderlin). In 1798, at the age of 23, he became a professor at Jena. Here Schelling approaches the circle of romantics (brothers A. and F. Schlegel, Novalis, Schleiermacher, and others). In Munich (1806-1820) he becomes a member of the Academy of Sciences and General Secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts. 1820-1826 - professor at Erlangen, from 1827 - again at Munich and from 1841 - at Berlin universities. He played a significant role in posing the problems of critical philosophy. Starting with Kant, critical philosophy set itself the task of studying the deepest foundations of self-knowledge, i.e. human I, the subject as an active creative principle. After Kant, this critical self-knowledge needed systematic completion and unity, but as soon as this goal was achieved, an equally important task arose - to find a way out of the field of the theory of knowledge into the field of the philosophy of nature, as a necessary object of the spirit itself. The significance of Schelling in German philosophy is determined by the fact that it was his lot to carry out the grandiose transition from self-knowledge to world-knowledge based on the principles of Kantian-Fichtean criticism. Schelling's philosophical path and, accordingly, the order of the problems he solves can be represented as follows. way: from self-knowledge to knowledge of the world, and from it to knowledge of God, which is consistent with such periods of his work as natural philosophy, the philosophy of identity, transcendental idealism, the philosophy of revelation. Before developing his point of view, Sh. was entirely under the influence of Fichte's ideas. All his works until the mid-1790s are nothing more than comments on the "scientific teaching" of the latter. The divergence between thinkers has been outlined in the understanding of nature. If Fichte directed his interest mainly to how the subject itself determines and forms itself, and left out of consideration the unconsciously acting and creating nature of the I, then, according to Schelling, such an I is not yet the subject proper. To become so, it must go through a long path of unconscious natural development. Schelling was convinced that it is unhistorical to begin philosophy immediately with a self-conscious self; one should return to its origins, depicting the entire genesis of self-consciousness and, thereby, the need for its appearance. Thus, the analysis of self-consciousness was preceded by an analysis of nature, which, accordingly, appeared in Schelling as the unconscious creativity of the spirit itself, a necessary product of its development, by itself - by the spirit, and contemplated. At the same time, consciousness, spirit, as a subject as an absolutely free pure activity, on the one hand, and spirit as a product of the development of nature, on the other, as conscious and unconscious, are distinguished. This problem of the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious will become the focus of Schelling's attention at all stages of his development.
The philosophy of nature at this stage acts as a necessary part of the philosophy of transcendental idealism, which Fichte did not have, who did not see an independent reality in it. The main problem of Schelling's natural philosophy is the consideration of all stages of the development of nature in the direction of its highest goal, i.e. generation of consciousness from an unconscious form of life of the mind. Schelling continued the development of critical philosophy, because, like his predecessors, Kant and Fichte, he solves the problem of the conditions of cognition: how a person, being a natural phenomenon (preceding cognition), begins to cognize nature, or: how nature comes to the fact that it is cognized by man. From this point of view, knowledge arises as a necessary product of the mind, incorporated and organized by nature in man. Further, the goals of natural philosophy are concretized by cl. arr.: to explore the organizing nature to the very stage of its development when knowledge arises. Schelling proclaims as the main principles of his natural philosophy the principle of the unity of nature and spirit; the principle of polarity (that is, the understanding of any natural body as a product of the interaction of oppositely directed forces); the principle of development or creativity of nature, whence Schelling's famous: nature is not only natura naturata (product), but also natura naturans (productivity, activity, subject). Development is carried out in nature as a kind of "hierarchy of organizations": from the objective to the subjective through the so-called potentiation - the growth of subjectivity.
Schelling's teachings had a great influence on philosophical thought in the 19th and 20th centuries. Having at its core, as it were, two principles - absolute reason and blind supersensible will, it was the ideological material for the most diverse philosophical systems, both rationalistic and irrationalistic.
Books from the collection of the Scientific Library:
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (German philosopher).
Works: in 2 volumes: per. with him. / F. W. J. Schelling; USSR Academy of Sciences; Institute of Philosophy; Comp. A. V. Gulyga. - Moscow: Thought, 1987-1989 .- (FN: Philosophical heritage).
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (philosopher).
Philosophy of revelation: in 2 volumes: per. with him. / F. V. J. Schelling. - St. Petersburg: Science, 2000-2002 .- (Word about being) (University Library).
Original translation: Philosophie der Offenbarung.
(German: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, January 27, 1775 - August 20, 1854) was a German philosopher. He was close to the Jena romantics. An outstanding representative of idealism in the new philosophy. Starting from I. G. Fichte, he developed the principles of the objective-idealistic dialectics of nature as a living organism, an unconsciously spiritual creative principle, an ascending system of steps (“potentials”), characterized by polarity, the dynamic unity of opposites.
Biography
Born in the Württemberg town of Leonberg. His father held the highest spiritual positions. Schelling early discovered brilliant abilities. At the age of 15 he entered the University of Tübingen.
At the university, Schelling's interests were divided between philosophy and theology. In the first works of Schelling - "a philosophical-critical explanation of the biblical story of the fall" and "on myths, historical sagas and philosophemes ancient world» - the idea of the need for a philosophical and historical interpretation of the Bible as opposed to the grammatical and dogmatic is being carried out. In essence, Schelling outlines here that historical-critical method, which subsequently received a detailed development in the New Tübingen school.
In the preface to The Life of Jesus, Strauss notes Schelling as his predecessor. At the university, Schelling did not remain a stranger to the influence of public sentiment. The trends of the French Revolution and the enthusiasm of the emerging romanticism found a lively response in him and in his circle of friends. As a translator of the Marseillaise, Schelling receives a severe reprimand from the Duke of Württemberg, who came to Tübingen to curb the dispersed youth.
Soon Schelling's interests focused exclusively on philosophy. He got acquainted with the philosophy of Kant, with the first works of Fichte, and at the age of 19 he himself entered the philosophical field, first as a follower and interpreter of Fichte. At the end of the course, Schelling acts as a home teacher for three years, in conditions very favorable for his own studies. During this time, he manages to become well acquainted with mathematics, physics and medicine and produces several significant works:
- "Allgemeine Uebersicht der neuesten philosophischen Literatur",
- "Ideen"
- "Von der Weltseele".
In the last two, Schelling's natural-philosophical worldview is already outlined.
In 1798 Schelling met Goethe and interested him in his natural philosophy. Thanks to the efforts of Fichte and the support of Goethe, Schelling received a professorship in Jena in the same year. Here, the 23-year-old professor, with extraordinary courage and energy, sets about developing his own worldview, more and more freed from the influence of his immediate predecessors. At the same time, Schelling entered into close contact with a circle of romantics - the brothers Schlegel, Hardenberg, and others. The soul of this circle was Caroline Schlegel, the wife of A. V. Schlegel, who played the role of German de Stael in the literary spheres of Germany. Its influence on representatives of romantic and philosophical literature was very great. Schelling himself experienced this influence to the greatest extent, having acquired a close friend in Carolina Schlegel, and subsequently a devoted wife. Kuno-Fischer rightly calls Caroline Schelling's muse. Her interest in philosophical questions, and most importantly - boundless faith in the philosophical genius of Schelling, determined the spiritual uplift that characterizes the most productive period of his life, which brought him great fame and great importance among his contemporaries.
In Jena (1799 - 1803) Schelling found his most fruitful activity. In addition to lecturing and publishing his main works on natural philosophy and the philosophy of identity, he published two journals: Zeitschrift fur speculative Physik and Kritische Journal der Philosophie (the latter with Hegel). Already at this time, Schelling became the head of the school, which extended its influence to various branches of science and literature. The extraordinary success of Schelling is explained both by favorable conditions for him and by the peculiarities of his talents. In his philosophical enthusiasm there was some kind of elemental, conquering force. At the same time, all the hostile influences directed against him were broken against his inflexible and powerful personality. In this respect, he fully justified the nickname “granite” given to him by his circle.
Schiller, Fichte, Hegel, Jacobi, Steffens, Oken, Eschenmeyer, Windischmann, and Platen belonged to the number of outstanding contemporaries who were in personal relations with Schelling, in addition to those already mentioned. With many of them, Schelling was in friendship, in most cases, however, short-lived: the proud and proud Schelling did not tolerate people around him equal to him and not subject to his influence, especially in the field of his specialty. This mainly explains Schelling's break with Fichte, his spiritual father in philosophy, and Hegel, his university comrade and friend. These same features of Schelling's character explain his almost continuous struggle with numerous enemies. In most cases, literary attacks on Schelling were of a personal nature and even took the form of not very neat pamphlets concerning the intimate aspects of his life (for example, a pamphlet full of poison attributed to Berg: “Lob der allerneusten Philosophie”). For his part, Schelling also revealed in the polemic a personal passion that often went beyond justice and even his own objective assessment, which manifested itself only later. In this respect, his polemic with Jacobi is characteristic.
After a ruthless and devastating criticism (in "Denkmal der Schrift Jacobis von den gottlichten Dingen") of his philosophy of feeling, Schelling, 17 years later, in his lectures on the history of philosophy, pays tribute to this philosopher and, criticizing the "negative" philosophy of mind, armed with Jacobi's arguments against his main enemy, Hegel. Schelling's hostile attitude towards Hegel was expressed only in part in the preface to Cousin's work and was found mainly in lectures and private letters. Here Schelling characterizes Hegelian idealism as a filigree processing of concepts, which has only episodic significance in history, as a perversion of his own Template: Natural Philosophy and the transformation of living nature into a herbarium of dried plants. But even with regard to Hegel, the time has come for a calm and objective assessment: the philosophical currents of the Hegelian "left" school, even more alien to Schelling, made him neglect secondary differences and feel his kinship with a recent enemy.
In Schelling's lectures given in Berlin in 1841-1842. and promulgated by Paulus, there is already full recognition of the system of absolute idealism, as a remarkable completion of his own philosophy of identity. In addition to Jena, Schelling was a professor at Würzburg, Munich, Erlangen and Berlin. The end of Schelling's life was overshadowed by the lawsuit against Paulus, who published his lectures at the University of Berlin without Schelling's permission. The process ended not in favor of Schelling, since the court found it difficult to recognize the publication of lectures, associated with a critical discussion, as a "reprint" provided for by law. Insulted, Schelling stopped lecturing forever. Last years deep old age, Schelling spent surrounded by those who remained to him true friends and a large family (three years after the death of his first wife, he entered into a second marriage). A year before his death, Schelling received from King Maximilian II, his former student, a sonnet dedicated to him, the final stanza of which very aptly characterizes the wide and lofty flight of his philosophical thought: “Du wagst die Klufte kuhn zu uberschreiten, wozu die Weisen keine Brucke fanden, die Glaubige und Denker stets entzweiten".
Characteristics of creative periods
Schelling's philosophy does not represent a completely unified and complete whole, but rather several systems that he developed successively throughout his life. However, one should not think that these systems were not connected at all. On the contrary, Schelling's worldview developed organically, as if generating new offspring from one main stem. Passing from the study of one area to another, Schelling usually took care of bringing these various departments into a harmonious unity freed from contradictions. Nevertheless, the various basic principles that prevailed in certain periods of his work, as well as the new problems and areas to which he devoted himself, placed very noticeable boundaries between these periods.
First period in the development of Schelling's philosophy consists in the study of the epistemological problem of the basic principle of cognition and the possibility of cognition from the point of view of criticism modified by Fichte. Here Schelling does not deviate in general from the path outlined by Fichte.
The main task second period is the construction of nature as a self-developing spiritual organism.
Identity system characterizing third period, consists in revealing the idea of the absolute, as the identity of the main opposites of the real and the ideal, the finite and the infinite.
IN fourth period Schelling expounds his philosophy of religion - the theory of the world falling away from God and returning to God through Christianity. Adjacent to the same period, as an addition, is the "positive" philosophy, known only from Schelling's lectures. It presents the philosophy of religion not as a subject of rational knowledge, but as an intuitively revealed truth. From this point of view, positive philosophy is at the same time the philosophy of mythology and revelation.
The most important works
- "Ueber die Moglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie uberhaupt" (1794);
- "Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie" (1895);
- "Philosophische Briefe uber Dogmatismus und Criticismus" (1795);
- "Abhandlungen zur Erlauterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre" (1796-97);
- "Ideen zur Philosophie der Natur" (1797);
- "Von der Weltseele" (1798);
- "Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie" (1799);
- "Einleitung zum Entwurf" (1799);
- "System des transcendentalen Idealismus" (1800);
- "Allgemeine Deduction des dynamischen Processes" (1800);
- "Ueber den wahren Begriff der Naturphilosophie" (1801);
- "Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie" (1801);
- Bruno. Ein Gesprach" (1802);
- "Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophien" (1802);
- "Philosophie der Kunst" (lectures delivered at Jena in 1802-1803 and at Würzburg in 1804-1805; published posthumously).
Important are:
- "Zusatze" to the second edition of "Ideen" in 1803 and "Abhandlung uber das Verhaltniss des Realen und Idealen in der Natur", added to 2nd ed. "Weltseele" (1806);
- "Vorlesungen uber die Methode des akademischen Studiums" (1803);
- "Philosophie und Religion" (1804);
- "Darlegung des wahren Verhaltnisses Naturphilosophie zur verbesserten Fichteschen Lehre" (1806);
- "Ueber das Verhaltniss der bildenden Kunste zur Natur" (a solemn speech read at the Munich Academy of Arts in 1807);
- "Philosophische Untersuchungen uber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit" (1809);
- "Denkmal der Schrift Jacobis von den gottlichen Dingen" (1812);
- "Weltalter" (posthumously); "Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake" (1815);
- "Ueber den Zusammenhang der Natur mit der Geisterwelt" (posthumously);
- "Die Philosophie der Mythologie und der Offenbarung" ( positive philosophy- posthumous edition).
In addition, Schelling wrote many small articles and reviews, published in the journals he published and included in the posthumous edition of his works, undertaken by his son (1856 - 1861, 14 vol.). It also included Schelling's numerous solemn speeches.
This article was written using material from encyclopedic dictionary Brockhaus and Efron (1890 - 1907).
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