Philosophy of Revelation (1841-42)

The 1841 Berlin lectures a king summoned Schelling to give — with Kierkegaard, Engels and Bakunin in the hall — against the ghost of Hegel.

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling222 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Philosophie der Offenbarung
First published: 1841(aged 66)
Original language: German

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Overview

Frederick William IV of Prussia had a philosophical problem, and in 1840 he called an old man out of retirement to solve it. Hegel had died in Berlin in 1831 and his system had spread through the universities; the new king wanted it uprooted, and the minister's brief was blunt — Schelling was to come and "stamp out the dragon-seed of Hegelian pantheism." He arrived in 1841, sixty-six years old, once Hegel's friend and roommate and long since his rival, and began the lectures published after his death as the Philosophie der Offenbarung, the "Philosophy of Revelation." The room was extraordinary: Kierkegaard, Engels, Bakunin, Burckhardt and Ranke all sat through the first course, and Engels wrote home that the battle for Germany was being fought in Lecture Hall Six. The argument is the fullest statement of Schelling's late "positive philosophy." A purely rational system, he holds, can tell you what a thing must be if it exists, but never that it exists; the sheer fact of the world's being, and of a God who freely creates rather than logically unfolds, lies outside what reason can deduce, and can only be met in history, mythology and revelation. This was aimed straight at Hegel's claim that the real is the rational through and through. The verdict was harsh. Kierkegaard left disenchanted, and Schelling published nothing more. What he said there reached the next century anyway, through the students who had come to listen.

Key concepts

What is positive philosophy?

Schelling's late program: a philosophy that begins from existence rather than trying to prove it. Its foil is negative philosophy, the science of the possible, which unfolds what is necessary in thought. Positive philosophy takes the actual, above all a freely creating God, as its starting point and follows it through history and revelation. The division of philosophy into these two is the central move of these lectures.

What does 'revelation' mean in this book?

Not merely church doctrine but the appearing of what reason cannot deduce. Since the free acts of God and the fact of the world's being lie outside logic, they can only be met where they actually show themselves, in the history of religions and in revelation. Revelation thus becomes philosophical evidence, the material a positive philosophy works from, rather than a matter left to faith alone.

How does this attack Hegel?

Hegel had taught that the real is the rational through and through, the world unfolding by logical necessity. Schelling denies exactly this: existence and free creation exceed any system of reason. A king summoned him to Berlin to uproot Hegel's philosophy, and these lectures are the weapon, replacing a self-unfolding logic with a God who acts freely and a being no concept contains.

What does a 'freely creating God' mean here?

A God who brings the world into being by a free act, not by logical necessity. In Hegel's system God, or the absolute, unfolds inevitably; Schelling insists creation could have been otherwise, which is why it cannot be deduced. This freedom is what puts existence beyond reason's reach and makes revelation, not proof, the only way the actual can be known.

Who was in the room for these lectures?

An extraordinary audience. Kierkegaard, Engels, Bakunin, Burckhardt and Ranke all sat through the first Berlin course of 1841, and Engels wrote home that the battle for Germany was being fought there. The lectures never became the book that would refute Hegel, and Schelling published nothing more, but what he said reached the next century through the students who had come to listen.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The philosophy that starts from existence

A rational system can tell you what a thing must be if it exists; can it ever tell you that it exists? Schelling's positive philosophy begins where deduction ends, from being that is simply given.

The lectures give the fullest statement of Schelling's late positive philosophy. Pure reason, he holds, unfolds essences, what a thing must be, and can prove necessity within thought, but the sheer fact that the world is, and that a God freely creates rather than logically unfolds, lies outside what reason can deduce. Positive philosophy therefore does not deduce existence; it starts from it, and follows the free acts of a living God through history. This reverses the usual order of proof, and it is why revelation, not logic, becomes philosophy's proper material at its highest reach.

ontology
epistemology
causality
methodology
teleology
absolute
unity

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Where the real is met, not deduced

Is the world rational through and through, unfolding by necessity, as Hegel taught? Schelling answers that the actual is free, met only in history, mythology and revelation, never spun from a system.

Frederick William IV summoned Schelling to Berlin in 1841 to uproot Hegel's system, and the lectures aim straight at its core claim that the real is the rational through and through. Against a world that unfolds by logical necessity, Schelling sets a God who creates freely and a being that no concept contains. What exceeds reason must be encountered where it actually appears, in the history of religions, in myth, in revelation, which become the positive philosopher's evidence. Kierkegaard, Engels and Bakunin heard the first course; Engels wrote home that the battle for Germany was being fought in the hall.

methodology
epistemology
ontology
absolute
trinity
creation

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Within this work

passages held: 222
distinct concepts: 359
by passages held, corpus-wide: #119

What this book thinks together

Every arc around the wheel is one concept in this book. A ribbon joins two the text reaches for together, and its width is how many of its passages hold both. Strongest: irritability with physiology.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 13 pairings. 63 shared passages in all. 87 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
irritability	physiology	12
biology	physiology	7
biology	chemistry	6
biology	irritability	5
biology	metabolism	5
causality	physiology	5
metabolism	physiology	5
biology	causality	4
chemistry	physiology	4
chemistry	methodology	3
irritability	metabolism	3
biology	methodology	2
chemistry	irritability	2

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1795 Of the I as Principle of Philosophy (Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie)
An early work, written while Schelling was still a theology student and read at first as pure Fichteanism; it opens the identity-philosophy that his Naturphilosophie would soon complicate.
DE
1798 On the World Soul (Von der Weltseele)
Second of Schelling's nature-philosophy books, following the Ideen of 1797; its organic conception of force is what carried him from Fichtean idealism toward a philosophy of nature in its own right.
DE
1803 On University Studies (Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums)
A Jena lecture course from Schelling's identity-philosophy years, addressed to students rather than to fellow philosophers; its idea of the university as an organic unity of the sciences anticipates Humboldt's Berlin model.
DE
1827 On the Nature of Philosophy as Science (Über die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft)
The hinge between Schelling's early identity-philosophy and the "positive philosophy" of his final decades, delivered at Erlangen in the winter of 1820–21 and unpublished in his lifetime.
DE
1841 Philosophy of Revelation (1841-42) (Philosophie der Offenbarung) you are here DE
1850 On the Source of the Eternal Truths (Abhandlung über die Quelle der ewigen Wahrheiten)
A short Berlin Academy address of 1850, from Schelling's final years and published posthumously; it applies his late doctrine of God as the ground of possibility to the classical problem of the eternal truths.
DE
1859 The Philosophy of Art (Philosophie der Kunst)
The aesthetics of Schelling's identity-philosophy, spoken at Jena and Würzburg between 1802 and 1805 and unpublished until the collected works of 1859; it treats art as the supreme presentation of the absolute.
DE

— or open another of their works