The Philosophy of Art

Lecture notes, never a book, in which Schelling makes art the highest organ of philosophy — where the absolute becomes visible as it can nowhere else.

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling689 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Philosophie der Kunst
First published: 1859(published posthumously)
Original language: German

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Overview

The book was never written; Schelling spoke it — first to students at Jena in the winter of 1802–3, then again at Würzburg in 1804 and 1805 — and it reached print only in 1859, five years after his death, when his son gathered the surviving manuscripts into a single edition of the Philosophie der Kunst, the "Philosophy of Art." What the lectures give is a system: the first sustained attempt in the German tradition to run a philosophy of art through every form, from music and painting up through the plastic arts to tragedy and the epic, each assigned its place by how it holds the ideal and the real together. Behind the taxonomy is a claim that made art central to Idealism rather than decorative to it. Philosophy asks how the absolute — the point where subject and object, freedom and necessity, are one — can appear at all in a finite world; Schelling's answer is that it appears in the work of art, where an idea takes on sensuous shape without ceasing to be infinite. Art is therefore not illustration but organon: the one place the absolute becomes an object for us, and, in his phrase, the eternal document of what philosophy can only think. The lectures had their deepest life before publication, shaping the aesthetics of the Romantic circle around him. As a printed book they arrived late, into a century that had moved on to Hegel's very different verdict that art belongs to the past — which is part of why the boldest aesthetics of early Idealism is also its least read.

Key concepts

What is the absolute in Schelling's philosophy of art?

The point where subject and object, freedom and necessity, the ideal and the real, are one and the same. It is what philosophy tries to reach but can only think. The whole aesthetics turns on a single claim: this absolute, ungraspable to thought as an object, becomes an object in the work of art, which is why art matters philosophically at all.

What does Schelling mean by calling art an 'organon'?

An organon is an instrument or organ of knowledge. Calling art the organon of philosophy means art is the actual organ through which the absolute becomes present to us, not a picture of ideas thought already has. Philosophy thinks the absolute; art alone makes it an object. This raises art from illustration to a mode of knowing on a level with philosophy itself.

How are the ideal and the real held together in a work?

In art an idea takes on sensuous shape without ceasing to be infinite, so the ideal, meaning or spirit, and the real, sensuous material, coincide in one thing. Schelling classifies every art by how it strikes this union: some lean toward the real, some toward the ideal. This fusion is what lets a finite object carry the infinite, the feat philosophy cannot perform in concepts.

Why does tragedy hold a special place?

Because it stages the deepest problem directly. Tragedy sets human freedom against necessity or fate in open collision and finds their reconciliation precisely in the hero's downfall, where the two powers are shown as one. For Schelling this makes it among the highest of the arts, the form in which the identity of freedom and necessity, the heart of the absolute, becomes visible as conflict resolved.

Why did this book arrive too late to be read?

Schelling spoke the lectures between 1802 and 1805 but never published them; his son printed them only in 1859, five years after his death. By then the century had turned to Hegel's very different verdict that art belongs to the past. So the boldest aesthetics of early Idealism reached print into a world that had moved on, which is much of why it remains its least read.

Themes of the book

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

Where the absolute becomes visible

How can the absolute, the point where subject and object, freedom and necessity are one, appear at all in a finite world? Schelling answers that it appears in the work of art, and nowhere else so fully.

Philosophy can think the absolute but never make it an object; Schelling argues the work of art can. In art an idea takes on sensuous shape without ceasing to be infinite, so that freedom and necessity, the ideal and the real, are held together in one visible thing. This makes art not illustration but organon, the very organ through which the absolute becomes an object for us, and, in his phrase, the eternal document of what philosophy can only think. The move raised art from decoration to the center of Idealism, a standing Hegel would soon deny it.

aesthetics
ontology
metaphysics
unity
identity
freedom
necessity
being
mythology
beauty

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A single order behind the arts

Are the arts a loose collection or a single order? Schelling runs philosophy through every form, from music to tragedy and epic, assigning each its place by how it fuses the ideal and the real.

The lectures are the first sustained attempt in the German tradition to build a complete system of the arts. Each form, music, painting, the plastic arts, up to tragedy and the epic, is assigned its place by how it holds the ideal and the real together, the real arts and the ideal arts mirroring one another. This is not a ranking of taste but a deduction: the forms follow from the one problem of how the infinite enters the sensuous. Tragedy holds a special height, staging freedom and necessity in open collision. The system had its deepest life among the Romantics before it ever reached print.

aesthetics
tragedy
unity
identity
creation
symbolism
painting
absolute

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Within this work

passages held: 689
distinct concepts: 785
by passages held, corpus-wide: #101

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “aesthetics” and “beauty”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 87 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aesthetics	beauty	46
aesthetics	painting	44
aesthetics	symbolism	41
absolute	aesthetics	35
aesthetics	mythology	24
mythology	symbolism	20
absolute	mythology	14
aesthetics	epic poetry	12
epic poetry	mythology	12
painting	symbolism	10
aesthetics	tragedy	9
absolute	beauty	6
absolute	symbolism	6
beauty	mythology	5
beauty	painting	5
beauty	symbolism	5
absolute	epic poetry	4
symbolism	tragedy	4
epic poetry	tragedy	3
beauty	tragedy	2
absolute	painting	1
epic poetry	painting	1
epic poetry	symbolism	1
mythology	painting	1
mythology	tragedy	1

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
1856 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
1858 Philosophy of Revelation (1841-42) (Philosophie der Offenbarung)
The capstone of Schelling's positive philosophy, delivered in Berlin from 1841; an unauthorised transcript appeared in 1843, the authorised text only posthumously in the collected works of 1858. Its critique of purely rational system is the historical seed of later existential thought.
DE
1859 The Philosophy of Art (Philosophie der Kunst) you are here DE
1861 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

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