On the Nature of Philosophy as Science

The opening lectures of Schelling's long middle silence, asking whether reason can reach being at all — or must first let go of itself.

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling68 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Über die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft
First published: 1827(aged 52)
Original language: German

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Overview

By 1820 Schelling had been the most celebrated philosopher in Germany and was no longer. He had published almost nothing for a decade, his former friend Hegel now commanded the discipline, and he had left Munich to lecture again at Erlangen, feeling his way toward a philosophy he would never finish putting into a book. Über die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft — "On the Nature of Philosophy as a Science" — is the opening stretch of that attempt: the first eleven of thirty-six lectures he gave from January to March 1821 under the title Initia philosophiae universae, printed only after his death by his son. The question is the one his whole late thought turns on. Can philosophy be a science of what actually exists, or does systematic reason only ever spin out what is necessary in thought while the fact that anything exists slips through it? Schelling had come to think reason cannot storm being from the front. The knowing subject has to release its grip on itself — a stepping-outside he describes as an ecstasy of reason — before what genuinely is can be received rather than deduced. This is the hinge between the Schelling of the identity-system, who trusted reason to comprehend the absolute, and the late Schelling of the Berlin lectures, who would divide philosophy into a "negative" science of the possible and a "positive" science of the actual. Read forward, it is where German Idealism first turns against its own confidence that thought and being are one.

Key concepts

What is the 'ecstasy of reason'?

Schelling's name for a stepping-outside in which the knowing subject releases its grip on itself. Reason normally holds fast to its own certainty and deduces; here it must let go, so that what genuinely is can be received rather than produced from thought. The word means a standing-outside oneself. It is his answer to how a mind might reach being when argument alone cannot force its way there.

What is the difference between the 'that' and the 'what'?

The what of a thing is its essence, what it must be if it exists; the that is the bare fact that it exists at all. Schelling's claim is that reason can spin out the what indefinitely yet never reach the that. Existence is not contained in any concept. This gap between essence and existence is the fault line his late philosophy is built across.

What are negative and positive philosophy?

The division Schelling's late thought moves toward, glimpsed here. Negative philosophy is the science of the possible, tracing what is necessary in thought; positive philosophy is the science of the actual, of what exists and could not be deduced. Reason yields the first; the second must begin from being that is given. These lectures are where that split first opens.

Why can't reason 'storm being from the front'?

Because being is not a conclusion. Any argument moves among concepts and can establish only what would follow if something existed, never that anything does. To reach existence head-on, reason would have to deduce the very thing that lies outside deduction. So Schelling turns the approach around: not conquest by proof, but a releasing of thought that lets the actual come to meet it.

Why did Schelling turn against his own earlier system?

His identity-philosophy had trusted reason to comprehend the absolute, holding thought and being to be one. Here he decides that confidence was misplaced: a system of pure reason can reach the necessary, but the existing world, and a God who freely creates, exceed it. The turn makes these lectures the hinge between the celebrated early Schelling and the neglected late one who divided philosophy in two.

Themes of the book

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

Whether thought can reach the fact of being

Can reason reach the fact that anything exists, or does it only unfold what is necessary in thought? Schelling comes to doubt that reason reaches being at all without first letting go of itself.

By 1821 Schelling had published almost nothing for a decade, and Hegel commanded the field. These opening lectures state the doubt his whole late thought turns on: systematic reason can tell you what a thing must be if it exists, but never that it exists; the sheer fact of being slips through its net. Reason cannot storm being from the front. The knowing subject has to release its grip on itself, a stepping-outside he calls an ecstasy of reason, before what genuinely is can be received rather than deduced. It is the hinge where German Idealism first turns against its own faith that thought and being are one.

subjectivity
identity
necessity
form
freedom
knowledge
dialectics
consciousness
epistemology

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Within this work

passages held: 68
distinct concepts: 134
by passages held, corpus-wide: #209

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: aesthetics with didactic poetry.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 15 pairings. 50 shared passages in all. 34 weaker pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
aesthetics	didactic poetry	7
aesthetics	subjectivity	5
aesthetics	epic	4
aesthetics	universality	4
aesthetics	epic poetry	3
aesthetics	form	3
aesthetics	objectivity	3
didactic poetry	universality	3
epic	objectivity	3
epic	subjectivity	3
objectivity	subjectivity	3
objectivity	universality	3
didactic poetry	subjectivity	2
epic poetry	form	2
form	subjectivity	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) you are here DE
1841 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
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