Schelling's Late Philosophy in Confrontation with Hegel

Recent decades have seen a remarkable upsurge of interest in German Idealism in the English-speaking world. However, out of the three leading thinkers of the period directly after Kant—Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—Schelling has received relatively little attention. In particular, the distinctive philosophical project of Schelling's late period, beginning in the 1820s, has been almost completely ignored. This omission has impaired the overall understanding of GermanIdealism. For it is during the late phase of his work that Schelling develops his influential critique of Hegel and his definitive response to the central problems post-Kantian thought as a whole. This book is the first in English to survey the whole of Schelling's late system, and to explore in detail the rationale for its division into a “negative philosophy” and a “positive philosophy.” It begins by tracing Schelling's intellectual development from his early work of the 1790s up to the threshold of his final phase. It then examines Schelling's mature conception of the scope of pure thinking, the basis of negative philosophy, and the nature of the transition topositive philosophy. In this second, historically oriented enterprise Schelling explores the deep structure of mythological worldviews and seeks to explain the epochal shift to the modern universe of “revelation.” Simultaneously, the book offers a sustained comparison of Hegel's and Schelling's treatment of a range of central topics in post-Kantian thought: the relation between a priori thinking and being; the role of religion in human existence; the inner dynamics of history; and the paradoxical structure of freedom.

For someone who is sufficiently familiar with the Hegelian line of thinking but always had difficulty in understanding the philosophical alternative created by his contemporary Schelling, this book is a long-awaited stroke of luck. With enormous lucidity, clarity, and elegance its author, Peter Dews, succeeds in reconstructing step by step the philosophical arguments that allow Schelling to depart from Hegel's system to develop his own notion of the dialectics of human freedom. At the end of this long and thrilling journey through Schelling's oeuvre, one uncomfortably starts to wonder whether one's own intuitions concerning the place of reason within history are not better harbored by Schelling than by Hegel. Is there a better argument for the intellectual value of a book than its power to make one reconsider one's own cherished assumptions and beliefs?, Schelling was famously called the great Proteus of philosophy. So numerous and diverse are the philosophical systems he developed in rapid succession that his philosophical position seems in constant flux, almost impossible to pin down. From the scattered building blocks of Schelling's neglected late philosophy, Dews now derives an astonishing and compelling account of Schelling's overall project that gives it clear definition and edge. Dews shows that Schelling provides us with a form of absolute idealism that should be considered as the most serious competitor to Hegel's: an absolute idealism beyond the Idea., Dews shows that Schelling provides us with a form of absolute idealism that should be considered as the most serious competitor to Hegel's: an absolute idealism beyond the Idea., With enormous lucidity, clarity, and elegance its author, Peter Dews, succeeds in reconstructing step by step the philosophical arguments that allow Schelling to depart from Hegel's system to develop his own notion of the dialectics of human freedom.

Peter Dews taught philosophy at the University of Essex for several decades before becoming Emeritus Professor in 2018. He has also held visiting positions in the United States, Germany, and Brazil. He has published widely on modern French philosophy, the Frankfurt School, and the major thinkers of German Idealism.