Schelling's philosophy - briefly. Philosophy of Friedrich Schelling Three types of history according to Schelling
Schelling
Biographical information. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) was a German philosopher who came from a pastor's family. After graduating from the classical gymnasium, he studied at the Tübingen Seminary (together with Hegel), from 1796 to 1798 he studied natural sciences in Leipzig and Dresden. In 1798, he began teaching at the University of Jena, collaborating with Fichte, and in 1799, after Fichte's dismissal from the service, he replaced him, taking the position of professor, where he remained until 1803; then he worked at a number of universities, in 1841-1847 - in Berlin.
Main works. "The System of Transcendental Idealism" (1800), "Philosophy of Art" (1802–1803) (Table 83).
Table 83
Schelling: main periods of development
Period name |
Chronological tails |
Main works |
"Fichtean" |
On the Possible Form of Philosophy (1794) "I" as a Principle of Philosophy (1795) Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (1795) |
|
Natural philosophy |
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797) On the Soul of the World (1798) First draft of a system of philosophy of nature (1799) |
|
The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) |
||
An Exposition of My System of Philosophy (1801) Bruno, or The Natural and Divine Principle of Things (1802) Philosophy of Art (1802–1803) General Methodology and Encyclopedia of Sciences (1803) Lectures on the method of academic study (1803) Philosophy and Religion (1804) |
||
Philosophy of freedom |
Philosophical Studies on the Essence of Human Freedom (1809) Stuttgart Conversations (1810) |
|
philosophy of revelation |
Introduction to the philosophy of mythology Philosophy of mythology philosophy of revelation |
Philosophical views. The main periods of development. In Schelling's work, it is customary to distinguish five periods of development: natural philosophy, transcendental idealism, the philosophy of identity, the philosophy of freedom, and the philosophy of revelation. The early "Fichtean" period (1795–1796) is sometimes singled out as a separate one, when Schelling was under the strong influence of Fichte.
Period of natural philosophy (1797–1799). Starting his philosophical studies as a Fichtean, Schelling soon came to the conclusion that the reduction of all nature to "not-I" (which took place in Fichte) leads to the fact that nature loses all specificity. But what, then, is nature? Still largely influenced by Fichte, Schelling nevertheless takes a step away from Fichte's philosophy towards a more consistent objective idealism.
Schelling proposes the following solution to this problem: Nature and Spirit (mind, Absolute "I") represent a certain unity. So, to understand Nature, you can use the same model as for the Spirit. And accepting Fichte's thesis about "pure activity" as the "essence" of Spirit, Schelling transfers this idea of "pure activity" of Spirit to Nature. She becomes active and developing with him - thereby Schelling lays the foundations for the doctrine of the dialectic of Nature, or the objective dialectic .
Nature really and objectively exists, it is something unified and whole, a product of the "unconscious mind", "a kind of frozen mind in being." This intelligence operates within Nature and can be traced through the expediency of its action. Moreover, the highest goal of its development is the generation of consciousness, and thus the awakening of the mind.
Just like in Fichte, the pure "I" in its development came up against the "not-I" limiting it, the active Nature ("unconscious mind"), according to Schelling, in the process of its development comes up against its own limit, limiting it. At each stage of the development of Nature, we find the action of a positive force and the counteraction of a negative force to it - in different phases of their interaction. At the first stage of the development of Nature, the collision of positive and negative forces gives rise to matter, at the second - "universal mechanism", i.e. dynamic development of the material world due to the action of opposite forces. Claiming the inconsistency of the forces acting in Nature, Schelling relied on the discoveries of polar forces in natural science made by that time (poles in magnetism, positive and negative electric charges, a similar polarity is seen in chemical reactions and in the processes of the organic world). In advancing to ever higher levels, the general development of Nature takes place, and each link in it is a component of a single "life chain". At the "stage of man" mind and consciousness appear, and thus the awakening of the "unconscious mind" that had been dormant at the previous stages of development occurs. Man turns out to be the highest goal of the development of Nature, because it is through human consciousness that she realizes herself. Moreover, this awareness is impossible within the framework of the mind, which thinks logically and consistently, this requires the activity of the Mind, which is able to see (directly contemplate) the unity of opposites in things. Far from all people possess such a mind, but only philosophical and artistic geniuses.
Schelling's dialectic of nature had a significant impact on the further development of philosophy, and above all on the philosophy of Hegel, and through him Marx and others. However, the concrete construction of his natural philosophy was soon forgotten, since it was refuted by the further development of natural science.
Period of transcendental idealism (1800–1801). During this period, Schelling comes to the conclusion that the work he had done earlier, in which he showed how the development of Nature leads to the appearance of the Spirit (Reason), only half solves the problem of building a philosophical system. The second half of the work consists in showing how Nature emerges from the Spirit, or, in other words, in what way Mind can come to Nature.
Schelling argues as follows. "I" (Spirit, Mind) is the original activity, the will, disposing itself in infinity. The activity of the “I” consists in thinking, but since only this “I” is the only one that exists, then the object of thinking for it can only be itself. But in order for the product of such activity to arise, the “I” must oppose something to itself, thereby putting limits on itself. Faced with such a limit, activity becomes conscious; Schelling calls it "ideal activity" in contrast to the original "real activity" (Scheme 129).
Scheme 129.
The construction of a philosophy based on the activity of the subject - the original "I", which creates (generates) its opposite, its limit ("non-I"), leads us to subjective idealism (Fichte's philosophy). The construction of a philosophy based on the real existence of Nature, i.e. "not-I" forces us to conclude that the "not-I" is independent of the "I" and leads to a philosophy that Schelling calls "realism". If we take into account both possibilities, then there is a synthesis subjective idealism with realism, i.e. "ideal-realism", or "transcendental idealism".
Primordial activity, being conscious and unconscious at the same time, is present both in the Spirit and in Nature, giving rise to everything that exists. Schelling interprets this unconscious-conscious activity as aesthetic. The objective world (Nature) is a primitive poetry that is not aware of the spiritual, and hence of itself. The best works of human art are created according to the same laws, contain the same cipher as the works of cosmic forces, i.e. Nature. Hence, the key to the knowledge of being is the philosophy of art, and art itself turns out to be "the only and eternal Revelation." Philosophy as a special kind of intellectual activity is accessible to a few, and art is open to any consciousness. Therefore, it is through art that all mankind will be able to reach the highest truth. Philosophy itself, which once originated within the framework of art (mythology), must eventually return again to the "ocean of poetry", apparently, by creating a new mythology.
Identity Philosophy Period (1801–1804). If earlier the idea of the identity of Spirit and Nature was the premise of Schelling's philosophical constructions, then in the period of the philosophy of identity it becomes the main problem of all philosophy. The starting point here is the concept of "Absolute", in which the subject and object are indistinguishable (Scheme 130).
In this Absolute, all opposites coincide, but it also contains the beginnings of differentiation and isolation of these opposites.
Scheme 130.
positives; and this Absolute is God. Thus, Schelling finds himself in the position of pantheism, which can be called "aesthetic pantheism". Schelling himself expressed the opposition of subject and object within an identity in the form of a scheme (Scheme 131).
Scheme 131.
Here the "+" sign means the predominance, respectively Consequently, on the left side of subjectivity, and on the right - objectivity, while the expression "A \u003d A" denotes the balance and indistinguishability of the objective and the subjective, a certain state of equilibrium, similar to the center between the magnetic poles.
A particular difficulty in this approach is the problem of the origin of this "infinite identity" separate and finite (both separate thoughts and separate objects). in the spirit Platonic teaching about ideas, Schelling says that already in the Absolute there is a certain isolation of individual ideas, and it is they that become the causes of final things. But in the Absolute "everything is in everything" (i.e., each idea resides in all the others), while in the world of things, i.e. sensually perceived objects, they act as separate (scheme 132). However, they are such only for us in our empirical consciousness. The process of becoming the final from the
Scheme 132.
he decides the final in the spirit of Gnosticism, interpreting it as a process of "falling away" from God.
Period of philosophy of freedom (1805–1813). The central problem of this period was the question of the generation of the world from the Absolute, the reasons for the imbalance of the ideal and the material, the subjective and the objective. Schelling argues that this is a primary irrational act that cannot be understood and interpreted rationally. The reasons for it are rooted in the fact that the Absolute (God) is originally inherent as the most important ability will with its freedom. In the Absolute there is both a dark blind beginning (Abyss) - an irrational will, and a bright rational one; the conflict between them is primordial, and the struggle between them is the life of God. The victory of a bright, good beginning leads to the formation Divine personality, and everything negative, overcome by God, is expelled by him into the sphere of non-existence.
Man also has a conscious and unconscious beginning, freedom and necessity, good and evil. Having discovered these two principles in ourselves, we begin to build our personality consciously - developing all the best in ourselves and banishing the dark from ourselves, thereby approaching the Divine personality.
Period of Revelatory Philosophy (1814–1854). The original divine will, acting as "irrational desire", is incomprehensible to the human mind. But to a certain extent, it is comprehended by a person in "experience", i.e. in mythology and in all religions. Through them, God reveals himself to people. Therefore, the way to comprehend God lies through the understanding of this series of Revelations. Here Schelling's philosophy, on the one hand, merges with theology, and on the other hand, lays the philosophical foundation for future cultural studies.
The fate of teaching Philosophical ideas Schelling had a great influence on the German romantics, on the philosophy of life (especially on Nietzsche), on the teachings of Kierkegaard and existentialism, and also on the development of the philosophy of culture. But it was especially great in relation to the teachings of Hegel, although the glory of Hegel by the middle of the XIX century. literally eclipsed Schelling, so that at the present time Schelling's teaching remains insufficiently studied. It should also be noted that Schelling's teaching had a significant influence on many Russian philosophers, and above all on Solovyov and Florensky (Scheme 133).
For example, O. Spengler's study "The Decline of Europe".
The philosophical development of Schelling is characterized, on the one hand, by clearly defined stages, the change of which meant the rejection of some ideas and their replacement by others. But, on the other hand, his philosophical work is characterized by the unity of the main idea - to know the absolute, unconditional, the first principle of all being and thinking. Schelling critically reviews Fichte's subjective idealism. Nature cannot be encoded only by the formula of non-I, Schelling believes, but it is not the only substance, as Spinoza believes.
Nature, according to Schelling, is an absolute, and not an individual I. It is the eternal mind, the absolute identity of the subjective and the objective, their qualitatively identical spiritual essence.
Thus, from the active subjective idealism of Fichte Schelling passes to the contemplative objective idealism. Center philosophical studies Schelling transfers from society to nature.
Schelling puts forward the idea of the identity of the ideal and the material:
Matter is a free state of absolute spirit, mind. It is unacceptable to oppose spirit and matter; they are identical, since they represent only different states of the same absolute mind.
Schelling's natural philosophy arose as a response to the need for a philosophical generalization of new natural scientific results that were obtained by the end of the 18th century. and aroused wide public interest. These are studies of electrical phenomena by the Italian scientist Galvani in their connection with the processes occurring in organisms (the concept of "animal electricity"), and by the Italian scientist Volta in connection with chemical processes; research on the effects of magnetism on living organisms; the theory of the shaping of living nature, its ascent from lower forms to higher ones, etc.
Schelling made an attempt to find a common basis for all these discoveries: he put forward the idea of the ideal essence of nature, the non-material nature of its activity.
The value of Schelling's natural philosophy lies in its dialectics. Reflecting on the connections that natural science has discovered. Schelling expressed the idea of the essential unity of the forces that determine these connections, and the unity of nature as such. In addition, he comes to the conclusion that the essence of every thing is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces, which he called “polarity”. As an example of the unity of opposites, he cited a magnet, positive and negative charges of electricity, acids and alkalis in chemicals, excitation and inhibition in organic processes, subjective and objective in consciousness. Schelling considered “polarity” as the main source of the activity of things; he characterized by it the “genuine world soul” of nature.
All nature - both living and non-living - represented a kind of “organism” for the philosopher. He believed that dead nature is just "immature rationality." "Nature is always life," and even dead bodies are not dead in themselves. Schelling, as it were, is in line with the Hylozoist tradition of Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz; he moves towards panpsychism, i.e., the point of view according to which all nature has animation.
The consequence of the appearance of Schelling's natural philosophy was the undermining of the foundations of Fichte's subjective idealism and the turn of classical German idealism towards objective idealism and its dialectics.
“Genius is different from everything that does not go beyond the limits of talent or skill,
by its ability to resolve a contradiction, absolute and insuperable by nothing else"
Friedrich Schelling, Works in 2 volumes, Volume 1, M., "Thought", p. 482.
German idealist philosopher. At the age of 23 he became a professor.
Hegel And Schelling studied at the same educational institution, later lived in the same apartment and collaborated in the same journal, and historians are still arguing: who had a greater influence on whom ...
« Schelling- a brilliant writer, a brilliant speaker, a brilliant talent in general. For 25 years he has been writing his system of transcendental idealism, and after Kant And Fichte becomes Germany's first celebrity. He works in impulses, freely surrendering to the striving of his creative spirit, not particularly afraid of contradictions, not particularly concerned about giving integrity and strict form to his system. His philosophy shines with youth, elegant originality of thought, poetic images, lively faith in himself and his strength.
If metaphysics is generally close to poetry, then, speaking of Schelling, it is very difficult to say where one begins and where the other ends. A very strong logical mind, Schelling, however, does not make full use of his remarkable ability to wind down the thread of arguments; he prefers to immediately take the reader into his own hands, immediately strike his imagination, and then completely simply and freely capture his attention with his brilliant paradoxes, his Attic wit and special ability to introduce the reader into all the subtleties of his mood, at first cheerful, cheerful, full of youthful enthusiasm and hobbies, then - melancholy and even mourning. In this respect, Schelling can be called quite a poetic nature. His rich creative imagination dislikes diligent work, he always prefers to guess, instead of getting to the conclusion through slow and patient efforts.
This was the peculiarity of his nature, which later helped Hegel push it completely into the background. He always relies too much on his genius, on his amazing ability to make the most varied and ingenious convergences, to subjugate the mind of the reader rather than to guide him. It was enough Fichte in one newspaper review and a short pamphlet to hint at the principle of his philosophy, how Schelling picks it up on the fly, draws the most diverse conclusions from it and turns it into his own property. The same - and this is even more curious - happens later with the natural sciences. With the foresight of a genius, Schelling sees that the renewal of philosophy must come from there, from this slowly growing heap of factual material. Full of faith in himself, he pounces on it and, not in the least embarrassed by the disparity of the material, then still completely ungeneralized, creates a whole natural-philosophical system.
The brilliant discoveries of Galvani, Volta, Priestley, Cavendish, Lavoisier seize his imagination. But he does not at all think of following the path of these modest workers. Despising the fact, Schelling believes only in the power of deduction, proceeding from a few immutable principles. Two or three years of fragmentary study of natural science is enough to build a philosophy of nature. Before you is real geometry: first, axioms, on the proof of which Schelling does not even consider it necessary to dwell, then theorems and lemmas. Facts are given in the form of illustrations. Electricity, galvanism, and the like, barely known at that time, is interpreted as some kind of problem of logic; there is no research - syllogism dominates everywhere; experimental physics is absent, instead of it - speculative physics.
But in Schelling's character there was another feature, no less instructive, which, having developed, added a fruitless life to the fruitless speculations of his philosophy. I am talking about separation from reality, about complete disregard for its practical tasks and requirements. In this case, Schelling acts in accordance with the spirit of the times; he is one of the innumerable victims of this murderous discord between the inner nature of man and the outer conditions of his life. No matter how Hölderlin went mad, Friedrich Schlegel converted to Catholicism, so Schelling ended up with mysticism. From this point of view, his biography is especially instructive. Already in his youth, after a brief fascination with the revolution and the struggle with the theologians who distorted Kant, Schelling's main concern was the concern for reconciliation with life. In the language of that time, to come to terms with life meant to give it up.
Only 25 years old (in 1806), Schelling, according to Gervinus, already looks at the world through dim glasses of some kind of higher contempt for reality, indifference and neglect of it. A passionate and impressionable nature, but not particularly deep, Schelling one-sidedly accepted only the cowardice of his time, that resentment that arose in the soul from a collision with too vulgar reality. In 1809, when a believer, or at least passionately striving for faith in the rebirth of the people Fichte it seemed that a social spirit was being strengthened in Germany, Schelling was already deliberately turning a blind eye to modern history, calling the character of modern times idealistic and arguing that the dominant spirit of the times is the desire for inner concentration. He fiercely hated the age of enlightenment and rationalism, considering it to be the culprit of the revolution, and looked with a grin at his young years, when he, not particularly, however, seriously, thought to practically help people and planted trees of freedom together with Hegel. Now, leaving his dreams of saving people, Schelling began to worry exclusively about how to save himself from life.
Solovyov E.A., Hegel: his life and philosophical activity/ Seneca. Descartes. Spinoza. Kant. Hegel: Biographical Narratives (reprint of the biographical library of F.F. Pavlenkov), Chelyabinsk, Ural, 1996, p. 441-442.
In Russia at Friedrich Schelling had enough fans V.F. Odoevsky wrote like this:
“At the beginning of the 19th century, Schelling was the same as in the 15th: he revealed to man an unknown part of his world, about which there were only some fabulous legends - his soul!
Like Christopher Columbus, he didn't find what he was looking for; like Christopher Columbus, he aroused hopes unfulfilled. But, like Christopher Columbus, he gave a new direction to human activity!
Odoevsky V.F., Russian Nights, L., "Nauka", 1975, p.16.
F.-V.-J. SHELLING
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 of great 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 the Ideas is more general. 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 provide only the material that philosophy must conjecture, formulate what the results of science signal, but which cannot be proved by scientific methods. 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 in relation to this world, something arises that was not in the original world, we can talk about two worlds, about the first, given without human participation, and about the other nature transformed by man (“artificial works”). This second world, in which "conscious and free activity, which is in objective world(i.e. in nature. - Auth.) only in glimpses, lasts indefinitely. 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, historical development is characterized by "progressiveness", which manifests itself 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 consciousness, on the one hand side, 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 specifically speaks of a "dynamic process", which includes 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 - on highest level- emerging again.
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 dying; 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 the 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, i.e., 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 of the philosophical history of 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 the latest 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 of answering only the question "how?" and not the question "what?", i.e., he accuses it of not paying attention to the principle that contributes to the fact that things . Rationalism allows the singular to emerge from common entities, but he 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."
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1. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775 - 1854) was a prominent representative of the objective idealism of German classical philosophy, friend, then opponent of Hegel. enjoyed great prestige in philosophical world Germany at the beginning of the 19th century before the advent of Hegel. Having lost to Hegel an open philosophical discussion in the 20s. XIX century, lost its former influence and failed to restore it even after the death of Hegel, taking his chair at the University of Berlin.
The main goal of Schelling's philosophy is to understand and explain " absolute", that is, the origin of being and thinking. In its development, Schelling's philosophy passed three main steps:
natural philosophy;
practical philosophy;
irrationalism.
2. In his natural philosophy, Schelling gives explanation of nature and does so from the standpoint of objective idealism. The essence of Schelling's philosophy of nature in the following:
the former concepts of explaining nature ("not-I" Fichte, Spinoza's substance) are untrue, since in the first case (subjective idealists, Fichte) nature is derived from human consciousness, and in all the others (Spinoza's theory of substance, etc.) a restrictive interpretation of nature is given ( that is, philosophers try to "squeeze" nature into any framework);
nature is "absolute" - the root cause and origin of everything, embracing everything else;
nature is the unity of the subjective and the objective, the eternal mind;
matter and spirit are one and are properties of nature, different states of absolute mind;
nature is an integral organism possessing animation ( living and inanimate nature, matter, field, electricity, light are one);
the driving force of nature is its polarity - the presence of internal opposites and their interaction (for example, the poles of a magnet, plus and minus charges of electricity, objective and subjective, etc.).
3. Schelling's practical philosophy resolves issues of a socio-political nature, the course of history. The main problem of humanity as a whole and the main subject of philosophy, according to Schelling, is the problem of freedom. The desire for freedom is inherent in the very nature of man and is the main goal of the entire historical process. With the final realization of the idea of freedom, people create a "second nature" - legal system. In the future, the legal system should spread from state to state, and humanity should eventually come to a worldwide legal system and a world federation of legal states. Another major problem (along with the problem of freedom) of Schelling's practical philosophy is alienation problem. Alienation is the result of human activity, opposite to the original goals, when the idea of freedom comes into contact with reality. (Example: the rebirth of the high ideals of the Great French Revolution into the opposite reality - violence, injustice, even greater enrichment of some and impoverishment of others; suppression of freedom).
The philosopher comes to the next conclusions:
the course of history is accidental, arbitrariness reigns in history;
both random events of history and purposeful activity are subject to a rigid necessity, to which a person is powerless to oppose anything;
theory (human intentions) and history (real reality) are very often opposite and have nothing in common;
there are often cases in history when the struggle for freedom and justice leads to even greater enslavement and injustice.
Philosophy Schelling German Classical
At the end of his life, Schelling came to irrationalism - the denial of any logic of regularity in history and the perception of the surrounding reality as inexplicable chaos.
Schelling's philosophy
Natural philosophy. The philosophical development of Schelling is characterized, on the one hand, by clearly defined stages, the change of which meant the rejection of some ideas and their replacement by others. But, on the other hand, his philosophical work is characterized by the unity of the main idea - to know the absolute, unconditional, the first principle of all being and thinking. Schelling critically reviews Fichte's subjective idealism. Nature cannot be encoded only by the formula of non-I, Schelling believes, but it is not the only substance, as Spinoza believes.
Nature, according to Schelling, is an absolute, and not an individual I. It is the eternal mind, the absolute identity of the subjective and the objective, their qualitatively identical spiritual essence.
Thus, from the active subjective idealism of Fichte Schelling passes to the contemplative objective idealism. The Schelling Center for Philosophical Research transfers from society to nature.
Schelling puts forward the idea of the identity of the ideal and the material:
Matter is a free state of the absolute spirit, mind. It is unacceptable to oppose spirit and matter; they are identical, since they represent only different states of the same absolute mind.
Schelling's natural philosophy arose as a response to the need for a philosophical generalization of new natural scientific results that were obtained by the end of the 18th century. and aroused wide public interest. These are studies of electrical phenomena by the Italian scientist Galvani in their connection with the processes occurring in organisms (the concept of "animal electricity"), and by the Italian scientist Volta in connection with chemical processes; research on the effects of magnetism on living organisms; the theory of the shaping of living nature, its ascent from lower forms to higher ones, etc.
Schelling made an attempt to find a common basis for all these discoveries: he put forward the idea of the ideal essence of nature, the non-material nature of its activity.
The value of Schelling's natural philosophy lies in its dialectics. Reflecting on the connections that natural science has discovered. Schelling expressed the idea of the essential unity of the forces that determine these connections, and the unity of nature as such. In addition, he comes to the conclusion that the essence of every thing is characterized by the unity of opposing active forces. called "polarity". As an example of the unity of opposites, he cited a magnet, positive and negative charges of electricity, acids and alkalis in chemicals, excitation and inhibition in organic processes, subjective and objective in consciousness. Schelling considered "polarity" as the main source of the activity of things; by it he characterized the "genuine world soul" of nature.
All nature - both living and non-living - represented a kind of "organism" for the philosopher. He believed that dead nature is just "immature rationality." "Nature is always life," and even dead bodies are not dead in themselves. Schelling, as it were, is in line with the Hylozoist tradition of Bruno, Spinoza, Leibniz; he goes to panpsychism, i.e. the point of view that all nature is animate.
The consequence of the appearance of Schelling's natural philosophy was the undermining of the foundations of Fichte's subjective idealism and the turn of classical German idealism towards objective idealism and its dialectics.
Practical Philosophy. Schelling considered the main problem of practical philosophy to be the problem of freedom, the solution of which in the practical activity of people depends on the creation of a "second nature", by which he understood the legal system. Schelling agrees with Kant that the process of creating a legal system in each state should be accompanied by similar processes in other states and their unification into a federation, ending the war and establishing peace. Schelling believed that it was not easy to achieve a state of peace between peoples in this way, but one should strive for this.
Schelling poses the problem of alienation in history. As a result of the most rational human activity, not only unexpected and accidental, but also undesirable results often arise, leading to the suppression of freedom. The desire to realize freedom turns into enslavement. The real results of the French Revolution turned out to be inconsistent with its high ideals, in the name of which it began: instead of freedom, equality and fraternity, violence came, fratricidal war, enrichment of some and ruin of others. Schelling comes to the following conclusions: arbitrariness rules in history; theory and history are completely opposed to each other: blind necessity reigns in history, before which individuals with their goals are powerless. Schelling comes close to discovering the nature of historical regularity when he speaks of an objective historical necessity that cuts its way through the multitude of individual goals and subjective aspirations that directly motivate human activity. But Schelling presented this connection as an uninterrupted and gradual realization of the "revelation of the absolute." So Schelling saturates his philosophy of the identity of being and thinking with theosophical meaning, an appeal to the absolute, i.e. to God. From about 1815 all philosophical system Schelling acquires an irrational and mystical character, becomes, in his own words, "the philosophy of mythology and revelations.
Accepting Fichte's idea of the mutual positing of subject and object, Schelling (1775 - 1854) is interested mainly in the objective principle. Fichte is interested in human affairs, Schelling is concerned with the problem of nature, its transition from an inanimate state to a living one, from the objective to the subjective.
Comprehending the achievements of natural science and technology, Schelling publishes the work Ideas for the Philosophy of Nature. Reflecting on the mystery of nature, Schelling is looking for the source of its unity. And in the next work "On the World Soul", based on the idea of the unity of opposites, he tries to unravel the mystery of life. Schelling expresses the idea that the basis of nature is some kind of active principle that has the properties of a subject. But such a beginning cannot be the individual Berkeley, for whom the world is the totality of his ideas, nor can there be a generic subject of Fichte, deriving the "non-I" of the world from his "I".
According to Schelling, this is something different, very dynamic. And this is something Schelling is looking for through the prism of the latest discoveries in the field of physics, chemistry, and biology. He expresses the idea of the universal interconnection of nature, which sets the expediency of all its processes.
In 1799, in his "First Outline of a System of Natural Philosophy", Schelling makes another attempt to state the basic principles of the philosophy of nature. If Kant called his philosophy "criticism", and Fichte - "the doctrine of science", then Schelling designates his teaching with the concept of "natural philosophy".
The main idea of this work is that nature is not a product, but productivity.
It acts as a creative nature, not a created one. In its "potentiation" nature tends towards its subjectivity. At the level of "mechanism and chemistry" it appears as a pure object, but at the level of "organism" nature declares itself as a subject in its formation. In other words, nature evolves from the dead to the living, from the material to the ideal, from the object to the subject.
The source of the development of nature is in its ability to bifurcate. Nature in itself is neither matter nor spirit, neither object nor subject, neither being nor consciousness. She is both, combined.
In 1800, Schelling published "The System of Transcendental Idealism", where he raises the question of supplementing natural philosophy with transcendental philosophy.
Considering nature as an object, one can trace its evolution from inorganic to organic and reveal the tendency of the spiritualization of nature, discover the formation of its subjectivity. This is the subject of natural philosophy.
Considering nature as a subject, one can trace the desire of nature to objectify itself through the process of objectification and deobjectification, through human anthropogenic activity, through the study of culture as a second nature. This is the subject of transcendental philosophy.
At the intersection of natural philosophy and transcendental philosophy, it becomes possible not only to adequately represent the object-subject, but also to construct a subject-object relationship.
Our "I" ascends from dead matter to living, thinking and closes on human behavior. "I" does not just think, but thinks in categories - extremely general concepts.
Schelling builds a hierarchical system of categories, demonstrates how each category breaks up into two opposite ones and how these opposites merge into one, even more meaningful concept, approaching the practical sphere of human activity, where free will already dominates. Will, in turn, goes through a series of stages of development, the highest of which is readiness for moral action. Consciousness becomes morally practical.
In Schelling's transcendental idealism, philosophical categories first began to move, and the philosophical system of the German thinker declared itself as a system for the development of consciousness. Fichte's idea of self-consciousness received a concrete embodiment. A little later, Hegel will create an even more impressive picture of the ascent of consciousness to its more perfect forms.
The logical development of Schelling's views was his Philosophy of Identity. According to the thinker, neither thinking nor being should be considered as the fundamental principle of being. It is necessary to proceed from the identity of spirit and nature, the real and the ideal, "the indivisibility of the object and the subject." The principle of identity eliminates the need to search for causal dependence, the search for priorities. In this unity, nature acts as an object (created) and as a subject (creating). Creative nature has its own history. She creates to the extent of her consciousness.
Justifying the principle of the identity of created nature and creative nature, Schelling is faced with the problem of how to correlate the theoretical and the practical, the subjective and the objective, the finite and the infinite. Schelling sees the means of this connection in art as the highest form of knowledge, embodying objectivity, completeness and general validity. In a concrete, and therefore finite, artistic activity and works of art, it is possible to achieve infinity - an ideal that is unattainable either in theoretical knowledge or in moral deeds.
The artist creates, like nature, resolving the contradiction noted above. Therefore, art should be an instrument of philosophy, its completion. Schelling embodies this idea in the work "Philosophy of Art".
Each work of Schelling is a kind of step in his philosophical evolution.
In the "Philosophy of Identity" Schelling introduces the concept of intellectual intuition, considering it no longer as an introspection of the "I", but as a reflection of the absolute, personifying the unity of object and subject. This unity is no longer spirit or nature, but the "impersonality" of both (like the point of indifference of the poles in the center of a magnet), it is "nothing" containing the possibility of everything. The idea of indifference as a potential seemed heuristic, and Schelling returns to it in Philosophy and Religion, where he considers the question of how the realization of the potential of "nothing" into "something" occurs, therefore, the balance of objective and subjective is disturbed at the point of indifference. Why "nothing" inverts into "something" and the Absolute gives birth to the Universe? Subsequent reflections lead Schelling to the conclusion that the birth of the world from the Absolute cannot be explained rationally. This rational fact is not the property of the mind, but of the will of man.
Free will "hacks" the Absolute, self-affirming itself. Since it is an irrational fact, it cannot be the subject of philosophy, understood as the rational derivation of all that exists from an initial principle. And therefore, negative, rationalistic philosophy should be supplemented with positive. Within the framework of "positive" philosophy, the irrational will is comprehended empirically, in the "experience of revelation", identified with mythology and religion. With this "philosophy of revelation" Schelling completes his philosophical system, which received a mixed assessment.
Schelling had to clarify his position: "I am different:
a) from Descartes in that I do not affirm absolute dualism, excluding identities;
b) from Spinoza in that I do not affirm absolute identity, excluding any dualism;
c) from Leibniz in that I do not dissolve the real and the ideal in one ideal, but affirm the real opposition of both principles in their unity;
d) from materialists by the fact that I do not completely dissolve the spiritual and the real in the real;
e) from Kant and Fichte in that I do not consider the ideal only subjectively, on the contrary, I oppose the ideal with something quite real - two principles, the absolute identity of which is God. "For all the similarity to everyone, he looked only like himself. Schelling's philosophical views evolved He was in constant search, touching on the most topical issues.
His reflections on historical progress are also interesting. He notes that supporters and opponents of the belief in human perfection are confused about what to consider as a criterion for progress. Some believe that the hallmark of progress is the state of morality, not realizing that morality is derivative, that its criterion is absolutely abstract. Others are betting on the state of science and technology. But the development of science and technology is inherently an ahistorical factor.
If we take into account that the goal of history is the gradual implementation of the legal order, then the only criterion for social progress can be the measure of how society approaches this goal through the efforts of a creative and acting person. (See: Schelling F. Soch. T.1.M., 1987. P. 456).
The following stages are built in Schelling's philosophy: natural-philosophical and transcendental; "philosophy of identity"; "philosophy freely; "positive philosophy"; "philosophy of mythology and revelation." One can evaluate the philosophical work of F. Schelling in different ways, but one should not rush and label a mystic, a reactionary, etc.
His philosophy had a significant impact on European thought, including Russian philosophy. P.Ya. corresponded with him. Chaadaev, the famous Slavophile I.V. Kireevsky, his student was the head of Russian Schellingism, Professor of Moscow University M.G. Pavlov. A.S. also met with Schelling. Khomyakov, who highly appreciated the work of the German thinker, and especially his Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism.
In the XX century. Schelling's irrationalist ideas were developed in the philosophy of existentialism. In addition, his philosophical system, while maintaining continuity with the teachings of I. Kant and I. Fichte, became one of the theoretical sources of Hegel's philosophy.