Yang, Yiran; (2023) Schelling's Transition to Identity-Philosophy: the Philosophical Turn between 1800 and 1801. Masters thesis (M.Phil.Stud), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Schelling’s philosophy underwent significant changes between 1800 and 1801 when his system shifted from the parallelism completed by System of Transcendental Idealism to Identity Philosophy. This thesis aims to explore whether there are differences between the two systems, what the differences are, in what way the parallel system supports the 1801 system and what the causes of this systematic shift are. By comparing the two systems, I will argue that Identity Philosophy prioritizes nature as the externalization of self-consciousness which serves as an empirical avenue for knowledge of absolute identity. However, reason’s self-knowledge of Identity Philosophy is not dependent on the investigation into the speculative physics of natural science; rather it is epistemologically self-sufficient due to its assumption of total indifference between subjectivity and objectivity. My interpretation of Identity Philosophy contends with the prevalent interpretation of the current Schelling scholarship which attributes ontological primacy to nature and identifies totality with it. Instead, I argue that Schelling’s definition of totality in 1801 must be understood as co-constituted by nature and consciousness. Schelling’s postulation of nature as the absolutely unconditioned was born out of his dissatisfaction with Fichte’s subjective idealism, which falls short of solving the problem of immanent self-knowledge and fails to raise the absolute beyond the standpoint of finite oppositions. Schelling’s positing of nature as the unconditioned in parallel with consciousness calls for an all-encompassing absolute identity between all oppositions, and it is the striving for this standpoint that motivated Schelling to dispense with all antitheses and occupy the original point of absolute identity, in a form of argument that recalls speculative philosophy. This thesis aims to contribute to Schelling scholarship by giving insight into the birth of absolute idealism, a key moment in post-Kantian German idealism in which Schelling played the leading role.

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