Tag: F. W. J. Schelling

Portrait of Schelling by Karl Joseph Stieler

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Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

In the first part of this essay I introduced readers to Schelling, who is one of the first philosophers to react against what Heideggereans have called “the metaphysics of presence”: the hidden will in Western metaphysics that gives primacy to human subjectivity, adjusting our understanding of the Being of beings to the human desire that beings should be completely transparent to us, hiding nothing, and readily available for our manipulation. In response to this, Schelling argues that it is nature, not human subjectivity, that should be the starting point of philosophy. (more…)

A daguerreotype of F. W. J. Schelling from 1848, the first known photograph of a philosopher.

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Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

1. Introduction: A Philosophical Rebel

This essay is a continuation of my series on “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics.” With Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) we have reached a significant milestone, in a number of ways. Behind us, in our journey toward Gelassenheit, we have Plato, the philosophers of the Middle Ages, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, and Fichte. Ahead of Schelling we have only two more philosophers to discuss, Hegel and Nietzsche, before we turn to cover in more detail Heidegger’s response to the metaphysical tradition and to modernity. (more…)

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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

1. Fichte on the Nature of the State

We began to explore Fichte’s political philosophy in the last installment, as expounded primarily in his 1796 work Foundations of Natural Right. It is a basic principle of Fichte’s philosophy that subjectivity, what he calls the “I,” must bring nature under the control of reason. (more…)

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1. Knowledge of the Right Use of All Things

To explain what philosophy is, we always have to go back to the beginning. Pythagoras (ca. 570-495 BC) is said to have been confronted by Leon, the tyrant of Philius, who demanded to know if he was wise. He responded that he was not a wise man, but merely a φιλόσοφος (philosophos), a “lover of wisdom”; a practitioner of φιλοσοφία (philosophia). Φίλος (philos) means “love,” and σοφῐ́ᾱ (sophia) means “wisdom.” (more…)

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1. Introduction: Remind me, why Fichte?

Readers have been asking me why I am devoting multiple essays to J. G. Fichte, an exceedingly difficult and seldom-read German Idealist born in 1762. The simple answer is that these essays are a continuation of my series on Heidegger’s “history of metaphysics.” Having devoted several essays to Kant, I am continuing with Fichte, then will move on to Schelling and Hegel, and then, finally, to Nietzsche. (more…)

Leopold Ziegler

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Leopold Ziegler (1881-1958) was a German philosopher who was steeped in the philosophy of the Will of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and in the philosophy of the Unconscious of the Schopenhauerian philosopher, Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906). Already as a secondary school student at the Technische Hochschule in Karlsruhe, Ziegler was introduced to the doctrines of Hartmann by the philosopher Arthur Drews (1865-1935), and in 1910 he wrote a work on his philosophy entitled Das Weltbild Hartmanns: Eine Beurteilung. He obtained his doctorate in 1905 from the University of Jena, but was unable to take up an academic career on account of his poor health. (more…)

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Friedrich Schelling, 1775–1854

Part 6 of 6

1. Schelling’s Influences: The Christian Trinity and Jacob Boehme

I turn, finally, to a different Indo-European tradition, that of German Idealism of the 19th century. I include this material so as to show the perennial character of Indo-European thought. One could argue that the entire history of Western (and Indian) philosophy is a long, unconscious attempt to recollect the wisdom known “directly” by our Indo-European ancestors.  (more…)

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Translated by Cologero

In his Life of Romulus (I,8), Plutarch writes:

Rome would not have risen to such power had it not had, in any way, a divine origin, (more…)

Friedrich Schelling, 1775–1854

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Translation anonymous, edited by Greg Johnson

Editor’s Note:

The following essay was originally published in English in East and West, vol. 9, nos. 2 & 3 (1960): 182–86. This is chapter 18 of Julius Evola, East and West: Comparative Studies in Pursuit of Tradition, ed. Greg Johnson, forthcoming from Counter-Currents in the summer of 2013.

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