Kyla Bruff

This Handbook provides a comprehensive, multi-authored study of Schelling’s thought, its context, and its enormous influence. Divided into four major sections (‘Periods,’ ‘Themes,’ ‘Figures and the History of Philosophy’, and ‘Reception and Legacy’), it is a well-structured guide to Schelling’s work and the ways in which it relates to other thinkers and movements. Key features: Links Schelling to the history of philosophy, contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, politics, and theology Offers a systematic overview of a thinker whose thought evolved through three main periods Explores the importance of Schelling in the development of German idealism more broadly Updates the English-speaking academic community with current German research on Schelling Responding to Schelling’s renewed scholarly prominence, The Palgrave Schelling Handbook provides a contemporary and authoritative re-consideration of his thought. Within its pages, scholars and researchers will find avenues and inspiration for new work in areas that have been previously underrepresented in Schelling studies. The Palgrave Schelling Handbook is the ideal reference work for advanced philosophy and theology students taking courses on Schelling or German idealism. It will have wide, general appeal to scholars and students of philosophy, theology, political theory, and German studies.

This essay reconstructs Schelling’s account of the state as second nature and accordingly as an objective ground of human freedom in the System of Transcendental Idealism. It first examines the roles of different concepts of freedom and first nature in the genesis of the concept of second nature. Secondly, it explains Schelling’s identification of second nature with the legal system as the prerequisite for the creation of a moral disposition and the exercise of human freedom. Intersubjectivity and time are shown to be crucial to Schelling’s account of second nature. Finally, despite the continuity of the grounding role of the state in all of Schelling’s political philosophy, the teleological account of history and its end in providence forces a distinction between the political conclusions of the 1800 System and Schelling’s post-1809, eschatological philosophy.