Peter Dews

Possessed by Concepts A Study of Concepts By Christopher Peacocke MIT Press, 1992. Pp. x + 266. ISBN 0–262–161338. £24.95. Morality, ethics and ‘postmetaphysical thinking: new books by Jürgen Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. An Enquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society Polity Press, 1992, Pp.300, ISBN 0–7456–1077–3. £35/11.95. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action Polity Press, 1992. Pp. 280. ISBN 0–7456–1104–4. £29.50. Postmetaphysical Thinking. Philosophical Essays Polity Press, 1992. Pp. 200. ISBN 0–7456–0734–9. £29.50. Justification and Application. Remarks on Discourse Ethics Polity Press, 1993. Pp. 192. ISBN 0–7456–0143–9. £35/11.95. Shame and Necessity By Bernard Williams University of California Press, 1993. Pp. xii + 254. ISBN 0–520–08046–7. $25.

The influence of the thought of the great German Idealist philosopher G.W.F Hegel on the thought of Theodor Adorno, the leading thinker of the first generation of the Frankfurt School, is unmistakeable, and has been the subject of much commentary. Much less discussed, however, is the influence of Hegel's prominent contemporary, F.W.J. Schelling. This article investigates the influence of Schelling on Adorno, and the sometimes striking parallels between fundamental motifs in the work of both thinkers. It argues that Adorno's critique of Hegelian dialectics, his conception of the relation between nature and spirit, and his philosophy of history owe a considerable debt to Schelling. Furthermore, when adequately explicated, Schelling's position on a range of problems which confronted German Idealist philosophy often prove intrinsically preferable to those of Hegel.

Despite considerable recent attention, important features of Schelling’s famous work, the 1809 treatise On the Essence of Human Freedom, remain under-explored. One of these is the methodological dualism which Schelling advocates at the very start of the text. Schelling aims to weld together into a coherent position a first-person phenomenology of freedom and an explanation achieved by locating freedom within a conceptual system articulating the basic structure of the world. Most interpretations of the Freiheitsschrift, however, concentrate on only one of these approaches, thus foreshortening their understanding of Schelling’s enterprise. The article explores this tendency towards one-sidedness by considering two sophisticated recent interpretations of the work, taking opposite tacks. One, by Markus Gabriel, focuses on the distinctive, self-reflexive metaphysics which Schelling proposes, while the other, by Sebastian Gardner, claims that Schelling’s ontology is extrapolated entirely from his account of our moral consciousness, a procedure pioneered by Kant. The article argues that neither of these interpretations can do full justice to Schelling’s project. Furthermore, although the Freiheitsschrift is not entirely successful, and hence points towards later developments in Schelling’s thinking, its treatment of freedom is superior to the ‘soft naturalism’ pioneered by Peter Strawson, and currently influential across various philosophical traditions.