•  3
    Reading Schelling
    In Tilottama Rajan & Daniel Whistler (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 143-163. 2023.
    This chapter argues (1) that no systems are closed, (2) that reality is not self-grounding/positing, and thus (3) that reality and thought are fundamentally contingent. Therefore, (4) both thought (the Symbolic) and the Real admit of an “indivisible remainder.” These staples of Žižek’s thought would have been impossible without Schelling.
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    The naturephilosophical challenge can be posed not merely to postkantian philosophy as an episode in the history of philosophy, but to the postkantianism that remains foundational for contemporary...
  •  6
    Argues that that all necessity is consequent, and that reason and God are contingent, albeit eternal, necessitiesFocusing on the central striking claim that there is something rather than nothing - that all necessity is consequent - Tritten engages with a wide range of ancient as well as contemporary philosophers including Quentin Meillassoux, Richard Kearney, Friedrich Schelling, Émile Boutroux and Markus Gabriel. He examines the ramifications of this truth arguing that even reason and God, whi…Read more
  •  13
    Schelling's Naturalism: Motion, Space and the Volition of Thought
    American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 42 (3): 90-93. 2021.
    Ben Woodard's book, exemplarily erudite and so not for the faint of heart, guides the reader through all periods of F.W.J. Schelling's thought—a feat important in its own right given the burgeoning Schelling renaissance in the English-speaking philosophical universe. Woodard follows this trajectory not in order to periodize this giant of German philosophy but rather in order to demonstrate the continuity of Schelling's thought through the leitmotiv of naturalism. Schelling's naturalism, however,…Read more
  •  6
    i would like to begin by heaping some well-merited laud upon Robert Cummings Neville, henceforth to be referred to simply as Bob. His architectonics, in this book and almost all his others, are perhaps only rivaled by Kant and Whitehead, and the profundity of his thinking is only surpassed by the breadth of his learning. Specifically, I am convinced that his knowledge of non-Western thought is unsurpassed by his peers. I, however, will refer to but a fraction of what he has to teach us about non…Read more
  •  25
    F.W.J. Schelling’s late distinction between negative and positive philosophy correlates negative philosophy with critical philosophy, which delimits what could be said of things without yet actually being able to do so. Positive philosophy, however, is able to make assertions about the actual existence of such objects without transgressing Kant’s prison of finitude, i.e., without moving from an immanent, subjective and transcendental position to a transcendent object. Schelling’s later positive …Read more
  • "Philosophie und Religion": Schellings Politische Philosophie (review)
    Interpretation 44 (3). 2018.
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    Review of Duane Armitage, Heidegger’s Pauline and Lutheran Roots (review)
    European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 10 (1): 198-203. 2018.
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    Language and anthropogenesis agamben’s profanity
    Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 76 (3): 477-502. 2014.
    The purpose of this article is to substantiate Agamben’s thesis that the originary experience of language as a performative speech-act, i.e. as an oath that guarantees the veridicality or efficacy of the speech-act, exposes the ethical relation to language as the origination of the human qua human, despite Agamben’s disenchantment rather than re-enchantment of language. This task first requires the elucidation of the seemingly magical and intimate connection between words and things, which will …Read more
  •  41
    The Contingency of God
    Heythrop Journal 59 (3): 448-455. 2018.
  •  321
    Per posterius: Hume and Peirce on miracles and the boundaries of the scienti c game
    Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal 4 (2). 2014.
    this article provides a response to David Hume’s argument against the plausibility of miracles as found in Section 10 of his An enquiry concerning human understanding by means of Charles Sanders Peirce’s method of retroduction, hypothetic inference, and abduction, as it is explicated and applied in his article entitled A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God, rather than fo‐ cusing primarily on Peirce’s explicit reaction to Hume in regard to miracles, as found in Hume on miracles. the main f…Read more
  •  80
    F.W.J. von Schelling’s positive philosophy of mythology and revelation questions how one can move from the natural (the negative or mythology) to freedom (the positive or revelation), i.e. from the natural to the supernatural. The move from nature to freedom surpasses the traditional metaphysics of presence. Being is not simply the presencing of nature but the result of a decisive deed surpassing and supplementing nature. Nature can do nothing other than presence. Freedom, however, could also no…Read more
  •  7
    F.W.J. von Schelling’s late philosophy of mythology and revelation attempts, among other ventures, to outline monotheism in opposition to polytheism, theism, deism, pantheism, theosophism, negative theology etc. This is far from a repetition of traditional monotheism’s assertion that there is one God. Schelling asserts instead that God is one and this presupposes a foregoing multiplicity. Moreover, God is only one by virtue of His separation from being. God extracts Himself from being; He is not…Read more
  •  67
    This book provides the English-speaking world with a comprehensive account of the still largely unknown work of Schelling’s philosophy of mythology and revelation. Its achievement, however, is not archival but philosophical, elucidating the relation between Schelling and onto-theology. It explains how Schelling dealt with the problem of nihilism and onto-theology well before Nietzsche and Heidegger, arguing that Schelling surpasses onto-theology or the philosophy of presence a century prior to H…Read more
  •  104
    Schelling’s Doctrine of the Potencies: The Unity of Thinking and Being
    Philosophy and Theology 24 (2): 217-253. 2012.
    This article has a historiographical and a philosophical aim. The historiographical and most difficult objective is to provide a comprehensive presentation of F. W. J. Schelling’s doctrine of the potencies (Potenzlehre) for the English-speaking philosophical community as found in his, for the most part yet to be translated, late lectures on the positive philosophy of mythology and revelation. The philosophical objective is to show how this same doctrine provides a modern response to the assertio…Read more
  •  79
    This essay argues for the contingency of necessity. The thesis is that contingency constitutes the possibility of necessity, which is always subsequent to contingency, only contingent necessity, a mere modality of contingent being. This study posits the contingency of necessity through a reading of Quentin Meillassoux and the late lectures of F. W. J. Schelling. While Meillassoux argues for the necessity of contingency, Schelling seeks to uncover the contingency at the heart of what is necessary…Read more
  •  39
    This book provides the English-speaking world with a comprehensive account of the still largely unknown work of Schelling's philosophy of mythology and revelation. Its achievement, however, is not archival but philosophical, elucidating the relation between Schelling and onto-theology. It explains how Schelling dealt with the problem of nihilism and onto-theology well before Nietzsche and Heidegger, arguing that Schelling surpasses onto-theology or the philosophy of presence a century prior to H…Read more
  •  30
    This article explicates the notion of face, which Emmanuel Levinasunderstands as trace, in terms of the tautegorical. In opposition to the allegorical, the tautegorical is neither representational nor referential in the traditional sense. In contradistinction to the tautological, the tautegorical indicates an a-symmetrical and therefore not to be inverted identity between the so-called origin of the trace and the trace itself. Accordingly, a smile is happiness, but happiness—qua origin of the sm…Read more
  •  36
    A Will Free to Presence... or Not: Schelling on the Originality of the Will
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 67-78. 2013.
    This article presents Schelling’s doctrine of creation, primarily as outlined in his lectures on mythology and revelation. Schelling there presents not a will to power, but a power to will or not to will—the decisiveness of freedom rather than blind willing. Accordingly, Schelling is able to surpass the tradition of the metaphysics of presence through freedom as an unprecognoscible act prior to potency/power. Schelling’s will is not natural but preternatural, capable of bringing forth something …Read more
  •  42
    First Philosophy and the Religious
    Philosophy and Theology 23 (1): 29-52. 2011.
    This article responds to Merold Westphal’s assertion that Paul Tillich suffers from “ontological xenophobia.” Westphal 1) subverts Tillich’s Augustinian/Thomistic typology into a Neoplatonist/Augustinian one and 2) critiques Tillich via Levinasian alterity. In response I show that 1) Westphal has misunderstood Tillich’s notion of Augustinianism insofar as he minimizes the role of estrangement in this viewpoint and that 2) Tillich’s notion of personhood and responsibility are anything but incompa…Read more
  •  34
    This article argues that Schelling, contrary to the traditional view which situates him as the mediator between Fichte and Hegel, the link from the absolute activity of the ego to the absolute activity constitutive of transcendental idealism, offered one of the first attempts to ground philosophy in a fundamental passivity. Schelling’s Erlangen lectures (1820-21) in particular provide a penetrating critique of idealistic modes of thought. I will show that these lectures, along with Schelling’s l…Read more
  •  10
    A Will Free to Presence... or Not
    Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (1): 67-78. 2013.
    This article presents Schelling’s doctrine of creation, primarily as outlined in his lectures on mythology and revelation. Schelling there presents not a will to power, but a power to will or not to will—the decisiveness of freedom rather than blind willing. Accordingly, Schelling is able to surpass the tradition of the metaphysics of presence through freedom as an unprecognoscible act prior to potency/power. Schelling’s will is not natural but preternatural, capable of bringing forth something …Read more