Translator's Introduction

Summary

REASSESSING SCHELLING

The reputation of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) in the English-speaking world has depended almost exclusively upon his early work, which influenced both the English Romantics and other philosophical, scientific, and aesthetic currents in the first half of the nineteenth century. The work of the later Schelling has, in contrast, been largely ignored by philosophers and has been seen as of interest mainly to theologians, with the result that its specifically philosophical import has not been appreciated. In the light of the recent growth of interest in German Idealism and its links to the rest of modern philosophy, it is important that some of the work of the later Schelling should become available to an English-speaking public, particularly in view of recent enthusiastic reassessments of Hegel. The best text through which such an audience can approach the work of the later Schelling is the lectures On the History of Modern Philosophy, translated here for the first time, which contain the most extended of Schelling's critiques of Hegel. The Lectures (as I shall refer to them) are one of the most significant works of nineteenth-century German philosophy, and their influence has yet to be adequately appreciated.

Because the Lectures deal with figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel, who are already familiar to those in both the analytical and European traditions, they enable one to gain an idea of Schelling's own philosophical perspective in his later period.