Idealism and the Endgame of Theory

Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling

Edited and translated by Thomas Pfau

Subjects: Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series, Intersections: Philosophy and Critical Theory
Paperback : 9780791417102, 293 pages, January 1994
Hardcover : 9780791417096, 293 pages, January 1994

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Table of contents

Preface

Glossary

Editorial Apparatus and Standard Abbreviations

Critical Introduction by Thomas Pfau

 

Chapter 1. Identity as the Provocation and Crisis for Theory: [Re]Introducing E W. J. Schelling
Chapter 2. Conditioning the Transcendental Subject: Synthesis, Imagination, and Time in Kant's Critique
Chapter 3. Mediated Immediacy: Production, Recognition, and the Affective Grounds of the Self in Fichte
Chapter 4. Identity Before Subjectivity: Schelling's Critique of Transcendentalism, 1794-1810

Notes

 

Three Essays by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

 

Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the Science of Knowledge (1797)
System of Philosophy in General and of the Philosophy of Nature in Particular (1804)
Stuttgart Seminars (1810)

Notes

 

Appendix: Excursus: Schelling in the Work of S. T. Coleridge

Bibliography

Index

Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English.

Description

Three seminal philosophical texts by F. W. J. Schelling, arguably the most complex representations of German Idealism, are clearly presented here for the first time in English. Included are Schelling's "Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism in the Science of Knowledge" (1797), "System of Philosophy in General" (1804), and "Stuttgart Seminars" (1810). Of these texts, the "Treatise" constitutes the most comprehensive critical reading of Kant and Fichte by a contemporary thinker and, as a result, proved seminal to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's efforts at interconnecting English Romanticism and German speculative thought. Extending his early critique of subjectivity, Schelling's "System of Philosophy in General" and his "Stuttgart Seminars" launch a far more radical inquiry into the notion of identity, a term which for Schelling, increasingly reveals the contingent nature and inescapable limitations of theoretical practice.

An extensive critical introduction relates Schelling's work both to his philosophical contemporaries (Kant, Fichte, and Hegel) as well as to the contemporary debates about Theory in the humanities. The book includes extensive annotations of each translated text, an excursus on Schelling and Coleridge, a comprehensive multi-lingual bibliography, and a glossary.

Thomas Pfau is Assistant Professor of English at Duke University. He is the editor and translator of Friedrich Hölderlin: Essays and Letters on Theory, also published by SUNY Press.

Reviews

"This is a well chosen group of essays by Schelling; it gives a sense of Schelling's development which is not available from those works already translated; as such it is a much needed complement to what is already available in English.

"Apart from its contribution to a greater understanding of Schelling, the presentation of this volume does much to define the issues at the source of the recurrent preoccupation with identity in contemporary theory. " —David Ferris, Yale University