Themes
Explicit concerns of Schelling in the book are: the existence of evil and the emergence into reason. Schelling offers a solution to the first, an old theological chestnut, in brief that “evil makes arbitrary choice possible”. On the other hand, by no means all interpretations of the work come from the direction of theology and the problem of evil. The second idea, requiring a rationale of emergence, was more innovative, because of the place it gave to irrationalism and anthropomorphism, within the "cosmic" setting (which need not be taken literally). The work stands also in relation to a decade of previous publications, formulations, and rivalries.
A view from the nineteenth century is that of Harald Høffding (who sets the book in the context of a supposed personal crisis and philosophical block):
| “ | ... attempts to show that we are only justified in conceiving God as a personal being if we posit an original antithesis within the absolute, within the essence of the Deity,—a dark irrational ground which becomes purified and harmonised ... in the course of the life-development of the Divine Being. All evil consists in a striving to return to the chaos out of which the order of Nature has proceeded. | ” |
Modern readings of Schelling's intentions can differ quite widely from this interpretation (and each other). This writing of Schelling is also seen as the beginning of his critique of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and an announcement of a transitional moment in philosophy; part of the purpose was self-justification, verging on polemic in defence of Schelling's panentheism. It is therefore a signpost marking a fork in the road for what is now called "classical German philosophy": even if it had its time of dominance, absolute idealism in Hegel's sense is (after the "freedom essay") just one branch of the discussion of the Absolute in German idealism. Hegel became a system-builder while Schelling produced no systematic or finished philosophy in three decades after the Freiheitsschrift.
Read more about this topic: Philosophical Inquiries Into The Essence Of Human Freedom
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
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“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
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