In this paper, I reconstruct Schelling’s 1842 introduction to his Berlin Lectures, The Grounding of the Positive Philosophy, as a return to the Kantian question of the epistemic status of the transcendental object or the thing-in-itself. The young Schelling appeared to align with Fichte and Hegel in asserting that nothing exists outside of mind understood as self-positing spirit. However, with his later distinction between negative and positive philosophy, Schelling reintroduces the transcendental object and develops an ingenious method for thinking it without violating Kant’s limits of reason. My interpretation will not only demonstrate how the debate over the transcendental object remains the leitmotif of German Idealism from beginning to end; it also challenges Schelling’s distinction between negative and positive philosophy. Without Kant’s theory of cognition—which Schelling fails to defend—this distinction collapses, along with most (although not all) of his objections to Hegel.

Speaker
Prof. Sean McGrath
Professor, Memorial University

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