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System of Transcendental Idealism (1800)

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Schelling is Schelling, and this is his most important work. But the actual book looks like a bad MS Word Job. It is already a difficult text. Why make it a torturous read on top of that?

Read this book carefully, and understand its general message and method, and you may begin to lose your mind. I did.

It is an awe-inspiring thing, to try and construct material and biological and even human and divine life from the processes of abstraction.

You can learn a whole lot from reading this book--slowly; very slowly. You can learn a whole lot about the logical, the merely formal, relations between different levels of reality (i.e. what does the coming-to-fruition of animal life have to do with the coming-to-awareness of human consciousness? how does the individual self-conscious human being represent the totality of the unconscious material/biological order, etc. etc.). You can learn by coming to terms with this book. Having to deal with it.

However in terms of truth, the book is dangerous. The author clearly conflates humanity with divinity. And this is absurd.

Schelling tries to find out the ultimate purpose of the universe. Long before Darwin he thinks of some kind of evolution, but with a divine purpose. He regards the absolute Ego as the universes program. He asks "Has creation a final purpose at all, and if so why is it not attained immediately, why does pefection not exist from the very beginning." He thinks of a Christian answer, God is not just a perfect being, He is more than that! More? Yes, more in as he is life and life needs to develop. This is, Schelling thinks, also what the Bible is about, God`s suffering in life and through people and peoples history. "For this is the final purpose of creation, that which could not be itself, shall be in itself.."...But the farther succession proceeds, the more fully the universe is unfolded. Consequently the organic world also, in proportion of succession advances will attain to a fuller extension and represent a greater part of the universe..."
Schelling has here the first introduction of an evolutionary metaphysics into philosophy, or more particularly the notion of an evolving God, who at the final state of the Cosmos will be both fully realized and one with the Cosmos. He says: "I posit God as the first and the last, as the Alpha and the Omega, but as Alpha he is not what he is as Omega, and in so far as he is only the one - God in an eminent sense - he cannot be the other God, in the same sense, or in strictness, be called God." He sees an evolution from an unevolved God, Deus implicitus to an evolved God, Deus explicitus. But both are in all stages remarkable both ways, all are one and the same. This evolution takes place in man of course.
In Schelling`s view the universal program would give rise to self-conscious subprograms which would, in the fullness of time, merge together into one self-knowing Mind. Nature is for Schelling clearly teleological for two reasons: the rational subprograms are presently an image of the universal program, and further- as a consequence of being an image of an intrinsically teleological entity - the universal program has the goal of universal self-consciousness.
I think Schelling was more influenced by Indian philosophy than by reading the Bible. The history of the universe is more than just the becoming aware of itself. Because the population of it - spirits, humans (and if there are else) is already aware of itself and the physical universe does not need any self-consciousness. Another question is whether the universe is in a perpetual evolution. If so, there seem to be more worthy goals than becoming super-self-conscious, what about simply "life" in a most perfect form? I note here ironically, that I find Hegel`s idea that the goal must be philosophy in a most perfect form, that is his own one, not more enlightening.

I have read some hard to understand books in my life but this is about the most difficult reading I have ever had to do - and members of my polisci class agree. Although the level is extremely high the ideas behind it are interesting to say the least. Pay special attention to the role of iself-conciousness it will lead to greater insight to the work.