XXXV, 2, 2025: Schelling and His Kantian Legacy: Metaphysical and Epistemological Perspectives. Edited by Tommaso Mauri and Ludovica Neri

Buy the electronic version

To inquire into Schelling’s Kantian legacy means to take a position regarding the interpretation of German Idealism as a whole. Schelling’s long speculative journey spans the entire classical German philosophy, from its critical-transcendental beginnings to its post-Hegelian legacy. It is no coincidence that the deepening of Schelling scholarship has led to a revision of the traditional Hegelian-inspired historiography that depicts classical German philosophy as the path “from Kant to Hegel” (R. Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, 1921-1924). Starting from the second half of the twentieth century, new hermeneutical approaches have emerged that challenge this linear picture, suggesting the existence of a second path within German idealism, one that leads “from Kant to Schelling” (M. Vetö, De Kant à Schelling: les deux voies de l’idéalisme allemand, Millon, Grenoble, 1998-2000). As this already suggests, what is at stake is not a merely historiographical dispute, but the articulation of a clear and substantive theoretical stance. To follow the path “from Kant to Schelling” means to set aside the claims of an absolute, all-encompassing reason and to acknowledge the structural limits of our cognitive faculties in relation to reality. From this, however, it does not follow that one must adopt a disillusioned philosophical attitude or resort to a sterile affirmation of existence, history, and radical freedom as irreducible to the concept. On the contrary, even while recognizing its constitutive finitude, reason cannot avoid inquiring into what exceeds it. Hence the need to widen the boundaries of reason itself: from the theoretical to the practical (Kant), from the negative to the positive (Schelling). In this sense, then, Schelling’s late project of a “self-restraint” of idealism (T. Buchheim, Eins von Allem. Die Selbstbescheidung des Idealismus in Schellings Spätphilosophie, Meiner, Hamburg, 1992) is closely bound up with his intention to carry forward Kant’s project of a critique of reason (A. Hutter, Geschichtliche Vernunft. Die Weiterführung der kantischen Vernunftkritik in der Spätphilosophie Schellings, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1996). Contrary to a still widespread commonplace, which portrays him as returning to a naïve, pre-critical philosophy – or even as taking refuge in some form of mysticism or theosophy – the late Schelling engages deeply with Kant’s transcendental-critical legacy, with the aim of providing a theoretical legitimation for the transition toward a historical-positive philosophy capable of once again pronouncing a metaphysical word on those ideas (God, soul, world, freedom), the knowledge of which had been forbidden by the Transcendental Dialectic.
In light of the ongoing reinterpretation of German Idealism “from Kant to Schelling” and of the fruitfulness of Schelling’s thought for both his contemporaries and present-day philosophy, this volume aims to highlight the attitude Schelling maintained throughout his entire intellectual trajectory – at once faithful to Kant’s thought and yet critical of some of its central philosophical claims. Through this attitude, Schelling exhibited a form of creative fidelity to the Kantian legacy, one that enabled him to move, together with Kant, beyond Kant’s own philosophy. It was this twofold movement, grounded in a return to the fundamental premises of Kant’s thought and in an in-depth engagement with his major works – from the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787²) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) to the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), from the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) to Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), etc. –, that led Schelling to attempt to understand Kant “where he has not yet followed through to the consequences”, to use the expression found in the Philosophy of Revelation (1842/43), albeit in the context of his critique of Hegel. This twofold movement led Schelling, across the various phases of his philosophical development and in relation to different topics, to a rethinking of Kantian philosophy. It was that rethinking, which in our view allows Schelling’s thought to be interpreted from a genuinely post-Kantian perspective (as the beginning of new theoretical paths critically elaborated after and through Kant, rather than a return to a merely dogmatic or pre-critical standpoint), that made possible the emergence – both then and now – of new metaphysical and epistemological perspectives concerning our cognitive relation to the world and our practical action within it. These are the perspectives that this volume seeks to bring out, in light of the different ways Schelling’s position – both faithful and critical toward Kant – has been interpreted.
The breadth and depth of this position emerge from the way Schelling, from his earliest writings to his most mature works, engaged first of all with the fundamental issues of Kantian criticism: from synthetic a priori judgments as the decisive starting point for reflecting on the Absolute as subject (Binkelmann), to the transcendental ideal of pure reason and its reconfiguration through the intellectual intuition of an “absolute I” (García-Romero), to the difficulty – already recognized by Kant and central to the reflections of Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel – of thinking together the radical freedom of the creature and the unconditional causality of God, a difficulty that the later Schelling attempts to resolve definitively (Buchheim). These fundamental issues, which reveal the sophisticated character of Schelling’s re-reading of Kant’s thought, form the background to other questions – equally crucial but more specific – at which Schelling arrived almost as a consequence of the unfolding of those premises never fully developed by Kant himself. For example: a rethinking of the specific way of understanding freedom, not as “self-determining reason” but as “other-regarding love” (McKinley) or in light of its creative and “re-creative” role within nature’s ongoing process of self-unfolding (Corriero); the reinterpretation of Kant’s transcendental idealism as “inverted transcendentalism” (Tritten); the revision of the a priori form of space in terms of “vastness and freedom” (Neri); and finally, the connection between the abyss of reason in Kant’s experience of the sublime and its ecstatic character in Schelling (Porchia), the reconfiguration of the concepts of happiness, highest good, and bliss (Mauri), and the role of imagination in the conception of the Christian religion (Alves). Far from exhausting the themes Schelling addressed in his critical re-engagement with Kant’s philosophy, these studies nonetheless highlight the fruitfulness of an inheritance that, in our view, leads Schelling in certain respects beyond the strictly rationalistic tendencies of post-Kantian Idealism and renders his thought still relevant today. Such relevance not only explains why, in the 250th anniversary of his birth – celebrated this year and commemorated by this volume – Schelling’s thought continues to arouse interest, but also grounds the intention of the present volume to invigorate research on Schelling in Italy from an international perspective. It does so by situating itself in the wake of other recent contributions, and by aiming to open further avenues of investigation into his thought and into the critical and fertile legacy of Kant’s philosophy – the philosopher from whom, according to Schelling, one must always begin anew if one intends to do philosophy.

Contents
(click on the titles to view the abstracts)

Tommaso Mauri, Ludovica Neri, Introduction
Christoph Binkelmann, Wie sind synthetische Urteile a priori möglich? Kant und Schelling über den „gemeinschaftlichen Punkt aller Philosophie“
Marcela García-Romero, “A Natural and Unstoppable Drive Toward Totality”: Schelling’s Transformed Reading of Kant
Thomas Buchheim, «Ma una difficoltà incombe ancora sulla libertà…»
Robert McKinley, From Self-Determining Reason to Other-Regarding Love: Schelling’s Critique of Kant’s Concept of Freedom
Emilio Carlo Corriero, Ricreazione. Natura e libertà da Kant a Schelling
Tyler Tritten, Empirical Realism or Speculative Realism? The Future of Transcendental Philosophy
Ludovica Neri, Libertà e spazio nel confronto dell’ultimo Schelling con l’Estetica trascendentale di Kant
Francesco Porchia, Riflessioni sull’abisso. Schelling lettore di Kant: dal sublime all’estasi della ragione
Tommaso Mauri, Happiness, Morality, and Bliss: Schelling and Kant on the Highest Good
Vittorio Bortolai A. Alves, Imagination and the Construction of Christian Religion in Schelling and Kant