System of Transcendental Idealism

Introduction

Schelling published the System in Tübingen in 1800, while teaching in Jena. It complements his philosophy of nature: that discipline goes from nature to mind, while transcendental philosophy starts from self-consciousness and shows how nature arises for it. The book traces a “history of self-consciousness” through several epochs, then treats practical philosophy and teleology, and ends with a philosophy of art. In aesthetic intuition the unity of conscious and unconscious activity becomes objective; art is therefore the “organon” and “document” of philosophy. The work marks a turning point in Schelling’s thought and influenced Romantic aesthetics.

Connections

Builds on

• Critique of Judgment1790 · Immanuel Kant
• Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge1794 · Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Criticized in

• Phenomenology of Spirit1807 · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

More works by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

• 1809Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom