Historical-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology

F. W. J. Schelling, Markus Zisselsberger, Mason Richey

Description

Translated here into English for the first time, F. W. J. Schelling's 1842 lectures on the Philosophy of Mythology are an early example of interdisciplinary thinking. In seeking to show the development of the concept of the divine Godhead in and through various mythological systems (particularly of ancient Greece, Egypt, and the Near East), Schelling develops the idea that many philosophical concepts are born of religious-mythological notions. In so doing, he brings together the essential relatedness of the development of philosophical systems, human language, history, ancient art forms, and religious thought. Along the way, he engages in analyses of modern philosophical views about the origins of philosophy's conceptual abstractions, as well as literary and philological analyses of ancient literature and poetry.
Foreword
Jason M. Wirth

Translator’s Introduction
Mason Richey

Author’s Outline of the Content

Lecture 1
Lecture 2
Lecture 3
Lecture 4
Lecture 5
Lecture 6
Lecture 7
Lecture 8
Lecture 9
Lecture 10

Author’s Notes
Translators’ Notes
English-German Glossary
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Esthétique et philosophie de l'art
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophy of religion
• History of philosophy

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791479964
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 5 Mo

Extrait

SchellingCover 09/20/06 Black/PMS436C

F.W.J.Schelling Translatedby MasonRicheyand MarkusZisselsberger ForewordbyJason M.Wirth

Historicalcritical Introduction tothe Philosophy of Mythology

A VOLUME IN THE SUNY SERIES IN CONTEMPORARY CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY

Historical-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology

SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy Dennis J. Schmidt, editor

Historical-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology

F. W. J. Schelling

Translated by Mason Richey Markus Zisselsberger

With a Foreword by Jason M. Wirth

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2007 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775–1854. [Historische-kritische Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie. English] Historical-critical introduction to the philosophy of mythology / F.W.J. Schelling ; translated by Mason Richey, Markus Zisselsberger ; foreword by Jason M. Wirth. p. cm — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-7131-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Mythology. I. Title.

BL314.S3413 201'.3—dc22

2007

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2006024606

Foreword Jason M. Wirth

Translator’s Introduction Mason Richey

C ONTENTS

Author’s Outline of the Content

Lecture 1 Lecture 2 Lecture 3 Lecture 4 Lecture 5 Lecture 6 Lecture 7 Lecture 8 Lecture 9 Lecture 10

Author’s Notes

Translators’ Notes English-German Glossary Index

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7 23 37 51 69 85 103 123 139 159

177 189 221 231

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F OREWORD

The great Walter Otto once lamented the eventual failure, despite their ini- tial excitement, of Schelling’s Berlin lectures on the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation (1841–1854). Schelling spoke at a time in which the “spiritual world was at the point of fully losing the sense for genuine philosophy” be- 1 cause “mythosremained in an age in which poesy was lost.” Schelling, after a meteoric but tumultuous early career, had largely retired from a prominent role in public life. His career as a philosophicalWunderkind had been tempered by scandals, betrayals (especially by his ascendant former roommate and philosophical companion, Hegel), and tragedies, including the devastating death of his first wife, Caroline, in 1809. The period after his mas- terpiece, the 1809 essay on human freedom, included repeated announce- ments of the imminent appearance ofThe Ages of the World, which, despite many drafts and intense activity, was never finished. Indeed, of its three pro- posed divisions (the past, the present, and the future), it scarcely escaped the past. “Perhaps the one is still coming who will sing the greatest heroic poem, grasping in spirit something for which the seers of old were famous: what was, what is, what will be. But this time has not yet come. We must not misjudge our time” [XIII 206; works cited at end of foreword]. Schelling published little after the 1809Freedomessay. There were a few small articles and the confrontation with his Munich colleague Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, which resulted in the 1812 appearance of Schelling’s unjustly neglected defense of his own thinking again Jacobi’s vicious and belligerent attack. This was the last book that Schelling would publish in his lifetime. Nonetheless, Schelling’s ensuing period of long, elected silence was not a period of inactivity. Quite the opposite. This time of reclusion included a series of re- markable lecture courses and public addresses, beginning with his stunning 1810 private lectures in Stuttgart, then the October 1815 public addressThe

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Foreword

Deities of Samothrace(effectively beginning the work of positive philosophy via the project of a philosophy of mythology), through to his remarkable lecture courses in Erlangen on his own thinking, on the history of modern philosophy, and including early courses on the philsophy of mythology. In 1826 he received the call to teach at the newly founded Munich University, where he gave several important courses, including those on the General Methodology of Academic Study (continuing to work on themes going back to his early career, including the call for a reinvigoration and enlivening of our approach to studies), the phi- losophy of mythology, the philosophy of revelation, the foundations of positive 2 philosophy, and the remarkable 1830Introduction to Philosophy. A decade after the death of Hegel, who had held philosophical court in Berlin until his death in 1831, Schelling received the call to come to Berlin, in part to counter Hegel’s enormous shadow. The initial lectures courses, as Mason Richey reminds us in his fine introduction, attracted the likes of Kierkegaard, Engels, Bakunin, and Ruge. The lectures were a kind of celebrity event—or perhaps a circus event—as Schelling returned to the limelight supposedly to take on his former friend. However, Schelling had not come to destroy but, as he said in his opening lecture, “to heal.” He then began to unveil the fruits of his active but reclusive years. The lectures largely fell upon deaf ears. Walter Otto was right to insist that in an era when mythology was considered a science, and when science itself was becoming increasingly alienated from its own philosophical grounds, the lectures were doomed to be virtually inaudible, as if Schelling were speaking an unknown language. The lectures were not intended to be a contribution to either theology or the burgeoning discipline of mythology, but, as Schelling claimed at the conclusion of these present lectures, they sought to “expand” both “philosophyandthe philosophical consciousness itself” [XI 252]. As such, Schelling’s questions and philosophical sensitivity were utterly out of sync with his time. In fact, in many ways, the lectures still retain their strange, unique voice and concerns, although, in their own unprecedented way, they address the question of difference at the heart and the ground of all history. They are one of the most radical reconsiderations of the nature of historical time, and they anticipate some of the twentieth century’s most penetrating investigations of this question. The inscrutable past—escaping the triumph of the idea— nonetheless lives as the groundless ground of the present. Schelling once ad- dressed the living opacity that is the ground of the present: “O Vergangenheit, 3 du Abgrund der Gedanken!” (“O the Past, you abyss of thoughts!”). I think that it is fair to say that there has been a resurgence of interest in Schelling in the last twenty years in the English-speaking philosophical world. Nonetheless, virtually no material from the Berlin period has ever ap- peared in English. I have long regretted this, and in a conversation about a half-decade ago, my good friend and colleague Mason Richey agreed to do something about this lacuna. I am proud to offer these few prefatory words

Foreword

ix

to and gratitude for both this fine translation and its insightful introduction. Along with the recent appearance of Bruce Matthews’s fine edition of the Grounding of Positive Philosophy(SUNY 2007), we can at last begin to ex- plore this remarkable crepuscular contribution to the philosophical discus- sion of the nature of philosophy itself. Schelling’s middle period, beginning with the 1804 appearance ofPhi- losophy and Religionand culminating in both theFreedomessay and the var- ious drafts ofThe Ages of the World(1811–1815), marks his attempt to articulate what Jeffrey Bernstein has aptly called an “interval” between what Schelling dubbed negative and positive philosophy. The former not only characterizes Schelling’s earlier work but culminates in the 1807 appearance of the grandest monument to negative philosophy, namely, Hegel’sPhenom- enology of Spirit. In a manner of thinking, one could say that Hegel helped reveal to Schelling the limit of negative philosophy not by merely stealing it but also by perfecting it. Negative philosophy ascends to the absolute, reveal- ing the absolute as the living ground of being. Hegel, however, does not, Schelling argues, fully confront the problem of time. Hegel’s idea of history ascends to the idea and all of the past stands in service to this culmination. In a way, all of history is a grand march to the revelation of the dialectic, and in this way the end of history can be understood as a theodicy that justifies the slaughter bench of the past. Schelling never dismissed Hegel or his own earlier negative philosophy but argued that negative philosophy cannot pro- ceed from existence itself. Rather it transcends existence to reveal the free ground of existence. It begins with necessity and culminates with freedom. Positive philosophy, however, reverses the direction, beginning with freedom as its starting point. This was decisively announced in the 1809Freedom essay, which, although Hegel’s name is never mentioned, is in a way the first text to struggle with the immense shadow of negative philosophy. Martin Heidegger once made a decisive claim about theFreedomessay that he designated as a key sentence of his own reading. “Key sentence: Free- dom not the property (Eigenschaft) of the human but rather: the human the 4 property of freedom.” Debates about human freedom have long oriented themselves around the extent to which freedom can or cannot be predicated of the human. Determinists eliminate freedom as a compelling predicate, while voluntarists celebrate it. For Schelling, the question has nothing what- soever to do with the nature of freedom as a predicate. Freedom is not a prop- erty of the human subject. Freedom is not even a property of nature. Rather, it has everything to do with the nature of the human as a predicate of freedom. If the human were a predicate of freedom, what then?Of course, this assumes that freedom itself is a subject, but, while freedom first appears in the subject position, it is a false subject, a dissembling and ironic subject. It is notousia construed as that which receives all predicates but which has no predicates of its own, as when Aristotle argued in bookZetaof hisMetaphysicsthat being is