Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom / Edition 1

by F. W. J. Schelling, Jeff Love, Johannes Schmidt

Overview

Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt offer a fresh translation of Schelling's enigmatic and influential masterpiece, widely recognized as an indispensable work of German Idealism. The text is an embarrassment of riches—both wildly adventurous and somberly prescient. Martin Heidegger claimed that it was "one of the deepest works of German and thus also of Western philosophy" and that it utterly undermined Hegel's monumental Science of Logic before the latter had even appeared in print. Schelling carefully investigates the problem of evil by building on Kant's notion of radical evil, while also developing an astonishingly original conception of freedom and personality that exerted an enormous (if subterranean) influence on the later course of European philosophy from Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard through Heidegger to important contemporary theorists like Slavoj Zðizûek.

This translation of Schelling's notoriously difficult and densely allusive work provides extensive annotations and translations of a series of texts (by Boehme, Baader, Lessing, Jacobi, and Herder), hard to find or previously unavailable in English, whose presence in the Philosophical Investigations is unmistakable and highly significant. This handy study edition of Schelling's masterpiece will prove useful for scholars and students alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791468746
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	06/01/2007
Series:	SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	220
Sales rank:	201,156
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

At Clemson University, Jeff Love is Associate Professor of German and Russian and Johannes Schmidt is Associate Professor of German.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     vii
Introduction, Schelling's Treatise on Freedom and the Possibility of Theodicy     ix
Translators' Note     xxxi
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Matters Connected Therewith     1
Supplementary Texts
Introductory Note     81
Jacob Boehme: Mysterium Pansophicum or Thorough Report on the Earthly and Heavenly Mysterium     85
Franz Xaver von Baader: "On the Assertion That There Can No Wicked Use of Reason"     99
Ephraim Gotthold Lessing: "A Parable"     103
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi: From On the Doctrine of Spinoza in Letters to Mr. Moses Mendelssohn     106
Johann Gottfried Herder: From God. Some Conversations     125
Notes     131