Reviews for System of Transcendental Idealism 1800

The average rating for System of Transcendental Idealism 1800 based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-12-15 00:00:00 Michael Swearingen So this is the fourth book I've read by Schelling. I really haven't read them chronologically; actually quite the opposite. I read the Philosophy Of Mythology first; then his Philosophy Of Human Freedom; then his Philosophy Of Nature, and then this work. I've liked all of them to a degree. Schelling's system developed over time and in the course of a number of works. When he wrote the System Of Transcendental Idealism, he was still very much a disciple of Fichte and this is evident when one reads this book. Much of his thought here depends on Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre. Basically, it's a discourse on dichotomous notions of being. Taking the basis from Fichte's system of the "I" and the "not I", Schelling investigates the bridging of opposites, e.g. self/not self, finitude/infinitude, limitlessness/limitedness, unconsciousness/consciousness, passivity/activity, subjectivity/objectivity, etc. A lot of this was investigated in Fichte's works related to the Wissenschaftslehre (loosely translated as the "Science of Knowledge/Knowing"), which I am very acquainted with. I purposely read Fichte thoroughly before reading this work. Both writers seek to make subjective being actively objective in an idealistic manner, rather than in a realistic or empirical manner. To go over this work in detail would make this review overlong and isn't necessary. I recommend that people who are interested in Schelling, German Idealism, or philosophy in general, read it. I gained a lot from it. I actually probably liked his investigation of art at the end of the work the best. I've also come to appreciate the role that Schelling and Fichte played in the development of psychology as a science. It's hard not to appreciate how much of the ground work was laid by them.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-10-12 00:00:00 Thanasis Farmakis Kant talks at you while Hegel gives his reader poetry in motion. Schelling in this book bridges the two in such a way that the twain meet. The self of the self awareness, the part where nature meets our freedom in such a way that the subjective within us realizes the objective outside of us where the intuitive melds into the intuited and the space where every determination is a negation (Schilling uses that Spinozian in this book but doesn't credit Spinoza). He'll have the finite pretend to understand the absolute and ceaselessly becomes until it knows. Schilling is onto something and gets close. Read this book before you read Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit since this book was meant to be understood on its own terms while according to Hegel nobody understood him except for one person and Hegel would even claim that person understood him incorrectly. Irony is jealous of authenticity. We live in a paradox wrapped in a riddle and peel the wrapping off till we get to the center of an onion where nothing resides except for remnants of expectations from our experiences. Descartes' primal error is assuming a world away in order to get the certainty of the self. Schilling follows Kant and makes ourselves about ourselves (about the self of the self awareness). It will take Heidegger to give us present-at-hand, ready-at-hand, and dasein leading to being-in-the-world such that the they, ambiguity, distractions, and attunement leads us away from authenticity and he does not assume the world away and makes us (i.e. dasein, that which takes a stand on its own understanding) part of the world. Schilling still atomizes us into monads but dances around it by making the subjective an objective by objectivizing the subjective while giving primacy to the self. He almost gets where Heidegger will take us but gets distracted by the absolute. If it's not obvious, I found this book incredibly fun to read. Hegel must have too because I think Schilling channels Hegel better than Hegel at times and he wrote it before Hegel wrote his opus. I wish I had a class assignment which required me to write a 20 page essay on what I thought about this book. It would be a fun assignment and at the end I would be able to articulate at least to myself why this book is such a vital book today (hint: there are interesting connections to the 'measurement problem' in physics that reside in the first half of this book and could be flushed out by somebody smarter and not as lazy as me, and there is 'being in time' and 'being in space' related to essence and accidents, there's a Henri Bergson Creative Evolution connection that seemed obvious to me but not to Wiki, and there are other multiple intriguing lines of thought that are worthwhile in themselves).