Abstract

Reflecting on the role of Platonic thought in shaping German Idealism, my project focuses on Platonic influences in F. W. J. Schelling's philosophy of nature. The project arises from Schelling's earliest attempts to engage with nature philosophically, without, however, seeking immediately to overcome the obstacles that the materiality of nature poses to the human intellect. Indeed, Schelling asks us to linger with these difficulties, to expose ourselves to the riot of vital and often volatile forces---including longing, persuasion, yielding, and fervor---that underlie the realm of material nature and the material bodies arising from this realm. ;Key to Schelling's engagement with nature is a series of three Plato studies that he composed between 1792 and 1794. My project looks to these studies as a whole, and finds among them a shared interest in the issue of creation. More specifically, it finds among them an interest in the dynamic of creation, in how the creative act unfolds. In tracing this dynamic, the project initially focuses on the role of mediation in creation. As the essay progresses through the Plato studies, however, this model begins to shift as mediation comes to be linked with reception, and is thus brought into the into the realm of necessity, in which Timacan cw&d12;ra ---Platonic "matter," or "receiving substance"---resides. ;The project therefore comes to focus in particular on Schelling's third Plato study, his Timaeus-Commentary, in which a great deal of time is devoted to the role of the material realm in creation. As we discover, upon entering the realm of necessity and receiving substance, the language of mediation begins to fall away as a direct relation between the fundamental components of creation is described. In light of this direct relation, we arc led to reconsider the fundamental dynamic of creation in terms of an organic dynamic, in which direct relations are also reciprocal relations. The study then traces the influence of this dynamic and its key Platonic concepts on Schelling's subsequent work in the philosophy of nature, which extends well beyond his formal philosophy of nature to his work as a whole