Abstract

On January 17, 1850, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling delivered a lecture, “On the Source of Eternal Truths,” before the Academy of Science in Berlin. My purpose is to comment on this lecture and to attempt to show that wherever we read in Schelling we are faced with the same problems and confront the same insights although the subject matter changes and the organon of philosophy changes from art to mythology to revelation. It is, however, not my concern or interest to enter the debate about how many “Schellings” we have; more important, I believe, is the philosophical discourse which Schelling sets forth, and the political consequences that are apparent in his philosophical position, which few commentators seem to find of significance. The political consequences of a philosophical attitude are fundamental, simply because the political problem is a philosophical one, and their unity can be denied only with serious, and at times, disastrous results.