Abstract

F. W. J. Schelling is the least well known of the major German philosphers of the nineteenth century in this country. Particularly frequently misunderstood are his early works, which are concerned with the relationship of the self and the absolute. In this dissertation I offer some reasons for the importance of the concept of the self in the writings of the early Schelling as well as assess the completeness and coherence of his various theories of the self. It will be seen that Schelling rapidly proceeds to discover and exploit many of the ambiguities in Kant's views on the self and self-knowledge. Schelling's relationship to Kant, Fichte, and Spinoza are examined with respect to their influence on his theory of the self and concept of intellectual intuition, whereby the metaphysical bent of Schelling's thought begins to emerge clearly. The self's relation to ultimate reality is explored in the philosophy of nature and in the System of Transcendental Idealism, reaching a point in the latter which indicates that Schelling has explored the limits of his previous philosophical assumptions