Abstract

My dissertation proposes a reevaluation of the philosophy of F. W. J. von Schelling by reexamining the tension between system and freedom. I call this tension the "conspiracy of Being." ;The work itself is divided into two parts, corresponding to Schelling's negative and positive philosophy respectively. The first part takes up the question of the negative philosophy by tracing this tension in the figure of Spinoza. Schelling claimed that his project was a "counterpart " to Spinoza. My strategy is as follows: to suggest some of the character of the Pantheism Debate, in which the scandalous figure of Spinoza was central. Schelling attempted to locate in Spinoza a tension that could help articulate the relationship between philosophy and freedom and thereby make bearable the irresolvable yet necessary contradiction that a system of freedom entails. This relationship will be charaterized by the form of tragedy which will serve as an image for the tension within Spinoza and a system of freedom itself. This relationship will be implicated as the conspiracy within Schelling's Philosophy of Nature. I will conclude with a short discussion of Schelling's complex relationship with Hegel. Schelling characterized Hegel's thought as a "Spinozism rewritten in the ideal." I will try to read this claim as emblematic of Schelling's reading of Hegel in general. ;The second part will take up the question of the positive philosophy and, in so doing, take up the question of Schelling's reevaluation of philosophy's own power. In the negative philosophy, philosophy serves divine works by implicating them in the ideal. It is therefore ascensive. The positive philosophy is testimony to the history of light, that is, the dark transfigured into light within time and places. This is the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation, the descensive history of freedom. I begin with a close reading of the 1809 Freedom essay and conclude with a discussion of the figure of time and its relationship to the figure of Dionysos. Here one finds Dionysian philosophy embodying the conspiratorial tensions of Being itself