The Kantian Elements of Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature.

Schelling’s philosophy of nature is commonly seen as a romantic enterprise detached from scientific practices and of minor philosophical interest. According to this view, Schelling neglected Kant’s prudent ascription of limits to reason and his alignment of philosophy and science. I argue that this assessment disregards Schelling’s deep indebtedness to Kant’s philosophy of nature as well as to the natural sciences of his period. Indeed, Schelling’s Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797) draws on Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science in order to elaborate an alternative to the mechanistic approach to nature. Similarly, his later sketches of a system of nature draw on Kant’s doctrine of the categories to provide a common framework for emerging scientific disciplines such as geology, magnetism, electricity, chemistry, and the life sciences. Yet there is as yet no systematic account of Kant’s influence on Schelling’s philosophy of nature and very few works treat Schelling’s engagement with the sciences of his time. Challenging the prevailing interpretation of Schelling’s philosophy of nature as a romantic or dogmatic endeavor, the project aims to fill this gap by (1) situating Schelling’s project in relation to Kant’s philosophy of nature, (2) analyzing his engagement with the scientific debates of the period, and (3) evaluating the methodological innovations of Schelling’s attempt to comprehend the unity underlying multiple scientific fields.

Keywords:Nature, Matter, Genetic Method

Disciplines:Philosophy not elsewhere classified