The Thought of the Early Schelling, Read as a Contemporary Impulse for a Real Notion of Individual Free Will.

The philosophical problem of free will concerns a clear tension betweentwo deep rooted and common presuppositions. In general, people would assume that, even though they might be determined by their surroundings and their past to a certain degree, they remain free in a certain way. This can be seen most easily in the practice of assigning moral responsibility to ourselves or other people. A person can only be held responsible for his actions if he could have acted differently. But on the other hand, modern scientific method presupposes that our universe is material and causally closed. This is called determinism, and it is a view of reality that has become as deeply embedded into our view of the world as our spontaneous moral reactions. The task of philosophy is to figure out how, if at all, these seemingly opposite views can be combined.
It is myintention to bring Schelling into this discussion. He was the writer ofa unique kind of philosophy that can still bring a fruitful addition tothe discussion today. His views on material reality, determinism and freedom may seem peculiar at first, and it is certainly not the intention of this research to proclaim that the biological sciences of around 1800should become the new canon. But on the other hand, there are certain elements in Schellings view on free will that can still be argued for today, on the metaphysical level of the discussion. In view of his insights into the nature of human freedom, it may be possible to formulate an alternative answer to the metaphysical question of free will.

Keywords:F.W.J. Schelling, Free Will, Transcendental Philosophy, Libet experiments, Philosophy of Nature, German Idealism, Organic Nature

Disciplines:Philosophy

Project type:PhD project