Schelling's Dialogical Freedom Essay

Provocative Philosophy Then and Now

By Bernard Freydberg

Subjects: Philosophy, Continental Philosophy
Series: SUNY series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy
Paperback : 9780791476048, 154 pages, July 2009
Hardcover : 9780791476031, 154 pages, October 2008

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. The Unfolding of the Task

II. Freedom, Pantheism, and Idealism

III. The Account of the Possibility of Evil

IV. The Account of the Actuality of Freedom

V. The Real Concept of Freedom—The Formal Side

VI. The Description of the Manifestation of Evil in Humanity

VII. God as Moral Being—The Nature of the Whole with Respect to Freedom

VIII. Indifference and the Birth of Love

Conclusion
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Explores Schelling’s Essay on Human Freedom, focusing on the themes of freedom, evil, and love, and the relationship between his ideas and those of Plato and Kant.

Description

With clarity and liveliness, Bernard Freydberg explores the major themes treated in Schelling's final public work: freedom, imagination, the nature of God, indifference, and love. Freydberg also examines Schelling's engagement with philosophy's history, including the relationship between his ideas and those of Plato and Kant, his oracular and mythical languages, and his relevance to contemporary thought.

Bernard Freydberg is Research Professor of Philosophy at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. He is the author of several books, including Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason and Provocative Form in Plato, Kant, Nietzsche (and Others).

Reviews

"…provides a fresh reading of Schelling's notoriously difficult masterpiece. What sets this book apart is how the author reveals Schelling's text to be an engagement with the history of philosophy, especially Plato and Kant. " — Symposium

"Freydberg aims to demonstrate the historical foundation of Schelling's work as well as its relevance, even importance, in contemporary philosophy … In many ways provocative as its object of study, Freydberg's volume will encourage readers to delve further into this area, whether it is to learn more about Schelling or to investigate Freydberg's interpretations. " — German Studies Review

"Freydberg argues that Schelling brings together Platonic myth with Kantian critique in a way that infuses reason with erotic passion. What is most impressive about the book is that Freydberg writes with passion and force and provides insights that are so vivid as to immediately evoke a sense of the mythical and the archaic. " — Joseph P. Lawrence, College of the Holy Cross

"Freydberg introduces a refreshingly deep understanding of Plato's philosophy to his discussion of Schelling and Kant, making a brilliant case for the historical continuity of essential philosophic problems. " — Bruce Matthews, translator of Schelling's The Grounding of Positive Philosophy: The Berlin Lectures