Symposium

Volume 19, Issue 1, Spring 2015

Schelling After Theory

Ground and Grounding: The Nature of Things in Schelling’s Philosophy

This paper examines the notions of ground and grounding across several of Schelling’s works, from the philosophy of nature, through transcendental idealism and identity philosophy, to the Freedom essay and The Ages of the World. It contends that Schelling repeatedly returns to the same problematic, that each attempt to establish a foundation for philosophy is inscribed with the particular and the concrete, so that the work of grounding is also an ungrounding. It reads the different expressions of Schelling’s philosophy against and through one another, arguing that each offers both a foundation and critique of its others.