Schelling's Theory of Symbolic Language Forming the System of Identity

This study reconstructs F.W.J. Schelling's philosophy of language based on a detailed reading of SC73 of Schelling's lectures on the Philosophy of Art. Daniel Whistler argues that the concept of the symbol present in this lecture course, and elsewhere in Schelling's writings of the period,provides the key for a non-referential conception of language, where what matters is the intensity at which identity is produced. Such a reconstruction leads Whistler to a detailed analysis of Schelling's system of identity, his grand project of the years 1801 to 1805, which has been continuallyneglected by contemporary scholarship. In particular, Whistler recovers the concepts of quantitative differentiation and construction as central to Schelling's project of the period. This reconstruction also leads to an original reading of the origins of the concept of the symbol in German thought: there is not one "romantic symbol", but a whole plethora of experiments in theorising symbolism taking place at the turn of the nineteenth century. At stake, then, is Schelling as aphilosopher of language, Schelling as a systematiser of identity, and Schelling as a theorist of the symbol.

Daniel Whistler is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.

I: Context
1. The symbol in the Goethezeit
2. Language in the Goethezeit
II: System
3. The symbol and the Identitatssystem
4. Schelling's metaphysics
5. Quantitative differentiation
6. Construction
III: Symbol
7. SC39 of the Philosophie der Kunst
8. Language in the Identitatssystem
9. SC73 of the Philosophie der Kunst
IV: Metaphilosophy
10. Science without reference
11. Systematic eclecticism