Metaphysics

System of Transcendental Idealism

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Friedrich Schelling

1800

Schelling's masterwork of his early period constructs a complete system of knowledge from the standpoint of the transcendental self, tracing the mind's ascent from bare sensation through practical reason to aesthetic intuition. Where Kant had left mind and nature as irreducibly separate, Schelling unifies them by showing that the same absolute identity expresses itself as unconscious nature and as conscious spirit. The final chapters on art and aesthetic genius — arguing that art is the supreme organ of philosophy — anticipate the Romantic aesthetics of the following century and give the system its most enduring legacy.