Schellings Idea of Man. The Philosophy of Identity between Idealism and Spinozism.

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This project seeks to explain Schelling’s theory of man in the context of his reception of Spinoza. Our starting point will be to provide a comprehensive interpretation of Schelling’s so-called "Würzburger System" from 1804, which is the central text of his philosophy of identity and which has surprisingly received very little attention in the secondary literature. The aim will be to show how, in this text for the first time, Schelling’s understanding of man becomes the foundation for an alternative philosophy and critique of the theory of subjectivity developed in Kant and Fichte. Thus, we will present the development of philosophical anthropology in an historical and systematic way as it emerges as a response to a theory of subjectivity. The research hypothesis is that understanding the influence of Spinoza and his conception of the identity between body and mind, will enable us to grasp the extent to which Schelling’s philosophy is opposed to humanistic and moral theories of man and how the idea of expressive spontaneity substitutes a theory of subjectivity. Inspired by Spinoza, Schelling’s theory of man is thus to be understood as an attempt to reconstitute the social dimension of life, which in his view has been dissolved in Modernity and needs to be given a new organic form. From this point of view, theories of subjectivity are just symptoms of this loss, and Schelling’s aim is to provide not only a new and coherent conception of man and nature, but also of science, art, religion and finally of the state. Ultimately, this comprehensive ʼpolitics of philosophy῾ whose goal is to revoke the pathologies of Modernity is the core of the so called philosophy of identity. Conversely, what becomes clear in this way is that this philosophical system is not based on an anonymous Entirety, transcendent God or the Absolute, but on the idea of man as an immanent power to develop perspectives of reality as a whole. But this means that reality as a whole exists only in the immanent power of the perspective of all perspectives (or the ideas of all ideas) - that is to say: in man. In other words: it is this very conception of man that gives the philosophy of identity its unity and coherence. But this needs to be proved in a very careful and nuanced way, for it questions and disagrees with all the interpretations of Schelling’s identity system since it first appeared in 1801. Our hypothesis is that in his Würzburger System, Schelling proves to be a philosopher of diversity and perspectivity which was hardly been recognized until today. And this raises the question which gives this study its actuality and importance: how anti-anthropomorpic does a philosophical anthropology need to be?