Schelling’s Aesthetic Turn in the System of （谢林的审美的系统）.pdf

KRITIKE VOLUME SIX NUMBER ONE (JUNE 2012) 40-49 Article Schelling’s Aesthetic Turn in the System of Transcendental Idealism Michael Stephen G. Aurelio Abstract: This paper inquires into what the philosopher F.W.J. Schelling saw was the fundamental relationship between art and philosophy. Widely regarded only as a transitional thinker between Fichte and Hegel in the development of transcendental idealism, Schelling in his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) develops the rather novel insight that transcendental philosophy finds its full expression in the philosophy of art. Taking into account the nature and the limits of both “transcendental philosophy,” which begins with the thought and consciousness of the I, and also of “natural philosophy” or science, which begins with the sensible and the non-conscious world, Schelling saw that it would be the responsibility of art to synthesize and unite the two opposing branches of philosophy. After describing the “artistic genius” and determining the nature of the work of art toward the last part of the System, Schelling boldly claims that in his creations the artist is able to resolve the contradiction between the ideal and the real, between the I and the world. Well before Hegel, Schelling thus foresaw that science and philosophy are destined to return to poetry and art in the course of history. Keywords: Schell