Schelling's Late Negative Philosophy: Crisis and Critique of Pure Reason

Abstract

Its division of philosophy into a "negative" and a "positive" approach characterizes Schelling's late philosophy. After developing positive philosophy, Schelling goes back in his last work (Darstellung der reinrationalen Philosophie) to a negative philosophy that is to play a critical role within Schelling's late system by showing, purely rationally, the limits of pure reason. This critical task requires the failure and crisis of negative philosophy. In this article, I show why Schelling understands his late negative project as a radicalization of Kantian criticism, undertaken by recourse to Aristotle and his notion of actuality. By taking the Aristotelian inspiration into account, I pro pose a new way of understanding two problems of Schelling scholarship: the need for a late negative philosophy, and the problem of the transition from negative into positive philosophy.