Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: “Germany” and German philosophy
- PART I KANT AND THE REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY
- PART II THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED: POST-KANTIANS
- PART III THE REVOLUTION COMPLETED? HEGEL
- PART IV THE REVOLUTION IN QUESTION
- Introduction: exhaustion and resignation, 1830–1855
- 12 Schelling's attempt at restoration: idealism under review
- 13 Kantian paradoxes and modern despair: Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard
- Conclusion: the legacy of idealism
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - Schelling's attempt at restoration: idealism under review
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: “Germany” and German philosophy
- PART I KANT AND THE REVOLUTION IN PHILOSOPHY
- PART II THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED: POST-KANTIANS
- PART III THE REVOLUTION COMPLETED? HEGEL
- PART IV THE REVOLUTION IN QUESTION
- Introduction: exhaustion and resignation, 1830–1855
- 12 Schelling's attempt at restoration: idealism under review
- 13 Kantian paradoxes and modern despair: Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard
- Conclusion: the legacy of idealism
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In one of the most celebrated comebacks in philosophical history, Schelling was called to Berlin in 1841 to assume a distinguished chair in the university and in effect to replace Hegel. Although Hegel had been dead for ten years, nobody of similar stature had emerged to take his place, and the breakup of the Hegelian school, along with the increasingly radical direction in which parts of it were headed, had alarmed the crown prince of Prussia during the 1830s (who discovered that, even though he was the king-to-be, his efforts to turn the tide were continually thwarted). However, after he finally ascended to the throne in 1841, the new king (Friedrich Wilhelm IV) wasted no time in recruiting Schelling. Alarmed by what he saw as anti-Christian, republican, and revolutionary movements growing in Berlin, and being himself a great partisan of Romantic philosophy (which since the Congress of Vienna had departed from its origins and assumed an increasingly apologetic role for the conservative reaction in Germany), the king wished to summon to Berlin someone with both the intellectual profile and the political sensibility to be able to mount a successful counter-offensive against the Hegelian school. Famously, the minister encharged with recruiting Schelling quoted the king as hoping that Schelling's appointment would stamp out the “dragon-seed of Hegelian pantheism” in Berlin.
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- Information
- German Philosophy 1760–1860The Legacy of Idealism, pp. 317 - 332Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002