The Spirit and the Organism : Schelling's Theses on the Concept of the Spirit in Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre

Abstract

The essay analyzes the relationship between spirit (Geist) and organism as posited by the early Schelling in his Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre. A detailed analysis of Schelling's procedure, especially in the second and third treatise, shows that Schelling - rather tacitly - pursues a way leading from the transcendental concept of subjectivity towards a metaphysics of the spirit, undertaking a process of its own increasingly more adequate self-objectivation.

In this sense, one can speak here of a phenomenology of spirit in statu nascendi.

Keywords

• Spirit
• Organism
• self-objectivation
• identity