Schelling's Ages of the World: The Beginning of the Beginning

<p>This dissertation traces the development of Schelling's philosophy of time as it appears in <em>the Ages of the World,</em> a work which Schelling himself never completed but which he clearly intended as his magnum opus. My project focuses on Schelling's claim that time is the absolute, a claim which grew out of his <em>Naturphilosophie </em>and which later served as the basis for his fruitful interactions with Kierkegaard in Berlin. In the dissertation, I defend the thesis that Schelling's concept of "beginnings" paves the way for an "organic" understanding of time which articulates the latter as a living, breathing entity. In short, my work attempts to prove that Schelling does not conceive of time as a horizon of being, or as a category of consciousness, but as the ultimate basis from which living things grow and evolve. As I write in the introduction to my project, time, for him does not simply "pass by;" instead, it "ripens," and "bears fruit." Similarly, living things are not merely in time, <em>but time is in them</em> insofar as living things produce time just as much as they are produced by it.</p> <p>Supporting this thesis is my investigation into Schelling's concept of "ground" [<em>Grund</em>], which regards time as a contradiction-producing <em>a priori</em>. Time begins with the free decision of the subject; however, this free decision is grounded, paradoxically, in the subject's confrontation with its own fate. "Ground," then, has the character of irreducible indeterminacy, giving time the character of "unprethinkability" [<em>Unvordenklichkeit</em>]. In the opening lines of <em>the Ages of the World</em>, Schelling argues that "only the past can be known." However, as I demonstrate, Schelling's insights on "ground," in addition to fragmentary nature of his essay, prove otherwise. Instead, what we discover in <em>the Ages of the World</em> is the unfolding of the insight that even the origin of history remains obscure to us, and that this obscurity is endemic to all "beginnings" in time, past, present, and future.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Immediate Access

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Jussaume, Andrew

Contributors dc:contributor

• James Swindal
• Joseph P. Lawrence
• Jay Lampert

• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
• the Ages of the World
• Weltalter
• philosophy of time
• metaphysics
• ground
• unprethinkable decision
• Naturphilosophie
• freedom
• contingency
• Continental Philosophy
• Epistemology
• History of Philosophy
• Philosophy

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/220

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dsc.duq.edu:etd-1223