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“True Empiricism”: The Stakes of the Cousin-Schelling Controversy
- Perspectives on Science
- The MIT Press
- Volume 27, Number 5, September-October 2019
- pp. 739-765
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
Between 1833 and 1835, Victor Cousin and F.W.J. Schelling engaged in an “amical but serious critique” of each other’s philosophies. I argue that, despite perceptions to the contrary, key to this exchange is a common vision of an atypical, speculative empiricism. That is, against the grain of most commentaries, I contend that there are significant similarities between Cousin’s and Schelling’s philosophies of the early 1830s—similarities that converge on the possibility of a post-Kantian speculative empiricism, which they respectively dub metaphysical psychology or a priori empiricism.