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146 Holger Zaborowski 7 S Why Is There Anything at All Rather than Absolutely Nothing? F. W. J. Schelling’s Answer to the Ultimate Why Question I. Immanuel Kant, German Idealism, and the System of Philosophy The last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth belong to the most interesting and important periods of German philosophy, if not even of modern Western philosophy tout court. Frederick C. Beiser rightly calls this time of Kant’s critical philosophy and of German Idealism “one of the most revolutionary and fertile” periods “in the history of modern philosophy.”1 F. W. J. Schelling argued in 1830 that since Kant, philosophy had not come to rest yet. “The effect of Kant,” he stated a few years later, “was indeed exceptional.”2 What happened in 1. Frederick C. Beiser, The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge , Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987), vii. For the pre-history of German Idealism see particularly Dieter Henrich’s masterful Grundlegung aus dem Ich. Untersuchungen zur Vorgeschichte des Idealismus. Tübingen—Jena (1790–1794) (2 vols., Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2004). For the development from Kant’s critical philosophy to Hegel’s idealism see also his Between Kant and Hegel: Lectures on German Idealism, ed. David S. Pacini (Cambridge, Mass.–London: Harvard University Press, 2003). For important primary sources in English translation see Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, trans. George di Giovanni and H. S. Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985). For a general introduction to German Idealism see The Age of German Idealism, ed. Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins (London–New York: Routledge, 1993); The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism, ed. Karl Ameriks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 2. F. W. J. Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophie (= Schellingiana 1), ed. Walter E. Ehrhardt Schelling’s Answer   147 this period to make it, even from a merely philosophical perspective, so “revolutionary,” “fertile,” agitated, and even turbulent that scholars such as Dieter Henrich argue that “this philosophical period was, from a historical standpoint, possibly more influential than any other”?3 A brief look at the 1780s and early 1790s may explain the philosophical significance of this period. Immanuel Kant published the Critique of Pure Reason in 1781 (2nd edition 1787), the Critique of Practical Reason in the beginning of 1788, and the Critique of Judgment in 1790. Shortly before and after the publication of his Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Alone in 1793 (2nd edition 1794), and, starting with the publication of Fichte’s Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation in 1791 (2nd edition 1793) and the first edition of his Science of Knowledge in 1794, the philosophical world could witness the rise of a new movement that continued to be both revolutionary and fertile—and is so still, after more than two hundred years since its inception, thought-provoking. This new movement, German Idealism, was led by a younger generation of philosophers, all of them born in the second half of the eighteenth century, who claimed to bring the Kantian project to its fulfillment, radicalizing some of his ideas and at the same time leaving many of his ideas far behind. With Kant’s works, as Schelling states, “the way to idealism was . . . opened.”4 In developing their new philosophy, the idealists took very seriously, not the letter of Kant’s philosophy, but its spirit.5 Kant provided them with the results, but failed to manifest the principles, as they maintained.6 He furthermore has, as the author of the anonymous “Oldest Systematic Program of German Idealism” argues, “given only an example and exhausted nothing.”7 In the idealist view, Kant did not (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989), 29. F. W. J. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, translation, introduction, and notes by Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 94. All translations are, if not otherwise indicated, my own. 3. Dieter Henrich, Between Kant and Hegel, 3. 4. F. W. J. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, 106. 5. See also in this context Fichte’s three lectures “Concerning the Difference between the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy,” in Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Early Philosophical Writings , trans. and ed. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press, 1988), 185–215. 6. See also F. W. J. Schelling, Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder über das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen, in Sämmtliche Werke...

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