Heidegger's critique of the history of modern philosophy as an ontotheology remains influential. Although a latecomer to modern philosophy, Heidegger reads Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling's philosophy as ontotheological, even if Heidegger considers Schelling to make attempts to move beyond this tradition. In this paper, we revisit and reassess Heidegger's critique of Schelling with a focus on the latter's later work. Heidegger names three problematic aspects in Schelling's philosophy, namely a lack of a radical distinction between ground and existence, a notion of God as a subject, and an overemphasis on the systematicity of thought. We argue that Heidegger fails to recognize Schelling's important innovations in rethinking the ground, the divine subject and the nature of systematic thought. As such, Schelling makes important strides beyond the problematic aspects of modern philosophical thought. The point of this contribution is to tease important insights from Schelling, rather than rehash or re-interpret Heidegger's critique of Schelling.
In his Letter to Fichte (1799), Jacobi welcomes Fichte as the << true Messiah of speculative reason >>. Fichte, in turn, celebrates Jacobi as the << clearest thinker of his era >>. Nevertheless, Jacobi constantly rejects any alleged affinity between his un-philosophy and Fichte's transcendental philosophy. For Fichte, this rejection is due to Jacobi's misconception of the transcendental presuppositions of his unphilosophical standpoint of life. Analyzing both Fichte's and Jacobi's diverging philosophies of religion, the paper shows that Fichte misconceived Jacobi's main philosophical intentions and, subsequently, failed in his attempt to integrate Jacobi's original philosophical concerns into his transcendental philosophy. To thus demonstrate both the incommensurability of Fichte's and Jacobi's respective philosophies of religion and the legitimacy of Jacobi's point of view, the paper analyzes Jacobi's and Fichte's diverging remarks on the truth of Christianity in their interdependent late philosophies.
The essay investigates the fate of Christianity in the Hegelian philosophy of religion along two lines already present in Hegel's early texts: the topic of the necessary presence in religion of an external object for the imagination, charged, however, in the case of Christianity by the burden of the founder's death; and the topic of the impossibility of the universalization of love, which vitiates the character of religion as acting. The essay's development into a section on the interpretation of the death of God through the Phenomenology of Spirit and Berlin lectures on the philosophy of religion illustrates the tension between the historicity of the figure of the man-God and the necessary consummation of the merely historical character of that death. The emphasis on the role of community in understanding the meaning of the death of the manGod addresses the centrality of community to a possible destiny of Christianity as well. The last section of the essay, on worship as ethics, again shows a tension between the specificity of worship and its necessary ending in life itself. Through the definitions of worship in the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and in the Encyclopedia , the evolution of religious action toward interiority and thus toward ethical life and the consequent reflections on the meaning of a permanence of religious community are highlighted. Here philosophy appears to play a decisive role in defining the terms of a dynamic and open religious community.
This paper attempts a fresh approach to understanding the emergence of philosophy of religion within classical German philosophy by delving into the process through which philosophy came to critically examine its discursive forms and the ways it was performed and transmitted. In particular, the paper explores several models of philosophy of religion centered around a key concept that proves pivotal in reshaping rationality and transcending mere historical knowledge: the concept of Mitteilung. Through its examination, Mitteilung is revealed as not only the self-expression of communicated content but also as a transformative experience for both philosopher and audience, challenging the philosophical discourse itself. This investigation points out a fundamental meta-philosophical gradient of philosophy of religion, indicating its emergence within diverse endeavors to develop a cosmic rather than scholastic philosophy in the world.
