Abstract
The first part of Schelling’s Freedom Essay offers an extensive discussion of pantheism and its compatibility with human freedom. Schelling defends pantheism in general and Spinoza in particular against charges, raised by critics like Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, who maintains that any rational philosophical system necessarily ends up as fatalism. Schelling, on the contrary, shows that freedom and pantheism can and must combined. This article investigates into Schelling’s understanding and transformation of pantheism in his Freedom Essay. It follows the explicit and implicit traces of Spinoza’s philosophy in Schellings thought and tries to show, how Schelling, challenged by the problem of evil, moves beyond Spinoza. Nevertheless it also argues that immanence remains crucial to Schelling’s ontology and his concept of freedom.
© 2012 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.