Max Stange, M.A.

PhD project

Title: "Geschichte als Form freier Gemeinschaftsbildung: Schellings Begriff und Theorie der Geschichte" [History as a form of free community formation: Schelling's concept and theory of history]

The word "history" is chronically ambiguous. When we speak of a "philosophy of history", it is therefore far from clear whether the object of study is history as written in history books, the events depicted therein, or a context of action which goes beyond this and includes human agents. One should be aware of this distinction if one studies philosophical texts which talk about "history", so as to avoid jumping to an overly simple, or even misleading, interpretation.

F. W. J. Schelling's early works in particular contain numerous passages which one would initially classify as contributions to a "philosophy of history". But their meaning and also their larger context are not clear at first sight. So far, they have often been considered merely in isolation and as an accessory to Schelling's 'system drafts'.

In my PhD project, I would like to show how these elements combine to form a coherent theory of history. They do not immediately concern "history" in the sense of a completely objectifiable series of events, but rather the awareness, arising from depictions of history, of standing in a historical context, i.e. being dependent on collective knowledge and institutions and not being a solitary agent in one's actions, but being essentially bound by relations to other human beings. Against the background of these action-theoretic considerations, Schelling furthermore takes a position in the discourse about a "science of history" which was conducted with increasing intensity in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In this connection, I will investigate which authors and viewpoints Schelling, who rarely made his references explicit, was referring to.

Keywords: Schelling, history, historicity, theory of action, metahistory.

Fields: philosophy of history, political philosophy, philosophy of religion.

My PhD project is funded by Evangelische Studienwerk Villigst e.V.