Abstract
Schelling's final system can be called "unfinished" in two respects: First, he was unable to complete the planned execution; second, the systematically intended form of the endeavor deliberately includes open elements and points of rupture within the system.
Two ruptures in the system are widely recognized in current research:
- The first is that a "proof" of the actual existence of God as the principle of the system, which Schelling's philosophy of revelation (following a philosophy of mythology) intends to establish in a positive manner, can essentially "never be completed."
- The second is that the transition between the "negative" presentation of pure rational philosophy and the "positive" philosophy of mythology and revelation—the two most prominent components of the entire program—essentially does not occur through a step-by-step progression within the system itself.
Less apparent and virtually unknown until now is at least one further rupture, unavoidable in the overall intellectual structure of Schelling's system, namely:
- Schelling's late philosophical program deliberately and explicitly unites two essentially incompatible senses of "system." This union requires the division of philosophy into a closed negative and a fundamentally open positive aspect, which conceptually can no longer border each other.
The term "Schelling's unfinished system" refers to the body of work he himself designated within his late philosophy, encompassing all systematic points of rupture.
The first research question, therefore, is to what extent Schelling's unfinished system, with these ruptures included, can still be intended as a systematic philosophical concept. This has occasionally been explicitly questioned in influential research.
The second, text-analytical research question is whether the philosophical system thus intended as an "unfinished system" in its final form deviates significantly from the systematic drafts that Schelling's late philosophy presented up to his early years in Berlin. On this question, too, existing research opinions tend to lean in the opposite direction regarding its systematic significance.
The project aims to provide a clear affirmative answer to both questions, drawing from Schelling's surviving late works and associated documents, and to justify the superiority of this interpretation.
The DFG project has been extended until December 2026.