Schelling and Early German Idealism

Schelling is part of the first generation of philosophers to read both Kantian and early German Idealist texts, developing his own thought in the immediate aftermath of Kant’s three Critiques and amid the popularization of the systems of Reinhold and Fichte. This uniquely positions him to assess the initial move beyond Kant. For early German Idealism, moving beyond Kant consists in supplying absolute premises for his conclusions, typically in the form of a first principle from which the categories of experience can be deduced. Their main question concerns what precisely this principle is and what a deduction properly involves. Schelling initially addresses this question in "Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy, or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge." Why, then, in that year’s "Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism" does he assert that philosophy’s "last great question" is "to be or not to be"? How could its answer possibly provide premises for Kant’s conclusions? A clue lies in Kant’s question quid juris, of which Schelling’s existential provocation is, I will argue, a radical form. Despite his own German Idealist concerns, I will show that Schelling’s early interrogation of who one is to be has a distinctly Kantian inspiration.