Schelling and The Ages of the World

Matthew Nini is Research Associate at the Institute of Philosophy in Zagreb, Croatia. Previously, he was fellow at Albert-Ludwigs-University in Freiburg, Germany. He is the author of The Book of Nocturnes (Spring Publications, 2025), and Fichte in Berlin (McGill-Queen’s, 2024).

• AbbreviationsWorks by SchellingPrologueFirst Part: Odysseys of Freedom§ 1. The Turn to the Ideal§ 2. The Beginning is where System and Freedom are One§ 3. Identity in the Freedom Essay§ 4. Excursus. The Origins of Schelling’s Theory of IdentityI. The Plato-Kant LineageII. The Leibniz-Ploucquet Lineage§ 5 The Logic of Ground and the Reimagining of Pantheism§ 6 The Logic of Ground between the Real and the Ideal§ 7. The Distinction within God between Ground and That-Which-Exists§ 8. Ground and Understanding, the Forces behind the Process of Creation§ 9. Ground and the Possibility of Evil§10 Actual Evil: no Capacity for God without the Capacity for Evil§ 11. Universal Evil or Human Evil?§ 12. The Formal Concept of Freedom§ 14. The Intelligible Deed and its Problems§ 15. Redeeming the Intelligible Deed? Two Proposals§ 16. From One to All: The Internal Development of God§ 17. The Ungrund§ 18. Intermezzo: Schelling in Stuttgart§ 19. The System as the Identity of the Real and the Ideal§ 20. Excursus: Identity as a Theory of PotenciesFigure 1: The Magnetic Line§ 21. The First Potency as Contractive Force§ 22. Seyn and Seyendes; the Quest for Personality§ 23. Freedom, Potency, and the Temporalization of Logic§ 24. Madness and the Real§ 25. Clara: Past, Self and OtherSecond Part: The Ages of the World§ 26. The ‘Grand Ruins’ of the Ages of the World§ 27. The Philosopher’s Secret: Schelling’s Starting Point§ 28. The Past: 1811I. Lucid PurityII. The Emergence of Two WillsIII. Homeostasis and PalingenesisIV. Struggle and RotationV. The Trinity in Crisis§ 29. The Past: 1813I. Lucid Purity, Freedom and ContradictionII. The Two Wills, RevisitedIII. The Play of the PotenciesIV. Separation and Decision§ 30. The Past: 1815I. The Eternal PastII. The Rotation of the PotenciesIII. The Free Decision to BeginIV. Krisis, Time, and the Ecstasy of ExistenceV. From Decision to CreationFigure 2: The World-FormulaVI. The Results of 1815: A Brief Account of the Beginning§ 31. The Deities of Samothrace§ 32. Thinking the Beginning for Oneself: The Erlangen ‘Initiation’§ 33. The Macrocosm as the Subject of the Complete System of Philosophy§ 34. Knowing, Not-knowing, and Ecstasy§ 35. Two New Versions of the Potencies§36. The Absolute and its NemesisInconclusive Postscript: ‘How Deep is the Well of the Past!’Bibliography

How can an absolute beginning be made? This question guides Matthew Nini’s erudite, lively, and significant study of the three first-known versions of Schelling’s unfinished and sui generis project, The Ages of the World. This “grand ruin” emerges as a breathtaking philosophical poem about how there is something rather than nothing.