The Review of Metaphysics

Volume 67, Issue 4, June 2014

The Role of Aristotle in Schelling’s Positive Philosophy

This article shows how important Aristotle’s thought has been in the development of Schelling’s last attempts in order to build a complete system for the solution of the problem of the existent. In particular, the last philosophy of the author of Leonberg is centered on the relationship between negative or purely rational philosophy, and positive philosophy, which Schelling used to call philosophical Empiricism. The former—the main representative of which was Hegel—gains exclusively the empty logical concept of the existent; the latter realizes that only experience can give us the actual existence. But they are both indispensable: positive philosophy gives the content, negative philosophy fixes the container: they are necessary to one another. Aristotle did not elaborate a complete positive philosophy, but he was the first one who recognized the prominence of the fact of existence on its mere concept. So that, in the end, he embodied the necessary step that the reason must make beyond itself, in order to get the real existence: this philosophical and not at all mystical step is what Schelling called ecstasy.