Philosophy and Theology

Volume 24, Issue 2, 2012

Schelling's Doctrine of the Potencies
The Unity of Thinking and Being

This article has a historiographical and a philosophical aim. The historiographical and most difficult objective is to provide a comprehensive presentation of F. W. J. Schelling’s doctrine of the potencies (Potenzlehre) for the English-speaking philosophical community as found in his, for the most part yet to be translated, late lectures on the positive philosophy of mythology and revelation. The philosophical objective is to show how this same doctrine provides a modern response to the assertion that thinking and Being are the same, sometimes rendered as “Thinking and Being belong together” or “Where there is Being, there is thinking.”