vijak haddadi moghaddam

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Vijak Haddadi Moghaddam Schelling's Existential Cosmology The philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling has long been woefully neglected, superficially read on terms imposed by a hostile historiography, or at best understood as a hidden precursor to later projects. Only very recent efforts in continental philosophy are breaking with this antiquated image and are contributing to a discovery of Schelling as a crucial figure in Western philosophy whose thought is of the greatest contemporary relevance. In this vein, my doctoral project seeks to lay bare the one great idea which – against the doxa of a multitude of mutually inconsistent phases – animates all of Schelling's thought from the initial poetic writings in the Romantic circle, over the systematising collaborations with Hegel, to the dark existential reflections of the middle phase and the monumental archaeology of spirit of the late philosophy. My thesis discloses Schelling's great idea as that of philosophy as existential cosmology: a mode of thought which fully embraces the radical contingency, the meaningless facticity and the ungroundedness of existence, while yet searching for the possibility of a redemptive symbolic integration of the universe – the passage from chaos to cosmos. In the reception of Schelling these two central concerns have commonly been separated and taken in isolation, making Schelling on the one hand the grandfather of existentialism whose influence on Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Heidegger has been formative, and on the other hand a Naturphilosoph and thinker of a vibrant self-organising universe whose thought has been of great influence on the cosmologies of thinkers like Peirce and Bergson. However, as my thesis argues, the true power of Schelling's thought lies exactly in the ability to think the existential and the cosmological as inextricably intricated. Schelling's main philosophical tool for accomplishing the disjunctive synthesis of cosmos and existence is the theory of powers (die Potenzenlehre) which – grounded on a fundamental analytic of deep reality – accounts for the emergence of symbolic stability in self-organising domains of nature and spirit, while allowing for their radical realignment through the rupturing decisions of historical agents. My thesis presents a reconstruction of the theory of powers and their mode of operation throughout key elements of Schelling's oeuvre, and a confrontation of this figure of thought with the most salient rivalling projects, producing a novel systematisation of existential cosmology which renders this project immediately contemporary.

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Page 1: Vijak Haddadi Moghaddam

Vijak Haddadi MoghaddamSchelling's Existential Cosmology

 The philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling has long been woefully neglected, superficially read on terms imposed by a hostile historiography, or at best understood as a hidden precursor to later projects. Only very recent efforts in continental philosophy are breaking with this antiquated image and are contributing to a discovery of Schelling as a crucial figure in Western philosophy whose thought is of the greatest contemporary relevance. In this vein, my doctoral project seeks to lay bare the one great idea which – against the doxa of a multitude of mutually inconsistent phases – animates all of Schelling's thought from the initial poetic writings in the Romantic circle, over the systematising collaborations with Hegel, to the dark existential reflections of the middle phase and the monumental archaeology of spirit of the late philosophy. My thesis discloses Schelling's great idea as that of philosophy as existential cosmology: a mode of thought which fully embraces the radical contingency, the meaningless facticity and the ungroundedness of existence, while yet searching for the possibility of a redemptive symbolic integration of the universe – the passage from chaos to cosmos. In the reception of Schelling these two central concerns have commonly been separated and taken in isolation, making Schelling on the one hand the grandfather of existentialism whose influence on Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Heidegger has been formative, and on the other hand a Naturphilosoph and thinker of a vibrant self-organising universe whose thought has been of great influence on the cosmologies of thinkers like Peirce and Bergson. However, as my thesis argues, the true power of Schelling's thought lies exactly in the ability to think the existential and the cosmological as inextricably intricated. Schelling's main philosophical tool for accomplishing the disjunctive synthesis of cosmos and existence is the theory of powers (die Potenzenlehre) which – grounded on a fundamental analytic of deep reality – accounts for the emergence of symbolic stability in self-organising domains of nature and spirit, while allowing for their radical realignment through the rupturing decisions of historical agents. My thesis presents a reconstruction of the theory of powers and their mode of operation throughout key elements of Schelling's oeuvre, and a confrontation of this figure of thought with the most salient rivalling projects, producing a novel systematisation of existential cosmology which renders this project immediately contemporary.