Duration
22 Sep 2025 - 26 Sep 2025
The course takes up the reading courses of previous years: After “The Beginning of the ‘Ages of the World’” (1811) and the “Erlangen Lectures” (1821), we focus a text that bring Schelling's speculation on the “Ages of the world” to a conclusion. We read and discuss Schelling's Munich lectures from 1827/28 on the “System of the Ages of the World” in the transcript of Ernst von Lasaulx (ed. Peetz, 1998). In this inaugural lecture, which Schelling gave at the beginning of his second stay in the Bavarian capital, he provides an insight into his concept of “historical philosophy”, discussing the approach of modern philosophy since Descartes and newly defined concepts as “time”, “knowledge”, “system”, “method”. The lectures culminate in the establishment of positive philosophy, which leads to a new (positive) concept of God, that is articulated in the trinitarian structure of the potencies of “that which can be”, “that which must be” and “that which should be”. That leads to the differentiation of three “world ages” (“pre-worldly”, “present”, “post-worldly time”), which Schelling explains in the concluding part on “monotheism”, that is a reflection on the Christian doctrine of Trinity and the Jewish doctrine of God and, beyond that, a revision of Spinoza's pantheism.
Lecturers
Prof. Dr. Petar Šegedin
Dr. Vicki Müller-Lüneschloß
Prof. Dr. Philipp Schwab
Dr. Alexander Bilda