Bringing Nature to Light: Schelling’s Naturphilosophie in the Early System of Identity

In November of 1800 the issue of the reality of nature and its meaning for a transcendental philosophy interrupts, or rather heats up, the exchange of letters between Fichte in Berlin and Schelling in Jena. Fichte has faint praise for the latter‟s System of Transcendental Idealism and marks as problematic the way it sets nature alongside of consciousness as the subject of a genetic deduction. For transcendental philosophy, he insists, nature can only be something found, finished, perfect because lawful, but whose lawfulness is not its own, but that of the intelligence which beholds and explains. 2 Schelling responds with a long recital of his philosophical development and poses several alternative ways that philosophy of nature might coincide with Wissenschaftslehre, the most radical of which suggests that philosophy of consciousness must be based on natural philosophy, not the reverse. Schelling refers to the final paragraphs of the second part of General Deduction of the Dynamic Process as a brief summary of his position. 3 They read as if they were penned for Fichte‟s eyes, or those of his stand-in, Carl Eschenmayer. Beiser is correct in viewing Schelling‟s writings on