Schelling and the end of idealism /

The philosophy of F.W.J. Schelling (1775-1854), who for a long time had been reduced to the status of a connecting link between Fichte and Hegel, is currently undergoing a significant reevaluation. In her well-informed and very readable contribution to this development, Snow (Loyola College) traces Schelling's complex relationship to idealism over the span of his long philosophical career. She argues for the unity of Schelling's thought, and specifically for his continuing concern with the conditions as well as the limits of idealist thinking. The book's seven chapters relate Schelling to his predecessors and contemporaries, including Spinoza, Kant, and F.H. Jacobi, and cover the main periods and works of Schelling's philosophy. Snow documents Schelling's increasing awareness of the reality and yet unthinkability of the irrational. Particularly interesting are the discussions of Schelling's relation to Fichte, his philosophy of nature, and his anticipations of Schopenhauer's and Nietzsche's metaphysics of the will. The book nicely complements Andrew Bowie's Schelling and Modern European Philosophy (1993). Upper-division undergraduates; graduate; faculty. G. Zoeller University of Iowa