Philosophy and Friendship: Schelling and Hegel

This seminar will be devoted to the intellectual relationship between Schelling and Hegel, each of whom produced great works in the context of one of the most fertile epochs of philosophical creativity in the Western tradition. For a time, Schelling and Hegel were close friends and associates. Their dramatic parting of philosophical ways, seemingly accompanied by concealed but unmistakable notes of personal bitterness, will lead us to reflect on the complex connections between the vagaries of their friendship and the principled incompatibility of their essential philosophical commitments. To get at the core of the intellectual disagreement between the two thinkers, we will study Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit in the first semester and Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism and On Human Freedom in the second. We will also read texts that specifically address their conceptual divergence as understood by each thinker, including selections from Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy and from Schelling’s Berlin Lectures. Both the nature of friendship and the nature of philosophical truth will be the guiding themes of the course, and conference work will provide students with opportunities to explore these themes across a wide range of philosophical and literary works.