Protean Matter-Shifting: A Clarification of the Evolving Relation Between Schellingian Materie and Neoplatonic ὕλη

Abstract

Abstract The established scholarly perspective on the relationship between F.W.J. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie and Neoplatonic metaphysics is underdeveloped. This perspective asserts that Schelling consistently distances himself from the emanation-based framework of Neoplatonism along with its construction of matter (ὕλη) as completely passive, purely potential, and spectrally obscure. Such a hermeneutic emerges from a close reading of Schelling’s 1794 Timaeus commentary as well as his 1811–1815 Weltalter drafts. I mark my intervention at the temporal midpoint of this range (1804–1806), namely during the final throes of Schelling’s Identitätsphilosophie. At this point in Schelling’s intellectual itinerary, he discloses a proximity between his conceptual configuration of matter (die Materie) and the aforementioned, Neoplatonic conceptual configuration of matter. Insofar as heretofore erudition has overlooked the denouement of Schelling’s early philosophical phase, it has also neglected Schelling’s coquettish attitude toward Neoplatonism and its ontological destitution of matter. I intend to highlight the overlap between these respective approaches.