SCHELLING'S POETRY

21. The Poem-to-ComeThroughout his philosophy, Schelling persistently invokes a poem-to-come, a messianicspeculative epic. Four passages scattered through his corpus serve to illustrate this. First, theOldest System Programme of German Idealism from 1796:I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, which embraces all ideas, is anaesthetic act . . . The philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as thepoet . . . The philosophy of spirit [thus becomes] an aesthetic philosophy [andlikewise] poetry gains a higher dignity; at the end it again becomes what it was at thebeginning—teacher of mankind; for there is no philosophy, no history any more,poetry alone will survive all the remaining sciences and arts. 3Second, a passage from the conclusion to Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism,published in 1800:Now if it is art alone which can succeed in objectifying with absolute validity whatthe philosopher is able to present in a merely subjective fashion, there is one moreconclusion yet to be drawn. Philosophy was born and nourished by poetry in the3 Attributed to G.W.F. Hegel, Friedrich Hölderlin and F.W.J. Schelling, ‘The Oldest System Programme ofGerman Idealism’, trans. Andrew Bowie, Appendix to Bowie, Aesthetics and Subjectivity: From Kant toNietzsche (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 130-1. Whether or not Schelling had a hand in thepenning of this document, there is agreement that it is representative of his thought at that period. For furtherdiscussion, see Xavier Tilliette, L’absolu et la philosophie: Essais sur Schelling (Paris: PUF), 26-43; Devin ZaneShaw, Freedom and Nature in Schelling's Philosophy of Art (London: Continuum, 2010), 56-7.