Thesis advisor: John Sallis / This dissertation is a reading of Schelling's influential <italic>Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom</italic> (1809), focusing on the meaning of "grounding" and the principle of sufficient reason (called the "principle of ground" in German philosophy). One of the contributions of my dissertation is to show how Schelling's treatise frames the traditional debate about "freedom vs. determinism" in terms of system. The connection with system provides a context for the claim of determinism and shows what is at stake in denying it. I argue that the principle of ground underlies the difficulties in integrating freedom within a system. Schelling is able to resolve these difficulties by distinguishing a deterministic from a non-deterministic sense of ground. Schelling uses the non-deterministic sense of ground (ground as condition of the possibility) to connect the parts of the system without jeopardizing freedom. At the same time, Schelling reserves the deterministic sense of ground for the ultimate act of freedom, by which individual human beings determine themselves. Beyond this core argument, the dissertation contributes to Schelling scholarship by interpreting the <italic>Freedom Essay</italic> in continuity with the texts leading up to and following its publication, most of which have not yet been translated. I show how these texts help to clarify some of the most difficult passages in the <italic>Freedom Essay</italic>. In particular, I draw on Schelling's correspondence to correct a widespread misreading of the fundamental distinction between that-which-exists and the ground of existence. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_101946 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Thomas, Mark Joseph |
| Publisher | Boston College |
| Source Sets | Boston College |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, thesis |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. |
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