Schelling's Mystical Platonism: 1792-1802 with Dr. Naomi Fisher

May 7th, 2024, marks the official release date of Dr. Naomi Fisher’s important text on 'Schelling’s Mystical Platonism: 1792-1802,' from Oxford University Press. For this special occasion in Schelling scholarship, I invited Dr. Naomi Fisher (who is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago), to discuss major themes from her new book.

Dr. Fisher navigates us through Schelling very early essays in 1792 to his systematic 1802 dialogue Bruno; highlighting Schelling's own sophisticated Mystical Platonism.

“Naomi Fisher argues that Schelling is committed to two overarching theses, which together comprise his mystical Platonism. First, Schelling considers the absolute to be ineffable: It cannot be described in conceptual terms. For this reason, it remains inferentially external to any given philosophical system and is only intimated to us in certain analogical formulations, in works of art, or in nature as a whole.

Second, Schelling is committed to a kind of priority monism: All things are grounded in the absolute, but finite things possess an integral unity all their own, and so have a distinct and relatively independent existence. Highlighting these commitments resolves an interpretive dispute, according to which Schelling is a Fichtean idealist or a Spinozist, or he vacillates between these positions. Interpreting Schelling as advancing a mystical Platonism provides an alternative way of interpreting these early texts, such that they are by and large consistent. Fisher presents Schelling's early philosophy as a unique and compelling fusion of the old and new: Schelling fulfills the characteristic aims of post-Kantian philosophy in a way distinctive among his contemporaries, by drawing on and appropriating various strands of Platonism.”

Naomi Fisher is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She earned her Ph.D in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame in 2016, and prior to that earned her M.S. in physics from UC Davis. Her research focuses on Kant and German Idealism and Romanticism, specifically the relationship between nature, freedom, and rationality in Kant and Schelling.

Currently, she is working on projects related to the impact of Plato and Neoplatonism on Schelling’s philosophy. She also has interests in the broader history of philosophy, philosophy of science, and philosophy of religion.

In her talk, she discusses: 

1. The disconnect between epiphanies and everyday thought
2. On the function of imagination in philosophy
3. The philosophy of art according to Schelling
4. Manifesting the divine through the power of imagination
5. Comparing Schelling’s work to the Romantics 6.
On accessing transcendent realities