Schelling's philosophy of mythology: A critical analysis

This monograph explores the metaphysical and hermeneutical principles underlying Schelling's final system concerning the nature of religious mythology. This system was worked out in the last two decades of his life and delivered in a series of lectures in Berlin between 1841 and 1846. Treatment of this topic requires a combination of methodological approaches--hermeneutical, historical, and philosophical, but my primary emphasis is on the philosophy. I give a detailed analysis of Schelling's "Potenzenlehre" (theory of Potencies) and discuss its logical implications for both the "negative" (abstract a priori) and "positive" (concrete a posteriori) branches of his philosophy.;According to Schelling, the positive branch is needed in order to provide independent confirmation of the results obtained by the negative branch. He criticized Hegel and his followers for failing to recognize this need and for reducing human experience to a bloodless series of logical categories. I show that the root of the disagreement between Schelling and Hegel lay in their differing conceptions of proper dialectical method. On due consideration, I conclude that Schelling's position, while interesting and provocative, is unconvincing.;Despite the limitations of his philosophical principles, Schelling's interpretive approach to mythology--especially Greek mythology--enabled him to uncover some of its hidden dynamics. Most Western thinkers at the opening of the nineteenth century still tended to dismiss representations relating to deities outside the Judeo-Christian tradition as mere fictions told by credulous, superstitious primitives. Schelling was one of the first to probe beneath the surface layers of the seemingly arbitrary narratives in search of deeper symbolic significances. My work shows how in the process he anticipated many of the developments of modern religious psychology.;Schelling suggested that the ostensible meaning of a myth often might be just a facade constructed by the conscious mind in order to dissemble the true motivations of the unconscious. I argue that Schelling's discovery of the role of the unconscious was his most important contribution to the study of religious meaning.;The dissertation concludes with appendices discussing major intellectual influences on Schelling's thought: Bohme, Baader, and Hegel. A final appendix analyzes the interpretations of two representative Schelling scholars: Jurgen Habermas and Walter Schulz.