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Schelling’s treatise bears the title: “Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and the Matters Connected Therewith.” It appeared in the year 1809 as the final part of a collection of investigations that Schelling had already published earlier and that were selected from the totality of his existing publications in order to serve as an introduction to the “Freedom Treatise.”

Cite the four preceding parts (do not at first go into the “works” and biography):

1 Of the I as Principle of Philosophy, or, On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge (1795)

2 Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (1795)

3 Treatises on the Elucidation of the Idealism of the Doctrine of Science (1796–1797)

4 On the Relation of the Fine Arts to Nature: An Academic Speech (1807)

The text of the Freedom Treatise will be cited according to volume and page numbers of the edition of Schelling’s Sämtliche Werke, 1856–1861, fourteen volumes.³ The Freedom Treatise can be found in volume VII, pp. 336–416. These page numbers are printed on the inner margin of the edition of the Philosophische Bibliothek.⁴

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The title of the treatise: philosophical investigations: “philosophical”? – zētēsis; “freedom”: arbitrary topic? freedom of the will? Kant; “human”: essence of the human; “essence”: inner possibility (formal concept) and ground of actuality (centrum),⁵ the absolute; “and {…} therewith”: with the “essence” (that is, with the absolute); “connected”: nexus – sustasis – system; “matters” {Gegenstände}: (formally) what stands {steht} ‘there’ in such a standing-together (system); “the”: not a few – arbitrary ones, but, rather, eminent ones.

Depending on how human freedom in its essence belongs to this nexus or even determines it, the treatise on human freedom either is an isolated and separate reflection or comprises the “innermost centerpoint of philosophy …” (Preface 1809, p. VIII).

The treatise goes into the center of the system as the “system of freedom.”

In his Berlin lectures on the history of philosophy, Hegel also dealt with Schelling’s philosophy – he calls it “the latest interesting, true shape of philosophy.” He assesses the Freedom Treatise in particular as follows:

Schelling published a separate treatise on freedom that is of a profound, speculative character, but it stands apart and for itself; in philosophy, nothing that stands apart can be developed.⁶

To what extent Hegel’s assessment is mistaken, to what extent it hits the mark, this can be gleaned already from the precise elucidation of the title. What stands “apart and for itself” here in this treatise is the center of the system, that is, it does not stand apart. Quite the contrary, what stands apart in this system is not carried out, above all not in the manner that Hegel demands and has himself actualized. The question must remain open as to what extent Hegel’s demand conforms with and does justice to Schelling’s system.

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