CONTRIBUTI / Niklas Sommer
The Principle of Indifference. A Dialogue Between Schiller and Schelling that Never Took Place
In 1803 long after Schiller has abandoned his philosophical endeavours in favour of dramatic poetry he engages with Schelling‘s emerging philosophy of identity (Identitätsphilosophie) and employs the term point of indifference (Indifferenzpunkt) in order to discern the true character of poetry. Within Schelling’s philosophy of identity said concept serves the function of unifying the two principal spheres of the science of knowledge: transcendental philosophy and philosophy of nature. The question arises, then, what does the integration of Schelling’s first principle into Schiller’s anthropological aesthetics entail? This paper attempts to place Schiller as a philosopher in the development of German Idealism by taking a closer look at the connection between his On the Aesthetic Education of Men and Schelling’s emerging philosophy of identity.
