Secluded Nature: The Point of Schelling’s Reinscription of the Timaeus

Abstract

The recent publication of Schelling’s early Plato studies serves to
underline the singular decisiveness that one could indeed already have
taken the Platonic dialogues to have for Schelling’s thought. In addition,
these very early studies, primarily (though not exclusively) of the Timaeus,
make it possible to amplify the brief indications given in Schelling’s works
and, in particular, to mark certain points in those works where
reinscription of the Timaeus, at least of certain of its discourses, is carried
out. By filling out the reinscription along lines traced by the early Plato
studies, one can transpose mere general indications into the textual
specificity corresponding to Schelling’s reinscription of the Timaeus in the
text of modern philosophy, his reinscription of the dialogue into a text that
while belonging to modern philosophy also renders it radically
questionable, perhaps for the first time. In this way one can provide a
certain measure of the decisiveness of the Timaeus for Schelling’s thought.