ABSTRACT
Strong historicism, though absolutely right (in my view) about the importance of viewing the philosophical agenda of the present in the perspective of the past, is not attractive. The opposite position, by contrast, has considerable appeal. My intention, however, is not to defend directly any general methodological standpoint but to o er Schelling as a case study. If I am right about the radical di erences of framework and fundamental assumptions which separate Schelling’s philosophy from contemporary philosophy of mind, then Schelling cannot have a solution to the problem of consciousness as we understand it, nor does the notion of a Schellingian solution to it extrapolated on his behalf make sense. Had Q3 or Q4 directed our enquiry, this would not have been grasped, with the result not only that Schelling would have been misunderstood, but also that we would have missed an opportunity to make a valuable gain in philosophical self-knowledge-viz. recognition of the live possibility that our way of conceiving consciousness as a problem is defective.
