ABSTRACT
The significance of the work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling in the history of modern philosophy has only recently begun to be understood. Having dominated the philosophical scene until his death in 1831, Hegel’s philosophy was then subject to massive attack from many directions. Examination of the role of metaphor in scientific discovery clearly has consequences which reach beyond the realm of natural science. The overlapping and interrelating stages of Schelling's philosophy begin with his enthusiasm in the mid-1790s for Fichte's attempts to revise Kant's transcendental philosophy, which gave the primary role to the activity of consciousness in the constitution of the knowable world. Alan White has provided a highly recommendable English-language introduction to Schelling's work and an important account of Schelling's philosophical relationship to Hegel, which takes the opposite position to the one the author shall advance in this chapter.
