Aesthetics and mythology in Schelling's philosophy

• Grant number: 16/10271-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 01, 2016
• End date: August 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - History of Philosophy
• Principal Investigator: Marco Aurélio Werle
• Grantee: Pedro Augusto da Costa Franceschini
• Supervisor: Birgit Sandkaulen
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/01548-2 - Aesthetics and mythology in classical German philosophy, BP.DR

Abstract

The main goal of this research project is to propose in the works of Schelling a better understanding of the movement of mythology into the aesthetics of the German philosophy of the end of the 18th century. Taking his philosophy as a culmination of a movement already present in the works of other authors, such as Herder and Moritz, we seek to establish the reciprocal relation between aesthetics and mythology as a possible thread through Schelling's complex development. After a brief consideration of his first works, we shall investigate the passage from his philosophy of nature to his system of identity, in which art, in its symbolic power, receives a growing role in the speculative demand for an exposition of the absolute in its indifference between subject and object, ideal and real. Finally, we are conducted to his Philosophy of art, in which the philosophical consideration of art's absolute potential correspond to a systematic exposition of mythology, resonating the romantic and idealist call for a "new mythology". Our hypothesis is that the notion of mythology can offer a reading key to the grounding of the aesthetics in classical German philosophy and to the significant role that art acquires inside the philosophy of that time. It would also be possible to perceive how such a field, which seemed limited by its founder, Baumgarten, to a subjective theory of sensibility, could ultimately constitute a speculative theory of art in the aesthetics of idealism and romanticism. (AU)