Schelling's reception in Scotland, 1817–1833

pp. 63-98

in: Giles Whiteley, Schelling's reception in nineteenth-century British literature, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Schelling's reception in Scotland in the late Romantic period. It begins with a consideration of the ways in which Schelling's thought was dismissed by the late common sense philosophy of Dugald Stewart, before analysing the key role William Hamilton's "The Philosophy of the Unconditioned" played in disseminating Schelling's thinking. The second half of the chapter then turns to John Carlyle, who studied with Schelling in Munich, and his more famous brother, Thomas Carlyle, who Schelling himself read. The chapter concludes with a major rereading of Carlyle's great ironic novel, Sartor Resartus, problematising the standard Fichtean approaches to the work.