Mythology, essence, and form: Schelling's Jewish reception in the nineteenth century. Issue 1 (15th March 2019) - Franks, Paul
ABSTRACT: Habermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by appealing to the impact of kabbalah on the German Idealists. Schelling was his principal example. In this article, I trace two lines of Jewish reception of Schelling in the nineteenth century. Among German-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of his philosophy of mythology, not because of his relation to kabbalah. Among Galician-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of what they took to be his non-mythological version of kabbalah. In both cases, Schelling offered a middle road between, on the one hand, traditionalist rejection of modernity and non-Jewish philosophy and, on the other, varieties of antinomianism.