Kant and Schelling on Metaphysical Disagreement

This paper addresses the role of disagreement in relation to the goals of<br/>metaphysical inquiry. In particular, I will discuss two reactions to Kant’s initial<br/>observation that metaphysics does not make any lasting progress: Kant’s own<br/>demand for a critical revision of metaphysics and Schelling’s ideas as presented<br/>in his 1821 lecture On the Nature of Philosophy as a Science. Kant’s account<br/>allows for an appreciation of metaphysical conflict as a necessary precondition<br/>for a critically revised system of pure reason. However, he thinks that such a<br/>system will ultimately replace all previous ones and thereby make further<br/>development of metaphysics obsolete. Although Schelling appropriates Kant’s<br/>notion of systematicity, he arrives at a positive evaluation of metaphysical<br/>disagreement as an expression of freedom which articulates itself within the<br/>history of metaphysics. I argue that Schelling’s view also entails that the history<br/>of metaphysics is an ongoing process rather than terminating in an ultimate<br/>system or a withdrawal from metaphysical inquiry. Thus, we get to see a) that<br/>Kant himself (not just his post-Kantian successors) entertains an account of the<br/>essential historicity of reason and b) how Schelling both preserves and transforms<br/>the Kantian legacy of a philosophical history of metaphysics.