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9.2.16

Schelling



I had a high school teacher who hated it when I compared two presidents. He wrote to me the most virulent criticism I had ever heard up until that day. [He still gave me a good grade for some reason I did not know.] Later my rosh yeshiva launched a much more public crusade against me. But not for the same kind of thing. In any case,, ever since then, I have been wary of comparing thinkers. But I can't help it sometimes. But on the same hand, I realize I might just be looking at something on a superficial level. So take this as suggestion for research, not as a conclusion.
I would like to compare Schelling with Plotinus, and also suggest that he perhaps consciously was redefining Plotinius to fit into a kind of Kantian system. [That is Reason is no longer inside of us. It is rather something outside of us that we sometimes have access to. And there is a ground of Reason. I can't help but think he must have been inspired by Plotinus to come up with his modification of Kant.]

 To Schelling  reason is not  totalizing and self-grounding, but an opening to that which cannot be thought.

And from this- we can understand the Rambam's idea of learning Physics and Meta-Physics as an opening to what comes beyond that. This is a theme which is brought up in books of Musar from the Middle Ages, like the חובות לבבות, מעלות המידות