Dreams of a spirit-seer

"Schelling and Swedenborg" is a scholarly monograph on the influence of Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg on the German philosopher Schelling.

Before reading this work, I assumed that Schelling was a boring, bland pantheist with a Romantic crush on "nature" (read meadows, hills or something to that effect). In reality, of course, Schelling was a sophisticated thinker who constantly straddled the border between philosophy proper and theology. Eventually, he came to accept the existence of a spirit-world and even a kind of personal God whose highest revelation was "Johannine" Christinianity. For good or for worse, Schelling was strongly inspired by the Gnostic speculations of Jacob Böhme, something he shared with other Romantic thinkers as well. And then, he studied Swedenborg.

The author, Friedemann Horn, seems to be either a Swedenborgian himself, or some kind of sympathetic fellow traveller. He mentions both similarities and differences between Schelling and the "seer of the North". Schelling accepted Swedenborg's idea of spiritual corporeality. I admit that I don't quite understand this notion, but Schelling's point seems to be that spirits aren't a kind of abstract "ideas" or disembodied entities implying complete dualism between spirit and matter. Rather, spirits are in some sense "material" and hence very real, keeping their earthly personalities intact. At death, humans only shed the grossest, physical part of the body - a spiritualized body survives as a vehicle for the immortal soul. (Perhaps he had in mind what others would later call "the astral body"?)

Schelling was also interested in Swedenborg's ideas about heavenly marriage. Swedenborg apparently believed that spouses would be re-united in the spirit-world and continue to live there as husband and wife. Schelling had personal, psychological reasons for embracing both a very concrete personal immortality and heavenly marriage after the death of his beloved wife Caroline.

Other Swedenborgian notions discussed by Schelling include the theory of correspondences, Christology and eschatology. Interestingly, however, Schelling rejected Swedenborg's allegorical view of the apocalypse and resurrection in favour of a more "orthodox" position.

The book also contain more disturbing information, but not about Schelling. Apparently, both Schelling and Franz von Baader believed in a quite literal spirit-world, but Baader took the thing a bit too far, even carrying out bizarre experiments on his own daughter, whom he regarded as demon-possesed! Schelling started to avoid the Baader household after this. (Note that Baader was a well known and important intellectual and political figure in his native Bavaria!)

Obviously, I did some further reading on Schelling after digesting this book! What struck me is that Schelling accepted ideas that were decidedly non-philosophical. How do you philosophically "deduce" the spiritual corporeality of dead people? There seems to have been a tension in Schelling between a genuine religious longing, and demands of a strict philosophical Systeme. His rival Hegel strikes me as a very different kind of person!

"Schelling and Swedenborg" is a very specialized, in-house kind of book. Frankly, it *is* somewhat boring. Nor does it contain any sensational revelations, at least not if Schelling's intellectual evolution is taken into account. I mean, why shouldn't Schelling have read Swedenborg? Still, Horn's book could be of some interest to students of philosophy, theology and theosophy.

Perhaps F.W.J. Schelling at bottom wanted to be...a spirit-seer.