Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the basic position that the copula occupies in the formulation of the concept of freedom in Schelling’s Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. On the one hand, in the 1809 writing, the copula represents the fundamental argument for the questioning of previous logical postulates according to which freedom would find no place within any philosophical system; on the other hand, it constitutes the ontological basis for the construction of a Schellingian version of pantheism in which the concept of freedom comes to replace that of necessity. The paper will be divided into four parts. The first part will be devoted to the introduction of the fundamental issues that characterized the so-called Pantheismusstreit that form the background to the formulation of the Schellingian concept of freedom. In the second part, an attempt will be made to assess the importance of the copula within the refutation of the different interpretations of pantheism called into question by Schelling in the first textual portion of the Freiheitsschrift. The third part will focus on highlighting the elements that make up and structure the ontological framework of the copula by considering Schelling’s writing Über das Verhältnis des Realen und Idealen in der Natur (‘On the Relation of the Ideal and the Real in Nature’) of 1806. Finally, in the fourth part, I will engage in identifying the crucial role that the logic-ontological argument of the copula plays within Schelling’s construction of his own interpretation of Spinozian pantheism and, consequently, his own theosophical vision of freedom.