Abstract

This essay reconstructs Schelling’s account of the state as second nature and accordingly as an objective ground of human freedom in the System of Transcendental Idealism. It first examines the roles of different concepts of freedom and first nature in the genesis of the concept of second nature. Secondly, it explains Schelling’s identification of second nature with the legal system as the prerequisite for the creation of a moral disposition and the exercise of human freedom. Intersubjectivity and time are shown to be crucial to Schelling’s account of second nature. Finally, despite the continuity of the grounding role of the state in all of Schelling’s political philosophy, the teleological account of history and its end in providence forces a distinction between the political conclusions of the 1800 System and Schelling’s post-1809, eschatological philosophy.