Theogony as Ethnogony: Race and Religion in Friedrich Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology

Abstract

The later philosophy of Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) has rarely been discussed in the scholarship on nineteenth-century racial thought. Yet the category of “race” played a key role in his “Lectures on the Philosophy of Mythology,” particularly in those sections that linked the genealogy of the gods (theogony) to the origins of the human peoples or nations (ethnogeny). Building on the mythography of Friedrich Creuzer and the racial thinking of Immanuel Kant and Henrik Steffens, Schelling developed a world-historical vision that he intended as an alternative to that found in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel. This chapter reconstructs the role of race in Schellng’s late philosophy of mythology, locating it within early nineteenth-century debates on ancient mythology and its relationship to Judaism and Christianity, as well as his own efforts to fathom the nature of human (and divine) freedom. At the same time, it shows that Schelling was aware of (and sought to highlight) the contemporary resonance of his racial ideas, particularly as they related to debates over European imperialism, slavery and genocide.