Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (Suny Series in Contemporary Continental Philosophy)
Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt offer a fresh translation of  Schelling's enigmatic and influential masterpiece, widely recognized as an  indispensable work of German Idealism.  The text is an embarrassment of  riches--both wildly adventurous and somberly prescient. Martin Heidegger  claimed that it was "one of the deepest works of German and thus also of  Western philosophy" and that it utterly undermined Hegel's monumental  Science of Logic before the latter had even appeared in print. Schelling  carefully investigates the problem of evil by building on Kant's notion of  radical evil, while also developing an astonishingly original conception of  freedom and personality that exerted an enormous (if subterranean)  influence on the later course of European philosophy from Schopenhauer and  Kierkegaard through Heidegger to important contemporary theorists like  Slavoj Zizek.This translation of Schelling's notoriously difficult and densely allusive  work provides extensive annotations and translations of a series of texts  (by Boehme, Baader, Lessing, Jacobi, and Herder), hard to find or  previously unavailable in English, whose presence in thePhilosophical  Investigationsis unmistakable and highly significant. This handy study  edition of Schelling's masterpiece will prove useful for scholars and  students alike."The unique combination of the most stringent power of conceptual thinking  and of shattering references to our most intimate experiences account for  thePhilosophical Investigations'almost hypnotic power. It is quite  simply, together with Hegel'sPhenomenology of Spiritand two or  three other works, one of the candidates for the greatest philosophical  book ever written." -- Slavoj Zizek--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.