The radical importance of artistic genius for human beings: (from Schelling 1800)

Abstract

The political failure of the French Revolution leaves a bitter aftertaste that the problem of human beings is found in Modernity and, specifically, in the radical split that opens consciousness. The ideals of Good and Truth are pointed out as dead forms, lacking erotic power, useless to mobilize the entire being and, therefore, anachronistic for an era that wants to awaken under the sign of Beauty. Under this rising sun, a young Schelling writes a work in which art appears as a praxis capable of suturing that wound that opens consciousness. Imagination and poetic synthesis are unavoidable elements in moving through a human life that seeks its plenitude in the return to original unity with the Absolute. The gesture of artistic genius will be the privileged one for this transition to the origin.