Bliss Against the World - Schelling, Theodicy, and the Crisis of Modernity

Bliss Against the World critically analyzes and systematically reconstructs the work of German Idealist and Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (1775--1854). In Schelling''s concept of bliss (Seligkeit), the idea of salvation from the world mutates into a burning concern with the negativity of the modern world and with the way modernity inherits the Christian promise of a non-alienated future that never arrives. Schelling emerges from this account as a key thinker of modernity and of the Christian modern trajectory as a path to salvation in the shadow of whose failure we continue to live.