Schelling and Swedenborg ─ Mysticism and German Idealism

In this groundbreaking study, Friedemann Horn documents Friedrich Schelling's intense personal engagement with Emanuel Swedenborg's theological works, an engagement fueled to a considerable extent by the untimely death of two women whom Schelling loved. In Swedenborg's vision of the spiritual realm, Schelling found an invaluable resource that supplied an underpinning for his own romantic idealism. Horn details the linguistic similarities in the writings of the two philosophers and shows how, particularly in Clara and the Stuttgart Lectures, Schelling employs the ideas of the "seer of the North."

The scholar will find suggestive contacts with Goethe, Wagner, and Franz von Baader, and with a theosophical tradition whose importance may have been overshadowed by Kant's scathing criticism of Swedenborg. In giving access to that undercurrent, Horn provides a unique and neglected view of nineteenth-century thought.

Friedemann Horn received his Ph.D. in Religious Science from Marburg University, where he studied under Ernst Benz, and has also studied languages, comparative religions, and Protestant theology. For the past forty years, he has been the editor of the bi-monthly journal Offene Tore; he has translated many Latin, English, Italian, and French works into German; and he has written articles for scientific publications. He was also the editor-in-chief of Swedenborg Verlag in Zurich, Switzerland.