Spiritual Intuition as the Odyssey of Consciousness. A Radical Phenomenological Analysis of Identity and Difference of Appearance in Schelling’s Philosophy

Abstract

This article offers a radical phenomenological reinterpretation of Schelling’s philosophy by examining the relation between consciousness, appearance, and the Absolute through the concepts of spiritual intuition, subjectivity, and self-manifestation. It argues that Schelling’s transcendental idealism, despite its attempt to overcome the dualism of subject and object, ultimately remains constrained by a phenomenology of intentionality that cannot fully account for the immanent self-revelation of life. Drawing particularly on Michel Henry’s material phenomenology, the paper contends that the Absolute is not primarily disclosed through transcendental reflection or speculative mediation but through a primordial, self-affective phenomenality preceding all objectification. By critically reassessing Schelling’s notions of potency, transition, passivity, and spiritual intuition, the study highlights both the originality and the limitations of German Idealism, showing how its conception of consciousness culminates in a structural self-oblivion of the very beginning it seeks to think. The analysis ultimately proposes that radical phenomenology provides a more adequate account of immediacy, immanence, and the self-phenomenalisation of absolute life than speculative idealism.