Schelling on the Evil

Martin Vrabec

The study focuses on Schelling’s thoughts about the nature of evil, and shows how Schelling reworked the traditional concept of evil as merely a passive lack of good and as something that comes from our senses, i.e. from what we have in common with animals. For only man is, according to Schelling, capable of evil and all his evil actions arise by actively promoting his individual will and power at the expense of the whole. Based on a more detailed analysis of the theme of radical evil, the study shows that the deepest motive of evil conduct is, according to Schelling, the human desire to escape one’s own particularity and transience. The last part of the study deals with the cosmological aspect of Schelling’s concept of evil and with his reinterpretation of the traditional motif of the wrath of God.