ANIMAL MAGNETISM

SCHELLING, KARL EBERHARD.

Über das Leben und seine Erscheinung.

Landshut, 1806. 8vo. Cont. marbled boards. Title label on spine missing. Wear to capitals w. some loss, corners bumped. Internally minor brownspotting. XXXIV, 178, (1, -Verbesserungen) pp.

The scarce first edition on Karl Schelling's rare work on "Life and its Appearance".

Karl Eberhard Schelling (1783-1854) was the younger brother of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854), together with Fichte and Hegel the central thinker of German Idealism.

Karl Schelling was a trained physician, who studied in Jena and there attended some of Hegel's lectures (1801-2). He later settled in Stuttgart (1805), as a general practicioner, where he wrote his main, though now forgotten, main work "Über das Leben und seine Erscheinung". In a letter to Hegel, F.W.v. Schelling suggests him to read an article by his brother the physician concerning animal magnetism (in Jahrbücher für Medizin als Wissenschaft, 1807), and it is this topic that is developed in his "On Life and the Appearance of it". Karl Schelling here advances a theory of life that involves a World Soul, in which induvidual souls participate. His theories of aether, sleep and death bear many resemblances to Hegel's philosophy of spirit.

It is also Karl Schelling who treats Hegel's sister Christianne, when she falls ill, and it is likely that the treatments (which he is said to have undertaken for free) involved "magnetic" therapy. Hegel himself was very interested in animal magnetism, as his Philosophy of nature also bears witness to. There is no doubt about the fact that Hegel was quite impressed and intrigued with Karl Schelling's now scarcely known but interesting work.

Order-nr.: 36194