Positive Philosophy, Negatively Defined

By making the distinction between positive and negative philosophy in the Begründung der Positiven Philosophie lectures, Schelling reintroduces an idea that constantly resurfaces in his work – that of philosophy as a double series, the last one he happens to approach philosophy with (in previous writings these were first dogmatism and criticism, then transcendental philosophy and Naturphilosophie, however there is no correspondence between those earlier series and the distinction positive-negative philosophy, since Schelling claims that everything that he has done before his “late” philosophy is to be classified under negative philosophy.)⁴⁷¹ The question of interrelation between the positive and the negative philosophies raises itself

always emanates from thinking, this can be rightly called the first science, and similarly it is only the idea pulled apart, thus also what it generates is the same thinking which has been active in dialectical grounding.”

469 On pure thinking, which is apparently abstract, deductive and mathematical, see XI, 359 or SW XI, 361, where it is shown that pure thought is therefore the operation of pure reason.

470 Schelling gives the example of mathematics as pure thinking (SW XI, 377-378): “Die Mathematik hat keine Usia, weder im Allgemeinen noch im Einzelnen. Nicht im Allgemeinen: denn sie hat überhaupt kein Ziel, kein Letztes, und scheint keine geschlossene, sondern eine ihrer Natur nach grenzenlose Wissenschaft zu seyn, ein Mangel, den schon Proklos eingesehen zu haben scheint und auf seine Weise zu heben sucht. Nicht im Einzelnen: sie kennt kein Dieses (kein τόδε τι), sie beschäftigt sich nicht mit diesem Dreieck, sondern mit dem allgemeinen.” English: “Mathematics has no Usia, neither in general, nor in particular. Not in general: for it has no goal at all, no telos; it is not a closed science, but a science unlimited according to its nature: a deficiency which already Proclus seems to have penetrated and sought to cancel in his own way. Not in particular: it knows no This (kein τόδε τι), it does not concern itself with this triangle, but with the general”.

471 Both philosophies in a double series are sound, but they approach their problematic from different angles and take different approaches.

144

particularly sharply, not in the least because Schelling himself leaves us with an incomplete answer at best, but also because it is brings to hand the entire issue of the direction post-Kantian philosophy should take for him.⁴⁷² As such, Schelling’s argument for the importance of constructing a positive philosophy is an argument for the need to engage in a new post-Kantian ontology, and do so in light of treating the negative critical philosophy as a discipline antecedent to such an ontology. In what follows, I will address the relationship between positive and negative philosophies, starting from the identity of what from the standpoint of the negative is the infinite potency of being, the content of reason’s infinite potency of cognition,⁴⁷³ and from the standpoint of the positive a real ground of existence. This identity generates a common point in the two philosophies, which further identifies the double series as double only for a Kantian transcendental subject situated at the standpoint of the negative.

As presented in the Begründung, the positive-negative philosophy distinction is a distinction in both the subject and the method of philosophy. A negative philosophy adopts, as its method, setting limits for our thought. It operates in the domain of conceptual determination and, since it operates at a conceptual level, its instrument is reason.⁴⁷⁴ Schelling here accepts wholesale Kant’s doctrine of thoroughgoing determination, which operates by attributing, to each subject

472 The lack of a clear answer about the relationship between the two philosophies on Schelling’s part does occasionally produce strange readings of his work – for instance that of Lanfranconi, who claims that Being is not conceptualiseable, but also – despite Schelling’s claim that the positive philosophy is a metaphysical empiricism – also unreachable through experience. Lanfranconi’s answer to the question of positive philosophy is that it is a philosophy of the will – see Lanfranconi, A.: “Inszenierung des Subjektivitäts“. In Baumgartner, H.M., Jacobs, W.G. (Ed.): Philosophie der Subjektivität? Zur Bestimmung des neuzeitlichen Philosophierens, Band 2, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: 1993, pp. 480-489, here p. 484.

473 See the discussion of the infinite potency of cognition and the infinite potency of being in chapter I. To define them again: the faculty of reason has what Schelling calls an infinite potency of cognition, and the content of this potency is the infinite potency of being – the being’s openness to be everything and accept every determination. See on this specifically SW XIII, 75 (GPP, pp. 141-142): “[die reine Potenz des Seins], eben weil bloße Potenz, in gewissem Sinne = nichts ist, ist die Vernunft allerdings voreingenommen, sie ist das gegen alles Offene, allem Gleiche (omnibus aequa), das nichts Ausschließende - aber was allein nichts ausschließt, ist die reine Potenz.”

474 Schelling writes extensively on science of reason and the negative philosophy in the Begründung der Positiven Philosophie at SW XIII, 58-59 (GPP, pp. 128-129): “Also wenigstens in Bezug auf alles, was in der Erfahrung vorkommt, kann es nicht Sache der Vernunftwissenschaft seyn, zu beweisen, daß es existirt; sie würde etwas Ueberflüssiges thun. Was existirt, oder bestimmter, was existiren werde, (denn das aus dem Prius abgeleitete Seyende verhält sich gegen dieses – das Prius – als ein Zukünftiges; vom Standpunkt dieses Prius aus kann ich also fragen, was seyn werde, was existiren werde, wenn überhaupt etwas existirt) – dieß ist Aufgabe der Vernunftwissenschaft, dieß läßt sich a priori einsehen, aber daß es existirt, folgt daraus nicht, denn es könnte ja überhaupt nichts existiren. Daß überhaupt etwas existire, und daß insbesondere dieß Bestimmte, a priori Eingesehene in der Welt existire, kann die Vernunft nie ohne die Erfahrung behaupten.” And at SW XIII, 82-83 (GPP, pp. 146-147): “Die alte Metaphysik glaubte die Existenz Gottes rational beweisen zu können, bewiesen zu haben, sie war insofern rationaler Dogmatismus, wie Kant sich ausdrückt, oder, wie ich mich umgekehrt ausdrücken will, positiver Rationalismus. Dieser nun wurde durch Kant so zersetzt, daß er fortan als unmöglich erscheint, wie denn heutzutage selbst solche Theologen, die gern überall nach Anhaltspunkten greifen, bei der alten Metaphysik keine Hülfe mehr suchen. Aber indem jener positive Rationalismus zersetzt wurde, war eben damit ein reiner Rationalismus in Aussicht gestellt – ein reiner, den wir aber nicht etwa den negativen nennen werden; denn dieß würde den positiven als einen möglichen voraussetzen, aber es gibt keinen positiven Rationalismus seit Kant. Rationalismus kann nur negative Philosophie seyn, und beide Begriffe sind völlig gleichbedeutend.”

145

and for each predicate, either the predicate itself or its opposite. The list of known predicates is the limit, actuality or being are not included in this “laundry list” of predicates, and the transcendental ideal is the regulative ideal (see chapter I for more detail on this).

The source of negative philosophy is thus in no way experience: Sie “[gelangt] sich aus zu allem Seyn […] und [nimmt] nichts mehr bloß aus der Erfahrung auf[…].”⁴⁷⁵ This does not mean that negative philosophy fully disregards experience, but merely that it does not take experience to be its authoritative source. It concerns itself with only that which is possible and not necessarily actual, since reason cannot know that something really is in actuality; it is only able to know what it could be. The kind of statement a negative philosophy is able to make, though, is a statement which goes along the lines of “x is/is not intelligible”. It provides criteria of intelligibility, rooted in what a thing is. With regards to the subject – it being a philosophy of reason – negative philosophy gives us conceptual knowledge about things, i.e., what they are – no more, no less than their essences. It, taken alone, cannot tell us whether things are and does not concern itself with the things’ coming into being. Furthermore, it is not concerned with the becoming of things, or even with individual things, but only with the universal,⁴⁷⁶ for to consider individual things is to look at them in a respect that deals with their existence – something which is impossible in the case of negative philosophy, which sticks only with what is possible, and not with actual existence:

Wäre die Wissenschaft Wissenschaft des bloßen Seyenden, d. h. des schlechthin Allgemeinen, oder der Idee, wie sie jetzt sagen, ohne sonderlich zu wissen, was sie sagen, so könnte sie nie über das potentielle Wissen hinauskommen, zum actuellen Wissen gelangen; denn das zu Grund Liegende, die Materie alles Allgemeinen ist – Dynamis, Potenz.⁴⁷⁷

Schelling is following Kant here; being is not a concept and thus is not discoverable by reason. It doesn’t really matter for the proceedings of reason whether they have as their objects things which exist in the world, or mere abstract entities, which have their existence only as concepts, notions and ideas. The negative philosophy is thus a kind of abstraction (according to the definition of abstraction which I have clarified in chapter III) – it consists of a cut, containing a break at the level of the idea.

475 SW XIII, 57. The English has, at GPP, p. 128: “[It] from within itself reaches out to all being and no longer assimilates anything just from experience”.

476 A wonderful example can be found at in SW XIII, 59 (GPP, p. 130): “Daß eine Pflanze überhaupt ist, ist nichts Zufälliges, wenn nämlich überhaupt etwas existirt: es ist nicht zufällig, daß es überhaupt Pflanzen gibt, aber es existirt ja keine Pflanze überhaupt, es existirt nur diese bestimmte Pflanze, an diesem Punkte des Raums, in diesem Moment der Zeit.“

477 SW XI, 378. English “If science were a science of merely that which has being, i.e. the purely universal, or the idea, as they say now, without knowing particularly, what it says, it could never come out of potential knowledge and reach actual knowledge, for that which lies in the ground, the matter of all universal is Dynamis, potency.”

146

A positive philosophy, on the other hand, is that philosophy which does not limit itself to the conceptual essences of things, but is rooted in their existences. It is able to tell us that things are. It is fundamentally historical, being able to trace the genetic emergence of the things it thinks. It is not limited to the consideration of the possibilities or impossibilities of things (“wie es sein kann, wenn es ist” – how it can be, if it is),⁴⁷⁸ but extends itself to the experience of the actual:

Daß dem reinen Subjekt (− A) nichts vorauszusetzen [ist], wird nicht bewiesen, man muß es erfahren. Erfahren, sage ich. […] Denn allerdings gibt es auch solche, die von dem Denken wie einem Gegensatz aller Erfahrung reden, als ob das Denken selber nicht eben auch eine Erfahrung wäre. Man muß wirklich denken um zu erfahren, daß das Widersprechende nicht zu denken ist. Man muß den Versuch machen, das Uneinbare zumal zu denken, um der Nothwendigkeit inne zu werden, es in verschiedenen Momenten, nicht zugleich zu setzen, und so die schlechthin einfachen Begriffe zu gewinnen. Wie es zwei Arten von Induction gibt, so auch zweierlei Erfahrung. Die eine sagt, was wirklich und was nicht wirklich ist: diese ist die insgemein so genannte; die andere sagt, was möglich und was unmöglich ist: diese wird im Denken erworben. Als wir die Elemente des Seyenden suchten, wurden wir nur durch das im Denken Mögliche und Unmögliche bestimmt. Es stand nicht in unserm Belieben, welche Momente des Seyenden und in welcher Ordnung wir sie aufstellten, sondern es galt, mit dem Denken dessen, was das Seyende ist, wirklich zu versuchen, und also zu erfahren, was als das Seyende gedacht werden kann, insbesondere was das primum cogitabile ist. Das Denken ist also auch Erfahrung.⁴⁷⁹

The experience of positive philosophy is what Schelling, in the above quote, refers to as that experience which tells us what is actual and what is not, as opposed to that which tells us what is possible and what is not, which is the experience of thinking. Positive philosophy is precisely the thinking, which is grounded in that first kind of experience (in the Grounding,

478 Verständnis der Potenzenlehre, p. 116. Also see on this point Müller-Bergen in Schellings Potenzenlehre, p. 283.

479 SW XI, 326. English: “That nothing is presupposed before the pure subject (-A) is not proven; one is to experience it. Experience, I say. […] For indeed there are also such people who speak of thinking as an opposite to all experience, as if thought itself was not precisely also a kind of experience. We must actually think in order to learn, that the opposite is not to be thought. We must particularly make the attempt to think the non-unifiable in order to grow aware of the necessity of not positing it in different moments, but simultaneously, and thus acquire simple concepts. Just as there are two kinds of induction, there also are two kinds of experience. The one says what is actual and what is not actual: this is generally called by its name; the other says what is possible and what is impossible: it is acquired in thought. As we sought the elements of being, we were only determined through the possible and impossible in thinking. It was not up to our whim which moments of that which has being and in which order we set up, but it rather was the matter of, with the thought of what being is, to actually try and thus learn what can be thought as being, especially what the primum cogitabile is. Thinking is thus also experience.”

See also SW X, 233-234, where Schelling further stresses that abstraction means “daß vorerst das Seyn ausgeschlossen bleibe, nicht in Betracht komme” (that for now being remain excluded, not coming into consideration) and remarks that through this abstraction one can mistakenly turn the knowing into being (of course not In actuality), and that one cannot ultimately separate the knowing from being – “[man kann] das Erkennende nicht von dem Seyn abscheiden”. We need to remember, that in order to not separate knowing from being, we need to begin with being and not try to achieve being through pure reason.

147

Schelling calls it “metaphysical empiricism” – “metaphysische[r] Empirismus”),⁴⁸⁰ although it also cannot be merely an empiricism in the usual sense this word has been historically used –

“[sie] schwerlich bloßer Empirismus seyn [könnte], in dem Sinn, wie er meist gedacht wird”.⁴⁸¹ According to Ewertowski’s analysis of postitive philosophy, it is an empiricism in the sense that it approaches experience – “[sie] geht […] auf Erfahrung zu.”⁴⁸² Ewertowski writes:

Bei dieser Erfahrung handelt es sich nun aber nicht nur um die elementare Erfahrung, daß wir existieren und eine Welt ist. Es handelt sich auch nicht um eine bloße Reihe von bestimmten Zügen im Sosein der erfahrenen Welt, die das zuvor gedanklich Entwickelte bestätigen. Die Erfahrung auf die wir hier zugehen ist, wie Schelling sagt, „nicht eine gewisse, sondern die gesammte Erfahrung von Anfang bis zu Ende Was zum Beweis mitwirkt, ist nicht ein Theil der Erfahrung, es ist die ganze Erfahrung.⁴⁸³

Positive philosophy therefore can follow the emergence of objects that are being thought, within the framework of a constant developing whole, hence it is historical in its essence. This

“historicity” is however to be thought in a somewhat free sense: positive philosophy could, among other things, be a Naturphilosophie. Schelling writes, for instance: “Der Uebergang in die Naturphilosophie [kann] in der rein negativ sich haltenden Philosophie bloß hypothetisch geschehen”, and immediately remarks in what follows: “[D]adurch wird auch die Natur in der bloßen Möglichkeit erhalten, nicht als Wirklichkeit zu erklären versucht, was einer ganz andern Seite der Philosophie vorbehalten werden muß”.⁴⁸⁴ This “entirely different side of

480 Compare SW XIII, 113 (GPP, p. 168). This is especially apparent in Schelling’s description of the Aristotelian philosophy, which according to him is positive: “Aristoteles erscheint doch eben dadurch als der Schüler beider [Platons und Sokrates’], daß er sich vom bloß Logischen ab-, und dagegen ganz dem ihm

erreichbaren Positiven, dem Empirischen im weitesten Sinne des Wortes, zuwendet, dem, bei welchem das Daß (daß es existirt) das Erste, das Was (was es ist) erst das Zweite und Secundäre ist.” (SW XIII, 100; GPP, p. 159) There are some pointers to the extent that the Schelling grounds the entire distinction between whatness and thatness on Aristotle’s philosophy, with the τί ε҆στιν being whatness, and the τί η ҃҅ν ει ҆ναι being thatness. For more on this, see Weidemann, H.: “Schelling als Aristoteles-Interpret”. In Theologie und Philosophie 54 (1979), pp.20-37.

481 SW XIII, 112. For English, see Grounding p. 167: “positive philosophy can hardly be just empiricism in the sense as it is most often conceived”.

482 Ewertowski, J.: Die Freiheit des Anfangs und das Gesetz des Werdens. Zur Metaphorik von Mangel und Fülle in F. W. J. Schellings Prinzip des Schöpferischen, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: 1999, p. 355, [zit. Freiheit des Anfangs].

483 Ibid. English: “This experience is about not only elementary experience, that we exist and the world is.

It is also not about a mere series of determined moves in so-being of the experienced world, which confirms what was previous developed in thought. The experience to which we recourse here is, as Schelling says, “not just of a particular kind, but is the entirety of all experience from beginning to end. What contributes to the proof is not a part of experience, but all of experience.” – The Schelling quote is from SW XIII, 130-131 (GPP, p.

181). The whole in which positive philosophy operates is investigated in the next chapter.

484 SW XIII, 89. For English, see GPP p. 151 where Schelling talks about what happens “[i]n the transition to the philosophy of nature, which can occur only hypothetically in a philosophy that remains purely negative (whereby even nature is preserved in its sheer possibility, with no attempt to explain it as a reality, a task which must be reserved for an entirely different facet of philosophy)”. In the same text (SW XIII 133, GPP, pp. 183-184) Schelling also writes that the positive philosophy comes to nature out of its own subject: “Nehmen wir nun an, es fände sich unter dem Wirklichen der Erfahrung, zu welchem die positive Philosophie fortgeht, etwa auch die

148

philosophy” mentioned in this quote is precisely positive philosophy, which can philosophise about the actual unfolding of nature.

But the transition to the positive philosophy does not seem to be that simple: when the positive is put in contrast to the negative an issue raises itself: if the negative is conceptual and unable to access the non-conceptual existence of its object, would then the positive have to be non-conceptual in order to be the said philosophy of existence? The issue soon splits itself into multiples – what does it even mean for a philosophy to trace the emergence of things? What is the relationship between the positive and the negative; why – and whether really – would there have to be a double series of philosophies in the first place? In order to answer these questions, I will in the following zoom onto the relationship between the positive and the negative philosophies using conceptual tools taken from Schelling’s Berlin lectures Begründung der Positiven Philosophie, as well as Schelling’s conception of identity from the Philosophischen Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit in order to ultimately argue that the pure negative philosophy is fundamentally an abstraction in the sense described in the previous chapter and that the positive and the negative are, in essence, one philosophy, without this philosophy being doomed to suffer from a crippling inconsistency at that.

In clearing the ground for determining the relationship between the positive and the negative philosophies, it is somewhat ironically most convenient to initially approach the positive by negatively determining it, given Schelling’s clues to that regard. Schelling is very careful to differentiate this positive philosophy, which apparently deals with the non-conceptual side of things, from mysticism or intuitionism. It is first and foremost a philosophy – speculative thought with a definite form and method. A mysticism then, fails this first test – as a result of it, we do not obtain knowledge; thus it is not a philosophy at all, and a positive philosophy is definitely not mystical,⁴⁸⁵ for in mysticism the object of inquiry is made into an object of feeling. Schelling makes this point very clear in the Begründung der positiven Philosophie, where he insists that positive philosophy “cannot be identical with any of them [mystical teachings] since it claims to be a philosophy, and, thus, a science.”⁴⁸⁶ A positive philosophy

Offenbarung, so wird die positive Philosophie zu dieser von ihrem Prius aus nicht anders kommen, als wie sie auch zur wirklichen Natur, zum wirklichen Menschen, zum wirklichen Bewußtseyn kommt.”

485 In addition to not having a method, a philosophy based on mysticism is still a philosophy that seeks out

“the divine essence” or “the essence of creation”, thus rendering it, for Schelling, negative. Anything

ontotheological sets for itself a fixed absolute it strives to discover, one way or the other, and does not address the generation of things – that is enough to render it merely positivising, never positive.

486 GPP, p. 174. The German reads at SW XIII, 120: “Um so mehr wird es nothwendig seyn, auch vorläufig schon Aufschluß darüber zu geben, wie sich die von uns in Aussicht gestellte positive Philosophie zu diesen mystischen Lehren verhalte. Denn identisch kann sie doch mit keiner derselben seyn, schon darum, weil sie Philosophie, also Wissenschaft zu seyn behauptet, jene dagegen, wenn nicht alle auf speculativen Inhalt, doch alle auf wissenschaftliche Form und Methode verzichtet haben.”

149

has principles, just like any other science, and although Schelling writes that it does not begin from pure thinking (“[sie] überhaupt nicht vom reinen Denken ausgeht, [sondern…] von dem, was vor und außer allem Denken ist, also von dem Seyn”),⁴⁸⁷ so that it has a beginning completely different from that of the negative philosophy, it uses the same principles as the negative: “Es folgt hieraus, [aus der Tatsache, dass wir Prinzipien als „Stufen und Sprossen“

benutzen, um das philosophische Prius des vollkommenden Geistes zu erreichen (mehr hierüber später), und um am Ende zu entdecken, dass diese Prinzipien aus dem Prius heraus folgen – DK] daß wenn die reinrationale Philosophie dem Vortrag der positiven Philosophie unmittelbar selbst vorausgeht, die letztere nicht erst die Principien des Seyns zu suchen hat, da sie ja in jener schon gegeben sind […]”.⁴⁸⁸The positive is to use, to its own benefit, the results reached through and by the properly conducted negative philosophy, specifically by taking over the principles of being that the negative discovers, those principles being nothing but the potencies.

So, the positive philosophy takes over the principles from the negative. We will see how this plays out in what follows, for now we can ascertain that the Potenzenlehre is indeed to provide the principles for both the positive and the negative philosophies.⁴⁸⁹ Schelling confirms such a reading in his Andere Deduktion der Prinzipien der Positiven Philosophie, where he, after he gives an account of the potencies a further time, writes the following:

Dieselben Potenzen, die sich uns in der negativen Philosophie als apriorische darstellten, und uns alles Concrete vermittelten, kommen hier (in der positiven) wieder, aber nicht als bloße Potenzen, d. h. nicht als solche, die dem Seyn vorausgehen, sondern die das Seyn, und zwar das als Wesen gesetzte Seyn, zu ihrer Voraussetzung, und dadurch zugleich zu ihrer unauflöslichen Einheit haben.⁴⁹⁰

Here we finally get our answer, namely that the potencies can be used in a positive philosophy – together with a further confirmation, that the positive philosophy is not a mysticism and not an intuitionism.

487 SW XIII, 126. For English, see GPP, p. 178: “If it does not start out from something that occurs in thought [im Denken Seyende], and, thus, in no way from pure thought, then it will start out from that which is before and external to all thought, consequently from being [Seyn],but not from an empirical being.”

488 SW XIII, 248f. English: “It follows from this [from the fact that we use principles as ‘stages and sprouts’

in order to reach the philosophical prius of the perfect spirit (more on this later) and in order to discover at the end that these principes follow from the prius – DK] that if purely rational philosophy is immediately antecedent to he account of the positive philosophy, the latter does not have to seek out principles of being initially, as those are already given in the first [...]”

489 Compare on this point Freiheit des Anfangs, pp. 241-242, especially footnote 292: “Das Prinzip liegt gleichermaßen der negativen wie der positiven Philosophie zugrunde und muß von den spezifischen Wegen der beiden Wissenschaften unterschieden werden.” English: “The principle lies at the foundation of both negative and positive philosophy in equal measure and must be distinguished from the specific paths of both sciences.”

490 SW XIV, 353-354. English: “These same potencies which have presented themselves to us in negative philosophy as apriori and mediated everything concrete to us come here (in the positive) again, but not as mere potencies, i.e. not as those that are antecedent to being, but which have being, even being posited as potency, as its antecedent, and therewith also as their indissoluble unity.”