Part II: Ontological Problemata in Schelling’s Late Philosophy in Light of the Potenzenlehre
IV. The reunification of philosophy
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extainment, extained things can contain extainments which extain them.550 The identity between the unprethinkable being and the fact of being’s unprethinkability, between the series of positive philosophy and that of the negative is then an identity of mutual extainment and codeterminance. Instead of being a double series whose horns are parallel to one another, the positive and the negative are two parts of one line – or one curve, touching in identity at the starting point of the former and the endpoint of the latter.551
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Philosophy is an activity taking place in the middle of the production of antecedents and consequents. When we consider “real”553 generation of novelty (even the real generation of ideal novelty, i.e. concepts), in which philosophy proceeds as genuinely positive, philosophy follows the actual emergence and generation of objects, using the potency dialectic of determination as a tool to trace the interrelations of those objects and generative processes and establishes this generation further as it writes its history (which is nevertheless more than just history in the usual sense of the word, since it describes the principles of generation behind things. This kind of philosophy is speculative, but only in the sense that it investigates already existing entities as to their generation and effects, and not in the sense of Kantian speculative reason, which postulates the existence of things out of pure thought.554 This philosophy then follows the train of thought according to which more and more novel entities can emerge, grounded in actual being and its unprethinkable character. This “following” is oriented towards the future, i.e. towards the fact that there is, in the world thought by this philosophy, an eschatology – and a terminus, towards which this world becomes (something which Schelling in the Begründung der Positiven Philosophie calls the “fortgehender, immer wachsender, mit jedem Schritt sich verstärkender Erweis des wirklich existirenden Gottes”555 – the ongoing proof of the existence of God, which is never fully complete. The same project – but oriented towards conceptual completion appears to have been followed in the sadly and ironically incomplete Weltalter).
On the other side of identity, we have the Kantian schema of thoroughgoing determination:
conceptual determination arises against the infinite potency of being or the transcendental ideal of reason, according to the Schelligian definition of a concept formulated in the world of Iain Hamilton Grant: “[A] concept is not a thing, an object, nor an abstract container, but a form of movement overcoming its beginning in pursuit of the history of which it is consequent.”556 Here is the predicative scheme subject/object/subject-object, presented by Schelling, among other things, through the potencies. The concept applied in determination is
553 “Real” is not the best word here – conceptual determination, even in negative philosophy, is a real activity, carried out by real subjects. I muss however denote this row as something, and since Schelling in his early work (e.g. in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus) has used the distinction ideal – real in order to refer to the double series of philosophy, I have decided to borrow this terminology.
554 See what Kant means by “speculative reason” in the CPR: speculative reason is the pure reason in that situation, where it seeks to overstep its boundaries. Metaphysics, for Kant, is speculative in this “bad” sense (B xiv). See B xxi: “Now after speculative reason has been denied all advance in this field of the supersensible, what still remains for us is to try whether there are not data in reason's practical data for determining that
transcendent rational concept of the unconditioned, in such a way as to reach beyond the boundaries of all possible experience, in accordance with the wishes of metaphysics, cognitions a priori that are possible, but only from a practical standpoint.” Also see generally the B-preface of the CPR.
555 SW XIII, 131, see GPP, p. 181: “the progressive, strengthening with every step, and continually growing proof of the actually existing God.”
556 Grant, I. H.: “The Universe in the Universe. German Idealism and the Natural History of Mind” in Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, 72 (2013), pp. 297-316, here pp. 315.
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a motion, produced by reason, as it strives to encompass its own history of generation, i.e.
reflects upon itself and tries to apply itself to its own beginning – applying itself however only to one or another conceptual determination. The system of knowledge may only cast its light forward,557 but the concepts used by this system are retroactive, since they are directed onto a certain definite point in the past of the concept in order to produce more and more detailed determinations and bring them back to the present case of thinking. The biggest difference between this “ideal” series and the “real” one is that the first one does not deal with real generation, but focuses on a static point it seeks to determine, without considering the generation of this point and its future possibilities. At most, the negative philosophy can limit these possibilities through reason and determine them as purely abstract. The important nuance lies in the fact if the ideal series is reflected upon as a process of generation, its activity is also in a certain sense positive: it cannot be opposed to the positive philosophy of the first side, because it is an activity of the ideal series, so to speak, tracing its own historical progression. This is different from a negative philosophy in the sense in which Schelling criticises negative philosophies in the Begründung – such a philosophy merely focuses on the point to be determined as a point, without taking it (or itself, for that matter) to be a spatiotemporal process with certain material conditions, and it is in this sense ahistorical.558 The above tools and the schema give us a view of positive and negative philosophy which is different from the typical understanding of them as a double series whose strands run fairly independently of one another with their subjects clearly delineated into essence and existence, such that the negative ends and then the positive begins simply carrying over the negative’s end point. Such a limited account of the connection between the two philosophies is, however, difficult to avoid due to the differences in subject and method of the two philosophies – although Schelling does attempt to guard against this on multiple occasions, for example:
Ich kehre auf die Meinung zurück, welche einige faßten, als sie aus der Ferne von positiver Philosophie hörten, daß sie nämlich ganz an die Stelle der negativen treten, diese also verdrängen und aufheben sollte. So war es nie gemeint, so leicht gibt sich auch eine Erfindung nicht auf, wie die jener Philosophie, die sich inzwischen für mich zur negativen bestimmt hatte.559
557 SW III, 357.
558 If it is to be noticed, that it is hard to distinguish the two philosophies at this point, then it must be remarked that there identity indeed lies here.
559 SW XIII, 89 – GPP, p. 151: “I return to the opinion that some have formed as they heard from afar of the positive philosophy, namely that it should take the place of the negative entirely, and should thereby supplant and nullify [aufheben] the latter. Thus was it never intended, and so easily will a creation like that of this philosophy never surrender, a philosophy that since then has determined itself for me as the negative.” See also SW XIII, 80 (GPP, p. 145): “Als zuerst durch meine öffentlichen Vorlesungen etwas von positiver Philosophie verlautete, fanden sich mehrere, die sich der negativen gegen mich annehmen zu müssen glaubten, meinend, diese solle ganz abolirt werden, weil ich allerdings von der Hegelschen in solchem Sinne sprach; dieß geschah aber nicht, weil ich die Hegelsche Philosophie für die negative hielt; diese Ehre kann ich ihr nicht anthun, ich kann ihr gar nicht zugeben, die negative zu seyn, ihr Grundfehler besteht vielmehr eben darin, daß sie positiv seyn will.”
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The schema presented in this chapter is different – the negative and the positive are presented much closer to each other than expected, they mutually determine each other, such that essence and existence are parts of one chain of production, both flowing from one identity. In the schematic representation above, production and conceptual determination might still look like they belong to two different chains, but that is a restriction of the diagram: conceptual novelty is produced just like any other kind of novelty, and moreover, concepts, as existing things, are not devoid of causal power: they can and do define the process of material production (as, for instance, in scientific discovery) – the processes on the two sides of the diagram mutually extain each other.
Of negative as a “wasteland devoid of all being” spoken of above, then, it can be said that it is only the abstraction which unfolds when essence is separated from its operative ground that Schelling heaps scorn on. He is only vehemently against a negative philosophy conceived aside from any positivity and aside from its own dynamic ground, as the philosophy of mere essence, taken in its isolated existence before becoming the ground of anything. Its restrictiveness does not step from it being the philosophy of the concept, but from it taking the concept away from the process of grounding.560 The bad, restricted negative is essence surgically extracted from the chain of its operations, which is hardly a legitimate move in the schema of anything but abstraction,561 as essence in its full capacity cannot even be separated from the chain in which it operates, into which it bifurcates. It is always grounded in another, and a positive philosophy gives this grounding due. A positive philosophy gives the grounding of real objects in each other its due as well. It is not that which catatonically stares as things are created. It is not the philosophy which does not address the whatness of things, but that which does not address merely the whatness of things. It is one which deals with the whole schema, the whole interplay of existences produced by nature and determined by reason.
From the foregoing analysis we can also see in what way a well-construed negative philosophy, one that gives consideration to the existence and characteristics of the positive, is necessary for preparing the existence of a true positive philosophy. Schelling himself calls both philosophies necessary and claims that they depend on each other:
Erst die recht verstandene negative Philosophie führt die positive herbei, und umgekehrt die positive Philosophie ist erst gegen die recht verstandene negative
560 On the other hand, Schelling notes that “Das wahre Logische, das Logische im wirklichen Denken, hat in sich eine nothwendige Beziehung auf das Seyn, es wird zum Inhalt des Seyns und geht nothwendig ins Empirische über. Die negative Philosophie als apriorische ist daher nicht in dem Sinn bloß logische Philosophie, daß sie das Seyn ausschlöße.” – SW XIII, 101-102 (GPP, p. 160) – the concept should not be unrelated to being, neither it this that which cannot be related to being.
561 On this point see Loos, S.: “Das Denken und sein Anderes. Refelxionen zum Verhältnis von Vernunft und Göttlichem in der Spätphilosophie Schellings.“ In Denker, A. und Zabrowski, H.: System – Freiheit – Geschichte, Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt: 2004, pp. 79-98, here p. 86.
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möglich. Diese wenn sie in ihre Schranken sich zurückzieht, macht jene erst erkennbar, und dann nicht bloß möglich, sondern nothwendig.562
He goes so far as to claim that positive philosophy could not emerge without developments in the negative: “die positive Philosophie nicht gefunden, nicht entwickelt werden [konnte] ohne entsprechende Fortschritte in der negative”,563 and yet he also writes that the positive philosophy could also have found its beginning (but perhaps not discover its full measure and scope) without the negative:
Aber, wird man sagen, so ist sie [die positive philosophie] ja doch durch die negative begründet, inwiefern sie von dieser die Aufgabe erhält. Ganz richtig, aber die Mittel der Aufgabe zu genügen muß die positive sich rein selbst verschaffen.
Wenn die erste bis zur Forderung der andern fortgeht, geschieht dieß nur in ihrem eignen Interesse, damit sie sich abschließe, nicht aber darum, als ob die positive nöthig hätte die Aufgabe von ihr zu erhalten oder von ihr begründet zu werden;
denn die positive kann rein für sich anfangen, auch etwa mit dem bloßen Ausspruche: Ich will das, was über dem Seyn ist, was nicht das bloße Seyende ist, sondern mehr als dieses, der Herr des Seyns.564
We could summarize these considerations as follows: positive philosophy could very well arise without the negative – although, as Marcela Garcia points out, it is puzzling as to how it would locate its starting point without the “pointers” of the negative565 – but it is only through the latter that the necessity of the former becomes clear: negative philosophy demands something, which it because of its own limitations could itself never reach. Thus, on the basis of this demand, a well-grounded positive philosophy arises. This is how it comes forth in the neatly abstract presentation of the two philosophies – in historical actuality, they have arisen together, and they can only continue developing together:
Nun sehen wir aber in der Natur, in der organischen z. B., daß irgend ein Vorausgehendes, sich zum Negativen oder sich als Negatives zu bekennen, erst in dem Augenblick sich entschließt, in welchem ihm das Positive außer ihm gegeben wird. Es war also unmöglich, daß jene Philosophie sich zu der reinen Negativität entschließen konnte, die an sie gefordert war, ehe die positive Philosophie gefunden und wirklich vorhanden war.566
562 SW XIII, 80. GPP, 145: “Only the correctly understood negative philosophy leads to the positive philosophy; conversely, the positive philosophy is first possible only in contrast to the correctly understood negative. Only the latter’s withdrawal back into its limits makes the former discernable and then, not only possible, but also necessary.”
563 SW XIII, 89-90. For English see GPP, p. 144-145.
564 SW XIII, 93. GPP, p. 202: “Yet, one will say, then it [positive philosophy] is nonetheless grounded by the negative to the extent it receives this demand from it. Quite right, but the positive philosophy must, entirely on its own, supply the means to satisfy this demand. If the negative arrives at the demand for the positive, this occurs only in its own interest that it completes itself—but not as if the positive had the need to receive this demand from it or to be grounded by it. For the positive can begin purely of itself with even the simple words: I want that which is above being [über dem Seyn], that which is not merely being [das bloße Seyende], but rather what is more than this, the Lord of Being [Herr des Seyns].”
565 See Significance of Aristotle pp. 354-355.
566 SW XIII 84-85. GPP, p. 148. “Now we see in organic nature, however, that an earlier organism decides to become negative, or to declare itself as negative, at precisely that moment in which the positive arises
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So, in the Begründung we see discussions of pre-Kantian philosophers whose philosophies cannot really be neatly categorised as either positive and negative, because they contain elements of both philosophies.567
It turns out that the double series of philosophy is itself a kind of abstraction – perhaps a pedagogical move, used by Schelling in order to introduce both philosophical methods, both sides of the identity, before revealing their oneness.568 Both philosophies, the “first” (negative)
outside of it. It was thus impossible that that philosophy could resolve itself to the pure negativity demanded of it before the positive philosophy was discovered and actually present.”
567 Hence in the Grounding we encounter the claim that Plato and Aristotle have not developed negative philosophies, but also not developed positive philosophies. Their philosophies were simply philosophies – not more and not less. On Socrates and Plato, Schelling writes as follows: “Am meisten zeugt dafür, daß der geistvollste seiner [Sokrates’] Schüler, Platon, die ganze Reihe seiner übrigen Werke hindurch dialektisch ist, aber im Gipfel und Verklärungspunkt aller – dafür nimmt wenigstens Schleiermacher den Timäos – oder wäre derselbe vielleicht ein Werk, wozu jugendlicher Ungestüm den dichterischen Philosophen hingerissen? – wie dem sey, im Timäos wird Platon geschichtlich, und bricht, freilich nur gewaltsam, ins Positive durch, nämlich so, daß die Spur des wissenschaftlichen Uebergangs kaum oder schwer zu entdecken ist – es ist mehr ein
Abbrechen vom Vorhergegangenen (nämlich dem Dialektischen) als ein Uebergehen zum Positiven. Sokrates und Platon, beide verhalten sich gegen dieses Positive als ein nur zukünftiges, sie verhalten sich zu ihm prophetisch.” – SW XIII, 100 and GPP, p. 159. On Aristotle he writes thus: “Aristoteles wendet sich vom Logischen ab, sofern es erklärend, also positiv seyn will“ (ebd.), but specifies that he has a lot of negative elements in his philosophy: “Die Philosophie des Aristoteles ist logische Philosophie, aber die von dem vorausgesetzten Existirenden und insofern von der Erfahrung ausgeht. Ihr Anfang ist Erfahrung, ihr Ende das reine Denken, das Logische im höchsten Sinne des Worts, ihr Ganzes aber ein im Feuer der reinsten Analysis bereiteter, aus allen Elementen der Natur und des Menschengeistes abgezogener Geist. […] Aristoteles konnte eine positive Philosophie nicht zulassen, die bei Platon eine bloße Anticipation war, und zu der auch ihm der wissenschaftliche Uebergang nicht gefunden war.” – SW XIII, 107 and GPP, p. 164.
568 If the two philosophies are really unified for Schelling, the question poses itself: how could Schelling criticise Hegel and distance himself from the Hegelian philosophy so forcefully, and what is the difference between their respective philosophies? Acccording to the reading I have developed here, the potencies are dialectical principles of positive philosophy – how does this square with Schelling’s rejection of Hegel (see for instance SW X, 153)? This is exactly the question posed by Axel Hutter, as he discusses the quasi-rationalistic interpretation of Schelling by Walter Schulz in his book Geschichtliche Vernunft (see. Hutter, A.: Geschichtliche Vernunft. Die Weiterführung der Kantischen Vernunftkritik in der Spätphilosophie Schellings, Frankfurt/Main:
1996, p. 28, [cited ass Geschichtliche Vernunft]). The answer to this question is multifaceted and could by no means be uncovered fully here. Some pointers, however, suggests themselves straight away: first, since the potency placeholders could be filled by many objects, the structure of the Potenzenlehre is like an empty canvas, ready for analysing some phenomenon or other. Without accepting such an interpretation of Schelling, many commentators have stressed his ambition to write a speculative epos – one is reminded here of the
“unfolding cosmic poem” Jason Wirth speaks of (Wirth, J.: Schelling’s Practice of the Wild. Albany: 2015, p. 113), Wolfram Hogrebe’s study on the influence of Dante on Schelling (P&G, pp. 31-36), Lothar Knatz on what he calls
“höhere Geschichte” (Geschichte – Kunst – Mythos, pp. 134-138) or the work of Peter Oesterreich on the epos of the Weltalter (Oesterreich, P. L.: “Die Freiheit, der Irrtum, der Tod und die Geisterwelt. Schellings
anthropologischer Übergang in der Metaphysik”. In Jantzen, J. and Oesterreich, P.L. (Eds.) Schellings Philosophische Anthropologie. Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt: 2002). Schelling could attempt to construct such a speculative epos (as an epos and not just history) precisely because of the flexibility of the Potenzenlehre: it gives the philosopher a possibility to conceive the world on different levels as different configurations of the potencies. There is freedom in the application of the potencies as a philosophical instrument. Furthermore, there are essential differences between Schelling’s understanding of the dialectic and that of Hegel. Markus Gabriel discusses those differences in the third of his Aarhus lectures on Schelling, claiming that Schelling and Hegel disagree not just with respect to positive philosophy, but also “on the level of negative philosophy, that is, about some of the details in our account of the structure of pure thought and its relation to what there actually is. In this context, [Schelling] defends a position much closer to Kant in that he argues that being and thought are not necessarily coextensive (as Hegel wants to show with his Science of Logic), but that they rather contingently coincide.” (Aarhus III p.115). In the following lecture, Gabriel launches a Schellingian attack on
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and the “highest” (positive) are united again the moment it is clearly seen what sort of distinction lies between them; this is clearest in full knowledge of their respective limitations:
Wenn Kant am Ende seiner Kritik alles Positive (Dogmatische) von der Vernunft abweist, geschieht ganz dasselbe von Seiten der richtig verstandenen negativen Philosophie; nur darin liegt ihr Unterschied von Kant, daß sie das Positive positiv ausschließt, d. h. zugleich es in einer andern Erkenntniß setzt, was Kant nicht gethan hat. Aber obgleich wir auf eine unzweifelhafte Weise einsehen, daß die Philosophie nur in zwei Wissenschaften sich vollendet, ist doch jetzt der Schein von zwei verschiedenen, nebeneinander bestehenden Philosophien, der allerdings ein Skandal der Philosophie zu nennen gewesen wäre, durch die letzte Erörterung verschwunden. Es hat sich gezeigt, daß die negative Philosophie die positive setzen muß, aber indem sie diese setzt, macht sie sich ja selbst nur zum Bewußtseyn derselben, und ist insofern nichts mehr außer dieser, sondern selbst zu dieser gehörig, also ist doch nur Eine Philosophie.569
The distinction between the two philosophies, the doubling of the series is only real as a doubling from the standpoint of a Kantian transcendental subject, firmly situated within the
Hegel: “Hegel assumes the actuality of a starting point on this side of pure thinking and only belatedly attempts to catch up with what is already there, that is pure thinking. Yet, how is it possible to move from the position of infinite or absolute knowing, that is, of alleged knowledge from a God’s eye point of view to an understanding of finitude without thereby illicitly transforming finitude into a mere disguise of the ‘truly infinite’?” Hegel misses the Schellingian insight: the standpoint of philosophically articulating anything about thought always relies on an abstration from actuality instead of identifying being with pure thinking. (Aarhus IV, pp. 126-128). We can also find an analysis of those differences in Beach’s Potencies of the God(s). The Hegelian dialectic is, according to this analysis a dialectic of sublation, and produces no new principles. The Schellingian dialectic is a dialectic of creation, and it produces something new with every iteration of the dialectic. Furthermore, since thought is a structuring of that which precedes thought, Schelling accepts the concept of “concrete universal”, culminating in the idea of a personal absolute – God. Existence cannot be reduced to the universal because of the
unprethinkability of being (Potencies of the God(s), p. 88; also see Ferrer, D.: “Schellings Stuttgarter
Privatvorlesungen als Systementwurf“. In Hühn, L., Schwab, P. (Ed.): System, Natur und Anthropologie. Zum 200.
Jubiläum von Schellings Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen, München: 2014, pp. 103-120, here pp. 116-120). For Schelling, God is a person, while for Hegel, “absolute Geist aber […] keine Person; er ist, wie der objektive Geist, eine Gebietsbezeichnung“ (Schulz, W.: “Macht und Ohnmacht der Vernunft“, in Hasler, L.: Schelling. Seine Bedeutung für eine Philosophie der Natur und der Geschichte. Referate und Kolloquien der Internationalen Schelling-Tagung Zürich 1979, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt, pp. 21-34, here p. 23). Moreover, in the aforementioned Aarhus lectures, Markus Gabriel makes it clear that there is no room for contingency in Hegel’s philosophy except in the study of nature, while for Schelling, contingency is part and parcel of our very relation to the logical space. For this, see Aarhus III, p. 117. Finally, Hegel and Schelling’s respective conceptions of time are very different, since Hegel conceives of time as merely representation, while for Schelling, as we will see in Chapter VI, time is real (also see Potencies of the Gods, p. 90 and Geschichtliche Vernunft, pp. 88-90). It could nevertheless be the case that Schelling and Hegel are closer to each other than is normally acknowledged. See on this Potencies of the Gods, p. 88; Geschichtliche Vernunft, pp. 71-72 und Hermanni, F.: “Hegel als Episode?
Die Bedeutung der Hegelschen Philosophie für die Entwicklung der Spätphilosophie Schellings.“ in Paetzold, H.
und Schneider, H. (Ed.): Schellings Denken der Freiheit. Festschrift Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik zum 70.
Geburtstag, Kassel: 2010, pp. 237-252, [zit. Hegel als Episode], for analysies of how Hegel has influenced the philosophy of late Schelling.
569 SW XIII, 152. GPP, p. 196: “If, at the end of his critique, Kant dismisses from reason everything that is positive (dogmatic), the very same thing occurs from the viewpoint of the correctly understood negative philosophy; it differs from Kant only in that it positively excludes what is positive, that is, it posits it in a different knowledge, which Kant had not done. But although we realize in an indubitable manner that philosophy only completes itself in two sciences, the semblance, nonetheless, of two different philosophies existing side by side, which certainly would have to be called a scandal of philosophy, now disappears through this last exposition. For it has become apparent that the negative philosophy must posit the positive, but by positing this it only makes itself into the consciousness of the positive, and is to this extent no longer outside the positive, but rather belongs to it itself, so that there is in fact but one philosophy.”