SCHELLING.
_Schelling_ sprang from _Fichte_. We may pass on to an exposition of his
philosophy without any farther introduction, since that which it
contains from Fichte forms a part of its historical development, and
will therefore be treated of as this is unfolded.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph _Schelling_ was born at Leonberg, in
Würtemberg, January 27th, 1775. With a very precocious development, he
entered the theological seminary at Tübingen in his fifteenth year, and
devoted himself partly to philology and mythology, but especially to
Kant’s philosophy. During his course as a student, he was in personal
connection with Hölderlin and Hegel. Schelling came before the world as
an author very early. In 1792 appeared his graduating treatise on the
third chapter of Genesis, in which he gave an interesting philosophical
signification to the Mosaic account of the fall. In the following year,
1793, he published in _Paulus’_ Memorabilia an essay of a kindred nature
“_On the Myths and Philosophemes of the Ancient World_.” To the last
year of his abode at Tübingen belong the two philosophical writings:
“_On the Possibility of a Form for Philosophy_” and “_On the Ego as a
Principle of Philosophy, or on the Unconditioned in Human Knowledge_.”
After completing his university studies, Schelling went to Leipsic as
tutor to the Baron von Riedesel, but soon afterwards repaired to Jena,
where he became the pupil and co-laborer of Fichte. After Fichte’s
departure from Jena, he became himself, 1798, teacher of philosophy
there, and now began, removing himself from Fichte’s standpoint, to
develope more and more his own peculiar views. He published in Jena the
_Journal of Speculative Physics_, and also in company with Hegel, _the
Critical Journal_. In the year 1803 he went to Würzburg as professor
_ordinarius_ of philosophy. In 1807 he repaired to Munich as member
_ordinarius_ of the newly established academy of sciences there. The
year after he became general secretary of the Academy of the plastic
arts, and subsequently, when the university professorship was
established at Munich, he became its incumbent. After the death of
Jacobi, he was chosen president of the Munich Academy. In 1841 he
removed to Berlin, where he has sometimes held lectures. For the last
ten years Schelling has written nothing of importance, although he has
repeatedly promised an exposition of his present system. By far the
greater portion of his writings belongs to his early life. Schelling’s
philosophy is no completed system of which his separate works are the
constituent elements; but, like Plato’s, it has a historical
development, a course of formative steps which the philosopher has
passed through in his own life. Instead of systematically elaborating
the separate sciences from the standpoint of his principle, Schelling
has gone back repeatedly to the beginning again, seeking ever for new
foundations and new standpoints, connecting these for the most part
(like Plato) with some antecedent philosophemes, (Fichte, Spinoza, New
Platonism, Leibnitz, Jacob Bœhme, Gnosticism,) which in their order he
attempted to interweave with his system. We must modify accordingly our
exposition of Schelling’s Philosophy, and take up its different periods,
separated according to the different groups of his writings.[4]
I. FIRST PERIOD. SCHELLING’S PROCESSION FROM FICHTE.
Schelling’s starting point was Fichte, whom he decidedly followed in his
earliest writings. In his essay, “_On the Possibility of a Form of
Philosophy_” he shows the necessity of that supreme principle which
Fichte had first propounded. In his essay, “_On the Ego_” Schelling
shows that the ultimate ground of our knowledge can only lie in the Ego,
and hence that every true philosophy must be idealism. If our knowledge
shall possess reality, there must be one point in which ideality and
reality, thought and being, can identically coincide; and if outside of
our knowledge, there were something higher which conditioned it, if
itself were not the highest, then it could not be absolute. Fichte
regarded this essay as a commentary on his _Theory of Science_; yet it
contains already indications of Schelling’s subsequent standpoint, in
its expressly affirming the unity of all knowledge, the necessity that
in the end all the different sciences shall become merged into one. In
the “_Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism_,” 1795, Schelling combatted
the notions of those Kantians who had left the critical and idealistic
standpoint of their master, and fallen back again into the old
dogmatism. It was also on the standpoint of Fichte that Schelling
published in Niethammer’s and Fichte’s Journal, 1797-98, a series of
articles, in which he gave a survey of the recent philosophical
literature. Here he begins to turn his attention towards a philosophical
deduction of nature, though he still remains on the standpoint of Fichte
when he deduces nature wholly from the essence of the Ego. In the essay
which was composed soon after, and entitled “_Ideas for a philosophy of
Nature_,” 1797, and the one “_On the World-soul_,” 1798, he gradually
unfolded more clearly his views. The chief points which are brought out
in the two last named essays are the following: The first origin of the
conception of matter springs from nature and the intuition of the human
mind. The mind is the union of an unlimited and a limiting energy. If
there were no limit to the mind, consciousness would be just as
impossible as if the mind were totally and absolutely limited. Feeling,
perception and knowledge are only conceivable, as the energy which
strives for the unlimited becomes limited through its opposite, and as
this latter becomes itself freed from its limitations. The actual mind
or heart consists only in the antagonism of these two energies, and
hence only in their ever approximate or relative unity. Just so is it in
nature. Matter as such is not the first, for the forces of which it is
the unity are before it. Matter is only to be apprehended as the ever
becoming product of attraction and repulsion; it is not, therefore, a
mere inert grossness, as we are apt to represent it, but these forces
are its original. But force in the material is like something
immaterial. Force in nature is that which we may compare to mind. Since
now the mind or heart exhibits precisely the same conflict, as matter,
of opposite forces, we must unite the two in a higher identity. But the
organ of the mind for apprehending nature is the intuition which takes,
as object of the external sense, the space which has been filled and
limited by the attracting and repelling forces. Thus Schelling was led
to the conclusion that _the same absolute_ appears in nature as in mind,
and that the harmony of these is something more than a thought in
reference to them. “Or if you affirm that we only _carry over_ such an
idea to nature, then have you utterly failed to apprehend the only
nature which there can be to us. For our view of nature is not that it
accidentally meets the laws of our mind—(perhaps through the mediation
of a third)—but that it necessarily and originally not only expresses,
but itself realizes, the laws of our mind, and that it is nature, and is
called such only in so far as it does this.” “Nature should be the
visible mind, and mind invisible nature. Here, therefore, in the
absolute ideality of the mind _within_ us, and nature _without_ us, must
we solve the problem how it is possible for a nature outside of us to
be.” This thought, that nature or matter is just as much the actual
unity of an attracting and a repelling force, as the mind or heart is
the unity of an unlimited and a limiting tendency, and that the
repelling force in matter corresponds to the positive or unlimited
activity of the mind, while the attracting force corresponds to the
mind’s negative or limiting activity—this identical deduction of matter
from the essence of the Ego, is very prominent in all that Schelling
wrote upon natural philosophy during this period. Nature thus appears as
a copy (_Doppelbild_) of the mind, which the mind itself produces, in
order to return, by its means, to pure self-intuition, to
self-consciousness. Hence we have the successive stages of nature, in
which all the stations of the mind in its way to self-consciousness are
externally established. It is especially in the organic world that the
mind can behold its own self-production. Hence, in every thing organic,
there is something symbolical, every plant bears some feature of the
soul. The chief characteristics of an organic formation,—the
self-forming process from within outwards, the conformity to some end,
the change of interpenetration of form and matter—are equally chief
features of the mind. Since now there exists in our mind an endless
striving to organize itself, so there must also be manifested in the
external world a universal tendency to organization. The whole universe
may thus be called a kind of organization which has formed itself from a
centre, rising ever from a lower to a higher stage. From such a point of
view, the natural philosopher will make it his chief effort to bring to
a unity in his contemplations that life of nature, which by many
researches into physical science had been separated into numberless
different powers. “It is a needless trouble which many have given
themselves, to show how very different is the working of fire and
electricity, for every one knows this who has ever seen or heard of the
two. But our mind strives after unity in the system of its knowledge; it
will not endure that there should be pressed upon it a separate
principle for every single phenomenon, and it will only believe that it
sees nature where it can discover the greatest simplicity of laws in the
greatest multiplicity of phenomena, and the highest frugality of means
in the highest prodigality of effects. Therefore, every thought, even
that which is now rough and crude, merits attention so soon as it tends
towards the simplifying of principles, and if it serves no other end, it
at least strengthens the impulse to investigate and trace out the hidden
process of nature.” The special tendency of the scientific investigation
of nature which prevailed at that time, was to make a duality of forces
the predominant element in the life of nature. In mechanics, the Kantian
theory of the opposition of attraction and repulsion was adopted; in
chemistry, by apprehending electricity as positive and negative, its
phenomenon was brought near that of magnetism; in physiology there was
the opposition of irritability and sensibility, &c. In opposition to
these dualities, Schelling now insisted upon the unity of every thing
opposite, the unity of all dualities, and this not simply as an abstract
unity, but as a concrete identity, as the harmonious co-working of the
heterogeneous. The world is the actual unity of a positive and a
negative principle, “and these two conflicting forces taken together, or
represented in their conflict, lead to the idea of an organizing
principle which makes of the world a system, in other words, to the idea
of a world-soul.”
In his above-cited essay on “_the world-soul_,” Schelling took the great
step forward of apprehending nature as entirely autonomic. In the
world-soul nature has a peculiar principle which dwells within it, and
works according to conception. In this way the objective world was
recognized as the independent life of nature in a manner which the
logical idealism of Fichte would not permit. Schelling proceeded still
farther in this direction, and distinguished definitely, as the two
sides of philosophy, the philosophy of nature and a transcendental
philosophy. By placing a philosophy of nature by the side of idealism,
Schelling passed decidedly beyond the standpoint of science, and we thus
enter a second stadium of his philosophizing, though his method still
remained that of Fichte, and he continued to believe that he was
speculating in the spirit of the _Theory of Science_.
II. SECOND PERIOD. STANDPOINT OF THE DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE
PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE AND OF MIND.
This standpoint of Schelling is chiefly carried out in the following
works:—“_First Draft of a System of Natural Philosophy_,” 1799; an
introduction to this, 1799; articles in the “_Journal of Speculative
Physics_,” 1800, 1801; “_System of Transcendental Idealism_,” 1800.
Schelling thus distinguishes the two sides of philosophy. All knowledge
rests upon the harmony of a subject with an object. That which is simply
objective is natural, and that which is simply subjective is the Ego or
intelligence. There are two possible ways of uniting these two sides: we
may either make nature first, and inquire how it is that intelligence is
associated with it (natural philosophy); or we may make the subject
first, and inquire how do objects proceed from the subject
(transcendental philosophy). The end of all philosophy must be to make
either an intelligence out of nature, or a nature out of intelligence.
As the transcendental philosophy has to subject the real to the ideal,
so must natural philosophy attempt to explain the ideal from the real.
Both, however, are only the two poles of one and the same knowledge
which reciprocally attract each other; hence, if we start from either
pole, we are necessarily drawn towards the other.
1. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.—To philosophize concerning nature is, in a
certain sense, to create nature—to raise it from the dead mechanism in
which it had seemed confined, to inspire it with freedom, and transpose
it into a properly free development. And what, then, is matter, other
than mind which has become extinct? According to this view, since nature
is only the visible organism of our understanding, it can produce
nothing but what is conformable to a rule and an end. But you radically
destroy every idea of nature just so soon as you allow its design to
have come to it from without, by passing over from the understanding of
any being. The complete exhibition of the intellectual world in the laws
and forms of the phenomenal world, and, on the other hand, the complete
conception of these laws and forms from the intellectual world, and
therefore the exhibition of the ideality of nature with the ideal world,
is the work of natural philosophy. Immediate experience is indeed its
starting point; we know originally nothing except through experience;
but just as soon as I gain an insight into the inner necessity of a
principle of experience, it becomes a principle apriori. Natural
philosophy is empiricism extended until it becomes absolute.
Schelling expresses himself as follows, concerning the chief principles
of a philosophy of nature. Nature is a suspension (_Schweben_) between
productivity and product, which is always passing over into definite
forms and products, just as it is always productively passing beyond
these. This suspension indicates a duality of principles, through which
nature is held in a constant activity, and hindered from exhausting
itself in its products. A universal duality is thus the principle of
every explanation of nature; it is the first principle of a philosophic
theory of nature, to end in all nature with polarity and dualism. On the
other hand, the final cause of all our contemplation of nature is to
know that absolute unity which comprehends the whole, and which suffers
only one side of itself to be known in nature. Nature is, as it were,
the instrument of this absolute unity, through which it eternally
executes and actualizes that which is prefigured in the absolute
understanding. The whole absolute is therefore cognizable in nature,
though phenomenal nature only exhibits in a succession, and produces in
an endless development, that which the true or real nature eternally
possesses. Schelling treats of natural philosophy in three sections: (1)
the proof that nature, in its original products, is _organic_; (2) the
conditions of an _inorganic_ nature; (3) the reciprocal determination of
organic and inorganic nature.
(1.) _Organic nature_ Schelling thus deduces: Nature absolutely
apprehended is nothing other than infinite activity, infinite
productivity. If this were unhindered in expressing itself, it would at
once, with infinite celerity, produce an absolute product, which would
allow no explanation for empirical nature. If this latter may be
explained—if there may be finite products, we must consider the
productive activity of nature as restrained by an opposite, a retarding
activity, which lies in nature itself. Thus arises a series of finite
products. But since the absolute productivity of nature tends towards an
absolute product, these individual products are only apparent ones,
beyond each one of which nature herself advances, in order to satisfy
the absoluteness of her inner productivity through an infinite series of
individual products. In this eternal producing of finite products,
nature shows itself as a living antagonism of two opposite forces, a
productive and a retarding tendency. And, indeed, the working of this
latter is infinitely manifold; the original productive impulse of nature
has not only to combat a simple restraint, but it must struggle with an
infinity of reactions, which may be called original qualities. Hence
every organic being is the permanent expression for a conflict of
reciprocally destroying and limiting actions of nature. And from this,
viz., from the original limitation and infinite restraint of the
formative impulse of nature, we see the reason why every organization,
instead of attaining to an absolute product, only reproduces itself _ad
infinitum_. Upon this rests the special significance for the organic
world, of the distinction of sex. The distinction of sex fixes the
organic products of nature, it restrains them within their own processes
of development, and suffers them only to produce the same again. But in
this production nature has no regard for the individual, but only for
the species. The individual is contrary to nature; nature desires the
absolute, and its constant effort is to represent this. Individual
products, therefore, in which the activity of nature is brought to a
stand, can only be regarded as abortive attempts to represent the
absolute. Hence the individual must be the means, and the species the
end of nature. Just so soon as the species is secured, nature abandons
the individuals and labors for their destruction. Schelling divides the
dynamic scale of organic nature according to the three grand functions
of the organic world: (_a_) Formative impulse (reproductive energy);
(_b_) Irritability; (_c_) Sensibility. Highest in rank are those
organisms in which sensibility has the preponderance over irritability;
a lower rank is held by those where irritability preponderates, and
lower still are those where reproduction first comes out in its entire
perfection, while sensibility and irritability are almost extinct. Yet
these three powers are interwoven together in all nature, and hence
there is but one organization, descending through all nature from man to
the plant.
(2.) _Inorganic nature_ offers the antithesis to organic. The existence
and essence of inorganic nature are conditioned through the existence
and essence of organic nature. While the powers of organic nature are
productive, those of inorganic nature are not productive. While organic
nature aims only to establish the species, inorganic nature regards only
the individual, and offers no reproduction of the species through the
individual. It possesses a great multitude of materials, but can only
use these materials in the way of conjoining or separating. In a word,
inorganic nature is simply a mass held together by some external cause
as gravity. Yet it, like organic nature, has its gradations. The power
of reproduction in the latter has its counterpart in the chemical
process in the former; that which in the one case is irritability, in
the other is electricity; and sensibility, which is the highest stage of
organic life, corresponds to the universal magnetism, the highest stage
of the inorganic.
(3.) _The reciprocal determination of the organic and inorganic world_,
is made clear by what has already been said. The result to which every
genuine philosophy of nature must come, is that the distinction between
organic and inorganic nature is only in nature as object, and that
nature, as originally productive, waves over both. If the functions of
an organism are only possible on the condition that there is a definite
external world, and an organic world, then must the external world and
the organic world have a common origin. This can only be explained on
the ground that inorganic nature presupposes in order to its existence a
higher dynamical order of things, to which it is subject. There must be
a third, which can unite again organic and inorganic nature; which can
be a medium, holding the continuity between the two. Both must be
identified in some ultimate cause, through which, as through one common
soul of nature (world-soul), both the organic and inorganic, _i. e._
universal nature, is inspired; in some common principle, which,
fluctuating between inorganic and organic nature, and maintaining the
continuity of the two, contains the first cause of all changes in the
one, and the ultimate ground of all activity in the other. We have here
the idea of a universal organism. That it is one and the same
organization which unites in one the organic and inorganic world, would
appear from what has already been said of the parallel gradations of the
two worlds. That which in universal nature is the cause of magnetism, is
in organic nature the cause of sensibility, and the latter is only a
higher potency of the former. Just as in the organic world through
sensibility, so in universal nature through magnetism, there arises a
duality from the ideality. In this way organic nature appears only as a
higher stage of the inorganic; the very same dualism which is seen in
magnetic polarity, electrical phenomena, and chemical differences,
displays itself also in the organic world.
2. TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY.—Transcendental philosophy is the
philosophy of nature become subjective. The whole succession of objects
thus far described, becomes now repeated as a successive development of
the beholding subject. It is the peculiarity of transcendental idealism,
that so soon as it is once admitted, it requires that the origin of all
knowledge shall be sought for anew; that the truth which has long been
considered as established, should be subjected to a new examination, and
that this examination should proceed under at least an entirely new
form. All parts of philosophy must be exhibited in one continuity, and
the whole of philosophy must be regarded as that which it is, viz., the
advancing history of consciousness, which can use only as monuments or
documents that which is laid down in experience. (Schelling’s
transcendental idealism is, in this respect, the forerunner to Hegel’s
_Phœnomenology_, which pursues a similar course). The exhibition of this
connection is properly a succession of intuitions through which the Ego
raises itself to consciousness in the highest potency. Neither
transcendental philosophy nor the philosophy of nature, can alone
represent the parallelism between nature and intelligence; but, in order
to this, both sciences must be united, the former being considered as a
necessary counterpart to the other. The division of transcendental
philosophy follows from its problem, to seek anew the origin of all
knowledge, and to subject to a new examination every previous judgment
which had been held to be established truth. The pre-judgments of the
common understanding are principally two: (1) That a world of objects
exist independent of, and outside of, ourselves, and are represented to
us just as they are. To explain this pre-judgment, is the problem of the
first part of the transcendental philosophy (_theoretical philosophy_).
(2) That we can produce an effect upon the objective world according to
representations which arise freely within us. The solution of this
problem is _practical philosophy_. But, with these two problems we find
ourselves entangled, (3) in a contradiction. How is it possible that our
thought should ever rule over the world of sense, if the representation
is conditional in its origin by the objective? The solution of this
problem, which is the highest of transcendental philosophy, is the
answer to the question: how can the representations be conceived as
directing themselves according to the objects, and at the same time the
objects be conceived as directing themselves according to the
representations? This is only conceivable on the ground that the
activity through which the objective world is produced, is originally
identical with that which utters itself in the will. To show this
identity of conscious and unconscious activity, is the problem of the
third part of transcendental philosophy, or the science of ends in
nature and of art. The three parts of the transcendental philosophy
correspond thus entirely to the three criticks of Kant.
(1.) _The theoretical philosophy_ starts from the highest principle of
knowledge, the self-consciousness, and from this point developes the
history of self-consciousness, according to its most prominent epochs
and stations, viz., sensation, intuition, productive intuition (which
produces matter)—outer and inner intuition (from which space and time,
and all Kant’s categories may be derived), abstraction (by which the
intelligence distinguishes itself from its products)—absolute
abstraction, or absolute act of will. With the act of the will there is
spread before us,
(2.) _The Field of Practical Philosophy._—In practical philosophy the
Ego is no longer beholding, _i. e._ consciousless, but is consciously
producing, _i. e._ realizing. As a whole, nature developes itself from
the original act of self-consciousness, so from the second act, or the
act of free self-determination, there is produced a second nature, to
find the origin for which is the object of practical philosophy. In his
exposition of the practical philosophy, Schelling follows almost wholly
the theory of Fichte, but closes this section with some remarkable
expressions respecting the philosophy of history. History, as a whole,
is, according to him, a gradual and self-disclosing revelation of the
absolute, a progressing demonstration of the existence of a God. The
history of this revelation may be divided into three periods. The first
is that in which the overruling power was apprehended only as destiny,
_i. e._ as a blind power, cold and consciousless, which brings the
greatest and most glorious things of earth to ruin; it is marked by the
decay of the magnificence and wonders of the ancient world, and the fall
of the noblest manhood that has ever bloomed. The second period of
history is that in which this destiny manifests itself as nature, and
the hidden law seems changed into a manifest law of nature, which
compels freedom and every choice to submit to and serve a plan of
nature. This period seems to begin with the spread of the great Roman
republic. The third period will be that where what has previously been
regarded as destiny and nature, will develope itself as Providence. When
this period shall begin, we cannot say; we can only affirm that if it
be, then God will be seen also to be.
(3.) _Philosophy of Art._—The problem of transcendental philosophy is to
harmonize the subjective and the objective. In history, with which
practical philosophy closes, the identity of the two is not exhibited,
but only approximated in an infinite progress. But now the Ego must
attain a position where it can actually look upon this identity, which
constitutes its inner essence. If now all conscious activity exhibits
design, then a conscious and consciousless activity can only coincide in
a product, which, though it exhibits design, was yet produced without
design. Such a product is nature; we have here the principle of all
_teleology_, in which alone the solution of the given problem can be
sought. The peculiarity of nature is this, viz., that though it exhibits
itself as nothing but a blind mechanism, it yet displays design, and
represents an identity of the conscious subjective, and the
consciousless objective activity; in it the Ego beholds its own most
peculiar essence, which consists alone in this identity. But in nature
the Ego beholds this identity, not as something objective, which has a
being only outside of it, but also as that whose principle lies within
the Ego itself. This beholding is the art-intuition. As the production
of nature is consciousless, though similar to that which is conscious,
so the æsthetic production of the artist is a conscious production,
similar to that which is consciousless. _Æsthetics_ must therefore be
joined to teleology. That contradiction between the conscious and the
consciousless, which moves forward untiringly in history, and which is
unconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its conscious reconciliation
in a work of art. In a work of art, the intelligence attains a perfect
intuition of itself. The feeling which accompanies this intuition, is
the feeling of an endless satisfaction; all contradictions being
resolved, and every riddle explained. The unknown, which unexpectedly
harmonizes the objective and the conscious activity, is nothing other
than that absolute and unchangeable identity, to which every existence
must be referred. In the artist it lays aside the veil, which elsewhere
surrounds it, and irresistibly impels him to complete his work. Thus
there is no other eternal revelation but art, and this is also the
miracle which should convince us of the reality of that supreme, which
is never itself objective, but is the cause of all objective. Hence art
holds a higher rank than philosophy, for only in art has the
intellectual intuition objectivity. There is nothing, therefore, higher
to the philosopher than art, because this opens before him, as it were,
the holy of holies, where that which is separate in nature and history,
and which in life and action, as in thought, must ever diverge, burns,
as it were, in one flame, in an eternal and original union. From this we
see also both the fact and the reason for it, that philosophy, as
philosophy, can never be universally valid. Art is that alone to which
is given, an absolute objectivity, and it is through this alone that
nature, consciously productive, concludes and completes itself within
itself.
The “_Transcendental Idealism_” is the last work which Schelling wrote
after the method of Fichte. In its principle he goes decidedly beyond
the standpoint of Fichte. That which was with Fichte the inconceivable
limit of the Ego, Schelling derives as a necessary duality, from the
simple essence of the Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of
subject and object, only as an infinite progression towards that which
ought to be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work
of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of a moral
faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the immediate object of
the æsthetic intuition. This difference between the two could not long
be concealed from Schelling. He was obliged to see that he no longer
stood upon the basis of subjective idealism, but that his real position
was that of objective idealism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in
setting the philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite
to each other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step
farther, and, placing himself on the point of indifference between the
two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being,
as his principle. This principle _Spinoza_ had already possessed before
him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling now found himself
peculiarly attracted. Instead of following Fichte’s method, he now
availed himself of that of Spinoza, the mathematical, to which he
ascribed the greatest evidence of proof.
III. THIRD PERIOD: PERIOD OF SPINOZISM, OR THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE IDEAL
AND THE REAL.
The principal writings of this period are:—“_Exposition of my System of
Philosophy_” (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2); the second
edition, with additions, of the “_Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_”
1803; the dialogue, “_Bruno, or concerning the Divine and the Natural
Principle of Things_” 1802; “_Lectures on the Method of Academical
Study_,” 1803; three numbers of a “_New Journal for Speculative
Physics_,” 1802-3. The characteristic of the new standpoint of
Schelling, to which we now arrive, is perfectly exhibited in the
definition of reason, which he places at the head of the first of the
above-named writings; I give to reason the name absolute, or the reason
in so far as it is conceived as the total _indifference of the
subjective and the objective_. To think of reason is demanded of every
man; to think of it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which
I require, every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To
him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be
something subjective, as most men represent it; neither can it be
conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that which is
thought, is only possible in opposition to that which thinks. We thus
rise through this abstraction to the reality of things (_zum wahren
an-sich_), which reality is precisely in the indifference point of the
subjective and the objective. The standpoint of philosophy is the
standpoint of reason; its knowledge is a knowledge of things as they are
in themselves, _i. e._ as they are in the reason. It is the nature of
philosophy to destroy every distinction which the imagination has
mingled with the thinking, and to see in things only that through which
they express the absolute reason, not regarding in them that which is
simply an object for that reflection which expends itself on the laws of
mechanism and in time. Besides reason there is nothing, and in it is
every thing. Reason is the absolute. All objections to this principle
can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking at
things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every thing which
is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. It is not the
reason which posits something external to itself, but only the false use
of reason, which is connected with the incapacity of forgetting the
subjective in itself. The reason is absolutely _one_ and like itself.
The highest law for the being of reason, and since there is nothing
besides reason, the highest law for all being, is the law of identity.
Between subject and object therefore—since it is one and the same
absolute identity which displays itself in both—there can be no
difference except a _quantitative_ difference (a difference of more or
less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but in
all things subject and object are united, this union being in different
proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes the object has
the preponderance. But since the absolute is pure identity of subject
and object, there can be no quantitative difference except outside of
the identity, _i. e._ in the finite. As the fundamental form of the
Infinite is A = A, so the scheme of the finite is A = B (_i. e._ the
union of a subjective with another objective in a different proportion).
But, in reality, nothing is finite, because the identity is the only
reality. So far as there is difference in individual things, the
identity exists in the form of indifference. If we could see together
every thing which is, we should find in all the pure identity, because
we should find in all a perfect quantitative equilibrium of subjectivity
and objectivity. True, we find, in looking at individual objects, that
sometimes the preponderance is on one side and sometimes on the other,
but in the whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is the
absolute totality, the universe itself. There is in reality (_an-sich_)
no individual being or thing. There is in reality nothing beyond the
totality; and if any thing beyond this is beheld, this can only happen
by virtue of arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole,
which is done through reflection, and is the source of every error. The
absolute identity is essentially the same in every part of the universe.
Hence the universe may be conceived under the figure of a line, in the
centre of which is the A = A, while at the end on one side is A⁺ = B, _i.
e._ a transcendence of the subjective, and at the end on the other side
is A = B⁺, _i. e._ a transcendence of the objective, though this must
be conceived so that a relative identity may exist even in these
extremes. The one side is the real or nature, the other side is the
ideal. The real side developes itself according to three potences (a
potence, or power, indicates a definite quantitative difference of
subjectivity and objectivity). (1) The first potence is matter and
weight—the greatest preponderance of the object. (2) The second potence
is light (A²), an inner—as weight is an outer—intuition of nature. The
light is a higher rising of the subjective. It is the absolute identity
itself. (3) The third potence is organism (A³), the common product of
light and weight. Organism is just as original as matter. Inorganic
nature, as such, does not exist: it is actually organized, and is, as it
were, the universal germ out of which organization proceeds. The
organization of every globe is but the inner evolution of the globe
itself; the earth itself, by its own evolving, becomes animal and plant.
The organic world has not formed itself out of the inorganic, but has
been at least potentially present in it from the beginning. That matter
which lies before us, apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic
metamorphoses, which could not become organic. The human brain is the
highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth. From the
above, Schelling adds, it must be perceived that we affirm an inner
identity of all things, and a potential presence of every thing in every
other, and therefore even the so-called dead matter may be viewed only
as a sleeping-world of animals and plants, which, in some period, the
absolute identity may animate and raise to life. At this point Schelling
stops suddenly, without developing further the three potences of the
ideal series, corresponding to those of the real. Elsewhere he completes
the work by setting up the following three potences of the ideal series:
(1) Knowledge, the potence of reflection; (2) Action, the potence of
subsumption; (3) the Reason as the unity of reflection and subsumption.
These three potences represent themselves: (1) as the true, the
imprinting of the matter in the form; (2) as the good, or the imprinting
of the form in the matter; (3) as the beautiful, or the work of art, the
absolute blending together of form and matter.
Schelling sought also to furnish himself with a new method for knowing
the absolute identity. Neither the analytic nor the synthetical method
seems to him suitable for this, since both are only a finite knowledge.
Gradually, also, he abandoned the mathematical method. The logical forms
of the ordinary method of knowledge, and even the ordinary metaphysical
categories, were now insufficient for him. Schelling now places the
intellectual intuition as the starting point of true knowledge.
Intuition, in general, is an equal positing of thought and being. When I
behold an object, the being of the object and my thought of the object
is for me absolutely the same. But in the ordinary intuition, some
separate sensible being is posited as one with the thought. But in the
intellectual or rational intuition, being in general, and every being is
made identical with the thought, and the absolute _subject-object_ is
beheld. The intellectual intuition is absolute knowledge, and as such it
can only be conceived as that in which thought and being are not opposed
to each other. It is the beginning and the first step towards philosophy
to behold, immediately and intellectually within thyself, that same
indifference of the ideal and the real which thou beholdest projected as
it were from thyself in space and time. This absolutely absolute mode of
knowledge is wholly and entirely in the absolute itself. That it can
never become taught is clear. It cannot, moreover, be seen why
philosophy is bound to have special regard to the unattainable. It seems
much more fitting to make so complete a separation on every side between
the entrance to philosophy and the common knowledge, that no road nor
track shall lead from the latter to the former. The absolute mode of
knowledge, like the truth which it contains, has no true opposition
outside of itself, and as it cannot be demonstrated by any intelligent
being, so nothing can be set up in opposition to it by any.—Schelling
has attempted to bring the intellectual intuition into a method, and has
named this method construction. The possibility and the necessity of the
constructive method is based upon the fact that the absolute is in all,
and that all is the absolute. Construction is nothing other than the
proving that the whole is absolutely expressed in every particular
relation and object. To construe an object, philosophically, is to prove
that in this object the whole inner structure of the absolute repeats
itself.
In Schelling’s “_Lectures on the Method of Academical Study_” (delivered
in 1802, and published in 1803), he sought to treat encyclopædiacally,
every philosophical discipline from the given standpoint of identity or
indifference. They furnish a connected and popular exposition of the
outlines of his philosophy, in the form of a critical modelling of the
studies of the university course. The most noticeable feature in them is
Schelling’s attempt at a historical construction of Christianity. The
incarnation of God is an incarnation from eternity. The eternal Son of
God, born from the essence of the father of all things, is the finite
itself, as it is in the eternal intuition of God. Christ is only the
historical and phenomenal pinnacle of the incarnation; as an individual,
he is a person wholly conceivable from the circumstances of the age in
which he appeared. Since God is eternally outside of all time, it is
inconceivable that he should have assumed a human nature at any definite
moment of time. The temporal form of Christianity, the exoteric
Christianity does not correspond to its idea, and has its perfection yet
to be hoped for. A chief hindrance to the perfection of Christianity,
was, and is the so-called Bible, which, moreover, is far inferior to
other religious writings, in a genuine religious content. The future
must bring a new birth of the esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher
form of religion, in which philosophy, religion and poesy shall melt
together in unity.—This latter remark contains already an intimation of
the “_Philosophy of Revelation_,” a work subsequently written by
Schelling, and which exhibited many of the principles current in the age
of the apostle John. In the work we are now considering, there are also
many other points which correspond to this later standpoint of
Schelling. Thus he places at the summit of history a kind of golden age.
It is inconceivable, he says, that man as he now appears, should have
raised himself through himself from instinct to consciousness, from
animality to rationality. Another human race, must, therefore, have
preceded the present, which the old saga have immortalized under the
form of gods and heroes. The first origin of religion and culture is
only conceivable through the instruction of higher natures. I hold the
condition of culture as the first condition of the human race, and
considere the first foundation of states, sciences, religion and arts as
cotemporary, or rather as one thing: so that all these were not truly
separate, but in the completest interpenetration, as it will be again in
the final consummation. Schelling is no more than consistent when he
accordingly apprehends the symbols of mythology which we meet with at
the beginning of history, as disclosures of the highest wisdom. There is
here also a step towards his subsequent “_Philosophy of Mythology_.”
The mystical element revealed in these expressions of Schelling gained
continually a greater prominence with him. Its growth was partly
connected with his fruitless search after an absolute method, and a
fitting form in which he might have satisfactorily expressed his
philosophic intuitions. All noble mysticism rests on the incapacity of
adequately expressing an infinite content in the form of a conception.
So Schelling, after he had been restlessly tossed about in every method,
soon gave up also his method of construction, and abandoned himself
wholly to the unlimited current of his fancy. But though this was partly
the cause of his mysticism, it is also true that his philosophical
standpoint was gradually undergoing a change. From the speculative
science of nature, he was gradually passing over more and more into the
philosophy of mind, by which the determination of the absolute in his
conception became changed. While he had previously determined the
absolute as the indifference of the ideal and the real, he now gives a
preponderance to the ideal over the real, and makes ideality the
fundamental determination of the absolute. The first is the ideal;
secondly, the ideal determines itself in itself to the real, and the
real as such is the third. The earlier harmony of mind and matter is
dissolved: matter appears now as the negative of mind. Since Schelling
in this way distinguishes the universe from the absolute as its
counterpart, we see that he leaves decidedly the basis of Spinozism on
which he had previously stood, and places himself on a new standpoint.
IV. FOURTH PERIOD: THE DIRECTION OF SCHELLING’S PHILOSOPHY AS MYSTICAL
AND ALLIED TO NEW-PLATONISM.
The writings of this period are:—“_Philosophy and Religion_,” 1804.
“_Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the
improved Theory of Fichte_,” 1806; “_Medical Annual_” (published in
company with _Marcus_) 1805-1808.—As has already been said, the absolute
and the universe were, on the standpoint of indifference, identical.
Nature and history were immediate manifestations of the absolute. But
now Schelling lays stress upon the difference between the two, and the
independence of the world. This he expresses in a striking way in the
first of the above named writings, by placing the origin of the world
wholly after the manner of New-Platonism, in a breaking away or a
falling off from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual, there is
no abiding transition; the origin of the sensible world is only
conceivable as a complete breaking off _per saltum_ from the absolute.
The absolute is the only real, finite things are not real; they can,
therefore, have their ground in no reality imparted to them from the
absolute, but only in a separation and complete falling away from the
absolute. The reconciliation of this fall, and the manifestation of God
made complete, is the final cause of history. With this idea there are
also connected other representations borrowed from New-Platonism, which
Schelling brings out in the same work. He speaks in it of the descent of
the soul from intellectuality, to the world of sense, and like the
Platonic myth he allows this fall of souls to be a punishment for their
selfhood (pride); he speaks also in connection with this of a
regeneration, or transmigration of souls, by which they either begin a
higher life on a better sphere, or intoxicated with matter, they are
driven down to a still lower abode, according as they have in the
present life laid aside more or less of their selfhood, and become
purified in a greater or less degree, to an identity with the infinite;
but we are especially reminded of New-Platonism by the high place and
the mystical and symbolical significance, which Schelling gives in this
work to the Greek mysteries (as did Bruno), and the view that if
religion would be held in its pure ideality, it can only exist as
exoteric, or in the form of mysteries.—This notion of a higher blending
together of religion and philosophy goes through all the writings of
this period. All true experience, says Schelling in the “_Medical
Annual_,” is religious. The existence of God is an empirical truth, and
the ground of all experience. True, religion is not philosophy, but the
philosophy which does not unite in sacred harmony, religion with
science, were unworthy of the name. True, I know something higher than
science. And if science has only these two ways open before it to
knowledge, viz., that of analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic
derivation, then we deny all science of the absolute. Speculation is
every thing, _i. e._ a beholding, a contemplation of that which is in
God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative, _i. e._
only so far as it is a contemplation of God as he is. But the time will
come when the sciences shall more and more cease, and immediate
knowledge take their place. The mortal eye closes only in the highest
science, where it is no longer the man who sees, but the eternal
beholding which has now become seeing in him.
With this theosophic view of the world, Schelling was led to pay
attention to the earlier mystics. He began to study their writings. He
answered the charge of mysticism in his controversy with Fichte as
follows:—Among the learned of the last century, there was a tacit
agreement never to go beyond a certain height, and, therefore, the
genuine spirit of science was given up to the unlearned. These, because
they were uneducated and had drawn upon themselves the jealousy of the
learned, were called fanatics. But many a philosopher by profession
might well have exchanged all his rhetoric for the fulness of mind and
heart which abound in the writings of such fanatics. Therefore I am not
ashamed of the name of such a fanatic. I will even seek to make this
reproach true; if I have not hitherto studied the writings of these men
correctly, it has been owing to negligence.
Schelling did not omit to verify these words. There were some special
mental affinities between himself and _Jacob Boehme_, with whom he now
became more and more closely joined. A study of his writings is indeed
indicated in Schelling’s works of the present period. One of the most
famous of Schelling’s writings, his theory of freedom, which appeared
after this (“_Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der
menschlichen Freiheit_,” 1809), is composed entirely in the spirit of
Jacob Boehme. We begin with it a new period of Schelling’s
philosophizing, where _the will_ is affirmed as the essence of God, and
we have thus a new definition of the absolute differing from every
previous one.
V. FIFTH PERIOD:—ATTEMPT AT A THEOGONY AND COSMOGONY AFTER THE MANNER OF
JACOB BOEHME.
Schelling had much in common with Jacob Boehme. Both considered the
speculative cognition as a kind of immediate intuition. Both made use of
forms which mingled the abstract and the sensuous, and interpenetrated
the definiteness of logic with the coloring of fancy. Both, in fine,
were speculatively in close contact. The self-duplication of the
absolute was a fundamental thought of Boehme. He started with the
principle, that the divine essence was the indeterminable, infinite, and
inconceivable, the absence of ground (_Ungrund_). This absence of ground
now projects itself in a proper feeling of its abstract and infinite
essence, into the finite, _i. e._ into a ground, or the centre of
nature, in the dark womb of which qualities are produced, from whose
harsh collision the lightning streams forth, which, as mind or principle
of light, is destined to rule and explain the struggling powers of
nature, so that the God who has been raised from the absence of ground
through a ground to the light of the mind, may henceforth move in an
eternal kingdom of joy. This theogony of Jacob Boehme is in striking
accord with the present standpoint of Schelling. As Boehme had
apprehended the absolute as the indeterminable absence of ground, so had
Schelling in his earlier writings apprehended it as indifference. As
Boehme had distinguished this absence of ground from a ground, or from
nature and from God, as the light of minds, so had Schelling, in the
writings of the last period, apprehended the absolute as a
self-renunciation, and a return back from this renunciation into a
higher unity with itself. We have here the three chief elements of that
history of God, around which Schelling’s essay on freedom turns: (1) God
as indifference, or the absence of ground; (2) God as duplication into
ground and existence, real and ideal; (3) Reconciliation of this
duplication, and elevation of the original indifference to identity. The
first element of the divine life is that of pure indifference, or
indistinguishableness. This, which precedes every thing existing, may be
called the original ground, or the absence of ground. The absence of
ground is not a product of opposites, nor are they contained _implicite_
in it, but it is a proper essence separate from every opposite, and
having no predicate but that of predicatelessness. Real and ideal,
darkness and light, can never be predicated of the absence of ground as
opposites; they can only be affirmed of it as not-opposites in a
neither-nor. From this indifference now rises the duality: the absence
of ground separates into two co-eternal beginnings, so that ground and
existence may become one through love, and the indeterminable and
lifeless indifference may rise to a determinate and living identity.
Since nothing is before or external to God, he must have the ground of
his existence in himself. But this ground is not simply logical, as
conception, but real, as something which is actually to be distinguished
in God from existence; it is nature in God, an essence inseparable
indeed from him, but yet distinct. Hence we cannot assign to this ground
understanding and will, but only desire after this; it is the longing to
produce itself. But in that this ground moves in its longing according
to obscure and uncertain laws like a swelling sea, there is,
self-begotten in God, another and reflexive motion, an inner
representation by which he beholds himself in his image. This
representation is the eternal word in God, which rises as light in the
darkness of the ground, and endows its blind longing with understanding.
This understanding, united with the ground, becomes pre-creating will.
Its work is to give order to nature, and to regulate the hitherto
unregulated ground; and from this explanation of the real through the
ideal, comes the creation of the world. The development of the world has
two stadia: (1) the travail of light, or the progressive development of
nature to man; (2) the travail of mind, or the development of mind in
history.
(1.) The progressive development of nature proceeds from a conflict of
the ground with the understanding. The ground originally sought to
produce every thing solely from itself, but its products had no
consistence without the understanding, and went again to the ground, a
creation which we see exhibited in the extinct classes of animals and
plants of the pre-Adamite world. But consecutively and gradually, the
ground admitted the work of the understanding, and every such step
towards light is indicated by a new class of nature’s beings. In every
creature of nature we must, therefore, distinguish two principles:
first, the obscure principle through which the creatures of nature are
separate from God, and have a particular will; second, the divine
principle of the understanding, of the universal will. With irrational
creatures of nature, however, these two principles are not yet brought
to unity; but the particular will is simple seeking and desire, while
the universal will, without the individual will, reigns as an external
power of nature, as controlling instinct.
(2.) The two principles, the particular and the universal will, are
first united in man as they are in the absolute: but in God they are
united inseparably, and in man separably, for otherwise God could not
reveal himself in man. It is even this separableness of the universal
will, and the particular will, which makes good and evil possible. The
good is the subjection of the particular will to the universal will, and
the reverse of this right relation is evil. Human freedom consists in
this possibility of good and evil. The empirical man, however, is not
free, but his whole empirical condition is posited by a previous act of
intelligence. The man must act just as he does, but is nevertheless
free, because he has from eternity freely made himself that which he now
necessarily is. The history of the human race is founded for the most
part on the struggle of the individual will with the universal will, as
the history of nature is founded on the struggle of the ground with the
understanding. The different stages through which evil, as a historical
power, takes its way in conflict with love, constitute the periods of
the world’s history. Christianity is the centre of history: in Christ,
the principle of love came in personal contact with incarnate evil:
Christ was the mediator to reconcile on the highest stage the creation
with God; for that which is personal can alone redeem the personal. The
end of history is the reconciliation of the particular will and love,
the prevalence of the universal will, so that God shall be all in all.
The original indifference is thus elevated to identity.
Schelling has given a farther justification of this his idea of God, in
his controversial pamphlet against Jacobi, (1812). The charge of
naturalism which Jacobi made against him, he sought to refute by showing
how the true idea of God was a union of naturalism and theism.
Naturalism seeks to conceive of God as ground of the world (immanent),
while theism would view him as the world’s cause (transcendent): the
true course is to unite both determinations. God is at the same time
ground and cause. It no way contradicts the conception of God to affirm
that, so far as he reveals himself, he developes himself from himself,
advancing from the imperfect to the perfect: the imperfect is in fact
the perfect itself, only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that
this becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness of the
perfect may appear on all sides. If there were no obscure ground, no
nature, no negative principle in God, we could not speak of a
consciousness of God. So long as the God of modern theism remains the
simple essence which ought to be purely essential, but which in fact is
without essence, so long as an actual twofoldness is not recognized in
God, and a limiting and denying energy (a nature, a negative principle)
is not placed in opposition to the extending and affirming energy in
God, so long will science be entitled to make its denial of a personal
God. It is universally and essentially impossible to conceive of a being
with consciousness, which has not been brought into limit by some
denying energy within himself—as universally and essentially impossible
as to conceive of a circle without a centre.
VI. Since the essay against Jacobi, which in its philosophical content
accords mainly with his theory of freedom, Schelling has not made public
any thing of importance. He has often announced a work entitled “_Die
Weltalter_,” which should contain a complete and elaborate exposition of
his philosophy, but has always withdrawn it before its appearance.
_Paulus_ has surreptitiously brought his later Berlin lectures before
the public in a manner for which he has been greatly blamed: but since
this publication is not recognized by Schelling himself, it cannot be
used as an authentic source of knowledge of his philosophy. During this
long period, Schelling has published only two articles of a
philosophical content: “_On the Deities of Samothracos_,” 1815, and a
“_Critical Preface_” to _Becker’s_ translation of a preface of _Cousin_,
1834. Both articles are very characteristic of the present standpoint of
Schelling’s philosophizing—he himself calls his present philosophy
_Positive Philosophy, or the Philosophy of Mythology and
Revelation_,—but as they give only intimations of this, and do not reach
a complete exposition, they do not admit of being used for our purpose.