History of Philosophy

by
Alfred Weber
Table of Contents
65. Schelling
(1)
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph SCHELLING, born 1775, at Leonberg, in Wrtemberg,
received the master's degree from the University of Tbingen, when seventeen
years old, and continued his studies at Leipsic. In 1798 he was made professor
of philosophy at Jena, where he became acquainted with Fichte and renewed his
friendship with his fellow-countryman Hegel. In 1803 we find him at the
University of Wrzburg; then he becomes the General Secretary of the Munich
Academy of Plastic Arts (1806-1820). After serving as a professor in the
Universities of Erlangen, Munich, and Berlin, he died (1854) in the seventy-ninth
year of his age. A precocious and fruitful
(2)
writer, but an inconsistent thinker,
Schelling passed from Fichte to Spinoza, from Spinoza to Neo-Platonism, from
Neo-Platonism to J. Bhme, with whom his friend and colleague Franz Baader
(3)

had made him acquainted. The following works
(4)
belong to his Spinozistic and
Neo-Platonic phase, which he calls his "negative philosophy": Ideen zu einer
Philosophic der Natur
(5)
(1797); Von der Weltseele (1798); System des
transcendentalen Idealismus
(6)
(1800); Bruno, oder ber das natrliche und
gttliche Princip der Dinge (1802); Vorlesungen ber die Methode des
akademischen Studiums (1803); Philosophic und Religion (1804). To his
"positive" period, which is characterized by the influence of Bhme and a more
or less pronounced tendency to orthodoxy, belong: Untersuchungen ber das
Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (1809); Ueber die Gottheiten von Samothrake
(1816); Vorlesungen ber die Philosophic der Mythologie und Offenbarung,
published by his son.
1. The non-ego, Fichte had said, is the unconscious product of the ego, or, what
amounts to the same thing, the product of the unconscious ego. But, Schelling
objects, the unconscious ego is not really the ego; what is unconscious is not yet
ego or subject, but both subject and object, or rather, neither one nor the other.
Since the ego does not exist without the non-ego, we cannot say that it,
produces the non-ego, without adding, conversely: the non-ego produces the
ego. There is no object without a subject, - as Berkeley had previously declared,
- and in this sense Fichte truly says that the subject makes the object; but
neither can there be a subject without an object. Hence the existence of the
objective world is as much the condition sine qua non of the existence of the
ego, as conversely. Fichte, who implicitly recognized this in his profession of
pantheistic faith, regards the distinction between the empirical ego and the
absolute ego as fundamental to his thought. But what right has he to speak of an
absolute ego, when it is certain that the ego, or the subject, is never absolute,
but limited, as it necessarily is, by an object? Hence we must abandon the
attempt to make an absolute of the ego.
Is the non-ego absolute? Not at all, for it does not exist unconditionally; it is
nothing without the thinking subject. Hence we must either deny the absolute or
seek it beyond the ego and the non-ego, or beyond all opposition. If the absolute
exists, - and how can it be otherwise! - it can merely be the synthesis of all
contraries, it can only be outside of and beyond all conditions of existence,
(7)

since it is itself the highest and first condition, the source and end of all
subjective as well as of all objective existence.
Consequently, we can neither say that the ego produces the non-ego (subjective
idealism), nor that the non-ego produces the ego (sensationalism); the ego and
the non-ego, thought and being, are both derived from a higher principle which
is neither one nor the other, although it is the cause of both: a neutral principle,
the indifference and identity of contraries.
(8)
This brings us to Spinoza's point of
view; though different terms are used, we find ourselves face to face with the
infinite substance and the parallelism of things emanating from it: thought (the
ego) and extension (the non-ego).
Philosophy is the science of the absolute in its double manifestation: nature and
mind. It is philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy, or philosophy of
mind. By adding the science of nature to the science of mind, Schelling fills the
great gap in Fichte's system. His method does not essentially differ from that of
his predecessor. Schelling, it is true, recognizes that the universe is not, strictly
speaking, the creation of the ego, and, consequently, has an existence relatively
distinct from the thinking subject. To think is not to produce, but to reproduce.
Nature is, according to him, what it is not for Fichte: a datum or a fact. He
cannot, therefore, escape the necessity of partially recognizing experience and
observation; he even goes so far as to call them the source of knowledge.
But, the reader will please observe, though Schelling denies that the ego makes
the non-ego, he denies, with equal emphasis, that the non-ego makes the ego,
that sense-perception constitutes thought (Locke, Hume, Condillac). Thought,
knowledge, science, cannot be derived from the non-ego and outer or inner
perception; they have their source and principle in that which also constitutes
the source and principle of the non-ego, in the absolute. Experience is but the
starting-point of speculation, the point of departure in the literal sense of the
term: a priori speculation continues to be the philosophical method. Speculation
operates with the facts of experience, but these facts cannot contradict a priori
thought; they must, therefore, conform to its laws, because the world of facts
(the real order) and the world of thoughts (the ideal order) have a common
source, the absolute, and cannot contradict each other. Nature is existing
reason, mind is thinking reason. Thought must accustom itself to separating the
notion of reason from the idea of mind; it must conceive an impersonal reason,
and no longer regard this formula as a contradiction in terms. We must conceive
the substance of Spinoza as impersonal reason embracing the ego and the non-
ego; we must look upon things as the images of thought, and thought as the
twin brother of things. There is a thoroughgoing parallelism between nature and
thought, and they have a common origin: the one develops according to the
same law as the other.
(9)
Thought, as Fichte, inspired by Kant, had said, is invariably thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis. Nature, the image of thought, is (1) matter or gravity (thesis:
brutal affirmation of matter); (2) form or light (antithesis : negation of matter,
principle of organization and individuation, ideal principle); (3) organized matter
(synthesis of matter and form). The three stages of material evolution are not
separated in nature; no more so than the three original acts of thought. The
whole of nature is organized even in its smallest details (Leibniz), and the so-
called inorganic world, the earth itself, and the heavenly bodies, are living
organisms. If nature were not alive, it could not produce life. The so-called
inorganic kingdom is the vegetable kingdom in germ; the animal kingdom is the
vegetable kingdom raised to a higher power. The human brain is the climax of
universal organization, the last stage of organic evolution.
(10)
Magnetism,
electricity, irritability, and sensibility are manifestations of the same force, in
different degrees (correlation and equivalence of forces). Nothing is dead,
nothing is stationary in nature; everything is life, movement, becoming,
perpetual oscillation between two extremes, productivity
(11)
and product,
polarity (electricity, magnetism, and intellectual life), expansion and contraction,
action and reaction, struggle between two contrary and (at the same time)
correlative principles,
(12)
the synthesis of which is the soul of the world.
(13)
The philosophy of mind or transcendental philosophy
(14)
has for its subject-
matter the evolution of psychical life, the genesis of the ego, and aims to
demonstrate the parallelism of the physical and moral orders.
The stages in the evolution of mind are: sensation, outer and inner perception
(by means of the a priori intuitions and the categories), and rational abstraction.
Sensation, perception, and abstraction constitute the theoretical ego, the
different degrees of the understanding. Through absolute abstraction, i.e., the
absolute distinction which the intelligence draws between itself and what it
produces, the understanding becomes will: the theoretical ego becomes the
practical ego. Like magnetism and the principle of sensibility, intelligence and will
are different degrees of the same thing.
(15)
They are merged in the notion of
productivity, or creative activity. The intellect is creative without knowing it; its
productivity is unconscious and necessary; will is conscious of itself; it produces
with the consciousness of being the source of what it produces: hence the feeling
of freedom accompanying its manifestations.
Just as life in nature is the result of two contrary forces, so the life of the mind
springs from the reciprocal action of the intellect, which posits the non-ego, and
of the will, which overcomes it. These are not new forces; they are the same
forces which, after having been gravity and light, magnetism and electricity,
irritability and sensibility, manifest themselves, in the sphere of mind, as
intelligence and will. Their antagonism constitutes the life of the race: history.
History unfolds itself in three ages which run parallel with the three stages of
organic evolution, corresponding to the three kingdoms. The primitive age is
characterized by the predominance of the fatalistic element (thesis: matter,
gravity, intelligence without will); the second, which was inaugurated by the
Roman people and still continues, is the reaction of the active and voluntary
element against the ancient fatum; the third, finally, which belongs to the future,
will be the synthesis of these two principles. Mind and nature will gradually be
blended into a harmonious and living unity. The idea will become more and more
real; reality will become more and more ideal. In other words: the absolute,
which is the identity of the ideal and the real, will manifest and realize itself more
and more.
However, as history is developed in time, and as time has no limits, history
necessarily consists in infinite progress, and the realized absolute remains an
ideal which cannot be definitively and completely realized. Hence if the ego were
merely theoretical and practical, it could never realize the absolute; for,
reflection as well as action is necessarily subject to the law of the dualism of
subject and object, of the ideal and the real. Thought, it is true, can and must
rise beyond reflection and its dualism; through the intellectual intuition
(16)
we
deny the dualism of the ideal and the real, we affirm that the ego and the non-
ego spring from a higher unity in which all antitheses are blended; we rise, in a
measure, beyond personal thought and ourselves; we identify ourselves with
impersonal reason, which becomes objectified in the world and is personified in
the ego. In a word, we partially return into the absolute whence we came.
But even this intuition cannot completely free itself from the law of opposition;
consequently it is still a polarity, forming, on the one hand, a perceiving subject,
on the other, an object perceived from without. The ego is on one side, God on
the other; the dualism continues; the absolute is not a reality possessed or
assimilated by the mind. The mind does not attain or realize the absolute, either
as intelligence or action, but as the feeling of the beautiful in nature and in art.
(17)
Art, religion, and revelation are one and the same thing, superior even to
philosophy. Philosophy conceives God; art is God. Knowledge is the ideal
presence, art the real presence of the Deity.
(18)
2. Schelling's "positive" philosophy, inaugurated in 1809 by the dissertation on
human freedom, accentuates the mystical element contained in the foregoing
sentences. Under the influence of Bhme, the philosopher becomes a
theosophist; the pantheist, a monotheist. He insists on the reality of the divine
idea, on the personality of God, on the cardinal importance of the Trinity.
However, when we peer beneath the strange forms enveloping his romanticism,
we find that there is less change in the essence of his thought than one would
suppose: this essence is monism, a form of monism, however, which, under the
influence of Bhme, is clearly defined as voluntarism.
(19)
The absolute, the
absolute indifference or identity, of "negative" philosophy exists, but it now
receives the name applied to it by the Saxon theosophist: primitive will
(ungrndlicher Wille). The foundation or first principle of the divine being, and of
all being, is not thought or reason, but will striving for being and individual and
personal existence, or the desire-to-be. Before being (ex-istere), every being,
God included, desires to be. This desire or unconscious will precedes all
intelligence and all conscious will. For God, the evolution by which he realizes
himself, personifies himself, or makes himself God, is eternal, and the stages
through which this evolution passes (the persons or hypostases of the Trinity)
are merged into each other; but they are distinguished from each other in the
human consciousness, appearing successively and forming stages in the religious
development of humanity. The evil in the world has its source, not in God
considered as a person, but in what precedes his personality, in that which, in
God, is not God himself, i.e., in the desiderium essendi which we have just
recognized as the first cause of all things, and which Schelling does not hesitate
to call the divine egoism. In God, this principle is eternally merged in his love; in
man, it becomes an independent principle and the source of moral evil. But
however great the latter may be, it serves the purposes of the absolute, no less
than the good.
We shall not here consider the philosophy of mythology and revelation, which we
have set forth in another work,
(20)
and which interests the historian of religion
rather than the historian of philosophy. Our main purpose was to outline the
contents of the principal treatises written by Schelling from 1795 to 1809, and to
elucidate: (1) his masterly critique of Fichte's egoism (Ichlehre) ; (2) his
conception of the absolute as will, the common ground of the object and subject
(Kant), of the ego and non-ego (Fichte), of thought and extension (Spinoza); (3)
his philosophy of nature, which, though abandoned by positive science, produced
such naturalists as Burdach, Oken, Carus, Oersted, Steffens, G. H. Schubert,
and, by carrying speculation into a field from which ideological investigations had
banished it, prepared the way for the fusion of metaphysics and science, which
we are now endeavoring to bring about; (4) his philosophy of history, a happy
prelude to Hegel's philosophy of mind.
The philosophy of Schelling, the influence of which was partially counteracted
and obscured by the Hegelian school,
(21)
really consists of two very distinct
systems, which are connected by a common principle:
(22)
according to the first,
which forms its starting-point, thought precedes being (idealism); according to
the second, (potential) being is the antecedent of thought (realism). Under the
influence of the former, he speaks of intellectual intuition and conceives his
Transcendentalphilosophie, while the latter exalts experience and the philosophy
of nature. The one leads to Hegel and the a priori construction of the universe
and of history, the other, to Schopenhauer and contemporaneous empiricism.
1. Complete works in two series, ed. by his son, 14 vols., Stuttgart and
Augsburg, 1856 ff. [Engl. translations in the Journal of Speculative Philosophy.]
French translations: Selections, by C. Bnard; System of Transcendental
Idealism, by Grimblot; Bruno, by Husson. [Cf. Rosenkranz, Schelling, Dantzic,
1843] ; Mignet, Notice historique sur la vie et les travaux de Schelling, Paris,
1858; [J. Watson, Schelling's Transcendental Idealism (Griggs's Philosophical
Classics), Chicago, 1882. See also Willm, o. c., vol. Ill.; Kuno Fischer, o. c., vol.
VI. ; and R. Haym, Die romantische Schule, 1870,-TR.].
2. At least during his earlier stage.
3. See 71.
4. We mention only the most important.
5. In this work he cuts loose from Fichte.
6. The most consistent and systematic of his writings.
7. Cf. 25 and 31.
8. Works, first series, vol. X., pp. 92-93.
9. Works, IV., pp. 105 ff.
10. Giordano Bruno.
11. The Wille of Schopenhauer.
12. re: Heraclitus.
13. Plato and the Stoics.
14. Works, III., pp. 327 ff.
15. Spinoza and Fichte.
16. Plato, Plotinus, St. Augustine, and the Mystics.
17. Kant.
18. Neo-Platonism.
19. The voluntaristic conception is, it is true, already found in the Abhandlungen
zur Erlduterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre, published by Schelling
in the Philosophisches Journal (1796 and 1797), as well as in numerous
passages in Fichte, whose philosophy is entirely impregnated with it. But he
clearly and consciously affirms the principle in his treatise on liberty: Es giebt in
der letzten und hchsten Instanz gar kein anderes Sein als Wollen. Wollen ist
Ursein, und auf, dieses allein passen alle Prdikate desselben: Grundlosigkeit,
Ewigkeit, Unabhngigkeit von der Zeit, Selbstbejahung. Die ganze Philosophie
strebt nur dakin,diesen hchsten Ausdruck zu finden. (Works, first series, vol.
VII. p. 350.)
20. Examen critique de la philosophie religieuse de Schelling, Strasburg, 1860.
21. Nevertheless, this influence was considerable. Even omitting the disciples
properly so-called, we can detect it in most of the thinkers mentioned in 71.
Observe that the most celebrated among contemporaneous German
philosophers, Eduard von Hartmann, is as much a disciple of Schelling as of
Schopenhauer, and that the most original of our French metaphysicians, Charles
Secrtan, is an avowed adherent of the "positive philosophy."
22. We noticed the same dualism in Plotinus.