NOTES

1. Basic Notions in Schelling’s and Habermas’s Conceptions of
History

1. Cf. W. Marx, Reason and World: Between Tradition and a New Beginning (The Hague, 1971), preface.

2. Regarding the thesis that, and how, the younger Hegel was influenced by basic ideas from Greek philosophy during the Jena period that he shared with Schelling, see W. Marx, “The Meaning and Task of Philosophy in German Idealism,” Reason and World, pp. 1ff.

3. Cf. W. Marx, The Meaning of Aristotle’s Ontology (The Hague, 1954), pp. 57ff.; and Introduction to Aristotle’s Theory of Being as Being (The Hague, 1977). PP. 38ff.

4. Schelling, Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie (1801), IV, p. 26.

5. Cf. W. Marx, Aristotle’s Theory, pp. ixf.

6. This notion plays an important role in a number of Löwith’s works concerning the history of thought; cf. especially Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen (Stuttgart, 1953).

7. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte, 11:27, [English: Reason in History, trans. R. Hartmann (Indianapolis, 1953), p. 27.]

8. Jürgen Habermas, Das Absolute und die Geschichte von der Zwiespältigkeit in Schelling’s Denken (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Frankfurt, 1954); “Dialektischer Idealismus im Ubergang zum Materialismus—Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Contraction Gottes,” in Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt, 1971), pp. 172ff.

9. Habermas, Erkenntnis und Interesse, mit einem neuen Nachwort (Frankfurt, 1973), pp. 38f., 26 [The page number printed in italics refers to the English translation, Knowledge and Human Interest, trans. Jeremy Shapiro (Boston, 1969). In all subsequent citations, this work will be referred to by its English title, the first page mentioned will refer to the German edition of 1973, and the following italicized page number will refer to Shapiro’s translation.]

10. Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie (Frankfurt, 1969), p. 160.

11. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 38, 26.

12. To judge from the appendix to the new edition of Knowledge and Human Interest, Habermas himself seemed to consider his attempt to comprehend the species’ history both as a history of transcendental consciousness and as a continuation of the evolution of nature in a materialistic vein to be inadequate. The “empirical” status of cognitive interests in their transcendental function is supposed to be understood “in quotation marks” since a theory of evolution that would undertake to explain transcendental frameworks “materialistically” cannot in turn be developed within a transcendental framework of objectifying sciences (Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 410; cf. also the preface to the new edition of Theorie und Praxis, p. 28). Even if the meaning of this unusual mediation between empirical and transcendental determinations could be clarified, the question would still remain, how one can resolve the conception of the species’ history as a “history of transcendental consciousness” (Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 58, 41) with the supposition that the transcendental framework of instrumental action is the result of an evolution in nature that precedes this history and is thus invariable in the historical development of the socio-cultural being “man” (cf. ibid., p. 48, 35, 57, 41; 400).

13. Technik und Wissenschaft, p. 160.

14. This remains true even though Habermas distanced himself somewhat from his orientation on the “traditional linguistic usage of ‘reflection’ that is derived from German Idealism” in the appendix to the new edition of Knowledge and Human Interest. There, he distinguished between reflection as reconstruction and reflection as self-critique, both of which find their justification in the concept of reflection developed in German Idealism, where they are, however, “confused with each other.” This distinction does not affect our argument, since we are concerned primarily with reflection as self-critique. Its determination remains unchanged, and in this appendix Habermas has by no means restricted its “power.” Reflection as self-critique remains for him an “analytical liberation from objective illusions,” i.e. not from structures of experience that are intersubjective constants and are unmasked by reflection as reconstruction, but rather from “self-generated pseudo-objectivity” (ibid., 1412). One of its essential marks of distinction as opposed to reflection as reconstruction lies in the fact that it has “practical consequences.” It thus appears to be a stimulus to consciousness and an alteration at the same time (cf. note 37).

15. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 60, 43.

16. Habermas’s critical discussion of Theunissen’s and of Rohrmoser’s critiques of “naturalism” in critical theory also bears witness to his distance from traditional Marxist materialism. At the same time, the formulation of the “highly unnatural idea of truth” as the “possibility of universal communication” and as a “fact of nature” demonstrates the dilemma in which Habermas is caught due to his orientation on both Marx and German Idealism (ibid. pp.415f.).

17. I. Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1902), 4:447ff. (English translation available in various editions.)

18. Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft, p. 164.

19. Cf. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 350, 286.

20. Technik und Wissenschaft, p. 68.

21. In his 1968 essay on Technology, Habermas reconstructed the thresh-holds of the species’ history under the obvious influence of Marx’s dialectics between the productive forces and the conditions of production. Habermas was here convinced that “from the outset the mechanism of the species’ development” consists in the fact that “under the pressure of relatively developed productive forces, a structural transformation is compelled to take place in the institutional framework” (Technik und Wissenschaft, p. 68). Nevertheless, he granted that this mechanism alone does not determine the further course of history, e.g. it does not sufficiently explain how capitalism arose on the basis of a traditional society. The conclusion of the essay justifies the conjecture that he also seemed to grant critical reflection a creative power.

22. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 85, 62. It must be noted that Habermas also employed the model of a dialectic of ethics taken from Hegel’s early theological writings. Cf. pp. 77ff., 56ff.; and Nachwort zu Hegels politischen Schriften (Frankfurt, 1966), p. 355. We shall not pursue this point in view of the declaration that “social theory remains in the framework of the Phenomenology” (Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 85, 62).

23. Cf. W. Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (New York, 1975), pp. 51ff.

24. Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes (Hamburg, 1952) p. 69, 51. [The italicized numeral refers to the English translation by A. V. Miller (Oxford, 1977).]

25. Cf. W. Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology, pp. 7, 15ff.

26. Cf. especially regarding this point: Rüdiger Bubner, “Was ist kritische Theorie?” in Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt, 1971), pp. 160ff.

27. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 83, 61.

28. Hegel, Phänomenologie, p. 69, 51.

29. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 83, 61.

30. The most important guideline for reflecting on “reconstruction” in Habermas’s social theory is that, in addition to the “technical” interest guiding knowledge and the “practical” interest involved in it, there is an “emancipatory” interest that drives society to dissolve the compulsion existing in society. For an explanation of the “inducement” [Auslösung] of reflection, however, Habermas did not invoke this interest.

31. Cf. W. Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology, pp. 78ff.

32. Hegel, Phänomenologie, p. 71, 53.

33. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 9, vii.

34. Hegel, Phänomenologie, p. 73, 55.

35. His orientation toward Hegel’s determination and employment of reflection in the Phenomenology is expressly reiterated in the appendix to the new edition of Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 412.

36. Knowledge and Human Interest, p. 342, 281.

37. Although, in his most recent publications, Habermas maintained his conviction that self-reflection determined after the model of a therapeutic conversation has “a wealth of practical consequences,” he seemed to lean toward a more cautious estimation of the power that enlightenment has to change things. This is partially due to Gadamer’s criticism. In any case, in Habermas’s discussion with critics of the psychoanalytical model (in the preface to the new edition of Theorie und Praxis, cf. also pp. 36f.), he clearly distinguished between the “formation and further development of critical theorems,” the “organization of enlightenment processes,” and an “engagement in political conflict” (ibid. P.37).

38. Translator’s note: The German term Aufhebung (along with aufheben and aufgehoben) as employed by Hegel and others in German Idealism entails a threefold movement involving the negation, conservation, and elevation of the object concerned. There is no term in the English language that adequately expresses all three of these aspects of Aufhebung, so I have in each particular case chosen the expression that, in my opinion, most nearly approximates the single aspect that is predominant in that context. Nevertheless, wherever the term Aufhebung is used in a strict sense, all three aspects should be implicitly understood. The German term has often been cited in parentheses in order to facilitate this understanding.

39. This essay deals only with those aspects of Habermas’s conception that appear to us to be relevant for his “theory of history” (as presented above all in his major work Knowledge and Human Interest and in his inaugural lecture with the same title). We have not taken into account his central thesis concerning a theory of science. According to this thesis, the meaning of the validity of empirical and analytical sciences as well as of the hermeneutic sciences of culture is founded on the interests that guide our knowledge and constitute these objective realms. These are in turn said to be founded on the life-world of labor, the functional horizon for instrumental activity, or on the life-world community of communication partners, which generates intersubjectivity in the form of interaction and practical and theoretical discourse. The more recent publications regarding a theory of language were dealt with only in regard to their relevance for his theory of history.

40. Cf. Habermas, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie (Frankfurt, 1972), p. 139.

41. Habermas, Legitimationsprobleme im Spätkapitalismus (Frankfurt, 1973), PP.19ff.

2. The Task and Method of Philosophy in Schelling’s
System of Transcendental Idealism and in Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit

1. Cf. W. Marx, “The Meaning and Task of Philosophy in German Idealism” in Reason and World (The Hague, 1971) pp. 1ff.

2. Translator’s note: Regarding the threefold meaning of Aufhebung, see above p. 89, note 38.

3. Cf. Klaus Düsing, “Speculation and Reflection. Zur Zusammenarbeit Schellings und Hegels in Jena,” Hegel-Studien 5 (1969) pp. 95ff.

4. Cf. M. Frank, Der unendliche Mangel an Sein (Frankfurt, 1975). Frank also emphasized the aspect of “prereflectivity,” especially in recourse to Sartre.

5. Cf. on this point: Adolf Schurr, Philosophie als System bei Fichte, Schelling und Hegel (Stuttgart, 1974).

6. In Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, opposition is by no means implied in the nondeducible principle of positing oneself, nor can it be deduced from that principle. If that were the case, then, as Fichte declared, the ego would suspend itself [sich aufheben]. Cf. Fichte, Werke, Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. R. Lauth and H. Jacobs, Vol. 1, 2 (Stutt-gart-Bad Canstatt, 1965), pp. 381f. In contrast to this, according to Schelling, “the concept of positing an opposite necessarily must be conceived of in terms of the concept of positing.” As we have emphasized, Schelling viewed the intellectual intuition as “absolute identity” and thus as the original and immediate pure realization of a self-positing into an intuiting agent and the object of intuition, into producer and product. The ego must, however, simultaneously posit itself such that “the other,” its “opposition,” can become its object. Pure self-consciousness cannot, therefore, be identical through and through, it must be “simultaneously identical and synthetic” (ibid.). The “One Act” of self-consciousness is “absolute synthesis,” a synthesis of ideal and real activities that is derived from an “original duplicity.” If this synthesis of activities is represented by the transcendental philosopher as arising successively, then it becomes evident that these activities are the conditions for an identity of self-consciousness that is then “not an original identity, but rather a mediated and generated identity” (392-93).

7. Cf. on this point: Dieter Jähnig, Die Kunst in der Philosophie Vol. 1, Schellings Begründung von Natur und Geschichte (Pfullingen, 1966), p. 113, pp. 127ff; Vol. 2 Die Wahrheitsfunktion der Kunst (Pfullingen, 1969), pp. 285ff.

8. Ibid.

9. See, for example, Walter Schulz’s introduction to System des tranzcenden-talen Idealismus (Hamburg, 1957), pp. xxviff.; Dieter Jähnig, Die Kunst in der Philosophie, pp. 133ff. and 155ff.

10. Cf. concerning the following: W. Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (New York, 1975).

11. Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, 15, p. 655.

12. Cl. note 10.

13. Cf. concerning this point: W. Marx, “Die Dialektik und die Rolle des Phenomenologen,” Hegel-Jahrbuch (1974): 381-87.

14. Richard Kroner, Von Kant bis Hegel (Tübingen, 1924), p. 110.

15. Walter Schulz, Die Vollendung des Deutschen Idealismus in der Spätphilosophie Schellings (Stuttgart, 1955), p. 132.

16. Ibid., p. 135.

17. Habermas, for example; cf. the first essay in this book.

3. The Task of Schelling’s Philosophical Inquiries into the
Essence of Human Freedom

1. Cf. I, pp. 174ff.; cf. also W. Marx, “The Meaning and Task of Philosophy in German Idealism,” in Reason and World (The Hague, 1971); and W. Marx, “Vom Bedürfnis der Philosophie,” in Von der Notwendigkeit der Philosophie in der Gegenwart, Festschrift für Karl Ulmer zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Helmut Kohlenberger and Wilhelm Lütterfelds (Munich, 1976).

2. Cf. above p. 89, note 38.

3. In the Ideas Concerning a Philosophy of Nature (1797), the World Soul (1798), and the First Draft of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (1800).

4. Translator’s note: The distinction between “Sein,” “Seiendes,” or “Seiendsein” and “Wesen” is very important in the Inquiries in particular, and for Schelling’s later philosophy as a whole. In this essay, I have therefore introduced the term “Being” (always capitalized) to refer to the German term “Sein.” The term “being” (not capitalized) is used by contrast, to render the German term “seiend” or “ein Seiendes.” In reference to God, I have consistently translated the term “Wesen” as “essence” even in contexts in which this may not correspond completely to the normal use of the term. In reference to man, I have, however, translated the term “Wesen” as “being” (e.g. “the human being”) except in cases where the connotation of an inherent characteristic is implied, so that the use of the term “essence” or “essential” is demanded.

5. Cf. on this point: W. Marx, The Meaning of Aristotle’s Ontology (The Hague, 1954), pp. 62ff.; and W. Marx, Introduction to Aristotle’s Theory of Being (The Hague, 1977), PP.43ff.

6. In the treatise Philosophie und Religion, which appeared in 1804 and can be seen as the transition from the phase of the System of Identity to Schelling’s “middle period” (cf. on this point: Harold Holz, Spekulation und Faktizität [Bonn, 1970], pp. 41ff., in particular his discussion with Fuhrman in the passage quoted and in note 1), Schelling rejected the possibility of a “negative” approach to the absolute, in which the absolute would be thought of in opposition to that which is not absolute (VI, 21). For, then the absolute would be caught up in a dependence on that which is not absolute (22). It would be just as wrong to construct the absolute from a relationship of moments (subject-object) that constitute its identity. Without a conceptual mediation, an appropriate grasp of the absolute is possible only in “intellectual intuition” (cf. 26, 29f.), as we have already seen in his conception of the System of Transcendental Idealism (see above, the two preceding essays). Schelling’s reasons for the rejection of mediating reflection in regard to the absolute “in itself” are based on the fact that, for him, the absolute is not “composite” but rather “simple” (26) and without mediation, so that it is therefore immediately comprehensible (31). The absolute is held to be an “idea” [Idee] that has come alive (27); and it is thus not a conceptual unity (cf. 29f.), but rather, as a living unity, it is an immediate unity of its oppositions. Reflection makes the mistake of trying to explain it by means of various constructions of the relationship of these oppositions, but this approach cannot fail to miss the immediacy of this living unity, since it can only be recognized in intuition. The absolute as a living unity is infinitely more than could be expressed by its determination as a conceptual unity.

7. “I have always represented that which I called Philosophy of Nature and Transcendental Philosophy as opposing poles in philosophizing; in this presentation I am situated at the point of indifference . . .” (IV, 108).

8. “That life which the beings within the all have in relation to one another is opposed to their life in God, in which each of them is free and itself infinite; to this extent, it is their life which is separated and fallen from God” (VII, 190).

9. Harold Holz, Spekulation und Faktizität, by contrast, tried to show that the influence of the theosophists—in opposition to the widespread opinion expressed in scholarly literature on Schelling—either did not exist or had only a subordinate significance (cf. §1). Holz viewed Neo-Platonic influences as the truly decisive influences on Schelling. We can no more consent to Holz’s thesis in its fundamental generality than to those theses that reduce Schelling’s philosophy of freedom to theosophic thought. Neither can one doubt the effect of theosophic influences on Schelling, nor can it be denied that he also adopted Neo-Platonic themes in his thought, especially since the theosophic tradition cannot in turn be conceived of without Neo-Platonism. The mutual exclusion of these traditions must be ruled out from the very beginning. In the end, all research into common motifs finds its limits in the fact that every independent thinker transforms the motifs that he adopts according to his own fundamental question, and he never simply reproduces a traditional doctrine. With Schelling, this is especially true. Schelling’s basic concept of freedom could not simply fall back behind the concept of freedom which had been attained in Idealism (cf. Inquiries, VII, 383; see above pp. 61—62).

In Piatonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt, 1972), Werner Beierwaltes attempted to demonstrate that—in contrast to the general tendency of Schelling scholarship that tries to derive Schelling’s thought only from theosophic influences—“there are structures of thought in Schelling and Plotinus that touch on and illustrate each other.” His purpose is to “recognize the invariability of the problems posed through the similarity of the two structures of thought.” The parallels that Beierwaltes points out are particularly convincing since he did not fail to show the differences between Plotinus’s and Schelling’s thought. Beierwaltes did not make use of the Inquiries in his research, but for us the problem of that which is demonic in God indicates an affinity to the theosophists. This affinity, however, would not exclude an affinity with Plotinus, because, as we have pointed out, the theosophists were in turn influenced by Neo-Platonism. Beierwaltes expressed doubts concerning the way in which Holz proceeded from “ascertainable affinity to historical ‘influence’“ and the way he claimed that “in place of the ‘Boehme-legend’” Neo-Platonism should be substituted (p. 109).

10. Regarding this whole problem, cf. Horst Fuhrman’s, Schellings Philosophie der Weltalter (Düsseldorf, 1954), pp. 75ff., p. 190; Jürgen Habermas, Das Absolute und die Geschichte (Inaugural Dissertation, 1954). Concerning the influence of Böhme, especially his doctrine of magic, cf. pp. 2ff., 7, 137, 200, 208, 210, 275ff., 256ff. Concerning Oetinger’s influence pp. 128ff., 200, 208, 275ff.; Ernst Benz, Schellings theologische Geistesahnen (Wiesbaden, 1955); Wilhem August Schulze, “Jakob Böhme und die Kabbala,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 9 (1955), pp. 447ff.; Karl Leese, Vom Jakob Böhme zu Schelling: Zur Metaphysik des Gottesproblems (Erfurt, 1922); Hans Jörg Sandkühler, Freiheit und Wirklichkeit (Stuttgart, 1970); Xavier Tilliette, Schelling: Une Philosophie en Devenir (Paris, 1970) 1:504ff.

11. As explained in this passage, there is only one way to rescue human freedom: Human freedom must be subsumed in the divine will itself, so that man’s activity “also belongs to God’s life” (ibid.). The very problem of the Inquiries is how this can be grasped in conceptual thought. It will turn out that human freedom can be determined neither outside of nor against God, nor can human freedom simply disappear in divine omnipotence (cf. 338-39). The question is thus concerned with the possibility of a “creative” (345) view of the law of identity; in other words, identity must be so determined that, as a “living” principle or as the principle of the living, it makes its opposite possible without abolishing itself as identity (ibid.).

12. In a lecture course that Martin Heidegger held in 1936 and published under the title Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit-1809 (Tübingen, 1971), he proceeded from his own question concerning the character that Being was given at the end of traditional philosophy, in German Idealism. For him, the Inquiries is the pinnacle of the epoch of “subjectivity” as conceived within the history of Being (cf. p. 232).

Concerning the problem of Heideggerian “retrieving” interpretations cf. W. Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition (Evanston, 1960), pp. 114-17. The question, whether the theme in the Inquiries is the absolute freedom of God or human freedom is answered at one point so that freedom is to be viewed “not as an accessory or a feature of the human will, but rather as the essence of authentic Being [eigentliches Seins], as the essence of the ground for beings as a whole.” Furthermore, freedom is not taken as a property of human beings, “but rather man is at most the property of freedom.” Heidegger then, however, explicitly termed freedom to be “human,” for example on p. 110: “The question concerning the essence of human freedom leads the new ‘system of freedom,’—at this point, Idealism—to waver” (cf. also p. 116). And similarly: “Freedom is, however, human freedom, and the question of a system is the question how human freedom belongs to being as a whole, i.e. to its ‘ground’“ (pp. 213f). A similar statement can also be found on p. 215. And yet on p. 234 it once more becomes clear that, for Heidegger, Schelling’s system of freedom is a character of Being within the history of Being, since it is only “another name for the system of subjectivity,” with the one reservation that the “anthropological, consciousness-oriented interpretation of the subject” is involved (ibid.). Strangely enough, Heidegger understood the “will of love,” the “allowing the ground to become effective,” as a willing, a mark of “unbounded subjectivity” (p. 224), although he himself determined it to be a “calm inwardness” [gelassene Innigheit] (p. 225), and characterized this as a “willing of nothing, not its own and not yours, nor even itself” (ibid.).

13. Cf. on this point, J. Habermas, Das Absolute und die Geschichte. Habermas oriented himself toward the “historical existence of man” (p. 7). Schelling is said to pursue an “anthropological method” (pp. 225ff.), and to proceed from the microcosmos-macrocosmos analogy (pp. 227ff., p. 369). Especially relevant here are the sections “Analytic of the Human Spirit” (pp. 275ff.) and “From Absolute Identity to Historical Life” (pp. 223ff.).

14. Important first steps in this direction can, of course, already be found in the treatise Philosophy and Religion.

15. Cf. Stuttgart Private Lectures 7:423, where Schelling called the absolute or God the “principle of all philosophy,” in contrast to the Leibniz-Wolffian and the Kantian systems, in which God is “brought in only at the end.” The absolute is not only a principle in the sense of that which is highest or primary, as the supreme “ground of explanation for all things,” and by no means can it be seen as a “particular object” as it is in theology. God or the absolute is more than that, it is the “element in which alone demonstration is possible” (ibid.). “Everything can only be presented within the absolute” (ibid.). Philosophy thus does not have the absolute as its object, the absolute’s existence is not something that philosophy would have to first of all prove, in order to be able to begin; philosophy is rather itself the “continuing proof of the absolute.” “Proof” means manifestation here, but only in that sense in which philosophy is incorporated in the occurrence of the absolute’s self-manifestation. As “mental presentation” [geistige Darstellung] of the absolute in its revelation in the universe, philosophy is a part of “God’s continual proving of himself.” Schelling, therefore, did not simply say that philosophy is a philosophy of the absolute because it conceives of the absolute and makes the absolute its principle of explanation for all things. Instead he conceived of the relationship to the absolute so that philosophy belongs to the absolute and not the absolute to philosophy.

16. Cf. W. Marx, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (New York, 1975).

17. After this essay had been completed, Guido Vergauwen’s Absolute und endliche Freiheit (Freiburg, Switzerland, 1975) appeared, which deals with Schelling’s entire work on the basis of the problem of freedom. It also contains an extensive section on the Inquiries. I am for the most part in agreement with Vergauwen’s interpretation, although the subject of the Inquiries for him is not an “ontology of life,” as we would suggest, but rather an ontology of love (pp. 130, 156, 186). Since, in my opinion too, life as absolute freedom is of course realized as love in accordance with the ultimate intention of creation, this difference of opinion is not of great significance. What I wish to stress is the way in which the ultimate intention of creation concretely realizes itself with the assistance of finite freedom which espouses evil.

18. The expression “leap” [Sprung] is employed by Schelling in Philosophy and Religion (VI, 38) in the discussion of the question of whether and how a transition from the absolute (infinitude) into finitude can be made. Here Schelling critically addressed himself to the doctrine of emanation, in which finitude came to be through a continual effluence from infinity. The expression as used in Philosophy and Religion does not refer to the question of divine self-constitution in freedom. There is, however, an essential relatedness here insofar as this “leap” is a characterization of the freedom of God’s “likeness” [Gegen-bild] of “the other absolute,” to “its freedom to ‘grasp itself in its selfhood’” (ibid.) and thus to “fall” from the absolute (cf. 40).

19. In The Ages of the World (1813-14), we see how this determination of the absolute as life extends beyond itself and leads to a new determination of freedom within the dimension of the absolute. If “life” is understood as the “movement” of the absolute’s becoming a “being,” if life is taken in its strict ontological meaning, then “beyond” this life, the self-revelation of the absolute as freedom must be conceived of as freedom in an eminent sense: as that freedom which is truly absolute, the freedom to be or not to be. This is “the pure (lautere) freedom itself” (VIII, 237), the pure will that wills nothing and is to this extent also not a willing (ibid.); it is freedom as the state of “indifference” toward all Being and non-Being, which nevertheless is not simply nothing, but rather that which retains position and negation within itself; and by being capable of doing so, is command over itself. Schelling conceived of freedom here not only as the absolute freedom of the deed of self-revelation, but also as the “state” of the absolute in which the principles of self-revelation (the principles of Being) are preserved.

20. Cf. Gershom Sholem, Über einige Grundbegriffe des Judentums (Frankfurt, 1970), pp. 53ff.; Gershom Sholem, Die jüdische Mystik und ihre Hauptströmungen (Frankfurt, 1967) pp. 285-90.

21. Cf. VII, 384, where Schelling rejected the Kantian concept of self-determination (at least on his interpretation), because in it the transition from “pure and simple indeterminacy” to determinacy remains unexplained and leads to a concept of freedom as mere “willful choice.”

22. Cf. also Stuttgart Private Lectures VII:429ff., and Philosophy and Religion VII:41f., where the “fall” is characterized as an active deed.

23. Cf. I. Kant, Religion within the Bounds of Reason, in Kant, Werke, Akademie Textausgabe, (Berlin, 1968) VI, p. 37.

24. According to Habermas, Das Absolute und die Geschichte, Schelling’s investigations into human freedom led to the “breakthrough of a specific understanding of historicity.” Schelling is said to have “expanded the horizon of the historicity of the finite spirit. . .” (Cf. p. 5, 7, 9, 11). Concerning the question of history and historicity as a whole, cf. pp. 203, 266ff., 313, 319ff. Besides this dissertation, which was essentially determined by Heideggerian problems, cf. the essay “Dialektischer Idealismus im Übergang zum Materialismus— Geschichtsphilosophische Folgerungen aus Schellings Idee einer Kontraktion Gottes” Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt, 1971) pp. 172ff., where the Inquiries imply the “abandonment of the absolute to history” (p. 194); the corrupted world is “a world which has fallen from God’s control” (p. 193), a world whose history has been entrusted to the “God in reverse,” mankind as a social being. “For the sake of love,” God had to accept the danger that his image might fail him, and that the bond of forces in fact would be dissolved, which in God is indissoluable (ibid.). Habermas failed to see the eschatological construction of the Inquiries and the fact that, for Schelling, creation has an “ultimate intention” (cf. VII, 403-404 and 404-405), the fact that, in the end, God will be all in all (405—406), since there must be a final separation of evil from good in the “perfect actualization of God.” If God will then through love have taken power over the condition of his existence, the ground, and subordinated it to his glorification, one cannot speak of an abandonment of the absolute to history. Only if one neglects the explicitly eschatological character of the Inquiries can one come to the particular “conclusion of a philosophy of history on the basis of the idea of a divine contraction” (pp. 194ff), which Habermas used to develop certain affiliations to Marx, and which he uses to determine the social task of man. Cf. on this point above p. 61, note 7.

25. W. Beierwaltes, Platonismus und Idealismus, defended another view of the determination “all in all” as the dialectical dimension of everything particular.

26. Cf. Stuttgart Private Lectures, VII, 428.