2

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

IN THIS STUDY I intend to relate certain aspects of Schelling’s Transcendental System of 1800 to Hegel’s Phenomenology of 1807, two works that were composed within a very few years of each other. How can such an attempt be justified in view of the fact that we today are so intensely aware of the difficulties involved in tracing the historical development of these two philosophers’ thought? We are indebted to the work in philosophical reconstruction done by Otto Pöggeler and Heinz Kimmerle at the Hegel Archives in Bochum for our knowledge that, especially during the period from Jena until the composition of the Phenomenology, Hegel’s conception of the system was modified several times. It is also evident that Schelling’s philosophizing was subject to continual transformation from 1800 until 1807. But nonetheless, surely no one will dispute that in addition to the connections involved in the historical development of certain philosophers’ thought, there can be a connection between different philosophical works that results from their common issue. This is especially true when different works by different authors, although composed at different times, are based on the same principle, or when on account of a common view concerning the “task of philosophy,” different works merely represent varying attempts to fulfill the same task.

I therefore derive the justification for this study from the fact that, although in a modified version, Hegel’s Phenomenology proceeded from the same principle as Schelling’s Transcendental System. Furthermore, the Phenomenology still understood the “task of philosophy” as Schelling had understood it in 1800. One year later in his Differenzschrift [The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy] Hegel declared it to be a view they held in common. Without pursuing a question that has interested me for more than a decade,¹ and has still never been fully answered—the question as to whether and to what extent Hegel’s and Schelling’s positions in the Differenzschrift still corresponded—one can ascertain that Schelling surely would have consented to the following Hegelian determination of the “task of philosophy”: Philosophy must “overcome” [aufheben]² the traditional oppositions such as reason and sensuality, intelligence and nature. (In the Ideen of 1797 Schelling had spoken of the “division” [Trennung] between consciousness and the forces in nature.) Philosophy has to overcome this “dichotomy” [Entzweiung] in knowledge, which the philosophy of reflection [Reflexionsphilosophie] during Hegel’s era is said to have rigidified into the opposition between “absolute subjectivity” and “absolute objectivity.” This “overcoming” was to be achieved by developing the principle of modern philosophy that had found its culmination in Fichte’s systematic Idealism. “Fichte’s philosophy is ... a genuine product of speculation,” wrote Hegel in the Differenzschrift (I, 272).

In the first section of this study, I intend to show how Schelling’s Transcendental System can be understood as an attempt to fulfill the task of overcoming this fundamental dichotomy, even though this system constituted only one part of Schelling’s whole system at that time. This will be the guiding consideration in my analysis of Schelling’s conception and composition of this system. This conception will not be explained by referring to Fichte, as one might expect at first, nor primarily by reference to Schelling’s later reflections on this work. Instead I intend to ‘stick to the text’. This cannot, of course, be achieved by merely interpreting various passages of that text. Rather, in the following studies I shall concentrate on the meaning of Schelling’s basic idea, for we must be able to see how and why systematic philosophizing was possible for him on the basis of this idea. The point of my question might be formulated in the following manner: “Is systematic philosophy still possible today?” As opposed to numerous other responses to this question, which have been offered during this and the last century, a new answer to this question can be prepared within the framework of a theme taken from the history of philosophy only by exposing the basic notions of various idealistic systems, and then inquiring as to whether and how they entailed the necessity for systematic philosophizing.

My second step will be to discuss certain aspects of the method presented in Schelling’s Transcendental System. I am convinced that this can be especially helpful in the clarification of the method in Hegel’s Phenomenology. Such clarification is still necessary, to no small degree on account of the fact that representatives of various philosophical movements current today still discern in Hegel’s method either a justification for, or opposition to their own efforts.

I

HEGEL STATES in the Differenzschrift: “The absolute principle, the only real ground and solid standpoint for philosophy in Fichte’s and Schelling’s philosophy is intellectual intuition—expressed in terms of reflection: the identity of subject and object” (I, 271).

Through this identification of the “absolute principle” and “intellectual intuition,” Hegel has abstracted from the agent of intuition, from the philosopher who has freed himself from all object-related representations, and has performed the intellectual intuition. Schelling himself had abstracted from the subjective act only for purely theoretical philosophy, for the philosophy of nature. In his Transcendental System he identified intellectual intuition, which is freely generated, with the ego (III, 369—70). In this sort of intellectual intuition, the producing and the intuiting self are one with and the same as that which is produced and intuited. Intellectual intuition here is seen as the ego that withdraws from the succession of time into the immanent realm (I, 318); it is comprehended as the pure atemporal activity (374—75, 396—97) of a self-production that becomes an object only “for itself.” This accomplishment, not limited by any object to be found in the world and completely void of presuppositions, this “non-objectivity” (350—51, cf. 600—601), is considered something absolutely free (cf. 376), detached from all beings, and sustaining itself in its own Being. As such it is the one and only point where subjectivity and objectivity are completely and immediately one and the same: It is that “which is absolutely identical,” [das absolut Identische] which, according to the quotation from Hegel’s Differenzschrift mentioned above, is “the identity of subject and object for reflection.” In its complete self-sufficiency, it can never be an object for knowledge; it can only be the object of an “eternal presupposition in acting, i.e. of faith” (600—601). Absolute identity is the “principle” for all knowledge and for all conscious action, which are themselves split up into subject and object. It is a principle that expresses an unconditionally posited axiom that has only one condition: itself. Precisely because form and content mutually presuppose each other in this axiom, this principle is said to be capable of providing a foundation for the whole content of science, and above all for the form of its unity, for the systematic character of “philosophy as science” (cf. 359-60 and I, 89; 92; 69).

But why does Schelling identify this principle with intellectual intuition? In this respect he is less a successor of Fichte than of Spinoza, and here one can discern the influence of mysticism and of Hölderlin. It is “intellectual” because here in contrast to “sensuous” intuition, the very intuiting itself is distinct from that which is intuited (III, 369-70): Such intuiting is not restricted in its freedom by that which it intuits. Rather, it is a realization of the spontaneity of the intellect, of reason: It is the accomplishment of reason’s freedom as “absolutely free knowing” (368-69). Even though intellectual intuition does not create things out of nothing like the intellectus divinus, it does generate itself as that ego which freely produces all of their determinations. Schelling described this intuition as “intellectual” because it is reason in its freedom and because it is spontaneous in its own self-construction. Thus he wrote: “The beginning and the end of this philosophy [is] freedom, that which is absolutely indemonstrable, which proves itself through itself alone” (376).

It seems to me that contemporary philosophy should be reminded over and over again of the following: Hegel, Fichte, and the young Schelling (who is our sole concern here) were convinced that in finite consciousness there is a dimension that, like creation from nothing, is an original, self-generating dimension not limited by objects (368-69), and in this sense a free dimension. They held this dimension to be the principle on the basis of which one could fulfill Kant’s expectation of “philosophy as science.”

But why was this spontaneity for Schelling not the spontaneity of the reflection of understanding or rational reflection, a term one can use in reference to Schelling if it is understood as “speculation?”³ Why was it rather the spontaneity of “intuition?” The uniqueness of Schelling’s Idealism with its genetic procedure lies in the fact that it views the spontaneity of reason as prereflective,⁴ and thus seeks to discover its workings in the region “beyond common consciousness” (527-28; X, 93). These workings of reason are themselves preconscious—we become conscious of them only in their results. And this is the source of the pertinence and fascination of his attempt for us today as we seek more now than ever to understand the way in which our comprehension and action “happen to us,” to understand their “passivity.” In his Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur [Ideas Concerning a Philosophy of Nature] (1797), Schelling had already praised the faculty of intuition insofar as it is consciously fulfilled, as the faculty “supreme in the human spirit” (II, 222). This supremacy lies in the fact that it is able to make the activities intuitable that produce the representations of the objective world and, in particular, material representations. In the Transcendental System he designated those preconscious activities, which make freely acting self-consciousness possible, as “intuitions,” as “an intuiting” or as “that which intuits,” insofar as these activities produce in an original and immediate way the “objectivity” of the “subject—object,” i.e., the unconscious lawfulness of intelligence in its process of becoming conscious (cf. e.g. III, 382-83ff, 408-9, 410ff., 505-6, 567-68, 597-98ff., 631-32). Here one must not understand this broad concept of intuition as cognitive, analytic reflection, or as a speculative reflection that mediates the related extremes with each other through negative self-reference. It is in this vein that Schelling emphatically declared in the System of Transcendental Idealism: “Our whole philosophy (rests) on the standpoint of intuition, not on that of reflection . . .” (455-56).

Until now we have dealt only with the principle of Schelling’s system and not with the conception of this system. It is obvious that a whole system of propositions can be developed only if one does not limit oneself to the positing of the principle, i.e., if one does not remain on the level of the “fundamental proposition” [Grund-satz]. Rather one must also demonstrate that this principle is the foundation for the whole realm of empirical knowledge and cognate activity. It is necessary to reconstruct how and why this principle—the spontaneity of reason—makes all knowledge possible through its lawlike constructive activity. One must show how, in the workings of the unity of subject-object, harmony emerges between the sum-total of all unconscious objects, i.e. “nature” in this broad sense that includes the intellectual and historical world, and the sum-total of all conscious subjects (cf. 335ff.).If such a demonstration were successful, then not only would Fichte’s Subjective Idealism have been overcome, but also the dichotomy between absolute subjectivity and absolute objectivity. The task of philosophy would have been fulfilled.

In reference to the conception of this system, however, one must inquire whether its point of departure, the principle of intellectual intuition as the fulfillment of freedom, entails any necessity for the fact that the system must be constructed as a positing that serves as the foundation for the whole of what can be known. Schelling had already inquired into the necessity for proceeding from an absolute into the realm of finitude in his earlier works. There, he had attempted to distinguish between Fichte’s absolute position of an unlimitable ego, which posits itself as an absolute beyond which one cannot proceed, and self-positing in the sense of a self-consciousness, in which everything else is posited and which can only be transcendentally explained by simultaneously thinking of the opposite positing, the “opposition” of a “nonego” [ein Nicht-Ich].

The difficulties⁵ involved in Schelling’s early attempts also appear to predominate, though to a lesser extent, in the System of Transcendental Idealism. I shall not explore this problem here because my intention is to show that, in accordance with Schelling’s basic notion of “intuition” as “self-intuition,” his system provides a foundation for the necessity involved in the development of the absolute principle into finitude. Hegel’s view, as expressed in his famous critique of Schelling in the Phenomenology, was that it lies in the very nature of intuition to “go no further than just where it begins” (PhG 18, 8). This view appears to me to be refuted by the fact that for Schelling the meaning involved in the terms “intuition” and “self-intuition” not only entailed a necessity to proceed to “finitude,” but also to proceed to a systematic presentation of “everything that can be known” as well. Therefore, the conception and composition of this system can be best illustrated by clarifying what is entailed in this meaning.

For the systematic conception and composition of the Transcendental System, the most important aspect contained in the meaning of intuition as self-intuition is an aspect that Schelling took for granted, namely that intuition is a faculty that “produces by means of a primordial force, from within itself” (III, 427-28). This view is an expression of a concept of nature modeled on the Spinozistic natura naturans, which views nature as an all-encompassing creative process that is thus also the foundation for knowledge. Self-intuition is “productive” in this sense. The compulsion to correspond to this essence provides a very convincing explanation, first of all, for the fact that intuition discloses itself in a series of steps in which it brings forth “powers” [Potenzen] within itself; and second, for the fact that intuition is fulfilled in a form that is the expression of utmost productivity. Schelling states accordingly: “It is the poetic faculty that is called original intuition in the first power; and, conversely, that which we call the poetic faculty in the highest power” (625). If one clearly sees the connotation attached to “productivity,” which Schelling saw in the term “self-intuition,” then one can understand why the system’s form of fulfillment is aesthetic and why the work of art is its product. The following retrospective insight, recorded by Schelling in the “Allgemeine Anmerkungen zu dem ganzen System” [General Remarks Concerning the System as a Whole], confirms that the necessity for the construction of a system lay in the meaning of self-intuition conceived of in this way: “the entire inner cohesiveness of Transcendental Philosophy rests upon self-intuition’s continually raising itself to a power, from the first power in self-consciousness up until the highest, the aesthetic power” (63off.).

Even more fundamental, however, was Schelling’s conviction that the meaning of self-intuition implies that the movement of this genesis is first set in motion by self-intuition. First comes the primal act [der Urakt], or the ego as the infinitely producing activity, i.e., the “epitome of all reality” [Inbegriff aller Realität] (380-81). The absolute ego, however, seeks to posit itself as self-consciousness, that is, “for itself.” For Schelling, the meaning of self-intuition implies that self-intuition is the power that can limit the primal act’s infinite producing and posit it “for itself,” but “the ego as ego is only limited by the fact” (402-9) that “it intuits itself as such, for an ego is only what it is for itself” (382—83). More precisely, this occurs through self-intuition’s positing of a negation into the infinite activity, through the positing of a “boundary” [Schranke] that “can be expanded into infinity” (383—84), and makes possible the occurrence of “an infinite becoming” [eines undendlichen Werdens] (ibid.).⁶ For, the limit brings about a “duplicity” (392—93), the duplicity of the “real” activity that, although limited by a boundary, in itself proceeds to infinity, and the infinite, “ideal” activity that forever transcends the boundary. The spontaneity of reason constitutes itself on the basis of this productive strife that is initiated by self-intuition and fulfills itself “preconsciously.” According to this “tendency” self-intuition necessarily fulfills itself as a system because “the ego is the infinite tendency to intuit itself” (400—401; 404-5; 418—19).

The desire to intuit itself without the intuiting ego initially knowing that it is the object of intuition is the beginning of the genesis of intelligence. The path begins with a first epoch of “feeling intuition” [empfindende Anschauung]; it progresses to a second epoch, “productive intuition”; and raises itself to a higher power until, in a third epoch, intelligence frees itself through the act of “absolute abstraction” from its producing so that free reflection, concept, judgement, and schematism are constituted. The pathway then begins anew when through “the activity of intelligence upon itself” (533—34), through the self-determining act of freedom, the now consciously intuiting ego intuits itself as actively producing. This ego acts according to concepts since it is now practical consciousness; it changes the world that had already shown itself to be the product of intuiting “in a transcendental past” (408—9).

Reason’s will to realize itself through practical intuition finds its expression with regard to the composition of the system in the fact that self-intuition gradually brings forth higher powers within itself, in that it increasingly becomes “for itself,” that is, objective. In this process the transcendental philosopher is repeatedly presented with a new “task” in which he has to supply a “transcendental explanation” for such questions as, “how does the ego come to intuit itself as limited,” or “how does the ego come to intuit itself as productive.” The tendency on the part of intelligence to intuit itself can come to rest only in a complete self-intuition, and this is the aesthetic intuition of the genius, as I shall show later. In the meaning of self-intuition lies the necessity that it be developed into this perfect form.

Another connotation of “self-intuition,” along with that of a power that limits “all reality,” was tied to self-intuition for Schelling. This connotation was that self-intuition is able to “set bounds for itself” [sich einschränken] out of freedom, which means out of its own necessity. It is the power of self-intuition that legitimates the concept and composition of the system for all the successive stages up to the stage of individuality (cf. 551—52). Because reason emerges as a self-restricting self-intuition in the construction of its own lawfulness, all of its concepts are “kinds of intuitions” (513—14) and as such they are, in Schelling’s words, mere “restrictions [Einschränkungen] of intellectual intuition” (370-71). Furthermore, empirical consciousness can only be conceived of as a restriction, a limitation of pure self-consciousness (374—75), just as the world and the things in the world are “only modifications of the ego’s activity that is restricted in various ways” (375—76). The meaning of self-intuition includes this necessity of the totality’s increasing restriction of itself and thus of its further evolution. The thesis that its evolution necessarily leads to a system follows from the basic supposition that in the pure act of self-consciousness as an “absolute synthesis” all of its ways of acting are comprehended in their lawfulness from the very beginning. In this form of “concrete totality” (388) they are gathered together in the modes of the ego “in itself,” and that precisely as such, they have the urge to become “for itself” with regard to the ego through intuition.

These are a few aspects that for Schelling are contained in the meaning of this fundamental concept. They show that the absolute principle of “self-intuition” necessarily evolves as a system, a consequence that Hegel would have denied. In discussing the “method” of the System of Transcendental Idealism in the second section of this investigation, I shall illustrate how it is necessary in Schelling’s view for self-intuition to develop into a system.

At this point, though, the following question poses itself: If one supposes that the necessity for the development into a system is contained in this principle, how is philosophy able to reconstruct this principle, if it is, as Schelling emphasized, something essentially “nonobjective,” something that, as he expressly stated, is “not reflected through anything” (350—51) and “never attains consciousness” (600-601), but rather is something that is only the object of an “eternal presupposition in acting” (600—601)? Here I must confine myself to the remark that the transcendental philosopher discovers intellectual intuition to be his principle, and that consequently it must “continually accompany” (369—70) his philosophizing. Intellectual intuition is the “substrate” for his philosophizing and the “organ for transcendental thought,” which aims at “making that which is not otherwise an object into an object through freedom” (ibid.). The transcendental philosopher must then allow this spontaneity, this original process of constitution—the “action of intelligence according to determinate laws” (350—51)—to come to be through his own production. Schelling prescribed that the philosopher’s “imitative constructing” [nachahmendes Konstruieren] (397—98) always has to be a reflection “in intellectual intuition” (351—52). What kind of philosophical reflection is this? Why is “the proper sense in which this philosophy must be comprehended the aesthetic one” (350—51)? How is this philosophizing essentially related to art (627-28)? How does it take the latter for its “organon” (ibid.)?⁷ Reflecting “in” intellectual intuition does not divide, but rather unites because Schelling determined theoretical reason, the form under which philosophy is fulfilled, as imagination. Imagination in turn projects “ideas” [Ideen] “on the behalf of freedom” (558—59), it is determined to be “the only faculty through which we are capable of conceiving of and conjoining contradictions” (625-26). Within the framework of this analysis I cannot further investigate how transcendental philosophy determines itself as essentially “productive” and even “creative” on the basis of this synthesis of intuition, imagination, and reflection. I cannot pursue the question of whether and how this synthesis distinguishes itself from the synthesis of reflection and intuition that Hegel conceived of in the Differenzschrift as “transcendental intuition” (I, 178, 194). In order to characterize the conception of the System of Transcendental Idealism more closely, I must instead trace a few of the steps that, within this “history of self-consciousness,” lead through successively emerging stages of “failure” (III, 536—37) up to the last stage—the fulfillment of the “task of philosophy” in overcoming dichotomy.

In his philosophy of nature, Schelling had previously attempted to overcome the “division” of nature and the forces of consciousness in a fundamental science that begins with the pure subject-object. There he had demonstrated how the objective subject-object is resolved in a dynamic succession that leads to intelligence—first to the form of the laws of nature, and then in the highest power to reflection, to self-conscious reason. There he had presented evidence that that which is objective and unconscious is essentially akin to that which is subjective, to intelligence, in that there is a “correspondence” [Übereinstimmung] between them. Schelling thus maintained that he had overcome Fichte’s Idealism, which is purported to have been merely subjective.

The second basic science, the Transcendental System, concerns itself with that “nature which is consciously productive” (634). Its task consists in exhibiting for cognition the foundation of the correspondence between the “complete comprehension of everything merely objective in our knowledge” (375) and that which is subjective, that is, intelligence. The subject-object must show itself to be not only “the absolute certainty through which all else is mediated” (346—47), not merely a “principle of explanation” (342—43) for all knowledge; it must prove itself to be the “ground of all reality” (ibid.), the “real ground of the harmony between subject and object” (600-601). Following Fichte as it does, this demonstration is and must be an “expansion” (cf. 330—31) on his Wissenschaftslehre [Doctrine of Science]. This is achieved through the “factual proof” of a deduction from the principle “I am” (377). This demonstration must exhibit not only the conditions for self-consciousness but also a “whole system of knowledge” in the form of a “history of consciousness” (399), and furthermore it must exhibit “how, for example, the objective world with all of its determinations, i.e. history, etc.” (378—79) develop themselves from pure self-consciousness without any external influences. For this purpose, the “main objects of knowledge” (330) must be reconstructed according to the “fundamental axioms of Transcendental Idealism” as a succession of actions performed by intelligence, from the lowest to the highest power.

In the “System of Theoretical Philosophy,” in which that which produces and intuits does not become the object as such (cf. 534—35), the production takes place “beyond consciousness” (536—37). The structure of the representation of the objective world with all of its determinations is the result of the strife between mental activities [geistigen Tätigkeiten], a strife that is carried out in a “transcendental past” (cf. above pp. 39—41). Its parallel is the constitution of matter as well as organisms by means of an increasingly productive intuition. In the “System of Practical Philosophy” the topic is the ego that has already torn itself away from its unconscious production and has elevated itself above all objects (cf. 534—35), an ego that is now taken as practical intelligence determined in its “acting upon itself” (cf. 533—34ff). In order to constitute itself as an “actual” practical consciousness, the ego deduces, with reference to “absolute willing” (556—57ff.) and its “appearance” (564—65), i.e., transcendental self-determination” (533—34), how such practical consciousness is produced through the influence of other conscious intelligent beings (554—55) that have a concept of willing. Within this constitution, an opposition arises between the consciousness of being in autonomous subjection to the demands of moral law (cf. 573—74) and the consciousness of being determined by the natural drive for happiness [Glückseligkeit] (574-75), which is directed toward an external world (581-82) that is independent of consciousness. This is the opposition that transforms “absolute will” into “voluntary choice” [Willkür] (575—76). But how can the voluntary choice of a single rational being, this “act of freedom” with which all consciousness begins (ibid.), this “holiest of all things” (581-82), be protected from being destroyed by the voluntary choice of other individuals? This question is the subject of the deduction of the “mutual interaction” [Wechselwirkung] (582—83ff.) of the various individuals who as a species attempt to realize “One Ideal” (cf. above p. 3). They attempt to institute a universal legal order for all nations (588-89ff) and in the realization of “history,” they experience the contradiction between freedom and necessity. This contradiction is constituted, on the one hand, by a blind or concealed necessity (586—87, 594—95) in the form of history’s lawfulness, and in this necessity Schelling saw an explanation for the unconscious accomplishment of an “absolute synthesis” (see above p. 8) of all arbitrary and selfish actions on the part of the various individuals (598—99). This synthesis represents that which is common to all, that which is “objective.” On the other hand, there is freedom, the “free play” of the actions of individuals as well as of nations (586—87). The conflict between necessity and freedom is meant to be solved by postulating an “absolute identity” (600—601). Since there is, however, no duplicity in this identity, and since duplicity is the condition for all consciousness, this identity can never attain consciousness. It is the final ground for the “pre-established harmony” that reigns in history, the harmony between freedom, that which determines, and that which is objective (i.e. the necessary lawfulness) (cf. above p. 10). This absolute identity is God who is above both of them and reveals himself in three periods of history, but who for the sake of freedom never fully manifests himself (cf. 603—4; also, above p.35).

According to the “Fundamental Propositions Concerning Teleology,” “organic nature” is then transcendentally explained as a product that is unconsciously brought forth through purposes and ends, although the result appears to have been consciously constituted (6o7ff.). “For” the living being itself, however, there is no appearance of this identity between unconscious and conscious activity, and certainly not for the consciousness of an ego. By contrast, the aesthetically productive intuition, the aesthetic intuition of the genius, is such that “the ego is simultaneously unconscious and conscious for itself in one and the same intuition” (611). This is precisely the identity sought by transcendental philosophy. The “Fundamental Propositions Concerning the Philosophy of Art” deduces that aesthetic production simultaneously realizes itself consciously when considered subjectively, and unconsciously when considered objectively: it is conscious as far as the production is concerned, and unconscious in view of its product (613—14). Furthermore, a genius knows that a “dark and unknown force” contributes objectivity to the work of art that he has consciously formed (616—17). This “simultaneity” attains visible form in an art work. Schelling wrote: “Only a work of art can reflect for me that which cannot otherwise be reflected, the absolute identity . . .” (625-26).

In order to understand the whole conception of the Transcendental System, it is important to see that the “original ground of all harmony between subject and object,” the absolute principle, is completely removed from the sphere of subjectivity by the work of art and becomes completely objective (628—29). Even more important is the fact that, through the deduction of aesthetic intuition, the presentation as a whole proves itself to be a “system.” In the Differenzschrift Hegel demanded as one requirement for a system that “that which is constructed in consciousness as absolute must be something conscious and unconscious at the same time” (I, 178), a requirement that presumably also holds for the system as a whole. Schelling’s Transcendental System finds its completion in a similar manner. In aesthetic intuition a principle has been deduced that is the supreme activity of self-consciousness (630) because it is, as had been explicitly postulated at the outset, “simultaneously conscious and unconscious activity ... in consciousness itself (III, 349-50). Furthermore, because it is essentially akin to the philosopher’s intellectual intuition (see below p. 46), it corresponds to the point “where we ourselves stood when we began to philosophize” (628—29, 389—90). This completely satisfies Hegel’s requirements for a system. It is then all the more noteworthy that Hegel did not even mention the aesthetic activity and its product in the Differenzschrift, as well as a number of other aspects in this system, especially its preconscious stages. His brief remarks concerning the relationship between art, religion, and speculation (I, 270) are already guided by motives directed toward a philosophy of identity.

One important outcome for Schelling was that the philosopher’s intellectual intuition becomes objective in aesthetic intuition. Although the philosopher’s “inner intuition” is essentially “nonobjective,” by being raised to the power of aesthetic intuition, it attains a “universal, generally recognized, and undeniably absolute objectivity” (III, 624—25). Thus, it is not only the nonobjective absolute principle on which all transcendental philosophy rests that is “called forth into consciousness” (624—25). As absolute it also becomes the entire mechanism that philosophy has deduced (625—26). Schelling’s statements here may be viewed as a “justification” of his transcendental philosophy in contrast to other contemporary forms of philosophy—or as Hegel put it, of his system as a “proper instrument” (I, 178) for overcoming the predominant dichotomies.

Artistic production is capable of completely overcoming the infinite opposition of activities through the finite production of an ideal world of art (III, 626—27). Transcendental philosophy, by presenting the productive intuition that initiates and then overcomes contradiction in the “real world,” performs the same task. Within this “kinship” [Verwandschaft] (627—28) art is nevertheless superior to philosophy in that it is capable of externally, objectively presenting that which philosophy can only subjectively attain (627—28, 628-29). Dieter Jähnig, in particular, has concentrated on this relationship between philosophy and art.⁸ For our understanding of the entire structure of the transcendental system, however, there is one aspect that is perhaps even more important: In aesthetic intuition, conscious and unconscious activity become objective in one and the same intuition (611); and furthermore, in aesthetic intuition the ego becomes “simultaneously conscious and unconscious for itself” (ibid.). As Schelling himself remarked, it is here that one finds the solution “to the entire (the supreme) problem of transcendental philosophy (the explanation of the correspondence between subject and object)” (610—11).

We are now able to see the special manner in which Schelling attempted to respond to the “task of philosophy” and to overcome “dichotomy”—and, furthermore, we are able to see the limitations of this attempt. His “Final Remarks on the System” (628—29) bear witness to the fact that he himself did not think that the overcoming of dichotomy in artistic production suffices to overcome the division prevailing in historical and social conditions (see above p. o). Since the system is supposed to have shown that art alone is capable of “objectifying with universal validity” that which philosophy can only present subjectively, it has to be expected that philosophy “must flow back into the universal ocean of poetry” from which it had proceeded. Moreover, the return of philosophy to poetry would supposedly be mediated by mythology, which existed “before the division took place that now appears to be irresolvable” (628—29). But, how a new mythology was supposed to arise, since it can only be the invention of a “new people that represents only one Author, as it were,” is a “problem,” he explained, “whose solution is to be sought only in the future fate of the world and the further course of history” (ibid.).

II

SINCE IT IS my intention to relate Hegel’s Phenomenology to Schelling’s Transcendental System, above all with respect to the latter’s method, I would now like to deal with an important aspect of this method, the relationship of the philosophical ego to that ego which is taken as the theme of philosophical presentation, i.e. as philosophy’s “object” (629—30). The latter ego is the one Schelling called an “objective ego” in his Munich Lectures of 1828 (X, 98). These lectures and the Lectures in Erlangen of 1822 have been decisive determining factors in the interpretation of the Transcendental System until now, especially with regard to this relationship.⁹ I am convinced, however, that Schelling depicted his earlier position here in a manner that is not completely faithful to the text of the Transcendental System.

In the Munich Lectures the relationship between the “philosophical ego” and the “objective ego” is compared to the one that holds “between the student and the master” in the “Socratic dialogues” (ibid.). This characterization has contributed to the false opinion that the Transcendental System concerns two distinct natural individuals with different experiences.

There is no doubt that in the Transcendental System a distinction is made between the philosophical ego and the ego that it thematizes. This distinction is expressed by the distinction between the term “we,” on the one hand, and the ego whose positings are supposed to become “for itself,” on the other hand. Schelling also declared that the ego must be “led to the point where it is posited with all the determinations that are contained in the free and conscious act of self-consciousness” (III, 450—51). The investigation must proceed until “the consciousness of our object coincides with our own consciousness” (389—90). Accordingly, transcendental philosophy is said to be “completed” only when “the ego becomes just as much an object for itself as it is for the philosopher” (452-53).

This “allotment of roles and tasks” is in reality, however, merely a “rhetorical figure” for argumentation and serves only to express a point I have already emphasized: that the essence of the ego consists in its becoming objective. In order to illustrate this genesis of self-objectification, a distinction between two “standpoints” in respect to one and the same ego is introduced (402-3). The standpoint of the transcendentally philosophizing ego is the one that performs the reconstruction of reason’s original self-constitution by disclosing the conditions for the constitution of self-consciousness. By means of a “free imitation” (396—97) of the original succession in the “first series” of actions, and by means of a reconstruction of them in a “second series,” the necessity (357—58) operative within the mechanism of the original genesis is to be demonstrated. Since philosophy’s theme is the ego and the ego is nothing other than what it is for itself, however, the philosopher has to halt at each new stage in his reconstruction and inquire to what extent and in what sense that which has been reconstructed has become “for itself” at this stage. In relation to himself, the philosopher places himself in the position of someone else. Because he continually adopts the viewpoint of his object (cf. 402—3), he claims to have accepted the role of an observer, of “looking on” [Zusehen] (472—73), although he is the agent of this reconstruction. The important thing is to note that the transcendental philosopher’s only concern here is with that which he “freely produces” (cf. 350—51), his “own free constructions” (371—72).

It would be completely false to envisage a “history of cultivation” [Bildungsgeschichte] here on account of the references to the philosophical ego as “guiding” the objective ego, or later to a “Socratic dialogue.” If the genesis described here were such a history, this would imply certain consequences that do not hold for the Transcendental System. For instance, after the philosopher has discovered that the idea of an immutably presented world, which is accompanied by a feeling of compulsion, is only the result of a strife between various mental [geistige] activities, consciousness would have to see through the illusion of this idea. The transcendental philosopher’s only concern is, however, as Schelling stated, to demonstrate the “inevitability of the delusion” (351—52), that it is a “necessary illusion,” and not to overcome false consciousness as a stage that must be surpassed. If it were a history of cultivation, then the self-intuition of practical consciousness as a false consciousness would also have to proceed to a further level of consciousness that finds its fulfillment in aesthetic consciousness. In the Munich Lectures it is therefore misleading when Schelling declared that philosophy in the Transcendental System was a recollecting, an anamnesis, for the objective ego, or when Schelling’s interpreters spoke, as many have done so, of consciousness’s “labor of coming to itself” (X, 93).

Finally, we have to clarify the source of the “law for the continuing process of determination” according to this method. In the Transcendental System of Idealism, as well as in the Munich Lectures, Schelling explained this continuing determination on the basis of a contradiction immanent within the ego, namely the contradiction that it is simultaneously finite and infinite, limited and unlimited. We have already pointed out that, in order to become “for itself,” to become an ego, the original infinite activity must intuit itself; it must posit itself as a subject. In positing itself as a subject, it makes itself into an object, into something finite and bounded, into something other than what it is. For Schelling’s later reflection, the ego’s inability to ever “gain possession” of itself as a subject is the “fundamental contradiction” [der Grundwiderspruch], “the misfortune of all being,” “the primal contingency,” the “dissonance” (X, 101). This “never being able to gain control of itself,” however, represents a “movement that continues to proceed and move on.” The subject-object is that which is desired in this movement from the outset, and, Schelling added in response to Hegel’s famous polemic in the preface to the Phenomenology, this desire is the starting point for the whole process, “the pistol from which it is shot” (149).

What did Schelling see as the “law of progress” for the method of the Transcendental System, as well as for the method of the Philosophy of Nature? The subject “A” that must posit itself as “A” in “B” in order to become objective does not remain a simple “A.” According to Schelling, it becomes something “ superior to itself (103). He adds the following remark to this assertion: “That which is superior is always and necessarily the comprehension and recognition of that which is subordinate. . .

In the Transcendental System the strife between the contrary activities is resolved by a third, mediating activity for the sake of the monad’s unity, an activity “ which is suspended between opposing directions” (III, 392). The self-conscious ego continually reasserts itself anew. We may suppose—although Schelling did not clearly state it—that this results from the activity of “imagination” (cf. 557—58, 625—26). By contrast, when a “comprehending and recognizing” [Begreifen und Erkennen] of that which is subordinate is spoken of in the Munich Lectures, one should note that this does not refer to a comprehending and recognizing on the part of the philosophical subject, but rather to a law that “resides in the absolute subject” (X, 108). In fact, the possibility is expressly excluded that the philosopher is referred to here (ibid.). Does this then mean that now the law of continuing progress in determination can only be explained for Schelling by means of a movement that, because it is referred back to the preceding stages, has to determine them in their opposition in order to mediate them? Does this mean that this movement has the structure of a negative self-reference such as that which underlies reflection and concept in Hegel’s thought?

I have attempted to illustrate the conception of Schelling’s transcendental philosophy by exploring the meaning of its basic notion, self-intuition. As a result of this inquiry the question arises whether—at least in line with Schelling’s later views—reason that constructs itself as self-intuition requires a structure that is alien to intuition for its progress and thus for its systematic completion? This is a question that we must take into account if we are going to try to answer the broader question “How is a systematic philosophy possible?” in the historical form in which it was posed in Schelling’s Transcendental System.

III

I BEGAN with the observation that at the time Hegel composed the Phenomenology he still shared Schelling’s conviction that the “task of philosophy” is to overcome [aufheben] the dichotomy between absolute subjectivity and absolute objectivity. Of course, in 1807 Hegel had a completely different view of the possibility for a systematic solution to this task than he did in 1801.¹⁰ In the meantime he had come to the conclusion that the absolute principle, the subject-object, is only truly related to the whole realm of knowledge and conscious action if it does not remain an immobile, immediate Spinozistic substance (cf. PhG 19, 9-10). It cannot “remain stationary in its beginnings,” as Schelling’s “idea” does, which “for itself is certainly true” (PdG 18, 8). The subject-object must rather be presented as the “result together with its becoming” (11, 2) if “that which is true” [das Wahre] is to be conceived of and expressed “equally as subject.” In Schelling’s system, we have seen (see above p. 39), that bounds or negation are posited in the originally absolute and immediate identity. Hegel also conceived of a negativity immanent within the absolute, but thought of it as a relationship between “the one and its other,” as a movement of “becoming other than itself together with itself” that relates itself to its negation and to itself (20,10). He conceived of the “concept” [Begriff] that is realized in a process of self-mediation of the “idea” [ldee] and of the subject-object unity as just that “subject” that is realized in and for itself in the philosopher’s presentation. For this reason, the question that we posed regarding Schelling’s Transcendental System—the question of whether and how its fundamental principle implies the necessity that it be developed into a system—would be completely superfluous here. The “concept,” the “subject,” is as developed self-mediation: the scientific system is “the true form in which there is truth” (12, 3). Regarding the philosopher, it must be noted that for Schelling, absolute identity is disclosed only in intellectual intuition, and is thus manifested only to those rare few—those “born under a lucky star” [die Sonntagskinder], as Hegel mockingly remarked¹¹—who have a faculty that is akin in its essence to aesthetic intuition. For Hegel, however, reflection is the form of natural consciousness. Of course, this natural reflection must be transformed from a reflection based on understanding into an “absolute” reflection because only the latter is capable of presenting the concept as concept. In the Differenzschrift, the stages toward the transformation to the suitable “instrument of philosophizing” demanded there are merely counted off, so to speak; the Phenomenology’s great achievement is that it is able to present the succession of stages of experience, which are required by the concept, in such a way that the result, “absolute reflection,” is “scientifically necessary.”

Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism and Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit are usually viewed as parallel works. The following consideration would seem to preclude such a parallel, however: In contrast to the object of Schelling’s system, the Phenomenology’s object is the becoming, the genesis of absolute knowledge. The Phenomenology is not yet the presentation of speculative philosophy and consequently does not claim to fulfill the task of fully overcoming dichotomy, as Schelling’s system does. Nevertheless, a comparison of both systems allows important fundamental traits to be seen. I have just pointed out that Hegel’s fundamental conception was exoteric (cf. PhG 16, 7—8), in contrast to the more esoteric view that Schelling held. If Schelling’s declared standpoint was that of prereflective intuition, then Hegel’s standpoint was just as decidedly that of a reflection, which as understanding, analyzes terms in their relationship to one another, and as reason, is a self-relation that negates these related terms and mediates them with each other. Since reflection is the element that understanding shares with absolute knowledge, it is a matter of giving this element its “completion and transparency exclusively through the movement of its becoming” (23, 14). The fact that this element is such a common ground makes it possible to “justify” the scientific standpoint against a contemporary culture of reflection by means of a scientific presentation. This stage of reflection is therefore said to be able to make use of the “ladder” that science extends to it (25, 14—15) and to transform itself into absolute knowledge. The fact that intellectual intuition, however, which is carried out only internally, finds a generally recognized objectivity in aesthetic production must suffice as the “justification” for Schelling’s Transcendental System.

The difference in the tasks of the two works cannot preclude a comparison of their methods, since the Phenomenology is also the presentation of a “genesis,” a genesis of even the same principle, the subject-object identity. It can be shown that the “idea” of the entire work is contained in just this principle.¹² What kind of genesis is the Phenomenology? In the Munich Lectures, Schelling insisted that his Transcendental System was the first to have had a “tendency toward the historical” (X, 93). I have shown, however, that the Transcendental System is history only as the genesis of the transcendentally reconstructed lawfulness found in reason’s original self-construction. The Phenomenology is by contrast a real history, even if only “under the aspect of the conceptual comprehension of its organization” (PhG 564, 493). More precisely, it is a “history of the experience” that consciousness has with itself and, at the same time, a history of spirit in its self-alienation and subsequent return to itself. It does not deduce a series of ways in which reason acts, but instead represents a succession of historical forms that, guided by the categories that follow one another, experience the claim to truth inherent in each of these forms. The succession does not end in a self-intuition in which conscious and unconscious activity are simultaneously present for consciousness, i.e. in aesthetic activity and its product, the work of art. Instead, it terminates in the “form of spirit that knows itself as spirit.” This genesis does not construct a preconscious occurrence within a “transcendental past” that makes real consciousness possible; it begins rather with real consciousness, even if only in its immediate form, sense certainty. As the first form of consciousness, sense certainty is above all determined by “inorganic nature,” and precisely not by an absolute identity that the philosopher has purified from all alien determinations, as is the case with Schelling’s intellectual intuition. In the Phenomenology this “purification” occurs only gradually in the history of experience and finds its completion in that form from which everything factual has been removed. The Transcendental System, by contrast, finds its completion in the fact that there is art.

All these differences can be explained by Hegel’s basic conviction that the absolute principle is the concept in its attainment of total manifestation, and not prereflective self-intuition. Although the uniqueness of Hegel’s concept lies in its having overcome the immobility of Kant’s conception, it is the identity between identity and difference contained in transcendental apperception that is the principle that Hegel made dynamic through historical experience and that he presented as modes of spirit in its self-mediation and in its process of becoming transparent to itself. In any case, the absolute principle does not emerge as a fundamental proposition or “principle” [Grundsatz] that must be posited as the totality of knowledge in the way we have shown necessary in the Transcendental System. Rather, the absolute principle, “the concept,” is presented in its operation as a process of self-mediation. In the Phenomenology, the concept appears in modes of consciousness, of “appearing” or “phenomenal” knowledge [erscheinendes Wissens]. Phenomenal knowledge then further determines itself in a history of experience until it reaches that shape in which it comes to know itself as “subject-object,” until it is absolute knowledge or “conscious identity.” This is natural consciousness in the form of knowing, which, in contrast to natural consciousness itself, is subject to a philosophically guided, systematic self-examination and becomes involved in a regular movement according to law. And it is this movement that brings about this progression toward absolute knowledge. Furthermore, this movement guarantees the completeness of the forms that are presented. “Phenomenal knowledge” is the philosopher’s theme, his object, and even though the philosopher is here distinguished from phenomenal knowledge in the same terms in which this is done in Schelling’s system, through “we” and “for us” as opposed to “for itself,” one cannot emphasize strongly enough that “phenomenal knowledge” is capable of having experiences with itself; whereas Schelling’s “objective ego” is, as we have shown, nothing other than a “rhetorical figure” that is employed by the philosopher himself. The “objective ego” in the Transcendental System cannot take on an independent role; “phenomenal knowledge,” by contrast, is entrusted with the important role of consciously liberating itself from its “inorganic nature” by means of the “desperation” [Verzweifelung] produced by a “self-fulfilling skepticism” (cf. above p. 26). The obtive ego, however, does not discern its “transcendental past,” nor can the various powers of its self-intuition lead to the consciousness of absolute identity between subject and object that is postulated by the philosopher.

The “law of continuing progress in determination” [Gesetz der Fortbestimmung] in the Phenomenology thus rests primarily on the activity of “phenomenal knowledge.” The unique structure of this law should be briefly explored by contrasting it with the motive for continuing determination in the Transcendental System.

Here again it is decisive that for Hegel, consciousness has a conceptual nature. “Consciousness for itself, however, is the concept ” (69, 51). The objective ego in the Transcendental System can be judged only against the “standard” of the identity between the conscious and unconscious activity in consciousness, according to a standard that the philosopher imposes “from the outside,” so to speak. By contrast, due to its conceptual nature, consciousness in the Phenomenology is nothing other than its own comparison with itself (cf. 72, 53—54). In the execution of its “self-examination,” the form and content of knowledge are measured against the “objectivity” that is inherent as a standard in the structure of consciousness itself. “Consciousness provides its standard in itself” (71,53). This standard changes when consciousness corrects its knowledge: That which was “in itself” [an sich] at first, is now demoted to “being in-itself for-itself” [für es an sich Sein]. This change in the standard, this transition to a new standard is “experience.” The necessary connection between the new standard and the previous one remains concealed, since the consciousness that has the experience thinks that it has cast the “old” one into the “empty abyss.” It is precisely this experience that is the realization of the “law of further determination”; phenomenal knowledge’s inability to discern this law, which lies inherent within it, is another matter. In any case, whereas the “objective ego” thematized by the philosopher in the Transcendental System has no function at all in this further determination, in the Phenomenology it is the experience of phenomenal knowledge as “comprehended in experience” that stimulates the process of further determination.

But surely the presentation of the necessity of further determination would not be possible if it were not discerned by the philosopher. His “contribution” [Zutat] consists in “viewing the issue” [die Betrachtung der Sache] (74, 55—56), because he does not hold the result of each particular examination—the noncorrespondence between knowledge and that which is “in itself,” i.e. the untenability of the standard—to be an empty nothingness as “phenomenal consciousness” does. He sees it rather as the “ nothingness of that from which it results” (ibid.). The philosopher recognizes that the experience of the nothingness of the previous object, of the first “in itself,” contains as its result the new object. He recognizes that phenomenal knowledge’s experience of the noncorrespondence between the previously dominant spheres of objectivity, or truth, and its knowledge of this objectivity is an antithetic movement. He recognizes that the “new object” is nothing other than the synthesis that results from the antithetic movement of experience. This dialectic of “determinate negation” (69, 51), which is the foundation for phenomenal knowledge’s experience, contains the “law of a continuing progress in determination,” which has been the object of our inquiry. For this law not only governs the genesis of a single particular shape but guides “the whole series of shapes of consciousness in their necessity” (74, 56). For the later Schelling, the Transcendental System’s law of further determination consisted in the fact that “the absolute subject” reasserts itself anew in each objective form by “recognizing and conceiving” it as “superior” to the previous one. When we noted that accepting this view implies that there must also be some sort of “knowledge” in the realm of preconsciousness that has a structure of self-relation, i.e. of the concept, this did not by any means imply that the concept plays the same role according to the method of the Transcendental System that it does in the Phenomenology. In the Transcendental System, it does not serve as a “standard” that consciousness gives to itself. It is also important that this be emphasized because the “law of continuing progress in determination” in the Phenomenology depends on the Logic in developing its categories, its “essences,” or “moments.” This logical development can be recognized by the philosopher, and it is his task to actively further this development. This can be documented not only by passages in the preface, but also by the section at the end of the Phenomenology (566, 488) where Hegel spoke of an additional “contribution” that the philosopher makes.¹³ In this section, a “gathering” [Versammlung] of the various moments and an “adherence [Festhalten] to the concept in the form of concept” is demanded of the philosopher. The philosopher is supposed to retain the categorical determinations or essences, the “moments,” such as “being-in-itself,” “being-for-itself,” “self-sameness;” in short, he is supposed to gather and retain them as the process of self-mediation, as the very process of the concept in its self-determination. This means that in the Phenomenology the absolute principle, according to the law “inherent within it,” securely and decisively guarantees that the movement described above necessarily leads to the goal of the system. The system in the Phenomenology, just like the one in Schelling’s “Transcendental Idealism,” is based on the supposition that there is a principle within empirical consciousness—namely, the spontaneity of self-constructing reason, the movement of an identity that is differentiated within itself—which develops itself into a system. Already in the Phenomenology, Hegel asserted the possibility of systematic philosophy, just as Schelling had done in the System of Transcendental Idealism.

In closing, I might add the following remark: Schelling’s so-called “Aesthetic Idealism” has been viewed to be “speculatively unsatisfactory” by Kroner,¹⁴ and as a “solution for lack of any other” [Verlegenheitslösung] by Schulz,¹⁵ not primarily because there is no reference to art in Schelling’s development after 1809, but rather because the philosophy of art is said to “have veiled the questions concerning the knowability of absolute knowledge.”¹⁶ These interpretations measure Schelling’s basic notions according to the standard of Hegel’s basic notion, that of “the concept,” of absolute reflection. It is in the concept that subjectivity indeed realizes itself through the self-mediation of its content, and, in its knowing, the principle provides its own foundation. In the Transcendental System, however, self-intuition has no such telos. There is rather a preconscious operation that belongs to reason as self-intuition, and the highest power of this operation is characterized by the idea of “genius.” This is the phenomenon that Schelling called “pure contingency” in the final lines of his System (III, 633—34). Here we see a further implication contained in his basic thought: the aspiration toward a sort of “knowledge” that cannot be grasped by thought.

I shall not here pursue Schelling’s further development in this direction. The purpose of this section was to show that, at the outset of German Idealism, Schelling employed the basic notion of intuition to conceive of something radically different from Hegel’s basic notion of reflection and of the concept. Both philosophers’ ideas were held to be principles of reason, and the realization of each of their basic conceptions by the philosopher was intended as a response to the type of task required of philosophy, and to the “need of philosophy” [Bedürfnis der Philosophie] to overcome the dichotomy prevalent at the time. There are certain contemporary movements in philosophy that, in attempting to counteract the dichotomy predominant today, almost without any reservations exclusively orient themselves toward Hegelian reflection and “the concept.”¹⁷ Perhaps, however, “practical philosophy” today would do well to recall the significance of the notion that underlies Schelling’s Transcendental System—the notion of self-intuition.