3

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

I

IN HIS WORK The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s Systems of Philosophy,¹ Hegel stated that the task, “the need of philosophy,” consisted in overcoming [Aufhebung]² the dichotomy that the philosophy of reflection had brought forth in his day. In the “development of culture” [Bildung] in the modern age, this philosophy had “rigidified” the traditional oppositions, especially the opposition between “intelligence and nature.” He stated that Schelling had already responded to this task by constructing the “objective subject-object” in his philosophy of nature and the “subjective subject-object” in his transcendental philosophy as the two sides of his system as a whole (cf. I, 178, 205ff.). The younger Schelling had indeed previously demonstrated that nature is not a res extensa in the Cartesian sense, that it is not a mathematical realm bereft of spirit and separated from the res cogitans, the mind or spirit, by an unbridgeable gap.³ Nature is rather a spirit that, in a dynamic series of stages from inorganic matter up to consciousness, is similar to an ego. It is thus altogether a will, and, as such, it is “freedom,” even if in a “suspended” [aufgehoben] mode (cf. III, 376). To put it another way: reality in nature is from the very outset ideality. For Schelling “nature” was the natura naturans that itself produces its naturata. It was life in its living genesis. By demonstrating this, he had attempted to found an “Objective Idealism” in opposition to Fichte’s “Subjective Idealism.” In retrospect, he remarked in the Inquiries (VII, 351) that one must not only demonstrate “that activity, life, and freedom alone are the only things that truly exist. . . , it is rather necessary to prove the opposite, that everything that exists (Nature, the world of things) is based on activity, life, and freedom, or—to use Fichte’s expression—not only that the ego is everything, but that, to the contrary, everything is also ego.” In this context, Schelling attained an insight that is decisive for the thesis of this essay, the insight that “to make thought, freedom, the sum and substance of philosophy” would be to give science a “more powerful impulse in a new direction than any previous revolution” (ibid.). Regarding his own motivation, he declared: “Only he who has tasted freedom can feel the desire to make everything analogous to it, to propagate it throughout the whole universe” (ibid.).

The Transcendental System, which by means of an “intellectual intuition” reconstructs the genesis of the ego in its self-construction, shows how, within the dimension of theoretical philosophy, “spirit” or “mind” [Geist] presupposes nature. More importantly, within the dimension of practical philosophy it then shows how, contrariwise, mind has the power to elevate [aufheben] that which is merely natural to a “second nature.” In the deduction of history, i.e. of the action of the species (see above p. 3), freedom emerges in its realization as that which unites nature, the realm of necessity, with spirit or mind. The central motif among the various interrelated motifs in the Transcendental System is the following: “Everyone who has attentively followed us this far can see for himself that the beginning and the end of this philosophy is freedom, that which is absolutely indemonstrable and is proved only through itself” (III, 376).

Had Schelling not then already responded to the “need of philosophy” as defined by Hegel? Had he not found the connection, the system (see above p. 34), by showing the predominance of freedom to be identical in both realms and by then showing it to be the foundation for their unity? Was this not the system that had been repeatedly sought after in various conceptions ever since Parmenides set out to inquire into the relationship between Being and thought?

Since Plato, however, metaphysics has not been content with the demonstration that the relationship between nature and the human spirit, or Being⁴ and thought, is one of identity, a special sort of unity. It has been demanded that this unity be in turn founded in a being that is supreme and itself has no other foundation. The determination of beings as such—ontology—must be founded in theology.⁵ In Neo-Platonism the conviction arose that the conjunction between Being and thought, nature and mind, this “system,” must find its final foundation in something that is absolved from finitude and reigns over both of these realms. Schelling also stood in this tradition. In the deduction of the concept of history in the Transcendental System, he had accordingly already directed his view to an “absolute identity” that is infinite and beyond history; his view was directed to that which “can never attain consciousness” for mere knowledge, i.e. to God (600, cf. 368, 379). The fact that there are works of art (see above pp. 45ff.) concludes this system because these alone reflect the “absolute identity” in a universally accessible manner. In his further development, which was influenced by Spinoza’s system, Schelling became convinced that he could not be satisfied with a demonstration of the identity between nature and mind through the concept of freedom. He became convinced that it was not sufficient to direct one’s view from the finite human mind and created nature toward absolute identity. He came to the insight that one must start with the absolute—God—who for Spinoza is the unity of Being (the Cartesian res extensa), the real, and mind (the Cartesian res cogitans), the ideal. By proceeding from the essence of divine Being, one must show that the condition of the possibility of finite nature and of the finite mind unites both of them in itself. It must be proven that, because of the unity of mind and Being in God, everything is at once real and ideal. A genuine proof of identity within the finite realm is only possible if this unity can be shown to be a manifestation of divine identity.⁶

In view of Spinoza’s system, Schelling recognized quite clearly that the proof of freedom’s predominance in both realms, in nature and in spirit, can be convincing only if the appearances of finite freedom are founded in divine freedom. Therefore, Spinoza’s causa sui, the freedom of the absolute as absolute “groundlessness,” must previously have been conceived of as such if freedom within the finite realm is to be secured. In the Presentation of My System (1802), in the Further Presentation, in the Lectures Concerning the Methods of Academic Studies (1803), in the Presentation of the Philosophy of Art (1802), and in the dialogue Bruno (1802), Schelling had taken great pains to model himself after Spinoza (IV, 113) and to conceive the absolute, God, as the unity of mind and nature, as the unity between the ideal and the real. From the standpoint of absolute reason, it is obvious that both of these aspects are “not actual” [unwirklich] in God’s essence, and that their relationship with regard to each other is one of “absolute indifference,”⁷ or “absolute disinterest.” At the same time, divine Being is the “universe,” “absolute totality” (125, 129), and contains nature and the finite intellect as forces within itself. All finite and singular beings, the plurality, are thus simultaneously real and ideal within this unity of a qualitative identity. This does not mean that there cannot be quantitative differences with regard to such particular dimensions as, for instance, the dimension of inorganic beings, that of organic beings, or that of consciousness and mind. Both realms—nature and the world of human spirit—are akin to each other according to their eternal idea. They are thus bound in a systematic relationship to one another and their oppositions are resolved in the absolute identity of divine Being.

Why did Schelling come to proceed beyond this “System of Identity?” In particular, we must ask how it happened that, in the dialogue Bruno (1802) for instance, the idea of a “disjunction” [Absonderung] of finitude was transformed so that there the “Fall” appears as a “stage” (VI, 471) in which finite freedom finds a factual form. Why did this lead to the approaches that abandoned the Philosophy of Identity (V, 429) such as those proposed in the treatise Philosophy and Religion (1804)? And how did these lead in turn to the Aphorisms, which introduced the Philosophy of Nature (1805—1806),⁸ to the first version of The Ages of the World (1806), and, above all, to the ideas proposed in the work Philosophical Inquiries Concerning the Essence of Human Freedom (1809)? As far as an account of the various influences involved in various stages in Schelling’s thought are concerned, the answer appears to be simple. Schelling began to read the works of the theosophist Friedrich Christoph Oetinger as early as 1803. Oetinger, in turn, was familiar with the writings of the Church Fathers, the mystics, and the cabbala; with Paracelsus, Emanuel Swedenborg, and the Swabian theologian Johann Albrecht Bengel; and, above all, with the theosophic mysticism of Jakob Böhme. During Schelling’s stay in Munich from 1805 until 1806, he became acquainted with Böhme’s teachings in particular, as well as with those of St. Martin, Johannes Tauler, Meister Eckhart, and Nicolaus Cues through Franz von Baader.⁹ The irrational, that which cannot be accounted for, that which is essentially alien and unfamiliar in Being, the demonic and the magical that are to be found in reality, the undisclosed, uncanny forces slumbering in everything that is forceful and vital, that which is demonically threatening, and in particular, all the terrifying power and reality of evil—all these issues were now taken up as problems, problems presented in the special sort of Christian thought in which Böhme, Oetinger, and Baader related the powers of darkness to the powers of light in the form of Jesus’ love. Various questions forced themselves on Schelling: How can one conceive of the Christian God of Creation if his creation is permeated by the powers of darkness? How can the struggle between the powers of darkness and the powers of light be compatible with revelation as it is conceived of in Christianity? Looking back on the System of the Philosophy of Nature, of Transcendental Philosophy, and of the Philosophy of Identity, he was now faced with the question of whether his view of nature and the finite spirit, as well as of the essence of the absolute, had not been completely wrong. If evil is real, and if man can choose evil precisely because he is free, then how can one conceive of a theodicy? How can a system of pantheism be conceived in which God’s absolute freedom and infinite goodness are consistent with a human freedom that is finite and capable of evil?¹⁰ Our inquiry is directed toward the “task” of the Inquiries. Precisely because of the young Schelling’s basic insight that the bond that unites nature and man is freedom, and because his later Philosophy of Identity led him to the conclusion that this freedom must be founded in God’s absolute freedom in order to guarantee its systematic cohesion, Schelling’s experience of the powers of darkness and the reality of evil now forced on him the task of considering “the essence of human freedom.” The task that he faced was also complicated by a further problem. Since, as we have seen, he had learned from Spinoza that the essence of finite beings must be founded in something infinite, an absolute, a “deduction” of human freedom as a faculty for evil could not be achieved in the manner that Schelling had thought possible until then. This means that the primary task of the Inquiries lay in a rethinking of the causa sui that had been seen as the determination of the absolute, as absolute freedom, such that, in congruence with the theosophic view, one could consequently conceive of a completely different sort of freedom in the finite spirit and in nature.

Schelling was confronted with a much more difficult task than his theosophic predecessors, whose task was not to solve the problem of freedom. Böhme and Oetinger had not experienced the French Revolution, which along with Kant’s philosophy had been the decisive event of the age for the students at the Tübingen Seminary. Confronted with the problem of freedom, Schelling had to reintroduce the question of how the absolute is capable of providing a foundation for the finite spirit and for nature in a manner consistent with the historical development that the concept of freedom had undergone. This development had its true beginnings in Kant and in German Idealism. “Until the discovery of Idealism [in which Schelling included Kant] the genuine concept of freedom was lacking in all recent systems, in Leibniz’s just as in Spinoza’s” (VII, 345, 348). Furthermore, according to Schelling, Idealism is said to have previously developed only “the most general, and, at the same time, the merely formal concept of freedom” (352). For, anyone seeking the content of freedom is left “helpless” by “the doctrine of freedom” proffered there (351, 156).

The first task in the Inquiries is thus prescribed to be the determination of the absolute’s essence as it is experienced from the theosophic perspective. This is to be accomplished by developing a new concept of freedom, a concept not of human freedom but rather of the freedom of the absolute.

There are serious problems involved in this definition of the task of Inquiries. According to its title, the treatise consists of Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom, and precisely not into divine freedom. The very first sentence indicates that the matter of concern is that “most vivid feeling” (399, cf. 336), which is stimulated by the “fact of freedom,” and it is expressly stated that the concept of human freedom is “one of the system’s dominant focal points” (ibid.). Other passages (340) are even more explicit: The issue is the rescuing of man’s freedom¹¹ and the demonstration of “the specific difference, the determinacy of human freedom” (352).¹² In the elaboration of the system, the only issue is said to be the question of the extent to which the concept of human freedom can be reconciled with divine understanding (337). Completely in line with this determination of the task of the Inquiries, contemporary interpreters have emphasized the essence of freedom insofar as it is human; thus Habermas’s¹³ interest is directed toward the “anthropology” contained in the Inquiries and toward the determination of freedom as something human and historical (cf. above pp. 18—32). By contrast, others have focused on Schelling’s theosophic predecessors and raised the question concerning the essence of God. They have failed to note, however, that the determination of the divine essence is a new step for Schelling in the development of the philosophical concept of freedom. It is supposed to perform the function of unifying, justifying, and guaranteeing all finite human freedom, as well as the freedom of nature, by “grounding” them in something infinite and absolute without abolishing the independence of finitude. This novel sense of “grounding” will be developed below.

In my opinion, this new step in the Inquiries ¹⁴ must be seen in general as a significant step forward. In spite of the importance that the determination of human freedom has from a theosophic perspective, its true significance consists precisely in the fact that it is not constructed in isolation or conceived of only in relation to freedom in nature, but rather that divine freedom provides a basis that is the principle of generation and explanation for everything else. This fits in with Schelling’s declaration in the Stuttgart Private Lectures: “There is no other principle of explanation for the world than divine freedom” (429, 423).¹⁵

II

TWO YEARS after the Inquiries appeared, Hegel claimed to have fulfilled the above-mentioned desideratum by presenting the Science of Logic. In the introduction to this work he wrote, “The Logic must therefore be understood as the system of pure reason, as the realm of pure thought. This realm is the truth unveiled and in and for itself. For this reason, one can say that its content is the presentation of God as he is in his eternal essence prior to the creation of nature and the finite spirit” (III, I, 35f. 50). This presentation had become possible for him because philosophical thought had progressed along the long pathway of the Phenomenology to its “final shape”: conceptual, absolute knowing (PhG, 556, 485), which therefore had been able to realize the concept as concept.¹⁶ Schelling, by contrast, was of the opinion that such a pathway was not necessary in order to discern by means of an “objective investigation, by means of the development of the primal essence itself, what God is,” or as Schelling also says—in order to determine what he is “on his own account” (VIII, 168). For Schelling, God is “what he wills to be” (ibid.). It is solely on the basis of this fact that he concluded that the philosopher’s first task consists in “examining his will.” The question, “what God wills” is equivalent to the question “what does he want on his own account and not on ours” (ibid.).

Such an inquiry into God’s will entails an inquiry into the specific character of divine “freedom,” i.e. God’s freedom “prior to the creation of nature and a finite spirit.” Accordingly, the first question is how “God makes himself” (VII, 432)? One must inquire into the occurrence within God prior to the world, into a theogony that is, of course, essentially related to cosmogony (see appendix, p. 83).

This is one of Schelling’s central ideas, which is expressed in the Stuttgart Private Lectures in the following manner: “And so, to say it in one word: God makes himself. And just as certainly as he makes himself, it is certain that he is not something complete and simply present right from the outset; otherwise, he would not need to make himself” (ibid.).

In scholastic terms this would mean that God bears within himself the reason for his existence, but as Schelling observed, “Every philosopher says that” (357). For instance, Spinoza had determined God’s absolute substance as causa sui. For Spinoza, this causa was the one being that exists through its own nature and is determined by nothing other than itself, neither by Being nor by being acted upon. Spinoza’s causa sui denoted an absolute unboundedness; it was an expression of “freedom from . . . .” In recollection of the tradition, Schelling added the following important remark: “But they speak of this ground as a mere concept without making it into something real and actual” (357f.).

This is precisely what Schelling undertook to achieve in the Inquiries. We have seen the significance of this effort to make the “ground” of divine existence into something actual and real (cf. above, p. 61 and note 9), and have traced the influence of the theosophic, magical Christology of Böhme, Oetinger, and Baader. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the meaning that the notion of “life” had for Schelling in particular as well as for the whole age of Romanticism was the decisive factor here, especially in the constitution of the structure of divine freedom.

Schelling conceived of life as a fundamental ontological movement, which is structured within itself, and which in the end is thought of against the background of an entelechia-like movement derived from the traditional doctrine of substance or “ousia” (see above p. 4). This will be shown more clearly later (p. 80). For now, it is only important to note that for Schelling, just as for the theosophists, life was like a great magician who creates and generates something where before there had been nothing. Life is that which is capable of developing itself on its own and which thus manifests itself by producing luminosity, spirituality, and regularity out of darkness, obscurity, and unruliness. Insofar as it realizes itself by itself, life is causa sui. Such self-generation, however, can only occur by means of life’s conflict within itself. Wherever there is life, it is a real force that posits something over against itself; it limits itself in order to rediscover itself again as an ideal force out of such opposition and limitation. By doing so, it heals and resolves contradiction. Life is the conflict of oppositions, but at the same time, within this conflict is the immediate unity of the oppositions that shows itself through these oppositions. In the concept of life, Schelling conceived the very same self-movement that was contained for Hegel in negativity; indeed Hegel also often simply termed this movement “life.” Schelling used this concept of life to oppose the mechanistic views of his age, which were derived from the historical influence of Cartesianism. This is the reason why we find it over and over again in decisive passages of the Inquiries, in the Stuttgart Private Lectures, and in the various versions of The Ages of the World. In the Inquiries, one reads, “But all life has a destiny and is subject to suffering and becoming. . . . Being is aware of itself only in becoming. There is, of course, no becoming in Being . . . but a becoming is necessarily entailed in any realization through opposition” (403). Furthermore, “wherever there is no conflict, there is no life” (400).

Schelling thus determined the essence of God on the basis of this concept of life. “There is a system in divine understanding, but God himself is not a system but a life” (399). Because God is life, he contains an oppositional becoming within himself, an opposition that does not, however, conflict with his unity. Because God does not have an idealistic, logical structure, because he is not “a mere logical abstraction” (394) but rather life, he can only be comprehended as an event, as an inner mobility in which divine Being constitutes itself on its own. Divine Being is not a system in the sense of a totality, as the perfect whole of a dialectical movement of mediation in which thought conceives itself. Instead the absolute must relinquish its completeness, it must be subject to “destiny” (403). As a living God, he is “not only Being” (ibid.) but also “self-becoming.” There is one goal here: It is in the interplay of the real and the ideal powers of opposing and healing forces that God constitutes himself atemporally as a person on his own. As a person, he is omnipotent not only in regard to himself, but also in regard to other beings; he attains the power to reveal himself, the power of creation. This step of emerging into Being as a “deed” prior to and beyond all thought (395) is opposed to the seemingly related structure of the Spirit in Hegel’s philosophy, which externalizes itself in order to be truly present to itself in its returning to itself.

III

OUR THESIS IS, therefore, that the first step in the Inquiries consists in determining the essence of divine freedom, and that this is accomplished within the horizon of the categories of “life.”¹⁷ It is thus of great importance to see in general how Schelling proceeded to reach this dimension of freedom. Together with the theosophists, he began with the supposition that, “prior to all grounding and to everything existent,” the Godhead is a “nonground” [Ungrund] (406). This concept characterizes that state within the process of God’s becoming himself in which he is neither Being nor becoming, and thus in no sense a ground, not even for himself. As “nonground,” God is the “absence of ground” [Abgrund]. In this state, one cannot yet speak of a divine “life,” for here God is “prior to all opposition” (ibid.); and without opposition, there is no life. God as the nonground is not even the overcoming of opposition in the sense of an “absolute identity” (ibid.). For this reason, Schelling terms his essence “absolute indifference.” Indifference is not in turn a product of opposition, nor does it implicitly contain such oppositions. As the nonground, God is an essence apart from all opposition, an essence “upon which all oppositions shatter” (ibid.).

Does God’s being a nonground imply that he is “nothing” in the sense of a nihil negativum? Certainly not, for Schelling only spoke of “nonBeing” in regard to oppositions and the ground. What does this concept “nonground” mean? Does it have a function in determining the essence of divine freedom? The determination “nonground” is a “concept of limit” in the true sense of the word; it is a concept that denotes the transitional movement across the threshold that leads from non-Being into Being. In terms of God, it refers to the transition from God as absolute indifference to God as “eternal oneness” (359). As “eternal oneness” God has left the state of being a “nonground” behind him, the “nonground” is God prior to his self-revelation. The gap that the “transition” from the “nonground” to “eternal oneness” must overcome cannot be bridged by deducing a chain of grounds or reasons. It is a gap that is not accessible to grounds. It rather belongs to the nature of this “transition” that it must be a “leap.”¹⁸ Suddenly, like a “bolt of lightning” (VIII, 304), there is “eternal oneness.” This oneness is the “seed” (VII, 363) that must be present before any subsequent “development” can take place. I am convinced that God’s inexplicable and sudden emergence as eternal oneness is intricately connected with the meaning of his essence, which is, for Schelling, the realization of a special kind of freedom. Indeed it is the lightninglike emergence that characterizes that aspect of freedom which the tradition denotes with the concept of “spontaneity.” The emphasis here is not as much on the fact of a “beginning” but rather on a “being able to begin.” Why is it possible that there can be a beginning at all? This is the deepest mystery in the essence of freedom. Schelling’s answer to this question, which still accords the mystery its due, might perhaps be that a beginning can be made because divine freedom emerges in the leap from God as the nonground to God as the “eternal oneness.” God’s “life,” his development, fulfills itself in a dimension that is given its essence through the occurrence of an essentially inexplicable leap, a dimension that, from the outset, is the dimension of absolute freedom. The formation of God’s development into a person from his beginnings in absolute oneness can thus only be understood if it is seen to be the formation of divine life as freedom. For this reason, Schelling emphatically asserted that the development of God’s “primal Being” is a development of the will. “Willing is primal Being” (350). This determination has indeed been understood as a determination of all finite Being, but this is by no means the case, since Schelling added the remark: “all of the will’s predicates apply to it [i.e. the divine essence] alone: inexplicability, eternity, independence from temporality, self-assertion” (ibid.). These are all determinations of the divine essence. The fact that primal Being is will means that divine life is a life based on absolute freedom.¹⁹

Schelling’s presentation of God’s absolute self-becoming is couched in anthropomorphic terms. I shall attempt to translate them into an “ontology of life” and interpret this ontology as the construction of the structural framework involved in God’s absolute freedom. Various stages must be distinguished here. The first stage concerns the occurrence prior to the eternal deed of self-manifestation (cf. VII, 359). In this stage, God forms himself as a person and—to use transcendental terms—then constitutes within himself the “conditions for the possibility” of revelation, of creation. Within creation itself, one must then distinguish between a “first,” “initial” creation (cf. 375, 377) and a “second creation” (cf. 380), which becomes a “lasting” one (378).

Prior to his revelation, God as the “eternal oneness” is, in Schelling’s view, the “longing [Sehnsucht] to give birth to himself” (353). In revealing himself, God takes a first step by excluding “that which is dark and unconscious from himself” and by “expelling [that which is subordinate in his essence] from himself” (473).²⁰ Thus, within the divine unity arises an unconscious part of God that is opposed to the consciously “existent” God and that “within God is not God himself (359). A stratum arises that is distinct, although not separable from him. This stratum in God constitutes the “ground of his existence” (358).

For our inquiry into the structure of divine freedom, it is important to note that Schelling took for granted, as it were, that this “first stirring of divine existence” (360), the constitution of the ground for divine existence, must be conceived of as a spontaneously initiated “willing” (cf. above p. 68). Since it has only a presentiment [ahndet] of understanding (359), this initial will is compared to “craving and desire” [Sucht und Begierde], which are by their very structure an externally oriented striving, and are thus “incapable” of “constituting something lasting on their own” (360). What this “dark ground” wills is to develop itself into light. Since in this respect it is “comparable to the drive of nature in its development” (395), Schelling also called it “nature in God” (358), a term that is meant to refer to that element of necessity in the divine essence on which freedom is founded.

This first step in divine self-creation already has significant implications for our question concerning the essence of divine freedom: namely that it is only through divine omnipotence that the initial will realizes itself in its presentiments. God himself in his existence presupposes this ground for his existence. “But,” as Schelling expressly remarked, “on the other hand, God is also . . . prior to the ground, for the ground as such could not be if God did not exist actū” (358). For the construction of the whole framework of absolute freedom, this moment of contradiction is necessary. It is a contradiction that God has posited within his unity by means of the “real principle” that is proper to him—the principle of darkness. The divine essence, however, also originally contains a second, an ideal principle, by means of which light predominates at this stage of the development. Both of these principles are inseparably unified in God. The first stage of the initial creation in this dynamic interaction is the “birth of light” (377) from darkness. This birth must exist as the ground “so that light can be elevated out of it” (ibid.). God is still also present in the ground that has been expelled from him: as the “luminous vision of life” [leuchtender Lebensblick] (361) he is present in the will, in the longing of the ground, a longing that has seized this “vision of life” “so that a ground will always remain” (ibid.).

Divine existence is thus realized as light in its dynamic and entelechia-like relation to its own ground. It emerges as the luminous form of that representation that shines on and reflects itself, which sees itself in its own “likeness” (360). As “internally reflective (ibid., cf. 396), divine existence has produced itself through a second primal action in God himself. This is the creation of the sphere of objectivity in general, even though the only object possible prior to creation is God himself. “God views himself in his image” (360). He has become objective for himself in self-intuition, as Schelling had indicated already in Philosophy and Religion (VI, 40, 42). “Representation” [Vor-stellung] is a power that brings about a separation within itself; as such it is the “original understanding” that is the “condition for the possibility” of all creation. As the separation of forces, understanding is active in the ground and awakens the forces that are separate from it, so that it can then expose the unity of the divine vision of life concealed within those forces. This unity is the idea of the essence that must be created or “informed” [eingebildet] into nature (VII, 362). Divine understanding enlightens the dark principle, it is the “word of that longing” (361). The “eternal spirit” expresses this word, although at this stage of the occurrence of creation in a “merely imperfect manner”; this word is expressed “in nature” (363). It is only in the second power [Potenz] of this occurrence, the “realm of history” (377—78), that he completely expressed this word “in mankind” (ibid.). This is the revelation of spirit and thus of God as “actū existent” (364).

In this occurrence of the first creation, the principle of light (understanding) and that of darkness (the ground) form themselves into the indivisible unity of a dynamic interaction in which God is constituted as “one” absolute existence (395), as the “supreme personality” (ibid.). God as the “absolute bond of both principles” (ibid.) is spirit “in the most eminent and absolute sense” (ibid.)—although precisely not as a pure spirit in an idealistic sense because God is the “living” unity of both powers and because he retains within himself his own “condition” (398), the “dark ground” of his existence (cf. 413). God as a person “is” the product of life and is, as such, the living unification of contradictory principles. Later we will show why and in which sense this conjunction of elements, which in themselves are heterogenous and separate, is the “mystery of love” (408, and below p. 74), and why on behalf of love God, who is “in himself,” must become “for himself.” We will show why he must become fully conscious, why he must attain “complete personification” (433), and why he decides to manifest and reveal himself in and through creation in order that love might reign.

First, however, it is important to see that, after God has created himself as a conscious personality due to the potency of his absolute freedom, he makes the “conscious and ethically free” (397ff.) decision for a world that is a deed of revelation, an expression of his living freedom. “Creation is not merely an event, it is a deed” (396). Its goal, then, cannot be “geometrically” deduced “from general laws.” Furthermore, it cannot be a matter of God’s “choosing” among a “plurality of possible worlds” or of “God’s deliberating with himself” (ibid.). This “deed” is rather the realization of the divine essence that belongs to God’s existence. This means that freedom, which is a consequence of this deed, is derived from the necessity contained in the laws of God’s essence. In God, freedom and necessity are “identical.” The original pattern for the world that is possible in accord with God’s essence is the one that must come into existence (cf. 398). “In divine understanding itself, however, . . . there is only one God, just as there is only one possible world” (ibid.).

Does the difference between this conception and the traditional determinations of metaphysical necessity and freedom then, not suffice as an indication of the novelty of Schelling’s attempt to redefine divine freedom in his Inquiries? In what sense is absolute, divine freedom determined differently in the Inquiries? In our analysis of the “leap” required in the “transition” of the divine essence from the nonground to “eternal oneness,” it turned out that one determination of divine freedom consists in its “capability to initiate its own action,” a determination that is similar to the traditional determination of finite human freedom, namely spontaneity. We then encountered a further determination that resembles that of finite freedom. This determination is implied in the voluntary commitment to the “necessity” of the law contained in God’s own nature—which is similar to the “libertas determinationis” taken in its modern sense as a “self-determination.”²¹ The question poses itself, however, whether it is not perhaps meaningless to speak of self-determination if the divine “personality” has an autonomy that, although not opposed by any heteronomy, is infinitely superior to human, finite autonomy? The difference in the determination of these two types of freedom according to Schelling can presumably only be discovered after we have seen how Schelling conceived of finite freedom in contrast to absolute freedom. According to the title of the Inquiries, they are an investigation into the essence of human freedom. This should be taken as an indication that human freedom must first be understood before one can understand the essence of God’s absolute freedom.

IV

“GOD IS NOT a God of the dead, but of the living” (VII, 346). This means that “God can only be revealed to himself in that which is similar to him, in free beings that act on their own” (347). Only by proceeding from the idea of “life” can we understand the character of self-revelation and of that being which, because it is similar to God, plays the decisive role in his self-revelation.

If the essence of the living God consists in his absolute freedom, then the being that is similar to him must be “just as” free as God. Furthermore, this means that the “condition for the possibility” of this human being’s freedom must already be predisposed in the structure of divine constitution. This is in fact true in a number of senses, as I intend to show.

We have already seen that, in the form of the “divine vision of life,” God remains present in the “ground” of his existence, which is constituted within him by being expelled through contraction. It is this presence in the “willing of the ground” (of “eternal longing”) that now makes possible the birth of human willing. “Man’s will is the seed of God, who is still present only in the ground, a seed concealed in eternal longing; it is the divine vision of life enclosed in the depths, which God espied when he resolved to will nature” (363). The “ground” is therefore not only the ground for God’s existence, but also for creation, in particular for the will of that creature who is entrusted with a decisive role in God’s self-revelation.

At first, however, the human will does not have its origin in divine existence, but rather in a principle that is independent within God. This means that the human will contains a “principle within itself that is independent in relation to God” (ibid.). The basic presupposition of self-revelation is thus preserved in that “the representations of the Godhead [can] only be independent beings” (347). In view of this postulated similarity, the fact that the human will contains a “principle which is independent in relation to God” implies even more. This independence implies that the free will is the will of a “being that is free, that acts on its own” (ibid.), a being that is autonomous and has a spiritual “selfness” or “personhood” (364), such as God. In its autonomy, this will is “similar” to God’s absolute freedom. Although man is God’s creation, something that has come to be through him, man is “derived” from God only “according to his becoming, not according to his Being: (346). This is true of every organic being. In this decisive passage, it becomes clear that Schelling’s basic categories are conceived within the horizon of the concept of “life.” It is no contradiction “that he who is a man’s son is also a man” (ibid.). Man’s freedom is therefore also “absolute or divine” just as God’s is. Schelling stated, “The concept of derivative absoluteness of divinity contradicts itself so little that it is rather the mediating concept for all philosophy” (347).

But how does this finite and nevertheless absolute being complete its “absolute freedom?” Why is this completion given a decisive role within creation? Before these questions can be answered, we must examine the “conditions for the possibility” of finite freedom’s constitution that are predisposed in divine nature.

Man—along with every other being that has come to be in nature—contains the ideal and the real principles within himself just as God does (cf. 362). To this extent, human nature finds itself in “the mere ground” (ibid.), in shadow and darkness, due to the real principle. The human being’s willfullness [Eigenwille] is a “blind will”; it is “passion or desire” (363). Due to the ideal principle, which is a “principle of understanding,” in man also, the dark principle is “transfigured into light” (ibid.). In man, this transfiguration is so complete that his particular will constitutes a “unified whole” together with the universal will, the will of understanding (ibid.). “Man contains the whole power of the dark principle and simultaneously the whole force of light. The deepest abyss and the highest heaven, both centers are contained in him” (ibid.).

Man’s soul represents the “living” identity of both principles” (364). As the eternal spirit, God contains the living and indissoluable bond between both principles, as we have seen. Moreover, the “eternal spirit” possesses the word, logos. As mentioned earlier (cf. above p. 70) this word is expressed imperfectly in the things of nature; in man, however, it is perfectly expressed. For this reason the human soul as spirit possesses the divine word; that is, it is the abode in which God reveals himself as “actū existent” (364). The human spirit, which can make use of the divine word, is “in God” (410), and its freedom is therefore also in God (cf. below p. 78). But does such immanence not mean that the “absolute” freedom of man’s will must be abandoned? If the human spirit is contained in God’s, how can man play an autonomous role within the occurrence of self-revelation? The answer to this question characterizes Schelling’s whole project, and thus the essence of divine freedom as opposed to finite freedom: God is a living God and his opposition belongs to his life. For this reason alone, it is impossible for the human spirit to be fully resolved into God’s. God as a living God required a spirit that stands in opposition to him. We have seen that the divine spirit is the eternal bond between the real and the ideal forces (cf. VII, 373 and 430), that it is the unification of principles that in themselves are disparate and separate. This unification is an expression of God’s love. His pure love strives to reveal itself, but this means that there must be something opposed to it outside of its own reality if it is to preserve itself in its purity. The opposite of pure love, however, is evil, and its reality outside of divine love lies in love’s realization through finite, human freedom. If God has decided to reveal himself, if he requires self-revelation to be “for himself” [für sich] as a person in order not to be merely “in himself” [an sich]; then we can now see that he requires a being that is similar to himself and that possesses a freedom capable of good and evil. The human will cannot then find its expression in the merely formal concept of freedom as autonomy, as Kant and Idealism had thought, but is rather the “faculty for good and evil” (352). The fact that the two principles can be separated in the human spirit means that it is nothing other than the “possibility of good and evil” (364).

V

LET US NOW inquire more closely into the reality of evil, and in particular, into that freedom which is capable of evil, finite human freedom. As an “explanation” (375) of evil’s reality, as an answer to the question of how it originated in created beings, Schelling remarks that for us “nothing is available other than the two principles in God,” that is, nothing other than the conditions of possibility that are established in the theogony. The “will to evil,” however, can be explained neither through the ideal principle nor through the determination of God as spirit, since the latter is “the purest love” (ibid.). Can the will to evil be explained through the real principle, the “will of the ground?” It turns out that this can be achieved only indirectly. If God’s life is to reveal and thus realize itself as the purest love, something that strives counter to love [ein Widerstrebendes] must be found (376) that is predisposed in the “will of the ground” itself (cf. 375, 384). This must be conceived of in the following manner: The will of the ground arouses a “desire for that which is created” [Lust zum Kreatürlichen] and thus provokes evil “in general” (381) so that it attains self-consciousness in human volition (388). The will does this as a reaction to God’s absolute freedom, to this order that is higher than everything created. It remains fundamentally true that, because evil is “also aroused” in the first creation through the reaction of the ground (381), because the created being has a will of its own, there is “a natural tendency toward evil in man” (ibid.). If man submits to this tendency, he has given the particular will, which originates in the ground, primacy over the universal will, which has its origins in the principle of light. He has “torn himself away” from the universal will (400). In either case, the two principles that are inseparably unified in the divine spirit are always separated in man. Man is able to separate them because his spirit is united with and carries within itself selfhood, which originates in the dark ground. In and of itself selfhood is not strictly evil. For when submissive, when it serves as a “basis,” selfhood is the “keenness in life” [die Schärfe des Lebens] in which goodness becomes “receptive” [empfindlich] to itself (ibid.). “Anything good without effective selfhood is an ineffective good” (ibid.). Selfhood is spiritual and, as such, it is not only a unification of the ideal and real principles, of light and darkness; as personally spiritual it is “higher than the principle of light” (364). It is even capable of “elevating itself above nature” and thus becoming “the will which beholds itself in complete freedom” (ibid.). This means that on the one hand, personally spiritual selfhood has the principles at its disposal and, on the other hand, that it is placed in the position of decision making: man decides to be good or evil.

The separation of those principles that are inseparable in God leads to the elevation of the particular will over the universal will: precisely this is the realization of evil. A will that, as a universal will, particularizes itself has reversed the proper relationship. This “reversal” [Umkehrung] must be understood “ontologically.” It does not refer to a “moral” decision in a narrow sense, but to a decision concerning a way “to be.” In evil, a decision is made to form an inverse unity directed against the whole. In this sense, Schelling called this “reversal” of principles an “inverse God” [umgekehrten Gott] (390).

Whenever man employs spiritual selfhood not as an instrument but instead allows it to predominate, derangement arises—a “false life, a life of lies, a growth of restlessness and corruption” (366). Whenever man has rent asunder the divine bond of forces within himself, then the “hunger of a craving for self” (390) arises within him, and “he falls from the arrogance of being everything into non-Being” (391). He has then touched on the ground of creation and profaned the mystery. Even if he has thereby lost his initial freedom (391—92), there is still a “life” in this mode of Being, for man cannot fully abolish the original (divine) bond of forces (366). Human freedom, even when it has taken evil as its determination, maintains a relationship to the divine condition since this condition is the absolute condition of all spiritual Being.

We now return to our original question: What is Schelling’s concept of finite human freedom? In accordance with Kant’s concept of freedom, he proceeded from the assumption that the freedom of man’s actions occurs beyond the world of appearance, that man’s freedom is supratemporal and is not subject to the causality of nature. “Free actions immediately result out of that which is intelligible in man” (384). Thus, for Schelling just as for Kant, man’s freedom of action is a self-determination of which man is capable due to his noumenal essence.

Furthermore, according to Kant a rational being can also fail to exercise rational moral self-determination, it can refuse to adopt the universal law as a maxim for its will. For Kant, as Schelling interpreted him, man is essentially characterized by indecisiveness; man’s freedom is “voluntary choice” [Willkür] . For Schelling, by contrast, the intelligible deed of self-determination occurs together with the “first creation.” This means that it is an eternal deed outside of time (386) in the same sense in which the original deed of creation through God’s contracting himself is eternal and outside of time. The original deed of creation posits “only a beginning of time, and not a beginning in time” (cf. 430). Similarly, man’s intelligible deed is not a “beginning in time” so that it would be the first of a series of discrete actions following one after the other and developing in time (cf. ibid.). It is rather an “eternal beginning” [ewiger Anfang] (386) for all of the singular actions that occur in time; it is the principle “which throughout all time” (385-86) constitutes the unity of their determinations. This unity must “always be completely and perfectly present in advance . . . so that a singular action or determination within it is possible” (383—84). Self-determination in regard to singular actions can thus only mean that man follows the laws of his own essence, and that means of his own character (cf. 430), which he has determined in the “first creation.” The freedom of his singular actions, therefore, consists in the necessity of the character that he has decided on, one way or the other. This necessity is a beata necessitas, a “holy necessity” (391), and is not to be confused with the modal category of necessity that applies to natural beings. Neither does the essence (the determinations) precede freedom, nor does freedom precede the determinations. Fichte correctly described this point of their unification by means of the notion of an “active deed” [Tathandlung] (385). This “active deed” is simultaneously freedom and determinacy (necessity), neither of the two can be derived from the other. The free deed does not result from the essence, since the latter is only present with the former; nor does the essence result from the free deed, because something determinate cannot result from something indeterminate. The full concept of freedom (which includes necessity) is therefore “a real self-positing” [ein reales Selbstsetzen], and human freedom must therefore also be thought of in relation to good and evil (cf. below p. 78). This sense of an active deed²² refers to an identity between necessity and freedom, a noumenal existence above all creation (364), which is valid only for the essence of man and only appears when man acts in accordance with his essence. In this vein, it is stated that, “The essence of man is essentially his own deed” (384).

In contrast to Kant’s determination of “radical evil,” according to which man is still able to “predominate” over evil,²³ Schelling saw the crucial decision as having been made once and for all “in the original active deed.” Through this deed, he wrote, “man’s life extends back to the beginning of creation, since by means of it he is . . . free and himself an eternal beginning” (386). Every man thus has a feeling that corresponds to this idea “as if he has been what he is for all eternity and by no means merely became so in time” (ibid.).

Reservations against accepting this interpretation of Schelling’s concept of finite freedom are prompted by the fact that Schelling intended to overcome the “formal concept of freedom” precisely by means of a “real and living concept,” which he recognized to be “a faculty of good and evil” (352). This latter determination of freedom, moreover, appears to be nothing other than freedom of choice with regard to singular actions. In the passage previously quoted, however, Schelling did not speak of a “faculty for good or evil.” He explicitly referred instead to a faculty for good and evil. The formal concept of freedom is not concretized as a kind of “willful choice,” as a freedom of choice with regard to specific actions. Rather, the reality of evil and its realization through man are thought of as being essentially entailed in the concept of freedom. Evil is necessary in the plan of creation: it is necessary that there be a finite freedom that makes a decision for and realizes evil. The reality of evil and its realization are also just as unconditionally necessary for the beginning of creation as they are for creation’s “ultimate intention” (404). The “complete actualization of God” (ibid.), and thus the universal reign of his love (ibid.), presupposes that finite freedom must espouse evil in order for goodness to be able to emerge as having been purified from evil. Only by way of evil and its having been overcome can good be separated from evil so that evil is in the end “eternally relegated to non-Being” (ibid.), and the way is thus opened for the exclusive reign of God’s love. The separation of good from evil, this “crisis” (ibid.), indeed presupposes the “ground” that solicits evil; however, Schelling’s theodicy is unique in that the “ground” is not in itself evil (400).

The role that finite freedom plays in the event of creation can now be more precisely determined. We have seen that man is independent in his Being, that he has an “inner independence from God” and a “freedom in regard to God” (cf. above pp. ooff. and VII, 458). Man is descended from the ground, and thus from a principle that is independent of God. Furthermore, this independence and this self-sufficiency are most clearly expressed in the fact that man possesses a faculty that in its essence is not derived from God—a faculty for evil. On the other hand, man’s will is nevertheless predisposed as a “seed” in the divine vision of life (cf. above p. 72). This is man’s initial “Being in God” (cf. above p. 74), and as a finite spirit man is contained in the “divine spirit” (411). Schelling states explicitly that only through “Being in God . . . is man capable of freedom” (ibid.). Human freedom is finite above all because it serves God. As we have seen, God’s love can only reign if goodness has constituted itself by overcoming evil, and this means that man must decide on evil in order to assist the triumph of goodness and, along with it, the complete reign of divine love. This means that finite freedom has its end, its boundary, in the telos of the process as a whole, in the “ultimate intention” of divine creation (404).

It becomes obvious at this point that Schelling comprehended the whole occurrence—God’s life, God’s absolute freedom, creation, and finite freedom—within a framework based on the concepts of telos and entelechia. Nevertheless, the “teleology” of this occurrence is not oriented toward the model of a Greek doctrine of substance, toward an “ousiology.” This occurrence does not proceed to its end circularly and blindly in the way that Uranos, the heavens, proceeds to its inherent “end.” This occurrence is rather a history of salvation (cf. 379) influenced by monotheism, messianism, and Christology; a history oriented toward a future event of salvation, toward God’s completely conscious self-realization. Man’s finite freedom in his relationship to evil is determined in reference to this occurrence as a whole: man’s independence and self-sufficiency in relation to God, man’s “derivative absoluteness,” is tied to the ultimate intention of divine creation. For this reason, finite freedom must espouse evil; it must become entangled in evil; and, for this reason, finite freedom can and must, with divine assistance, decide “to die to this world of senses” (VI, 53, cf. VII, 405—406) and to let “the ground be effective within it” (VI, 375). It is necessary for the good principle “to be allowed to be active within it [i.e. freedom]” (389) so that evil may be relegated to “complete irreality” (405). This “return” to the absolute principle that is actively accomplished by finite freedom must take place in order that the complete reign of divine love may be achieved.

Human freedom is furthermore determined by its position in relation to nature. This position can likewise only be understood against the background of Schelling’s eschatological conception as a whole. Insofar as man originates from the ground, he has “roots in nature” that are independent of God (cf. 458). He is nevertheless free from nature insofar as he stands “above nature in the midst of nature” (ibid.). For, he not only has a “soul,” as does every other living being; he also has a spirit. Through his freedom from nature and through his spiritual essence, man is predestined to be the “mediator” between God and nature (411). “Placed in the point of indifference” (458), man is the being in whom the divine word is completely expressed. Man is the being capable of logos, of rational speech, which is why he can take on himself the task of being “nature’s redeemer” (411). He can spiritualize nature by explaining the “archetypes” [Vorbilder], which are directed toward him as “anticipations” [Vorbedeutungen] in nature (415). Schelling’s early philosophy of nature had demonstrated how nature in its spiritual permeation, in the disclosure of its egolike, volitional, dynamic, and free essence, proves itself to be akin and even identical to the human spirit. The Inquiries does not merely seek to overcome this dichotomy within the sphere of finitude: “Since he himself is bound to God” (411), man, in his efforts to recognize nature’s lawfulness actively assists in the process by which “God accepts nature and transforms it into himself” (ibid.).

At the beginning of this study, we saw that Schelling’s transcendental philosophy and his philosophy of nature had demonstrated an identity within the finite realm by proceeding from the concept of finite freedom. The question then arose whether it had been the task of the Inquiries to prove that this dimension is in turn grounded in an absolute. We have since seen that, within the finite dimension, the finite human spirit serves the teleological occurrence, the ultimate intention of divine creation, in a twofold sense: first of all, by espousing evil in order to enable goodness and, in the end, the complete reign of love to be victorious; and secondly, by spiritualizing nature, so that nature in this form can return to the divine spirit. In this active movement, which human freedom performs in returning from evil to the love of God and which nature undergoes in returning to spirit, a side of the dynamic occurrence shows itself in which the dimension of finitude is grounded in that infinitude, in God’s absolute freedom. We must, however, still ask how this occurrence appears from the other side. How does God’s absolute freedom realize the grounding of finite freedom within itself?

In the preface to the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel remarked in criticism of Schelling: “God’s life and divine knowledge may therefore very well be expressed as a play of love with itself: This idea sinks to edification and even to triteness if the seriousness, the pain, the patience, and the labor of negativity are lacking therein” (PhG, 20,10).

We have seen that, for Schelling, the determination “life” had the same implications that the determination “negativity” had for Hegel: an internal self-movement that posits itself in opposition, in dissimilarity, in order to find its way back to itself by proceeding out of this opposition into identity. For Schelling, the issue was not the life of “the concept” (ibid., 44, 33—34) or its self-determination in generating the “complete wealth of its developed form” (ibid. 21, 11), as it had been for Hegel. Nonetheless, Schelling did view life as a process that is characterized by its “fluidity” (ibid. 135ff., 106ff.). Furthermore, regarding the “seriousness,” “pain,” and “labor” of life, it must be noted that the force that they have in furthering the affirmative powers is greatly surpassed by the force of evil. For, God in his infinite freedom makes himself into the ground of finite freedom without encroaching on its autonomy. He accomplishes this by utilizing finite freedom and allowing it in the struggle with evil to experience its “fate,” which is “subject to suffering and becoming” (cf. VII, 403). Only through the temptation that evil arouses ever anew does the “inner fluidity,” which Hegel spoke of, come about at all; for, only through this temptation is the rigidity dissolved within the realm of morality. Only by means of this temptation can the constantly renewed struggle be provoked in which finite freedom seeks goodness over and over again. This is the only way in which, with the help of God’s grace, the “death” (cf. 405—406) of evil desires can be achieved so that the rebirth can occur, which is a necessary preparation for the exclusive reign of divine love. This fate, this finite struggle for goodness, encompasses the whole realm of morality and transforms it through and through. This complete realization by way of the tragedy of finite freedom’s entanglement in evil is anything but a “play of love” of God with himself. In truth, it is the genuine conception of the way in which finitude is grounded in infinity; it is a realization of “ethics” [Sittlichkeit] (VI, 53).

If we observe both sides of the dynamic occurrence of grounding, we recognize something new and unique in Schelling’s Philosophical Inquiries and in its principal conclusions. God’s infinite freedom, his infinite will, the primal Being, realizes itself only in cooperation with finite freedom, finite willing. Through the concept of “cooperation” [Mitwirken], the essence not only of divine freedom, but also that of finite freedom are completely transformed. The latter no longer denotes the “good will” of a rational being that subjects itself to its own moral legislation (Kant), nor is it understood in the sense implied in a “will which is in and for itself” and which realizes itself in an ethical order manifested by good laws and civil institutions because the individual rediscovers himself in them (Hegel).²⁴ The finite will, finite freedom, finds its true essence by relinquishing the connotations implied in such subjectivity and becoming an active collaborator in the play of the realization of divine love. Infinite, divine, absolute freedom thus in turn attains its true essence and proves itself to be of such a nature that it limits its absoluteness on its own, i.e., “contracts it,” in order to enable finite freedom to come to play as well. This insight into the “interwovenness” [Verschränkung] of absolute and finite freedom, this formulation of the grounding occurrence, is in my view the speculative achievement in Schelling’s thought.

In the System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling had already conceived of the finite spirit’s collaboration by employing the image of “One Spirit that acts as poetic author in all spirits” (III, 602). The poet “is” in the grand play of a gradually self-manifesting revelation. Here God is revealed and discloses himself gradually in the play of our freedom so that without this freedom “he himself would not be.” In the finitude of our own freedom, we are not only “poetic coauthors of the whole,” we are even “self-improvisors of the particular roles which we play” (ibid.).

Although even at that stage Schelling had already envisaged the image of a “mutual belonging” [Zusammengehörigkeit] between absolute and finite freedom, he had not been able to grasp this relationship in conceptual terms (cf. above, p. 18). The Inquiries, however, conceives of the relationship between infinite freedom and finite freedom by disclosing both of them in their active realization through evil. In so doing, the Inquiries responded to the “need of philosophy” at that time. For, here the concept of freedom, which Transcendental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Nature had synthesized into a system of finitude, is “grounded” in absolute freedom. In this “grounding,” the absolute as infinity in the end transforms finitude into absoluteness, into the element proper to it (cf. VII, 423). That which is to be transformed, however, is also for its part active in this transformation. The truth is thus grounded in an eschatological event so that that which is “supreme” and “was already present before creation was present” (406) finally emerges as the dimension that makes possible the beginning, the “initial nonground,” God’s absolute freedom. This dimension, therefore, appears as “the general unity that is the same toward all, but captive to none: [as] the beneficience that is free from all else but permeates everything; in a word, [as] love, which is all in all” (408—409).²⁵

Appendix

THE DISTINCTION between cosmogony and theogony in Schelling’s middle period may seem problematic and requires further explanation. In a certain sense, the problem involved in this distinction touches on the foundations of his system, insofar as it is thought of as overcoming the (false) alternative between theism and pantheism. According to the pantheistic view, the difference between God and the world, and thus, along with it, between theogony and cosmogony, had been completely abolished. According to the theistic view, the difference was posited absolutely—God as a completed, eternal being was set in opposition to the world; and, at the very most, the question concerning creation arose independently of the question concerning God’s Being in himself. Schelling can be viewed as espousing a conception of the absolute that supercedes both of these views insofar as he tried to conceive of the absolute with regard to its own self-revelation. The conditions of this self-revelation are at the same time the conditions of the existence of that which is other than the absolute (of nature, of the “world”). This is precisely the problem involved in this distinction: Through the separation of principles within itself, the absolute posits itself as an (ideal) being and its opposite, Being (i.e., a “relative” [beziehungsweise] nonbeing, that which is real, A = B). Is this absolute, which is identical with its self-positing, likewise at one with that which, in the sense of creation, posits something other than itself as a self-sufficient existence? Or is a further, independent decision to proceed to creation required? The question is complicated by the additional problem that for Schelling one can speak of the absolute, God, in a number of ways. Taken as the absolute purely for itself before the separation of the principles (into the “powers” [Potenzen]), the absolute appears as “that which is above beings,” as the “primal ground,” the “nonground,” or “indifference.” After this separation, it appears as a being (existence) in opposition to the ground (its Being). Furthermore, from the vantage point of the first absolute, it appears as the ground itself. The absolute (in the first sense) posits—or rather must posit—itself as the ground in order (by negating the simultaneity within it) to be able to initiate the continuing series of powers.²⁶ It should be added that after the separation, the absolute also appears in the third power as the unity of the first and second powers, as the completely disclosed unity of the absolute subsequent to its separation (cf. VII, 427).

In view of the Inquiries, one must ask how we can incorporate the concept of God’s personality into this general scheme. Here personality (with regard to God) is the indissoluable bond between ideality and reality. This is not, however, to be confused with the third power, since only the third power is the final unity between God and creation as the “love that is all in all.” The third power is the last period of God’s self-revelation. Thus God must first of all be able to emerge as a person, for it is as love, the affirmative principle, the ideal that he is, that he posits himself for himself. (In the Stuttgart Private Lectures, and even more clearly in The Ages of the World, the doctrine of principles is increasingly resolved into the simple opposition between two principles. In the Inquiries it appears in a much more differentiated manner.) This self-positing is furthermore accompanied by, and made possible through, an expulsion of that principle that is opposed to God’s essence as love: egoism. It is through the expulsion of the negative principle (egoism) that the affirmative principle is made into the ground of God’s revelation. In this sense, God becomes manifest himself by first positing himself as affirmation in relation to his negation and by then becoming conscious of himself. (This relationship appears as the relationship of beings to Being, or of subject to predicate in the Stuttgart Private Lectures and in The Ages of the World; in the Inquiries it appears as the relationship between existence and ground.) Must an independent act of revelation be conceived of in addition to this constitution of God as a being [eines seienden Gottes] in order that creation may occur? Or does the self-revelation of the absolute (as indifference) also imply the creation of the world merely due to the fact that, in its self-revelation, the absolute freely limits itself and posits a ground? Although some of Schelling’s statements can be interpreted in this direction, creation in the proper sense must nevertheless be distinguished from the theogonic process of God’s coming into being, both with regard to the concept and to the matter of concern itself. For creation does not properly consist in excluding from God that darkness that is in him (this is the way in which the “theogonic” process occurs). Rather, one can speak properly of creation only if that which is excluded proceeds to be developed into something higher, if divinity enclosed within itself (the first power) is actualized and raised to clarity (cf. 434: “creation therefore consists in producing something higher, something properly divine, in that which is excluded.”). Precisely because the separation into a conscious part of God (which is God “sensu eminenti” 435) and an “unconscious” part would contradict his love (i.e. God’s essence as having become “for itself”), a creation is required in which this love may communicate itself. Creation is not required in order that God may become “actual.” God’s relationship to nature, in which he produces that which is higher, is one of actuality to potentiality; and the expansion of “divinity” into nature (the awakening of the “divine vision of life”) already presupposes God in his actuality. (Cf. 441: “nature is therefore divine, but a lower kind of divinity, a divinity that is awakened from death, so to speak, a divinity that has been elevated from non-Being into Being—whereby it still remains distinct from the most initial divinity that does not have to be first awakened from non-Being to Being.”)