Schelling and Absolute Idealism

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Introduction: The Troublesome Schellingian Legacy

In history of philosophy, Schelling has been regarded as “an intermediate figure”. The tendency to treat Schelling as a foot stool has been especially mislead- ing with regard to his role in the development of German idealism. Persistently, Schelling has been valued only as the predecessor of Hegel. It was Schelling who fathered the basic principles and who forged the central themes of the absolute idealism that Hegel loyally defended and systematized from 1801 to 1804.

The basic question of epistemology—‘How do we know that our concepts correspond to the world?’—is resolvable, Schelling argued, only if we can also explain the interaction between the mental and physical, the subjective and objective, the ideal and real. If these terms refer to complete opposites—if they denote entities in separate worlds—then the correspondence between representation and object in knowledge becomes impossible, at best a complete mystery. The task of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie—the goal behind all his speculations about the nature of matter—was to find some middle path between dualism and materialism, some way of explaining the mind naturalistically without reducing it down to a mechanistic straitjacket.

Absolute idealism is in- conceivable apart from Naturphilosophie because the solution to its fundamental problem—’How does the subject know the object when they appear to be in opposite worlds?’—depends on the organic concept of nature.

The Path toward Absolute Idealism

The Fichte-Schelling Alliance

Schelling formed his absolute idealism in reaction against the “subjective idealism” of Fichte. Schelling’s break with Fichte is a crucial episode in the development of absolute idealism. Its main effect was to make public and explicit all the differences between subjective and objective idealism.

In the course of the development of his Naturphilosophie, he began to question the whole Cartesian tradition of beginning philosophy with the know- ing subject, a tradition that had been continued by Kant, Reinhold, and Fichte. Schelling became convinced that rather than providing a presuppositionless starting point, epistemology had some dubious presuppositions all its own. The epistemological tradition assumes, for example, that the self- conscious subject is a self-sufficient noumenon or res cogitans, though this is only a false abstraction from its place in nature. If philosophy were ever to escape from the impasse of Cartesian solipsism and dualism, Schelling firmly believed, then it had to follow the path of nature itself - reconstrucing the natural history of consciousness, the laws by which nature gradually produces self-consciousness itself.

The true starting point of philosophy, he argued, should be nature itself, the universe as a whole. Rather than beginning with self-consciousness, the philosopher should start with the natura naturans and derive self-consciousness from it. The self-awareness of the transcendental subject now became simply the highest potency of the organic powers of nature.

Early Fault Lines

Schelling writes that the unconditioned cannot be found in the subject anymore than the object, for both the subject and object are conditioned and determinable only in contrast to one another; and he contends that any system that begins with the subject contradicts itself no less than dogmatism. Another difference is that Schelling gives the idea of the absolute not a regulative but a constitutive status. Schelling maintains that the absolute ego is an existing reality that we know through intellectual intuition.

Schelling flatly rejects any demand to prove the existence of the absolute ego. He stresses that we cannot prove the existence of the absolute, since all demonstration is valid only in the sphere of the conditioned (§3; I, 167). We cannot even conceive or describe the ‘I,’ he argues, because it is the condition under which we apply all concepts (§8; I, 180). All that we can say about the ‘I,’ he admits, is that it exists (§15; I, 210). Also this ‘I’ does not refer to an individual or empirical subject. like Spinoza’s substance, and unlike Fichte’s ego, Schelling’s ego is not simply indeterminate, the negation of any specific determination; rather, it is the whole of all reality, the unity of all specific determinations.

An Independent Standpoint

Idealism and realism, or criticism and dogmatism, are both equivalent from the standpoint of the absolute. These systems are essentially identical, Schelling explains, since both attempt to describe the pure subject–object identity of the absolute. While criticism makes the subject absolute and demands that the object disappear, dogmatism makes the object absolute and demands that the subject vanish.

The Development of Naturphilosophie

The Claims of Naturphilosophie

Schelling’s break with Fichte is largely a tale about the development of his Naturphilosophie. Differences of Naturphilosophie is that: first, transcendental realism, the thesis that nature exists independent of all consciousness, even that of the transcendental subject; second, transcendental naturalism, the doctrine that everything is explicable according to the laws of nature, including the rationality of the transcendental subject.

There was a complete reversal: Naturphilosophie began as the servant to the Wissenschafts- lehre but ended as its master.

The Early Fichtean Phase

In the beginning Schelling denies the possibility of Naturphilosophie, which begins with the reality of nature and then derives the self-consciousness of the ‘I’ according to necessary laws. Schelling argues that we have only two options in philosophy: either we explain matter from spirit or spirit from matter. Since we cannot understand matter in itself, and since we originally understand only ourselves, we have no choice but to explain matter from spirit. Schelling explains the self-causing activity characteristic of an organism from the subject’s tendency toward self-consciousness. Insofar as the subject knows that it is the cause of its own representations, it knows that it is the cause and effect of itself, and so that it has a self-organizing nature.

The First Decisive Step

Schelling now states explicitly that transcendental philosophy and natural philosophy are equal to and independent from one another, both providing necessary perspectives on a single reality: the activity of reason or intelligence. This activity has two appearances: a necessary or subconscious form in nature, and a free or conscious form in the ego. Since these are simply different aspects of a single reality, Schelling argues, we should be able to explain each in terms of the other. Transcendental philosophy begins from the free and conscious activity of the ego and derives its necessary and subconscious appearance in nature; natural philosophy begins from the necessary and subconscious activity of nature and derives its free and conscious appearance in the ego.

The first maxim of Naturphilosophie is that of all natural science: to explain everything on the basis of natural powers alone. This principle means treating nature as a self-sufficient and autonomous realm, whose investigation should be free from the guidelines of the transcendental philosopher.

The Priority of Naturphilosophie

In the Einleitung zu dem Entwurf Schelling made the vital move in giving equality and independence to his Naturphilosophie. But this was far from the final step in the evolution of the Identitätssystem. For Schelling had still not conceived of the single absolute standpoint that would unite both transcendental philosophy and philosophy of nature. Later Schelling insists on the priority of Naturphilosophie over transcendental philosophy.

Schelling recognizes that idealism removed self-consciousness from its place in nature, treating it as if it were eternal and given, when it is in fact the product of the development of the powers of nature. The self-consciousness of the transcendental ego is not something self-sufficient, but it is really nature coming to consciousness through him.

Schelling argues that the principle of subject–object identity exists properly, purely, and completely only within the realm of nature itself. He explains that the identity of the subjective and objective means that the ego and nature have parity with one another; but, in the philosophical sense, it signifies that nature is pure and the ego is a derived or subjective subject–object identity.

Problems, Methods and Concepts of Naturphilosophie

Absolute Idealism and Naturphilosophie

The close connection between absolute idealism and Naturphilosophie is clear in two respects. First, Schelling’s absolute idealism arose from his Naturphilosophie. That there is a single universal substance, of which the subjective and objective are only manifestations, is the fundamental proposition of Naturphilosophie.

Second, the intimate bond between absolute idealism and Naturphilosophie is also apparent from Schelling’s own use of the term ‘absolute idealism’.

The purpose of the next two chapters is to examine the purpose, problem, and method of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. I shall argue that Naturphilosophie belongs to the rational core rather than the mystical shell of Schelling’s and Hegel’s absolute idealism.

The Problematic of Naturphilosophie

Although Schelling breaks with the Kantian-Fichtean tradition, ultimately it is trying to answer the same questions in that tradition, for example: “How do we explain the correspondence between representation and object on which all knowledge depends”, “How do synthetic a priori concepts apply to the manifold of a posteriori intuitions given in sensibility?”.

The strategy behind Schelling’s Naturphilosophie was to approach the classical problem of mental–physical interaction from the opposite direction of transcendental philosophy itself. Rather than beginning from the subject and investigating the realm of consciousness, Schelling would begin from the object and study the nature of matter itself. He recognized that the whole problem of mental–physical interaction involves the question ‘What is matter?’ as much as the question ‘What is mind?’

We can summarize Naturphilosophie as naturalistic epistemology, that is, one which attempts to explain the origin and possibility of knowledge by placing the subject and object of knowledge within nature as a whole.

Rethinking Matter

Schelling’s main strategy for dealing with the mind–body problem—reconsidering the nature of matter itself—faced one serious challenge: the Cartesian account of matter as res extensa. It was the central aim of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie to replace it with a new concept of matter that did not have dualistic consequences.

According to Descartes’ cosmology, the nature of matter consists in extension, in having a certain length, breadth, or depth. The main point behind such a concept of matter was to justify the mathematical treatment of the natural world. The price to be paid for such a concept, however, is an insurmountable mental–physical dualism. The problem is that consciousness does not appear to occupy space, because ideas—whether as acts or objects of thought—do not have a definite size, shape, and weight. And also it’s impossible to explain how the external world acts on the mind.

The heart of Kant’s theory of matter in the Anfangsgründe is his analysis of a physical body into two fundamental but opposing forces: the force of repulsion, by which one body causes another to go away from it, and the force of attraction, by which one body causes another to come close to it. What makes a body possible, is a balance between its attractive and repulsive force. Kant’s Anfangsgründe provided Schelling with the conceptual basis for his own break with the Cartesian legacy.

What Fichte had done for the Kantian categories and forms of intuition that Schelling would now try to do for the Kantian principles of dynamics: they too were to be derived from even more fundamental principles.

According to Fichte, there are two basic activities that are completely opposed to one another: an indeterminate activity extending outward to infinity, and a determinate activity reflecting inward to a single point. Schelling applies the analysis from Fichte of the conditions of experience to Kant’s fundamental forces. Attractive and repulsive force, Schelling argues, represent or objectify these two activities in our outer experience.

Nature as Organism

Schelling suggests that the paradigm for the unity of the mental and physical, ideal and real, should be the concept of an organism or self-organizing matter. Since the idea of organization involves that of a unity of form and content, concept and object, and since such a unity is possible only if there is some directing intelligence or governing mind, self-organizing matter must be understood as a unity of mind and body, ideal and real. The purpose or concept of an organism must be inherent in the object itself, and not something imposed on it from outside, Schelling argues, because it is necessary not only for its structure or form but its very existence. Hence it is necessary to assume that there is some intelligence or reason within matter.

Rather than taking mechanism as his model of explanation and reducing the organic and mental to its terms, he makes the organic his model, seeing the mechanical relation of cause and effect only as a manifestation of a universal organic development.

All nature forms one vast hierarchy, which consists in the various stages of organization and development of living force. This hierarchy begins from the most simple forms of matter, passes through the more complex minerals, plants, and animals, and finally ends with the most complex forms of life, such as the self-consciousness of the transcendental philosopher and the creativity of the artistic genius.

Schelling follows Kant in his definition of ‘organism’: The distinctive feature of an organism, when it is considered as an end of nature rather than of art, is that it is the cause and effect of itself. All nature forms one vast hierarchy, which consists in the various stages of organization and development of liv- ing force. This hierarchy begins from the most simple forms of matter, passes through the more complex minerals, plants, and animals, and finally ends with the most complex forms of life, such as the self-consciousness of the transcendental philosopher and the creativity of the artistic genius. Organism has two characteristics. First, the idea of the whole contains and precedes all its parts, so that every part has its identity only in the whole. Second, the parts produce the whole because they are reciprocally cause and effect of one another. Mechanical explanation must now be placed in the broader context of the purposiveness of nature as a whole: it is the means and medium by which organic activity realizes itself.

This organic concept of nature was Schelling’s solution to the dilemma that had troubled physiology ever since the early seventeenth century: dualism versus mechanistic materialism. The organic concept of nature alone, he believed, could avoid the problems of both dualism and materialism and provide a naturalistic yet nonreductivistic account of life and the mind. The organic concept thus calls into question the false common premise behind both dualism and materialism: that all natural explanation is mechanical. Rather than accounting for natural events by external causes acting upon them, it explains them by their necessary place in a systematic whole. The paradigm of explanation is now holistic rather than analytical or atomistic.

According to his organic view, then, there is no distinction of kind, but only one of degree, between the mind and body. They are different levels of organization and development of the single living force throughout all of nature.

Regulative or Constitutive?

The problem for Schelling’s organic theory is that is it possible to give the idea of life a constitutive worth, so that we can assume that nature is an organism? Or is it necessary to assign it a merely regulative status, so that we can investigate nature only as if it were an organism?

For Kant it is regulative. We should proceed in our investigation of nature as if it were created according to a divine intelligence since this will help us to find such systematic unity as exists; but we have no right to conclude that there really is such an intelligence or complete unity.

Despite his methodological caution in some passages, the thrust of Schelling’s organic metaphor in Von der Weltseele was to give constitutive status to the idea of life. In seeing matter as only the negative side of life, as its lowest degree of organization and development, Schelling had virtually embraced the very hylozoism Kant had condemned. To explain the interaction between representation and object, subjective and objective, ideal and real, Schelling postulated the idea of an organism, which makes the subjective and objective simply different degrees of vital activity.

The Methodology of Naturphilosophie

How did Schelling attempt to justify his principles? By what means did he claim to know them?

The ultimate basis for Schelling’s a priori methodology, and his critique of empiricism, lay with his Kantian paradigm of knowledge. True to the idealist tradition, Schelling stresses the role of mental activity in cognition. We know only what we create, he says, so that all knowledge in the strictest sense is a priori. To know an object is to determine the principles of its possibility, and to determine these is to be able to construct it, to reproduce its activity in thought. The principles by which nature creates its objects in reality are the same as those by which the philosopher constructs his objects in thought. As Schelling puts it, nature too works a priori, because it brings forth all its products according to a rational plan.

This paradigm of knowledge is also the foundation for Schelling’s ideal of science. On the basis of his paradigm of knowledge, Schelling then developed some striking views about the role of experiment in natural science. Since knowing is acting, we gain knowledge of nature not when we passively record its operations but when we actively interfere with them. Facts in themselves are nothing, having their meaning and validity only in the context of a specific theory: “whoever does not have the correct theory also cannot have a correct experience, and conversely”.

The a priori aspect of Schelling’s methodology is only one of its aspects. For all his criticism of empiricism, and for all his insistence on a priori principles, Schelling also stresses the indispensable role of experience in Naturphilosophie.

Theory of Life and Matter

The Spinozism of Physics

To consider the detail of Schelling’s doctrines, it is necessary to consider their evolution, for Schelling’s views were constantly changing as he developed new approaches to the same problem. Our task now is to consider the development of Schelling’s views on matter and life during the crucial period from 1798 to 1800.

If transcendental philosophy could postulate the absolute reality of the ego, Naturphilosophie could do the same for nature itself. The fundamental presupposition of Naturphilosophie is therefore the autonomy of nature, which means that the basic forces of nature must be sought within it. True to this new, more naturalistic standpoint, Schelling now called his Naturphilosophie “the Spinozism of physics.”

The central principle of Schelling’s new dynamics is that nature in itself consists in infinite productivity, absolute activity. Strictly speaking, then, nature is not even an organism, since that would be again only the product of its activity. Instead, nature is nothing less than living activity or productivity itself.

Like Spinoza, Schelling maintains that nature in itself, considered as absolute productivity, is completely positive and infinite, so that it is not possible to distinguish anything within it. But he also holds that this productivity results in definite products, in specific things, which are distinguishable from one another. This raises the difficult question: How do we explain the limitation of the absolute productivity of nature? He claims that to re- solve this problem is nothing less than “the highest task of all Naturphilosophie”.

Schelling’s postulate of an original opposition in nature is the basis for one of the central and characteristic principles of his Naturphilosophie: polarity. Polarity comprises several interrelated claims: (1) that every force in nature is limited by an opposing force; (2) that the degree of one force increases or decreases in inverse ratio to the other; and (3) that opposing forces are complementary, such that one cannot be conceived without the other.

Then why is there a balance between opposing forces? Schelling concludes in true Fichtean fashion, is that there is in nature a striving to return to its original identity. We must conceive of the activity of nature as a progression from identity, to opposition, and to a new higher identity, which incorporates its opposition. Although it cannot resolve its fundamental opposition, the activity of nature approaches, if it does not attain, the ultimate synthesis by unifying opposites within this more fundamental opposition.

Why there are two forces in the first place? In short, what justifies Schelling’s original postulate of a duality in nature? Here Schelling admits that he has come to the absolute limits of his Naturphilosophie, which must presuppose this duality and cannot explain it. Although he postulates a common cause of the duality, he does not dare to name it. The sheer imponderability of this issue would soon lead Schelling to the most drastic of conclusions: that the problem is irresolvable because it is absurd.

The Dynamic Construction of Matter

While Schelling postulated the basic forces of nature and their hierarchic organization, he gave only the roughest of outlines about how the basic phenomena of nature were interrelated. He was still far from his central objective: a definitive and detailed account of how all the basic forces of nature—magnetism, electricity, chemistry, light, and life—create matter and form a systematic unity. In this section we’ll talk about dynamic construction of matter. To construct something dynamically is to show how it arises of necessity from the interrelationship of its basic forces. These moments are not temporal but logical, Schelling explains, because they determine the necessary conditions under which it is possible for anything to occupy space. Thus dynamic construction is to physics as transcendental deduction is to philosophy: it shows the necessity of a phenomenon from the original conditions of matter in general.

Schelling’s Allgemeine Deduktion addresses two central problems in dynamics. The first problem concerns the interrelationship between three basic kinds of phenomena: magnetism, electricity, and chemistry. The second problem concerns how the dynamic forces fill space, that is, why they fill it to a definite degree, and why they constitute a three-dimensional space. Schelling attempts to resolve both of these problems with one bold stroke: each kind of phenomenon (magnetism, electricity and chemistry) expresses a definite relation of the basic powers of matter to space. More specifically, he tries to demonstrate how each kind of phenomenon corresponds to a definite dimension of space, and how each dimension arises from the interplay of its forces.

The Theory of Life

What, more precisely, is Schelling’s theory of the relationship between the mind and body? We have seen that, according to his dynamic and organic concept of nature, they are only different degrees of organization and development of living force. We still need a more precise account, however, of how these degrees differ from and relate to one another. We must examine whether Schelling avoided the Scylla of mechanistic materialism and the Charybdis of dualism after all.

Schelling begins by setting forth three theories about the basis of life: (1) that it lies solely in the animal matter itself, that is, in the chemical composition of the body; (2) that it rests completely outside the animal matter in some vital spirit or force; and (3) that it is contained in opposed principles, one of which is outside the individual and the other inside it. The first view is that of materialism; the second that of vitalism; and the third, a synthesis of the others, is Schelling’s own.

Schelling rejects the materialist explanation because all chemical explanation assumes the existence of certain basic components, and from them explains the general structure of living matter; but it cannot give the reason for the existence of these components themselves.

Schelling also dismissed the second view of vitalism because it violates the general principle of his dynamism: polarity. It makes the body entirely passive, as if it simply receives vitality like a lump of clay. However, there is nothing in nature that is totally passive, that does not react when it is acted on.

Schelling’s own theory of life attempts to combine the strengths and to avoid the weaknesses of both theories. He maintains that the basis of life is contained in two principles: a positive principle that is outside the organic body, and a negative principle that is inside it. While the vitalists have rightly stressed the value of the positive principle, the materialists have correctly emphasized the negative one. The vitalists have gone astray in placing the source of life completely outside the processes of organic chemistry, while the materialists have been mistaken in placing theirs totally inside it.

The positive principle is nothing less than the universal ether, the world spirit itself, which is a universal medium spread throughout creation, penetrating every individual thing, both organic and inorganic. The negative principle consists in the structure and chemical composition of each organic body, which is distinctive or characteristic of that body. Schelling sees the positive principle as the proper cause and source of life, and the negative principle simply as its condition. The positive principle constantly stimulates and maintains the living processes characteristic of the organic body; yet it is not part of these processes itself. The specific role of the positive principle is to upset or disturb the equilibrium of forces characteristic of the organic body, so that there must be a constant at- tempt to restore equilibrium. What is characteristic of life, in contrast to the merely material, Schelling says, is that life consists in the constant activity of unifying and separating forces, of struggling toward equilibrium. Purely material things, by contrast, are much more stable, quickly achieving a more lasting equilibrium of elements.

In making such a distinction between the organic and inorganic, Schelling seems to lapse into a new kind of dualism all his own: namely, the organic is that which strives, and the inorganic that which does not strive, toward higher stages of equilibrium. It is possible to read this distinction, however, in a manner consistent with Schelling’s general theory while avoiding any sharp dualism between organic and inorganic. The distinction must be only of degree rather than kind.

In the end, then, the theory of life in Von der Weltseele was vulnerable to objections of obscurantism and dualism—the very problems the theory was designed to avoid.

Irritability, Sensibility, and World Soul

In his Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, Shelling tries to formulate a different account of life. Schelling now re- fined and reformulated his earlier position, utilizing the concepts of irritability and sensibility of eighteenth-century physiology. But, while the theory gains in clarity and precision, some fundamental problems remain.

Schelling explains materialism and vitalism in different terms than those in the earlier work. He now says that there are two opposing systems about the nature of life, which he calls physiological materialism and physiological immaterialism.

According to the physiological materialist, the activity of an organism is determined entirely by its passivity, by the effect of external causes acting on it. The influence of these external causes happens solely according to the laws that govern matter, that is, according to the interchange between attractive and repulsive forces. All the different phenomena of life are functions of the different chemical elements and the different ratios between their attractive and repulsive forces. This biochemical explanation of life is not merely mechanical but also dynamical, Schelling says, because chemical interactions take place according to the ratios between their forces.

According to the physiological immaterialist, however, the passivity of an organism is determined completely by its activity, by the vital force assimilating and transforming material and stimuli from outside.

The Mental and Physical as Potencies

Schelling’s goal was to avoid the extremes of both dualism and materialism, to find a common concept of the mental and physical, the subjective and objective, that would not reduce one term to the other.

In both the Entwurf and Von der Weltseele Schelling failed to achieve his goal. The problem was that, to avoid materialism, he regarded the cause of life as something transcendental; but he thus placed the cause of life outside the sphere of experience itself, and so introduced another dualism between the transcendental and the empirical. All the problems Kant once had about accounting for the interaction between these domains returned to haunt him. After writing the Entwurf, however, Schelling began to eliminate every vestige of the transcendental from his Naturphilosophie.

The best way of explaining this relationship, he now believed, was by the concept of a potency. The essence of Schelling’s new theory is that the organic is only the higher potency of the inorganic. In other words, the organic is the higher degree of organization and development of the inorganic. Both organic and inorganic are one and the same substance - living force - that has developed and organized itself in different degrees, first as the inorganic phenomena of matter and then as the organic phenomena of life.

With the concept of a potency Schelling finally arrived at his middle path between dualism and materialism. There is no dualism since the higher potency includes and presupposes the lower; but there is also no materialism because, as a greater degree of organization and development, the higher potency cannot be reduced down to the lower. The middle path is based on the potencies differing only in form but not in content or substance: they are only different kinds of manifestation of one and the same thing, namely, living force. Schelling sometimes put this point — the identity in substance but the differences in form — in terms of a distinction between nature as subject and as object. The distinction between nature as subject and as object is therefore one between nature as productivity and nature as product. The organic and the inorganic are one and the same insofar we consider nature as subject, but they are different from one another insofar as we view nature as object.

The fact that the higher potency differs from the lower only in form, but not in substance, makes Schelling’s theory appear like a form of epiphenomenalism. But Schelling’s theory of potencies is the very opposite of epiphenomenalism, and more accurately described as form of holism. Rather than giving priority to the material parts of an organism and seeing the whole only as their product, it regards the whole as prior to its parts, and indeed as the source of their activity.

Schelling’s Absolute Idealism

The Blinding Light of 1801

Schelling now naturalizes the absolute, or he absolutizes nature, so that the absolute is identical with the universe itself. This was the final triumph of Naturphilosophie, which had now become identical to the standpoint of reason itself, representing the entire principle of subject–object identity.

Objective Idealism

The Darstellung meines Systems has an important place in the history of German idealism. It is the first systematic exposition of ‘objective’ or ‘absolute’ idealism.

True to its pantheistic credo, Schelling’s treatise is essentially a defense of a monistic rationalism. The whole work is a demonstration of three fundamental propositions: that there is a single, indivisible sub- stance, which is identical with the universe itself; that this substance does not transcend reason but is identical with the fundamental law of reason, which is the principle of identity, A = A; and that the principle of identity expresses the complete unity of the subjective and objective, the ideal and real, the mental and physical.

The conflict between idealism and realism then concerns which term is more fundamental: the universe or the ego? In making the universe the subject rather than predicate in his formula for objective idealism, Schelling was reversing the order of logical priority from subjective idealism. The universe was now the ground or explanans of the ego, and not conversely, as in the Wissenschaftslehre.

Another formulation for the difference between subjective and objective idealism occurs when Schelling tries to explain the difference between transcendental and natural philosophy. He explains that both these disciplines attempt to explain the rationality of nature, that is, its conformity to law or systematic order. But there is a fundamental difference between them: whereas transcendental philosophy sees rationality as the product of the activity of the ego alone, natural philosophy regards it as the result of the activity of nature itself. Naturphilosophie ascribes rationality to nature because it holds that nature acts for ends, that it is not purely mechanical but also organic, having a systematic structure developed from its own intelligent activity. According to the view of natural philosophy, then, rationality is inherent in nature itself, implicit within its purposive activity, and not simply imposed on it by the understanding. Objective idealism is then the view that reason is within nature itself, that its rationality is not created by the transcendental ego alone but is inherent in the purposive activity of nature itself.

How, though, do these formulations square with Schelling’s frequent statements that the system of identity gives equal standing to both transcendental and natural philosophy? If we take these statements seriously—as we must—then the meaning of objective idealism should comprise both the idealism of the Wissenschaftslehre and the realism of Naturphilosophie.

The standpoint of absolute identity can be described as realism because it maintains that the absolute is the universe as a whole, the one and all, of which consciousness is only one mode; it can also be regarded as idealism because it sees the absolute as reason, as the idea of all ideas, and holds that everything is a manifestation of it. There is also, a realism and idealism within or subordinate to this standpoint because there are complementary manifestations or appearances of the absolute, and realism and idealism each describe one of them. Realism considers its appearances from the infinite to the finite, from unity to difference; and idealism treats its appearance from the finite back to the infinite, from totality back into unity.

The main point at issue between subjective and objective idealism is where we place the principle of subject–object identity: whether in nature or in the ego itself? In either case we can speak about two aspects or manifestations of the principle. If subject–object identity is in nature, then the subjective and objective, the mental and physical, are different attributes or appearances of a single universal substance. If, however, subject-object identity is in the ego, then the subjective and objective, the mental and physical, are different attributes or appearances of a single subject.

All this brings us to a significant conclusion: objective idealism is not a synthesis of the Wissenschaftslehre and Naturphilosophie after all. Rather, it is nothing less than the standpoint of the Naturphilosophie itself, an absolute or transcendental realism and naturalism.

The Kantian–Fichtean Interpretation

In their early Jena years, Schelling and Hegel were indeed very anxious to distinguish their doctrine from Kant’s and Fichte’s. First, they contrast their objective idealism with the subjective idealism of Kant and Fichte. Kant’s and Fichte’s idealism is subjective because it regards reason as the product of the transcendental subject, or because it limits subject–object identity to transcendental self-consciousness. Schelling and Hegel maintain that their idealism is objective, however, because it sees reason as the intelligible structure of reality itself, and subject–object identity as the archetypical structure of the absolute itself. It sees the rational or the intelligible not as the form of consciousness but as the form of being itself. Second, they distinguish their absolute idealism from the relative idealism of Kant and Fichte. Relative idealism attempts to derive the objective from the subjective, the real from the ideal, as if one appearance or aspect of the absolute has priority over the other; but absolute idealism maintains that the subjective and objective, the ideal and the real, are only different appearances or aspects of the absolute, and that both have an equal and independent standing.

All this does not mean, of course, that the absolute is somehow objective, completely transcending the realm of consciousness, and existing apart from and prior to it. This would be a serious mistake because Schelling and Hegel made it one of their chief aims to combat the illusion that the absolute is somehow beyond us, existing on its own in some supernatural and heavenly realm. They were explicit that, as the whole of all reality, the absolute had to include the realm of consciousness within itself, and that this realm is indeed one of its necessary manifestations.

The Interpretation of Subject–Object Identity

Some of Schelling’s accounts of absolute idealism virtually equate it with the doctrine of subject–object identity, the principle that the absolute is neither subjective nor objective but the complete indifference of both.

There are three possible interpretations of Schelling’s principle, corresponding to three different models of the unity of the subjective and objective.

The Dual-Aspect Doctrine

According to this interpretation, to say that the absolute consists in subject– object identity means that the subjective and objective, the ideal and real, or the mental and physical are simply different attributes, perspectives, or explanations of one and the same thing. This means that there is no real opposition between these terms in the sense that it does not describe different properties of reality itself, let alone distinct substances. Rather, there is only an ideal opposition in the sense that it exists only for reflection, for our way of ex- plaining things. The principle of subject–object identity is then something like a cosmic dual-aspect doctrine, according to which idealism and natural- ism, the mental and physical, are incomensurable but equally valid ways of explaining the world.

The Hylozistic Interpretation

According to this reading, the principle of subject–object identity of the Identitätsystem must be understood in the context of Schelling’ general theory of life in his Naturphilosophie. The principle of subject–object identity then simply states that the subjective and objective, or the mental and physical, are essentially one and the same in themselves because they are only different manifestations, expressions, and embodiments of a single reality — namely, living force.

This interpretation implies that there is a real difference between the subjective and objective, the mental and physical, although it is only a difference in degree rather than kind. There is a difference in degree in that the mental is the highest degree of organization and development of the living powers of the body, while the body is the lowest degree of organization and development of the living powers of the mind. This seems to be indeed the essence of Schelling’s concept of quantitative differences, which played a central role in the Identitätssystem.

Schelling’s hylozistic account of nature demands teleology, the attribution of purposes to nature, which is expressly forbidden by Spinoza. It does not account for a major shift in his views from the Naturphilosophie to the Identitätssystem, because Schelling no longer writes of the absolute in terms of living force, and indeed he ceases to regard it as an activity. The absolute is not the force of all forces, the potency of all potencies; rather it is that in which all potencies are extinguished, the point of indifference that is potencyless.

The Platonic Interpretation

According to this reading, the principle of subject–object identity means that the absolute consists in reason, the archetype, or the idea, and this is neither mental nor physical, neither subjective nor objective, because an intelligible form is neither kind of entity or property. It is neither of them exclusively, but it is also both of them equally because it manifests or embodies itself in them. The mental and the physical are united on this model not because they are really one and the same thing, as in the dual-aspect theory, or be- cause they are different degrees of organization and development of a single living force, as in the hylozistic model, but because they both instantiate or embody a single kind of law or rational structure.

Which of these interpretations applies best to the Identitätsystem? Appropriately enough for a philosophy that wants to overcome all oppositions, all and none of them. The texts are so rich that they support each of them and do not give any single one the exclusive title to the truth.

The Dark Night of the Absolute

The Dark Parmenidian Vision

In the Darstellung meines Systems Schelling develops a vision of the absolute that is strictly monistic and severely Parmenidian. The absolute is pure oneness, complete unity, utter self-sameness, and there is no difference, distinction, or multiplicity in that dark night. Hence Schelling repeatedly, emphatically, and explicitly defines the standpoint of absolute reason as that of pure self-identity, the complete indifference of subject and object. The highest law, and indeed the sole law, to express the absolute is therefore the law of identity, A = A. The absolute standpoint therefore excludes all opposition between things or any differences between subject and object. From the absolute standpoint, the finite simply does not exist, because nothing considered in itself is finite.

This was the view of the absolute that Hegel famously parodied as “the night when all cows are black.” The absolute cannot be both one and many, both pure unity and difference, because that would be a contradiction. Those who assume that the absolute goes outside itself entangle themselves in this contradiction, because they must assume that the differences are somehow within it. It is a fundamental maxim of reason, however, that ex nihilo nihil fit, so that the differences cannot emerge from its opposite, unity.

It was indeed the central problem of his early thought - as it was later of Hegel’s - to think of the unity of unity and multiplicity, the identity of identity and nonidentity. The fundamental task of philosophy, Schelling said in the Briefe, is to explain the possibility of the synthetic a priori, which means understanding how the absolute could go outside itself to posit the multitude of things in the empirical world. Schelling had now convinced himself, however, that this was a pseudoproblem, that it involved the false presupposition that the absolute could per absurdam destroy itself.

The Dilemma of Absolute Knowledge

Whatever the reasons for Schelling’s Parmenidian vision, the results were still problematic, and indeed for all the classical reasons. There could be no denying the fact that there are differences between things, that there are individual things, or that there is a finite realm where things are limited by one another. So, like it or not, it seems as if Hegel had a point after all: there must be some white cows in that dark night. The problem is then to explain how they got there.

While we now seem to be deep in metaphysical territory, far removed from the epistemological concerns of the Kantian–Fichtean tradition, it is important to keep in mind that the main problem here is still that central to all German idealism: How do we explain the reality of the external world?

On the one hand, it is necessary to exclude the realm of the finite from the absolute, because the finite and absolute contradict one another; more specifically, the absolute is independent and indivisible while the finite is dependent and divisible. On the other hand, however, it is also necessary to include the realm of the finite in the absolute, because, as the whole of all reality, the absolute cannot be limited by something outside itself; as the being in itself, having an independent essence and existence, the absolute cannot be conceived in contrast to something it is not.

Of course, Schelling was acutely aware of this problem, and his solution to it in the Darstellung meines Systems is his theory of quantitative differences. According to this theory, there cannot be any qualitative differences between things in the absolute, that is, differences where one thing opposes another or can be posited without the other. There can be, however, quantitative differences, that is, differences where two things are posited together and are inseparable from one another, but where one is given more reality than the other. This concept therefore implies that there can be differences in degree but not in kind.

However, quantitative differences are no better than qualitative ones: both fall outside the absolute standpoint, and both therefore serve as limits on the absolute. Another related problem with Schelling’s Parmenidian vision is that it forbids the possibility of all intellectual discourse about the absolute. The proper conclusion to draw from it is that we cannot say anything at all about the absolute, because to do so would be to ascribe some property to it, which is to posit some difference within it. To attribute some property to the absolute is to divide it, because any property has its determinate meaning only in contrast to its negation.

His response to the difficulty is to distinguish between the essence and the form of absolute identity. While the essence of the absolute is its nature considered in itself, its form is its manner of being. Since knowledge of the absolute does not belong to its essence, it does not introduce any distinction into its pure self-identity; but since it does belong to its form, the manner in which it exists, it also does not stand completely outside it, at least not in the manner of pure reflection, which knows only the appearances of the finite world. However, the main problem is that the absolute, as pure undifferentiated unity, cannot have any form at all, any specific manner of being, given that all determination involves negation. Therefore, all discourse about the absolute must stand outside it, so that it has a purely imaginary status, consisting in nothing more than arbitrary and artificial abstractions of the understanding.

Rethinking the Absolute

The absolute is still pure unity and identity. It is an infinite that includes the finite insofar as all finite things are identical with one another; but it is still an infinite that excludes that finite insofar as all finite things are distinct from one another.

Schelling’s view is between the two problematic extremes. According to one extreme, the absolute is an abstract unity that excludes all difference, or it is the infinite in contrast to the finite. Schelling rejects this view because such an absolute becomes limited by the finite. According to the other extreme, the absolute is the unity of the infinite and the finite, but a unity that contains all the differences of the finite world within itself. He discards this view because such an absolute would lose its unity, becoming divided by all the differences within itself. The challenge is then to find a concept of the absolute that explains how it can include the finite without losing its unity. Again, Schelling’s solution is that the finite is within the infinite, but not as such or as a determinate thing. In other words, all individual things are within the absolute, but only insofar as they are identical with one another, and not insofar as they are distinct from one another.

In Hegel’s view, the problem with Schelling was not that he had the wrong formula for the absolute—that he did not conceive of the finite within the infinite—but that he did not take this formula to its proper conclusion. Absolute should include the finite insofar as things are also different from one another.

The Fall

Relentlessly, the critics pressed him on the question of the origin of the finite. If the absolute were the source of the finite, Carl Eschenmeyer wrote, then it had difference within itself; but if it were not the cause, then there was a dualism between the infinite and finite.

There is no problem of explaining the or- igin of the finite world, he argues, for the simple reason that this world does not exist. Philosophy should have a completely negative relationship to the world of appearances, so that it should not attempt to derive the reality of the finite world; rather, it should try to prove that such a world does not exist. In any case, Schelling insists, it is impossible to explain the origin of the finite from the absolute. There cannot be any transition from the infinite to the finite, either in a logical or a causal sense, because this would entail that the absolute has real differences within itself. Whether we conceive of the origin of the finite through the self-differentiation of the absolute or through its gradual emanation, we end out dividing its reality by assuming that the finite is somehow inside it. The absolute, as pure self-identity, cannot go outside itself.

Although they are indirectly joined, Schelling still denies that the absolute is the cause of the finite world. The immediate source of the finite world is the idea, whose self-reflection is objectified in the finite. But this does not mean, Schelling thinks, that the absolute is even the mediate cause of the finite world. This is not the case for two reasons. First, the idea asserts its independence from the absolute in giving rise to its reflections. Second, even the ideas are not the proper causes of the finite world. They provide only the principles of its possibility, he explains, but not of its reality. So the question still remains: Whence the reality of the finite world? Schelling’s answer is simple but surprising: the reality of the finite world arose from a “breaking off,” “a leap,” “a distancing” and “a defection” from the absolute by the finite itself.

For all his speculations, then, Schelling never escaped Eschenmeyer’s dilemma. If he made the absolute the cause of the finite, he divided it; and if he made the finite its own cause, he gave it a reality that limited the absolute. The whole of philosophy of identity was fracturing under the stress of this dilemma. The original Spinozian inspiration was giving way, slowly but surely, to a Christian theism. It was this factor more than any other that eventually drove Schelling away from the philosophy of identity and toward his new philosophy of freedom.

In the meantime, Hegel drew his own conclusions from Schelling’s difficulty. Seeing the dualism implicit in Schelling’s account of the fall, he was convinced that it is necessary to make negativity an essential element of the absolute itself.

Absolute Knowledge

In Defense of Speculation

The position sketched by Schelling in the Darstellung meines Systems was metaphysics in the grand style, and indeed in the very sense condemned by Kant: knowledge by reason of the absolute or unconditioned. But How is it possible to justify the possibility of such knowledge? How, indeed, is metaphysics possible?

According to one common view, Schelling simply refused the demand for justification. Since he held that absolute knowledge is indemonstrable and esoteric, he had to reject any attempt to prove or explain it. The philosophy of identity therefore represents a relapse into dogmatism, because it claims to possess a knowledge of the absolute that stands above all criticism.

But this objection is unfair. Although Schelling did hold that absolute knowledge is indemonstrable and esoteric, he still believed that he had to justify its possibility. To prove its reality was one thing; but to establish its possibility another.

For Schelling and Hegel, the defense of metaphysics involved surmount- ing another even more basic challenge than the Kantian–Fichtean critique of metaphysics: the Kantian–Fichtean circle of consciousness. Their attempt to demonstrate absolute knowledge became inseparable from their attempt to establish a more general realism, a knowledge of reality in itself. The source of the connection is plain: since the absolute is the universe—the whole of reality, which is not reducible to the dimensions of my subjectivity—there can be knowledge of it only if there can also be knowledge of something independent of my own representations. They had to demonstrate, in other words, that we have knowledge of things-in-themselves and not only appearances.

The task of the present chapter is to examine Schelling’s and Hegel’s early attempt to justify both the metaphysics and realism of absolute idealism.

The Strategy for the Defense

To defend their project, Schelling and Hegel first had to come to terms with the Kantian critique of metaphysics, pinpointing its weaknesses and strengths. They maintain that Kant was perfectly correct in arguing that these concepts cannot be extended beyond experience, and that in their transcendent employment they end in paralogisms, antinomies and amphibolies. But for Schelling and Hegel, the value of Kantian critique was essentailly negative, it had rightly destroyed the bankrupt Leibnizian–Wolffian Verstandesmetaphysik, but in doing so it had only cleared away the rubbish lying in the path of a true metaphysics. Kant drew this unwarrented conclusion, Schelling and Hegel insisted, only because he had unwittingly accepted one of the main premises of the older rationalism: that all knowledge through reason has to be through the principle of sufficient reason. Kant had indeed a much too limited concept of reason: he reduced it down to logic, and saw it as nothing more than an extension of the concepts of the understanding. Schelling and Hegel would therefore attempt to show that there is a form of rational knowledge of the unconditioned that is not limited by the principle of sufficient reason, and hence that there is a kind of knowledge of the absolute that is not subject to Kant’s strictures about the limitations of the understanding. Schelling’s and Hegel’s strategy was to revive a rational knowledge of the absolute. While they wanted to escape the mistakes of the older rationalism and its narrow reliance on the principle of sufficient reason, they also wanted to avoid the excesses of mysticism, of any appeal to intuition that transcended conceptual elaboration and methodological guidance.

Intellectual Intuition

Schelling and Hegel saw the solution to the problem of metaphysics in “a wonderful and secret faculty”: intellectual intuition. Schelling defines intellectual intuition in general terms as “the capacity to see the universal in the particular, the infinite in the finite, and indeed to unite both in a living unity.” An intellectual intuition, he explains, consists in my grasping an individual as a member of a whole, in seeing how its es- sential nature or inner identity depends on the totality of which it is only a part. When I have an intellectual intuition of an object, Schelling says, I do not explain it, and I do not deduce it, but I contemplate it. To contemplate an object is to consider it in itself, apart from its relations with other objects. When I contemplate an object, Schelling maintains, I also see how it is part of a wider whole, how it represents the entire universe from its own point of view, because in themselves all objects are one and the same. According to their definition, the task of reason is to comprehend something by showing how its identity depends on its place within a whole.

Schelling’s and Hegel’s definition of reason marks an important change from that prevalent in the eighteenth century. The earlier concept of reason was essentially based on a mechanical model of explanation, according to which events have to be understood by the causes acting on them. According to this mechanical concept, reason is governed by the principle of sufficient reason, which states that there must be a sufficient reason or cause for every event, such that given the cause the event occurs of necessity. It is then the task of reason to seek the reasons or causes for events, to find the conditions for everything conditioned in the universe.

Schelling and Hegel defined their own organic or holistic concept of reason in contrast to this mechanical concept. They now called the power of explaining events according to the principle of sufficient reason the “understanding” (Verstand), which they sharply distinguished from reason. It is now easy to understand why Schelling and Hegel believed that they had outmanuevered Kant. They could endorse all of Kant’s criticisms of metaphysics as valid for the understanding, but they did not regard them as true for reason itself. That is because Kant had simply presupposed a mecha- nistic paradigm of reason, a view of reason that reduced it to the under- standing. He never really considered the concept of reason in its proper sense as the power of intellectual intuition, the capacity to grasp things as parts of the whole. Hence the path lay open for the new metaphysics based on intellectual intuition.

Notoriously, any appeal to intuition is weak because it leaves open the possibility for someone else to claim an opposing intuition. Aware of this very point, Schelling and Hegel insist on the need for conceptual elaboration or systematic development to test the truth of the original intuition.

Fichte versus Schelling on Intellectual Intuition

For Fichte, an intellectual intuition is a form of self-knowledge, and its structure consists in subject–object identity. It is also an immediate intellectual insight into its object, which cannot be demonstrated or explained by concepts. There are at least two important differences between Fichte’s concept of intellectual intuition and that of Schelling and Hegel. First, while Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel all see intellectual intuition as self-knowledge, they have different conceptions of the self and its place in nature, and so opposing conceptions of the self-knowledge of intellectual intuition. For Fichte, intellectual intuition gives me knowledge of my noumenal self, which transcends the phenomenal realm of nature. Through it I recognize my autonomy, that I am the sole source of my own actions. For Schelling and Hegel, however, intellectual intuition consists in the knowledge of my identity with the universe as a whole. Through intellectual intuition I do not see my- self acting but all of nature acting through me. Second, Fichte expressly denies that intellectual intuition can be the source of metaphysical knowledge, as if it gives insight into the archetypes or eternal forms. Schelling and Hegel affirm this very possibility, however, defining intellectual intuition as archetypical knowledge. It is by intellectual intuition that I grasp the unity of universal and particular, the ideal and the real, that is characteristic of the Platonic forms.

Art versus Philosophy

How does one attain an intellectual intuition? And how does one know that it even exists?

Schelling’s first response to them develops the doctrine of the sovereignty of art so characteristic of the romantic circle in Jena. Schelling’s deduction of the primacy of aesthetic experience attempts to demonstrate how it alone can synthesize the two fundamental aspects of the absolute, its subjective and objective pole. Since the subjective pole of the absolute manifests itself in free and conscious activity, and since its objective pole appears as necessary and subconscious activity, the perfect synthesis of these activities is nothing less than the creative activity of the artist. The work of genius consists precisely in the expression of the subconscious forces of nature. All great artists testify, Schelling insists, that in creating their work they feel that they are directed by higher powers beyond themselves. Their works too show that they are not entirely the product of intention and design, because the artist himself cannot explain entirely how they arose and how they are to be interpreted. They present the infinite in a finite form because they are capable of an infinity of interpretations. Intellectual intuition comes with that self-consciousness after the moment of creation when the artist recognizes that he alone does not produce the work of art according to his conscious design but nature also acts to produce it through him.

Schelling seems to dissolve the problems of philosophy into those of art. Philosophy now becomes the virtual handmaiden of art because “art is the model of science, and wherever art is science should follow”.

However in his next publication on the philosophy of art Schelling restored philosophy to sovereignty over art.

The Method of Construction

Schelling began to develop his own philosophical methodology after his demotion of the role of art: the method of construction. The aim of this method is not only to establish the reality of an intellectual intuition, but also to provide a procedure for its systematic elaboration.

The inspiration for Schelling’s method is mathematics. That our reason has the power of intellectual intuition—that it has the capacity to perceive archetypes—is clear from the example of mathematics. Every mathematical demonstration shows the identity of the universal and the particular, the ideal and the real, which is characteristic of the archetype. Schelling thinks that these features of a mathematical proof—the pure intuition of the universal in the particular—show the possibility of intellectual intuition in philosophy itself. The mathematician’s construction of a proof according to the forms of space and time is the primitive sensory form of the philosopher’s intellectual intuition. Just as the geometer abstracts from the accidental properties of his particular figure and considers its essential properties as pure instances of space in general, so the philosopher abstracts from all the contingent features of a particular and sees it as a pure case of the absolute whole. Both mathematician and philosopher aspire to a unity of thought and intuition, an identity of universal and particular. The only difference between them is this: the geometer deals with a universal that is the a priori form of sensible intuition (space and time), whereas the philosopher deals with a universal that is the a priori form of intellectual intuition.

The proper method of philosophy, the means by which to attain and confirm an intellectual intuition, is through construction. Just as the mathematician constructs a figure in space, so the philosopher constructs a particular in his system. In each case we show the universal in the particular through an act of intuition.

The task of philosophical construction, Schelling explains, is to grasp the identity of the particular with the universal, to see the ideal in the real and conversely. To establish such an identity, the philosopher has to abstract from each particular’s determinate characteristics, to negate those distinctive features of the thing by which it differs from everything else. He then has to focus on the thing itself, apart from all its relations with other things, and to contemplate it for its own sake, regardless of its moral value or physical utility. If he does this, he will then see its identity with all things, grasping the entire universe within it. This is because all things are in themselves identical with one another, differing from one another only through their properties, which are abstracted away through intellectual intuition.

Head over Heels into the Absolute?

Several years after the dissolution of their philosophical alliance, Hegel criticized Schelling for beginning his system directly with absolute knowledge. To think of reason as absolute, Schelling explains, it is necessary to abstract from everything subjective, the activity of thinking itself. But to do this is also to abstract from the objective, because the subjective and objective have meaning only in contrast to one another. Through this feat of abstraction, then, reason is grasped as neither subjective nor objective, but as something indifferent between them. In this manner, Schelling assures us, we grasp reason as the true being in itself.

In so quickly launching the reader into the realm of absolute knowledge, Schelling again seems to be transcending the limits of experience and to be engaging in a dogmatic metaphysics. Schelling explained that all he wanted is an abstraction from the intuiting subject of an intellectual intuition. All knowledge presupposes the pure identity of subject and object, Schelling argues, and such pure identity demands that we abstract from the subject as much as the object of knowledge. Hence Schelling denies that postulating absolute knowledge involves transcending the limits of knowledge. It goes beyond the narrow limits postulated by Kant and Fichte, to be sure, but it does not go beyond these limits in general, for it simply articulates a necessary presupposition of all knowledge.

Schelling’s transcendental argument consists in two stages: (1) that subject–object identity is the necessary condition of all knowledge; and (2) that subject–object identity has to be conceived not as pure self-consciousness, or as the self-consciousness of the transcendental ‘I,’’ but as the self-knowledge of the absolute itself.

Schelling and Hegel believed that only their objective interpretation of the principle of subject–object identity ensures the possibility of knowledge because it alone means that knowledge is not simply my knowledge—something I know to be true from my own case or my own consciousness—but the knowledge of the object itself.

It is clear, however, that this interpretation of the principle of subject–object identity saves the objectivity of knowledge only on the further assumption that my knowledge as a finite subject is part or a mode of absolute knowledge. It presupposes, in short, the ancient Platonic theme that all knowledge participates in divine self-knowledge, or that when I know something God knows it through me.

Such an explanation of the possibility of knowledge seems to create more problems than it solves, because it does not answer the skeptical challenge of how I know that my knowledge participates in divine self-knowledge. Simply to maintain that this is the only means to explain the possibility of knowledge begs the question by assuming that there is knowledge in the first place. Schelling places the discursive knowledge of the finite subject outside the ab- solute and even condemns it to the realm of illusion. In what sense, then, can he be said to guarantee the objectivity of its knowledge?

The Paradox of Absolute Knowledge

In spite of all Schelling’s and Hegel’s attempts to explain the possibility of absolute knowledge there lay a deep paradox behind the philosophy of identity. It was one of Schelling’s and Hegel’s cardinal doctrines that there cannot be any distinction between knowledge of the absolute and the absolute itself for the simple reason that the absolute is all reality and has nothing outside itself. The same result arises from their paradigm of knowledge. Since they contend that subject–object identity is the necessary condition of all knowledge, the subject who knows the absolute must be identical with the absolute itself. There cannot be any distinction between absolute knowledge and the absolute itself, because that would create a dualism between subject and object, violating the fundamental condition of all knowledge.

This result is paradoxical, however, because it denies legitimacy to the very problem Schelling and Hegel are trying to solve. The question how we know the absolute becomes a pseudoproblem because it is not we, you, or I who can know the absolute, but it is only the absolute that can know itself. According to Schelling, the whole question of how I can know the absolute commits the fundamental error of all modern philosophy: that I, not God, am the subject of knowledge.

The net result of such teaching, however, is that it is virtually impossible for the finite subject to know the absolute. If the subject knows the absolute, then ipso facto it ceases to be finite and becomes the same as the absolute itself!

In the end, then, Schelling’s uncompromising insistence on subject–object identity as his standard of knowledge placed him in an impossible position: to know the absolute we have to be the absolute, which is to say that we, as finite subjects, cannot know it at all. For all Schelling’s insistence on explaining the possibility of absolute knowledge, for all his attempts to avoid the charge of dogmatism, and for all his efforts to develop a scientific method of knowledge, his ideals of knowledge were in the end simply impossible to fulfill.

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