The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century

by Michael N Forster

  (Frank, ‘“Alle Wahrheit ist relativ, alles Wissen symbolisch”’, 420)

  Frank’s view has become the more prevalent in recent interpretations of Schlegel’s development and his relation to Fichte, and implies that Schlegel began to formulate his critique of the Wissenschaftslehre prior to going to Jena. I will not enter into this debate, as my concern is not with showing that Schlegel was (or was not) a critic of Fichte prior to moving to Jena. Rather, my concern is to elaborate how Schlegel’s interest in transcendental idealism was always coupled with an equally deep interest in history and empirical knowledge. Thus, my claim is that Schlegel’s critique of Fichte involves more than his rejection of a first unconditioned principle. I will discuss Schlegel’s conception of a system (section 4.4) and his critique of the first principle (section 4.5) in relation to this larger project.

  16 Schlegel is at pains to convince Cotta that his writings would sell because—although they are philosophical—they are ‘thoroughly not of the kind which simply remain unsold. I am brash enough to promise you with some certainty, that they would create a sensation for the late public’ (KFSA 23, 355, no. 192). For Schlegel, style was a significant theme, particularly because he thought it necessary that philosophy be more accessible to the general public. In his essay ‘On Philosophy. To Dorothea’ [Über die Philosophie. An Dorothea], Schlegel discusses the history of philosophy, and strongly encourages his interlocutor (and women in general) to study philosophy (KFSA 8, 41–62). Stylistically the essay seeks to mirror the kind of intimate dialogue that took place at a salon, such that Schlegel was not only inviting women to participate in philosophy, but also challenging the conventional philosophical style.

  17 The review is of the first four volumes (1795–6) of the Philosophisches Journal einer Gesellschaft teutscher Gelehrten. It appeared in issue number 90 (March 1797) of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, and Schlegel republished it in 1801, with only minor changes in a volume which contains works by him and his brother, titled Charakteristiken und Kritiken.

  18 HKA 1/8, 260.

  19 This appears in a footnote in Fichte’s ‘Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre’, which came out in volume five of Niethammer’s Journal, pages 319–78. See Fichte, Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 1, 469.

  20 The review offers a comprehensive, though not detailed, account of the essays that appeared in the Journal. These include a number of works by Niethammer himself, an essay by Maimon, Schelling’s Briefe über Dogmatismus und Kriticismus (1795–6), a work by Christian Erhard Schmid on the Wissenschaftslehre, and Fichte’s response to Schmid.

  21 Schlegel’s aesthetics are also decidedly based on an understanding of the cultural context of the artwork. He writes, for instance, that to understand ancient Greek comedy, it is necessary to achieve ‘a complete knowledge of the Greeks’ (KFSA 1, 20).

  22 See also KFSA 1, 628, where Schlegel similarly claims that, while there is now a natural history of plants and animals, there remains no history of humanity ‘which can earn the name of a science’.

  23 In a letter to Novalis, Schlegel recounts with horror Fichte’s statement that he’d much rather ‘count peas’ than study history (KFSA 23, 333, no. 169). And in notes he critically remarks that Fichte ‘had absolutely no interest in the historical and technical’ (KFSA 18, 3, no. 2). Schlegel also finds Kant’s lack of historical knowledge and understanding to have been deeply problematic for his aesthetic theory (KFSA 18, 19, no. 10).

  24 In many ways, Schlegel’s true predecessor and possibly most significant influence is Herder, who had already argued for the significance of history and historical understanding in philosophy. For a detailed explication of Herder’s influence on Schlegel, see Michael Forster, German Philosophy of Language, esp. 12–35.

  25 Schlegel argued from as early as 1796 that a system of philosophy need not be based on an original and absolute first principle, but rather on two reciprocally determining principles. See note 17 and section 4.5.

  26 It is highly likely that Hegel attended Schlegel’s lectures. See Ernst Behler, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Hegel und Friedrich Schlegel in der Theorie der Unendlichkeit’, 119–41. The proximity of their thought should not, however, dilute their differences. See Michel Chaouli, The Laboratory of Poetics, 67–77.

  27 In the same way that philosophy can only be understood through its history, so Schlegel argued that literature too can only be understood through its history. Thus in his ‘Lectures on the History of European Literature’ (1803–4) he remarks that ‘the new cannot be understood without the old’, because ‘literature can only be understood as a whole [ist durchaus nur im ganzen verständlich]’ (KFSA 11, 5 and 11, respectively). The Lectures seek to explain the nature of literature through the history of literature.

  28 See also Schlegel’s claim in ‘On Philosophy. To Dorothea’ that ‘philosophy is infinite and can never be completed’ (KFSA 8, 59). The reason for this, he explains, is because to understand philosophy one must understand the whole of philosophy—its entire history—which is, however, an infinite task.

  29 Schlegel also writes ‘the fragment is the actual form of the philosophy of nature’ (KFSA 2, 100, no. 859), and ‘the true form of universal philosophy is fragments’ (KFSA 2, 114, no. 204).

  30 Michel Chaouli explicates the important distinction between a fragment and an aphorism, noting that ‘if the aphorism attempts to bound the horizon of our understanding by offering a central point of focus, the very generic structure of the Schlegelian fragment aims at breaking such an understanding wide open’ (Chaouli, The Laboratory of Poetics, 55). Similarly, he distinguishes between the modern and ancient fragment. While the ancient fragment is a remainder of something that was once whole, and is thus a symbol of a historical unity, the modern fragment ‘is made fragmentary’, that is, it is a fragment in its very intention, and thus disrupts the goal of unity (Chaouli, 59).

  31 On Novalis’ conception of thinking as free self-activity, see Schriften 2, 584, no. 249; Schriften 2, 271, no. 256; Schriften 2, 373–4, no. 35.

  32 In the ‘Athenäum Fragments’, Schlegel similarly notes that individuality does not only imply complexity but also ‘real, historical unity’ (KFSA 2, 205, no. 242).

  33 For an investigation of the way in which Schlegel thematically organized fragments within his collections, see Hans-Joachim Heiner, Das Ganzheitsdenken Friedrich Schlegels, esp. 30–44.

  34 In a fragment published as part of Novalis’ Blüthenstaub (1798), Schlegel remarkably affirms difference within unity by drawing on nature: ‘If one has loyalty for the universe and cannot escape it, then there remains no way out except to end up with contradiction and to connect the opposed’ (KFSA 2, 164).

  35 In his enthusiastic review of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, Schlegel speaks of a deeper kind of systematicity than the one we commonly understand. The higher kind of systematicity, he explains, requires a reader who has a ‘true systematic instinct’ and a ‘sense for the universe’. Only to such a reader will the ‘personality and living individuality of the work’, the ‘inner connections and affinities’ in it, reveal themselves (KFSA 2, 134). These inner connections and affinities, he elaborates, are based on a repetition of what preceded and an expansion upon it. Thus, ‘with every book a new scene and a new world opens up, and every book holds the seed for the one which follows and revises the pure output of the one which precedes with living force in its individual essence’ (KFSA 2, 135).

  36 The idea of two mutually conditioning and conditioned principles, in the place of one unconditioned first principle, is central for Schlegel’s thinking and is present throughout his writings. Thus, in addition to Wechselerweis and Wechselbegriff, Schlegel also invokes ‘Wechselgrund’ (KFSA 18, 7, no. 36), ‘Wechselwirkung’ (KFSA 18, 88, no. 84; KFSA 18, 151, no. 335; KFSA 18 303, no. 1314; KFSA 18, 374, no. 515; KFSA 18, 507, no. 20; KFSA 12, 5; KFSA 13, 38), ‘Wechselgrundsatz’ (KFSA 18, 36, no. 193), ‘Wechselspiel’ (KFSA 18, 361, no. 489; KFSA 18, 361, no. 495), and ‘Wechselbegr�
�ndung’ (KFSA 18, 510, no. 51).

  37 See, for instance, Schelling’s essay ‘Allgemeine Uebersicht der neuesten philosophischen Literatur’, which was published over two years (1796–7) in Niethammer’s (and, by that point also Fichte’s) Philosophisches Journal (for the complete order in which it was published, see HKA 1/4, 3). In the 1809 edition of his works, Schelling republished it under the title, ‘Abhandlung zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre’.

  38 In the Cologne Lectures, Schlegel distinguishes between, on the one hand, logical and mathematical entities, which he maintains can be treated as atemporal, static things, and, on the other hand, all other entities, which, by contrast, must be recognized as inherently changing and historical (KFSA 12, 307ff.). For this reason, the rules of logic and mathematics, he contends, must not be applied to any other disciplines.

  39 This is exactly Schlegel’s hermeneutic method which, he argues, must be used in interpreting works of art. Thus, in his interpretation of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, he explains that the novel must be ‘understood on its own terms’ (KFSA 2, 133). Schlegel’s concern with developing a hermeneutics which would be able to overcome partiality and thus judge a work on its own terms is clearly connected to Herder’s goal, which, as Michael Forster writes, seeks ‘to resist a…strong temptation to evaluate particular works of literary or non-linguistic art in terms of genre-purposes and rules which they do not in fact aspire to realize in the first place, instead of in terms of those which they do’ (Forster, German Philosophy of Language, 16).

  40 In Blüthenstaub, Novalis distinguishes between ‘the unconditioned (das Unbedingte)’ and ‘things (Dinge)’, drawing attention to the implicit claim that the unconditioned is not a thing (Schriften 2, 412, no. 1).

  41 In the Cologne Lectures, Schlegel explains that the ultimate problem with Fichte’s conception of intellectual intuition is the fact that the identity of intuition is founded on an original objectification of the self, which is then followed by an identification with the object. It is therefore not a real identification of the self (as knower) with itself (as knower), for the identity only occurs after the original objectification of the self (as known) (KFSA 12, 324ff.). For a more detailed account of Schlegel’s critique of Fichte’s notion of intellectual intuition, see my The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in German Romantic Philosophy 1795–1804, 109–11.

  42 He contrasts this to, on the one hand, mere historical compilation of data, which can only offer a confused perspective, and, on the other, a priori systematic derivation, which would offer a few examples of every art from various time periods, without, however, explicating their internal structure, placing them in context or demonstrating their relations (KFSA 11, 12).

  43 Schlegel writes:

  all insight into the essence of a thing is obtained only if we know its emergence according to its source, according to its ground and according to its purposes and laws of formation. Thus taken speculatively all concepts are genetic and all theory consists in genetic concepts. As soon as we no longer remain with the external characteristics, the concept of the thing disappears, like an invisible, dead carrier of the characteristics, and only the concept, the picture of life, emerges. We then obtain something thoroughly living—moving, where one emerges from out of the other and brings forth another. In short we obtain the insight into the history of the thing.(KFSA 12, 307)

  44 The research and writing of this article was made possible through the support of the Australian Research Council DECRA Grant [DE120102402].

  CHAPTER 5

  SCHELLING (1775–1854)

  MARKUS GABRIEL

  5.1 INTRODUCTION

  WITHIN the emergent and steadily increasing contemporary interest in nineteenth-century philosophy in the Anglophone world, Schelling is certainly the most widely neglected figure among the so-called German or Post-Kantian Idealists. Whereas the much greater attention paid to Schelling in German, French, and Italian scholarship has been inspired by Heidegger’s appreciation of Schelling as an important forerunner and by the prominence of Schelling’s various criticisms of Kant and Hegel, it is precisely these two factors that have motivated his dismissal in the Anglophone context. For in this context, Kant and Hegel are read in the light of their potential contribution to contemporary semantics and epistemology in a broad sense as well as their respective far-reaching ideas in practical philosophy. Even Fichte has been adopted because of his insistence that we need to further develop the pure concept of autonomy and free it from Kantian metaphysical constraints, such as transcendental idealism’s distinction between appearances and things in themselves.1

  However, recent German literature on Schelling, beginning with Wolfram Hogrebe’s groundbreaking book Predication and Genesis and continuing with Manfred Frank’s work on Schelling, has rightly emphasized that Schelling himself can be seen as developing highly original ideas in semantics, epistemology, and some domains of practical philosophy.2 The difference in outlook between Schelling and his forerunners Kant and Fichte consists in his insistence that metaphysics is prior to any other discipline of philosophy. From a strictly Kantian perspective, Schelling seems to relapse into some form of pre-critical metaphysics, an objection constantly raised by Fichte.3 It usually goes unnoticed, however, that Hegel praises Schelling, particularly his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters (the so-called Freedom Essay), as the highest development of speculative philosophy before Hegel himself.4 We do not know anything about Hegel’s reaction to most of Schelling’s work unpublished during Hegel’s lifetime, nor is it possible to speculate about his potential reaction to Schelling’s later philosophy. It is also not entirely clear to what extent any of Schelling’s various” attempts at systematizing the Kantian enterprise by giving it a different foundation are really incompatible with Kantian premises.5 However, there is no strictly historical reason for dismissing Schelling as an option for a contemporarily feasible version of Post-Kantian philosophy. If Hegel is an option, it is hard to see why Schelling should not be.

  Schelling’s published work alone comprises so many volumes and different forms of presentation of his philosophy, that it is impossible to cover it in a single article. What makes matters more complicated is that some of his posthumous later work has been as least as influential as his published books. This is particularly true of his later Philosophy of Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation, which famously inspired Kierkegaard and the various left-Hegelians who attended his Berlin lectures in the early 1840s.

  My own approach to Schelling is focused on a systematic interest in some of his fundamental ideas. Accordingly, I will not try in my article to give a historically comprehensive picture of Schelling, but will focus on the works and philosophical features that I believe to be most relevant for the contemporary debates that accept nineteenth-century philosophy as their starting point. It is impossible to give an adequate account of Schelling’s intellectual biography for the simple reason that most of Schelling’s thinking has not yet been reconstructed; there is much systematic scholarship yet to be done. The best Schelling biography is written by Xavier Tilliette and has not yet been translated into English.6 In the wake of Heidegger in the early 1950s there were far-reaching attempts to make sense of Schelling, most notably Habermas’ Bonn dissertation, Karl Jaspers’ book on Schelling, and Walter Schulz’ fairly influential Heidelberg habilitation thesis in which he argued that Schelling’s late philosophy is really the ultimate consummation of the very program of German Idealism as a whole.7 It is fair to say that many elements of Schelling’s so-called middle period (comprising the projects of the Freedom Essay, the Ages of the World, and also the less prominent Stuttgart Private Lectures) have gained some attention. The same holds for the late philosophy, his Philosophy of Mythology and his Philosophy of Revelation, due to the fact that both left-Hegelians and Kierkegaard were inspired by what they took to be an important critique of Hegel. However, the details of Schelling’s trans
itions and numerous attempts to state his position, including various forms of presentation (dialogues, treatises, lecture series, etc.) are hardly known, let alone systematically interpreted. Too much of Schelling scholarship until the late 1980s has been dedicated to reconstructing rough outlines of his development rather than focusing on the arguments in Schelling’s texts.

  For the purpose of this chapter, it might nevertheless be useful to provide a rough sketch of my own understanding of Schelling’s development or intellectual biography. It is widely accepted that there are at least four major phases in Schelling’s thinking. His first phase is epitomized by his System of Transcendental Idealism. The idea behind his first publications culminating in the System is to unify two tendencies he sees in Fichte’s version of transcendental idealism. On the one hand, Fichte, like Kant, refrains from broad ontological commitments and attempts to replace an analysis of how things in themselves really are by an account of how we can make sense of things accessible to truth-apt thought such that this account need not necessarily coincide with how things in themselves are. Yet, Schelling fears that this “transcendental modesty” leads to a devastating form of skepticism. If the framework of how things in themselves really are could be said to diverge entirely from our account of how they appear to us, then we could not rule out the possibility that the domain of things referred to (the appearances) might ultimately be undermined by their actual integration into a larger framework inaccessible to us. Therefore, Schelling tries to spell out a form of transcendental idealism that generates its own ontology.