Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  In contrast to this he declares in the same place the understanding to be “the not creating, but regulating, limiting, giving measure to the infinite boundless Will.”

  With this corresponds the principles of the Pythagoreans, the (unlimited), and the (limiting), or (giving form or notion), (i. 10, 243). If the ideal principle is an Understanding in which is no Will (ii. 2, 112; ii. 1, 375, L. 14–16), the real principle is a “Will in which is no Understanding” (i. 7, 359). “All willing, however, must will somewhat” (ii. 1, 462), an objectless willing is only = vague desire, “the longing that the Eternal One feels for self-deliverance” (i. 7, 359). The Word of this longing is, however, the Presentation—that Presentation which is at the same time the Understanding (i. 7, 361), or “the ideal principle” (i. 7, 395). In the “utterance of this word” is found the union of the ideal and the real principle from which the existence to be explained arises.

  In his later expositions Schelling endeavours to deduce these principles from the concept of Being as the elements of it which cannot be thought away, an undertaking which plainly reveals its infutility by this, that all real progress can only be gained by the reinstatement of the concrete determinations. Here the being-able-to-be (potentia existendi) answers to the Will, the purely (i.e., non-potential, idealiter) being to the Idea. On the being-able-to-be he says (ii. 3, pp. 205–206), “But now the being-able-to-be of which we here speak is not conditioned; it is the unconditioned potentia existendi; it is that which can pass unconditionally and without further mediation a potentia ad actum. But now we know no other passage a potentia ad actum than in volition. Will in itself is potentiality κατ ,willing the act The transition a potentia ad actum is everywhere only transition from not-willing to willing. The immediately being-able-to-be, therefore, is that which, in order to be, needs nothing but just passing from not-willing to willing. Being consists for it simply in the willing; it is in its being nothing else than willing. No actual being is without an actual willing, however qualified, conceivable.”—The being-able-to-be is the Will per se, the not yet objected, but only primitive Will, that indeed can will (else it would indeed not be Will), but simply does not yet Will; the Will before its manifestation (ii. 3, pp. 212–213).

  If this Will is kindled into willing, if it becomes active, it therewith surrenders its freedom, its being-able-not-to-be, and lapses into blind being, like Spinoza’s substance. As such, it becomes the “Sinister,” “the source of all displeasure and dissatisfaction” (ii. 3, 226).

  The purely being or the IDEA is neither potentiality nor act, for act is only that which proceeds from potentiality Schelling calls its state actus purus.—I remark here that Schelling endeavours, for the sake of the Christian Trinity, to make his principles and their substantial unity into persons, and for that end to ascribe to each of the three a will of its own, which is altogether absurd. That one may not feel the preposterousness of this too distinctly, he suppresses in his later expositions as far as possible the tenet that the concrete determination of the “purely being” is the “Idea.” (See further my essay mentioned above.)—

  There is a remarkable passage in Irenæus, i. 12, 1, where the latter is giving an account of Ptolemy. As this same passage proves how early that perception attained distinct expression which declares a creation from the pure Idea to be impossible, I shall set it down here: (For first he thought to produce, then he willed.—The Will thus became the power of Thought. For Thought thought indeed the creation, but it could not itself produce from itself what it thought. But when the power of Will was added, then it produced what it thought.)

  The essential agreement of our principles with those of the greatest metaphysical systems (Spinoza we still reserve) can only serve to strengthen us in the conviction that we are on the right path. Let us now consider somewhat more minutely each of the principles.—

  2. The Will. —Volition represents the superiority of the real over the ideal. The ideal is the ideal object per se, the real is the willed idea of the Idea as content of Will.

  Equally diffused with the belief in Matter is the conception of the vulgar Theism, that the real is not the apparition of the will-action itself of the creative Being of the world, but a dead, arrested product, a caput mortuum of a former long-extinct activity of Will, the act of creation, and that the proper representative of this caput mortuum is matter. From this prepossession we have already, in Chap. vii. C., delivered ourselves, where we saw that there is only the Unconscious and its activity, but no third. As long as this notion of a dead matter was not overcome, there certainly only remained the two ways of apprehending it: either as uncreated eternal substance, with Materialism, or as caput mortuum of a former act of creation, however difficult it might be to form a clear idea of such a dead product; but after material substance had been perceived by us to be a chimera, pure matter a system of atomic forces, and the material world an ever-changing state of equilibrium of very many intersecting will-activities (cp. vol. ii. pp. 241–243), there remained no longer any reason for assuming dead remnants of former productivity, and we now perceived the Real at every moment of the process to be present will-activity, tnerefore the existence of the world a continuous act of creation (cp. vol. ii. pp. 268–269). This is doubtless also the meaning of the “second corollary” at the beginning of Schelling’s “Philosophy of Nature” (Werke, i. 3, p. 16): “Nature nowhere exists as product; all the several products in Nature are only apparent products, not the absolute product, in which the absolute activity exhausts itself, and that always becomes and ever is.”

  This conception by no means, as might appear at first sight, contradicts the physical axiom that the effect of a once-acting cause persists; for the state newly induced, in which consists the physical effect (e.g., a movement of this or that direction and velocity), certainly persists, supposing the object to persist whose state it is, i.e., supposing that this object is continually posited anew.

  It is coherent with this view of the persistence of the world as a continuous act of creation that we can no longer regard volition as separated from the act: volition is itself the act.

  This truth appears clearer in the case of the atomic will, as discussed in Chaps, v. and xi. C. If it appears otherwise in psychology, this is to be explained thus:—

  (1.) When act is employed in the wider sense, it must be understood as external activity of the will; if, on the other hand, act is taken in the narrower sense, namely, only as the intended mode of efficiency, undoubtedly only that willing is identical with the act which accomplishes its will, but not that which indeed does and works, but is impeded in the execution of the deed in the intended manner by external unconquerable impediments.

  (2.) Only the volition directed to the present is identical with the act, a volition directed to the future, however, is also no proper categorical volition, but only a hypothetical volition, a resolution or an intention.

  (3.) By act one understands in psychology only a doing of the whole person, but not those movements of the brain-molecules caused by the Will, which in themselves are not powerful enough to call forth an external action of the body, or are hindered by other cerebral vibrations acting in the contrary sense.

  Therefore in psychology certainly only the whole present volition of the individual, i.e., the resultant of all the simultaneous single wills or desires, is identical with the act, whilst the simultaneous components exhaust their mutual action in the brain so far as they do not become act in the resultant. Strictly taken, however, the movement of the cerebral molecules is also a coming of the will into external operation, i.e., an act, and in this sense is also every single desire in the individual an act, only that it is perhaps prevented by other cerebral vibrations from realising itself in its whole possible range; e.g., hunger produces cerebral vibrations in the beggar, that would compel him to stretch out his hand to the bread in the baker’s shop; the dread of the theft produces other cerebral vibrations, which prevent this particular movement; but both, the p
ositive as the negative desire, are in act expressed as cerebral vibrations.

  “The Will per se is potentiality volition actuality ”. This declaration of Schelling must certainly be assented to. Thus much is at least universally recognised, that volition is to be regarded as an act dependent on a power, and this potency, this being-able-to-will, of which we know nothing more than this, that it can will, we call Will. Whatever be a being-able-to-will, the possibility must be open to it to be, under certain circumstances, a non-willing,1 i.e., the notion of the being-able-to-will includes that of the being able not-to-will, or the being-able-to-will is only a correctly chosen name if that which is denoted by it is at the same time also a being-able not-to-will on occasion. If, namely, the being-able-to-will were deprived of this possibility of not-willing on occasion, it would be a not- being-able not-to-will or being-obliged-to-will, and, indeed, not a being-obliged-to-will conditionally under certain circumstances or for a certain time, but an eternally unalterable being-obliged-to-will. This would, however, upset the notion of the being-able-to-will or of potentiality, and only leave the notion of the absolute groundless willing that wills to all eternity. Superfluous as would be the notion of force in presence of an eternal motion, so superfluous would be the notion Will (as potentiality of volition) in presence of an eternal willing; willing would then be non-potential actus purus. On this assumption all possibility not only of an individual, but also of a universal redemption, would be cut away; all hope of a cessation of the process (whether intended and striven for, or accomplished according to blind law and fortuitously) would be destroyed. The cheerlessness of such an assumption can of course be for us no argument against its admissibility or probability; we shall, therefore, in another direction, have to test its validity.

  The eternity of willing conditions the endlessness of the process, and indeed both forwards and backwards. In the endlessness of the process forwards there lies no difficulty, because the same is at every moment, at every now, merely ideal, postulated, not real, given. It remains for ever pure problem, posited progression with negation of an end, and therefore never lies under the contradiction of the completed endlessness. On the other hand, the part of the process realised at every moment always succumbs to this. Thought can just as easily from the given Now follow the path backwards indefinitely as the path forwards, but that proves nothing at all as regards the real process, which pursues its course in an inverse direction to this ascent of thought into the past. The infinity that remains an unsatisfiable ideal postulate to regressive thinking is to be complete accomplished result to the forward process; and here occurs the contradiction that an infinity (if also only onesided) is given as finished realisation. Schopenhauer, too, is perfectly clear concerning the impossibility of this (W. a. W. u. V., 3 Aufl. i. p. 592, 1. 23–27, and p. 539, 1. 9 to the foot), only for our problem this is of no account, because he denies the reality of time, and therewith of the process, and deals with the question of the world’s beginning or non-commencement only in the subjectively idealistic sense, where thought just as little finds a limit in itself backwards as forwards (ibid., p. 594). The reality of the process, however, includes the finiteness of the same backwards, i.e., its beginning before a finite time reckoned from the present moment. The point of commencement of the process (with and through which time begins) is therefore the boundary-point between time and timeless eternity; only in the former was the Will willing, in the latter it was accordingly not-willing. It is herewith proved that the willing can under certain circumstances be also a not-willing, whereby at once the necessity is posited of supposing behind the actual willing a being-able-to-will (and not-to-will), a potentiality of willing, a will. Since, on the other side of the commencement of the process, this potentiality was without actuality, the possibility remains that fresh circumstances may occur where it again becomes a potentiality without actuality, i.e., it is now possible that the real process is also finite forwards. (The necessity of the future end of the process is not to be proved from the notion of the process or of time, but only from that of development, on the assumption that the world-process is development,—as I have shown at the close of the frequently mentioned essay, “Ueber die Umbildung der Hegerschen Philosophi,” in the Ges. Philos. Abhandl., No. ii.)

  It follows, then, from the impossibility of a regressive or progressive infinite world-process that volition as such cannot be eternal; that it is not an ultimate capable of and needing no further explanation, but that before its rise there must have been something that was not indeed itself volition but yet contained the power of willing. But this we call the pure will. When we come to this conception from the recognition of the fact that one and the same now wills, now does not will, we have in this conception established the elements of being-able-to-will and being-able-not-to-will. This is, however, to be taken as a contradictory, not as a contrary opposition. A contrary opposition is the counter-struggling of volition split into a positive and a negative part, as we have assumed at the end of the world-process. Here two opposed species of the genus “willing” are given, but the not-willing, of which there is question before the beginning of the process, is the purely privative negation of the genus willing in general; for only when a positive willing is already given can an antagonistic negation arise as actively-negative willing. The being-able-not-to-will is consequently also not, like the being-able-to-will, to be understood as active power, but as merely passive possibility of the intermission of the use of the active power.

  The now justified relation of potentiality and act, will and volition, appears indeed eminently clear and obvious’, it becomes, however, again more involved as soon as we direct our glance to the real passage of the pure potentiality (still without actuality) into the act of volition. We know, namely, from Chap. iv. A., that volition can only truly exist when it is definite volition, i.e., when it wills something determinate, and that the determination of that which is willed is an ideal determination, i.e., that volition must have a presentation for its content.

  On the other hand, we know, from Chap. i. C., that the Idea cannot of itself become existential,—not pass from non-being into being,—for otherwise it would be potentiality or will, or contain this in itself,—that thus only the Will can give it existence. But here we are caught in a circle. Volition is first to become existential through the presentation and the presentation first through volition. Through the Will per se, i.e., so far as it is mere potentiality and not actual, certainly no effect (action) can be produced on the Presentation, but the Will can manifestly only act so far as it is not mere potentiality. If now, on the one hand, the Will as pure potentiality cannot act at all, thus also not on the Idea; if, on the other hand, Volition as act proper only becomes existential through the Idea, and yet the Idea cannot of itself become existential, there only remains the hypothesis that the Will acts on the Idea in a condition intermediate as it were between pure potentiality and true act, in which it indeed has already emerged from the latent repose of pure potentiality, thus seems to be actual as compared with the latter, but still has not yet attained to real existence, to complete actuality. This may be considered to be relatively potential. Not as if this intermediate state were intercalated as time-interval between the ante-mundane repose and the real world-process—this is, as we shall see hereafter, impossible—but it represents only the moment of the initiative. Any one accustomed to think under the notion Will or faculty of initiation might say that there is no will at all in his sense within the world-process, since Volition is here continuous state become fatal, in which merely the ideal content is changed, and that only that moment of the initiative determining the elevation of the will for the whole duration of the world-process is the true will-act. Thus much is certain, that of the two, Will and Idea, the initiative can only be ascribed to the former, and that the state of the will at the moment of the initiative is other than it was before the same, and other than it will be when the original impulse has done its duty, and has become fu
ll-action by participation of the Idea. As we must consider still more closely this condition of the Will in the initiative (in the “impulse” of Fichte transferred to the absolute), we require a fixed designation for the same and choose the expression “empty (i.e., still devoid of content) willing.”

  Schelling, too, is acquainted with this empty willing. He says (ii. 1, p. 462), “But now a distinction important for all that follows presses on us of itself—of the willing, that is properly objectless, that wills only itself (= Sucht), and of the willing, that is filled and remains as product of that first willing.”

  Empty volition is not yet, for it lies still before that actuality and reality which we are accustomed alone to comprehend under the predicate Being; it is substantive, however, not merely like the Will per se, as pure potentiality, for it is indeed a consequence of this, and accordingly is related to it as act. If we desire to apply the right predicate, we can only say: Empty volition becomes; becoming is employed in that eminent sense in which it signifies not transition from one form into another, but into being from absolute not-being (pure essence). Empty willing is the struggling for being, which can only attain being if a certain external condition is satisfied. If the will in itself is the will able to will (consequently also able not to will, or velle et nolle potens), the empty volition is the will that has decided itself to will (thus can no longer not-will) the will willing to will indeed, but not yet able to accomplish the willing by itself alone (velle volens, sed velle non potens), till the presentation is added, which it can will.