Legacy of Neoplatonism

The Legacy of Neoplatonism inF. W. J. Schellings Thought*

Werner BeierwaltesTranslated from the German by

Peter Adamson

Abstract

F. W. J. Schelling, one of the essential thinkers in the development of GermanIdealism, formed his own thought not only in a critical dialogue with Kantsand Fichtes transcendentalism and Hegels earlier conception of thinking,but also in an intensive discussion with Plato and Aristotle. Over and abovethat, Neoplatonism especially Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian Dionysiusthe Areopagite played a decisive role in Schellings reception and trans-formation of ancient philosophy.

Selecting the manifold aspects which could be reected on in this eld, Iwant to make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus concept ofself-knowledge Schellings requirement for a raising-up and transformationof the nite I into the form of the Absolute, whose central features convergewith the goal of the Plotinian self-transformation of thought into a timelessself-thinking and its ground.

A main part of this paper discusses Schellings and Plotinus concept ofnature as a dynamic process constituted by an immanent creating theoria.Furthermore we nd in Schellings theory of the Absolute as the utterly Onea union of Plotinus notion of a pure One beyond Being with that of thereexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood as anAll-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality because it is in itselfthe most unifying self-afrmation or self-mediation. What follows is a reec-tion on the anagogical function of art, especially from the viewpoint ofPlotinus non-Platonic rehabilitation of art as an imitation of nature. The lastperspectives focus on Schellings concept of matter and emanation as different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus and onSchellings theory of an absolute self-willing will in connection with PlotinusEnneads VI.8, On free will and the will of the One as a causa sui.

Keywords: Schelling; Plotinus; Neoplatonism; Absolute; self-knowledge; art

I Historical Connections

The history of the analysis of German Idealism has, with varying degreesof intensity, placed it in a close association with the temporally distant

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tradition of Neoplatonism. This is primarily apparent in the afnity oranalogy between the structure and content of the philosophy of Hegeland Schelling and that form of thought of Plotinus and Proclus. Indirectly,Neoplatonic ideas had a sustained formative inuence on Idealism throughthe reception of Dionysius Areopagita, John Scottus Eriugena, JakobBhme and, above all, through Giordano Bruno, who experienced a truerenaissance in the context of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis and Schellingsmomentous analysis of Spinoza.1

Schellings2 philosophy was at the time of its development connected tothe structures of Neoplatonic thought, both in a positive and in a criticalsense.3 Thus Friedrich Schlegel said outright that Plotinus system is almostcompletely that of Schelling, and that Schellings later work obviously con-tained nothing but a completion of Spinozism and Plotinian philosophy.4

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who tried to explain various signicant points of agreement between his philosophy and Schellings by referring to thecommon starting point in Kant, the polar logic and dynamic philosophy of Bruno and Bhme, and the Neoplatonic tradition,5 wavers betweenProclus and Plotinus in his historical identications of Schelling when hesays, for instance, that the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte and Schelling is puraparte the Alexandrine philosophy . . . Fichte = Plotinus, Schelling = Proclus,or that Schelling is a sort of Plotinised Spinozism.6

Because of their sweeping nature and their totalizing claims, suchidentications as a whole are no more accurate than such national char-acterizations and renamings as, for instance, that Hegel is the GermanAristotle or the German Proclus, while Jacobi is the German Plato.7

But analysed seriously from certain perspectives, they indicate essentialmoments in the newer philosophical theory, which, despite differences, arequite comparable to Neoplatonism, and show its intellectual persuasive-ness and formative inuence in a new context.

By concentrating here on Schellings relation to Plotinus8 as a paradigmof Neoplatonic thought,9 it will be possible not only to make a structuralcomparison of a few points that are crucial for the potential of Schellingsthought as a whole. Such an attempt can also prove the following histor-ical supposition: Schelling must have taken his knowledge of Neoplatonismnot only from the inuential accounts of the history of philosophy at thattime (for example, by Johann Jakob Brucker, Dietrich Tiedemann,Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann), or from other sources dealing with Platosphilosophy and Platonism (for example, from Nicolas SouverainsPlatonisme devoil10), but also from direct access to Plotinus forinstance, from Marsilio Ficinos Latin translation of the Enneads, via theStellen aus Plotinos made available to Schelling in a German translationin 1805 by the philosopher Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, andfurther from Friedrich Creuzers translation of Plotinus Enneads III.8 On Nature and Contemplation and the One, in the Studien of 1805, from

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Creuzers edition of Plotinus Enneads I.6 (De Pulcritudine) in 1814,which Schelling owned as a gift from Creuzer, and not least, from Creuzersattempt at a critical edition of the complete Greek texts of Plotinus (withFicinos translation), from 1835.11

Schellings statements about Plotinus and the Neoplatonists are of anambivalent nature. On the one hand, these statements recognize withadmiration the philosophical importance of Neoplatonism, especially whenthey facilitate a productive connection to recent thought and the thoughtof Schelling himself. On the other hand, he sometimes indicates the mate-rial deciency of this philosophy, especially in his critique of the so-calledtheory of emanation.12

In what follows, I shall reect on various aspects of Schellings early,middle and late periods, in order to make clear that an examination ofhis historical and philosophical relations with Neoplatonic thought canshed light on the structure of his own philosophy, and at the same time,show the enduring importance of Neoplatonism for one of the forms ofphilosophy that shaped modernity.13

II Self-consciousness and Subjectivity

Schellings interest in the Neoplatonic elements that reveal themselvesmore or less openly in his philosophy springs, in my view, not so muchfrom a radical break with his earlier pure transcendental philosophy, butrather is closely connected to a specic mode of thought and conceptu-alization which becomes clear in his rst fundamentally transcendentalwriting, Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingteim menchlichen Wissen (On the I as Principle of Philosophy, or, on theUnconditional in Human Knowledge) (1795),14 where we nd notableconnections to Neoplatonic and, specically, Plotinian theories. This isgoverned by a constant critical engagement, both explicit and implicit,with Kants transcendental dialectic and his concept of the I am and Ithink, with Fichtes dialectic of I and Not-I, and with Spinozas conceptof substance, the unconditional, the absolute.

In an implicit move against the metaphysical determination of a (divine)Absolute, which stands in a denitive relation to human thought as aUnity of thought and being transcendent in itself above all things, or as a pure Unity not constituted through a thinking relationality, for Schelling in this work in contrast to later modications of his thought it is exclusively the I that is Absolute, or the Absolute is the absoluteI. This absolute I is, however, not a being given a priori, alreadycompleted in its origin, but is rather given to the empirical, nite, I,bound up with time, as something to be reached. (This line of thoughtanticipates Schellings conception of a history of self-consciousness whichhe develops in his System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800):15 through

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various epochs, thought becomes or develops via consciousness of sensa-tion, intuition, intelligence, reection and the absolute act of the will intoan absolute act of self-consciousness,16 which is itself outside all time asthe unmediated unity of the subject and object of thought.) From theconcept of the absolute I as the highest reality, it follows that the empir-ical I must assimilate itself to it, and thus fullling its own highestpossibility become identical with it. Thus from the concept itself therelogically follows the imperative be absolute identical with yourself,17 orbecome identical, raise (in time) the subjective forms of your being to theform of the Absolute.18 In this becoming-identical with the Absolute, thestriving of the nite I for pure eternity19 fulls itself: the nal goal ofthe nite I is thus expansion to identity with the innite.20 The achieve-ment of the state of being of an absolute, timeless I implies theannihilation of the world as the sum total of nitude,21 in favour of apure, eternal being. This I, as the goal of rising out of the nite, wasnot, will not be it is.22 This foundational conception in Schelling, ofthe raising of the nite to the absolute I as the unity of productive intu-ition (imagination) and thought with the object of thought realized by it,shows in my opinion an afnity with a central thought of Plotinus: thatknowledge and thus the thinking possession of ones own, true self canonly be achieved through the self-transformation of the dianoetic thinkingof the soul (and the forms of multiplicity, including time, that go alongwith this) into the self-identity (Selbst-Stand) of the timeless, absoluteIntellect (Geist). In this act of noothenai23 an immanent transcending ofthe soul into a higher, more intensive form of being and unity the uncon-scious nous, operating in soul and not wholly fallen (that is, absolutelyremaining in itself ), is made conscious of itself. Thereby the soul in itselfis taken into the self-thinking of the absolute nous, in its self-illuminationas the identity of thinker and thought, of thinking and being, unied withitself and these modes of thinking. Schellings annihilation of the ni-tude of the world in a self-consciousness identical with itself wouldcorrespond to Plotinus demand for an increasingly intense abstractionfrom all forms of multiplicity (aphairesis, aphele panta24), which at onceaccompanies and promotes the transition to the consciousness of time-lessness and the self-identity of nous. Thus Schelling and Plotinus, bothconsidering the elevation of the nite I to the absolute I, or to the self-transformation of discursive thinking into the thought of the timeless nousthat operates within it, converge in the basic motion towards freedomfrom sensibility and nitude. Hence in Philosophie und Religion,25

Schelling says perhaps in an allusion to Platos requirement for akatharsis of the soul that the goal of philosophy in relation to man isnot so much to give him something, as to separate him as purely as possiblefrom the accidental things brought to him by the esh, the world of appear-ances, the life of the senses, and to lead him back to the original.


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Some essential characteristics of Plotinus absolute nous, as ground and goal of self-knowledge of the soul, can be seen as quite analogous to Schellings Absolute, despite certain differences between these twoconceptions as a whole. They indicate mutatis mutandis, though not bytheir surface semantics analogous content in the thought of both. OnceSchellings I takes the role of the Absolute, that which is utterly Firstand Last, its attributes can be related to Plotinus Absolute or First, theOne itself. That is to say: for Plotinus, despite a certain relation betweenthe two principles, the First (the One itself) is distinguished by othernessfrom the second, which is a dimension or sphere of being and thought(nous) produced from the First; thus the First remains transcendent above and distinct from the second,26 so that the two also receive differentpredicates. For Schelling, on the other hand, the Absolute unies bothperspectives in itself as absolute I. I refer now to the predicative deter-minations of the absolute I, which seem to me at once compatible withthe Plotinian absolute Oneness and with his One-Many, or, in which thetwo levels of predication from the perspective of the Plotinian One andIntellect are concentrated in Schellings I as the One Absolute. I cannot,however, give here a specic interpretation for each such predicate.

The absolute I and thus the Absolute itself is complete Oneness (VomIch, p. 182); it contains all reality, or it is absolute reality (p. 208); all thatis is in it and for it, and outside of it is nothing (p. 192); it is ground andgoal of a philosophy of hen kai pan (p. 193); as this All-Oneness, it is notonly unitary in itself but also a unique substance (pp. 192f.); it iscompletely innite (p. 192); it is absolute, pure, timeless, eternal being(p. 202), absolute Oneness and absolute reality in every innite spherein which all is intellectual (p. 21527); the nite I should strive to makeall that is possible in it actual, and all that is actual, possible (p. 232), soas to achieve a perfection of possibility in actuality (cf. the Cusan possest),as a necessary oneness of both; further, the absolute I is indivisiblebecause of its oneness (p. 192), unchangeable because of its pure being(192); its self-identity or sameness with itself (pp. 216f.) is one of purethought with itself, without relation to any object other than itself: it is,insofar as it thinks itself (pp. 193; 204A); it is absolute power (p. 195)and freedom through itself (p. 179). I would wish for myself the languageof Plato, or that of his fellow spirit, Jacobi . . . (p. 216), so as to be ableto describe adequately this absolute act of self-grounding. This funda-mental suspension (epoche) in relation to the power of language to graspthe Absolute corresponds, to a startling degree, with Plotinus use of hoionas a qualication (in VI.8) of afrmative statements about the One, which, even when they are negated upon further reection, still have verymuch the power to elucidate the highest intensity of actuality (i.e. theOne/Good).28 What language, despite all conceptual efforts, cannot achievethrough its structure of difference, namely a precise grasp of the Absolute


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in itself, is in fact reached for Plotinus in the mystical-ecstatic experienceof identication with the One Origin at least in a timeless instant(exaiphnes).29 Already in Schellings early thought this kind of Plotinianhenosis nds a correspondence in intellectual intuition. This is shown inthe statement following the above-cited wish for Platos language: . . . andI think that this Absolute in us is not bound by the mere words of humanlanguage, and that only an intuition of the intellectual achieved by oneselfcan help the incomplete work of our language.30

For the specic legitimization of the intimate afnity between Schellingand basic Neoplatonic ideas, even from his early transcendental philoso-phy, a Neoplatonic commentary would be required regarding the predicatesof the Absolute and the absolute I mentioned here. Such a commentarywould need to make the linguistic and thematic connections and differencesin both modes of thinking and types of philosophical theory more preciselyclear than I have just done, in more of a suggestive fashion. But for thepresent indication of a Neoplatonic impulse in Schellings thought as a paradigm of philosophizing in German Idealism, the following should beborne in mind as an essential difference between the two. The utterlyAbsolute is unique and everything (all reality) at the same time, it isthrough itself, insofar as it posits itself (pp. 216, 221, 234), it brings itselfto be (p. 208, causa sui), it has thus no being or nature transcending it, no being before or above it. This lack of transcendence, due to its own absolute transcendence above (all) others, does hold true for theNeoplatonic One and the First beyond which one cannot go. This is, how-ever, transcendent precisely over that which, as thought related back toitself, limits itself at the very First, and thus posits itself in relation to itsorigin as its own hypostasis, nous. Schelling at least in the transcenden-tal period of his thought (here: in Ich als Princip der Philosophie) neverallows the Absolute qua pure identity or sameness with itself to go out ofitself (p. 217). The Absolute of Plotinus, on the other hand the One asthe Good itself despite the difcult question of the why of its self-expli-cating, is positioned precisely to be the origin or the self-giving ground ofsomething which becomes and is through it, but also comes to be or is gen-erated outside it. This is something present to itself, related to itself throughthinking itself: nous as the thinking self-identity with its own being doesnot ground itself in an absolute sense, but by a reexive return to and inits origin, the One itself. Schellings Absolute, on the other hand, sets itselfas Absolute in and for itself and is thus to be thought as self-originating in a pure sense. While for Plotinus, the One is thus the deter-mining point of beginning and end for the self-constitution of nous,Schellings Absolute qua absolute I is a spontaneous act bringing itselffrom itself, that is, out of freedom: origin and end of self-motion in One.

In indicating the inner afnities to Neoplatonism in Schellings earlywork Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, I was chiey concerned to


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make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus concept of self-knowledge31 Schellings requirement for a raising-up and transformationof the nite I into the form of the Absolute, whose central featuresconverge with the goal of the Plotinian self-transformation of thought ina timeless self-thinking, and thus in a thinking of its own ground (PlotinusV.3). A central feature of this Plotinian concept is that there be a conver-sion of dianoetic thought into the pure self-reection of nous or asSchelling would say, self-consciousness as an absolute act [completingitself outside time].32 From this point of view, Schelling must later (1805) have especially welcomed the passages from V.3, 6 and 7 inWindischmanns Stellen aus Plotinos (Passages from Plotinus):33

Reason, remaining within itself, and tending towards another neitherthrough act nor affect, acts always upon itself through knowledge ofitself. In this self-knowledge, remaining and never deviating fromitself, it also knows God. With this knowledge of God self-knowl-edge is achieved again: for it knows what it has from God, andknowing this, necessarily knows itself, for it is indeed all that is given.If it should not comprehend Him clearly, because that of which wesay that it sees is the same as what is seen, then especially in thisway will a vision and knowledge of itself remain, insofar as seeingis the same as what is seen.

The identity of seeing or seer and seen, knowing and known, in the actof self-knowledge thematized here through Plotinus corresponds to acentral principle in Schellings lectures from 1821 ber die Natur derPhilosophie als Wissenschaft (On the Nature of Philosophy as Science).34

The absolute subject (or the divine Absolute) is to be thought of as eternalfreedom above all [human] knowledge which knows itself and thusis as object subject, and as subject object, without being two. Since thereis nothing outside it, there is nothing for it to know other than itself:there is no knowledge of it whatsoever, other than that in which the sameknows the same. If there is supposed to exist for humans at least anunmediated knowledge (in the sense of an intellectual intuition) of thisvery eternal freedom, then the only possibility of such [a knowledge]would be if such self-knowledge of eternal freedom were our conscious-ness, that is, the other way around, if our consciousness were a self-knowledge of eternal freedom. Or, since this self-knowledge lies in turningfrom the objective to the subjective, if that turning were to happen in us,i.e. if we were ourselves the eternal freedom reestablished from the objectto the subject. This notion of Schellings has, at the heart of its expres-sion, a thematic connection with Plotinus treatise on self-knowledge (V.3):in the self-knowledge of the timeless, absolute nous, the same thinks,knows, sees, gazes upon the same (auto hauto) in a unity mediated only


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by itself, related only to itself. This is the goal or the completion of self-knowledge in the realm of true or pure thought. It is achieved through,as Schelling would say, a conversion towards ourselves, i.e. through self-transformation of discursive thought into absolute thought, which forhumans means the realization of the true, authentic self. Through this veryknowledge of the true self, in the sense of a noothenai, we ourselves onthe path of an assimilation to God having become quite other thinkabsolute thought, and are with it a thinking One. For Plotinus, however,this act would only be a self-knowledge of eternal [i.e. absolute] freedomif his expression in VI.8 were also without doubt valid in this context: thatis, that the One which is absolutely free in truth, because it is the causeof itself, could be determined in itself through self-thinking still moreintensely than nous. Of course the achievement of identity betweenhumans and absolute thought can be understood as a pregnant form oftheir freedom, insofar as this corresponds to a high level of abstraction(aphairesis) or freedom from sensibility and multiplicity, achieving evergreater structures of unity through thought. Such concentration on the selfis the prerequisite for the highest mode of union: with the One itself.

III Nature

Schelling published, especially during the years from 1797 to 1801, a seriesof writings on the philosophy of nature, for example: On the World Soul,an Hypothesis of Higher Physics (Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese derhheren Physik (1798)), a First Outline of a System of the Philosophy ofNature, and an Introduction to the Outline of a System of the Philosophyof Nature, or, On the Concept of Speculative Physics (1799), then On theTrue Concept of the Philosophy of Nature (1801), later (1806): Aphorismenzur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie, furthermore Aphorisms on thePhilosophy of Nature, and still later, in 1830, an Account of PhilosophicalEmpiricism to name only those texts which are externally marked asrelating to the philosophy of nature. Schellings early engagement withPlatos Timaeus, in a commentary (1794) pursuing mainly his own inter-ests, remained determinative of his later reections on the categorialunderstanding of nature, in the spirit of Kants transcendental philosophy.It was, however, one of Schellings basic intentions to construe nature notonly conceptually, in a transcendental way to philosophize about natureis to create nature35 but also to mediate between nature as object ofempirical experience and nature as subject, towards which alone all theoryis directed.36 In this mediation, both spheres or powers form a unity differ-entiated in itself so that also the two sciences, whose different orientationsare equally necessary for a reliable insight into the whole of the phenom-enon of nature namely transcendental philosophy and the philosophyof nature basically represent one science. This unity differentiated within


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itself reects the fact that subject and object work together one organicwhole, in or as nature. Even the idea that nature as subject is spirit borninto the objective, which is the being (essence) of God introduced intoform,37 makes clear that nature cannot be objectied or reied in a posi-tivistic, mechanistic way, but must rather be grasped on the basis of aspirit unfolding itself in nature. From this basic movement, nature canrefer to this very ground in itself and beyond itself, beyond its objectivityas an empirical appearance: nature is the step towards the world ofspirit.38 With this conception Schelling solved that postulate which hadalready been formulated by The Oldest Programme for a System ofGerman Idealism (1796/7): I would like to once again give wings to ourslow physics, which by means of experiments proceeds so arduously.39 Arestriction of the intention of the philosophy of nature to only those objectsgiven in sensation would thus miss what is essential to nature, its consti-tutive ground spirit and instead remain caught in the supercial.

When, in accordance with the dialectical relationship or dynamic iden-tity of nature and spirit, the system of nature proves to be at once thesystem of our spirit,40 then all experience of the so-called empiricallygiven is utterly speculative. True physics is thus speculative physics. Itsprinciples are that nature is visible spirit, and that spirit as its ground isinvisible nature,41 so that both condition and explicate each other, or eventhat nature is not only the appearance or revealing of the eternal, but israther at the same time this very eternal itself .42 The protreptic to physicsis thus the protreptic for speculative philosophy, which has the timeless,absolute ground as its object: come to physics and know the eternal.43

In opposition to a mechanistic, and hence for Schelling spiritless physics,the speculative philosophy of nature attains a victory of the subjectiveover the objective [roughly imagined as independent of consciousness].44

In and through such a philosophy, nature itself as subject stands oppositeto thought and contemplation. As the visible appearance of the Absolute included in the absolute act of knowing nature itself becomes an innermoment of the philosophical theory of the Absolute of absolute idealism.Thus speculative philosophy of nature, so conceived, is, for Schelling, incor-porated into a process of the wholly modern period, which is essentiallycharacterized idealistically through the reigning spirit in it, as a returninwards.45

Because of the prerequisite that nature and spirit interpenetrate andcondition one another in nature as a whole, speculative physics cannot as I have already indicated be directed towards that in nature whichcould be seen immediately as objective, but rather towards that which is hidden to the senses, but open to spirit: that which expresses themystery of nature.46

This foundation of nature in reason, spirit or subject implies forSchelling, from his concept of spirit, that it is essentially productivity,


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being or productivity itself ,47 entirely or absolutely active, absoluteactivity,48 or in its own free development action itself.49 Just as natureshould not be seen merely as object, but rather primarily as the result ofthe immanent subjectivity of the creative spirit, so also nature cannot beunderstood merely as a nite product, but rather, at once as a self-limitingunity of productivity and product in its own active expansion. The activityor productivity of spirit, so understood, actualizes itself in nature asorganism, which organizes itself in its productive motion into a self-movingUnity-Being.50

Schellings conception of nature as a dialectical, dynamic unity of theproductivity of spirit with the product of its activity is demonstrablyinspired by Spinozas linking of natura naturans with natura naturata.51

Schelling bears witness to this inspiration in many ways.52 Approachedfrom this context natura naturans in the sense of absolute activity wecan also understand Schellings notion that the spirited or enthusiasticresearcher of nature cannot declare nature to be the dead aggregate ofan indeterminable number of objects, or as the mere spatial contain-ment of things, but can and must grasp nature as the holy, eternallycreative originative power of the world, which generates and activelybrings forth all things from itself.53

Despite differences between their basic intentions, there is also a certaininner afnity between Schellings philosophy of nature and Plotinusconcept of nature. This is shown not only by essential moments of boththeories, but also by the terminology used. In Schelling, this is especiallytrue for Plotinus thirtieth treatise, III.8: Peri phuseos kai theorias kai touhenos. Friedrich Creuzer, the learned editor of the collected Plotinus anda friend of Schelling,54 was the rst to translate this text of Plotinus intoGerman, and published it in 1805 under the title Von der Natur, von derBetrachtung und von dem Einen (On Nature, on Contemplation and onthe One) in the rst volume of the Studien edited by himself along withthe theologian Carl Daub, with commentary. He did this evidently becauseof the insight into the relevance of the Plotinian theory of nature forsome ideas of the most recent philosophy, or even because of the clearcorrespondences with the ideas of Schelling.55 That Schelling read thistext of Plotinus with devoted attention is clear from his excerpts that Ihave found in Windischmanns Stellen aus Plotinos (Selected Passages fromPlotinus) in the Berlin Schelling archives.56

Without wishing to force Schellings philosophy of nature together withPlotinus conception of nature (phusis) into an asymmetrical unity, I ndconvincing thematic afnities between the two in this area. Both agreeprimarily upon the idea that nature cannot be imagined as the whole of the merely objective of the empirical facta bruta but rather that acertain form of reason, spirit or contemplation lies at the foundation ofthe being and working of nature, that only this is the universal foundation


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and operation in its various forms, and that this very contemplation isequivalent to a form-creating actuality, and the result of this active contem-plation is again a theorema that which is contemplated.57

Even though Plotinus reections on phusis in Enneads III.8 as beforewith the conception of self-consciousness demand an exact comparison,not minimizing the differences between the two, and could be given variouselucidatory support from Friedrich Creuzers translation of the Plotinustext, I must limit myself here to some key passages in Plotinus that mayopen a way to Schelling.

From the principles of the Greek theory of nature, in this case state-ments transmitted from the Stoics, nature has at its disposal no phantasia(imagination);58 it is, therefore, aphantastos.59 The conclusion which followsfrom this is that nature is alogos, deprived of reason (or of a rationalstructuring principle). Plotinus agreed with the rst assertion,60 though heaccepted the second one in other contexts, restricting it by giving it adifferent sense.61 In III.8 (and also in V.8.1), however, he conceives oflogos or the logoi as rational principles (Creuzer: Begriffe), creating formfrom reason, as operational moments of theoria and thus, through theiroperation as that which gives shape (III.8.2.3), as the foundations of natureitself: nature is the formative power, which brings forth [creates: poiei]other formative powers.62 Logos comes then from contemplation itself,as the essential moment of nature (3.10f., 4.6), and is at the same timethe result or product (apotelesma) of its poietic operation through logos(3.12, 21). Thus there is a determination of nature differentiated in itself,with different degrees in its foundation: its being (3.17, 22f.) and life(3.15) are a contemplation which creates through a rational, teleologicalformative power: what it brings forth, it creates through contemplation(1.23); the logoi are (in vegetative and sensitive nature) creative (powers),or what is creative in nature (2.28), because they are grounded in theoria,or are operative because of it, insofar as they create forms in matter (2.3,22, 27, 34), and thus shape these into delimited beings.

Hence, if logos63 itself comes forth from theoria, and so is given at the same time as its productive activity, or if logos itself is even to bethought of as identical with theoria (3.3), and logoi appear forth from itas its operative, forming powers, then physis, as the form which is becomingor has become the total product of contemplation, can also be graspedconsistently as logos or as dunamis poiousa creative power or potency(3.15). Because it has or immediately is contemplation, it immediatelycreates without a further cause following from its origin, that is, it createsfrom itself: Being, for it, means creating. . . . It is contemplation andcontemplated at the same time, for it is logos. Through its being contem-plation and contemplated [as the unity of both] and logos, it creates, inso far as it is this. So the creation [of nature] has revealed itself to us ascontemplation.64


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The assumption that nature is grounded in rational formative princi-ples, coming forth from the act of contemplation, existing with itimmanently as one, at the same time refers nature in relation to thetotality of the being given forth by the One to its own origin in Intellect,which reects upon itself (4.13). Nature becomes the basis of its media-tion, mediately through nous, and immediately through the demiurgic soulthat orders the cosmos.65 Even taken alone, this foundation of nature incontemplation which operates in nature, and through the means of thiscontemplation even if this is the most extended and weakest form oftheoria66 in soul and nous, is a sufcient reason not to be able to expli-cate nature mechanistically , for example, on the model of Epicureanphysics, as pushes and levers (othismos, mochleia: 2.4, 5). On the contrary,nature requires a thoroughly theoretical reection of the philosophicalcontemplator, on the principle that like knows like. Such a reection isfound in Plotinus precisely in III.8, as the rst part of a lengthy, formallyand thematically united writing,67 in the context of a conceptually powerfulattempt to prove that the entire cosmos, in the face of opposing forces(for example, those noted by the Gnostics68), is one grounded in reason,intellect, and mathematical structure, and thus as one characterized in theend by Unity, Goodness and Beauty, which are due to the structuringemergence of the One itself.

Such a harmony or sympathy among the different and even opposedforces in the cosmos, a unity of productive motion and the stillness whichpreserves the constitution of the whole, founded in or mediated by thelogoi, which has its origin in the timeless, intelligible sphere and is main-tained by that sphere in its rest and activity united in themselves sucha conception could be related to with fascination by Novalis as well asGoethe69 and Schelling, with a respectively modied interest in naturedetermined by spirit and the divine ground in a nature thought ofprimarily as Natura Naturans, in nature as the unique artist creatingaccording to the logoi or, as a representation or appearing of the divine,and thus, regarding the form of the reection, as a holy physics, for whichnature is the visible spirit and spirit is, as its ground, invisible nature.70

With regard to this thematic connection I have sketched betweenSchelling and Plotinus concept of nature as a contemplation which bringsforth form-principles, and thus a rationally structured sensible reality, itis instructive to note Schellings direct interest in Plotinus treatise III.8 in the translation of Friedrich Creuzer. With no comparison to the text,he begins his excerpts71 with the note: How does nature know? An innereye looking upon itself. (Wie die Natur erkenne? Ein inneres Auge sichzu schaun). He suggests, in his answer to the question of the form ofknowledge in the Plotinian physis, self-reection in the sense of an eye-sight72 (Augen-Blick) that is self-related and thus constitutive of being thus, a self-contemplation of nature. Plotinus, meanwhile, excludes


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expressis verbis (3.11)73 this thought-movement from the most extended,i.e. lowest or weakest form of theoria, which nature operates, just as healso understands natures proper contemplation not as seeking or discur-sive (3.13f.), so that it would not have what is in its intention, but ratheras a knowledge on the model of artistic creation (2.10ff., 5.4ff.)74 whichalready has its object as understood qua object of contemplation, andwhich, as indicated above, is immediately that which it has: the unmedi-ated unity of contemplating and contemplated (3.16ff.). It comes forth,however, from a self-reexive being: from nous or, through the activemediation of nous, from soul (4.13f., 17).

Among the remaining excerpts, Schellings conception of a nature orga-nizing itself through the productivity of spirit comes out most clearly fromthe following paraphrase of Plotinus text (7.13): Every true existent iscontemplation. Likewise, that which is produced by contemplation is alsocontemplation. For it has become such by being contemplated throughsomething contemplated.75

IV Further Perspectives

Up to this point my consideration of the thematic connections betweenSchellings thought and Plotinus and Neoplatonism in general supportedon the one hand by direct knowledge of the texts on Schellings part, and on the other by the sense of an astonishing degree of analogy and afnity in their very differences may make it plausible thatSchellings philosophy could appear as the Neoplatonism of our time inthe eyes of knowledgeable and insightful contemporary philosophers, oras Neoplatonism in the form of the modern consciousness . . . i.e.Neoplatonism in perfected, more scientic form.76 These considerationsof mine could now be extended in a whole series of perspectives, whichI would now like only to mention.

1. In Schellings theory of the Absolute as the simply One77 we nda union of Plotinus notion of a pure One beyond being with that of thereexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understoodas an All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality because it isin itself absolute self-afrmation or self-mediation.78 Schelling thinks of theAbsolute as the simply One as immediately connected to his conceptionof the Absolute as freedom and will of itself, as something beyond being,above any being which would delimit it. This aspect of Gods essence isretained as a fundamental motif in the theory of his late philosophy, inconscious engagement with the Neoplatonists.79

2. In his discussion of the theory of emanation, Schelling takes up thequestion, central for Plotinus and later Neoplatonism, of the reason and manner of the (constitutive) procession of the Absolute One into Being as a whole, and is in part critical of Plotinus. He understands the


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externalization of the Absolute not as a continuous transformation, but(according to his own view) not unlike the Neoplatonists, who understoodthe spirit of their progenitor (Plato) more purely and deeply than alllater followers,80 as a leap, a distancing or falling away from theAbsolute, a break with the innite, or as tearing itself away from theAbsolute in the process of overow.81 This implies for Schelling, as wellas for Plotinus, the question of the production of time from eternity.Schellings critique of the Neoplatonist theory of emanation rises to thelevel of a forceful rejection in one text from the drafts of the rst bookof the Weltalter,82 which is obviously directed against Plotinus in partic-ular. Here he disputes the closeness to Plato which he had alreadyattributed to Plotinus in Philosophie und Religion (I shall in each caseprovide in the notes the relevant passages from Plotinus):

Those systems which wish to explain the origin of things bydescending from above are almost necessarily forced into the notionthat the outow of the highest originative power must ultimately belost in some most distant thing,83 where there is, as it were, only ashadow of being,84 a minimum of reality left over, a something, whichexists only to a certain extent (i.e. which has only a quasi-existence),and in fact really does not exist.85 This is the meaning of non-beingfor the Neoplatonists,86 who here no longer understand the truth ofPlato. We, following the opposite direction, also posit a most distantthing under which there is nothing; but for us it is not Last, a naloutow, but the First, from which all begins, not mere lacking or anear total deprivation of reality, but active negation.

This may be understood in the sense of a self-delimitation of the Absoluteand its unfolding in and through the world and history towards itself, intoits absolute future after and outside the world87 a process fulllingitself in the system of ages. The end of this processive self-revelation ofGod is in opposition to the Neoplatonic procession of the One/Good88

the Highest.3. The conception in Christianity, determined particularly by Dionysius,

of creation as an ekstasis of God from Himself into the world nds athoroughly compatible starting-point in Plotinus: the One/Good givesfreely (without envy) from itself, i.e. from its founding, being-producingpower, itself to something different, which through this very act of freebestowal89 rst becomes90 what it is.

4. In Neoplatonic philosophy, being and thought as a whole are deter-mined by respectively different forms of a return (epistrophe) of theindividual levels and their activity back to their origin: the timeless nousturns in order to achieve self-constitution towards the One as its origin,and nous and the soul return into themselves in a reexive self-relation


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as the perfection of an (or the) identity of thought with its own being(nous), which is grounded in the One itself, or as an emergent conscious-ness of its own noetic ground in a transformation of its being (noothenaiof the soul). These turnings of thought inwards and upwards can andshould ultimately lead to a (no longer thinking) union with the One itself: a e x .91 In eachof the hypostases the origin and those that come forth from it theconstitutive workings of remaining (mone), procession (proodos) andreturn (epistrophe) to an ever higher or more intense form of unity, and nally to the One/Good itself, determine also the being and motionof the cosmos as a sympathetic unity guided by and centred in the world soul.

In Schellings philosophy this universal, circular dialectic corresponds to,among other things, the notion that each motion is completed only by itscontrary motion. The Absolute, which as spirit is at the same time the mostintense unity, knows itself, and is a pure absolute afrmation of itself,92

removing all difference in itself through thought this is an analogue tothe Plotinian identity of thought and being in or as nous. For Schelling, of course, this unity of the Absolute, realized through self-afrmation, is utterly the First (as opposed to the position of the Plotinian nous).

The idea of Plotinus, developed from Platos Sophist and Aristotlestheology, that nous, despite standing in itself is an intrinsically constant,yet living motion of self-thinking being, is very close to Schellings notion,but the latter notion is at the same time removed from the former by itshistorical aspect: God is not to be thought of as a still, standing power,but as life, personality, progressive motion, leaving and returning toitself.93 Absolute unity so conceived is, for Schelling, not only the creative,ecstatic beginning of being, but rather also the immanent goal of themotion of the same being: the Absolute-Innite is the highest unity, whichwe consider to be the holy pinnacle, from which all proceeds and to whichall returns.94 Return here signies the reconciliation or dissolution ofthe nite in the absoluteness of the In-nite.95

V Art (a); Matter Emanation Will (b)

Since, in my book Platonismus und Idealismus,96 I have developed theabove questions and problems which are, mutatis mutandis, common toboth thinkers, or wherein their intentions overlap, I would like now tothematize two further perspectives, which can be taken as both analogousand distinct: the concept of art (a); and the meaning of those Plotinusquotations in Schellings Weltalter which have to do with the concept ofmatter and of will (b).

(a) Despite their different characterizations of the essence and func-tion of art, and despite their different estimations of its philosophical


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meaning in relation to the Absolute, Plotinus and Schelling agree in thisarea of their thought that art can have an effect which guides thought,showing the way to a higher dimension of being thus, an anagogicalfunction. While for both a determinative element of art is its imitationor representation of nature (mimesis, imitatio naturae),97 this conceptionlies at the foundation of their respective concepts of nature, and sobecomes important for art as a medium of knowledge.

Thus Plotinus, working from his theory of a nature that is active andproductive through thought and contemplation, routinely modies thenotion of mimesis through art that had come down to him above all fromPlatos Republic. In the context of his educational programme for the idealpoliteia, Plato defended the position (perhaps inadequately, yet all themore vehemently) that art is of itself completely unable to represent theIdea as the goal of every form of knowledge. Rather, art misguidingand confusing thought and emotion is xated on a copy far removedfrom the truth, and thus is more likely to cover up the reality than to illu-minate it or to transform it into a conception or picture which wouldat least come close to the original. Thus, in an assertion of mimesis, arthas no relevance for knowledge. In contrast to this, Plotinus legitimizesmimesis as an aesthetically appropriate category which in art reveals thething (Gegenstand) to be presented, in that he combines his own foun-dational concept the universal, reexive ascent to the One with theAristotelian estimation of mimesis. For Aristotle, poetic mimesis aims ofitself primarily towards what is universal, as can be shown by a compar-ison between poetry and historiography, a difference that may stand as aparadigm for art in general.98 For Aristotle, the Universal has both inprocess and end of knowing taken over the epistemic function played byPlatos Idea. Thus art of course in a different way from philosophy isquite benecial for knowledge and has the function of revealing things.

Motivated by Aristotles poetics, Plotinus now argues as follows: if artimitates nature, then it does not do so in the sense of a concealing doubleof true reality. Its point of reference, as I tried to make clear above, isnot nature as a purely empirical, available objectivity, but rather natureas a process of contemplation which brings forth and is related to thelogoi. In this way a foundational activity of nature itself can be under-stood as mimesis or the representation of the operative rational formsimmanent in itself. The result for Plotinus is a rehabilitation of the conceptof art as the mimesis of nature, which he presents vividly in his treatiseOn the Intelligible Beauty:

But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works byimitating nature, we must tell him, rst, that natural things are imita-tions too. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitatewhat they see, but they run back up to the logoi from which nature


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derives; then also that they do a great deal by themselves, and, sincethey possess beauty, they make up what is defective in things. ForPheidias too did not make his Zeus from any model perceived bythe senses, but understood what Zeus would look like if he wantedto make himself visible.99

If then art presents, in a mimesis of nature, natures structuring logoi, andmediates intelligible beauty through this very representation in the sensibleappearance of the work of art, then art does not speak only to the sensesand the emotions, but proves itself as an impulse towards the turning ofthought out of the sensible, into the timeless structures of being and reec-tion belonging to intelligible being and life, which has come forth fromthe One itself.100

While the question of the essence and function of art has a more peri-pheral signicance for Plotinus it was only implied by the more pertinentquestion of a theory of nature and, above all, of beauty for the thoughtof Schelling, especially in his phases of transcendental philosophy andphilosophy of identity (Identittsphilosophie), the same question had rele-vance which was central and nearly impossible to overestimate. Hisphilosophical intent comes out of many streams of thought towards ametaphysical foundation of art: art is, for him, an historical and sensibleappearance, sensible in its various forms, an outow or emanation of theAbsolute,101 the repetition of the philosophical system in the highestpotency.102 As the work of the productive intuition of the artist, the imag-inative power (Einbildungskraft) as the In-Eins-Bildung of the opposites:conscious and unconscious, nite and innite, real and ideal, art is eventhe fullment or perfection of the intent of philosophy as simultaneouslythe only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy.103 Theseattempts to understand art according to its highest claims are set outalready in the ltestes Systemprogramm (1796/7), a sketch outlined by thethree friends: Schelling, Hegel and Hlderlin. Here we nd a statementformulated precisely within the development of Schellings thought: thatthe highest act of reason . . . is an aesthetic act, and that truth and good-ness are kin only in beauty, and that the philosophy of spirit is or shouldbe an aesthetic philosophy.104

Schelling developed the above-noted metaphysical foundation of theconcept of art and its individual categories in a highly nuanced andengaging manner, especially in the sixth section of the System ofTranscendental Idealism (1800), the dialogue Bruno (1802), in the Lectureson the Philosophy of Art, which he gave at Jena in the winter semesterof 1802/3, and repeated in 1804/5 at Wrzburg, and further in the Lectureson the Method of Academic Study (1803), and nally in the Speech on theRelationship between the Fine Arts and Nature, which he gave for the cele-bration of the saints day of the Bavarian king Max I. Joseph on 12 October


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1807, as a member of the Academy of the Sciences in Munich and thefuture General Secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.105 Oneof the basic lines of thought developed in this speech offers a promisingopportunity for a connection with Plotinus concept of art. In theirpronounced tendency to turn art inward as the imitation of nature, thetwo are very close to one another on this issue, proceeding from a concep-tion of nature as an activity of reason or contemplation, productive initself. Thus Schelling moves the act of the artist away from a presenta-tion of the merely external: it should not be a serviceable imitation,106

which mirrors what exists with slavish accuracy and as pure externality.In this sort of mere outlining of reality, instead of a transformative reca-pitulation, there are only masks with a certain similitude; no real worksof art come into being. If nature is for Schelling as I have already shown no crude, spiritless, merely mechanistically graspable matter, but itselfspirit: visible spirit, an appearing or revealing of the eternal, indeed eventhis very eternal itself, living, creative organism, unity of product andproductivity or productivity itself, then the imitation of nature throughart must be related to the phenomenon of nature so-structured. Againsta serviceable imitation, Schelling therefore poses, following his concep-tion of nature as an active principle grounded in reection, the postulatethat art must transform the immanent concept or creative activity ofnature into an image. Only when the artist grasps the spirit of naturewhich is operative in the interior of things through form and shape, as ifspeaking through symbols, only when he allows his own idea to come tothe sight and expression of the in-living spirit of nature,107 may he achievean authentic work of art. The intelligible structure of nature is then theinnite reservoir for the imagination of the artist, itself productive becauseit knows and reshapes. Thus not nature as externally visible is the normof artistic production, but rather the knowledge of natures inner struc-ture, which takes its potency from the shaping power of the artist, asopposed to a merely serviceable imitation. The living concept, immanentin nature, forms the work of art through the transformative power ofimagination; this gives the recipient an insight into nature which he hasnot previously experienced, or which was impossible to experience.

When imitation of nature is understood in this way, as an act of trans-lation and re-forming of nature, an organism that shapes itself throughreection, then the product of art cannot wish to be realistic, copying theexternal. Rather its intention is decisively the ideal, to make this idealobjective, graspable in a temporal, historical form. Just as nature is a steptowards the world of spirit,108 so art opens up a view into the intellec-tual world109 comparable to Plotinus logoi, to which arts mimesis ofnature attains, so that this mimesis may possibly gain access to the dimen-sion of intelligible beauty. Through this motion, immanent in nature andart in different ways, both essentially have a function pointing beyond


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themselves: their referring is their being. For Schelling, this means thatart becomes a symbol in the original sense of the word, in that it bringstogether ideality and reality into a unity in which both appear in oneanother. The imitation of nature through art is then not mere reproduc-tion or a redundant mirroring of nature, but natures transformationthrough knowledge of structure and through imagination-impulse. Thusart decisively surpasses reality as such.110

Art as referentiality or as symbol corresponds to the above-notedanagogical function Plotinus gives to art: art as a medium of return fromthe sensible experience of nature to the productive logoi operative innature a motion which can precede abstractive reection (aphairesis)on the ground of our thought and of absolute thought the One itself and which perhaps for this very reason attains philosophical signicance.

I must now restrict myself to only these aspects of the 1807 Speechwhich provide possible analogies to Plotinus rehabilitation of artisticmimesis. However, I would like to look, proceeding from Schelling andPlotinus, at a principle of modern art. The conception of the imitation ofnature which we nd in Schelling and Plotinus, according to which artbrings the inner structure of nature into appearance, anticipates the rela-tionship to nature of abstract painting. Paul Klee, for example, realizes inhis painting the thought formulated by himself, that the artist should notworry so much about visible nature, but rather about its law; and forWassily Kandinsky, abstract painting leaves behind the skin of nature,but not its cosmic laws: the artist has the inner vision which penetratesthrough the hard shell to the interior of things, and which takes the innerpulse of things with the various senses as the germ of his works.111 Thenon-realistic imitation of nature thus becomes an aesthetic reconstructionof inner lawfulness, and at the same time the visible representation of thatwhich eludes sensible experience as such.112

The relatively close connection between Schelling and Plotinus sketchedhere from the perspective of their understanding of art as the mimesis ofnature must be juxtaposed with the strong opposition that separates themin their estimation of the relation of art to philosophy, and the signi-cance they give to art for the knowledge of truth and the absolute groundof reality. For Plotinus, the conceptual reection on the ground of ourthinking in the nous which works within us, and in the inner ascent ofthought itself to a union beyond thought with the One itself, is taken asthe fullment of the philosophical way of life and thus as the highest andbest for mankind; Schelling, on the other hand, conceived not only theinner identity of art and philosophy, but also sometimes113 in opposi-tion to Hegel even raised art above philosophy, because only art couldachieve that for which philosophy can only be a preparation and presup-position. A thoroughly philosophical apotheosis of art, which is shown inthe continuation of a statement on art quoted above as simultaneously


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the only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy, wouldbe unthinkable for Plotinus as a replacement for union with the One: Artis precisely therefore the Highest for the philosopher, because it so tospeak opens to him the Holy of Holies, where in eternal and original uni-cation it is as if in One ame there burnt what in nature and history isseparate, and what in life and in acting as well as in thinking must eefrom each other eternally.114 Regarding also the fundamental imagingcharacter of art, Plotinus would also reject the idea that art can be animmediate and authentic expression of the Absolute the One/Good. Itdoes, however, give an impulse towards the realization of the image,115

that is by discovering in it the reference to the intelligible.(b) A further perspective on the signicance of Plotinus (or of

Neoplatonic philosophy as a whole) for Schelling can be gleaned from hisWeltalter (The Ages). Schelling circled around this central philosophical-theological project with various approaches, methods and routes, yet as awork it remains a fragment. A testimony to his exertions is, among otherthings, the convolution of manuscripts in the Berlin Schelling Archives.The original versions of 1811 and 1813 were printed, but not publishedduring Schellings lifetime. For their rescue from the bombs of the SecondWorld War, which destroyed Schellings Nachlass in the Munich UniversityLibrary, we must thank the foresight of Manfred Schrter.116 Schellingslecture on the System der Weltalter (System of the Ages) in 1827 gives usfurther access to the development of this project.117 It contains principlesof Schellings late thought as a positive philosophy. In the WeltalterSchelling attempted to think through the temporal or historical self-unfolding of God in the phases of the past, present and future: to thinkof the transitus or disclosing of God not as from the empty, abstract andtimeless, but as from a circling eternity dynamic in itself, living in itselfin eternal time (Romans 16:25) into his temporal, world-positing andhistorically active revelation or presence, which brings about its ownfuture: God as a living action in world and history, or, world and historyas a theogonic process. With this free disclosure of divinity in its ownhistory, however, Schelling did not intend a radical, essential temporali-zation and hence nitization of God.118 Or, to speak from a Trinitarianpoint of view of the separation of God the Father from Himself, whichmarks a true beginning: the unfolding of God the Father from his past,potentiality and interiority into the presence, actuality and externalizationof the Son this is a central idea of his new positive philosophy.

In the Weltalter Schelling takes note of two conceptions of Plotinus that are not insignicant for his own line of thought. The rst () ratherambivalent indication given by Schelling touches on Plotinus theory of the procession of being from the One/Good itself ending in matter called by Schelling emanation or the theory of emanation. The second() has to do with the concept of an absolute, self-willing will, which as


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such is its own cause, connected expressly by Schelling with PlotinusEnneads VI.8.

() Schellings ambivalent estimation of the theory of emanation isdependent on context. From the point of view of the Weltalter, whose mainintent is to make evident an historical unfolding of the Absolute or God,a reection upon the beginning of the self-unfolding of God in history, orof the development of divine life up to the present, is required. This isachieved by the theory of emanation as the rst great original system[Ursystem] of all religion and philosophy, insofar as it does not try toexplain the origin of reality through a deed or proper motion which wouldarise out of the most original simplicity [Laterkeit], pure eternity. Ratherit allows this to be, quite without mediation, only an eternal source, anoutowing, similar to beauty, which overows out of grace while in themost peaceful remaining [mone!]. If then the principle does not go outfrom itself in a self-active way, and creatively posits reality in such a pro-cession which would correspond more to the Plotinian notion of an activeproceeding (arche, dunamis panton) or the self-unfolding of the One/Good then as an alternative we have the idea that the overowing separatesitself from that from which it ows forth.119 Above I have noted how this concept of overow, especially in Schellings work Philosophie und Religion(1804), already intensies to become a separation, a break, a falling awayor leap, the reason for which is not found in the Absolute itself, but in thatwhich separates itself from it.120 The Weltalter, of course, see emanation asthe beginning of the history of God: it is the earliest, mythical phase ofthe development a theory which must be overcome, since in Schellingsview it does not bring us to a First, Self-Fullled, Absolute. This view ofSchellings led him, already in his Philosophische Untersuchungen ber dasWesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhngendenGegenstnde (Philosophical Inquiry on the Essence of Human Freedom andRelated Subjects) (1809), to a critique of the theory of emanation, espe-cially in the form which seemed to him derived principally from Plotinus.121

This theory, so understood, is characterized by the idea that the transitionof the originative good into matter and evil is described insufciently,that is, not described on signicant grounds. The First as the point ofdeparture of the overow loses itself in this progressive processionthrough innitely many mediating levels, through a gradual weakeningin that which no longer has any semblance of the good.122 Or, as he saysin the Weltalter: the system which wishes to explain the origin of things by descending from above is almost necessarily forced into the notion thatthe outow of the highest originative power must ultimately be lost in some most distant thing, where there is, as it were, only a shadow of being,a minimum of reality left over, a something, which has only a quasi-existence, and in fact really does not exist. This is the meaning of non-beingfor the Neoplatonists.123


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From the point of view of this critique of the Neoplatonic concept ofemanation as a steadily increasing enervation into non-being in placeof a development of thought into the Perfected-Absolute Schellingspraise of matter seems especially surprising in the way it develops concep-tually following his understanding of Plotinus. The text from the Weltalterthat touches on the Plotinian concept of matter presents itself preciselyas a mosaic of elements from Plotinus thought which attempt to circum-scribe the difcult-to-describe the mystical essence of the non-being ofmatter. The situation of him who reects is ambiguous. The terminologyof this circumscribing of nothingness as empty is, on the one hand, occa-sionally extrinsically synonymous with the negative demarcation of theOne as the nothingness of fullness. On the other hand, the two are essen-tially distinguished from one another intentionally, in accordance with theposition of the two modes of nothing. Schellings treatment of Plotinusmatter in the Weltalter is in the following quotation at least not somuch aimed at its signication as the end or furthest point of the self-unfolding of the One, but more at its negativity as pure potentiality, whichis in itself indeterminate, shapeless, decient, shadowy or dark:

How often have we been attracted by those descriptions made bythe Platonists, and especially by Plotinus, of the mysterious entitythat is matter, without their being able to explain it? For becausethis profound spirit had already given up the Platonic pre-existenceof a lawless entity striving against order, and adopted a certain view-point according to which it is assumed that all has begun from themost pure and perfect, for this reason there remained for him nallyno explanation for the existence (Dasein) of matter other than agradual weakening of the most perfect. Incidentally he describes thisessence of non-being124 with inimitable depth, as when he says thatmatter ees from the one who wishes to grasp it, and when one doesnot grasp it, it is then to some degree present.125 Reason seems tobecome other, almost an un-reason, when it contemplates it,126 aswhen the eye goes out of the light in order to see the darkness butthen does not see it,127 since it can be seen as little with light aswithout light. It is nothing other than the lack of all properties,128

immeasurability when compared to measure, formlessness whencompared to form, insatiable and, in a word, the most extreme need-iness,129 so that its lack does not seem to be accidental, but essential.Thus it is presented in the shape of penia at each festival of Jupiter,130

as is said in the mythical speech of Diotima.131

For Plotinus and for Schelling, matter is as pure potentiality the basis whichfacilitates the determinations for the various shapes through active forms132

for Plotinus this is shown in the discussion of his concept of nature, which


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is unthinkable without determinable and formable matter. Schelling, however, understands matter in his speculative physics as a process pro-ductive in itself, and in the Weltalter as the precondition for the dynamicprocess of an historical unfolding of the Absolute, or of the Eternal in time.Thus, in his ennobling of matter and in the attempt to overcome the primacy or monism of spirit (a Hegelian conception, as Schelling saw it)in favour of a spiritualizing or idealizing of the material, nite and nat-ural, and in the thoughts of the unity of dualistically opposed pairs:niteinnite, possibleactual, realideal, naturespirit, Schelling departsdecisively from Plotinus. This difference has less to do with the concept ofmatter as an element and basis of nature than it has to do with the progressive weakening or destruction (Zer-Nichtung) of reality (i.e. of theontological intensity or living activity) of being, down to matter as the fur-thest point of the unfolding of the One, as shown particularly in thePlotinian theory of emanation. Hence Schelling pleads in his work on freedom immediately following a critical treatment of Plotinus, Spinozaand Leibniz for a mediation and reconciliation of one-sided xations:Idealism is the soul of philosophy, realism its esh; only both togethermake up a living whole . . . If a philosophy lacks this living foundation . . .then it loses itself in some system whose abstract concepts. . . stand in thestarkest contrast to the power of life and the fullness of reality.133

() From the basic principle in his Freiheitsschrift that there is, in thelast and highest instance, no other being than willing and that that willingis originative being,134 Schelling developed in his late philosophy a conceptof God as characterized essentially as absolute, self-willing will. Theguiding thread in this development is his own interpretation of the OldTestament self-expression of God in Exodus 3:14: \ , Egosum qui sum.

The meaning Schelling gives to this statement135 characteristically goesbeyond the philosophical-theological traditions variously executed iden-tications of God with being itself (esse ipsum, esse incommutabile):Schelling does not understand the self-expression of God as present Iam who I am but as future: I will be. Here for Schelling is manifestedGods freedom from being in the sense of a present essence or deter-minate existent, from anything that would limit Him, or freedom fromxed substantiality. Gods absolute freedom as true self-being as or throughSpirit is, however, founded in His being as will. From this point of view,the self-expression of God in Exodus 3:14 can only adequately be under-stood in the following form: I will be who I will be, i.e. who I will to be(Ich werde sein, der ich sein werde, d.h. der ich sein will). Here theperfected Spirit presents itself as God.136 From the idea that God iscompletely Himself, self-possessed and at His own disposal, is free fromHis own being no less than from the being which is created by Him,there comes to God as a consequence the name Lord of Being.137


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In the idea that God, as willing Himself, is absolute freedom, and thussimultaneously the First grounding itself from out of itself, in the senseof a causa sui, Schelling adheres to Plotinus concept of the One as absolutewill, which is as the cause of itself ( ) at the same time truefreedom.138 In another context, I have discussed the problematic of thisdevelopment in Plotinus VI.8,139 and tried to elucidate the instructivesignicance of Plotinus afrmative statements about the One that proceedfrom self-causality for his thought on the One in general. Here I refer tothis showing a direct connection between Schelling and this very thoughtof Plotinus.

In a passage from the Munich lectures on the System of the Ages in1827/8,140 Schelling combines several central statements from PlotinusVI.8141 for his own argument: From this basis, the word of a Platonist[Plotinus] may also be understood:

God is not how He happens to be, but how He Himself acts and isthe willing cause of Himself. He is Himself before [vor perhapsvon? Cf. VI.8.14.41: von sich selbst her] Himselfand through Himself [14.41f.: d e ]. He Himself willsto be the cause of His being, and He is what He wills to be. Thewill to be that which He is is He himself He Himself is in factonly the will to be Himself; He is not without His will.142

In VI.8 Plotinus gives numerous proofs against , e , (chance, that which happened to be [Schelling: wie es sichtrift], just by itself) as the supposed essence or structure of the One andFirst Principle, and thus also of the world which proceeds from Him. Thisrejection has as its goal the grounding of an origin which is rational, andtransparent in itself, which as absolute freedom wills what it is and canonly will this, because it is what it wills.143 The will of the One in fact hasin itself, as absolute will, no reason to will anything other than itself bydeviating from itself. The absolute will as the One itself wills, then, to beunchangeably that which it already is without being determined by thenormal differentiation of that which intentionally plans by consideringor producing an intention and its realization. Its absoluteness or origina-tive self-determination consists in the fact that it can be only this. In itsown self-caused being () it articulates itself as identical with itself;in this self-relation, it will be itself ( r144); in this being-itself itwills itself: .145

If, then, the will identical with its own being leads intentionally to itsown self-causation or self-grounding, then it wills precisely through thisand in it without any inner difference always already (and primarilyonly) itself. In the self-causation of the One its will wills itself as preciselythis self-grounding of its own being and thus of its activity; the self-


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grounding is then unthinkable without willing itself as one and the sameact. Since both self-causation and self-willing are to be thought of asidentical with one another with no real difference, self-causality throughwilling itself or in willing of itself is the highest criterion of the absolutefreedom of the Primordial One. Taking into account also the most extremepossibility and highest determination of humans, the following sentencealso goes for Schelling: Freedom is the highest for us and the divine,146

above which nothing higher exists and can be thought.Of course, the relationship I have sketched between Schelling and

Plotinus in the characterization of the divine Absolute or One as self-willing-will is only illuminating if Plotinus consistent suspension of belief(epoche) concerning afrmative predications about the One signalledmany times by hoion (so to speak) is given an appropriate weight inits philosophical signicance. In other words, that which is said afrma-tively of the One refers (of course in the categorial language of difference)to that which the One properly is in itself, beyond the being and thoughtof nous, in that it precisely is not this in the thought and speech of thethinkable and sayable of the intellect and the soul. Thus afrmations as intensications of their normal sense, as their modications into thethought of an otherness from the One appear as radicalized negations:as the negation of negation in favour of an afrmation which at leastmomentarily allows one, in a kind of intuition or estimation, to see thatcontent which is systematically ruled out by negation.147

Even if the self-willing will of the Absolute One as genuine freedomcan be thought of as a substantial agreement between Schelling andPlotinus in the above sense, yet one must recognize also an essential differ-ence between the two, which does not, however, remove this veryagreement or analogy or make it a priori impossible. The differenceconsists of the being of God which reaches forth into the future, whichis shown in the interpretation of Exodus 3:14 as I will be that which Iwill be, and is strengthened by Schellings theory of potencies. This goesalso, to put it paradoxically, for the timeless self-unfolding of God inHimself towards Himself: that God of negative philosophy, related toHimself in thought and remaining in Himself, whose model is Aristotlescharacterization of God as thought thinking Himself,148 must be trans-formed into a God who creatively projects Himself outward, acting inhistory. Instead of staying a God who is only ,149 an end; a Godholding fast to Himself, like Aristotles God in Schellings opinion, Hemust become a productive beginning150 which goes out of itself, in a posi-tive philosophy a God of absolute future.

For Plotinus, on the other hand, one may not accept for the One inthe sense of Enneads VI.8 and for the self-thinking intellect any of theseself-relations as inner developments or unfoldings analogous to history,even if they were to be thought of as timeless. The One and the intellect


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both thought of as God are what they are, and (in contradistinctionto Schellings conception) do not come to themselves, to their absolutecompletion, rst in a theogonic process.151

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen, Germany

Notes

* This paper was presented as the rst Stephen McKenna Lecture at the RoyalIrish Academy, Dublin, on Friday 22 October 1999.

1 I have dealt with this context in detail, above all in Platonismus und Idealismus(Frankfurt, 1972), hereafter referred to as PI, and also in Identitt undDifferenz (Frankfurt, 1980), hereafter ID, especially in the chapter AbsoluteIdentitt. Neuplatonische Implikationen in Schellings Bruno, pp. 20440,and further in: Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophieund ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1985), hereafter DdE.

2 The following works of Schelling will be cited by abbreviation, after theGesamtausgabe (Collected Works) in 14 volumes by K. F. A. Schelling(Stuttgart and Augsburg, 185661). The edition is divided into two sections(I.110 and II.14), but I will number the volumes as a complete set, so that,e.g., Vol. II.1 will be Vol. XI.

Vom Ich: Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingte immenchlichen Wissen (1795), Vol. I, pp. 149ff. (See also the critical editionof this text in: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Reihe I Werke2, ed. Hartmut Buchner and Jrg Jantzen (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 69175.)

Ideen: Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studiumdieser Wissenschaft (1797), Vol. II, pp. 1ff.

Weltseele: Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der hheren Physik zur Erklrungdes allgemeinen Organismus (1798), Vol. II, pp. 345ff.

Entwurf: Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799), Vol. III,pp. 1ff.

Einleitung: Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie,oder ber den Begriff der speculativen Physik und die innere Organisationeines Systems dieser Wissenschaft (1799), Vol. III, pp. 268ff.

Idealismus: System der transcendentalen Idealismus (1800), Vol. III, pp. 327ff.Bruno: Bruno, oder ber das gttliche und natrliche Prinzip der Dinge. Ein

Gesprch (1802), Vol. IV, pp. 213ff.Philosophie der Kunst: (1802), Vol. V, pp. 357ff. Selections in: Schelling, Texte

zur Philosophie der Kunst, ausgewhlt und eingeleitet von W. Beierwaltes(Stuttgart, 1982).

Philosophie und Religion: (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 11ff.System: System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbeson-

dere (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 131ff.Rede: Ueber das Verhltni der bildenden Knste zu der Natur (1807), Vol.

VII, pp. 289ff. (also in Texte zur Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 5395).Freiheit: Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das Wesen der menschlichen

Freiheit und die damit zusammenhngenden Gegenstnde (1809), Vol. VII,pp. 331ff.

Weltalter: Die Weltalter. Fragmente. Published in the original versions of 1811and 1813 by M. Schrter (Mnchen, 1946). A quite different text from


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this version is found in Vol. VIII, pp. 195344 of the Collected Works(3rd printing).

System der Weltalter: Mnchener Vorlesungen 1827/28 in einer Nachschrift vonErnst von Lasaulx, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Siegbert Peetz(Frankfurt, 1990).

Mythologie: Philosophie der Mythologie, Vols XI and XII.Offenbarung: Philosophie der Offenbarung, Vols XIII and XIV.

A clear date cannot be given for the last two works. Cf. on this point theedition of Manfred Schrter (Mnchen, 1927), 1. Hauptband, p. XI.

3 For example, by Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, Friedrich Creuzer,Franz Berg, Friedrich Schlegel, J. F. Winzer, Johann Ulrich Wirth, SamuelTaylor Coleridge. Cf. PI, pp. 100ff.

4 Critical edition, E. Behler et al., Vol. XIX, Zur Philosophie, (1804) (Mnchen,1971), p. 44: Many a philosophy is grounded in the spirit of their age, but thereis only one which perfects it and expresses it scientically, as Plotinus is in theAlexandrian philosophy the only one who really understands (after which follows the sentence cited above regarding Plotinus relationship to Schelling).Vol. XII, Philosophische Vorlesungen (18007), ed. J. J. Anstett (Mnchen,1964), p. 294. For Schlegels relationship to the Platonic tradition, see also M. Elssser, Friedrich Schlegels Kritik am Ding (Hamburg, 1994).

5 F. A. Uehlein, Die Manifestation des Selbstbewutseins im konkreten Ich bin(Hamburg, 1982), p. 6.

6 The Notebooks of S. T. Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1957), Vol.I Notes, p. 457. Philosophical Lectures, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1949),p. 390, characterizing Schelling: I might at one time refer you to Kant . . .another time to Spinoza as applied to his philosophy . . . and then again I should nd him in the writings of Plotinus, and still moreof Proclus.

7 Compare PI, pp. 186f.; Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 106.8 On Plotinus relation to Schelling: PI pp. 100ff. For Proclus, see pp. 105 (also

Mythologie, Vol. XII, p. 288), pp. 109f., 142f. For Dionysius, p. 112. See alsober die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft, Vol. IX, p. 217, whereSchelling says, of Dionysius concept or : [the absolutesubject] is not not God, and is also not God, it is also that which God is not.It is thus above God, and if even one of the excellent mystics of earlier timesventured to speak of an above-divinity, then we may be allowed to do thesame. Dion., De div. nom. IV. 1; 143, 10 (Suchla); XI. 6, 223, 6; XIII. 3, 229,13. Weltalter, 16: Thus we [venture] to place simplicity of essence above God,just as some of the ancients spoke of an above-divinity. 43: For weexplained that every original essence of simplicity as that which is even aboveGod and the divinity in Him. Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, p. 236. PIp. 80, n. p. 353; 112, n. 40. See also below on beyond being, n. 79. ForGiordano Bruno: ID p. 204ff.

9 Cf. PI, pp. 83ff.10 1700 (anonymously) translated from the French with introduction and

commentary by Josias Friedrich Christian Lfer, published in Zllichau andFreystadt in 1792 in a second, expanded edition under the title Versuch berden Platonismus der Kirchenvter. Oder Untersuchung ber den Einu derPlatonischen Philosophie auf die Dreyeinigkeitslehre in den ersten Jahr-hunderten. On Lfer: ID, pp. 205f. Neoplatonic texts are also found in theLoci Theologici of Johannes Gerhard (Jena, 16101625) and Suicerus(Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus e Patribus Graecis (Amsterdam, 1682, 1728 with


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the same pagination)), which Schelling knew and used. Amongst the numerouscitations, see, e.g., for Gerhard: Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 13, 27, 100, 102; forSuicerus, 62, 91.

11 For verication of these citations, see Beierwaltes, PI, pp. 100ff, 210ff. HorstFuhrmans has included in the third volume of his collection of letters anddocuments (F. W. J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente, Zusatzband (Bonn,1975) the Stellen aus Plotinos, published by myself (loc. cit.) for the rst timefrom the Berlin Schelling archives, and the Bemerkungen regarding Plotinusin many aspects made by Windischmann to Schellings Aphorismen zurEinleitung in die Naturphilosophie (ibid., pp. 202ff). The claim made there byFuhrmans on p. 241, that Schelling cited Plotinus only (!) critically or toreject him, is inaccurate in its sweeping one-sidedness. (He indicates onepassage in which Schelling discusses the theory of emanation; cf. on p. 413.)This is shown already by veriable arguments in my discussion in PI and herein what follows. Equally unreasonable is the conclusion drawn by Fuhrmansfrom Schellings request (in a letter to Windischmann of 7 April 1804) forPlotins Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini another edition is incidentally alsone, though there is almost none other that Schelling did not know thePlotinus editions particularly well (p. 74). One may assume that Schellingwas aware that the Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini contained only FicinosLatin translation, and not the Greek text of Plotinus. Which edition otherthan the Editio princeps by Perna of 1580 could he have wanted in 1804?The lightly asserted supposition of Fuhrmans that Plotinus was no longer soimportant to Schelling after the appearance of Franz Bergs Sextus (1804,cf. PI, pp. 100f.), who parodied him as Plotinus, is contradicted by Schellingsestimation of the Stellen aus Plotinos and his thereby strengthened wish forother signicant passages about matter, time, space, death and nitude (PI,pp. 102f; Fuhrmans, p. 253; (p. 326: I have recommended him [Plotinus] toCaroline) without even mentioning the many other passages referred to inwhat follows and Schellings reections concerning Plotinian ideas in his laterphilosophy. For Friedrich Creuzer see also here, p. 402. Parts of PlotinusEnneads (a) and the works of Dionysius (b) have been available in the trans-lation of J. G. V. Engelhardt: (a) Die Enneaden des Plotinus, bersetzt, mitfortlaufenden den Urtext erluternden Anmerkungen begleitet, ErsteAbteilung (Erlangen, 1820) containing only the rst Ennead. (b) Die ange-blichen Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius, bersetzt und mit Abhandlungenbegleitet, zugleich mit einer bersetzung der Elementatio theologica desProklos (2 vols, Sulzbach, 1823) in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mnchenfrom the Library of the Bayer. Staatsminister Maximilian Joseph Graf vonMontgelas, who died in 1838.

12 See p. 413ff.13 Given Hegels foundational engagement with the Neoplatonic texts them-

selves, the constitutive importance of Plotinian and Proclean philosophy forcertain areas of his philosophy must be even more evident. Cf. PI, pp. 144ff., 154 ff.; J. Halfwassen, Hegel und der sptantike Neuplatonismus, Beiheft40 der Hegel-Studien (Bonn, 1999).

14 Published for the second time in 1809 in Schellings Philosophische Schriften,Vol. I, pp. IXXIV, 1114. I quote from the edition of 1856, in the CollectedWorks, Vol. I.

15 Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 399.16 Ibid. p. 55.17 Vom Ich, Vol. I, p. 199.18 Ibid.


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19 Ibid., p. 200.20 Ibid., p. 201.21 Ibid.22 Ibid., p. 202.23 Plot. V. 3.4.7,11f.; 29. 8.35, 48f.; VI. 7.35.5.; VI. 8.5.35.24 V. 3.17.38.25 VI. 26 and 60ff., 64: conscious of its immortality, the soul should already

here free itself from the bonds of sensibility as much as possible.26 In contrast to a transcendence of the Absolute which is immanent in the I

itself, towards which the I itself must extend and raise itself up (in accor-dance with the intent of Vom Ich (1795)), Schelling in his System dergesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere of 1804 clearly,in my view, had in mind a real transcendence of the Absolute opposed to aself-enclosure in pure transcendental subjectivity: If there were no knowl-edge in our own mind, which was utterly independent from all subjectivityand no longer a recognition of the subject as subject, but rather a recogni-tion of that which is alone and absolutely, and which alone can be recognizedas the completely One, then we would indeed have to abandon all absolutephilosophy, and would be forever trapped with our thought and knowledgein the sphere of subjectivity, and we would have to see the result of theKantian and Fichtean philosophies as the only one possible, accepting it asour own (Vol. VI, p. 143).

27 Related to the statement from Liber XXIV philosophorum (end of the twelfthcentury): deus est sphaera innita [intelligibilis], cuius centrum ubique,circumferentia nusquam. For the metamorphosis of this statement up throughIdealism, see D. Mahnke, Unendliche Sphre und Allmittelpunkt (Halle, 1937)(on Schelling: pp. 1012).

28 Cf. W. Beierwaltes, Causa sui. Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung desGedankens der Selbsturschlichkeit, in Traditions of Platonism. Essays inHonour of John Dillon, ed. John J. Cleary (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 191226,esp. 194ff., 206ff.

29 Cf. in DdE the chapter Henosis (pp. 123ff.) and see, for example, at pp.167f., 171f., 250ff.

30 Cf. Plot. VI. 9.9.46f.: b r, r n . Also I. 6.7.2f.31 Schelling, ber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft (1821), Vol. IX, p.

226: The entire motion [the transformation from object to subject, withoutthe removal of the inner polarity of the two, a transformation in which liesthe possibility of a self-knowing of eternal freedom] is only motion towardsself-knowledge. The imperative, the impulse of the entire motion, is the , Know Thyself, whose practice is generally seen as wisdom. Knowwhat you are, and be, as that which you have known yourself to be: this isthe highest law of freedom. Here Schelling on the basis of the Delphic imper-ative alludes to an analogous understanding of an isolated sentence fromPindars Pythian II. 72: x d , become that which you arethr

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