Manfred Frank - Schelling_s Critique of Hegel and the Beginnings of Marxian Dialectics.pdf

8/10/2019 Manfred Frank - Schelling_s Critique of Hegel and the Beginnings of Marxian Dialectics.pdf

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SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL AND

THE BEGINNINGS OF MARXIAN DIALECTICS

Manfred Frank

The history of western philosophy provides many occasions for verifying a

general experience: theoretical innovations gain immediate appreciation only

if they do not demand too much of the ability of contemporaries to integrate

them into their worldview.

If

they emerge hastily and lack clear connection

to their epoch's expectations about meaning, they will be dismissed

as

an

untimely growth. This is, of course, easy enough to understand. What

is

remarkable, though, is that even subsequent generations that have come to

accept the innovation will often continue to regard its originator

as

taboo.

Consider, for instance, the fame accorded Nietzsche for the discovery that

pre-conscious life forces lure the intellect into webs of Maya, making it be

lieve that it itself decides over the economy

of

values that

is

actually the pro

jection of the powerhungry will. Coinciding with the praise granted Nietzsche

are strong attacks against Schopenhauer. Not only

is

the latter denied credit

for having initiated the paradigmatic revolution in the metaphysics of will

that occurred in the post-idealistic epoch, but he is made to answer for every

imprecision and

subterfuge which is

remarkable only in light

of

the fact that

his work is a good deal more precise and straightforward than thatofNietzsche.

It seems as

if

the official ideography has to eliminate one name from its canon

before another name, even the name of one who has done little more than

drawn the consequences

of

the eradicated doctrine, can be recognized or even

praised: Jasper's and Heidegger' s interpretations of Nietzsche and condemna

tions of Schopenhauer are classic examples of this ritual. The rehabilitation of

a thinker seems to necessitate the sacrifice of his predecessor.

Something comparable has occurred to sabotage Schelling's fame. His

name has been consistently scorned until it evokes a subcutaneous negative

response. I am speaking in part about the fact that just mentioning Schelling

in seminars beside Fichte or Hegel is often viewed

as

an obscenity or at least

as

a disclosure of one's naivety, with the result that the passage from Fichte

to Hegel

in

the history

of

ideas has had to bridge an embarrassing loophole. I

am also concerned about the many performances of the emperor's new clothes

we have had to endure by paying automatic obeisance to Hegel's profundity.

Schelling's logical sleights of hand (especially the

18 1

System of Identity)

have meanwhile been soundly dismissed. Instead of being praised for his


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252 IDEALISTIC STUDIES

profundity, Schelling has been decried for a geniality that lacks seriousness,

his works dismissed

s

a delirium

of

ideas brought forth by opium and

romanticism.

What concerns me much more, however, than the injustice wrought Schel-

ling is that his original insight has been lost in the process. His work was

an attempt (not always a successful one) to give birth to an idea that trans-

cended the vision

of

his age, an idea which-in the Blochian

sense-was

transcontemporary iibergleichzeitig). Exaggerating somewhat, I argue that

Schelling's insight could never have been adequately articulated in the dis-

cursive quilt offered by idealistic grammar. Stressing this helps us to critically

evaluate the idealistic position

of

Hegel's Phenomenology in comparison

with Schelling's 1801 system, with its alleged argumentative weaknesses.

One cannot,

of

course, deny the tremendous historical impact

of

the

Phenomenology. It embodied the major breakthrough through which idealism

became recognized in its maturity and thus gained its followers.

t

constitutes,

moreover, an important corrective to the growing sklerosis

of

a dogmatic

and subhuman materialism, a corrective that carries weight to this day.

At the beginning and at the end

of

the movement named dialectical

materialism stands the figure

of

Hegel. No

thinking-apart

from that

of

Marx-has

been so important for the general understanding of materialism,

or

of

the modern era as a whole. In the interim, however -and for a period

lasting more than a century-the Weltgeist oversimplified matters by calling,

against the background of turbulent changes in the institutional structure of

our intellectual and social reality, for an overcoming

of

idealism. By doing

so it took a characteristic turn and deviated from Hegel's legacy. t is this

critical relation that (from the young Marx to the student movement of the

1960's) sustained interest in Hegel's oeuvre, but in what one today might

call a deconstructive guise. The reading that resulted certainly reflected an

heretical position towards idealism, but it never really penetrated to the crux

of

Hegel's arguments.

You may already guess where I am headed. At the outset

of

the materialistic

rejection

of

idealism, the only philosophy that could boast a truly revolutio-

nary critique

of

Hegel's idealistic dialectics was Schelling's. t was contained

in his-mostly unpublished-late works, available in student transcripts

of

lectures in Erlangen, Munich and Berlin. These transcripts, which com-

manded stiff prices, were

sold-without

the control and to the grief

of

their

author. They made their way even into Russia and France, where they were

eagerly received by intellectuals among the nobility. People like Pavlov,

Cadae, Herzen, Bakunin, Belinskij and Turgenev found in these transcripts

their speculative acid test. They also reached the pupils of St. Simon (among


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SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL

253

them Prosper Enfantin) and advocates

of

religious socialism (like Lamennais

and Leroux).

1

Marx was well informed

of

these connections (and also knew Schelling's

writings first hand). This could surprise only one who has no notion of the un-

heard of pUblicity that accompanied Schelling's Berlin lectures in the winter

of 1841142 t

might,

of

course, also prove offensive to disciples who insist

upon Marx's originality by, in a very unMarxian fashion, envisioning the

development

of an idea capable of moving the world as the result of a single

act of original procreation. It

is

indeed the case that Schelling's late writings

do not officially

playa

role in the genesis

of

Marxian dialectics. A more

sympathetic view is taken of

his earlier work, an important step leading to the

temple ofHegel. But the older Schelling has a reputation of being a notorious

reactionary, despite the fact that he left Munich for Berlin at least partly

to escape restrictions imposed upon his own teaching. Indeed, his first act

in Berlin was to suspend censorship against the Halleschen JahrbUcher.

Arnold Ruge responded in August

of 1841

by calling Schelling

a

political

and religious freethinker. 2

The letter written by Marx to Feuerbach the third of October 1843

3

can be

read-at first glance-as ifMarx himself dismissed Schelling as a reactionary.

The matter seems to me to deserve further attention. Marx incorrectly thought

that Feuerbach, in his introduction to the second edition of the Wesen des

Christentums, had proposed

a

detailed work on Schelling. He urged Feuer-

bach to execute the plan and gave several reasons why he should do so. First

of

all, Schelling had a protected status. Due to censorship rules he could not be

attacked in journals, and thus had to be dealt with in a larger work. A more

extensive study was also called for to unveil Schelling to the French literati,

who had remarkably enough fallen victim to his attempts to win them over.

His French disciples were particularly to be feared, since some of

them-for

instance der geniale Leroux, who translated Schelling in a series

ofarticles

promoted socialism. An attack on Schelling would furthermore be an indirect

attack on Prussian politics as a whole, since Schelling had allegedly lent his

doctrine to the task

of

diplomacy. But, last though not

least-and

this is

decisive-Marx

regarded Feuerbach as unusually suited to lead the attack.

You are precisely the man for this, because you are Schelling n reverse.

You are the one who-we are permitted to believe the best about our

opponent-has

taken the splendid insight

o

his youth (der aufrichtige

Jugendgedanke), which for him always remained a fanciful dream, and

elevated it to truth, reality, and manly seriousness. Schelling is therefore

yourpredetermined caricature, and once the real thing steps over against

the caricature, it will dissipate into fog and vapor.


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I suspect that even today, when the issue has lost its relevancy, one will

sense the irony in Marx's compliment: No one who strives to attain his

intellectual identity will find it easy to face his own caricature, especially

when it

is

a matter o world philosophy, which must be affirmed in its basic

righteousness. Nor does it help to be told that its fanciful air will dissolve

only when confronted in a manly way. Feuerbach' s dilemma is exasperated

by the fact that his positive philosophy does in fact owe something to

Schelling and that his deviation from Schelling's original intention makes

them natural enemies. Marx was not the first to encourage him to take this

step, although no one else insisted upon it so resolutely. IfFeuerbach hesitated

for more than a decade to follow Marx's advice, it was presumably because

he realized the delicacy o confronting his own caricature.

Three fairly extensive outlines for letters mirror Feuerbach's embarrass-

ment. He made diligent excerpts from the Paulus transcript o Schelling's

lectures, tossed and turned for some weeks, and then confessed that Marx

had thrown him into a difficult connict with himself. 4

t

seems that Marx

had touched upon a trauma: Feuerbach had always tried to fend off Schelling's

obvious priority

s

being a presumptuous fantasy. (Marx cites this with

a certain sense o delicacy.) He had never found a better name to characterize

his own position than Schelling's own expression, positive philosophy,

although he asserts that for him in contrast to Schelling the aim is the actual

rather than the merely imaginary absolute identity o all oppositions and

contradictions. 5 One has to be aware o all o this when seeking to elucidate

Feuerbach's relationship to Schelling.

After these fragmentary suggestions, I will set aside the biographical-

philological search for points

o

contact between Schelling's materialism

and that o Feuerbach and Marx. I would next like to assert that not only

in the materialism o Feuerbach and Marx, but also in French Socialism, in

Bakunin and Cieszkowski,6 there existed a powerful tradition of materialistic

argumentation which, nourished by Schelling's late lectures, was critical o

Hegel. The obscurity of this tradition, which can be followed all the way

to Lenin's notebooks, can be explained in part by the fact that Schelling

did not publish a single lecture during his lifetime. The short Vorrede zu

ousin

and the pirated edition o notes from his first Berlin lecture were

the only documents

o

his tum to positive philosophy that could be cited.

Another reason for the obscurity o this tradition is that, for reasons o

political identity, leftist theoreticians refuse to think o Schelling s a pre-

decessor.

t

is indeed necessary to challenge the usual terms

o

political

semantics by considering what antiliberal romanticism and anticapitalistic


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55

socialism have in common. One might begin by noting that the dichotomy

was not always evident. This was particularly the case in the beginning:

Ruge's interest in the details of Schelling's tum was so great that he offered

to

edit his lectures; Feuerbach, who seemed to have been inspired by a

transcript

of

a Schelling lecture, sent his dissertation to the philosopher with

an obviously genuine respect (one might ask what would have happened if

Schelling had liked it, but beyond any doubt the style of thinking was too

Hegelian for him); Cieszkowski, whose historiography Schelling seems to

have known, always sustained a lively interest in Schelling, was drawn

to

the latter's religiosity, and kept himself informed about the Berlin lectures

from his Polish home (there also are two outlines for letters from him to

Schelling). Bakunin wrote home: You would not be able to imagine the

great impatience with which I look forward to Schelling's lectures. 7

Schelling, who saw himself as the inadvertent spiritual father of Young

Hegelianism, acknowledged that these young people were striving for some

thing like positive philosophy. Their mistake was that they searched for it

with Hegelian means and were thus doomed to failure. In order truly to

transform the system, it was first necessary to dismantle the edifice of

logical necessity. One had to emancipate oneself from the immanent legiti

mation of a teleologically conceived intellectual process.

8

The emotion

directed against Schelling, by Fr. Engels, for example, was the reaction of

a young man who felt that the basis for group solidarity the enthusiasm

for Hegel was threatened. That

is

the recurring theme in the Young Hegelian

petition

to

Schelling: he would be welcome in Berlin as a teacher in the

spirit

of

Hegel, but he should not desecrate the name

of

the symbolic father.

He

should not, in effect, attack idealism.

t

should be clear that Marx, however, would not make such restrictions.

He praised Feuerbach, for instance, for overcoming the Young Hegelian

idealism

of

Bruno Bauer and his consorts. (In this regard he was like

Bakunin, who was also outspoken in his criticisms

of

leftist idealism.) He

relied on Schelling

as

he parodied their irritation towards any praxis, which

is different than theory, and towards any theory, which seeks

to

be anything

but the dissolution of a given category in the 'limitless universality

of

self

consciousness. '9 As Schelling taught (and here he impressed not only Marx

but Bakunin and Cieszkowski

as well),

there is in the

ogic

nothing that could change the world The

transition cannot proceed from thinking . . . One cannot begin anything

with the highest principle of rational philosophy [that is, with the concept

of

absolute self-consciousness] Rational philosophy must lead

beyond itself and press towards a reversal. The reversal itself cannot


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proceed from thinking, but requires a practical impulse. In thinking,

however, there

is

nothing practical; the concept

is

purely contemplative

and relevant only to the realm o necessity. But we are concerned here

with something that lies outside necessity, with something willed 1O

Before I further document the convergencies between Schelling's late

philosophy and Marx's practical materialism, I will attempt the impossible

by briefly outlining the late philosophy and its position on Hegel. Unless

one has a firm grasp

o

the direction and style

o

Schelling's thought, one

will not be able to search for allusions

to

Schelling in Marx's early work.

The fact that they have not already been deciphered I can only explain

as

a proof o the fundamental lack of interest displayed by those in power who

guard Marxist doctrine. This lack o interest cannot be traced back to Marx

himself.

I believe it

is

possible to state precisely the one thought that sustained

Schelling's philosophizing from beginning to end: It is the conviction that

Being (understood

as

seamless identity) cannot be deduced by unfolding

reflective relationships. In a certain sense this

was the common conviction

held by the three Tiibingen friends against Fichte. Dieter Henrich has ventured

to carefully reconstruct a conversation

in which Holderlin allegedly suc

ceeded

to

convince even Hegel of this thought and bring him beyond the

boundary line of Kantian philosophy, 12 that is, beyond the point where

the abstract subject stands in opposition to its other.

Holderlin maintained that absoluteness must exclude the self-relatedness

o the 1. 13 I-ness cannot be thought o as absolutely unconditioned, since

it presupposes as its condition an explicit relationship to self. On the other

hand, one cannot dispense with the unconditioned, for one must still account

for the moment

o

self-possession and identity that is maintained through

the opposition of what

is

interrelated. It

is

not a matter o denying one o

the two moments, but o recognizing that the active relationship of the self

to itself cannot explain knowledge o the identity o the relating moments.

This knowledge is, however, real. According to Holderlin, it is thus necessary

that a preeminent unifying unity, which is itself not identical with the I,

make itself manifest within the infinite unity of the Self.

14

Holderlin and

Schelling call

it

Being or Identity and distinguish it from Indifference,

which

is

the result of an act o synthesis that itself presupposes a totally

unreflected identity that eludes the play

o

relation.

Despite terminological differences (Schelling first articulated his thoughts

more in the language o Fichte's issenschaftslehre

, 5

Schelling shared

Holderlin's basic conviction. For Hegel this was much less the case. The

impulse he received from the poet did enable him to take the decisive step


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57

over the Kantian boundary line. He thus no longer turned to abstract

subjectivity to find a mediation

of

the conflict between love and selfhood.

On the other hand, he regarded the mediation as occurring in the realm of

reflection and rejected HOlderlin's account that it was rooted in a transreflec

tive Being or, using the term

of

Sinclair, in a pure Athesis that existed

apart from and prior

to

the relation.

16

Love, life, and spirit are Hegel's

terms for that which carries the opposition between the finite and the infinite

forward to the point where it discloses its untruth and thus leaves behind

the counterfeit totality envisioned by one-dimensional thinking. This process

is that true infinity which establishes itself in the very finitude

of

the

relationship of difference. It is itself not related to anything and constitutes

a kind

of

argumentative fundus whereby relation can be thought

of

as unity

and substance as subject. Such a concept of unity does not tolerate a being

that transcends it and threatens to reduce it to a moment

of

reflection. As

such it would have a merely relational existence that prevents it from being

more than a specific and incomplete aspect

of

an incomprehensible totality.

I hope that, given its necessary brevity, this

is

a fair characterization

of

Hegel's original insight. He provided it with more depth and consequence

in the len Logic and above all in the Phenomenology of 1807. He did not

accomplish the full elaboration of the formal ontological status of his basic

philosophical program until his Science

of

Logic. Particularly decisive for

us in that work is his attempted demonstration that Being is in truth a moment

of a reflection that depends on nothing outside itself.

In the present context it is impossible to sum up Hegel's extraordinarily

complex argumentation. For this step I refer the reader to the works

of

Dieter

Henrich. I will here simply elaborate some

of

the consequences

of

Hegel's

insight by conjuring up a hypothetical exchange with Holderlin (Hegel in

reality never spoke with the poet after the latter's lapse into

insanity-just as

he also avoided further talks with Schelling). We can begin with Hegel's asser

tion that in pure Being, without true determination only negative qualities

can be contained, qualities such as immediacy Un-mittelbarkeit) and unre

latedness Un-bezogenheit). Holderlin would have agreed. Hegel might then

proceed to explicate-in

an

apparently harmless way-the unrelatedness of

Being by depicting it as Being which is only related to itself. The pure nega

tion modifies itself into a simple restriction which does not necessarily exclude

the possibility

of

a relation-to-itself. However, once Being is assumed to be

inarticulate or simple relation, then according to Hegel it becomes not only

permitted, but logically necessary to recognize within it a contradiction. Only

by virtue

of

this contradiction does it attain internal determination (for only

that

is

itself, which can be set off negatively against an other).


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58

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

Hegel, in a characteristic fashion, speaks

of

Being

as

concept Being.

In

this way too

he

forestalls the understanding that it is a question of trans

reflective

Being Being

which could at any rate have no place in a logic,

or in any formal system of ontology. The step that leads Hegel from the

category of indifference-the last position of the logic of Being to the

category of appearance-the first position in the logic of essence--can

be

characterized as follows: the concept of a relationship conceived as unidimen

sional is matched with itself, conceived now as two-dimensional. In the

logic

of

reflection, a hidden implication

of

the concept

of

a simple relation

only to itself' is unfolded and made explicit. It thence comes to light that

this self-relation includes a relation to an other. Hegel maintains that this

consequence

is

executed within the framework of one thought and leads to

the realization that the other-relationship cannot be detached from the concept

of self-relationship.

Holderlin was not able

to

answer in person. Schelling spoke

in

his place,

probably first during the summer semester of 1822 in his lectures on the

history of modem philosophy that were delivered in Erlangen. Schelling's

reply, despite the clarity

of

its language, was based on a complicated

argumentation that I can here only approximate. I will occasionally make

use of formulations from Schelling's Wiirzburg system of 1804. Beneath

the appearance of

an extensive consensus with Hegel's Jena philosophy,

one finds even at that stage the seeds of the confrontation which was to come.

Schelling discerned with an ingenious accuracy the circulus n probando

in Hegel's proceedings.

f

the concept is, at the end

of

its development, to

attain recognition of itself as itself, it would have

to

implicitly possess this

self-knowledge from the beginning. Hegel rather shamefully confessed this

when, in the methodology chapter of the Logic he rehabilitated intellectual

intuition. l7 If this is indeed the case, then Holderlin was presumably right.

t is necessary to abandon the claim that it

is

possible, without presupposition,

to deduce through a series of steps the thought of the self from the thought

of abstract Being which is void of self. The original, allegedly seltless,

Being is, contrary to the stated intention, conceived as self-relation from

the outset. It is a concept of self-relation which even possesses

an

implicit,

but unreflected self-knowledge.

If this were not the case, then it could not

be posited, sublated and finally realized in the end

as

self-knowledge.

This was Schelling's first critical observation: the dialectical progress in

the unfolding of the idea grows out of a speculative or narcissistic dialogue

of reflection with itself alone. The appearance of progress that occurs as an

implicit presupposition

is

explicated and then interpreted as having arisen


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260

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

says that negation is the ground

of

Being, insofar as through the negation

of negation something positive is posited, one must nonetheless understand

that the possibility

of self-negation does not imply the actual productive

force of Being, but only its ideal ground

(Ideal-Grund).

For one has in fact

said no more than this: there is no

concept

of Being apart from that which

is posited through the self-sublation of reflection; on this count there

is

no

difference between Hegel and Schelling. What Schelling asserted is that it

is possible for the negation, when applied to itself, to abolish itself for the

sake of Being , thereby letting Being come to appearance (in this way negation

is the ground

of

the

appearance

of

Being). But in this way neither the being

of

negation nor

of

that which it negates is actually affirmed.

This can be immediately and analytically grasped: negativity can destroy

(and can destroy itself), but it cannot create. If through its play of opposition

it does affirm a being (or even its own being), it must nonetheless be clear

that it does not establish its own being. With Sartre one might call this the

ontological proof of reflection. t has several important consequences.

First of all, in simple terms, Being precedes consciousness; the realization

of

this is confirmed

within

the inevitable collapse

of

any attempt to ground

Being through an immanent and autonomous self-deduction (Selbstbegrun

dung).

Secondly, and this

is

closely connected to the first point, although

the essence (das Wesen) is the epistemological ground (Erkenntnisgrund)

of

Being (and of its own Being), it is not the real ground. For

s

soon as

Being is, it is in a way that cannot be pre-conceived, it is unvordenklicher

weise seiend.

That means that---even if only to fulfill the formal-ontological

condition of its being an essence it must first of all be. Sartre characterized

this with the technical term etre he What he wants to say thereby is that

conceptual

Being essence is

derived from a transreflective Being that

always already was, it is thus supported in its being and lacks genuine

independence. Without a foundation in a Being that is not reflection, the

being of essence would dissolve into nothing. This is the reason for Schel

ling's talk about negative philosophy : it describes a form of speculation

that has forgotten Being. It absolves itself from its own existence by reducing

the transcendence of Being to a determination of essence.

I admit that to this point Schelling's critique has been quite abstract. But

before 1 tum to more concrete consequences (especially those that were

elaborated by Marx), I might point out that precisely the abstractness of

Schelling's critique of Hegel made plausible its claim to universal validity,

a claim that in tum facilitated its deep undercurrent effect. Schelling con

fronted Hegel at the level of Hegel's own logic

of

essence. He formulated

his objections in such a way that Hegel could not have defused them by


11/18


26

insisting that there

is no

point

of

contact between the idea

of

a pre-conceptual

Being and the argumentation of the Logic itself. Indeed, Schelling makes

the claim which I believe to be thoroughly correct that the Logic fails to

accomplish its own program. The program was to resolve the conflict between

concepts of opposition and of unity by arranging them within the concept

of an overarching unity that bridged the conflict itself, what Hegel described

in the chapter on the Idea as the identity

of

the real and the ideal. According

to Schelling, the place of this

existing

idea remains vacant as long as the

term of reality lacks sensuality, for sensual existence

is

necessary to actually,

rather than merely conceptually, differentiate it from its correlative concept,

the ideal. Feuerbach repeated Schelling's conclusion verbatim: where there

is only an essential, or what amounts to the same thing, apotential opposition,

there exists no real discord at all. Everything unfolds in

an

entirely peaceful

manner between being and nothing [regarded as mere conceptual powers]

there is no opposition, they do not affect one one another at

all. 22

In other

words: the Logic does not fulfill its own intention of attaining reality; it

reaches only the concept

of

truth. Truth itself, as something to be postulated,

must surrender itself

to

another discipline. This

is

clear even in Hegel's

terms. The merely logical concept perceives its own impotence, its own

lack of Being, and decides, as Hegel said, to abdicate in favor of nature.

The naked idea should

be

provided flesh and blood before it can ever be

led towards its real truth, the self-consciousness of actually existing spirit.

Hegel thus implicitly accepted the objection that his concepts are contami

nated by a lack of Being, once he makes the Logic the overture to his

encyclopedic system. The problem, however, is that the system itself is

caught up in the emptiness of the same circle that defines the Logic. For

how could a concept that has no command

of

Being possibly give birth out

of itself to an actually existing nature? The concession that Hegel's logical

edifice lacks real truth is a concession that affects his entire

system

insofar

as the system itself springs forth from the Logic. The system thus takes on

a negative character that is far more pronounced than Hegel intended. One

can almost see the jarring effect on Schelling himself as his philosophy of

nature bore its first fruit in the triumph over Hegel.

From the vantage point of its historical reception, this is certainly Schel

ling's most successful argument against Hegel. Feuerbach repeated it as

eagerly as did Marx and was indeed more keenly aware than the latter

of

its rich consequences for a philosophy of nature. Marx was still aware that

nature is a synonym for reality and that the

system

o

philosophy

takes

on true actuality, that is, more than a merely logical character, only when

t passes through the reality of nature. I can document this from Marx's


12/18

6

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

early wlitings. I would also like to refer to Alfred Schmidt's still unsurpassed

work on the concept of nature in Marx. It lacks only the recognition that

Marx's argumentation derives largely from the late work of Schelling.

But before I begin with Marx, I want to present two further consequences

that result from Schelling's objection to Hegel. One concerns the culmination

of the system in the idea

of

absolute self-consciousness. This idea marks

the place where, according to Hegel, the system reaches its truth. This truth

emerges insofar as difference, which characterizes reflection, sheds its quality

of otherness, and becomes,

as

Hegel liked to put it, completely self-trans

parent. Hegel insisted beyond this that the absolute suspension of the differ

ence between otherness and selfhood must itself be reconfirmed in the mir

rorplay

of

reflection. Schelling objected and asserted that the thought

of

absolute identity destroys itself by the very means it uses to actualize itself.

We can once again hear H6lderlin speaking through him: a real difference

would never be able

to

account for an ideal unity. Within the Hegelian

system such unity can only be postulated. Its disclosure remains the subject

of another science, which Schelling and Feuerbach referred

to

as positive

philosophy. Marx, in a similar spirit, pointed to the one-sidedness

and . . . limited nature of Hegel that is made manifest in the final chapter

of

the

Phenomenology. 23

The last consequence that I want to present here

is

perhaps the most

surprising. Schelling believed that, judging from certain formulations in the

foreword to the second edition of the

Logic

Hegel had himself started to

realize the abstract negative character

of

his philosophy

of

reflection.

f

not

for Hegel's death, the revision might have been continued. Be this

as

it

may, the formulations from the introductory essay

of

the

Logic

are worth

listening to. According to Hegel:

The absolute spirit, which discloses itself as the concrete and the last

and highest truth, will be recognized all the more when at the en of

the

development it abandons itself with freedom, lets itself into the

fonn

of immediate

Being, and resolves to create a world, a world which

will contain everything given in the development which preceded this

result, but

by

virtue

of

its reversed position over against the beginning

will be transformed into something that depends upon the result as upon

a principle.

4

The general context shows that Hegel did not mean

by

creation the self-aban

donment of the idea into nature. Instead, he was reflecting in a radical way

upon the implications

of

the concept

of

reflection that underlies his entire

argumentation. Consider a passage preceding our quote:

One must concede that it

is

an essential observation, and one that will


13/18


63

be more closely described within logic itself, that progress forward

is

at the same time a regress into the ground, to what is original and true,

that upon which the principle of the beginning itself depends, indeed,

as

that which has produced it.

25

Here he was plainly referring to a tum in the logical dialectic itself and to

the idea that only the ground truly is, so that upon its Being the appearance

of

an

independent beginning depends. Schelling closely analyzed the meaning

of this tum in his first Erlangen lecture. Reflection, he said there, means

reversal. t reverses as in a mirror the direction of everything that shows

itself in it,

so

that what really is only the second

is

envisioned as being the

first; and what really is first appears as the second.

26

When reflection is

uncritical, what appears

or

it to be first is regarded as actually being first.

But because reflection can reflect upon itself, it can provide an immanent

correction to the perverted position of thought over against reality. It then

realizes that the dialectical process which leads from Being to reflection

really leads from reflection to Being, with the restriction that this Being

becomes visible only as the limit of reflection so that it cannot be further

thematized within the science

of

reason. To pursue this consequence does

not lead

to

the completion of idealism, bilt to its abolition (Aufhebung).

Anyone who is familiar with Marx's critique of Hegel, as it is formulated

in the final chapter of the 1844 Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, will

notice the convergence of his arguments with those

of

Schelling. The Ver

kehrtheit, the inversion, of Hegelian speculation over against reality

is

without doubt his favorite objection. This is what Schelling had already

protested, when he accused Hegel of reversing the positions of subject and

predicate. Feuerbach echoed this, as did Marx, when he wrote that for Hegel,

actual man and actual nature are regarded

as

mere predicates, as

symbols

of

a hidden, non-actual man and non-actual nature. Subject

and predicate have been inverted.

27

Marx's arguments against Hegel on this issue were drawn, as far

as

I can

see, for the most part from Schelling. Negation, according to Marx, cannot

by itself generate something positive; it would sublate (aufheben) itself not

in the Hegelian sense, but absolutely [that is, it would abolish itselfl if

the real hypokeimenon, the ground of Being that is nature, were ever to be

withdrawn. The objection that the thought

of

an unconditioned reflection is

circular did not bother Marx as much

as

it bothered Schelling and Feuerbach.

However, Marx still followed Schelling and here one cannot speak of

Feuerbach's influence when he explained that Hegel's final thought is

false, since self-referential negation exists only

on

this side of the threshold

of its Being.


14/18


There are in fact at least three important slogans

of

Marx that can be read

as loose Schelling citations (in other cases they might also be allusions to

Feuerbach). One of them stems from Schelling's parody

of

Hegel's belief

that spirit would, after realizing its perverted relation to Being, have to

descend the same steps that it ascended, so that

through this reversal man would appear as the productive cause

of

the

world

of

animals, animals as the productive cause of plants, and

organisms as the productive cause of inorganic nature, and so forth.

8

Marx echoed the parody when he wrote:

In Hegel's philosophy of history the son gives birth to the mother, spirit

gives birth to nature, Christian religion gives birth to paganism, and in

general the result gives birth to the beginning.29

At another juncture Marx wrote that the abstraction, or the abstract thinker,

permitted the idea to surrender itself in its otherness only because he had

been informed

of

its truth through experience. 30 In the Paulus transcript,

Schelling had mocked Hegel in the same terms, as the thinker who, after

the alleged completion of the idea, is compelled to work through the process

of

nature, not because

of

the force

of

logical necessity, but because he has

happened to have

an

experience

of

nature.

3

Marx seems to have particularly enjoyed Schelling's sarcasm from the

Vorrede zu Cousin:

The logical self-development of the concept sustains itself, as one might

have anticipated, only as long as the system is devoted to what is purely

logical. Once it dares the difficult step into reality the thread of the dia

lectical development is tom apart. A second hypothesis suddenly becomes

necessary, that it occurs to the idea to let its moments fall apart in order

to create the world of nature. Why this takes place is a mystery, unless it

is to break the boring monotony of its logical development.

32

Marx wrote in a similar vein:

This entire transition from logic to the philosophy of nature is nothing

other than transition from abstraction to intuition a step that is so diffi

cult for an abstract thinker that it can only be presented in an adventurous

spirit. The mystical feeling, which forces the philosopher to abandon ab

straction for intuition,

is

boredom the longing for a content Inso

far as the abstraction grasps itself and perceives its own infinite boredom,

Hegel is moved to describe the abandonment

of

such abstract thinking

which thinks only itself . . . as a decision to acknowledge nature as the

essential and to shift the emphasis to intuition. 33

For the sake

of

brevity I will have to end here the philological catalog

of


15/18


65

Schelling excerpts in the early work of Marx. I have presented much more

evidence elsewhere.

I now want to speak to an objection I have often encountered. What use, one

asks, is the most complete catalog

of

Schelling quotations in Marx,

if

their dif

ferences in spirit remain insurmountable? I am myself not very bothered by

this question. Both Schelling and Marx regarded their work

as

scientific.

In

a

scientific context, the political-moralistic position of an author is significant

only insofar

as

it

is

defended with arguments. Marx and Engels viewed Hegel

as the seismographer, indeed, as the ideological leader of the Prussian restora

tion. This did not give them second thoughts about learning from him. One

must presume that they would have regarded Schelling in the same manner. t

is

one thing

to

oppose Schelling

as

the 38th ranking officer who had com

mand

of

the entire Prussian police, and something entirely different to study

and often find agreement with the afterword to his first Berlin lecture.

t

is of no

use

to

debate the matter abstractly. The evidence indicates that Marx did both.

One observes repeatedly in the history

of

philosophy that systems are

appropriated by later generations that no longer share the original concerns

of

the author. This does not mean that the structure

of

the system

is

violated.

According to its

structure-and

quite apart from the political-theological

concerns

of

its

author-Schelling s

concept

of

history

is

closer to historical

materialism than

is

Hegel's. True dialectic, he taught

in

Berlin, exists only

in the realm

of

freedom, which will solve all mysteries. By breaking the

closed circuit of logical necessitation, freedom gained a central position in

the late phase

of

Schelling's philosophy. t constitutes a warning to humanity

to discover its practical essence through the contrast with a Being that it has

not itself created. This was an idea that clearly appealed to Pierre Leroux,

Michail Bakunin and August Cieszkowski.

34

Even if his personal attitude

might have been counterrevolutionary, Schelling unmasked the state as an

association of force and did so with an acidic tone that only anarchists like

Bakunin or Proudhon could reiterate.

Marx's thought

of

a resurrection

of

nature in communism is noteworthy,

but should not be overly emphasized. There are similar formulations

in

Schelling, but even if these are the source

of

Marx's thought, they still point

to an entire tradition, from the neoPlatonism of the Renaissance to Jakob

Bohme, that Marx and Schelling were both equally aware of. More important

is

the convergence in their idea

of

alienation

Entfremdung).

Schelling

used the expression, which one finds already in the conservative critique

of

capitalism developed by such thinkers

as

Franz Baader and Adam Miiller,

to depict a dialectical reversal

of

the real and the ideal, that is,

of

what

is

and

of

what should be. The thesis

of

the primacy

of

being before essence


16/18

66

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

(and in the field

of

appearance,

of

nature before reason) characterizes an

ontological relationship: natural being surpasses the human powers

of

reason

not in terms

of

its dignity, but only in terms

of

the immediacy

of

its being.

n the course

of

its evolution, the process

of

nature attains a level in which

its further fate

is

endangered. This

is

the moment when human self-conscious

ness has been produced, for the future fate of nature now rests upon an

indeterminable freedom. According to Schelling, human beings spoiled the

chance that thus presented itself. Instead of recognizing the ontical priority

of their ground in nature, they have destructively degraded nature to an

object

of

rule and exploitation and have thereby initiated the catastrophe

Umsturz), the inhuman consequences

of

which we sadly confront when we

peer into our own nature or the natural world that surrounds us. This was

the act

of

alienation which tore us from nature and delivered us over to

the state, that Leviathan

of

anti-physis, under whose whip we now sigh

and whose mechanical impersonality subverts our freedom.

These ideas clearly have an enormous contemporary relevance. They

reflect and help verify, moreover, Marx's concept of alienation. For Marx,

too, wanted to depict a subversion

of

what should be the ground

of

human

nature, the source of real essential human powers. The result of this subver

sion is that, instead

of

deriving from our natural ground a free space for

unfolding our most genuinely human possibilities, we exhaust our essential

powers in the struggle for physical survival.

Still, the act of alienation is not a work of nature, but of human

beings-

which means it could be terminated. Schelling's methodological materialism

opens up for freedom a terrain of history that is, as a matter of principle,

open-ended and interminable. He derived from the idea that Being transcends

consciousness also the realization that no thinkable level

of

evolution could

produce a species with a legitimate claim to have reached a final truth.

Schelling's religious option which the more hopeful

of

the socialists always

scomed--thus proved always to be resistant to one thing: it did not necessi

tate, and here the contrast to Hegel

is

noteworthy, an acceptance

of

existing

reality.

t

was for this reason that Schelling attacked Hegel's totalitarian

doctrines of the state in a lecture in Munich.

t

would be a profitable undertaking, which I clearly cannot now pursue,

to examine the historical reception

of

this critique upon the Hegelian left.

I will instead close with a quotation from the early French socialist Pierre

Leroux. He makes it evident that the animosity

of

socialists for Schelling

is

by no means a necessary or natural animosity.

t

derives instead from

an

Hegelian faction of socialism, a faction that historically developed into a

technocratic and dogmatic Marxism that departed regrettably and tragically


17/18

SCHELLING S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 267

from the humanistic outlines

of

a socialistic

utopia a

utopian vision with

clear religious components. Such socialism has opted for the politics

of

worldpower and with dissonant self-approval-insists upon being called

scientific. t is against this background that I now conclude with the quote

from Leroux:

Everything that Schelling had to say about the situation

of

contempor

ary philosophy is profoundly true We, like he, also sense the dan

gers which threaten philosophy. They derive not only from philosophy s

natural enemies, but from those who present themselves as philosophers,

but are only eclectics. The false interpretation

of

Hegel (on the part of

left-Hegelians and Marxists) has unfortunately paralyzed many spiritual

energies. The pantheism

of

the master has given way to the skepticism

and indifference of his followers. Deplorably enough, many today who

regard themselves as progressive believe that the goal

of

philosophy con

sists in drawing everything into doubt. They regard as a mystification the

true goal

of

philosophy, which is to cultivate a

conviction

that allows one

to engage oneself wholeheartedly in the practical sphere. One wonders

how it could have come this far that

obfuscating

and sophistic thinkers are

now prepared to betray philosophy altogether and to deliver it over to the

prevailing powers.

35

Universitiit Tiibingen

Notes

have verified and documented this in two publications: Der unendliche Mangel an Sein.

Schellings Hegelkritik and die Anfiinge der Marxschen Dialektik. Frankfurt am Main 1975

and in the introduction

as

well

as

in the documentation part to F. W. 1. Schelling s Philosophie

der Offenbarung 184112 Frankfurt am Main 1977.

2Schelling s Philosophie der Offenbarung, p. 421.

Ibid., pp. 488ff.

4Ibid., p. 494.

Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie, in: Gesammelte

Werke, ed. by W. Schuffenhauer, vol. 9, Berlin 1970, p. 260.

6 discuss this little-known connection

in

the introduction to Schelling s Philosophie der

Offenbarung 184112 pp. 25ff.

Ibid., p. 461.

F. W. 1. Schelling: Siimmtliche Werke, ed. by K.

F. A.

Schelling, Stuttgart 1856-1861


18/18

268

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

(vol. 13, p. 90).

9Die

heilige Familie,

in:

MEW 2, p. 204.

iOSW

(vol. to p.

153

and vol. 11,

p.

565).

I'Dieter Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt

am

Main 1971; within that mainly Hegel

and Holderlin, esp. pp. 22ff.

l2Holderlin, Siimmtliche Werke, 7 vols., Stuttgart 1943-1972, vol. VI, p. 137, Letter to

Neuffer o to. to. 1794.

I'Compare Holderlin, vol. IV, pp. 253/4 (the long footnote on the Verfahrungsweise des

poetischen Geistes).

l4Letter

to his brother in the middle o 1801 (vol. VI, p. 419).

l5Concerning Schelling's early relationship with Holderlin

see

M. Frank, Der unendliche

Mangel all Sein, pp. 19-31.

6A recurring term from Sinclair's Raisonnements, first printed

in

Hannelore Hegel, Isaac

von Sinclair zwischen Fichte, Holderlin and Hegel, Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 243ff.

l7G W.

F.

Hegel, Werke, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Frankfurt

am Main 1970

ff.

(Theorie-Werkausgabe), vol. 6, p. 553.

18Feuerbach

Zur Kritikder Hegelschell Philosophie, in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, p. 40.

19Ibid.

pp.

37

and 38.

2lbid., vol.

to

pp. 155-56; see Schelling SW (vol.

to

p.

152).

2lSW (4, 358) and (6, 185). I have reconstructed both arguments and documented them in

the Unendlichen Mangel an Sein, pp. 75ff., and pp. 109ff.

22SW (vol. to

p.

137). See Feuerbach, vol. 9, pp. 252-53.

2 MEW, 1. Additional Volume,

p.

574.

24HegeJ

Werke, vol. 5, p. 70.

25lbid.

26Cf. (vol. 10 p. 234).

27MEW 1

Additional Vol.,

p.

584.

28SW (vol. 10 pp. 158-59).

29MEW Vol.

2 p.

178.

,oMEW, I Additional Vol., pp. 585-86.

3lS

c

helling s Philosophie der Offenbarung 184112

p.

130.

2SW (vol. 10, pp. 212f.).

MEW,

1. Additional Vol., pp. 586f.

34

1 have documented these assertions

in

the introduction and in the documentation o my

edition

o

Schelling's

1841142

lecture. See pp. 24ff., 460ff., 468ff., and 476ff.

Pierre Leroux, De Dieu, in:

a

Revue Independante, Vol. 3 (April 1842), pp. 29-30.

translated by Joseph P. Lawrence

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