Pp 233 254 05 Bernstein1.Indd Libre

2004. Epoch, Volume 8, Issue 2 (Spring 2004). ISSN 1085-1968. pp. 233254

Philosophy of History as the History

of Philosophy in Schellings System of

Transcendental Idealism

JEFFREY BERNSTEIN

College of the Holy Cross

ABSTRACT: Schellings System of Transcendental Idealism is usually considered to be either

(1) an early Fichtean-infl uenced work that gives little insight into Schellings philosophy

or (2) a text focusing on self-consciousness and aesthetics. I argue that Schellings

System develops a subtle conception of history which originates in a dialogue with

Kant and Hegel (concerning the question of teleology) and concludes in proximity to

an Idealist version of Spinoza. In this way, Schelling develops a philosophy of history

which is, simultaneously, a dialectical engagement with the history of philosophy.

I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

The Schelling resurgence of the past decade has been benefi cial in a number of ways. First, Schelling is no longer unequivocally viewed as a mere precur-sor to Hegel (as was the view for the past half century). Second, important new translations of Schelling have emerged (in particular die Weltalter and Clara1) which provide greater visibility for Schelling both in journals and in the classroom. Finally, a reassessment of Schellings overall career is in its germinal stagesi.e., a discussion has begun as to which phase of Schellings thought provides the greatest philosophical insight, or at least speaks most directly to twentieth- and twenty-fi rst century philosophical concerns. Indeed, this raises the important question as to whether or not chronology is an adequate criterion for the project of philosophical assessment.

To the extent that this type of assessment has been occurringwith respect to Schellings thoughtwe would do well to locate its historical beginnings in

234 Jeffrey Bernstein

certain remarks made by Heine, Fichte, and Schelling himself in a similar nine-teenth-century discussion concerning Schellings work. In Heines On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (published fi rst in 1834 and again in 1852),2 we fi nd an ambivalent judgment with respect to the progression of Schellings philosophical career. On the one hand, Heine tells us, the early Schelling of the 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism3 is the truly philosophical Schelling insofar as he proceeds conceptually.4 On the other hand, the Schelling of the System is a mere imitator of his mentor Fichte (Schellings original work, according to Heine, being contained in the Naturphilosophie). This view is, by and large, shared by the late Schelling in his 18331834 Munich Lectures on Modern Philosophy: I was in so little hurry to put up my own system that I contented myself for the time being . . . with making the Fichtean system comprehensible.5 As Schelling goes on to note, Fichte clearly notices the difference between the substance of the System and that of Fichtes Grundlage. In a letter to Schelling (dated 15 November 1800), Fichte writes, I still do not agree with your opposition of transcendental philosophy and philosophy of nature. . . . Nature appears in transcendental phi-losophy as fully found (gefunden), that is, fi nished and complete, and furthermore it is discovered not according to its own laws but according to the immanent laws of the intellect.6 This certainly amounts to a rejection of Schellings departure from Fichtes monism of self-consciousness. However, insofar as Fichte also rec-ognizes Schellings innovation, his statement can additionally be understood as a challenge to the chronologically-based assessment to which Heine and Schelling both fall victim.7 Moreover, ironically enough, the greatest opponent of Schellings System turns out to be a strong voice in support of treating the System as a serious philosophical work.

Given this interpretation of Fichtes comments, I would like to suggest that the discussion of history, in Schellings System, is one place particularly worthy of at-tention. Schellings text is, after all, a history of self-consciousness; it is by virtue of this historical movement that one comes to recognize both (1) the absolute identity which constitutes the primordial and indifferent ground of self-consciousness and (2) the aesthetic intuition which discloses this identity. Therefore, although attention has been paid to the issues of self-consciousness and aesthetics in the System, I believe that focusing on the history discussion is of crucial importance for understanding this text.8

At this point, however, Heines remark about the early Schelling can serve as another type of provocation for considering the System: it often seems to me necessary . . . to distinguish where his [Schellings] thinking ends and his poetry begins.9 This strange separation between thinking and poetry leads Heine to the conclusion that Herr Schelling is now leaving the path of philosophy and seeking to attain to the contemplation of the absolute itself by a kind of mystical intuition.10 The problem with this statement is that Heine places Schelling in a

Philosophy of History as the History of Philosophy in Schellings System 235

narrative bound for failure. Heine here utilizes the chronological method of as-sessment in order to discount the developments which were in fact apprehended only through the imposition of chronology.

This problem can be additionally illustrated by a brief comparison of Schellings treatment of history in the System as opposed to subsequent texts such as the Freiheitschrift and die Weltalter. One might suggest that the difference between the Systems history-discussion and those of subsequent texts is one of form. The System provides a fully conceptual articulation of history as having its teleological moment in the radical futurity gestured to in the aesthetic intuition. This intuition ultimately discloses the unity of nature and consciousness in the indifferent ground of absolute identity.11 In contrast to this fully discursive presen-tation, the Freiheitschrift and Weltalter texts present this insight aesthetically. In other words, whereas the System speaks conceptually about the movement of his-tory (with reference to the Absolute), the subsequent texts poeticize (and therefore give an immediately historical articulation of) this very historical movement. This is, admittedly, no small difference. For Heine, it suggests that the System (despite its merely marching along in Fichtes footsteps12) remains philosophical while the subsequent works indicate where Schellings philosophy ends and his poetry, or rather folly, begins.13 Yet for thinkers who seriously consider the aesthetic as an authentic mode of making life manifest (e.g., Hlderlin, Nietzsche, and Hei-degger), poetic illumination would be precisely the improvement over conceptual articulations like the Systems; it would disclose history historically.

Although I will defend the historico-philosophical signifi cance and inter-est of the Systems history-discussion, I will do so in a manner different from Heines (and, in fact, Schellings) chronologically-based opposition between the philosophical and the poetic. Viewed from a different standpoint, Schellings presentation of history (in the System) assumes an entirely historical form; while the System does not conceive of history by means of an historical poeticization, it does conceive of it through an intense engagement with the history of philosophy concerning the issue of teleology. In this paper, I claim that the account of his-tory which Schelling gives in the System effects an interesting and provocative oscillation between Kants pseudo-teleological conception of history and Hegels ultra-teleological conception (as he will come to formulate it in the Introduction to his Lectures on History).14 Through a careful reading of the history section in the System, I track this oscillation in order to illuminate how Schellings philoso-phy of history (particularly in his concern with the issue of historical teleology) is presented as an engagement with the history of philosophy (particularly with Kant and Hegel). Insofar as Hegel develops his conception of historical teleology during and subsequent to the System, Schellings engagement with the history of philosophy cannot merely be reducible to a chronological investigation. This departure from chronology is further elaborated in my subsequent claim that the


oscillation between Kant and Hegel ultimately leads Schelling to a new concep-tual place marked by yet another philosophical fi gurei.e., an Idealist version of Spinoza.

II. THE HISTORY DISCUSSION IN SCHELLINGS SYSTEM

In the overall context of Schellings System, a philosophy of history would be for the practical part of philosophy precisely what nature is for the theoretical part (STI: 201). That is, it would be the penultimate moment of expressing how humans come to attain self-understanding within the sphere of action (the fi nal moment being through aesthetic intuition). We need to realize that self-consciousness is (for Schelling) not the self-consciousness of a discrete individual I, but rather a common and temporally unfolding intuition amounting to the foundation and, as it were, the solid earth upon which all interaction between intelligences takes place (STI: 164). We might, from the outset, anticipate that history would be the common stage upon which practical human events continuously occur. We might, in further anticipation, raise the following series of questions concerning history: How is it possible that a necessary purpose for history can preserve the free character of history? Further, what would be the status of such a purpose? Would it assume a critical character (as it does in Kant), thus remaining wholly determined by (and, in fact, be inseparable from15) human reason? Or would it, instead, have the character of an ontological and/or theological force (as it does in Hegel16)? Though stated provisionally, it is the case that these questionsfor-mulated as the general concern with historical teleologyare the organizing moments of Schellings entire inquiry.

1. The Concern with Historical Teleology and the Concept of History

Schellings history discussion emerges from explicitly political concerns.17 Were one not concerned about overwhelming and displacing Kants own philosophy of history, one could locate the beginnings of Schellings history discussion within the fi rst third of the Seventh Proposition in Kants 1784 essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. For Kant, progress in universal history ultimately requires abandoning a lawless state of savagery and entering a federa-tion of peoples (Vlkerbund) in which every state, even the smallest, could expect to derive its security and rights not from its own power or its own legal judgment, but solely from this great federation (Fdus Amphictyonum) from a united power and the law-governed decisions of a united will.18 For Schelling, such a federa-tion of all states (Fderation alles Staten) (STI: 198) would require a universal constitution which, in providing unifying fi rst principles, would be able to bring about universal allegiance to a state of states (STI: 198) rather than merely preserve the individual constitutions of participating states. However, even such


a constitution would not itself be suffi cient to compel states to adhere; compliance with a universal allegiance could only come through the free participation of the states themselves. Schelling is therefore led to the question as to how freedom can serve as the necessary determining basis of a historical occurrence such as political allegiance? This question, the inaugural question for the Systems history discussion, is articulated by Schelling in the following manner:

The emergence of the universal constitution cannot be consigned to mere chance, and is accordingly to be anticipated only from the free play of forces that we discern in history. The question arises, therefore, as to whether a series of circumstances without plan or purpose can deserve the name of history at all, and whether in the mere concept of history there is not already contained also the concept of a necessity which choice itself is compelled to serve. (STI: 199)

One sees another Kantian text, alongside the Universal History essay, at work in this passagei.e., the Third Antinomy from Kants First Critique. For purposes of the present context, we might paraphrase this Antinomy as follows: historical events have, as their causes, freely chosen decisions. But freedom cannot, itself, provide the unity and determination needed for the creation and causality of a historical continuum. It would appear, then, that there must ultimately be a plan or purpose which provides the necessity, determination, and organization which will unify these freely chosen events into a coherent series.19 But, according to Schelling, we can only truly arrive at the resolution to this antinomy by fi rst ascertaining the concept of history (STI: 199). Given this, we can understand the problem of teleology as motivating his next question, which focuses on what it means to be historical.

Another way of articulating the need for a coherent series of historical events is to put the issue concretely in terms of successive generations. If the term history refers to anything at all, it refers to the delivering-over (literally ber-lieferung) in time of certain ideas, practices, attitudes, and cultures from one individual/society to another: if that which is to be realized in the progress of history is something attainable only through reason and freedom, . . . there should also be the possibility of tradition or transmission (Tradition oder berlieferung) (STI: 200). But such delivering-over can only happen if there is a requisite spatial and temporal unity allowing for the transmissive process. This unity would have to be in some sense ontologically (though by no means temporally) prior to the resulting specifi c transmissive actions. Schelling calls this prior unity an ursprnglichen Original (STI: 199). This two-foldedness of the inceptive moment suggests that, according to Schelling, such unity cannot simply serve as a clearly delineated foundation or origin with respect to historical representation or action; no space between the unity and the multiplicity would exist. Instead, this unity would be the actual totality of history.


It stands to reason that no one individual could actualize the entirety of this historical unityonly the entire species or, in Schellings language, genus could fulfi ll this ideal of history (STI: 200). Stated in Kantian terms, no conditioned element can ever, by itself, attain the unconditioned. Schelling thus comes to the realization of a new feature of history, namely that there can only be a history of such beings as have an ideal before them, which can never be carried out by the individual, but only by the genus (Gattung) (STI: 200). The unfolding of historical unity would thus be an ideal for the individual, but a goal of the species/genus. It is this ideal which furnishes Schellings philosophy of history with its teleology insofar as Schelling conceives of such unfolding as progress (STI: 200).

But this generic conception of history has another side to it; not only can historical unity (as an ideal) only be realized by the entire genus but it neces-sarily shows itself already in/as the original. We can now see that, for Schelling, unity is not simply the totality of historical events (just as it is not simply a sepa-rated foundational origin), but the very occurrence of events in their necessary temporal upsurge; the ground of history would be the emergence of history (understood from a particular standpoint). The emergent unity of the original would also, therefore, fi nd fulfi llment in/as the ideal. Put differently, Schelling is thinking unity neither as static totality nor as stable foundation but, instead, as manifestation.20

This conception of the generic leads Schelling to make the immediate as-sociation of history with naturean association which lifts our perception of nature out of the realm of the merely natural:

If we wanted to speak of a history of nature in the true sense of the word, we should have to picture nature as though, apparently, free in its productions, it had gradually brought forth the whole multiplicity thereof through constant departures from a primordial original (einem ursprnglichen Original); which would then be a history, not of natural objects (which is properly the description of nature), but of generative (hervorbringenden) nature itself. (STI: 199)

The locale of objectifi ed life (i.e., the genus or individual considered as an object of theoretical cognition) is, for Schelling, nature. And in good Kantian fashion, history would be that same locale understood from the standpoint of free, temporally pro-ductive (i.e., human) activity. But Schelling now faces a more specifi ed version of the problem which confronted him in his discussion of the universal constitution for all states: how can we conceive of nature as both productive activity and the emergent manifestation of (i.e., the constant departures from) an original/ideal? Differently stated, how can there be both freedom and necessity?

2. The Unity of Freedom and Necessity and the Dialectic with Kant and Hegel

In the Forward to the 1809 Freiheitschrift, Schelling announces that [t]he time has come for the higher, or rather the proper (eigentlich) opposition to come to


the fore: the opposition of necessity and freedom, in which the innermost center of philosophy fi rst comes to view.21 Viewed from a non-chronological perspec-tive, this statement could just as easily have occurred (and, in some sense, does occur) in the Systems deduction of history. For the problem which Schelling now faces has to do with the negotiation between empirical freedom and necessity with respect to historical unfolding. This problem does not necessarily demand a complete solution; it does, however, need to be posed in such a manner that it will help rather than hinder the Systems deduction. The way Schelling poses the problem would appear to overcome Kants Third Antinomyfor the purposes of history, there can never be full freedom (i.e., lawlessness) or full necessity (i.e., lawfulness); the two must function dialectically: it is self-evident that an abso-lutely lawless series of events is no more entitled to the name of history than an absolutely law-abiding one (STI: 200). Schelling continues this undertaking:

whence it is apparent:

a. that the idea of progress implicit in all history permits no conformity to law such as would limit free activity to a determinate and constantly recursive succession of acts;

b. that nothing whatever can be an object of history which proceeds according to a determinate mechanism, or whose theory is a priori. Theory and history are totally opposed. Man has a history only because what he will do is incapable of being calculated in advance according to any theory. Choice is to that extent the goddess of history. (STI: 200)

To say that the idea of progress permits no conformity to law is to say that em-pirical freedom is the sine qua non of history. To say that nothing theoretical or a priori can limit history is to say that there can be no moment of application from the transcendentalwe can interpolate teleologically unifyingrealm to the empirical. And, in fact, Schelling says precisely this regarding the teleologi-cal explanation of history: So far as concerns the basic principles of teleology, the reader will doubtless recognize for himself that they point to the only way of explaining the coexistence of mechanism with purposiveness in nature in an intelligible manner (STI: 4) but that the merely teleological application of them [i.e., of proofs for the existence of empirical objects] would not in fact advance true knowledge a single step, since notoriously the teleological explanation of an object can teach me nothing whatever as to its real origin(wirklichen Ursprung) (STI: 34). Put slightly differently, although there must be unity (or, for Schelling, progress) in history, such unity can in no way direct, infl uence, or attempt to fully explain historical events. From the standpoint of the empirical (i.e., for Schelling, real) world, there is freedom all the way down. That this freedom occurs within the context of unity merely means that (as stated earlier) the constitutive transmissive moment of history needs a spatio-temporal structure as the very


condition for historys possibility; history would admit of no continuity if there were pure heteronomy.

We can at this point, hear the infl uence of Proposition One of Kants Universal History essay: if we abandon this basic principle [i.e., the teleological theory of nature] we are faced not with a law-governed nature, but with an aimless, random process, and the dismal reign of chance replaces the guiding principle of reason (PW: 42). For Schelling, as for Kant, teleology/historical unity is a necessary presupposition in order to think or speak about history; it would be irrational to inquire into history without presupposing this moment. In other words, this presupposition appears to be normative; and for Kant, it is normative. The teleo-logical principle is inseparable from our reason; purposiveness in nature thus necessarily assumes an as if character. Is this the case for Schelling? By the time we move to the third self-evident proposition issuing from the deduction of his-tory, we fi nd that Schelling makes a surprising turn: neither absolute lawlessness, nor a series of events without aim or purpose, deserve the name of history, and . . . its peculiarity (Eigentmliche) is constituted only by freedom and lawfulness in conjunction, or by the gradual realization of a never fully lost Ideal on the part of a whole genus of beings (STI: 200). That this ideal was never fully lost suggests that it bears some (if not total) relation to the original unity of history. And to speak of an original/ideal which is not simply reducible to human reason is to move the inquiry from a critical to an ontological register.22 It is now no longer a matter of affi rming a teleological principle in order to preserve human reason, but because such a principle is both connected to the original unity of life and held out as the emerging goal of life.

Hegel serves as the example par excellence for this type of historical ontologi-zation through his extension of reason from that which primarily constitutes the human being (as is the case for Kant) to that which also constitutes the being of Spirit. In doing so (to paraphrase one of his more celebrated remarks), he bestows upon reason a substantiality in addition to a subjectivity. Reason now functions as an objective, not merely normative, ground for world history:

Reason is the infi nite content, the very stuff of all essence and truth, which gives to its own activity to be worked up. For, unlike fi nite activity, it does not need such conditions as an external material, or given means from which to get its nourishment and the objects of its activity. It lives on itself, and it is itself the material upon which it works. Just as Reason is its own presupposition and absolute goal, so it is the activation of that goal in world historybringing it forth from the inner source to external manifestation. (IPH: 12)

For Hegel, reason is indeed the origin and ideal of history insofar asqua Spirits beingit constitutes the very activity of life. This ontological character of Hegels rational-historical origin and ideal fi nds an analogue in Schellings ursprnglichen Original (which is, simultaneously, an Ideal) with the important difference being


that Schelling will refrain from the predication of reason. As we shall see (accord-ing to Schelling), historys original unity, while not irrational, is arational (insofar as it originally manifests indifference).

As we suggested before (and as we have been anticipating), the second moment of Schellings dialectical presentation of history deals with the necessity/lawful-ness ascribed to the ursprnglichen Original. This moment amounts to nothing less than an inquiry into the transcendental possibility of history (STI: 200)which, for Schelling, would lead directly to a philosophy of history (properly speaking) (STI: 201). In other words, a philosophy of history depends upon an interpretation of historys groundi.e., that standpoint which provides the necessary unity for history. Regarding the question as to our access to the transcendental possibil-ity of history, Schelling has this to say: so far as the transcendental necessity of history is concerned, it has already been deduced in the foregoing from the fact that the universal reign of law has been set before rational beings as a problem, realizable only by the genus as a whole, that is, only by way of history (STI: 202). That a universal constitution determining a Fderation alles Staten is a real pos-sibility for humanity means, for Schelling, that humanity has the access (i.e., the provocation) for inquiry into the transcendental necessity of history. Phrased in very different (but not inappropriate) language, Schelling (like Kant) sees events such as the French Revolution as providing an indication or sign of the fact that there can be progress in history; that an ultimate unifying operation may be in a process of temporal unfolding. Schelling views his philosophy of history as an exercise in explication and illumination of this play between free historical action and necessary spatio-temporal unity without trying to (as stated above) apply this dialectic to the actual unfolding of a specifi c world order: We content ourselves here . . . with merely drawing the conclusion, that the sole true object of the historian can only be the gradual emergence of a political world order, for this, indeed, is the sole ground for a history (STI: 202). Order and freedom in their two-fold emergence within the realm of politicsthis, according to Schelling, constitutes the actuality of history.

Raised to the conceptual level, however, Schellings philosophy of history will only deal with how there can be necessary unity and free heteronomy at the same time: We now pass on . . . to the primary characteristic of history, namely that it should exhibit a unity (Vereinigung) of freedom and necessity, and be possible through this unity alone (STI: 203). Just as the question concerning freedom and necessity had become more specifi ed for Schelling during the course of the inquiry, now the contradictory character of such a unity becomes intensifi ed: on the one hand, freedom cannot be merely something either bestowed upon people or wrested by them illegally (STI: 203). It needs to be essentially theirs; it needs to emerge from the unity of the very political organization of which they are a part. On the other hand, this political order only exists due to its realization


by free individuals and communities (STI: 203). A contradiction ensues insofar as the goal of politics presupposes that goal as its very condition of possibility: That which is the fi rst condition of outward freedom is, for that very reason, no less necessary than freedom itself. And it is likewise to be realized only through freedom, that is, its emergence is consigned to chance (STI: 203204). How can necessity, if it is to have any historical signifi cance, operate as the transitional mo-ment in the emergence and realization of freedom? Schellings answer attempts to survive Kants Third Antinomy by simultaneously appropriating its dualistic character and doubling it; in a manner reminiscent of Hegel, Schelling holds that: The only way of resolving it [this contradiction] is that in freedom itself there should again be necessity . . . freedom is to be necessity, and necessity freedom (STI: 204). How, exactly, will this resolve the contradiction? In a statement similar to his pronouncement of 1809about philosophys innermost center being the opposition of necessity and freedomSchelling here claims this issue to be the highest problem of transcendental philosophy (STI: 204).

3. Unconscious, Absolute, and Art

If freedom amounts to the capacity for humans to consciously make choicesthereby initiating series of eventsthen necessity amounts to something which exceeds this capacity (i.e., the involuntary aspect of human being [STI: 204]). Necessity, on Schellings account is that force or drive which (in the purest sense) acts on, in, and through each individual. Schelling names this force the uncon-scious (das Bewutlose); he explains this integral relationship between freedom and necessity as follows:

[O]ut of the most uninhibited expression of freedom there arises unawares something wholly involuntary (unwillkrlichthis also carries the senses of spontaneous and instinctive), and perhaps even contrary to the agents will, which he himself could never have realized through his willing. This statement, however paradoxical it may seem, is yet nothing other than a mere transcen-dental expression of the generally accepted and assumed relationship between freedom and a hidden necessity, at times called fate and at times providence . . . a relationship whereby men through their own free action, and yet against their will, must become cause of something which they never wanted, or by which, conversely, something must go astray or come to naught which they have sought for freely and with the exertion of all their powers. (STI: 204)

In Kantian terminology, we might describe this unconscious necessity as that force which unifi es the manifold of human action into a historical whole. Fate or Provi-dence would thus be the very unfolding of history itself without the possibility of any theoretically applicable teleology; as in the Kantian model, progress would only be possible in a practical sense (insofar as historical events and occurrences could only occur through the free actions of humans). However, insofar as this unconscious


force is ontological, Schellings conception shifts closer to the Hegelian model; such unity would (as stated above) not merely be the by-product of human reason, but instead would be organically related to historys unfolding movement.

The question of how humans can actualize the unity of history now returns: how, Schelling asks, when we act quite freely, that is, with consciousness, can something arise for us unconsciously, which we never intended, and which free-dom, left to itself, could never have brought about? (STI: 205). In other words, how can there be a reconciliation between freedom and necessity when necessity runs counter to every individuals free actions? How can there be a unity to history at all? The answer, for Schelling, is the same one given in his initial discussion concerning the need for unity in history: such a reconciliation between conscious freedom and unconscious necessity can only take place in the context of the entire species/genusit can only happen generically: we are here of course talking, not of the individuals action, but of the action of the entire genus (STI: 206).23 As stated earlier, this is, in effect, the practical analogue to Schellings discussion of the pre-established harmony of intelligences (STI: 164) given in the theoretical section of the System. And, again, we see the oscillation between Kant and Hegel take place: this reconciliation between unconscious necessity and human free-dominsofar as it amounts to a play of contrary impulsesresembles Kants conception of unsociable sociability in the Fourth Proposition of his Universal History essay (PW: 4445). However, insofar as this reconciliation is not merely a function of human reasonbut maintains, instead, an ontological statusit resembles Hegels conception of the cunning of Reason (where Reason is un-derstood as an integral moment of Spirit) (IPH: 35).

What specifi cally would (or could) be the condition for the possibility of this reconciliation? What would be the character of this unconscious necessary unity? Unifying necessity, Schelling holds,

is inconceivable unless the objective factor in all acting is something com-munal, whereby all the acts of men are guided to one harmonious goal and are so guided, that however they may set about things, and however unbridled the exercise of their choice, they yet must go where they did not want to, without, and even against, their own will . . . this necessity can itself be thought of only through an absolute synthesis of all actions, from which there develops every-thing that happens, and hence also the whole of history; and in which, because it is absolute, everything is so far weighed and calculated that everything that may happen, however contradictory and discordant it may seem, still has and discovers its ground of unity (Vereinigungsgrund) therein. (STI: 207)

As stated earlier, unity in history does not occur via a static and discrete founda-tion which is ontologically separate from the subsequent unifi ed contents. Rather, this unity is nothing other than an absolute synthesis of all actionsi.e., it is the emergent movement of historical occurrence in its unconditioned totality. As


Schelling states, this movement discovers its unity from within; history grounds itself. To say that this unity is absolute is to say that it becomes manifest as unconditioned. To say that such a unity is a synthesis is to say that it is not un-derstood from any particular perspective but rather, from the perspective of all actionsi.e., as unconditioned.

Insofar as this unity is a synthesis of actions, it occurs as a result of acting humans. But insofar as this unity is unconditioned, it occurs through the actions of the entire genus (not the individual). How are we to think this generic unity? For Schelling, necessity (i.e., lawfulness) cannot come merely from consciousness insofar as consciousness is correlated with freedom. This means that the necessary unity of/in history cannot be understood by means of concepts (which are instru-ments of consciousness). Instead, this unity can only be accessed by means of an intuitionbut one which cannot occur merely on the individual level. Schelling explains the apprehending of this unity in the following way: history, objectively regarded, is nothing else but a series of data which appears subjectively as a series of free actions. The objective factor in history is thus an intuition indeed, but not an intuition of the individual, for it is not the individual who acts in history, but rather the genus; hence the intuitant, or the objective factor in history, will have to be one for the entire genus (STI: 206207). Phrased slightly differently, it is not merely the singularity of free individuals who constitute history but, instead, the necessary generic unity of the individuals actions. Similarly, the intuition of such unity cannot occur individually but only generically. We might say (in quasi-Hegelian fashion) that history is the progressive coming to intuition of unity in/as self-differentiating emergence.

The unifi cation occurring as the absolute synthesis of historical action does not, as yet, provide any insight into the way in which freedom and necessity are reconciled: This unity does not explain . . . the coexistence of lawlessness, i.e., of freedom, with conformity to law. In other words, it leaves us none the wiser as to how that harmony is effected between this objective element, which through its own lawfulness, generates what it generates, in complete independence of freedom, and the freely determining element (STI: 208). It is one thing to assert that freedom and necessity are to be dialectically related to one another. It is quite another thing to show how this relation/reconciliation would occur. It is at this point that the two-foldedness of Schellings conception of unitythe ursprnglichen Original again gains signifi cance. Recall that this conception simultaneously signals both emergent unity and the ground of this emergent unity (the two not being distinct from one another). When viewed from the standpoint of history, this primordial Original is the emergent totality of his-torical action. When viewed from an originating standpoint, this primordial Original is the absolute identity of freedom and necessity. Schelling gives the following explanation:


[I]f this higher thing [i.e., common source of the intelligent and the free] be nothing else but the ground of identity between the absolutely subjective and the absolutely objective, the conscious and the unconscious, which part com-pany precisely in order to appear in the free act, then this higher thing itself can be neither subject nor object, nor both at once, but only the absolute identity, in which is no duality at all, and which, precisely because duality is the condition of all consciousness, can never attain thereto. This eternal unknown . . . [is] the eternal mediator between the self-determining subjective within us and, and the objective or intuitant; at once the ground of lawfulness in freedom, and of freedom in the lawfulness of the object. (STI: 208209)

When understood as ground, the necessary unity is seen not merely as the absolute synthesis of all actions, but the absolute identity of actions and forces whichas unconditionedexceeds the dualities which arise in the conscious movement of historical occurrences. While this absolute identity is merely perspectivally distinct from the standpoint of absolute synthesis, it can be un-derstood (in Schellings account) to provide a derivation for that other standpoint and everything which issues from it (i.e., the unity of history). Put differently, this identity is the standpoint of unity understood as simple indivisibility which grounds the standpoint of unity understood as totality. The unconscious unity of historythe ursprnglichen Originalhas two simultaneous moments: (1) a monistic moment where there are no oppositions but mere indifference and (2) a totalistic moment where all oppositions emerge synthetically in the movement of history.24 We shall return to this two-fold conception of the ursprnglichen Original in the penultimate section as we discuss Schellings philosophy of his-tory as approximating an Idealist version of Spinoza.

Insofar as absolute identity, for Schelling, can not admit of any predication (due to its simplicity), it can never be an object of knowledge. Predication (as is the case with all forms of distinction) is a by-product of consciousness; therefore, it can-not exist with respect to the standpoint of absolute identity (STI: 209). Schellings discussion of this point again moves in an explicitly Kantian direction: it [absolute identity] is the absolutely simple, and thus can have no predicates drawn either from intelligence or free agency, and hence, too, can never be an object of knowl-edge, being an object only that is eternally presupposed in action, that is, an object of belief (STI: 209). This recalls Kants discussion of God as a regulative (rather than constitutive) principle of reason in the First Critique (A685686/B714); it also recalls Kants conception of natural purposiveness (in his Perpetual Peace essay) as holding practical, rather than theoretical, value (PW: 108109). Like Kant, Schelling holds that we are obliged to believe in such identity in the service of practical aims. Similarly, since this identity cannot be given in consciousness without the moment of necessity becoming empirical (thus doing away with the moment of freedom and, likewise, history), Schelling holds that, [w]e can


. . . conceive of no point in time at which the absolute synthesisor to put it in empirical terms, the design of providenceshould have brought its development to completion (STI: 210). This is, perhaps, the moment of greatest resistance between Schellings philosophy of history and more conventionally teleological conceptions: absolute identity/synthesis (qua absolute) can never be brought to consciousness; therefore, it can never be taken as fully actualizedi.e., there can never be any specifi c legitimate claim made about the end of history. Even given the ontological character of Schellings conception of historical teleology, it can never provide any particular justifi cation for attempts to bring about the end of history because such an end (i.e., absolute unity) is constitutively unavailable to any particular human or group of humans. This end (or rather, unity) can only be accessed via an intuition apprehended generically.

What kind of intuition could possibly be available to the entire genus? [We] shall be likeliest, Schelling holds, to fi nd traces (die Spur) of this eternal and unalterable identity in the lawfulness which runs, like the weaving of an un-known hand, through the free play of choice in history (STI: 209). Fair enough, but which aspect of history shall we investigate? Which mode of human activ-ity would best be able to yield such traces? It cannot be simply history which yields the intuition, as Schelling notes: since it [identity] is the ground for the explanation of history, it cannot, conversely, be demonstrated from history (STI: 213). There must be a particularly appropriate access for the generic intuition of absolute synthesis/identity.

Schelling begins this search by noting that such a productive activity would have to yield (in analogous conception to that contained in Kants Third Critique) a product that is purposive (zweckmig) without being purposively generated (zweckmig hervorgebracht) (STI: 214). Necessary purposive unity must emerge as an intuition for the free self. This purposiveness without a purpose Schelling understands to be the principle of all teleology (STI: 214). Schelling holds that the access to the generic intuition of (purposive) identity would have to provide insight as to how the ultimate ground of harmony between the subjective [i.e., freedom, consciousness] and the objective [i.e., necessity, intuition] becomes an object [i.e., intuition] to the self itself (STI: 217).

In other words, the harmony between freedom and necessity must not only be the content of the intuition, it must be its form25 as well: Every organism is a monogram of that original (ursprnglichen) identity, but in order to recognize itself in that refl ected image, the self must already have recognized itself directly in the identity in question . . . it [the intuition] can be no other than the intuition of art (STI: 218). In the intuition, therefore, there must be a harmony between freedom and necessity and between the self and the original identitya two-fold harmony which is present in aesthetic intuition. Our access for this


intuition, according to Schelling, is the art-product or rather, the product of genius (STI: 222).

Because of this, Schelling claims that art is paramount to the philosopher (STI: 231) insofar as the philosophers task must end where arts task begins (i.e., at the limit of particularizing conceptuality and the intuition of identity). What might this insight suggest to humanity at this particular historical juncture? Schelling now provides a brief genealogy of (and desire for) the return to mythol-ogy as a privileged mode of discourse and learning:

Philosophy was born and nourished by poetry in the infancy of knowledge, and with it all the sciences it has guided toward perfection; we may thus ex-pect them, on completion, to fl ow back like so many individual streams into the universal ocean of poetry from which they took their source. Nor is it in general diffi cult to say what the medium for this return of science to poetry will be; for in mythology such a medium existed, before the occurrence of a breach now seemingly beyond repair. But how a new mythology is itself to arise, which shall be the creation, not of some individual author, but of a new race (Geschlects26), personifying, as it were, one single poetthat is a problem whose solution can be looked for only in the future destinies of the world, and in the course of history to come. (STI: 232233)27

Although history fi nds the trace of its telos in aesthetic intuition, the full actu-alization of history (via the apprehensionand mythologizationof such an intuition by the entire genus) remains radically futural; as stated earlier, an in-defi nite postponement of this telos is manifest in Schellings conception of history. We cannot apply the Schellingian conception of teleology in order to make claims about the end of history simply because we can never have a full conception of the presenthistorical unity, manifest only in the aesthetic intuition, disrupts our capacities for attaining such a complete conception (hence, the totality of his-tory exists merely at the formal level). The most we can do, from the standpoint of the genus, is to attempt attainment of aesthetic intuition (and help as many others as possible to attain it as well) while we remain unwitting participants in historys unfolding.

4. The Three Periods of History and Spinoza

History as a whole, Schelling tells us, is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the absolute (STI: 211). This holds for both the epochs of self-con-sciousness and for the periods of world history. It comes, then, as no surprise that both historical movements runs parallel courses with each other (concerning their respective triadic structures28) in Schellings System.

Just as the fi rst epoch of self-consciousness begins with original sensation (STI: 51), we fi nd that the fi rst period of history is ruled by a wholly blind force which rules over humans as an impersonal destiny (STI: 211). For Schelling, this


tragic period gains its concrete expression in the downfall of the glory and the wonder of the ancient world (STI: 211). Just as the second epoch of self-con-sciousness begins with productive intuition (STI: 94), we fi nd that the second period of history begins at the moment where blind destiny becomes manifest as nature (STI: 211). This period, characterized by the rule of natural law (STI: 211), fi nds its concrete expression in the expansion of the mighty republic of Rome (STI: 212). Since all events are understood, at this point, as outcomes of nature, Schelling tells us that even Romes demise has neither a tragic or moral aspect, being a necessary outcome of natures laws (STI: 212). Finally, as the third epoch of self-consciousness begins with refl ection and progresses to an absolute act of will (STI: 134)thereby effecting the transition from the theo-retical to the practical section of Schellings System (STI: 151)the third period of history marks the moment where destiny and nature can retrospectively be understood as the beginning of a providence imperfectly revealing itself (STI: 212). Schelling ends his brief historical periodization with a remarkable claim: When this period will begin, we are unable to say. But whenever this period will be (sein wird) God also will then be (wird . . . sein) (STI: 212).

We need to remember that, for Schelling, the absolute and unconditioned unity of history can never emerge as fully present at any point in history because such unity is the totality of history. We might here understand Schelling to be suggesting that this third period of history would remain (as stated above) radically futural, unable to be accessed except through aesthetic intuition (i.e., as a moment of the future occurring in the present). The naming of the absolute as God, however, now places Schellings conception of history in the proximity of Spinoza; for if the unity of history is the absolute, and the absolute is God, then we exist as moments (in Spinozas language, modes) of Gods historical self-revelation. How, one might ask, does this differ from Hegels conception of history where history is the self-unfolding and self-understanding of Absolute Spirit? The difference lies in the fact that, for Hegel, such unfolding happens primarily along rational/discursive (i.e., conceptual) lines. Insofar as Schelling privileges intuition as the moment of absolute understanding, he more closely resembles Spinoza (recall Spinozas discussion of the third [and highest] kind of knowing as intuitive29).

It is, ultimately, Schellings conception of historical monism (or, in a more precise Schellingian sense,30 monistic duality) which leads him beyond the dia-lectic of Kant and Hegel toward an Idealist version of Spinoza. Schelling holds that while God never is (ist), if being is (sein . . . ist) that which presents itself in the objective world (STI: 211), God still continually reveals Himself. Man through his history, provides a continuous demonstration of Gods presence, a demonstration, however, which only the whole of history can render complete (STI: 211). Insofar as history is absolute unity, our continuous demonstration of Gods self-revelation is nothing other than that very self-revelation. This is a ver-


sion of Spinozas discussions concerning God as the one substance within which all fi nite modes (e.g., human beings and their actions) occur.31

One can understand Schellings summing-up of history in a similar manner: history itself is a never wholly completed revelation of that absolute which, for the sake of consciousness, and thus merely for the sake of appearance, separates itself into conscious and unconscious, the free and the intuitant; but which itself, however, . . . is eternal identity and the everlasting ground of harmony between the two (STI: 211). History is the unfolding of the absolute both as a synthetic totality of diverse actions and as the indivisibly unifi ed ground of such total-ity. This parallels Spinozas distinction between God/Nature as natura naturata (i.e., nature in its manifold expressions) and natura naturans (i.e., nature in its indivisible singularity/absolute infi nity). For both Schelling and Spinoza, these distinctions are merely perspectival; there is no ontological split occurring be-tween synthesis and identity for Schelling, just as there is none between manifold nature and simple nature for Spinoza. Hence, Schelling can here be understood to appropriate the familiar Spinozistic dictum Deus sive Natura in order to transform it into Deus sive Historia.

Finally, this monism fi nds expression in Schellings conception of generic intuition and the hope for a single generic poet. In Schellings references to both a genus-wide intuition and a genus which acts together as one poet, one can discern an appropriation of Spinozas defi nition of singular things (Ethics 2D7): by singular things I understand things that are fi nite and have a determinate existence. And if a number of individuals so concur in one action that together they are all the cause of one effect, I consider them all, to that extent, as one singular thing.32 If many act together in a certain way, they attain the possibility of becoming one individual. Therefore, if the entire genus can acquire aesthetic intuition and poeticize out of that intuition, they would bring the unity of history (i.e., the absolute, God) to full revelation. Schellings hope for the full revelation of historical unity ultimately takes its point of departure from Spinozas monistic insight.

III. CONCLUDING REMARKS

In his 1936 Freiburg Lectures on the Freiheitschrift, Martin Heidegger says this about Schelling, Schelling is the truly creative and boldest thinker of this whole age of German philosophy. He is that to such an extent that he drives German Idealism from within right past its own fundamental position.33 In the present context, we can interpret Heideggers statement in the following manner: Schelling, via a dialectical engagement with Kant and Hegel concerning the question of historical teleology, fi nds his own Idealism ultimately in the process of moving past that very dialectic. For Schelling, teleology amounts to the ontological unity of historical manifestation in both its expressive and grounding capacitiesthis


is Schellings Hegelian moment. Such unity, however, can neither (1) achieve full actualization during any particular point in history, nor (2) serve as the content of application with respect to positing a historical telos; insofar as it remains accessible only via generic intuition, it cannot serve as the object of knowledge but only beliefthis is Schellings Kantian moment. In the light of Schellings philosophy of history, we are given an ontologically unifying conception of history which resists the application of a teloswe are left with a conception of teleology which imposes on events nothing other than an intuition of historical unity. It is this moment where Schellings thinking exceeds the Kantian-Hegelian dialectic and moves in the direction of Spinoza.

However, the version of Spinoza which Schelling affi rms still remains within an Idealist trajectory. Schelling, in the end, remains tied to a divinized monism. Schelling can only think this historical unity of forces as a living and revealing God even when this God amounts to nothing more than intelligibility at the onto-logical level: Every individual intelligence can be regarded as a constitutive part of God, or of the moral world order (STI: 206).34 God cannot, for Schelling, be nature pure and simple (as it is for Spinoza). There must, for Schelling, ultimately be something like an intelligible or meaningful order to life (however removed from individual cognition it may be).35 Because of this, teleologyeven when it amounts solely to the intuition of historically monistic unityalways already amounts to a departure from Spinoza. Given his complete and utter rejection of fi nal causality,36 the belief in absolute identity (insofar as it admits of a real, ontological character) would remain uncompelling to Spinoza. This being the case, however, Schellings dialectical presentation of philosophy of history as the history of philosophy still amounts to both (1) a genuinely historical engagement with history and (2) a fascinating and unique conceptualization of a Spinozistic Idealism which proceeds beyond the limits of Kant and Hegel.37


NOTES

1. Strong translations now exist of both the 1813 and 1815 versions of die Weltalter. For the 1813 version, see Judith Normans translation in Slavoj iek and F. W. J. Von Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/The Ages of the World (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997). For the 1815 version, see F. W. J. Schelling, The Ages of the World, trans. Jason M. Wirth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). For Clara, see F. W. J. Schelling, Clara or, On Natures Connection to the Spirit World, trans. Fiona Steinkamp (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002).

2. Heinrich Heine, Selected Prose, trans. Ritchie Robertson (New York: Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 199294.

3. F. W. J. Schelling, System der transzendentalen Idealismus, ed. Horst D. Brandt and Peter Mller (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992). In order to assist the reader, I will refer to the English translation (F. W. J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism [1800], trans. Peter Heath [Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993]) and will modify the translation as needed. Cited as STI: page number. All bracketed interpolations are mine.

4. Heine, pp. 283286.

5. F. W. J. Schellings 183334 Munich Lectures, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, have appeared in translation as F. W. J. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 110.

6. For Fichtes correspondence with Schelling on this issue, see Theory as Practice: A Critical Anthology of Early German Romantic Writings, ed. and trans. Jochen Schulte-Sasse, Haynes Horne, Andreas Michel, Elizabeth Mittman, Assenka Oksiloff, Lisa C. Roetzel, and Mary R. Strand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 7374; translation slightly modifi ed.

7. Heine even goes so far as to state that, one must read [Schellings] books in chrono-logical order, pursuing the gradual development of his thought, and holding fi rmly to his basic idea (p. 283).

8. It strikes me as rather strange that the role of history in Schellings System is usu-ally presented in a truncated manner. The most surprising example of this trend is Werner Marxs Schelling, Geschichte, System, Freiheit (Mnchen: Verlag Karl Alber Freiburg, 1977), where history is treated merely as the vehicle for (and unfolding of) the prstabilierten Harmonie (p. 80) of Schellings Identity-system. For additional otherwise fi ne discussions of the System where the role of history is dealt with in a sparse manner, cf. Richard Velkleys, Realizing Nature in the Self: Schelling on Art and Intellectual Intuition in the System of Transcendental Idealism, in Velkleys Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 110122, Jacques Taminiaux, The Critique of Judgement and German Philosophy, in Jacques Taminiaux, Poetics, Speculation, and Judgement: The Shadow of the Work of Art from Kant to Phenomenology, trans. Michael Gendre (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 2140, Dale Snow, Schelling and the End of Idealism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), pp. 119140, and Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 17601860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 2002), pp. 184191. This trend of de-emphasizing the role of


history in Schellings System can be traced (at least in the English-speaking world) back to Coleridges appropriation of Schelling in the Biographia Literaria.

9. Heine, p. 283.

10. Heine, p. 286.

11. Were one to stay, for the moment, with the chronology-based type of assessment, one could make a case that the history section of the System anticipates (or, to use the language of Schellings Munich Lectures, contains in embryonic form) the entirety of Schellings concerns with respect to the historical unfolding of the absolute as evidenced in the Freiheit and Weltalter texts. One should note that this particular languagei.e., the relation of the seed/embryo to later developments (or, in the Leibnizian language of the Freiheitschrift, the relation of subject to predicate) is a philosophical articulation of a certain theological conception concerning the relation of the Old Testament to the New. Schelling is explicitly aware of this in his discussion of Spinoza in the Munich lectures (History of Modern Philosophy, p. 69).

12. Heine, p. 245.

13. Heine, p. 286.

14. Limitations of time and space prevent me from being able to provide a full discussion with respect to these interpretations of Kant and Hegel. Nevertheless, during my read-ing of the System, I shall substantiate these interpretations as a way of dialectically confronting Schellings own philosophy of history.

15. Such inseparability from human reason is literally how Kant describes the unifying aspect of this purposive/teleological movement in both the First Critique (unzertrenn-lich, A695/B723) and the Third (untrennbaren, 5:481, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Royal German Academy of Sciences [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1900]). Put differently (and taking my cue from a phrase present in both the First and Third Critiques), we might refer to Kantian teleology as an as-if teleology.

16. Concerning the stark contrast between Hegels conception of the ontological/theologi-cal character of historical purposiveness and Kants critical conception, the following passage from Hegels Introduction to his Lectures on the Philosophy of History may suffi ce as an initial provocation: In our knowledge, we aim for the insight that what-ever was intended by the Eternal Wisdom has come to fulfi llmentas in the realm of nature, so in the realm of spirit that is active and actual in the world. To that extent, our approach is a theodicy, a justifi cation of the ways of God (G. W. F. Hegel, Introduction to the Philosophy of History, trans. Leo Rauch [Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1988], p. 18. Cited as IPH: page number).

17. I believe that Schellings System maintains a complex relation to the political. This relation does not always appear as evident in other texts of his. For a similarly complex treatment of the political, the reader should consult Schellings 1802 Jena Lectures, On University Studies (trans. E. S. Morgan [Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1966]).

18. Immanuel Kant, Political Writings, ed., H. S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 47. Cited as PW: page number.

19. Although this passage does not make it explicit, the question concerning freedom and necessity will develop into the question as to how there can be a necessary basis which


can both preserve the unity of history and preserve the freely chosen acts/events of history as free.

20. This is similar to a materialist interpretation of Hegels philosophy of historyi.e., that absolute Spirit is nothing other than objective Spirit. However, this reading would have to occur through an over-emphasis of the antithetic moment. On the other hand, Schellings conception of generic history can be viewed as similar to the Eighth Proposition of Kants Universal History essay (PW: 50).

21. F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters, trans. Priscilla Hayden-Roy, in Philosophy of German Idealism, ed., Ernst Behler (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1987), p. 217.

22. Cf. Fredrick Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism17811801 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), p. 522, Paul Redding, The Logic of Affect (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 113, Terry Pinkard, German Philosophy 17601860: The Legacy of Idealism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 189, and Vronique Zanetti, Teleology and the Freedom of the Self, in The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Dieter Sturma (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), p. 60.

23. Because Schelling is, in part, concerned with the construction of systema crucial feature of which is that the whole becomes manifest in each individual parthe is sometimes interpreted (with respect to natural history/biology) as a precursor to Ernst Haeckels conception of evolutionary recapitulation (i.e., ontogenesis directly recapitulates phylogenesis). However his articulation of the generic reconciliation between conscious freedom and unconscious necessity suggests that, for Schelling, no such simple and direct recapitulation between the individual and the species/genus is possible.

24. Here one can clearly discern the Neo-Platonic infl uence in Schellings System. This infl uence re-occurs in the Freiheitschrift insofar as Schelling re-articulates the mo-ment of absolute identity in his discussion of the Ungrund.

25. In fact, this conception of identity as embodying both content and form is put forth by Schelling earlier on in the System: There is absolutely no explaining how presenta-tion and object can coincide, unless in knowledge itself there exists a point at which both are originally oneor at which being and presentation are in the most perfect identity (STI: 24).

26. We should note that Schelling is not here referring to any particular race/generation but rather, solely to a possible genus which could actualize aesthetic intuition in the form of mythology.

27. For a similar account of mythologys unifying role with respect to poetry and science, see the The Earliest System-Program of German Idealism, a text widely attributed to Schelling.

28. The reader should note that this triadic structure of historical periods is preserved in Schellings Weltalter texts.

29. See Spinozas Ethics, 2P40S2.


30. Cf. Schellings footnote, in the Freiheitschrift, concerning the relation of duality and unity (Philosophy of German Idealism, p. 238).

31. Ethics, IP8, 14, & 18.

32. Baruch Spinoza, The Collected Works Of Spinoza, ed. and trans. Edwin Curley (Princ-eton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 447.

33. Martin Heidegger, Schellings Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1985), p. 4.

34. Recall that, in the Freiheitschrift, Schelling explains that God is the living unity of forces (Philosophy of German Idealism, p. 267).

35. While Spinoza is surely interested in the order of nature, this order isstrictly speak-ingnot an intelligent or meaningful order but one based solely on formal, material, and effi cient causal necessity.

36. Ethics I Appendix.

37. I should like to thank Joseph Lawrence and Peter Warnek for provocative discussions which contributed to the conception and composition of this paper.

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