Schelling on the essence of human freedom

Abstract
In this essay I present the themes central to Schellings philosophy in the so-called
Weltalter-period (the period from Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit to the three
Weltalter-fragments). I argue that Schelling at this stage in his philosophical development
presents a philosophical program which makes a crucial break with philosophy as it was
conducted in both pre- and post-kantian philosophy. As such this program is still of vital
philosophical importance today. My essay takes of by presenting Schellings arguments
against Spinozism, a pantheistic ontology of things which covers more of the
philosophical landscape than one would normally be inclined to think. Basically the
ontology of things applies to any philosophical theory that, knowingly or unknowingly,
stems from an understanding of the relation between the ground and (grounded) existence
which takes the ground to be a fundamentally expansive principle and existence to be
contractive. Schellings argument shows that such an ontology results in contradiction
with regards to the question of human freedom. The consequences of such ontology is
namely both fatalism and a radical notion of freedom (freedom as coincidence). From
there the essay follows Schelling in his turning around of the relation between the ground
and existence, so that the ground is viewed as a fundamental contractive force, whereas
existence is viewed as expansive. This results in the position that an ontological edifice is
something which can never be complete; an adequate ontology is on that suffers from a
fundamental lack. We can never achieve closure in the ontological realm. As a result no
ontology can pose a threat to human freedom. On the contrary human freedom means the
ability to redefine ontology.

Introduction
Famously Kant formulated the problem of human freedom as the question of the
“Möglichkeit der Kausalität durch Freiheit in Vereinigung mit dem allgemeinen Gesetze
der Naturnotwendigkeit” (KrV A 538/B 566). The obstacle which threatens the notion of
human freedom has classically been some notion of natural necessity or natural
causality. We will see that there is reason to praise Kant’s choosing of the term necessity

1
over causality in his formulation of the problem. Still, Kant’s way of formulating the
third Antinomy of Pure Reason indicates that he (at this point) attempts no differentiation
of natural necessity and natural causality - in the third Antinomy it is natural causality (in
the form of the laws of nature) which opposes freedom (KrV A 445/B 473).1 And so the
question of human freedom remains the question of whether there, besides the causality
of nature, can be some causality belonging to the human spiritual faculties; the problem
of human freedom is the problem of the opposition between ‘Natur’ and ‘Geist’2. Again,
as we will later see in detail, there is reason to praise Kant for not opposing the causality
of nature with the causality of spirit, but instead with that of freedom itself.
Still, as much as there is reason to praise Kant, this paper is mainly on Schelling
and not on Kant, which is a result of the fact that it was Schelling and not Kant himself
who fully explicated the point expressed in Kant’s ingeniously cautious formulations. In
the preface to Über das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit3 Schelling writes:

Es ist Zeit, daß der höhere oder vielmehr der eigentliche Gegensatz hervortrete, der von
Notwendigkeit und Freiheit, mit welchem erst der innerste Mittelpunkt der Philosophie zur
Betrachtung kommt. (Schelling, VII, 333)

The distinction between necessity and freedom should be understood in opposition to the
more classical distinction between nature and spirit. If we are to understand human
freedom at all, it must be the conflict between freedom and necessity that has our
attention - not the one between nature and spirit. We can remind ourselves of the Kantian
point from Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten that it is only humans who can be said
to be free. Neither animals nor angels or gods can be free, since all of these are following
their own metaphysical principle with necessity; animals act in accordance with their
nature, angels and gods necessarily follows their divine principle. The problem with the
distinction between nature and spirit is then that when freedom is sought within the limits
defined by this distinction, it is almost always sought in spirit, which in a Schellingian
perspective can only amount to a replacing of one type of necessity (natural necessity)
with another (spiritual or intellectual necessity).

1
The exact Kantian relationship between the categories of causality and necessity and the laws of nature is
very complex indeed, which for instance can be seen in Michael Friedman’s studies (Friedman, 1992).
2
For lack of a better English term I translate ’Geist’ into Spirit.
3
The essay is often referred to in German as the “Freiheitsschrift” or the “Freiheitsabhandlung”.
Accordingly I will here simply call it the Essay on freedom.

2
 Following Kant a person is free when he acts in accordance with and out of duty;
a person is free when the Moral Law is the sole principle in his action. The free will is
thus the will which can only do good. The Kantian notion of radical evil does in fact
point in the direction that Kant wasn’t quite as hardheaded in this matter, as would here
seem. Radical evil is what occurs when an agent has sufficient insight into the Moral Law
as to know what the good deed would be in a given case, and then still chooses to follow
his inclination. This could be taken as an indication that a Kantian free agent, would be
an agent that can also do evil. However, at this point Kant would insist that an agent
which accomplishes a radically evil act cannot understood as be free, since he would be a
slave to his inclination. Therefore Kant writes: “Also ist ein freier Wille und ein Wille
unter sittlichen Gesetzen einerlei” (Kant, GzMS, BA 99).4 According to Schelling this
cannot be. If freedom is to be understood at all, it must be understood through a living
notion of freedom. A living notion of freedom is the freedom to do evil as well as good
(Schelling, VII, p.352).
This of course amounts to a very devastating critique of reason, since for Kant it
is not through spirit that man opposes nature, but through reason. The Moral Law rests
not in some metaphysical principle called spirit; instead it stems from reason. Or to be
exact: it stems from the clarity which reason can have of itself. This is of course the basic
project of Kantian philosophy: That reason puts itself into critical light in order to
discipline itself, so that it can keep itself within its own limits. As long as reason in this
way is critically self-sufficient, it seems plausible that an action which is acted out of
reason can be considered free. Being free would then basically amount to being able to
act solely out of reason. It is this understanding of reason which is put into doubt by
Schelling. In the end reason can never satisfyingly cause its own critical illumination.
Thus reason is never fully aware of its own turning into Hegelian objective spirit, which
in Schelling’s perspective can just as well cause the opposite of freedom, as it could be
the guardian of true freedom.

4
In her excellent book on Kant’s moral philosophy Das Reale einer Illusion Alenka Zupancic shows that
Kant in truth was much closer to Schelling in this matter than it would seem here. She undermines the usual
reading of Kant’s notion of freedom as that of noumenal freedom which is opposed to phenomenological
necessity (the reading of Kant which unfortunately has to be defended here), and insists that for Kant
freedom transcends the opposition between the phenomenal and the noumenal. (Zupancic, 2001, p.46)

3
 Schelling wishes to oppose freedom and necessity instead of nature and spirit,
because he in nature and in spirit finds only two different versions of necessity and thus
in the end determinism. This of cause does not mean that he wants to eradicate necessity
all together, which would only amount to indeterminism, but not deliver any satisfying
notion of freedom. What is needed is first of all an analysis of the notion of necessity, in
order to get at how necessity and freedom opposes each other and how they do not. This
would perhaps lead to the point where it is discovered how necessity and freedom each
act as the condition of the possibility of the other.
The first point would then be that in fact nature and spirit do not just present two
different versions of necessity. As we shall see, they present two versions of necessity
which are exactly the same. And crucially, Kant’s practical reason is on par with what
Schelling means by spirit in this matter. This can be seen the following way: The
necessity of practical reason is a necessity of ends; it is a teleological form of necessity.
Whereas the necessity of nature is a necessity of effecting beginnings; this is the causal
form of necessity. However, these types of necessity are on par with regards to the
following issue which for Schelling becomes essential. The movement within both of
them (their direction of fit so to say) goes strictly in one direction. The direction of
natural causality goes from cause to effect, whereas the necessity in practical reason goes
from means to ends. Thus we can turn back to the point where we in the beginning
applauded Kant. That he opposes freedom itself to (natural) necessity brings us on the
right track. Only this opposition is taken in the wrong direction as it is said that this
freedom has to function as a version of causality from freedom, because it is then
restricted to the motion which characterizes natural causality.
We shall see that the freedom of the will thereby becomes identified with freedom
of choice. One is free when one is able to move in different forwards directions, whereas
for Schelling it is the necessary forwardedness of the motion that is a threat to freedom.
The argumentative tool Schelling utilizes to get at the kernel of this problem is the
distinction between essence in so far as it exists and essence in so far as it is ground for
existence, which he introduces as follows:

4
 Die Naturphilosophie unsrer Zeit hat zuerst in der Wissenschaft die Unterscheidung
aufgestellt zwischen dem Wesen, sofern es existiert, und dem Wesen, sofern es bloß Grund
5
von Existenz ist . (Schelling VII 356).

This distinction between ground and existence present a vital break in the development of
German Idealism. Perhaps it is even the central breaking point of the movement
(Habermas, 1963), (Heidegger, 1971).

Ground and Existence

At first glance the distinction seems to be a rather uncomplicated matter - almost
tautologious. E.g.: For every existing thing, there is a ground for its existence, and for
every ground for existence, there is a correlating existing thing. We will see that this
correlation is indeed much more complicated.
The first idea one must give up when trying to understand Schelling’s distinction
between ground and existence, is the misconception that ground should be on par with
cause and existence with effect. The problem here is as mentioned that the movement in
such a conception only has one direction. In a relation between a cause and its effect, the
cause is solely active and the effect is passive, thus the movement in this relation goes
from cause to effect alone. This is the mechanistic conception of causality, which
Schelling wants to leave behind6. Instead, he introduces a thoroughly dynamic theory, at
the heart of which we find the distinction between ground and existence. Schelling
operates with two different patterns, which rely on the concepts of expansion and
contraction. In the first scenario, the ground is the expansive force, the raw power which
is then put into place, or given form, by the contractive principle: existence (thus
repeating the scenario of mechanistic causality). In the second scenario, the ground is the
original contracting force, which is then contradicted by the expanding force, thereby
giving the fully fledged existence.

5
That Schelling gives the honor of producing this insight to philosophy of nature basically means that he
refers to an earlier period in his own authorship. This would be the period 1797-1801 where Schellings
philosophy was the outstanding dynamical system of German Idealism. In the intervening period
(especially 1801-1806) Schellings philosophy had more of a static form, something which again changes
with the Essay on Freedom. Here the central dynamic thought is back with a vengeance, as we will see.
6
This does not mean that Schelling would deny the truth of Newtonian physics. He would however insist
that a proper philosophical worldview would have to rely on principles transcending Newtonian physics.

5
 In the Essay on freedom it is this second scenario which Schelling is aiming at.
This may be a somewhat surprising thought to many people. An obvious question would
be: How can something which only contracts into itself act as a ground for the existence
of something else? Wouldn’t it at least need some kind of outwardedness in order to
function in such a way? Here there are couple of things to consider.
First and foremost Schelling makes great effort to point out that it is not the
“thing” which is at issue here. Taking “existence” to be “some existing thing” will
inevitably, as we will see, lead to a certain kind of Pantheism, of which Schelling was
often accused (and still is today). The point being that the reason why one would tend to
insist on some basic outwardedness of the ground is that existence is understood as “some
existing thing”. In order for some existing thing to be influenced by something else (in
this case grounded in something else), this other must possess some sort of surface or
some sort of tissue with which the existing thing can collide and thus be influenced
(affected in its motion). Such tissue or surface would in this line of thought be what
Schelling calls expansive force.
Thus, when existence as such is taken to be “that which is thinglike”, the ground
must necessarily act primarily as an expansive force. A letter Schelling wrote
Eschenmayer concerning the Essay on freedom contains an intriguing comment at this
point: “Daß ich nicht Ursache unter Grund verstehe, glaubte ich hinlänglich dadurch
angedeutet, daß ich den Grund auch Fundament, Unterlage, Basis nannte“ (Fuhrmans,
1964, p.142). Here Schelling seems to be insisting upon the thought that, because the
ground is to be understood as foundation, support or base, it should not be understood as
cause. But doesn’t “foundation, support, or base” entail some sort of surface? And if
cause is to be understood as that which in relation to its effect possess some defining
outwardedness, some expansive force, wouldn’t “foundation, support, or base” then count
as a cause in exactly this sense?
Schelling’s answer would of course be no, and he would add that the kernel of our
misconception lies in the identification of existence with “some existing thing”. As long
as we can only conceive of existence as “some existing thing”, the case is clear. In this
way the relationship between ground and existence can only be understood in such a way
that the ground acts as the primary expanding force, where existence acts as the

6
contracting force which forms the expansion into an ideal shape; this ideal shape is the
existing thing. Thus we find a crucial critical potential in these Schellingian
considerations. It is the ontology of things that is bewitching our minds, when we feel the
need of some surface through which ground and existence can touch each other. This
ontology of things has a tendency to colonize thinking as such. Even philosophical
thought is rarely free of this colonization. Thus, a philosophical idea is often validated
though the grounding in some kind of foundation, the truth of which is taken to be, or is
presented as, self-evident. Philosophical thinking is in this way presented as a search for
safe ground, and the giving of arguments for the robustness of the ground. Just as if a
philosophical idea was some kind of trophy that could be placed upon a shelf. It is this
colonization of thinking by the ontology of things, Schelling tries to deconstruct in the
early passages of Über das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit.
The lesson to be taken from Schellings letter is thus that the ground is not that
which effectively grounds existence, it is not that which causes the security of this
existence. The ground is exactly the opposite; the ground is just ground, it is entirely
passive with respect to the existence that it is ground for. As such, the ground can never
be a safe ground for existence. On the contrary: The fundamental ground turns out to be
an abyss, as described in the following passage: “Wenn die Abgründe des menschlichen
Herzens im Bösen sich aufthun, und jene schrecklichen Gedanken hervorkommen, die
auf ewig in Nacht und Finsterniß begraben seyn sollten: dann erst wissen wir, was im
Menschen der Möglichkeit nach liegt.“ (Schelling, VIII, p. 269). If we are to seek out the
fundamentals of human freedom, we have to realize that what we find in the end may not
be a very pretty sight.
I will later unfold the meaning and consequences of the fundamental grounds
abyssal character, but for now I will continue to follow Schelling’s critical
considerations. Central to this critique is the notion of Pantheism. In 1809 Schelling was
very keen on getting rid of the accusation that he promoted a kind of Spinozist
Pantheism. Famously Hegel ridiculed him in the preface to Phänomenologie des Geistes
with the following remark: “Absolutes für die Nacht auszugeben, worin, wie man zu
sagen pflegt, alle Kühe schwarz sind, ist die Naivität der Leere an Erkenntnis.“ (Hegel,
1971, p. 22). This should be seen in light of the fact that Pantheism had a very particular

7
ring to it in the intellectual milieu at the time. Originating in the so called Pantheism-
debate between Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi and Moses Mendelssohn, Pantheism was
virtually understood as another word for fatalism. This debate was opened to the public
by Jacobi’s publishing of Über die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den Herrn Moses
Mendelssohn (Jacobi, 1998). A book which many considered a defense of Pantheism,
even though it was clearly the very opposite. Jacobi’s book present the at the time
prominent intellectual Gotthold Ephraim Lessing as a Spinozist, which to Mendelssohn
was nothing short of slander. So why was Pantheism considered such a diabolic idea?
Basically, Pantheism means the immanence of God in all things. All things have a
godlike nature. In other words: All things belong to one single divine principle.
Pantheism can never be polytheism, since it would then be impossible for one God or
ruling principle to be everywhere. This is the meaning of the Spinozistic formulation
εν και παν (one and everything): There can be only one ruling principle, and this ruling
principle governs everything.
In a way this is the tendency of any kind of (systematic) philosophy. In
philosophy, one is rarely satisfied if, say, one’s fundamental ethical principles are in
conflict with one’s fundamental political principles. The same goes for the relationship
between epistemological and ontological principles (or ontological and political or any
other combination for that matter). In the end, most philosophy has the form and purpose
of bringing conflicting ideas into balance with each other, thus fulfilling some synthetic
function, no matter how analytically styled it may be. This can rightly be understood as
the strive for Pantheism, since it is the struggle to subsume everything to as few
governing principles as possible: Ultimately the ideal will be that there can only be one
governing principle.7
But at the same time Pantheism as a fully fledged doctrine has some very radical
consequences. If it is possible to establish one fundamental metaphysical principle, and it
is accepted that this metaphysical principle is the governing principle of everything, then
it seems impossible that there could be such a thing as human freedom. My actions would
then be necessitated through this fundamental principle, and thus any idea of such a thing

7
In effect the most clear cut version of Pantheism today is Physicalism. A point Andrew Bowie also makes
in his book on Schelling. (Bowie, 1993)

8
as freedom would be an illusion. In other words, Pantheism leads to fatalism. In short,
Pantheism was taken to rule out any kind of human greatness, because in the light of such
Pantheism it seemed impossible that anyone should be able to transcend one’s
predetermined destiny. Therefore Pantheism also counted as the very opposite of the
ideals central to the enlightenment. The whole idea of humans moving out of their own
self-inflicted immaturity (Kant, 1974, p.9) seemed absurd in the light of Pantheism. It
was Pantheism in this sense that led to the controversy between Jacobi and Mendessohn.
Schelling finds that Spinoza can rightly be accused of such fatalistic tendencies,
but he points out that these tendencies do not cover the whole truth of Spinozism. In fact,
we shall see that Spinozism also results in an overly radical, but sadly misconceived,
notion of freedom. Furthermore, and this will be our first consideration, it is not as much
the Pantheism in Spinoza as it is the fact that it is a Pantheism of things that constitutes
the problem. Schelling writes on Spinoza: “Der Fehler seines Systems liegt keineswegs
darin, daß er die Dinge i n G o t t setzt, sondern darin, daß es D i n g e sind - in dem
abstrakten Begriff der Weltwesen, ja der unendlichen Substanz selber, die ihm eben auch
ein Ding ist. (Schelling, VII, p.349)”
The failure of fatalistic Pantheism is not Pantheism as such, but the fact that it is a
Pantheism of things. The last clause of the quote is of crucial importance. It points out
that the ultimate problem in Spinozism is found in the consequence that God himself
becomes a thing. Here we have the dialectic moment where the ontology of things
colonizes philosophical thought as such. From the idea that everything has to be
understood through one and only one principle, we get the idea that it is every thing that
is to be understood through this principle. This thought then reflects back onto the
original idea, effectively turning the fundamental principle itself into a thing. From there
all thinking is enslaved in a discourse, the sole purpose of which is to make things of
thoughts.
In the end this colonization necessitates that Schelling also refuses the first sense
of Pantheism I mention above. His point would be that “things” are indeed apt for being
brought into balance with each other. Ideas, however, are not. The nature of an idea is not
static fixation, but conflict and dynamicity. The very idea that a philosophical system can
put the whole world into balance is basically just a way of making one big thing out of

9
the would. Schelling is instead insisting upon conflict as that which is encountered at the
center of things.

It is in this way that we are to understand the principal distinction between essence in so
far as it exist, and essence in so far as it is ground of existence. It is the fundamental
principle of Schellings philosophy, but this singular principle is also immediately
dualistic as it is a consequent distinction. For every existence, every occurrence, every
thing, there is also always an essential feature which is distinct form it. It is this feature
that grounds existence. But because that which grounds every existence is something
distinct from it, this ground serves two purposes. First of all it is that which puts the
existence into place, gives it its proper founding, but secondly and more important,
because the ground is thoroughly distinct from the existence which it grounds, it is a sign
of an inherent lack in every existence. However clear and distinct, however
understandable and controllable, however ideal the existence with which we are
confronted seems to be, it always possesses some essential feature which fundamentally
resist categorization at the level of existence. This is the real ground of the ideal
existence, the empty space at the center of every existence which only contracts into
itself8. The proper function of the ground is thus the removal of the ground beneath our
feet; the real ground is an abyss.9
Combining these two features is essential. That which puts existence into place
and gives it its proper founding is also that which exhibits the fundamental lack of every
existence: The result is the fundamental finality of every existence. There is no existence
which can fully incorporate its own ground into itself. An existence that is able to fully
incorporate its own ground into itself is rightly called causa sui. This is the Spinozistic

8
That I introduce the term real and idea at this point does not serve to show that Schelling is still working
within the bipolarity of symmetrical principles which is very characteristic in his earlier philosophy. See for
instance the introduction to System der transzendentalen Idealismus. The relation between the real ground
and the ideal existence is exactly asymmetrical. The ideal existence is that which is ontologically ordered,
whereas the real ground is the very opposite; it is that which lacks ontological fixation. As Zizek puts it:
“the Ground is less than Existence, it lacks ontological consistency” (Zizek, 1997, p.7)
9
Unfortunately the German affinity between the terms “Grund” and “Abgrund” does not figure in English.
Still the point of the dialectic remains. The never fully illuminable “Grund” which always contracts into
itself, turns into an “Abgrund” when driven to its conclusive extreme.

10
absolute substance, which Schelling rejects in order to get at finitude proper. This notion
of finitude will be our next topic of consideration.

Finitude and finality

In the fragments of The Ages of the World10 which Schelling conceived shortly after
publishing the Essay on Freedom, he drives this notion of finitude further. Finitude
implicates time as opposed to eternity. In other words: Finitude necessitates historicity. It
is thus the basic historicity of the world which is expounded in The Ages of the World.
Schelling gives the following analysis of time in the second fragment of the work:

Wer die Zeit auch nur nimmt, wie sie sich darstellt, fühlt in ihr einen Widerstreit zweier
Prinzipien; eines das vorwärts strebt, zur Entwicklung treibt und eines anhaltenden,
hemmenden, der Entwicklung widerstrebenden. Leistete dieses andere nicht Widerstand, so
wäre keine Zeit, weil die Entwicklung im Nu, ohne Absatz und Folge geschähe; würde aber
auch nicht dieses andere beständig von dem ersten überwunden, so wäre absolute Ruhe, Tod,
Stillstand und darum wieder keine Zeit. (Schelling, 1946, p. 122)

Time thus implicates a certain protraction. If time moves either too fast or too slow it
ceases to be time. Therefore, we need two basic principles in order to understand time. To
be exact: We need one split principle. If time did not entail this central protraction, it
would still be possible to think of time as a logical operator, for instance in physical
theories. But it would not be possible to think of time as something in which events occur
that human beings can make sense of. Time as something in which human beings can
operate in such a meaningful manner is history. As such, it is in the light of the general
historicity of the world that we need two basic principles to understand it. In the light of
an example given by Hogrebe, we can see the necessity of the split principle (Hogrebe, p.
100). Hogrebe illustrates the point by referring to filmrolles in cinema. Only if the
filmrolle is spun at a certain speed it is possible to follow the storyline of the movie. If it
is spun to fast the viewers can only perceive a blurred mix of colors, if it is spun to slow,
they only get the static singular images, but no meaningful chronology. Thus it is in

10
In the three fragments of the great project The Ages of the World (Die Weltalter) Schelling further
explicates the issues,, he evolved in the Essay on Freedom. It was to consist of three parts (the three ages of
the world): past, present and future. Nevertheless, the project was never carried out. What we have is three
fragments, all attempts at the first part of the project. The first one known to the public is in fact the last of
Schelling’s attempts. This is the fragment found in Schellings sämmtliche Werke published by Schellings
son in the years 1856-1861. The two earlier fragments was published by Manfred Schröter in 1946
(Schelling, 1946). It is especially the second fragment which is of interest here.

11
virtue of the basic protraction that it is possible for time to emerge as time impregnated
with meaning or history.
It wouldn’t be possible to make sense of a historical existence which persisted
through all of history; such an existence could not be protracted in the above sense. So
historical being is finite. This leaves us with two different notions of finitude. We have
Schelling’s idea of a ground that contracts into itself, thereby constituting an inherent
lack at the center of every existence, making it impossible for it to fully incorporate its
own ground in itself, which means that it can never achieve absoluteness or infinity. And
we have the basic notion of finitude as historicity, which is inferred from the split
principle engaged in time itself.
Here we encounter the crucial point. Because of this split principle it seems as if
we have achieved a notion of finitude proper through this basic understanding of time.
Since every existence is subjugated to time, then every existence is determined through a
fundamental split principle, meaning that it cannot incorporate its own ground into itself,
and thus it can never achieve infinity or absoluteness. Thereby we have the finitude of
timely being. Nevertheless, in thinking this way we are deluding ourselves. This is
because we have not yet connected this second notion of finitude with the kind of finitude
expressed in Schelling’s idea of a fundamental split between ground and existence. In the
notion of finitude expressed in Schelling’s analysis of time, we find the very same
principles of expansion and contraction we found in his description of the split between
ground and existence. But here the expanding force is that which presses time forward,
and the contracting force that which holds time at a pace in which a space of meaning
opens up. Thus time is determined by a primary expanding force, a force which
secondarily is held into place by a contracting one. In other words we have made the
ground, which is logically prior to existence, the fundamental expanding force, thereby
effectively turning existence into the contracting force that forms the raw expansive
potential into an ideal shape. In doing so, we effectively reinstalled the ontology of
things. Because it is the idea of the primacy of expansion over contraction that leads to
the ontology of things. In this constellation we have the basic outwardedness of
everything giving tissue or surface, due to which a thing can stand in causal relations to
other things, and we have the secondary inwards motion which gives this tissue a certain

12
form. The two of these combined give the robustness of things, making sure that the
causal relations between things are repeatable and thus measurable.11 But with the aid of
the above considerations, we are able to see why this ontology is radically mistaken.
Most importantly this ontology is failing because it installs a fake version of
finitude (a finality) which possesses a hidden element of infinity. Through the robustness
of the thing which we have just seen expressed, we arrive at a kind of finality in which
things are final. As such they are absolute. This absoluteness stems from the fact that
when the ground is perceived as the fundamentally expansive force, it ceases to be the
inherent lack at the essence of things which is expressed in the ground perceived as the
primary contractive force. Thus the essence as grounds for existence becomes the warrant
that there is no inherent lack at the center of things. In other words, it is not only possible
for existence (as the existing thing) to incorporate its own ground into itself. The thing is
that which necessarily incorporates its own ground into itself, which basically goes to say
that the thing is the fundamental causa sui. This element of infinity is once again what
lies at the heart of Spinozistic Pantheism (see quote on p. 8).

Fatalism and Coincidence

The consequences which such finality has for the question of freedom will become
apparent when we consider Schelling’s comments on predicative being (being as the
copula of predication. As a causa sui the fundamental thing is expressed through an A=A.
In Pantheism the fundamental thing (God) is thought to be everything, meaning that the
derivatives of the original substance is =A/a. Of this Schelling says:

Setzen wir nun die unendliche Substanz =A, dieselbe in ihren folgen betrachtet =A/a: so ist
das Positive in A/a allerdings A; aber es folgt nicht, daß deswegen A/a=A, d. h. daß die
unendliche Substanz in ihrer Folge betrachtet mit der unendlichen Substanz schlechthin
betrachtet e i n e r l e i sei. (Schelling, VII, p. 344)

Basically, there is no logical necessity which forces us to infer from the fundamental self-
creating ability of the Spinozistic substance to the idea that this original causa sui is also
the cause of everything else. As Pantheism goes, the original substance is everything else,
but this means that everything is derived from the original substance. This however does
11
The very same ontology is at stake in the realm of thought, when thinking becomes the establishing of a
hierarchy between well-defined concepts or ideas.

13
not go to say the original substance is completely the same as everything else. Derived
being is exactly completely different from the original substance, in that it is derived
where original substance is self-defined (Schelling, VII, 340). As such it is possible that
there may be some other effective cause than the original one. In fact every existing thing
is in this view of the matter itself a causa sui, a little copy of the original one. As we have
seen, the ontology of things is at bottom the idea that every thing is capable of
incorporating its own ground into itself, since the ground of existence is always a safe
ground. As such, we have the paradoxical result that Pantheism as the immanence of the
things in God leads to fatalism because everything is derived from one single principle
and to a radical concept of freedom where everything acts as its own beginning because
every existence is capable of incorporating its own ground into itself.
Thus it is in fact fully possible to merge Spinozistic Pantheism with the idea of
freedom as the capability to transcend natural causality in virtue of some
spiritual/intellectual principle. Schelling puts it in this way:

Denn bis zur Entdeckung des Idealismus fehlt der eigentliche Begriff der Freiheit in allen
neuern Systemen, im Leibnizischen so gut wie im Spinozistischen; und eine Freiheit, wie sie
viele unter uns gedacht haben, die sich noch dazu des lebendigsten Gefühls derselben rühmen,
wonach sie nämlich in der bloßen Herrschaft des intelligenten Prinzips über das sinnliche und
die Begierden besteht, eine solche Freiheit ließe sich, nicht zur Not, sondern ganz leicht und
sogar bestimmter, auch aus dem Spinoza noch herleiten. (Schelling, VII, p. 345)

In Kantian terms: It is fully possible that there may be a causality from freedom besides
the causality of nature. Yet this way of perceiving freedom is, as we can now see,
completely insufficient. This notion of freedom basically goes to say that one is free if
one is able to freely choose between A or -A without being predetermined; it is the
freedom to raise your arm at will or to refrain from doing that. In the end this is the
freedom to act completely without reason; it is the freedom to act by chance. The simple
ability to thwart natural causality suddenly seems to be a poor idea of freedom. When
everything acts as its own beginning, we are completely ruling out predictability and
necessity. Schelling rightly comments that the attempt to save the human ability to act, by
subsuming human action to coincidence, can only amount to admitting that there is no
saving the idea of action (Schelling, VII, p. 383).
Schelling can thus conclude on the evaluation of Spinozism in the following way.

14
 Die Hauptsache ist, daß dieser Begriff eine gänzliche Zufälligkeit der einzelnen Handlung
einführt und in diesem Betracht sehr richtig mit der zufälligen Abweichung der Atomen
vergleichen worden ist, die Epikurus in der Physik in gleicher Absicht ersann, nämlich dem
Fatum zu entgehen. Zufall aber ist unmöglich, widerstreitet der Vernunft wie der notwendigen
Einheit des Ganzen; und wenn Freiheit nicht anders als mit der gänzlichen Zufälligkeit der
Handlungen zu retten ist, so ist sie überhaupt nicht zu retten. Es setzt sich diesem System des
Gleichgewichts der Willkür, und zwar mit vollem Fug, der Determinismus (oder nach Kant
Prädeterminismus) entgegen, indem er die empirische Notwendigkeit aller Handlungen aus
dem Grunde behauptet, weil jede derselben durch Vorstellungen oder andere Ursachen
bestimmt sei, die in einer vergangenen Zeit liegen, und die bei der Handlung selbst nicht mehr
in unsrer Gewalt stehen. Beide Systeme gehören dem nämlichen Standpunkt an; nur daß, wenn
es einmal keinen höheren gäbe, das letzte unleugbar den Vorzug verdiente. (Schelling, VII,
p.383, my emphasis)

When indulging oneself in Spinozism, one must ultimately find that the consequences are
both fatalism and a radical notion of freedom, which completely rules out any kind of
predictability. Something which is clearly absurd. This is the dilemma which Kant could
never solve. Because he never went behind the back of this problem - because in his way
of viewing things, freedom remained the freedom of spirit/intellect over nature - Kant
was never able to establish what Schelling refers to as a living concept of freedom. Such
a concept of freedom is defined by Schelling in the following way: “Der reale und
lebendige Begriff aber ist, daß sie ein Vermögen des Guten und des Bösen sei.”
(Schelling, VII, p.352)
This concludes our evaluation of the critical project in Schelling’s Essay on
freedom. We have seen how any system which sets out from the idea that the
metaphysical ground is a primary expansive force ultimately ends up in radical
contradiction. The outcome of these considerations is that we, according to Schelling, are
in need of a new definition of freedom. This involves the intimate connection of freedom
to both good and evil. Something which we will look deeper into in the following
chapter.

Good and Evil

According to Schelling, freedom as the possibility of both good and evil is a concept
which can only be comprehended through the assistance of the now well known
distinction between ground and existence.

15
 We have now learned that the attempt to conceive of this distinction as the
distinction between the fundamentally expansive ground and the forming contractive
existence must inevitably result in the installation of a pantheistic ontology of things,
which fails in giving an answer to the question of freedom, as it at the same time results
in fatalism and radical (coincidental) freedom. We are therefore forced to indulge the full
dialectical force involved in the reversal of these principles, meaning that we have to
conceive of the original ground as contraction.
Still, Schelling is a systematic thinker. He thus keeps some of the tendencies in
the old philosophical ideals of Pantheism alive. He does not abandon the ideal of trying to
establish a systematic relation between the ultimate ground and existence as such. Only,
and this is the crucial point, such a relation cannot be allowed to establish any kind of
balanced ontological hierarchy, since this would lead us on the way to the now well-
known ontology of things. In conceiving of original ground as contraction Schelling thus
wants to unfold a radically new mythology of creation. It is the relation between the
creator and the created, between God and the World, which is to be evaluated.12
Creation does not stem from the original expansive will of God, but instead from
an original contractive will of God. Still, as the fundamental principle of the world, God
has to be viewed as that which contains the essential features of the world. Therefore God
must contain both expansion and contraction prior to creation. But, since we are talking
of that which is logically prior to the creative act, none of these principles are active. The
principles are at ease in an original absolute unity which Schelling calls indifference.13
God is in a state of bliss. Schelling defines this pre-creational God as the Will that
“nothing wants” (Schelling, VIII, 236). This will, however, necessarily turns into the will

12
This can be viewed wholly secularized (and is). God is here simply understood as that which contains the
force of everything that is active in the world. He is the ultimate principality of the world. To explain
creation thus means to explain how this principality is active in the world.
13
It is worth noticing that this term contains both a logical and a psychological point. Logically in-
difference is that which is not different -(A≠-A). However this does not imply identity A=A. Indifference in
this sense means that the differing elements are simply not actively differing. In the same way that it is
possible for the same human being to be both moral and immoral, as long as she is not actively both at the
same time. To say that the latter is possible, is to say that morality and immorality are identical. To say that
the former is possible, is to say that morality and immorality are indifferent. This also indicates the
psychological meaning of indifference. As long as a human being is inactively both moral and immoral, it
doesn’t really make a difference that she is so. In other words, morally we don’t really have to care how she
acts if she is inactively both moral and immoral. Her actions are morally indifferent to us.

16
that “wants nothing”.14 This is the original contraction, it is the egoistic tendency which
violently forces the implosion of the original equilibrium. This is the original
spontaneous act. The central idea to grasp here is that for Schelling spontaneity goes
inwards; its principle is contraction.
This mythology is dissected by the question as to what it means that the original
blissful will that “nothing wants” necessarily turns into the will that “wants nothing”. In
the line of thought which Schelling advocated prior to the Essay on Freedom this
necessity would be explained though the idea that God needed to set the stage of creation
in order to fully accomplish his own being. God needed the world as his own mirror
image, in order to be able to fully know and recognize his own being. This is the line of
thought which Hegel gives a thorough exposition of in his Phänomenologie des Geistes.
In other words, the move was necessitated by the thirst for self-knowledge, and this thirst
for knowledge thus showed the path to be followed. The creating motion was thus set
forward by God’s longing to be something which he was not yet, before the moment of
creation. This gave the original necessitating force that initiated the gesture of creation a
central element of teleology. Thus the creating motion had an implicit external goal from
the very beginning, meaning that the original direction in creation was in fact not the
ultimate contraction in “wanting nothing”, but rather the wanting of something specific,
namely self-fulfillment. As a result the primary ground inherited expansion as its primary
function, a line of thought which has turned out to be very problematic indeed.
After 182715, where Schelling installs the distinction between positive and
negative philosophy at the center of philosophy, this picture is completely turned around.
From then on Schelling abandoned the idea of the necessity of creation, which means that
God was completely free to chose whether or not he would want to indulge himself in
creation. Not that God was free to create just any world he would have liked - he would
still have to create the world in accordance with his own inherent principles, but he was
free to accomplish the gesture of creation, and therefore also free not to do so. Thereby
the project of Schelling’s late philosophy was split in two. The first being the

14
Years later Nietzsche would repeat the same nihilistic point. The will that is without an object, without
some ultimate goal, has a tendency to turn into the desire for the destruction of any possible object.
15
From this time on Schelling begins his lectures on Philosophy of Mythology and philosophy of
revelation. (Hutter, 1996, p.387). See also the next note.

17
investigation into the necessity of the world - what the world is - the investigation into
that which is necessary in God. This would be negative philosophy. And the second being
the investigation into the brute fact of the world - that the world is - the investigation into
the empirical fact which can be subsumed to no logical necessity - the moment in God
that can never be sublated by reason. This is contingency; it is the unforeseeable being
(or, since the German word is unvordenklich, the unforethinkable being). This latter
investigation would then be positive philosophy16.
In the light of the present discussion however, this view to freedom seems a bit
ill-conceived. Wouldn’t such a notion of freedom fail in the same way, as the notion of
freedom expressed in the possible supremacy of intellect over nature did? (see p. 13-14).
Indeed Schelling here seems to repeat that which we have just seen his extensive critique
of: the idea that freedom should be the simple ability to choose freely between A and -A.
At the time of the Essay on Freedom and The Ages of the World, and especially in
the second fragment of the latter, we find a third way between these two lines of thought.
God’s creation of the world is no longer necessitated in the sense that he had to go
through the process of creation in order to fully become himself in some sort of dialectics
of recognition. The original act of God is thus not a necessary expansion, which would
lead back into a pantheistic ontology of things. But at this time Schelling did not yet
perceive the creating act as free, in the sense that God could just as well have chosen not
to create. In a sense this would namely lead back into the very same problematic that we
have just seen unfolded. It would be the freedom to choose between A and -A, a freedom
which in the end is the freedom to act completely by chance. As such there is still an
element of necessity in Schelling’s notion of creation at this time.
Still, and rather forcefully, Schelling insists that creation is set in motion through
freedom. At this time in Schelling’s philosophy, God’s primary contractive motion is

16
In the literature on Schellings late philosophy we find a very intriguing discussion of the relationship
between these (separated) projects of philosophy. It is an open question whether this division of labour is as
strict as it would seem here. Schelling himself insist that the positive project of philosophy is to be
understood as the logical consequence of the negative project. If these projects are closer connected than
the obvious idea of divided labour would indicate, then the elements of freedom and necessity in God
would also have to be closer connected, and thus Schelling did not in his late philosophy present as clean a
break with his ideas from the period of the Weltalter. One such reading is very elegantly put forward in
Axel Hutter’s Geschichtliche Vernunft (Hutter, 1996). In favour of the clean break we find the works of
Horst Fuhrmanns (Fuhrmans, 1940), Jürgen Habermas (Habermas, 1963) and Slavoj Zizek (Zizek, 1997).

18
perceived as the ultimate free action, because it is an act of pure will. The antecedent is
the will that “nothing wants” and the consequence is the will that “wants nothing”. This
violent disruption of the primordial equilibrium is neither necessitated through the need
for an expression of the forces contained (at ease) in the original indifference, nor is it the
result of a will reflected enough in its own stance to freely choose between leaving things
as they are or effectuating creation. The will expressed in the original contraction is free,
because it acts solely out of itself. This freedom however, contains a central element of
necessity, again because the will is acting solely out of itself. It is freedom as the
expression of own necessity. But because there is only the will itself to relate this action
to, this acting out is better understood as an acting into itself, though not as some sort of
active soul-searching (investigation into the primordial indifference), but as pure
negativity - destruction, implosion or collapse. This is not the kind of negation known
from Hegelian dialectics, in which something negates itself in order to establish some
mirror image of itself, through which it can achieve itself in a more complete and explicit
manner. That would be some sort of story of how something could realize or implement
its own implicit being. This is a story of how something becomes something radically
new. Something which was not contained in the original constellation. Thus, in
Schellingian dialectics, negation is not “negation in order to... (establish some dialectical
counterpart)” - negation is pure substantial negation. It is that which can never be fully
reversed in a positive sublation. It is substance turned upside down; that which always
collapses into itself.
This original collapse results in a complete disorder of drives and directions
described by Schelling in the following central passage:

So also müssen wir die ursprüngliche Sehnsucht uns vorstellen, wie sie zwar zu dem
Verstande sich richtet, den sie noch nicht erkennt, wie wir in der Sehnsucht nach
unbekanntem namenlosem Gut verlangen, und sich ahndend bewegt, als ein Wogend wallend
Meer, der Materie des Platon gleich, nach dunklem ungewissem Gesetz, unvermögend etwas
Dauerndes für sich zu bilden. (Schelling, VII, p.361, my emphasis)

In this waving and sizzling sea, this chaos of raw uncontrolled forces, a second
contraction is effectuated. Where the first contraction was that which disturbed the
original equilibrium, the second is a contraction in the resulting chaos. As such it
constitutes a reflexive center in this chaos: “Aber entsprechend der Sehnsucht [...] erzeugt

19
sich in Gott selbst eine innere reflexive Vorstellung, durch welche, da sie keinen andern
Gegenstand haben kann als Gott, Gott sich selbst in einem Ebenbilde erblickt.“
(Schelling, VII, p.361) This second contraction, in which God a second time moves
inwards into himself, is not pure disruptive negativity but that which gives form and
reestablishes some sort of regularity. It sets the stage for categorization. “Diese
Vorstellung ist zugleich der Verstand - das Wort jener Sehnsucht.“ (Schelling, VII, p.
362) With this first regular formation we get the first expansive motion: The expression
of the word. In the expression of the word we have the beginning as creation; from this
point on we can talk of ontology. 17
So how does this mythology help us to an understanding of a living concept of
freedom? This will become clear when we look at the consequences all of this has for the
ontological edifice: Because negation is viewed as inverted substance, as that which can
never achieve complete selfhood, and because it is from this inverse motion that creation
springs, creation itself is never complete. Although Schelling abandons his earlier idea
that God necessarily had to create the world in order to achieve himself, meaning that he
takes the mentioned necessity (see p. 17) out of the equation, it is still a central point that
God can only be existing as his ideal self (implement himself), if he goes through the
process of creation. In other words, from the point of the original free act and on, the
dialectics of recognition are still valid. However, it is a dialectic that can never be
completed. Thus God never fully becomes himself. This is what Schelling calls the
personality of God. (Schelling, VII, p.395-6).
Normally a person is viewed as an individual, as something which can be
individuated. The prime criteria for a person is thus sameness. Although my bodily
matter is completely exchanged over a certain period of time, I can still be understood as
one and the same person due to this central sameness, which would be linked to my
intellect, my personality, my habits or some other factor. Schelling completely turns this
picture around. A person is that which is never fully himself. This counts both for the
personal God and for human persons. It is thus the central point of the human world.

17
Zizek is thus completely correct when he states: ”Schelling’s fundamental thesis is that, to put it bluntly,
the true beginning is not at the beginning” (Zizek, 1997, p.14)

20
 The personality of God means that any ontological edifice must bear some residue
of the original contraction; it always contains some abyssal center. Therefore ontology is
fundamentally instable. There is no final ontology, since a final ontology can only be an
ontology of things. Something which we have found ultimately to be absurd. As a result
any ontological edifice can only ever be the current ontological edifice.18
Because a person is that which is never fully herself, she is also that which is in
need of constant redefinition. But at the same time a person is also that which can
redefine the ontological edifice. Such a thorough redefinition of the ontological edifice is
that which counts as a genuine act. The ability to accomplish such an act is what counts
as freedom.
The free act is therefore an act which mines the original creative act of God. As
we remember, this act was defined through pure negativity. A negativity which worked in
a double motion; The first being the original implosion which destroys the prior
indifference, the second being the formative, centering contraction which makes genuine
expansion possible. This means that the free act is as much an act which occurs within
the will itself. The first motion is the motion from the will that “nothing wants” to the
will that “wants nothing”. The second motion is the motion from the will that “wants
nothing” to the will that “wants itself in nothing”. This wanting of self in nothing is that
which makes possible a redefinition of the self. Such redefinition is then the first
expansive motion of the will. Therefore expansion is always secondary to contraction;
therefore freedom is always negative.
At this point the term indifference acquires its full psychological meaning.
Indifference is in this sense not to be understood as the original equilibrium, but as the
indifference towards the current ontological balance. Indifference is the acceptance of a

18
Defining idealism through the classic credo of “being as elevation” (Fuhrmans, 1964, p.163) Schelling is
thus placed at the breaking point between idealism and post-idealism. Being is still thought of in terms of
elevation, but elevation is that which bears its own inherent flaw. Elevation is only possible through a
consistent element of that which can never be elevated, the abyssal center of being itself. Something which
is mimed by the change of perspective within the Frankfurter School from Adorno and Horkheimer to
Habermas. Where Adorno and Horkheimer insisted upon the inherent negative dialectic of modernity,
meaning that modernity contains its own inherent barbarism, Habermas defends the idea that the problems
of modernity are due to the fact that modernity is still an unfinished project. In this discussion Schelling is
thus strictly on the side of Adorno and Horkheimer.

21
current ontology as the only possible ontology. Freedom is therefore the ability to thwart
any ontological order.
This is why freedom as a living concept means the freedom to do both good and
evil. There is no security in any fundamental ontological distinction, such as that between
nature and spirit. There is no guarantee that an action which springs out of nature is evil
nor that the one that springs from spirit is good. In Schelling, evil is a spiritual unity just
as well as good is. Since there can be no fundamental ontology, there can be no
fundamental moral law. And as such it is impossible to give fundamental guidelines for
“how to do good” and “how to do evil”. Therefore a living notion of freedom is the
freedom to do both good and evil.

Conclusion
We are now in position to see the consequences of Schelling’s renewed focus in
philosophy. By moving the center of philosophical discourse from the opposition
between nature and spirit to the one between freedom and necessity, he effectively inverts
the relation between freedom and necessity. Where the central philosophical opposition is
the one between nature and spirit, the tendency will be that freedom will always need to
be explained in the light of some natural necessity which is basically taken to be a fact. In
Schelling the central question is formulated the other way around: How can there be
necessity when there is freedom?
We have seen how Schelling argues that taking the opposition between nature and
spirit to be central means the acceptance of an ontology of things which ultimately leads
to unsolvable contradictions. This was accomplished through an analysis of the relation
of the principles of expansion and contraction in the ontology of things. We have also
seen that he effectively inverts the relation of these principles in order to unfold a
fundamentally different ontology: a non-ontology, which has as its central feature that the
center is absent. The installation of this non-ontology means that any final
(finished/complete) ontology can only be a current one. As such any current ontology can
be replaced be a genuine free act.
Therefore, the answer to Schellings fundamental question (How can there be
necessity when there is freedom?) is: because freedom is the ability to define necessity.

22