Professional Documents
Culture Documents
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Philosophy Education Society Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to The Review of Metaphysics
The Review of Metaphysics 53 (September 1999): 99-128. Copyright ? 1999 by The Review of
Metaphysics
II
7 SW, 11/3:83: unur das reine Was desselben enth?lt, nichts aber von
dem Da?, von der Existenz." See also SW, 11/3:59.
8SW, 11/3:60 and 101-2.
QSW, 11/3:172.
10 On Schelling's view that the existence of particular things in nature
can only be confirmed a posteriori by sensuous experience or Vorstellung,
see SW, 11/3:61-2,171, and 173. On his view that the existence of God (and of
other minds) can only be confirmed a posteriori by pure, nonsensuous expe
rience or Vorstellung, see SW, 11/3:113,169,171, and 173, and Beach, The Po
tencies ofGod(s), 148 and 172. Note that alongside the more famUiar sensu
ous empiricism, ScheUing thus propounds a theory of metaphysical
empiricism, according to which we can directly intuit that which is not given
to the senses; see SW, 11/3:114.
11 The appropriate translation of Vorstellung would thus be "presenta
tion" rather than "representation." I have elected to leave the term untrans
lated in this essay, however, as the etymology of the German word itself pro
vides the clearest indication of its meaning for Schelling.
ply proves that things have to be conceived in a certain way and that,
insofar as they can indeed be conceived coherently, their existence is
possible. Thought is thus concerned with the mere possibility of a
thing's existence, with its potential being?being that can but need not
become actual.12
Now negative phUosophy is philosophy that seeks to determine in
a systematic manner aU that is a priori conceivable and possible. It
starts from the bare idea of infinite possibility or potential as such?
"die unendliche Potenz des Seins"?and seeks to determine how all
the manifold possibilities of being follow necessarily from this infinite
potential.13 Exactly how negative philosophy proceeds, according to
Schelling, need not concern us here.14 What is important is that such
philosophy seeks insight through pure reason alone and that, as a re
sult, it is restricted to determining what is conceivable by thought and
so possible. Negative philosophy is thus able to show us what can ex
ist, but it can never show us by itself that anything it understands does
exist. Nor can it prove a priori that anything must exist by virtue of
what it is understood to be, whether that thing be a triangle, a plant or
indeed God. The actual existence of what is conceived by negative
phUosophy can only ever be demonstrated by something other than
negative phUosophy itself, namely Vorstellung.
Negative philosophy reaches its culmination, Schelling explains,
when it considers the final possibility that can be conceived. This is
the possibUity which we can only entertain when aU the various possi
ble modes of being have been considered?the one that thus lies at the
furthest remove from the thought of sheer possibility as such, with
which negative philosophy begins. According to Schelling, this final
conceivable possibUity can be none other than the one in which there
is no longer any possibility as such to think. It is thus the possibility of
that being that is not itself merely possible being, but rather pure act
(reiner Actus) or pure actuality (reine Wirklichkeit). Such pure actu
ality, ScheUing tells us, is nothing other than being itself?"das
Seiende selbst."15 Negative phUosophy comes to an end, therefore,
12 SW, 11/3:161: uDas Denken hat eben nur mit der M?glichkeit, der Po
tenz zu tun."
l3SW, 11/3:165,148.
14 For a lucid account of Schelling's negative phUosophy, see Beach, The
Potencies of God(s), 95-146. See also John Burbidge, "Contraries and Con
tradictories: Reasoning in Schelling's Late PhUosophy," The Owl of Minerva
16, no. 1 (faU 1984): 55-68.
15 SW, 11/3:104,149, and 155.
than actual be-ing and exist-ing. By virtue of the fact that it only ever
is, being is thus simply necessary, according to ScheUing. Being is
"das einfach-notwendig Existierende."19
The necessity which attaches to being itself is not necessity as it
is usually conceived, however. For Kant, for example, "necessity is
just the existence which is given through possibUity itself."20 A neces
sary being is thus one whose very possibUity makes it actual. For
Schelling, however, being cannot be necessary in this way, because it
can never be preceded by its own mere possibUity and so cannot fol
low with necessity from that possibUity. The necessity of being itself,
for Schelling, Ues not in the fact that its very possibUity requires it to
be, but rather in the fact that it can never be merely possible in the
first place. The necessity of being, in other words, Ues in the fact that
it can only ever be actual. Being itself is thus that which necessarily
exists because it excludes its own mere possibUity by preceding all
possibUity.21 This means that the necessity of being itself is not one
that is grounded in possibility, but one that is without any prior
ground. It is the groundless necessity of being's simply being and hav
ing no other option apart from being.
Such necessary existence, which cannot be understood to foUow
from any prior possibility, is conceived by Schelling as that which is "a
priori incomprehensible,"22 for such existence cannot be explained by
being derived from something prior to it. Existence does not occur
because of some prior ground which would necessitate it, but exists
simply of itself.23 It exists necessarily because there is no other possi
bUity for it than existence. This needs to be borne in mind when con
sidering ScheUing's Leibnizian question: "why is there anything at all?
why is there not nothing?"24 In asking this question ScheUing appears
19 SW, 11/3:167.
20 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (hereafter UCPR," with
references to pagination in the first [A] and second [B] German editions) ed.
Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990), A122/B111; English
translations taken from Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith
(London: MacmUlan, 1929), 116.
21 SW, 11/3:160: ueben darum . . . m?ssen wir von dem ausgehen, was
ich das blo? Existierende genannt habe, von dem unmittelbar, einfach not
wendig Seienden, das notwendig ist, weil es aller Potenz, aller M?glichkeit
zuvorkommt, " 166: "Eben darum ist es das notwendig Existierende, weil es
alle vorg?ngige M?glichkeit ausschlie?t, weil es allem K?nnen zuvorko
mmt"
22SW, 11/3:165: "das a priori Unbegreifliche."
23SW, 11/3:168: "von selbst."
to suggest that logicaUy there could just as easily be (or could just as
easily have been) nothing rather than being. Yet that is by no means
the principal point of the question. For as we have seen, Schelling
thinks that existence as such is actually necessary; the logical possi
bility of nothing is thus not really a possibUity after all. The main
point of Schelling's question, therefore, is not to raise the purely logi
cal possibUity of nothing, but to make us aware that no reason can be
given for the existence that actually and necessarily is. In asking his
question Schelling is thus actually giving expression to the fact that
existence is groundlessly necessary. Why is there something rather
than nothing? ScheUing asks. The answer is that there is no reason;
there is simply the sheer necessity of existence itself?the fact that
existence as such must be. Neither in the order of knowing nor in that
of being is there first the possibility of being, or the essence or con
cept of being, and then, following from this, the fact of being. As
Spinoza saw, there is first existence, being, and actuality itself which
exists out of sheer necessity.25
Pure actuality or indubitable existence thus constitutes the one
glaring exception to Schelling's golden rule that thought can never
know that something must and does exist simply by virtue of under
standing what it is. The reason why it should constitute an exception
is clear to see. In every other case (including that of God as fully God,
Schelling maintains), the concept of what something is identifies the
character or essence that that thing must have to be the thing that it
is, whether or not it actually exists. It tells us that, whether or not
there are such things as triangles and unicorns, and whether or not
there is a God, a triangle has three sides, a unicorn is a white horse
with a horn on its head, and God is the creator of all things. By them
selves, such concepts indicate that triangles, unicorns and God are at
least conceivable and so could possibly exist, but they cannot prove
that such objects must or do exist; that can only be established by
sensuous or pure Vorstellung. Indeed, Schelling maintains, the mere
possibUity of a thing's existence is never sufficient to prove that the
24 SW, 11/3:7. See also Bowie, Schelling and Modem European Philoso
phy, 162.
25 SW, 11/3:166. This is not to say that nature or the human world is nec
essary, but only that existence as such is necessary. Insofar as nature and
the human world are contingent (because they are freely created) and so do
not have to exist, "there could exist nothing at all" (SW, 11/3:59). There could
not, however, be no existence whatsoever; there could not be absolutely
nothing. On the contingency of nature, see notes 36 and 45 below.
thing itself exists. Thus when Schelling claims that we can never
know that something exists simply by understanding what it is, he is
asserting above aU that the actual existence of something can never be
shown to follow from its mere possibUity.
In the case of pure actua?ty or existence as such, however,
ScheUing does not claim that its necessity foUows from its mere possi
bility. This is because pure actua?ty is precisely that which can never
be merely possible in the first place, but is always and only actua?ty.
There can thus never be the mere possibUity of sheer actuality from
which its actua?ty as such can follow. The necessity of sheer actua?ty
stems not from any prior possibUity, but from the fact that it can only
ever be pure and simple actuality and so excludes from itself the very
possibUity of its own nonbeing and of its own mere possibUity.
The fact that there is and must be existence as such thus cannot
be said to follow from what existence is conceived to be, if by this we
mean that the necessity of existence as such is enta?ed by its mere
possibUity. This is because sheer existence is not preceded by any
possibUity that is estabUshed by its essence or what it is; existence is,
rather, "the merely existing ... in which there is as yet nothing of an
essence, a What, to be conceived."26 Yet in another sense, of course,
the fact that there is and must be existence as such does foUow from
what existence is conceived to be. For what existence is in itself is
nothing other than the actuality of existing: "the existing is here itself
the concept and the essence."27 To know what existence is, is thus au
tomaticaUy to know that it exists?not because any prior essence or
possibUity of existence (or indeed our concept of existence) makes
existence necessary, but because existence itself cannot but exist.28
Negative philosophy thus understands a priori that there cannot
just be potential and possibUity, but that there must be existence as
such. However, Schelling maintains that negative phUosophy gets no
further than the mere thought of this necessary existence. Further
more, it comprehends this necessary existence in an expUcitly nega
tive way: it understands that existence is necessary quite simply be
cause it cannot not be.29 Negative philosophy culminates, therefore,
26 SW, 11/3:167.
27 SW, 11/3:167.
^SeeSW, 1/10:17; OHMP, 51-2; SW, 11/3:156.
29 SW, 11/3:70: "Die Veraur?/?, wenn gleich ihr letztes Ziel und Absehen
nur das Seiende ist, das Ist, kann es doch nicht anders bestimmen, sie hat
keinen Begriff f?r dasselbe, als den des nicht nicht Seienden."
36 SW, 11/3:163.
Ill
37 SW, 11/3:164.
38 SW, 1/10:127; OHMP, 134.
39 SW, 1/10:126,141; OHMP, 134,145.
40 SW, 1/10:143^1; 0#MP, 147.
concept is thus not just the structure of possible being for Hegel; it is
what is ultimately actual and real: "das einzig Reale"41 Furthermore,
the concept, for Hegel, is the real ground of nature and the human
world, because it is that which externalizes itself as nature and re
turns to itself as conscious spirit. Hegel thus does not keep his Sci
ence of Logic within the limits of negative phUosophy, but sees it as
the self-sufficient source of positive understanding of existence it
self.42
Why Schelling should object to this understanding of the concept
should be obvious. What Hegel has done, from Schelling's point of
view, is equate pure actua?ty with reason or the concept. Hegel thus
misses what is aU-important for Schelling: the fact that being itself or
pure actua?ty is not just reason, but sheer existing as such, the sheer
necessity of the "is." Schelling explains that he has no objection to
the idea that what is logical or rational wiU turn out to be an irreduc
ible aspect of existence?"that without which nothing could exist."
What he does object to, however, is the idea that the logical is ulti
mately aU that there is and that "everything only exists via what is log
ical," because this overlooks the fact that ultimately existence as such
occurs groundlessly of itself.43
Schelling also objects to the fact that Hegel understands nature
to be grounded in the rational necessity of the concept and to be noth
ing but a mode of being of the concept itself, because this conflicts
with Schelling's view that nature is created by the free activity of God,
that is, by the free activity of groundless, necessary existence which
raises itself to expUcit Godhood through its activity of creation.44 In
addition, Schelling objects to (what he takes to be) Hegel's assertion
that every aspect of being as such and nature can be deduced and
known whoUy from within thought, because this goes against the
Schellingian claim that aU existence, whether necessary or contin
gent, Ues outside of thought and can only be reached by Vorstellung
and understood when thought is taken outside itself and becomes ec
static. In Schelling's interpretation, therefore, the problem with Hegel
is that he is an irredeemably panlogicist?or indeed, logocentric?phi
losopher, who conflates existence with what is simply conceivable.
Yet for Schelling there is no way that a dead tautology which simply
repeats nothing can yield the idea of becoming or any other determi
nation. For Schelling, therefore, whatever necessity leads from pure
being to further concepts in the Logic cannot be a necessity that Ues
in the opening thought of pure being itself, because that thought is
empty and completely immobUe.48
Yet if Hegel cannot move from the concept of being to further
concepts through some dialectic immanent in the thought of pure be
ing itself, how does he progress in his Logic? The only explanation
Schelling can come up with is that the compulsion to move on from
the concept of being Ues within the phUosopher who is doing the
thinking. This compulsion, Schelling teUs us, lies in the fact that
"thought is already used to a more concrete being, a being more full of
content, and thus cannot be satisfied with that meager diet of pure be
ing in which only content in the abstract but no determinate content is
thought." The HegeUan phUosopher cannot stay with pure being,
therefore, because he knows "that there reaUy is a more rich being
which is more fuU of content" and, having withdrawn to the most min
imal content possible, he now feels the need to regain that rich being
once more. What always tacitly leads the progression in Hegel's Logic
is thus "the terminus ad quern, the real world, at which science fi
naUy is to arrive" (or, at least, what the HegeUan phUosopher under
stands of the real world).49
The specific transition from being to becoming in the Logic is ex
plained by Schelling in the foUowing way. First of all, the Hegelian
phUosopher anticipates the goal of fuU being (as concept, idea, and ul
timately nature) and judges that the meager concept of pure being,
with which the Logic begins, falls short of that goal. The proposition
"Pure being is nothing" is thus reread as saying that "Pure being is still
(noch) nothing" or that "it is not yet (noch nicht) real being."50 By be
ing recast as not yet real being in this way, pure being is understood
not just as nothing but as harboring the possibUity for real being
which is yet to be fulfiUed, that is, as being in potentia. With the in
terpolation of the word yet (noch), Schelling maintains, pure being is
thus understood as lacking, but also as promising, something which
has yet to be. That is to say, pure being is thought as pointing beyond
itself and as heralding real being which is to come. In this way, ScheU
ing claims, the transition is made by the HegeUan phUosopher from
the thought of pure being to the thought of coming to be or becoming.
One moves from pure being to becoming, therefore, not by under
standing pure being as pure being, but by understanding it as not yet
real being and so as pointing forward to the future coming of that real
being itself. In Schelling's view, it is only "with the help of this yet
(noch) [that] Hegel gets to becoming."51 Hegel's dialectic develops,
therefore, because pure being is understood already to be the concept
in its abstract form, though not yet the fuU concept to come.
From Schelling's point of view, Hegel thus perpetrates a double
deception at the beginning of his Logic. He pretends that the concept
of pure being is something that moves itself, when it would in fact lie
completely immobile if it were not for the thinking subject; and he pre
tends that the Logic is driven forward by a necessity immanent within
the concept of pure being alone, although it obviously has a goal that it
is striving toward, namely real being.52
Schelling's interpretation of the Logic has been hugely influential,
even on critics of Hegel who do not expUcitly acknowledge their debt
to Schelling. The idea that Hegel's dialectic moves forward "thanks to
the play of the already and the not-yet" governs the whole of Derrida's
reading of Hegel in Glas, for example.53 It is what enables Derrida to
suggest that at every stage in its development Hegelian spirit is always
already what it is, but also not yet what it is, and so is never actuaUy at
one with itself but always, as it were, both ahead of and behind itself.
The idea that Hegel acknowledges no genuine other or outside of
thought underlies Levinas's critique of Hegel;54 and the idea that Hegel
abstracts from existence?existence which he must nevertheless pre
suppose?is to be found in Kierkegaard.55 It is clear then, as Andrew
Bowie says, that Schelling's critique of Hegel has set the agenda for
much subsequent phUosophy. But if Schelling has set the modern
agenda in this way, what would be the consequence if Schelling had
actuaUy misunderstood what Hegel had to say? Might not the modern
imperative to go beyond Hegel lose some of its urgency? So just how
accurate is Schelling's reading of Hegel?
IV
Note that Hegel does not claim that thought can prove by itself
that certain particular things?such as Herr Krug's pen?have to exist
(though he does believe it can prove that there is and must be being as
such). He claims, rather, that thought is what enables us to under
stand the particular, contingent things which we do encounter, not
merely to be something seen or heard, but to be something actuaUy
existing. For Hegel, thought must be able to think existence from
within itself, because it is thought that conceives of there being any
thing in the first place. Now to the extent that thought is aware
through itself that there is being, being cannot be absolutely other
than thought and utterly exceed the reach of thought. Hegel's refusal
to regard being as ultimately exceeding thought is thus not the result
of any desire to reduce everything there is to the concept, but is the
result of his beUef that thought itself, through itself, is what is first
conscious that there is anything at aU.
It should be noted, by the way, that when Hegel turns to consider
nature, he does not conceive of it as that which Ues utterly outside
thought, either. Nature is conceived as being outside of itself, as
Au?ersichsein, not as being utterly outside of thought.60 This, indeed,
is what gives rise to the concept of space as sheer externality. Once
again, this does not mean that nature is a mere posit of thought for
Hegel. Nature is independent of and prior to thought. But it is not to
be thought of as utterly outside thought?as utterly exceeding
thought?because thought is directly aware through itself of the very
self-externa?ty that nature is.
61 For Hegel's account of thought and its activity, see Hegel, Enzyk
lop?die der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830). Dritter
Teil: Die Philosophie des Geistes, ??465-7; Philosophy of Mind, 224-7.
62 Strictly speaking, Kant only identifies understanding (Verstand), not
thought as a whole, with the faculty of judgment (Verm?gen zu urteilen); see
CPR, A108-9/B93-4; pp. 105-6. Theoretical reason (Vernunft) depends on
the activity of judgment, however, insofar as it seeks "to discover the univer
sal condition of its judgments];" see CPR, A345/B364; p. 306. Bowie con
firms at various points in his book that Schelling understands thought to be
primarily discursive and predicative; see, for example, Schelling and Modern
European Philosophy, 26: "knowledge has a subject-object, prepositional
structure"; and 63: "Manfred Frank suggests that Schelling conceives of being
as the 'transitive relationship of a subject to its predicates.'" See also Peter
Dews, The Limits of Disenchantment: Essays on Contemporary European
Philosophy (London: Verso, 1995), 140-1.
63CP?,A572/B626;p.504.
another possibUity: that the Logic does proceed immanently from the
thought of being as such and that Schelling is incapable of grasping
this because he has simply assumed from the outset that thought by it
self cannot bring being as such before the mind.
I have to acknowledge that the immanent interpretation of He
gel's Logic that I am recommending is not a popular one today. It is
not accepted by aU Hegel scholars and it is certainly not prominent
amongst continental readers of Hegel.79 The orthodoxy amongst con
tinental readers of Hegel is that he clearly anticipates the goal of the
dialectic from the very outset and that his is thus a closed phUosophi
cal system which already knows from the very beginning where it is
going to end up. Wittingly or unwittingly, the orthodox continental in
terpretation of Hegel thus follows that advanced by Schelling. My ac
count of Schelling's critique of Hegel in this essay has without doubt
been too cursory and has left many questions unanswered and many
things unexplained. But if it has at least shown that Schelling's cri
tique of Hegel is a questionable one, and that the current orthodox in
terpretation of Hegel amongst continental philosophers (to the extent
that it is indebted to Schelling) is also questionable, I shall be more
than content.
not to be found at the beginning of the Logic, but later in the text, as
well as in the ph?osophies of nature and spirit. There is nevertheless
an important reason for studying ScheUing's critique of Hegel, because
that critique has introduced a twofold suspicion of Hegel that lingers
to the present day and often overshadows the whole of his system.
First, it is often assumed that Hegelian thought is thought which
progresses by already knowing where it is headed and by drawing
whatever it encounters into a systematic development which it can al
ready foresee. Second, Hegel is often accused of failing to think a cer
tain outside which is the very condition of his own speculative
thought because he absorbs all exteriority into the interiority of what
can be thought. I have tried to show that both of these worries about
Hegel are unfounded, or at least open to serious question. As Alan
White argues, Hegelian thought does not already know where it is
headed, nor does it, as Heidegger maintains, proceed "in accordance
with a predetermined idea of being."80 Rather, HegeUan thought, and
in particular the Logic, makes its own way, and the speculative
thinker in the process of determining the categories does not know
where, if anywhere, he is headed. HegeUan thought thus does not pur
port to be the closed economic system described, for example, by Der
rida, which already knows where it is going and which always seeks to
appropriate whatever exceeds it (such as the gift, or diff?rance) as a
moment in its ineluctable journey back to itself.81 Furthermore, Hegel
does not simply absorb exteriority into the interiority of what can be
thought. It is true that Hegel does not see the externa?ty of nature as
absolutely external to thought, but this is not because he simply re
duces externality to a mere category. It is because he beUeves that
thought itself is precisely what opens up for us the space of genuine
externa?ty. Thought, for Hegel, does think and intuit genuine exter
na?ty, therefore; but just because thought does think such externa?ty,
that externa?ty cannot Ue simply outside of thought.
It is important to counter Schelling's suspicions regarding Hegel's
system, not simply because they distort the argument of the Logic and
so get in the way of an appreciation of the subtlety of that text, but
University of Warwick