epistemologies of rupture - the problem of nature in schelling's philosophy
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
Epistemologies of Rupture:
The Problem of Nature
in
Schelling's Philosophy
T
N
HIS
1801
ESSAY
THE
DIFFEENCE
ETWEN
FICHTE S
AND
SCHELLING S
1Systenm of Phtilosophy,
Hegel
set
out that difference in
terms of
a
contrast
between
reflective and speculative philosophy. Dichotomy, rupture
[En
tz-
weitutg],
he argued, gives
rise
to the need
for
philosophy, a
rupturing
which
reflective philosophy both seeks to resolve and exasperates. The under-
standing strives
to
enlarge itself
to
the
absolute,
but, in its finitude, it
only
reproduces
itself endlessly, positing
oppositions
within
itself
and its
prod-
ucts, and so mocks itself.I The being of nature, in particular, is
either dis-
solved
into
abstractions or remains but a deadly
darkness
within intellect.
Although Fichte was Hegel's
prime target
here, much of
contemporary
philosophy
was included in
his
critique.
Hegel
argued that the
identity
phi-
losophy
of
Schelling, however, in which reason raises itself to speculation
and provides a positive account of being, overcomes such finitudes and
ruptures. Thie Critical Jortnal of Philosophy
that
Schelling and
Hegel
launched from
Jena in
1802, critical of the limitations of proliferating con-
temporary philosophical systems, sought to establish
an
objective philo-
sophical criticism based upon such
a
speculative use of reason.
2
In Germany at the tum of the nineteenth
century,
all philosophy, and
especially
all
philosophical
criticism,
began with reference to Kant's critical
philosophy. In the Preface to his D ference essay, Hegel praised the spirit
of Kantian philosophy, the speculative principle articulated in the
transcen-
dental deduction of
the categories, but
deprecated
the remainder -the
i G. W.
F.
Hegel,
Differenz des
Ficdtne scle,z
itad Sciellitng stilenf Systemis der
Phtilosophie,
in
Gcsammilelte
Werke, ed. Otto
P6ggeler, 2i volumes (Hamburg: Felix Meiner
Verlag,
1968-89)
: 12-13.
2 G. W. F. Hegel,
Einleitung. Ueber das Wesen der Philosophischen
Kritik iiberhaupt,
und ihr
Verhalltniss
zum gegenwirtigen Zustand der Philosophie
insbesondere,
in
Hegel,
GCesaimmelte
Werke
4: 117-28. Although Hegel
is
the author
of the introduction, it
was writ-
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
hypostatization
of the
thing-in-itself,
the
transformation
of
the
categories
into dead compartments of the understanding and their opposition to the
empirical realm of sensation, the restriction of
practical
reason to what can
be conceived by the understanding-all of
which
became fodder for
reflective
philosophy
(Hegel,
Dffferenz
5-6 .
Kant never
had
the
opportu-
nity to comment on the project of Tlhe
CriticaljJournalof
Plilosoplhy,
but
his
own
critical project
started from exposing the
errors
and contradictions of
reason in its purely speculative use and arguing for its restriction to finite,
empirical knowledge.
Nevertheless,
Kant's
critical works were primarily
preoccupied
with the
cognitive
processes involved in the production
of
such knowledge, with
the laws
of reason that
are
the
necessary
conditions
of
possible
experience, with interrogating how cognition in
general
is
pos-
sible. Yet Kant left a problematic rupture in his critical examination of the
conditions and sources of cognition, a
rupture that he
explicitly
acknowledged and graphically represented in the
Introduction
to
his
I790
CritiqueofJusdginient
as
an immense gulf
[Kl:Sft] between
the two do-
mains of our cognitive powers, that in which
understanding legislates
through
the concept of nature and that
in
which reason legislates through
the concept of
reason,
the
subjects
of his first two critiques.
3
For Kant, this
chasm leaves indeterminate not
only
how freedom was to
be
reconciled
with the necessity of
nature,
but also
how
nature was to
be comprehended
as
an
organized
system.
We
are
left merely
with
reflective
judgments
of
these
relations, problematic acts of synthesis, rather than determinative
judgments based upon the necessary laws of cognition. Kant also acknowl-
edged
a mpture in his attempt to
deterrnine
the conditions
and
sources
of
cognition in his I782
Critique
of Puire
Reason,
when he referred the
relation
of
sensory
intuition and understanding to a common, unknown
root
[Wutzefl.
4
As Heidegger
has argued, it is the transcendental
imagination
that acts
as this unknown root,
unconsciously
relating the
concepts of
understanding
to the
manifold
of intuition in judgment. Indeed, it is
the
unconscious
transcendental
imagination that
enacts
the
synthesis
of
the
manifold
of intuition, prior to apperception, to
produce
a unified
represen-
tation
of appearances
for
reflective consciousness in
Kant's
celebrated,
if
problematic, Transcendental Deduction of the
Pure
Concepts of the Un-
derstanding.
5
If Kant
designated specific judgments as indeterrninate
3. Immanuel
Kant,
Critiqtue ofJuidg:ent, trans. W.
S.
I'luhar
(Indianapolis: Hackett Pub-
lishing,
1987) 175-76. Page numbers refer to the
Akademie
edition of
Katts
gesaninfelte
Scirifiten,
vol.
S, which are also
given
in the Pluhar
translation.
4.
Immanuel
Kant, Critique
of
PIre
Reason,
trans.
N.
Kemp Smith (London:
MacMillan,
1933)
Ax5/B29 and A8
35
1386
3
.
546
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NATURE
IN
SCHELLING'S PHILOSOPHY
and hence a problem for critical reflection in
his
Critiquie ofJudginienit, the
unconscious role of the
transcendental
imagination in the
Critique
of Puire
Reasont means
that
even
purportedly
determinate judgments have
an inde-
terminate basis.
6
Hegel
and Schelling regarded reflection as an
instrument
for
producing
philosophical
awareness
of
the
unconscious synthetic
activity
of thought, but
argued
that
only an
intellectual intuition is able to over-
come the
dichotomizing
inherent in
reflection.7
Indeed, intellectual intu-
ition is purported to
enact
consciously what the
transcendental imagination
enacts unconsciously.
The
speculative philosophy Schelling and Hegel ad-
vocated
around
I800 appears a less
radical
departure from Kant's
critical
philosophy when the central role of the transcendental imagination in the
first critique is acknowledged.
Jena was the
perfect
site
for
Schelling
and
FIegel
to
launch
Thie Critical
Jornial
of
Plhilosophty. The
university
was
the center
for post-Kantian
philos-
ophy
at
the end of the eighteenth century, with Reinhold, one of Kant's
chief expositors, the Professor of Philosophy from 1787, only to be re-
placed on retiring
by Fichte
in
1794; and
it was the
home
of the Allgemneine
Literatur-Zeituttg,
the leading joumal for the
dissemination of
Kantian
phi-
losophy from
I785
to I803. If Kant drew attention to the extent to which
our knowledge is dependent upon cognitive
processes,
he did not provide
an
account
of
our knowledge
of
those
cognitive
processes.
Post-Kantian
philosophy thus introduced a second
order
critique-it
not
only asked
how
knowledge is possible, but also asked how a critique of knowledge is possi-
ble.
Fichte introduced
his Wissensclhaftslehre, the science of knowledge or
theory
of philosophy, as such
a meta-critique that
took the
critical
philoso-
phy
itself as an object, and posed the question of
how
we know
the
neces-
sary conditions of cognition.A Fichte
argued
that we have an indubitable
awareness of our own rational activity, of the activity of the I
[Icti]
in
think-
6. These
arguments are developed in Joan Steigerwald,
Instruments of
Judgment:
Inscribing
Organic
Processes
in
late
Eighteenth-Century
Germany,
Stuidies
in
History and
Phtilosophy of Biological
and
Bio-,nedical Sciences 33
2002): 79-131.
7.
Hegel,
Differenz i6-ig
and
27-28; and
F.
W.
J.
Schelling, System
des
transcendental
Idealisnmus in Sciellings Sdnmtiliche
Werke,
ed. K.
F.
A.
Schelling
(Stuttgart:
J. G. Gotta'scher
Verlag, 1856-61)
3:
397-629; hereafter
cited
as SW
8.
Harris, Introduction to the Djfferentce Essay, in G.
W. F.
Hegel, Thje Dtfferente Bettveen
Fichite's and
Schellinig's Systemil of Plilosophy, trans. by
H. S.
Harris and
Walter
Cerf (Albany:
SUNY Press,
I977)
13-14; and
Frederick
C. Beiser, The Fate of Reasoni: Genman Philosophy
from
Kant to Ficite
(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard UP, 1987) 7.
Fichte
sought to raise philosophy
to a science [Wissenschaft]. SeeJ. G. Fichte,
Gnmndlage
dergesaminiteni Wissenschaftslehre (1794),
in
esanuntausgabe der
Bayeristhen
Akadendie der Wissetnscliaft eds.
Reinhard Lauth,
Hans Jacob,
and Hans
Gliwitzky,
35
volumes
to
date
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Friedrich
Frommann,
1964-)
i: 251. The pagination
of
the 1845-46
editionjohatnts
Gottlieb
Fichtes
sditmniliceli Werke,
547
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
ing. His
claim
was that the self-positing activity of the I is the
first, abso-
lutely
unconditioned principle of all human knowledge
Grndlage
255;
FsW i 91 .
Fichte
further
argued that
this
pure
activity
of the
I can
only
become
determinate and present for
the
self through
the
counterpositing of
a
not-I
[Nicht-Ich]
in
opposition
to the
I.
But
as
Hegel
relentlessly
made
clear in his Difference
essay,
the
not-I,
if postulated to
be
a product
of
the
activity of the I, remains an unconscious product.
In
attempting to provide
a foundation
for
critical
philosophy,
Fichte's
science
of knowledge thus
only
transposed
the
rupture at
the
core
of Kant's
system
ofphilosophy
into
a
rupture
within the
self
In
introducing the
self-positing
activity
of the
I as
the foundation of
all
knowledge, Fichte only provided
a
subjective account
of
the relationship between the subjective and objective sides of knowl-
edge,
what Hegel described as a subjective subject-object, in which the
not-I remains
unconscious,
the problem
of nature
a darkness within
con-
sciousness.
In his Difference
essay
Hegel
praised
Schelling's philosophy, in contrast,
for giving
equal weight to our knowledge of the universe as an organiza-
tion intuited
as objective and appearing as
independent
and
the universe
constructed by and for intelligence,
to
NathrplTilosophieand transcendental
idealism.
9
Such a complete philosophical system, Hegel maintained, is only
possible
when speculative philosophy makes the synthetic acts effecting
the
construction
of
nature
as
transparent to the
intellect
as
those
of
ts
own
activity,
the project of
Schelling
t
s
Naturphilosophie. Yet Schelling had
difficulties
living up
to the
promise Hegel saw in his philosophy.
The per-
sistent
problem in all Schelling's various philosophical systems,
a problem
he never
resolved
to his
lasting satisfaction,
was how
to give
nature life by
demonstrating its construction without destroying its positive presence. In
the Natuirphilosophiethat Schelling developed from
1797,
if
he
started from
a construction
of
nature
after
Kant
that sought to
demonstrate the
theoreti-
cal principles necessary for the possibility of nature, he applied the methods
of
critical
philosophy
more
relentlessly
than
Kant,
extending
them
even
to
the empirical concept of matter. The result was that all natural phenomena
became problems for
reflective
judgment, and were
conceived
as complex
organizations of
formal
and material principles, of
activity
and constraint,
whose
synthetic principle remained indeterminate. Moreover, his
relentless
critical
construction of nature resulted in the positive presence of nature
being
dissolved into
an abstract
relation. Having thus
abstracted
the phe-
nomena of nature into theoretical principles in his speculative physics,
in
9. Hegel,
iffercniz 6-7
and 27-28.
Although
Hegel's criticisms of Fichte in this
essay
are
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NATURE
IN SCHELLING'S
PHILOSOPHY
his i oo
System of
Transcendental
Idealism Schelling
turned
his
attention to
tracing
the
genesis
of all concepts
of nature
from
the activity of
thought
ac-
cording
to the principles
of Fichte's Wissenscltaftslelhre.
He
concluded
that
the
problems plaguing
transcendental idealism,
the
dichotomizing effect of
the
self's reflection
on
its
own
activity
and the
counterpositing
of
the
I
to
the not-I
that
left
the not-I
as
an
unconscious
element
within
conscious-
ness, could
only
be resolved through
art. Kant's
critical philosophy
re-
mained
important
here,
but now on the
Critique
ofJuidg nent
and
its
concern
with the
reflective judgment
of organized nature
and
art.
Schelling's
inter-
est in
art
was
also influenced
by
the Jena
Romantics-their
critical
reflections
upon
the
fragmentation
and incompletion
of
all art, their atten-
tion
to process of artistic production,
and their
conception of the
relation-
ship
between
the
fragmentary
individual
and the
system
in terms
of
potentiation.
Schelling
conceived organized
nature
in
analogous
termns.
But
in
attempting
to articulate
an absolute
principle
as
the foundation of
the
whole
system of nature
and art, of every
potency of
the real
and
the
ideal,
Schelling
again
found
himself
reduced
to
abstract
formulations,
attempting
to
conceive it
through a paradoxical
logic of
indifference as
the identity of
identity
and difference.
Hegel appears
to
have been
disturbed by this aspect
of
Schelling's identity philosophy-even
in
the
Dfference
essay
there is
an
implicit criticism
of it
as empty
formalism.
It
is
thus not surprising
that soon
after
attempting
a
collaboration on Thiejournal
of Speculative
Phlilosophy
the
philosophies of
Hegel
and Schelling
developed in
quite distinctive
ways.
In
his
807 The
Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel
would
seal his separation
from
Shelling's
mode of philosophizing
by
condemning
it as
falling
back into
inert
simplicity
and
even expounding
reality
itself in
an
unreal man-
ner. 1
0
But
what
Hegel
saw
as the failure of
Schelling's philosophy
is perhaps
its
most interesting
aspect.
Schelling
is often
represented
as
the
grandest
of
metaphysical system
builders.
Yet
developing his
philosophy in
the context
of
rigorous philosophical reflection and
critique,
reflection
not
only
upon
the conditions of knowledge
but
also
upon
the conditions of philosophy
and critique,
he encountered
at
every
point the problem
of rupture.
Pur-
suing the
ideal
into
its furthest reaches,
he could only
conceive
it in
terms
of
an
abstract
Band
pursuing the real,
he
either
similarly
theorized
it
into
an abstract Band or
was left with
an incomprehensible
dark
presence.
In his
I809 essay
Plhilosophical
Enquiries
into thi Natture
of Human
Freedom these
problems
are
presented in
stark and irresolvable
terms.
Dichotomy
now
ex-
tends
even to God, who
is
conceived
in
terms of
ground
and
existence.
The
ground
of
God,
his
impenetrable and
unruly
nature,
persists
in
created
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JOAN STEIGERWALD
nature
as that
which
cannot
be
brought
to order.
And the
absolute princi-
ple
of indifference
is
now
articulated only
negatively,
as nonground
[Ungrun]l.Thus
a fundamental incompletion
remained
the core of each
of
Schelling's attempts at
a philosophical system,
an incompletion
in which
the
problem
of
nature
has
a
particular
prominence.
His unwillingness to
publish after
the
Freedom essay
perhaps
was
an acknowledgement
of his
in-
ability to
produce
a complete philosophical
system.
As
he would
argue
late
in life,
in his Munich
lectures
of
1832-33:
Nothing is easier than
to
displace
oneself
into
the
realm of
pure
think-
ing; but
it
is
not so easy then to escape
that
realm.
The world does
not
consist
of mere
categories
or
pure
concepts, . but
of concrete and
contingent things,
and
what
must
be considered is
the illogical,
the
other,
which
is
not
concept,
but
its
opposite,
which
only unwilling
accepts the concept.
It is
here
that
philosophy
must
take
its test.'
2
The
Construction
of
Nature:
Schelling's Natlrplilosophie
When
Schelling arrived
inJena in I798
to take
up the position of
Professor
ofPhilosophy, he
was
only twenty-three, yet
he already had
a considerable
number
of publications to
his credit. He
had completed two substantive
works on
Naturphilosophie,
Ideasfor a Phiilosophy
of Nature
in I797
and On
thle
World
Souil
in
1798. He
had
also
published
several
essays
critically
respond-
ing to Fichte's
writings
between 1794
and I797.
The engagement with
Fichte's science
of
knowledge began when Schelling was
a
student at
a
serninary
in
Tiibingen together with
Hegel and
Holderlin.
But
he had de-
veloped an
interest in Natuirphilosophie
by the close
of his
studies
in 1796, an
interest he
was able to pursue
that
autumn when,
taking a position
as a
tutor
to
an
aristocratic
family, he traveled
to Leipzig, an important center
for the study of the
natural sciences
at
that time.'
3
At Leipzig Schelling
en-
i l.
On this failure, see Martin
Heidegger,
Sdtellitig
omti
er esen
er
meetschl ichien Freihteit,
in
Gesamtauisgabe,
ed.
Ingrid
SchuiBfler (Frankfurt
am Main:
Vittorio
Klostermann, 1976-)
:
4-6; and David Clark,
'The
Necessary Heritage
of Darkness':
Tropics
of Negativity
in
Schelling,
Derrida,
and de Man,
in
Iitersections:
Nineteenith-Cenituiry
Plhilosophy and Contemtpo-
r ry Theory,
ed.
Tilottama Rajan
and
David
L.
Clark
(Albany: SUNY Press,
1995
81-82.
12. Schelling, Zntr Grutndlegizing der
Positiveen Phtilosophic,
cited in Clark, 'The Necessary
Heritage
of
Darkness ' 79.
13. Schelling's early
interest in Natuirphilosophie is revealed
in a fragment
from
a 1796 essay,
Oldest System Programme
of
German
Idealism, in Andrew Bowie, Aesthetics
and
Subjectiv-
ity rom
Kant
to Nietzschie
(New York: Manchester
UP,
9ggo
65-67.
Although the author-
ship
of
the
essay isuncertain,
with Hegel and Holderlin also
appearing
to have
had
a hand in
it,
the
emphasis
on nature
is
likely
Schelling's.
See
Manfred Frank, Eine
Einleitilg
n
Schiellings
PhIilosophic (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1985) 13;
and W. Schmied-Kowarzik,
Thesen zur
55 0
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NATURE
IN SCHELLING'S
PHILOSOPHY
grossed
himself
in
the
study
of
contemporary
physics,
chemistry,
physiol-
ogy
and medicine.
His
first
works
on NattTrphilosopihie
also
display
a close
reading
of
Kant's
critiques
and
his
I786
Metaphzysical
Fouindation
of Natutral
Science.
The
Ideas
introduced
the
project
of Naturphilosophzie
through
a
pre-
cocious dialogue
with
this
complex
of
forrnidable
sources,
and
particularly
Kant's
philosophy
of
nature.
Schelling
made
clear
that
the
concern
of
his Natutrphilosophie
was
not
to
present
a
system
of
nature
once
it exists,
but
the
possibility
of a nature ;
that
is,
not
how
the
connections
of
phenomena
we
call
nature
have
be-
come
actual
otutside
us but
how
they
became
actualfor
tus,
how
those
con-
nections
of
phenomena
attained
the
necessity
in
our
representation
in
which
we
are
compelled
to
think
of them.'
4
The
terms
are Kantian.
Kant's
critical
philosophy
was
concerned
to
determnine
the
forms
of
cognition
that
enable
knowledge
of
objects.
He
argued that the
possibility
of
nature,
indeed
the
possibility
of an
object
of
experience,
depends
upon
our
con-
cepts and
representations,
for
only
through
such
concepts
is
it possible
to
know
anything
as
an
object,
or to
know
the
necessary
connections
be-
tween
phenomena-a
priori
concepts
give
our
sensory
intuitions
determine
meaning.
But
Schelling
was
critical
of the
appeal
to
the
idea
of a
noumenal
thing-in-itself
in
Kant,
an idea
he
noted
that
Kant
inherited
through
tradi-
tion,
for to
Schelling
it
was
inconceivable
what
things
external
to us
an d
independent
of
our
representations
might
be. Such
ideas
make
the
separa-
tion
between
human
beings
and
nature
permanent, into
bottomless
abysses
[bodenlose)t
Abgrfinde].
But
Schelling
did not
seek
unity
in
a
meta-
physical
monism,
whether
of
an
infinite
material
substance,
after
Spinoza,
or
infinite
divine
spirit.
His
sought
unity
in
a
philosophy
of nature
in
which
nature
would
not only
express,
but
even realize,
necessarily
and
originally,
the
laws
of
our
mind,
and that
it is
called
nature
only
insofar
as
it
does
so
(Ideeni
93). Schelling
was thus
truer to
Kant's
critical
philosophy
than
its
author,
at
least
in
his
view,
restricting
the
conditions
of
our
cogni-
tion
of
nature
to the
cognitive
phenomena
of
the
finite
human
mind.
These
ideas
for a
philosophy
of nature
were
made
more
precise
in
Shelling's
1799
Introduictioni
to
tihe Otutline
of a
System
of Natuirphilosophie.
Natuirphilosophie
is
now
defined
as
a
speculative
physics,
in
which
our
knowing
is
changed
into a
construction
of
nature
itself,
that
is,
into a
sci-
14.
F.W.J.
Schelling,
Ideetl
zu
einer
Philosophie
derNatfr
n
Historiscil-KritischeA
sgabe,
ed.
Hans
Michael
Baumgartner,
Wilhelm
'G.
Jacobs,
and Hermann
Krings
(Stuttgart:
Frommann-Holzboog
1992-
S:
69 and
84-85.
is.
Schelling,
Ideet
71-72
and
87. The
apology
for
Kant
appears only
in
the
second
1803
edition
of
Ideas. See
Schelling,
Ideen
zu
eitnerPlhilosophie
derNatuire,
1803
edition,
in
SWZ:
33.
The
first
edition
attributed
this dichotomizing
to
speculative
philosophy;
the
second
edition
551
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
ence
of
nature
a
priori.
Schelling
argued
that
we
know
objects
only
when
we
know
the
principles
of their
possibility,
which
means
a
puire
knowing
a
priori.
It
is
only
through
a
deduction
from
a
priori
principles
that
phe-
nomena
of
nature
are
conceived
with
the
necessity
requisite
of
a science.'
6
The
basic
conception
remains Kantian. In the
Metaphtysical
Foundatiotns,
Kant
presented
a
construction
of
Newtonian
laws
of
physics
by
reasoning
a
priori
from
categories.
But
Kant
distinguished
his
metaphysical
construc-
tions
from
a purely
speculative
philosophy
of nature
by
making
such
con-
structions
dependent
upon
the
injection
of
empirical
concepts
from
con-
temporary
science.'
7
Schelling,
in
contrast,
whilst
insisting
that
we
know
nothing
at all except
through
experience,
also
insisted
that
empirical
phys-
ics
is directed
only
at
the
surface
[ObeflUdze]
of nature.
Even
experiment,
he
argued,
is
only
a
first
step
toward
science.
In
putting
a question
to
na-
ture
that
it
is
compelled to
answer,
experiment
contains
an implicit
a
priori
judgment
of
nature,
making
it
what
Schelling
called
a
production
of na-
ture,
but
experiment
can
never
go
beyond
the
forces
of
nature
it
uses
as
its
tools
of
inquiry.
A
speculative
physics
was
to
have
no
such
limitations.
It
was
to
be
directed
at
the
inner
spring-work
[Triebwerk]
of
nature.
Ac-
cordingly,
it was
necessarily
a
subjective
or
purely
theoretical
science.
If
empirical
physics
is
directed
to
what
is
objective
in
nature,
it
only
regards
its
object
in being,
as a
finished
product;
a speculative
physics,
in
contrast,
is directed
to
what
is
non-objective
in nature ;
it
regards
its
ob-
ject
in
becoming,
in its
productivity
(Einleitullg
274-75,
282-83).
For
Schelling,
Kant's
concept
of
matter
is
the
physical
correlate
of
his
idea
of
the
thing-in-itself.
Representing
the
limits
of
human
rationality,
the
impenetrable
content
of
objects
given
to
cognition,
it
acted
in
a
similar
way
to
the
purported
presence
of some
thing
in experience
that
was
the
absolute
other
to all the
mind's
activity.
But Schelling
contended
that
no
physical
concept,
no
phenomena,
no
thing
is in
principle
refractory
to
fur-
ther rational
analysis.
In
the
Ideas
he
argued
that
any body,
no
matter
how
inert or minute,
can
be regarded
as
a system
of
yet
smaller
bodies.
His
argu-
ment
was
based
upon
a consideration
of
the
simplest
distribution
of
matter
in
space
required
to
ensure
an
orderly
and
self-perpetuating
motion
in
its
parts.
His
solution
was
that
of
an indefinite
number
of
unequal
bodies,
each
disposed
in
relation
to
the
others
so
that
they
all
would
gravitate
16.
Schelling,
Einleitung
zn
dem
ntiurf
itn s Systems
der Naturphilosophie.
Oder
iiber
den
Begriff
der
speadlativen
Plhysik
ind
die
innere
Organisation
eines
Systems
dieser
Wissenschlaft,
in
SW
3:
275-80.
17.
Immanuel
Kant,
Metaphysische
Anfatngsgrainde
der Natnavissenschiaft,
in
Kants
gesammelte
Selriften
(Berlin:
K6niglichen
Preuschen
Akadeniie
der
Wissenschaften,
1908-13)
4:
469-70;
and
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NATURE
IN
SCHELLING'S
PHILOSOPHY
around
an
ideal
center.
In such
an
arrangement,
any determinate
set
of
bodies
that
achieved
equilibrium
around
a center
of
gravity
would
also
be
gravitating
as a unit
around
some
other
center as
part
of a larger
system
of
bodies.
On
the
other
hand,
the bodies
within
the
first
system
could
be
con-
ceived
to
consist
of
smaller
bodies
all
forming
a
system
around
their
own
center.
Schelling
argued
that
to
stop
the
analysis
at any
particular
system
of
bodies
would
be
arbitrary.
Accordingly,
he
rejected
the
conception
of
mat-
ter
as
an impenetrable
substratum
endowed
with
attractive
and
repulsive
forces.
Neither
Kant
nor
Newton
before
him,
he
argued,
had
been
able
to
explicate
how
forces
are
supposed
to
inhere
in
this
inert substratum,
or
what
matter
without
forces
or
forces
without
matter
might
be
conceived
to
be.
Schelling
rather
argued
that the
material
content
of
any phenomena
must
also
be
conceived
as a
system
of
attractive
and
repulsive
forces.
8
In
resolving
the
problem
of
how matter
in
general
is originally
possible,
he
concluded,
the
problem
of
a possible
universe
has
also
been
solved
(Ideen
I87).
To
state
his point
more
modestly,
the
problem
of understanding
the
nature
of
matter
is no
different
from
that
of
understanding
the
nature
of the
universe
as
a
whole,
or any
organized
body.
Schelling
thus broke
down
the
difference
in
kind Kant
had
introduced
in
the Critique
ofjJudgtnent
between
determinate
judgments
of
inorganic
bodies,
in
which
phenomena
are
sub-
sumed
directly
under
the
concept
of
mechanical
causality,
and
reflective
judgments
of organic
bodies
or
nature
as an
organized
whole,
in
which
the
complex interrelationship
of
phenomena
posed
a
problem
for
conception.
For
Schelling,
all
of
nature
and
each
part
of
nature
was
to
be understood
like
an
organism,
and
thus
posed
a problem
for
judgment.
Schelling
also
blurred
the
boundary
between
inorganic
and
organic
phe-
nomena
through
his
treatment
of chemistry.
In his
Metaplhysical
Foulndations
Kant
had
excluded
chemistry
from
science
proper,
which
treat[s]
its
ob-
ject
according
to
a priori
principles,
because
its
principles
are
ultimately
merely
empirical
(Metaplhysisclhe
Anfangsgriinde
468).
But
some
ten
years
on,
the new
French
chemistry
was
widely
accepted
in
Germany,
providing
investigators
with
the
theoretical
foundation for
a
science
of
chemistry,
and
new
instruments
and
methods
for
the study
of inorganic
and
organic
phe-
nomena,
the
results
of which
were
widely
disseminated
in new
joumals
and
monographs,
and by
increased
funding
for
chairs
in chemistry
and
chemical
laboratories
at
universities.'
9
Schelling,
fresh from
his
scientific
studies
at the
University
of
Leipzig,
gave chemistry
a
central
place
in the
i8.
Schelling,
Idee
n 78-83
and
183-97.
See
George
di Giovanni,
Kant's
Metaphysics
of
Nature
and
Schelling's
Ideasfor
a Philosophy
of
Natuire,
Journal
of tile
History
of Plhilosophy
xvii
1979):
207-9.
ig. On
these changes
to
the
German
chemical
community,
see Karl
Hufbauer,
Thse
For-
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
Ideas.
If
mechanics
examines
the
motion
of bodies
under
the
impact
of external
forces,
insofar
as
the
parts
of
the
bodies
appear
at
rest,
Schelling
argued
that
chemistry
examines
how
bodies
supposedly
inert
become
active under
an external
stimulus.
He
attributed
the
apparently
spontaneous
chemical reaction to the forces
within
bodies,
which
only
need the stimu-
lus
of
something
extraneous
to be
excited
into
free
play.
If
that
stimulus
should
be continued,
he
contended,
these
new
activities
could
become
permanent.
Thus
already
in
the
chemical
properties
of matter
actually
lie
the
first
seeds,
albeit still
quite
undeveloped,
of a
future
system
of
nature,
which
can
unfold
into
the
most
diversified
forms [Fonnen]
and
formations
[Bildungen],
up
to
the
point
at
which
creative
nature
seems
to
return
into
herself
Ideen
190 .
Schelling
argued
that
any
chemical
event
is
open
to
the
conceptualization
of
mechanics,
whilst
mechanical
events
are
liable
to
the
conceptualization
of chemistry-it is
just
a question
of
the
perspective
of
one's
analysis.
Furthermore,
chemistry
lies
at
the
juncture
of
mechanical
and
organic
bodies,
with
the
difference
between
mechanical,
chemical,
and
organic
phenomena
conceived
as
a
difference
in
degrees
of activity
and
or-
ganization
rather
than
a
difference
in
kind.
The
Naturphilosophie
that
Schelling
put forward
in
the
Ideas
was
that
all natural
phenomena
must
be
conceived
as
an interplay
of
attractive
and
repulsive
forces
in varying
degrees
of
complexity
and
activity.
These
opposed
forces
were
not
intro-
duced
as
empirical
concepts,
or
as
the
physical
grounds
of explanation
like
some
form
of occult
qualities,
but
as
the
necessary
conditions
for
the
possi-
bility
of a
world
system
Ideen
79-80).
If
the
Ideas
extended
the
conception
of
natural
phenomena
as
organized
systems
of
opposed
forces
into
matter
infinitely
and
indefinitely,
On
the
World
Soiul
extended
that
basic
conception
in
the
opposite
direction,
through
the
organic
world
towards
the
appearance
of mind
in
nature
with
the
human
form.
In
the
1798
work,
rather
than
forces,
Schelling
referred
to
the
more
abstract
notion
of
principles,
representing
the
basis
of
life
as
con-
tained in opposed negative and positive principles.
The
negative principle
of
life
is the
specific
material
condition
lying
within
each
individual
being,
which
determines
the
differing
degrees
of
receptivity
to
stimulus
of the
di-
verse
forms
of ife
Vont
der
Weltseele,
SW2:
503-5 .
Much
of the
World
Soul
is concerned
with
detailing
these
negative
material
conditions
of life,
by
drawing
upon
contemporary
research
in chemistry
and
physiology,
from
the
role
of
light and
the
elements
of carbon,
hydrogen
and
oxygen
in
plant
nutrition,
to
animal
respiration
and
the
influence
of
nutrition
on
irritability
of muscles,
with
Schelling
displaying
an
impressive
command
of the
mate-
rial.
But
he
argued
that these negative
conditions
alone
are
insufficient to
account
for the
phenomena
of
life-the
capacity
of
organs
to develop
and
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NATURE
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SCHELLING'S
PHILOSOPHY
mal
fluids
that
animate
the body,
the
contraction
of
muscles-all
these pro-
cesses
are
inconceivable
without
the
assumption
of
a
positive
principle
which
disturbs
the
tendency
of
the
negative
conditions
of
life
toward
stasis.
This
positive
principle
lies
outside
the
living
individual;
a single
principle
spread
throughout
the
whole
of
creation,
it
penetrates
each
individual
as
the
common
breath
of
ife.
But
Schelling,
in
keeping
with
the
project
of
Naturphilosophie,
did
not
introduce
this
positive
principle
as
a determinate
entity
and
was
critical
of
his contemporaries
who
appealed
to
a
special
force
or
Lebenskraft
as a purported
cause
of
the
phenomena
of
life. Indeed,
he
even
contended
that
language
has no
term
for
it,
and
hence
made
use
of
the
poetic
expression
of the
ancient
philosophers,
the
world
soul,
to in-
dicate
metaphorically
what
eluded
conception
Vont
der
Weltseele
502-4,
247,
529,
565-69).
Life
thus
appears
as
the
interaction
of
an indeterminate
positive principle and material conditions
that
are
also
indeterminate,
re-
ceding,
as the
Ideas
showed,
infinitely
into
ever
smaller
systems
of
interact-
ing
forces.
When
changing
material
phenomena
become
bound
together
in
a
product,
something
enduring
is formed.
But
this
product,
as
the
com-
bination
of
phenomena,
is
not
anything
real in
itself
but
only
the
concept
of a definite
organization,
and
as
dependent
upon
actual
phenomena
that
are continually
altering,
is not
anything
enduring-it
is
only
the
union
of
both,
of
concept
and
phenomena,
that
gives
rise to
a living
being.
Schelling
translated
this representation
of
life
directly
into
the
terms
given
by
Kant
in
the
Critique
ofJuidgmiientt.
Life,
organization
is
nothing other
than
an ar-
rested
stream
of
causes
and
effects
.
.
a succession
[of
processes]
that,
en-
closed
within
certain
borders,
flows
back
into
itself.
Such
an
organized
being
we
must
consider
as
if
it
is both
cause
and
effect
of
itself
2 0
To
ex-
press
this
concept
of life
Kant
appealed
to
the
notion
of
the
Bildntogstrieb
or
formative
impulse,
first
introduced
by
Blumenbach
to
represent
the forma-
tive
activity
of
organic
matter.
For
Schelling,
the
Bilduingstrieb
expresses
the
synthesis
ofpositive
and
negative
principles,
activity
and
constraint,
of
free-
dom
and
lawfulness
in
all
natural
formations,
but
is
not
the
explanatory
ground
of
this
union
itself
2
'
Thus in
the
World
Sotul
Schelling
represented
life
in
terms
of
a
concept
of
a relation
between
positive
and
negative
prin-
ciples,
principles
that
are
ultimately
indeterminate
and
recede
into
infinity,
but
a concept
without
constitutive
significance
in
itself
These
provocative
aspects
of
the
Ideas and
On
thie
World
Soutl
are
much
more
explicitly
articulated
in
Schelling's
1799
First
utline
of
a Systent
of
Natirplhilosoplhie
and
the
subsequently
produced
Introdtuctioni
to
that work,
20.
Von
der
Weltseele,
349,
519-20.
See
also
the
Introduction
to
Ideen
40-44.
21
Von
der
Weltseele,
527-30.
See Kant,
Critiqu e ofjudgntzetnt
424;
and
Johann
Friedrich
Blumenbach,
Ober
den
Bildnngstrieb
untid
das
Zcgnnitngsgesdztafte
(Gbttingen:
Johann
Christian
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
both
completed
after
his
arrival
in
Jena.
In
these
works
Schelling
stressed
the
infinite
and
indeterminate
nature
of
the
negative
and
positive
principles
and
the
abstract
and
indeterminate
nature
of
their
relation
in
any
given
nat-
ural
product.
These
later
works
also
place
a
greater
emphasis
on
the
activity
of
nature,
with
the positive principle characterized
as
pure productivity
and
the
negative
principle
as
its
constraint.
Schelling
also
emphasized
that
if
the
negative
principle
is
to
constrain
the
positive
principle,
pure
productivity,
it
must
be
something
positive
itself-a
counteracting
tendency.
It
is
in
the
space
between
these
two
principles,
each
receding
beyond
the
horizon
of
our
representations,
that
the
phenomena
of
nature
occur.
Schelling
de-
picted
the
products
resulting
from
the
concurrence
of
the
pure
productiv-
ity,
the
positive
principle,
and
constraint,
the
negative
principle,
with
the
image
of
a whirlpool.
Where
[a stream]
meets
resistance,
there
is
formed
a
whirlpool;
this
whirlpool
is
nothing
fixed,
but something
that
in
every
mo-
ment
is
vanishing,
and
in
every
moment
springing
up
anew
Einzleitung
289).
Such
a
product
appears
finite,
but
as
the
infinite
productivity
of
nature
concentrates
itself
within
it,
it
must
have
the
impulse
to
infinite
de-
velopment
.
. .
the
empirical
representation
of
an ideal
infinity.
In
each
such
product,
therefore,
lies
the
germ
[Kei1n]
of
a
universe
Einleituing
290o-i .
The
image
of
a
whirlpool
highlights
the
activity
inherent
in
all
natural
phenomena.
It
also
suggests
the
potential
or
potency
of
each
natural
product
for
further
change
and
development,
already
suggested
by
his
treatment
of
chemistry
in
the
Ideas,
what
Schelling
now
termed
its
entelechy
or
potency
[Potenz].
Again
he
emphasized
that
the
difference
be-
tween
inorganic
and
organic
products
is
only
the
degree
of
productivity
enclosed
within
it. Of
particular
import
is
the synthetic
aspect
of
these
nat-
ural
products.
Schelling's
discussion
of the
Bildtungstrieb
buried
in
the
mid-
dle
of
World
Soul
thus
now
becomes
highlighted,
and
the
discussion
in
Ideas
of
the
interplay
of
attractive
and
negative
forces
is supplemented
with
a
dis-
cussion
of
their
synthetic
relation
through
gravity.
The
concept
of
gravity
had
acquired symbolic significance
during
the
course
of
the eighteenth
century
as
the
representation
of
an
actual
relation
whose
nature
remained
unknown.
It was
appealed
to
throughout
the
sciences
to
justify
the
intro-
duction
of
a
conception
of
synthesis
that
could
not
be made
specific,
with
Blumenbach
introducing
his
notion
of
a Bildttngsttieb
by invoking
the
au-
thority
of
the
concept
of
gravity.'
Schelling
made
the
indeterminate
nature
of
such
syntheses
explicit
by
referring
to
them
abstractly
as
a
third
some-
thing,
ci t
Dritte,
as
something
[etulas]
which
is mediated
by
the
antithesis,
and
by
which
the
antithesis
is
in
turn
mediated
Einileitunlg
308).
Nature
is
22
Johann
Friedrich
Blumenbach,
Uber
den
Bildrrngstrieb,
2nd ed.
(Gottingen:
oh nn
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NATURE
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that
third
arising
out
of
the
dynamic
opposition
between
negative
and
positive
principles,
each
of
which
recede,
indeterminately,
into
infinity;
nature
is
that
middle,
das
Mittel,
between
pure
productivity
and
its
con-
straint,
between
the
free
and
the
fixed,
that
middle
which
is
ever
in
a
state
of
formation, and
whose
formative
or
synthetic
principle
also
remains
inde-
terminate
Einleittng
299-300).
For
Schelling,
this
indeterminate
relation
between
activity
and
constraint,
form
and matter,
was
not
only
a problem
of
organic
bodies
and
the
system
of
nature
as a
whole,
as in
Kant's
Critiquie
ofJuidgiient,
but
of
each
natural
product.
In
his
I799
works
Schelling
introduced
a
series
of analogies,
analogies
between
sensibility
and magnetism,
between
irritability
and
electricity,
be-
tween
the
Bilduingstrieb
and
chemistry,
each
in
turn
represented
in
terms
of
opposed
principles
in
different
relations
and
potencies.
Scientific
details
seem obfuscated
by
this overlaying
of
apparently
fanciful
speculations.
But
Schelling
was
very
clear
that
he
was
not
offering
a
system
of nature
but
a
system
of
speculative
physics;
his concern
was
not
with
natural
products
but
with
the
principles
for
the
construction
of
nature,
the
principles
neces-
sary
for
our
knowledge
of nature.
Whereas
Kant's
construction
of nature
was
dependent
upon
empirical
concepts,
upon
some
content
given
in
ex-
perience
that
was not
open
to
further
analysis,
Schelling
critically
ques-
tioned
such
restrictions,
arguing
that
speculative
physics
cannot
set
out
from
some
product,
some
thing,
but
must
extend
to
the
unconditioned
Einleitting
283).
The
result
was
a
construction
of
nature
premised
upon
an
opposition
ofpositive
and
negative
principles,
both
of
which
extended
into
infinity
and
so
defied
determinate
representation.
Between
these
opposites
all
of nature
lies
as
some
Dritte
struggling
to
indifference,
as
an
infinitely
progressive
formation,
in
which
are
found
only
relative
mediating
links of
synthesis,
never
a lasting
or an
absolute
synthesis.
In any
particular
product
there
is
both
productivity
and
constraint,
freedom
and
necessity,
so that
in
even
the
simplest
formation
there
is
some
element
of freedom
and
the
po-
tential
for
further
formation,
and
in even
the
highest
formation
some
ele-
ment
of
necessity.
It
would
be
a strange
metaphysical
system
in
which
outside
this
opposition
nothing
is.
Schelling
relentlessly
questioned
all
foundations
for
a
system
of speculative
physics
so
that
in the
end he
was
left
only
with
this
indeterminate
opposition.
But
as
he
argued,
who
cannot
think
activity
or opposition
without
a substrate
cannot
philosophize
at all
Einleitulng
308).
Schelling
introduced
his Natuirplhilosophie
in
1797 by
arguing:
Nature
should
be
the
visible
mind
[Geist],
the
mind
the
invisible
nature.
Here
then,
in the
absolute
identity
of
the mind
within
us
and
nature
outside
us,
the
problem
of
how
a
nature
external
to
us is
possible
must
be
solved
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JOAN
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the
Concept
of
Matter,
from
the
Nature
of
Perception
and
the
Human
Mind,
in
which
he
provided
a
trantscenidental
discussion
of the
concept
of
matter,
tracing
the
origin
of
the
concept
in
our minds
after
the
method
of
Fichte's
Wissenschaftslehre
(Ideert
2I3-23 .
Thus
from
the
beginning
of
his
engagement
with
Naturphilosophie,
he
was
concerned
with
its
relationship
to
idealism.
Indeed,
the
positive
and
negative
principles
of
his Natur
philosophie,
pure
activity
and
its
constraint,
were
conceived
as
analogies
of
the
activities
of freedom
and
constraint
in
Fichte's
analysis
of
the
activity
of
thinking.
On
the
completion
of his
three
important
works
on
Natur
philosophie,
Schelling
turned
to
the
problem
of
the
relationship
of
his
Naturphilosophie
to transcendental
idealism.
The Natural
History
of the
Mind:
Transcendental
Idealism
In
his
i oo
System
of
Transcendental
Idealism
Schelling
offered
a
new
con-
ception
of the
natural
history
of
the
mind,
depicting
the
emergence
of
na-
ture
from
the
mind
by
tracing
the
genesis
of all
intuitions
and
concepts
of
nature
from the
mind's
activity
according
to
the
principles
and
method
of
Fichte's
Wissensclaftslehre.
Fichte's
dominant
presence
in
Jena
no
doubt
stimulated
Schelling
shortly
after
his
arrival
there
to
reexamine
Fichte's
work
with
which
he
had
engaged
so
productively
as
a student
at
Tiibingen.
Moreover,
given
the
project
of
his
speculative
science
to
bring
theory
into
the
phenomena
of
nature,
to examine the
a
prioriconditions
or
the possibil-
ity
of
a nature,
it
became
important
to
clarify
its
relationship
to idealism.
Schelling
insisted
that
the
two
were
quite
separate
sciences,
starting
from
different
bases
and
proceeding
in
different
directions.
Naturphilosophie
as-
cends
from
experience
and
empirical
laws
to the
pure
principles
prior
to
all
experience;
it sets
out to
idealize
the
real,
to
spiritualize
all
natural
laws
into
the
laws
of
thought.
Transcendental
idealism,
in
contrast,
descends
from
pure
subjectivity
to
empirical
phenomena;
it
sets
out
to
produce
a
realism
out
of
idealism,
to
display
phenomena
as
products
of
the
mind.
Thus
although
both
offer constructions
of
nature,
they do
so
in
distinct
ways.
As
opposed
to
Fichte,
Schelling
contended
that
a
complete
system
of
philoso-
phy
would
need
both.23
His
System
ofTranscendental
Idealisrm
was
introduced
as
a complement
to
his
earlier
Naturphilosophie,
and
as
a part
of
a
complete
philosophical
system.
Schelling
also
offered
a different
emphasis
than
Fichte
in his
treatment
of
transcendental
idealism-whereas
Fichte
was
principally
concerned
with
finding
a
consistent
definition
of
the
principle
of
pure
sub-
jectivity
and
proving
his
system
through
immediate
inference
from
that
principle,
Schelling
claimed
to
offer
a
factual
proof
of
transcendental
ideal-
23.
Schelling,
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NATURE
IN SCHELLING'S
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ism
by
demonstrating
that
it could
actually
derive
the
entire
system
of
knowledge
(System
377).
Fichte's
science
of
knowledge
is
best
understood
as
a
reworking
of
Kant's
critical
philosophy,
and
its claim
to examine
the sources
and
condi-
tions
of
cognition.
As
Schelling's
Naturphilosopiuie
subjected the
empirical
concepts
that Kant
took
as
a starting
point
for
his construction
of
nature
to
further
critical
construction,
so
Fichte
subjected
the
facts
of consciousness
that
Kant
took
as
the starting
point
for
his
critical
philosophy
to
further
critical
analysis.
Fichte
objected,
for
example,
to
Kant
resting
the
argument
for
practical
reason
upon
an
appeal
to a
fact of
consciousness.
He
also main-
tained
that
Kant by
no
means
proved
that
the
categories
he
set
up
to
be the
conditions
of
self-consciousness,
but merely
said
that
they
were
this.
2 4
In-
deed,
Kant
left
the synthesis
of the
manifold
of
intuition
that
constitutes
the
categories
to
the
unconscious
activity
of
the
transcendental
imagination
(Critiquie
ofPure
Reason A
7
78/BIo3).
Fichte
sought
to examine
the
grounds
for
these
facts
[Thatsache]
of
consciousness
by
examining
the
activity of
thinking
giving
rise
to
them,
what
he
called
the
Act
or
active
deed
[Tlhat
handlung].25
Rather
than
simply accepting
that
an I
think
accompa-
nies
all states
of
consciousness,
Fichte
demanded
of his students
and
readers
that they
attend
to the
activity
of
thinking
involved
in
thinking
the
I. He
would
thus
claim to
provide
a better
defense
of Kant's
philosophy
than
Kant
himself
gave, and
in ways
more
consistent
with
the
principles
of criti-
cal philosophy.
In
attending
to
the
activity
of
one's I
in
thinking,
Fichte
cautioned
against
tuming
such
activity
of thinking
into
phenomena
of
consciousness
requiring
a
distinct
subject
possessing
awareness
of that
phenomena,
result-
ing
in
an
infinite
regression
of the
subject's
thinking
of thinking.
Such
an
error
had
been
made
by Reinhold,
Fichte's
predecessor
at Jena.26
In
his
Fouindationts
of
thie Entire
Science
of
Knrowledge,
published
in
I
794 for
his
first
lectures
on
the
Wissensclhaftslelhre
in Jena,
Fichte
introduced
the
notion
of
self-positing
[sicil
setzen]
to avoid
the
self-alienating
effect of the
infinite
re-
gress
of
reflection
upon the
self's
activity
of
thinking.
The
positing
of
the
I through
itself
is
thus
its
own
pure
activity.-The
I posits
itself,
and
by
virtue
of
this
mere
self-assertion
it
is; and
con-
24.
Fichte, Zweite
Einleitung
in die
Wissenschaftslehre,
in Gesamtaztsgabe
I.4:
230,
an d
FsW
l:
479.
25 The
term
Tliatizanidlhig
is
derived
from
the term
Thlatsacie
[fact],
but replaces
achle
[thing]
with
Handlmng [action].
26. Fichte,
Aeneisdemus,
oder
iuber
der von
dem
Hrn. Prof.
Reinhold
inJena
gelieferten
Elementar-Philosophie,
in
Gesamlauisgabe
1 2:
41-67;
FsW
1:
3-25.
See Beiser,
Fate ofRea
son,
ch.
8;
and Frederick
Neuhouser,
Ficthte's
Tlheory
of
Suibjectivity (Cambridge:
Cambridge
55 9
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
versely,
the
I
is
[ist]
and
posits
its being
[Seyn] by
virtue
of its
mere
be-
ing.
It is
at
once
the
agent
[Handelnde]
and
the
product
of
action
[Handlung];
the
active [Thidtige],
and
what the
activity
[Tltatigkeit]
brings
about;
action
[Handltng]
and
deed
[That]
are
one
and
the
same,
and
hence
the
anl
[ chi
bin]
expresses
an Act
[Thathandlhing].
Gnmndlage
259;
FsW
I:
96)
Fichte
played
with the
double
meaning
of
the
word
Seyn,
as
both
the
noun
being
and
the
verb
to
be
or
logical
copula
is,
to
express
the
identity
of
the
self's
being
and
the
activity
of thought
in
self-positing.
In
the
posit-
ing
of
itself, he
argued,
the
I
is
both subject
and
predicate,
subject
and
ob-
ject
of
itself For
Fichte,
philosophical
reflection
is
concerned
with
the
transformative activity
of
reflecting
on
the form
of
knowing,
through
which
the
form
becomes
the
form
of
the form
as its
content
and
returns
into
itself
Fs
W
i
67).
But
the
Wissenschaftslehre
is not
solely
a formal
sci-
ence
of
potentially
unending
reflection,
of
the
self
reflecting
upon
the
form
of
its
thought.
The
positing
of the I
determines
the
I, making
its
being
present,
and
halting
the
infinity
of
reflection.
The term
Thathandllung
ex-
presses
the
identity
of
reflection
and
positing,
of the
form
and
content
of
the
self's
activity.
27
The
judgment
that
something
is
something,
that
phenomenological
awareness
of
something
is
connected
to
a concept,
that
act
of
thought,
constitutes the
being
of
the
self
as
an
active
power or pure
activity.
The content
of the
self's
activity
is thus
identical
to
its form.
Fichte
introduced
this
absolute
[schlechthin],
unconditioned
self-positing
of
the
I
as
the
first
principle
of
all
philosophy.
Fichte
thus
foregrounds
the
identity
of
the
self,
the I
think
that
Kant
held accompanies
all cognitive
activities,
making
it the
basis
of
all
human
knowledge.
But,
as Heidegger
has
noted, Kant
held
that
the
identity
of
the
self
that
accompanies
all
cognition
only
becomes
aware
of
itself
through
opposition
[entgegensteht]
to some
object
[Gegenstanda
of
thought
or
repre-
sentation.28
Fichte followed Kant here,
oppositing
or
counterpositing
[Etntgegensetzeti]
to
the
positing
[setzen]
of
the
I [ chi]
that
of a
not-I
[Nicht-
Ich]
as
the
second
principle
of all
human
knowledge.
The
not-I
acts
as
a
check
[Anstofi]
or
limit
upon
the
I's
infinite
and
unconditioned
activity,
reflecting
it back
upon
itself
and
thus
making
it
conscious
of itself.
Fichte
used
this
strange
expression
not-I
to
indicate
that
all
cognitive
activity
in-
volves
the
I, that
any
phenomenon
must
be
a
phenomenon
of conscious-
ness
for
us
to be
aware of
it
as a
phenomenon-a
not-I.
Like
Schelling,
27.
See
Walter Benjamin,
Der
Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen
Romantik,
in
Walter
Bciamint
Cesan,nnelte
Scitifteni,
ed.
Rolf Tiedemann
and
Hermann
Schweppenh-iuser,
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PHILOSOPHY
Fichte
found
Kant's
notion
of a
noumenal
thing-in-itself
completely
sepa-
rate
from
the
activity
of
the
I
meaningless
and
uncritical.
Yet
this
phenom-
enon
of
consciousness
appears
as
something
alien
and
unconscious
to
the
pure,
unconditioned
activity
of
the
I a
niot-I.
The
opposition
of the
I and
not-I
led Fichte
to
introduce
a
third
principle,
that
of
a
synthetic
relation
between
these
opposites.
This
third principle
addresses
the Kantian
prob-
lem
of
how
synthetic
a
priori
judgments
are
possible.
Fichte
argued
that
by
regarding
the
pure
activity
of the
I as
quantitatively
divided
into
an objec-
tive
portion
of
the
I,
or not-I,
opposed
to
a
subjective
portion
of
the
I,
their
synthesis
could
be
comprehended
as
grounded
in the
self-positing
I as
the
basis
of
both.
From
these
three
principles-the
pure,
unconditioned
activity
of
the
I,
the
opposition
within
the I's
activity
of
a
not-I to
the
I,
and
the
synthesis
of the
I and
the
not-I-Fichte
claimed
to be
able to
de-
rive
the entire
form and
content
of
cognitive
activity.
Fichte's
presentation
of
the
Wissensclhaftslelzre
is
mind-numbingly
convo-
luted, and
it is hard
to
imagine
his
students
thinking
with
him
as he
traced
the
supposed
activity
of the
I
through
all
aspects
of
its self-construction.
Its
complex
formulation
is
in
part due
to
its
hasty
composition
and
episodic
publication
as
lecture
notes,
and
in
part due
to
Fichte's
unusual
modes
of
expression.
Indeed,
some
have
read
him
as postulating
the
production
of
the entire
world
from
the
absolute,
unconditioned
activity
of
the
self,
al-
though
it is
unclear
what
that
might
mean.
29
But
we should
take
seriously
Fichte's
claim
that
he
was
a
Kantian,
that
he
offered
a
critical
examination
of the
cognitive
activities
of the
finite
human
mind,
and only
went
beyond
Kant
in
offering
a
critical
examination
of
elements
of cognition
left opaque
by
Kant.
The
close
relationship
between
Fichte's
Wissensclzaftslehre
and
Kant's
critical
philosophy
is
particularly
manifest
in
the
Deduction
of
Representation,
the
summary
statement
that
concluded
the
first,
theoreti-
cal
part
of
the Founidationis,
and
that
was
based
on
the
argument
and termi-
nology
of
Kant's
Transcendental
Deduction
of the
Pure
Concepts
of
Un-
derstanding
in
the
Critiquie
of
Puire
Reasonj
Fichte,
Grundlage
369-84;
FsW
I:
228-46).
In Kant's
treatment,
the
synthesis
of intuitions
into
a unified
representation,
ready
for
recognition
in a concept,
is
enacted
by
the
tran-
scendental
imagination
working
unconsciously.
As
the
unknown,
but
common
root
of
sensation
and
thought,
the
transcendental
imagination
has
an
essential
but problematic
place
in
Kant's
architecture
of
pure
rea-
son.
30
Fichte,
in
contrast,
argued
that
through
philosophical
reflection,
all
29
Neuhouser
attributes
such popular
readings
of
Fichte
as
due
to a
misreading
of
his
use of
the
term
absolute
[scisIecdithizi]
Fichte
used
the term
to
refer
to the
unconditioned
activity
of
the
1
rather than to
claim
that
the
I
was
an
absolute
being productive
of
all
other
being.
See
Neuhouser,
Ficite s
Thjeosy
of ibjectivity
46.
561
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JOAN
STEIGERWALD
activity
of
the
I could
be
attended
to
and
traced
genetically,
including
that
of
the
imagination.
Indeed,
a
science
of
knowledge
must
not
only
posit
knowledge
as
the
identity
of
intuition
and
thought,
but show
that
identity
by
its
Act
(Hegel,
Djferenz
36).
Fichte
depicted
the
imagination
as
wavering
between
the opposite directions
of
the
l's
activity,
its
spontane-
ous,
outward
activity
and
the
reversion
of
that
activity
back
into
itself
through
some
extraneous
check.
The
imagination
thus
posits
an
intuited
[Anschauteni],