Abstract
I seek to identify the specific nature of Schelling’s transcendental philosophy in the System of Transcendental Idealism. This transcendental philosophy implements two moments: a ‘transcendentalization of nature’ (containing the ‘real series’ as an expression of the ‘ideal series’) and the ‘self-objectification of the subject.’ In particular, it has to fulfill three tasks: unify (teleologically) theoretical and practical philosophy, specify the method of philosophy in relation to that of mathematics, and clarify the meaning of ‘construction.’ I then turn to the position that Schelling developed in his correspondence with Fichte, highlighting the ‘objective subject-object’ as the highest unity of the philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy. This leads me to a discussion of what, if anything, of Schelling’s transcendental philosophy can reach us today in light of contemporary criticisms of philosophies of the subject, criticisms that argue they are unable to give a robust enough notion of reality.
Translated by Heidi A. Samuelson
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Notes
- 1.
F.W.J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente, vol. II, ed. H. Fuhrmans (Bonn: Bouvier, 1962–1975), 57.
- 2.
SW, I/1, 401 ff. Citations of Schelling provide the pagination of the English translation if one exists, followed by that of the Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schellings sämmtliche Werke, vols 14, ed. Karl Friedrich August Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856–1861). References to the K.F.A. Schelling edition are given by the abbreviation SW, division, volume and page number.
- 3.
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [hereinafter cited parenthetically as CRP], trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), B423.
- 4.
This foundation is completed with the identification of the ‘transcendental schema’ in the chapter on the Schematism.
- 5.
At the very end of the Deduction of 1787, when, in a ‘brief summary,’ he recapitulates the fundamental objective of this chapter, Kant explicitly states that the deduction of the categories consists in the ‘presentation [Darstellung]’ of the determination of the phenomena in space and in time in general ‘from the principle of the original synthetic unity of apperception as the from of understanding in relation to space and time as the original forms of sensibility’ (CRP, B169). He asserts here, focusing on the extreme deduction delivered in paragraphs 24–26, that the synthetic unity of transcendental apperception refers originally to time and space, and, in particular, that it is this connection that first makes it possible that all sensible intuitions are subject to the categories as the only conditions under which the manifold can be synthesized in consciousness.
- 6.
On this point, see my work Réflexion et spéculation. L’idéalisme transcendental chez Fichte et Schelling (Grenoble: J. Millon, 2009).
- 7.
Note that these two series are not strictly symmetrical with respect to each other (as argued, for example, by Ernst Cassirer), but the second is the raising to a high power of the first, which means it is first raised to a higher degree of reflection. These two series do not relate to each other as do, for example, the two attributes of Spinoza’s substance.
- 8.
J.G. Fichte, ‘First Introduction to the Science of Knowledge,’ in Science of Knowledge, ed. and trans. Peter Heath and John Lachs (Cambridge University Press: 1982), 8–9; J.G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften [hereinafter cited as GA], division I, volume 4, ed. Erich Fuchs, Reinhard Lauth, and Hans Gliwitzky (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964–2012), 188–189.
- 9.
F.W.J. Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism [hereinafter cited parenthetically as ST], trans. P. Heath (University Press Virginia, 1978), 5; SW, I/3, 340.
- 10.
Note that this is a radicalization, which in no way entails that, in reality, Schelling thereby leaves the field of what could still be called the transcendental in a Kantian sense.
- 11.
See in particular, Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre (Essays in Explanation of the Idealism of the Science of Knowledge) (1796/1797). In the interpretation that follows, I will build on Steffens’ review of Schelling’s writings. See ‘Recension der neuern naturphilosophischen Schriften des Herausgebers,’ in Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik (Journal of Speculative Physics), vol. 1, book 1, ed. Manfred Durner (Hamburg: Meiner, 2001), 1–48.
- 12.
And this figure is a direct response to the First Introduction of Fichte’s Science of Knowledge where he claimed—at the beginning of Sect. 6—that ‘dogmatism is completely unable to explain what it must’ (‘First Introduction,’ 16; GA, I/4: 195).
- 13.
Schelling evokes this by way of the series: optical phenomena (where the only ‘substance’ is the light), magnetic phenomena (which are completely immaterial), and gravitational phenomena (thus indicating the action of a single law).
- 14.
Note that this philosophy of natural ends is the very point of unification for theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy—thus, it is not merely unconscious.
- 15.
On Schelling’s concept of ‘transcendental construction,’ see the doctoral thesis of Jürgen Weber, Begriff und Konstruktion. Rezeptionsanalytische Untersuchungen zu Kant und Schelling (Göttingen: Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, 1998).
- 16.
Namely, at the beginning of solution II of the second period (in which Schelling gives the clearest indications of his transcendental idealism).
- 17.
This reconsideration of the categorical/hypothetical pair through this other conscious/unconscious pair is indeed essential and dominates the entire System of Transcendental Idealism. But the categorical/hypothetical pair is also involved in a specific place in the work: at the interface between the system of theoretical philosophy and the system of practical philosophy.
- 18.
J.G. Fichte and F.W.J. Schelling, The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling: Selected Texts and Correspondence (1800–1802) (Albany: SUNY Press, 2012), 43 ff.; Schelling—Fichte Briefwechsel. Kommentiert und herausgegeben von Hartmut Traub, ed. Hartmut Traub (Neuried: Ars Una, 2001), 178 ff.
- 19.
Finally, note that time intervenes here as decisive: it is the ‘moment’ where self-consciousness (thus, the ‘pivot’ of the two series) blossoms and where it articulates thinking and reality. Hence, it clarifies why the distribution between the hypothetical and the categorical comes about under different ‘epochs’: it is expressed here by the specific temporality of the ‘speculative.’ The epochs are not simple ‘syntheses’ (as in Fichte’s Grundlage of 1794/95), but the expression of the inscription of the real (specifically temporalized) in the operations of the transcendental philosopher. This figure of the transcendental is unpublished, profoundly original and—although Schelling did not pursue it personally—the greatest interest in the history of transcendental philosophy. For more on the status of time in the transcendental idealisms of Schelling and Fichte, see my work En deçà du sujet. Du temps dans la philosophie transcendental allemande (Paris: PUF, 2010).
- 20.
For a more thorough development of these questions (in terms of what I call a ‘transcendent reflexibility’ and a ‘speculative transcendentalism’), see Alexander Schnell, La déhiscence du sens (Paris: Hermann, 2015) and Wirklichkeitsbilder (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck [forthcoming]).
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Schnell, A. (2016). The Meaning of Transcendental Idealism in the Work of F.W.J. Schelling. In: McGrath, S., Carew, J. (eds) Rethinking German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53514-6_3
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