Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom

5: On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy: The Form Essay

§11 This table of categories suggests some nice points, which may perhaps have important consequences in regard to the scientific form of all modes of knowledge obtainable by reason. For that this table is extremely useful in the theoretical part of philosophy, and indeed is indispensable as supplying the complete plan of a whole science, so far as that science rests on a priori concepts, and as dividing it systematically according to determinate principles, is already evident from the fact that the table contains . . . the form of a system . . . in the human understanding, and accordingly indicates all the momenta of a projected speculative science, and even their order, as I have elsewhere shown. (B 109)1 Schelling’s Original Insight Schelling’s first philosophical publication, On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General, is traditionally read as the youthful work of a follower of Fichte.2 At first glance, such a reading appears to be justified. He does make ample use of some of Fichte’s central ideas, most notably the absolute positing of the I and its formulaic expression ‘I = I.’ But as we have seen in his earliest texts, Schelling has been busy at work developing his own ideas for some time before his actual exposure to Fichte. A point that, if clearly demonstrated, would lend credence to Schelling’s claim that the Form Essay is actually grounded in ideas that he had already been thinking about “for some time” 5 On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy The Form Essay ? 137 138 Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy (I/1, 87). In fact, when examined in the light of writings such as the Timaeus Commentary, which predate the Form Essay by as much as three years, it appears that the customary reading of Schelling as simply a brilliant follower of Fichte can no longer be maintained. As we have seen, the Timaeus Commentary, finished sometime in May or June of 1794, is a work free of any Fichtean vocabulary.3 Fichte’s Recension des Aenesidiemus appeared in early February of the same year, while his “Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannnten Philosphie, als Einladungsschrift zu seinem Vorlesungen über diese Wissenschaft,” appeared in May.4 As the Form Essay is dated September 9, 1794, this provides a three-month period during which Schelling could have read one, or both, of Fichte’s works.5From both a substantive and historical standpoint, however, it appears that Fichte’s Recension had more of an impact on Schelling’s Form Essay than the Grundlage. First, there is evidence that Schelling did not even have a copy of Fichte’s “Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre” until the end of 1794. In a letter to Hegel dated January 6, 1775, he speaks of having finally received the first part of the “Wissenschaftslehre” from Fichte himself. He writes, “I read and found that I had not failed my prophecy.”6 If this timeline of events is accurate, this would mean that Schelling refers to Fichte’s Recension des Aenesidiemus when in the Form Essay he writes: “My opinion regarding that part of the problem, which the Theorie der Vorstellungsvermögen has left for some future elaboration of die Elementarphilosophie, has been strongly confirmed by the newest work of Professor Fichte” (I/1, 88). This points clearly to the Recension, in which Fichte indeed critiques Aenesidiemus on some points, yet also agrees with other issues Schultz raises against Reinhold’s theory.The focus of dispute in this nexus of essays is the possibility of formulating Kant’s mysterious “common ground” that should unite the duality of the intuitive facticity of our senses and the conceptual forms of our understanding. All parties involved agree that there must be an ultimate principle, derived from this common ground, to unite both the form and content of philosophy. Schelling states that Reinhold’s Elementarphilosophie merely repeats Kant’s case for the possibility of the form of philosophy, failing, just as Kant before him, to extend the “investigation to an ultimate principle of all form” (I/1, 88). Such a form Schelling believes will help him overcome philosophy’s inability to show “how the content of a philosophy is possible,” thereby correcting a critical failure that has “hitherto hurt philosophy extraordinarily ” (I/1, 88). The inability of philosophy to integrate content references a theme central to Schelling’s program, which he addresses [18.227.48.131] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 02:46...