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

2: Beginnings: Theosophy and Nature Divine

The Acculturation of a Prophet of Nature We begin at ground zero. To engage in an immanent reconstruction of the inner dynamic of Schelling’s philosophy we must first attempt to bring to light the background from whence his ideas emerged. This exercise will prove all the more worthwhile since in this chapter we survey a cast of figures whose passions and beliefs do much to solve many of the puzzles apparent in our subject’s work. In what follows we explore the upbringing and acculturation of Schelling, paying particular attention to three determinative forces: 1) the scholarly study of ancient languages and text criticism, 2) Pietism and the freedom of the unmediated experience of the divine, and 3) Theosophy and the divinity of nature. The study of ancient language inducted the young Schelling into the ordered and disciplined world of thinking and its ability to travel through time; the second factor stands opposed to the first: the unmediated experience of the divine provided Schelling with a normative paradigm of the priority of experience over reflection. The last influence unites the previous two: through his exposure to the person of Philipp Matthäus Hahn (1739–1790), Schelling was presented with an ideal of one who dedicates his life to pursuing the divine in both sensuous and intellectual nature. It is perhaps this figure more than any other who provides the young Schelling with the model of a thinker who is a philosopher of nature both seen and unseen, who pursues the absolute through the study of the natural sciences, while simultaneously pursuing the same end through the study of sacred texts. Hahn’s attempt to synthesize these seemingly opposed activities into one life parallels his interpretation of Plato’s doctrine of 2 Beginnings Theosophy and Nature Divine ? 39 40 Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy the binding of mind and ensouled matter through the “eternal band” of life qua soul in the Timaeus. The impact of this man on the young Schelling was so great that at the age of fifteen, he wrote and published a eulogy in his honor. The contents of this eulogy are brief but illuminating . What they tell us is that Schelling started very young with the conviction that life, understood as the power for self-organization, always precedes the subsequent reflections of reason. An inquiry into these roots will go far in correcting the monochromatic portrait of this multifaceted thinker, helping us to understand much of the complexity of his thought that gets lost when we fail to read Schelling on his own terms. The Discipline of Language and Actuality of the Past Freedom is the highest good of humanity; but only independence of the will from the understanding is freedom. Affixed in remembrance, From your true friend, 20 August 1788 F. Schelling1 Schelling entered these words of condolence into the family record of a recently deceased colleague of his father. The idea that freedom is the highest possible good of mankind seems entirely predictable coming from a thinker who argues that “freedom is the alpha and omega of all philosophy.”2 Indeed, the position that the logic of the understanding enslaves the will and hinders it from determining itself would appear to be quite the expected position of a thinker who grounds his philosophy in the unfathomable footing of freedom. Yet all semblance of normalcy vanishes when we examine the date of this condolence and realize that Schelling was but thirteen years of age he wrote these words. Before Kant’s second and third Critiques, a year before Jacobi’s büchlein on Spinoza, and many years before Fichte’s works, this youth posits freedom as the summum bonum of humanity, and sets as its condition the will’s power to overcome its dependence on the understanding . Where does a youth of this age come up with such thoughts? The received portrait of Schelling’s beginnings as a philosopher portrays him as an acolyte kneeling before Fichte. More sophisticated renderings of his intellectual pedigree have Fichte flanked by Kant and Jacobi’s Spinoza, with perhaps Leibniz, Hölderlin, and Schiller lurking nearby in the background. In the orthodox scripting of the beginnings Beginnings 41 of German Idealism, Schelling’s role lacks any significant distinguishing characteristics or unique identity: he is merely the bridge between Fichte and Hegel in the development of Idealism. While too much importance should...