The Barbarian Principle: Merleau-Ponty, Schelling, and the Question of Nature

CHAPTER FIVE On the Relation Between Natureand History in Schelling’s Freedom Essay and Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise

CHAPTER FIVE On the Relation Between Nature and History in Schelling’s Freedom Essay and Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise Jeffrey A. Bernstein Abstract This chapter explores the relation between Schelling’s and Spinoza’s respective conceptions of Nature and the different conceptions of history to which they lead. Although Schelling’s conception of Nature initially emerges out of an intense engagement with Spinoza, I argue that his reconfiguration of the Spinozan substance/mode relation as ground/existence implies a developmental structure and thus leads to a unified and divinized conception of history. In contrast, Spinozan history is always an expression of modal configuration in its infinite (social and political) variation. In this way, Spinozan history can be understood as materialist. Introductory Remarks The development of revealed truths into truths of reason, is absolutely necessary, if the human race is to be assisted by them. —Gotthold Ephraim Lessing1 77 78 Jeffrey A. Bernstein The passage from Lessing’s 1780 Education of the Human Race can serve as an introduction into the perpendicular relation that holds between the philosophies of Schelling and Spinoza. Near the end of his 1809 Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters (henceforth referred to as the Freedom essay),2 Schelling asserts his complete agreement with Lessing’s statement (F2, 281). Schelling’s commentary on the meaning of this statement, however, moves in a decisive direction: “a system in which reason actually knows itself would have to unite all the demands of spirit as of the heart, of the most moral feelings as of the strictest understanding” (F2, 282). For Schelling, reason’s ultimate capacity is to function as a synthesis between mind and heart, spirit and affect. Read in this manner, Lessing’s statement would suggest that the movement from revealed truth to rational truth must be one of unified historical development where revelation serves as the initial impetus for the fully unfolded and differentiated truth as subsequently shown by the light of reason. In one sense, one might even suggest that reason, for Schelling, would be a derivative manifestation of truth, the function of which is to gain higher consciousness and differentiation with respect to revelation. In short, although revelation must transform into reason, reason cannot fully exist without revelation. Thus, Schelling’s Lessing. There is, however, another interpretation of Lessing’s same passage that points in a different direction—not simply opposite, insofar as it continually takes its bearings from the same starting point, but rather perpendicular, insofar as it takes those very bearings down a lateral path of thinking with respect to the former interpretation. One might say this reading is radically different, in that it re-visions the same root insight in such a way that its development moves along completely different lines. One might read Lessing’s aforementioned statement in the light of ¶4 of his “Education” text: “Revelation gives nothing to the human race which human reason could not arrive at on its own; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these things sooner.”3 Taking the two passages together, Lessing appears to be suggesting that reason and revelation disclose the same truths, but that revelation’s utility lies in its providing a simpler means through which to grasp truths (i.e., for those who lack the desire and/or capacity for reason). Rather than amounting to an unfolding of revelation, reason here would be construed as a more substantive alternative to revelation. Where might Lessing have acquired this particular conception of the reason/revelation relationship? Given Lessing’s historical embroilment in the Pantheism Controversy it would be appropriate to ask whether Spinoza anywhere holds an analogous conception.4 Sure enough, in his 79 On the Relation Between Nature and History Theologico-Political Treatise5 of 1670, Spinoza gives an indication of this uneasy unity between reason and revelation in his definition of prophecy: “A prophet is one who interprets God’s revelations to those who cannot attain to certain cognition (cognitionem) of the matters revealed, and can therefore be convinced of them only by simple faith” (TTP, 9). Reason and revelation are truly unified with one another—but what a strange manner of unity this is! Whereas for Schelling, reason is the fullest historical expression of initial revelation, for Spinoza, revelation expresses the truths of reason in their lowest common form. How can it be that Lessing’s...