Zum Begriff der Negativität bei Schelling und Hegel (review)

240 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Zum Begriff der Negativittit bei Schelling und Hegel. By Friedrich W. Schmidt. (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1971. Pp. xii + 139) This work attempts to gain from Schelling the element of a critique of the idealistic dialectic of Hegel and to advance to dialectical materialism. The key to this movement of the Begriff is Hegel's concept of negativity (p. vii). Following W. Schulz, J. Habermas, and W. Kasper, Sclmaidt regards Schelling as more than a preparer of the way for Hegel. He wishes to show that Schelling was correct in regarding Hegel's philosophy as an "episode" which was unnecessarily extended in the progression in which philosophy returned upon itseLf the concept of negativity to sublate its idealism. The way from idealism to historical materialism is ,through Schelling and Feuerbach to Marx. Hegel was for Marx both a fruitful and a delaying detour (p. x). As in the case of a number of works which regard German idealism as preparing the way for Marx (including those by the above noted authors he mentions), the adequacy with which the primary thesis of this one is supported turns upon whether or to what extent one can sustain the (perhaps polemically overworked) claim made by the late Schelling that material nature is for Hegal excluded from continuing and significantly determinative influence. This claim, here accepted without serious challenge, permeates the interpretation of both Hegel and ScheHing, with the result that, even if one were disposed to agree that dialectical materialism represents the direction of progression of dialectical philosophy viewed from the perspective of Hegel's concept of negativity, Schmidt's justification of his main thesis--the progression from Hegel to Marx--appears to be accomplished too easily. What is most notably suppressed is any sense that, viewed temporally and historically, there might on Hegel's account be continuing concretion of the dialectic, not merely its highest phase as grasped in thought, but at sub-levels as well (the whole being such only in dialectical relation to the parts on Hegel's account) including the increment of material determination. It can certainly be construed, at least, that on Hegel's account there might be a continuing increment of material determination which is continuously being actualized. I think I have shown in other contexts that the kind of understanding of his dialectic (temporally viewed) which requires this is only consistent with his position . The origin of the reading which overlooks this temporal-process dimension of his thought is made understandable by Hegel's frequent refusal to step outside of his concern to delineate the timeless necessity of dialectic, even to the point of refusing to reply to critics who seemed not to have entered into this standpoint, and even to the point of being seemingly oblivious to pain and patient labor in the world as the author notes that he was. It has at this point been sufficiently well documented, nevertheless, so that at the very least it ought to constitute a problem for such a study as Schmidt has attempted , particularly since apart from it little sense can be made of Hegel. If the author has made Schelling's and his own task too easy by overlooking this issue, this has contributed to what I think is another grave if familiar error in construing Hegel as idealist in an overly simple sense. This is by permitting his efforts to transcend the ideal and the real in the actual to be set aside or (what amounts to the same) to be relegated simply to standpoints on the way toward an ideal unity and wholeness of reality, which not having been historically realized may be regarded as so much ideology. A recent "Marxist" interpretation of Hegel on negativity which succeeds far better in respect to these criticisms is that by Michael Theunissen in Hegels Lehre vorn absoluten Geist, a work less reminiscent of an earlier form of left-wing Hegelianism. Schmidt's work reads best when its broader thesis is set aside and it is regarded for its protracted and substantial exposition of anticipations of dialectical materialism in Schelling, leaving bracketed the consideration as to which of these may also be found...