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SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL AND

THE BEGINNINGS OF MARXIAN DIALECTICS


Manfred Frank
The history of western philosophy provides many occasions for verifying a
general experience: theoretical innovations gain immediate appreciation only
if they do not demand too much of the ability of contemporaries to integrate
them into their worldview. If they emerge hastily and lack clear connection
to their epoch's expectations about meaning, they will be dismissed as an
"untimely growth." This is, of course, easy enough to understand. What is
remarkable, though, is that even subsequent generations that have come to
accept the innovation will often continue to regard its originator as taboo.
Consider, for instance, the fame accorded Nietzsche for the discovery that
pre-conscious life forces lure the intellect into webs of Maya, making it be-
lieve that it itself decides over the economy of values that is actually the pro-
jection of the powerhungry will. Coinciding with the praise granted Nietzsche
are strong attacks against Schopenhauer. Not only is the latter denied credit
for having initiated the paradigmatic revolution in the metaphysics of will
that occurred in the post-idealistic epoch, but he is made to answer for every
imprecision and subterfuge-which is remarkable only in light of the fact that
his work is a good deal more precise and straightforward than that of Nietzsche.
It seems as if the official ideography has to eliminate one name from its canon
before another name, even the name of one who has done little more than
drawn the consequences of the eradicated doctrine, can be recognized or even
praised: Jasper's and Heidegger' s interpretations of Nietzsche and condemna-
tions of Schopenhauer are classic examples of this ritual. The rehabilitation of
a thinker seems to necessitate the sacrifice of his predecessor.
Something comparable has occurred to sabotage Schelling's fame. His
name has been consistently scorned until it evokes a subcutaneous negative
response. I am speaking in part about the fact that just mentioning Schelling
in seminars beside Fichte or Hegel is often viewed as an obscenity or at least
as a disclosure of one's naivety, with the result that the passage from Fichte
to Hegel in the history of ideas has had to bridge an embarrassing loophole. I
am also concerned about the many performances of the emperor's new clothes
we have had to endure by paying automatic obeisance to Hegel's "profundity."
Schelling's logical sleights of hand (especially the 1801 System of Identity)
have meanwhile been soundly dismissed. Instead of being praised for his
252 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
profundity, Schelling has been decried for a geniality that lacks seriousness,
his works dismissed as a delirium of ideas brought forth by opium and
romanticism.
What concerns me much more, however, than the injustice wrought Schel-
ling is that his "original insight" has been lost in the process. His work was
an attempt (not always a successful one) to give birth to an idea that trans-
cended the vision of his age, an idea which-in the Blochian sense-was
transcontemporary (iibergleichzeitig). Exaggerating somewhat, I argue that
Schelling's insight could never have been adequately articulated in the dis-
cursive quilt offered by idealistic grammar. Stressing this helps us to critically
evaluate the idealistic position of Hegel's Phenomenology in comparison
with Schelling's 1801 system, with its alleged argumentative weaknesses.
One cannot, of course, deny the tremendous historical impact of the
Phenomenology. It embodied the major breakthrough through which idealism
became recognized in its maturity and thus gained its followers. It constitutes,
moreover, an important corrective to the growing sklerosis of a dogmatic
and subhuman materialism, a corrective that carries weight to this day.
At the beginning and at the end of the movement named dialectical
materialism stands the figure of Hegel. No thinking-apart from that of
Marx-has been so important for the general understanding of materialism,
or of the modern era as a whole. In the interim, however,-and for a period
lasting more than a century-the Weltgeist oversimplified matters by calling,
against the background of turbulent changes in the institutional structure of
our intellectual and social reality, for an overcoming of idealism. By doing
so it took a characteristic turn and deviated from Hegel's legacy. It is this
critical relation that (from the young Marx to the student movement of the
1960's) sustained interest in Hegel's oeuvre, but in what one today might
call a deconstructive guise. The reading that resulted certainly reflected an
heretical position towards idealism, but it never really penetrated to the crux
of Hegel's arguments.
You may already guess where I am headed. At the outset of the materialistic
rejection of idealism, the only philosophy that could boast a truly revolutio-
nary critique of Hegel's idealistic dialectics was Schelling's. It was contained
in his-mostly unpublished-late works, available in student transcripts of
lectures in Erlangen, Munich and Berlin. These transcripts, which com-
manded stiff prices, were sold-without the control and to the grief of their
author. They made their way even into Russia and France, where they were
eagerly received by intellectuals among the nobility. People like Pavlov,
Cadae, Herzen, Bakunin, Belinskij and Turgenev found in these transcripts
their speculative acid test. They also reached the pupils of St. Simon (among
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 253
them Prosper Enfantin) and advocates of religious socialism (like Lamennais
and Leroux). 1
Marx was well informed of these connections (and also knew Schelling's
writings first hand). This could surprise only one who has no notion of the un-
heard of pUblicity that accompanied Schelling's Berlin lectures in the winter
of 1841142. It might, of course, also prove offensive to disciples who insist
upon Marx's originality by, in a very unMarxian fashion, envisioning the
development of an idea capable of moving the world as the result of a single
act of original procreation. It is indeed the case that Schelling's late writings
do not officially playa role in the genesis of Marxian dialectics. A more
sympathetic view is taken of his earlier work, an important step leading to the
temple of Hegel. But the older Schelling has a reputation of being a notorious
reactionary, despite the fact that he left Munich for Berlin at least partly
to escape restrictions imposed upon his own teaching. Indeed, his first act
in Berlin was to suspend censorship against the Halleschen JahrbUcher.
Arnold Ruge responded in August of 1841 by calling Schelling "a political
and religious freethinker."2
The letter written by Marx to Feuerbach the third of October 1843
3
can be
read-at first glance-as if Marx himself dismissed Schelling as a reactionary.
The matter seems to me to deserve further attention. Marx incorrectly thought
that Feuerbach, in his introduction to the second edition of the Wesen des
Christentums, had proposed "a detailed work on Schelling." He urged Feuer-
bach to execute the plan and gave several reasons why he should do so. First of
all, Schelling had a protected status. Due to censorship rules he could not be
attacked in journals, and thus had to be dealt with in a larger work. A more
extensive study was also called for to unveil Schelling "to the French literati,"
who had remarkably enough fallen victim to his attempts to win them over.
His French disciples were particularly to be feared, since some of them-for
instance "der geniale Leroux," who translated Schelling in a series of articles-
promoted socialism. An attack on Schelling would furthermore be "an indirect
attack on Prussian politics as a whole," since Schelling had allegedly lent his
doctrine to the task of "diplomacy." But, last though not least-and this is
decisive-Marx regarded Feuerbach as unusually suited to lead the attack.
You are precisely the man for this, because you are Schelling in reverse.
You are the one who-we are permitted to believe the best about our
opponent-has taken the splendid insight of his youth (der aufrichtige
Jugendgedanke), which for him always remained a fanciful dream, and
elevated it to truth, reality, and manly seriousness. Schelling is therefore
your predetermined caricature, and once the real thing steps over against
the caricature, it will dissipate into fog and vapor.
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I suspect that even today, when the issue has lost its relevancy, one will
sense the irony in Marx's compliment: No one who strives to attain his
intellectual identity will find it easy to face his own caricature, especially
when it is a matter of world philosophy, which must be affirmed in its basic
righteousness. Nor does it help to be told that its fanciful air will dissolve
only when confronted in a "manly" way. Feuerbach' s dilemma is exasperated
by the fact that his "positive philosophy" does in fact owe something to
Schelling and that his deviation from Schelling's original intention makes
them natural enemies. Marx was not the first to encourage him to take this
step, although no one else insisted upon it so resolutely. IfFeuerbach hesitated
for more than a decade to follow Marx's advice, it was presumably because
he realized the delicacy of confronting his own caricature.
Three fairly extensive outlines for letters mirror Feuerbach's embarrass-
ment. He made diligent excerpts from the Paulus transcript of Schelling's
lectures, tossed and turned for some weeks, and then confessed that Marx
had "thrown him into a difficult connict with himself."4 It seems that Marx
had touched upon a trauma: Feuerbach had always tried to fend off Schelling's
obvious priority as being a presumptuous "fantasy." (Marx cites this with
a certain sense of delicacy.) He had never found a better name to characterize
his own position than Schelling's own expression, "positive philosophy,"
although he asserts that for him in contrast to Schelling the aim is "the actual
rather than the merely imaginary absolute identity of all oppositions and
contradictions."5 One has to be aware of all of this when seeking to elucidate
Feuerbach's relationship to Schelling.
After these fragmentary suggestions, I will set aside the biographical-
philological search for points of contact between Schelling's materialism
and that of Feuerbach and Marx. I would next like to assert that not only
in the materialism of Feuerbach and Marx, but also in French Socialism, in
Bakunin and Cieszkowski,6 there existed a powerful tradition of materialistic
argumentation which, nourished by Schelling's late lectures, was critical of
Hegel. The obscurity of this tradition, which can be followed all the way
to Lenin's notebooks, can be explained in part by the fact that Schelling
did not publish a single lecture during his lifetime. The short Vorrede zu
Cousin and the pirated edition of notes from his first Berlin lecture were
the only documents of his tum to "positive philosophy" that could be cited.
Another reason for the obscurity of this tradition is that, for reasons of
political identity, leftist theoreticians refuse to think of Schelling as a pre-
decessor. It is indeed necessary to challenge the usual terms of political
semantics by considering what antiliberal romanticism and anticapitalistic
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 255
socialism have in common. One might begin by noting that the dichotomy
was not always evident. This was particularly the case in the beginning:
Ruge's interest in the details of Schelling's tum was so great that he offered
to edit his lectures; Feuerbach, who seemed to have been inspired by a
transcript of a Schelling lecture, sent his dissertation to the philosopher with
an obviously genuine respect (one might ask what would have happened if
Schelling had liked it, but beyond any doubt the style of thinking was too
Hegelian for him); Cieszkowski, whose historiography Schelling seems to
have known, always sustained a lively interest in Schelling, was drawn to
the latter's religiosity, and kept himself informed about the Berlin lectures
from his Polish home (there also are two outlines for letters from him to
Schelling). Bakunin wrote home: "You would not be able to imagine the
great impatience with which I look forward to Schelling's lectures."7
Schelling, who saw himself as the inadvertent spiritual father of Young
Hegelianism, acknowledged that these young people were striving for some-
thing like positive philosophy. Their mistake was that they searched for it
with Hegelian means and were thus doomed to failure. In order truly to
transform the system, it was first necessary to dismantle the edifice of
"logical necessity." One had to emancipate oneself from the immanent legiti-
mation of a teleologically conceived intellectual process. 8 The emotion
directed against Schelling, by Fr. Engels, for example, was the reaction of
a young man who felt that the basis for group solidarity-the enthusiasm
for Hegel-was threatened. That is the recurring theme in the Young Hegelian
petition to Schelling: he would be welcome in Berlin as a teacher in the
spirit of Hegel, but he should not desecrate the name of the symbolic father.
He should not, in effect, attack idealism.
It should be clear that Marx, however, would not make such restrictions.
He praised Feuerbach, for instance, for overcoming the Young Hegelian
idealism of "Bruno Bauer and his consorts." (In this regard he was like
Bakunin, who was also outspoken in his criticisms of leftist idealism.) He
relied on Schelling as he parodied their "irritation towards any praxis, which
is different than theory, and towards any theory, which seeks to be anything
but the dissolution of a given category in the 'limitless universality of self-
consciousness."'9 As Schelling taught (and here he impressed not only Marx
but Bakunin and Cieszkowski as well),
there is in the Logic nothing that could change the world ... The
transition cannot proceed from thinking . . . One cannot begin anything
with the highest principle of rational philosophy [that is, with the concept
of absolute self-consciousness] .... Rational philosophy must lead
beyond itself and press towards a reversal. The reversal itself cannot
256 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
proceed from thinking, but requires a practical impulse. In thinking,
however, there is nothing practical; the concept is purely contemplative
and relevant only to the realm of necessity. But we are concerned here
with something that lies outside necessity, with something willed.1O
Before I further document the convergencies between Schelling's late
philosophy and Marx's practical materialism, I will attempt the impossible
by briefly outlining the late philosophy and its position on Hegel. Unless
one has a firm grasp of the direction and style of Schelling's thought, one
will not be able to search for allusions to Schelling in Marx's early work.
The fact that they have not already been deciphered I can only explain as
a proof of the fundamental lack of interest displayed by those in power who
guard Marxist doctrine. This lack of interest cannot be traced back to Marx
himself.
I believe it is possible to state precisely the one thought that sustained
Schelling's philosophizing from beginning to end: It is the conviction that
Being (understood as seamless identity) cannot be deduced by unfolding
reflective relationships. In a certain sense this was the common conviction
held by the three Tiibingen friends against Fichte. Dieter Henrich has ventured
to carefully reconstruct a conversation
ll
in which Holderlin allegedly suc-
ceeded to convince even Hegel of this thought and bring him beyond the
"boundary line of Kantian philosophy,"12 that is, beyond the point where
the abstract subject stands in opposition to its other.
Holderlin maintained that absoluteness must exclude the self-relatedness
of the "1."13 I-ness cannot be thought of as absolutely unconditioned, since
it presupposes as its condition an explicit relationship to self. On the other
hand, one cannot dispense with the unconditioned, for one must still account
for the moment of self-possession and identity that is maintained through
the opposition of what is interrelated. It is not a matter of denying one of
the two moments, but of recognizing that the active relationship of the self
to itself cannot explain knowledge of the identity of the relating moments.
This knowledge is, however, real. According to Holderlin, it is thus necessary
that "a preeminent unifying unity, which is itself not identical with the I,"
make itself manifest within the "infinite unity" of the Self. 14 Holderlin and
Schelling call it "Being" or "Identity" and distinguish it from "Indifference,"
which is the result of an act of synthesis that itself presupposes a totally
unreflected identity that eludes the play of relation.
Despite terminological differences (Schelling first articulated his thoughts
more in the language of Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre) , 15 Schelling shared
Holderlin's basic conviction. For Hegel this was much less the case. The
impulse he received from the poet did enable him to take the decisive step
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 257
over the Kantian "boundary line." He thus no longer turned to abstract
subjectivity to find a mediation of the conflict between love and selfhood.
On the other hand, he regarded the mediation as occurring in the realm of
reflection and rejected HOlderlin's account that it was rooted in a transreflec-
tive "Being" or, using the term of Sinclair, in a pure" Athesis" that existed
apart from and prior to the relation. 16 "Love," "life," and "spirit" are Hegel's
terms for that which carries the opposition between the finite and the infinite
forward to the point where it discloses its untruth and thus leaves behind
the counterfeit totality envisioned by one-dimensional thinking. This process
is that "true infinity" which establishes itself in the very finitude of the
relationship of difference. It is itself not related to anything and constitutes
a kind of argumentative fundus whereby relation can be thought of as unity
and substance as subject. Such a concept of unity does not tolerate a being
that transcends it and threatens to reduce it to a moment of reflection. As
such it would have a merely relational existence that prevents it from being
more than a specific and incomplete aspect of an incomprehensible totality.
I hope that, given its necessary brevity, this is a fair characterization of
Hegel's original insight. He provided it with more depth and consequence
in the lena Logic and above all in the Phenomenology of 1807. He did not
accomplish the full elaboration of the formal ontological status of his basic
philosophical program until his Science of Logic. Particularly decisive for
us in that work is his attempted demonstration that Being is in truth a moment
of a reflection that depends on nothing outside itself.
In the present context it is impossible to sum up Hegel's extraordinarily
complex argumentation. For this step I refer the reader to the works of Dieter
Henrich. I will here simply elaborate some of the consequences of Hegel's
insight by conjuring up a hypothetical exchange with Holderlin (Hegel in
reality never spoke with the poet after the latter's lapse into insanity-just as
he also avoided further talks with Schelling). We can begin with Hegel's asser-
tion that in "pure Being, without true determination" only negative qualities
can be contained, qualities such as immediacy (Un-mittelbarkeit) and unre-
latedness (Un-bezogenheit). Holderlin would have agreed. Hegel might then
proceed to explicate-in an apparently harmless way-the unrelatedness of
Being by depicting it as Being which is "only" related to itself. The pure nega-
tion modifies itself into a simple restriction which does not necessarily exclude
the possibility of a relation-to-itself. However, once Being is assumed to be
inarticulate or "simple" relation, then according to Hegel it becomes not only
permitted, but logically necessary to recognize within it a contradiction. Only
by virtue of this contradiction does it attain internal determination (for only
that is itself, which can be set off negatively against an other).
258 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
Hegel, in a characteristic fashion, speaks of Being as "concept" Being.
In this way too he forestalls the understanding that it is a question of trans-
reflective Being-Being which could at any rate have no place in a logic,
or in any formal system of ontology. The step that leads Hegel from the
category of indifference-the last position of the logic of Being-to the
category of appearance-the first position in the logic of essence--can be
characterized as follows: the concept of a relationship conceived as unidimen-
sional is matched with itself, conceived now as two-dimensional. In the
logic of reflection, a hidden implication of the concept of a "simple relation
only to itself' is unfolded and made explicit. It thence comes to light that
this self-relation includes a relation to an other. Hegel maintains that this
consequence is executed within the framework of one thought and leads to
the realization that the other-relationship cannot be detached from the concept
of self-relationship.
Holderlin was not able to answer in person. Schelling spoke in his place,
probably first during the summer semester of 1822 in his lectures on the
history of modem philosophy that were delivered in Erlangen. Schelling's
reply, despite the clarity of its language, was based on a complicated
argumentation that I can here only approximate. I will occasionally make
use of formulations from Schelling's Wiirzburg system of 1804. Beneath
the appearance of an extensive consensus with Hegel's Jena philosophy,
one finds even at that stage the seeds of the confrontation which was to come.
Schelling discerned with an ingenious accuracy the circulus in probando
in Hegel's proceedings. If the concept is, at the end of its development, to
attain recognition of itself as itself, it would have to implicitly possess this
self-knowledge from the beginning. Hegel rather shamefully confessed this
when, in the methodology chapter of the Logic, he rehabilitated "intellectual
intuition."l7 If this is indeed the case, then Holderlin was presumably right.
It is necessary to abandon the claim that it is possible, without presupposition,
to deduce through a series of steps the thought of the self from the thought
of abstract Being which is void of self. The original, allegedly seltless,
Being is, contrary to the stated intention, conceived as self-relation from
the outset. It is a concept of self-relation which even possesses an implicit,
but unreflected self-knowledge. If this were not the case, then it could not
be posited, sublated and finally realized in the end as self-knowledge.
This was Schelling's first critical observation: the dialectical progress in
the unfolding of the idea grows out of a speculative or narcissistic dialogue
of reflection with itself alone. The appearance of progress that occurs as an
implicit presupposition is explicated and then interpreted as having arisen
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 259
first in the explication. Feuerbach later repeated this criticism when he
objected that the method of proving things in the Logic is an attempt "to
introduce already into the opposition of the idea a premise which the idea
itself presupposed. "18 In this way, he concluded, the dialectic, which should
be a dialogical discipline, conducts "a monologue of speculation with itself."
Its alleged unconditionally is vain assertion.
19
Something like that he may
have read first in an afterword of Schelling's. This even seems likely, given
that an examination of Feuerbach' s intellectual development reveals that his
critique of Hegel did not grow out of premises of his own thinking. It
represented, instead, an abrupt break that one can accurately trace back to
an almost literal citation of Schelling that Feuerbach recorded in his diary
in 1828. He wrote there that the "immaculate maiden 'logic'" could never
by itself give birth to a being which is not in turn of a solely logical nature. 20
Schelling did not stop with the objection that Hegel's philosophy is im-
properly circular. He went on to show that the circle itself derived from an
invalid theory about the nature of the self. Once again we hear H6lderlin,
himself now reduced to silence, speak in Schelling's arguments. The circu-
larity that stems from regarding Being as reflection is but the beginning,
for reflectivity implies the belief that the self can be grasped as the interplay
of two opposing reflexes-a widespread perception which unites thinkers
as diverse as William James, Edmund Husserl and Jacques Derrida. Schel-
ling, on the other hand, claimed already in 1804 that it is impossible to
conceive the synthesis of self-cognition as the material ground (Real-Grund)
of our knowledge of the self: It is not at all self-evident that an identity with
otherness exists either in the constituent elements of the synthesis of self-
knowledge or in the concept of the relation as a whole. This doubt exists
even if one concedes that the consciousness of the self always implies the
unity of the very thought in which the relation prevails. As we know, this
was Hegel's contention and Schelling did not refute it. What he proved,
however, is that two negations related to each other (or the self-relatedness
of negation as such) are a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of the
existential experience of the cogito-sum.
Two mutually negating reflexes would be able to displace (abzuerkennen)
a self-sufficient and independent Being, but would be unable to generate a
consciousness of the identity of what is thus interrelated or of the unquestiona-
bility of its being. Because this consciousness of an absolute positivity exists,
however, Schelling concluded that it stems from an experience that precedes
the mirrorplay of negations and grounds them in their Being. 21 The very
existence of negation as negation is something that cannot be regarded as
an effect of negation: existence is not an implication of its concept. If one
260 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
says that negation is the ground of Being, insofar as through the negation
of negation something positive is posited, one must nonetheless understand
that the possibility of self-negation does not imply the actual productive
force of Being, but only its ideal ground (Ideal-Grund). For one has in fact
said no more than this: there is no concept of Being apart from that which
is posited through the self-sublation of reflection; on this count there is no
difference between Hegel and Schelling. What Schelling asserted is that it
is possible for the negation, when applied to itself, to abolish itself for the
sake of Being , thereby letting Being come to appearance (in this way negation
is the ground of the appearance of Being). But in this way neither the being
of negation nor of that which it negates is actually affirmed.
This can be immediately and analytically grasped: negativity can destroy
(and can destroy itself), but it cannot create. If through its play of opposition
it does affirm a being (or even its own being), it must nonetheless be clear
that it does not establish its own being. With Sartre one might call this the
"ontological proof of reflection." It has several important consequences.
First of all, in simple terms, Being precedes consciousness; the realization
of this is confirmed within the inevitable collapse of any attempt to ground
Being through an immanent and autonomous self-deduction (Selbstbegrun-
dung). Secondly, and this is closely connected to the first point, although
the essence (das Wesen) is the epistemological ground (Erkenntnisgrund)
of Being (and of its own Being), it is not the real ground. For as soon as
Being is, it is in a way that cannot be pre-conceived, it is "unvordenklicher-
weise seiend." That means that---even if only to fulfill the formal-ontological
condition of its being an essence-it must first of all be. Sartre characterized
this with the technical term etre he. What he wants to say thereby is that
conceptual Being---essence-is derived from a transreflective Being that
always already "was," it is thus supported in its being and lacks genuine
independence. Without a foundation in a Being that is not reflection, the
being of essence would dissolve into nothing. This is the reason for Schel-
ling's talk about "negative philosophy": it describes a form of speculation
that has forgotten Being. It absolves itself from its own existence by reducing
the transcendence of Being to a determination of essence.
I admit that to this point Schelling's critique has been quite abstract. But
before 1 tum to more concrete consequences (especially those that were
elaborated by Marx), I might point out that precisely the abstractness of
Schelling's critique of Hegel made plausible its claim to universal validity,
a claim that in tum facilitated its deep undercurrent effect. Schelling con-
fronted Hegel at the level of Hegel's own logic of essence. He formulated
his objections in such a way that Hegel could not have defused them by
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 261
insisting that there is no point of contact between the idea of a pre-conceptual
Being and the argumentation of the Logic itself. Indeed, Schelling makes
the claim-which I believe to be thoroughly correct-that the Logic fails to
accomplish its own program. The program was to resolve the conflict between
concepts of opposition and of unity by arranging them within the concept
of an overarching unity that bridged the conflict itself, what Hegel described
in the chapter on the Idea as the "identity of the real and the ideal." According
to Schelling, the place of this existing idea remains vacant as long as the
term of reality lacks sensuality, for sensual existence is necessary to actually,
rather than merely conceptually, differentiate it from its correlative concept,
the ideal. Feuerbach repeated Schelling's conclusion verbatim: where there
is only an essential, or what amounts to the same thing, a potential opposition,
there exists no real discord at all. "Everything unfolds in an entirely peaceful
manner-between being and nothing [regarded as mere conceptual powers]
there is no opposition, they do not affect one one another at all."22 In other
words: the Logic does not fulfill its own intention of attaining reality; it
reaches only the concept of truth. Truth itself, as something to be postulated,
must surrender itself to another discipline. This is clear even in Hegel's
terms. The "merely logical" concept perceives its own impotence, its own
"lack of Being," and decides, as Hegel said, to abdicate in favor of nature.
The naked idea should be provided flesh and blood before it can ever be
led towards its real truth, the self-consciousness of actually existing spirit.
Hegel thus implicitly accepted the objection that his concepts are contami-
nated by a lack of Being, once he makes the Logic the overture to his
encyclopedic system. The problem, however, is that the system itself is
caught up in the emptiness of the same circle that defines the Logic. For
how could a concept that has no command of Being possibly give birth out
of itself to an actually existing nature? The concession that Hegel's logical
edifice lacks real truth is a concession that affects his entire system, insofar
as the system itself springs forth from the Logic. The system thus takes on
a negative character that is far more pronounced than Hegel intended. One
can almost see the jarring effect on Schelling himself as his philosophy of
nature bore its first fruit in the triumph over Hegel.
From the vantage point of its historical reception, this is certainly Schel-
ling's most successful argument against Hegel. Feuerbach repeated it as
eagerly as did Marx and was indeed more keenly aware than the latter of
its rich consequences for a philosophy of nature. Marx was still aware that
"nature" is a synonym for "reality" and that the system of philosophy takes
on true actuality, that is, more than a merely logical character, only when
it passes through the reality of nature. I can document this from Marx's
262 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
early wlitings. I would also like to refer to Alfred Schmidt's still unsurpassed
work on the concept of nature in Marx. It lacks only the recognition that
Marx's argumentation derives largely from the late work of Schelling.
But before I begin with Marx, I want to present two further consequences
that result from Schelling's objection to Hegel. One concerns the culmination
of the system in the idea of absolute self-consciousness. This idea marks
the place where, according to Hegel, the system reaches its truth. This truth
emerges insofar as difference, which characterizes reflection, sheds its quality
of otherness, and becomes, as Hegel liked to put it, completely self-trans-
parent. Hegel insisted beyond this that the absolute suspension of the differ-
ence between otherness and selfhood must itself be reconfirmed in the mir-
rorplay of reflection. Schelling objected and asserted that the thought of
absolute identity destroys itself by the very means it uses to actualize itself.
We can once again hear H6lderlin speaking through him: a real difference
would never be able to account for an ideal unity. Within the Hegelian
system such unity can only be postulated. Its disclosure remains the subject
of another science, which Schelling and Feuerbach referred to as "positive
philosophy." Marx, in a similar spirit, pointed to the "one-sidedness
and . . . limited nature of Hegel" that is made manifest in the final chapter
of the Phenomenology. 23
The last consequence that I want to present here is perhaps the most
surprising. Schelling believed that, judging from certain formulations in the
foreword to the second edition of the Logic, Hegel had himself started to
realize the abstract negative character of his philosophy of reflection. If not
for Hegel's death, the revision might have been continued. Be this as it
may, the formulations from the introductory essay of the Logic are worth
listening to. According to Hegel:
The absolute spirit, which discloses itself as the concrete and the last
and highest truth, will be recognized all the more when at the end of
the development it abandons itself with freedom, lets itself into the
fonn of immediate Being, and resolves to create a world, a world which
will contain everything given in the development which preceded this
result, but by virtue of its reversed position over against the beginning
will be transformed into something that depends upon the result as upon
a principle.
24
The general context shows that Hegel did not mean by creation the self-aban-
donment of the idea into nature. Instead, he was reflecting in a radical way
upon the implications of the concept of reflection that underlies his entire
argumentation. Consider a passage preceding our quote:
One must concede that it is an essential observation, and one that will
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 263
be more closely described within logic itself, that progress forward is
at the same time a regress into the ground, to what is original and true,
that upon which the principle of the beginning itself depends, indeed,
as that which has produced it. 25
Here he was plainly referring to a tum in the logical dialectic itself and to
the idea that only the ground truly is, so that upon its Being the appearance
of an independent beginning depends. Schelling closely analyzed the meaning
of this tum in his first Erlangen lecture. Reflection, he said there, means
reversal. It reverses as in a mirror the direction of everything that shows
itself in it, so that what really is only the second is envisioned as being the
first; and what really is first appears as the second.
26
When reflection is
uncritical, what appears for it to be first is regarded as actually being first.
But because reflection can reflect upon itself, it can provide an immanent
correction to the perverted position of thought over against reality. It then
realizes that the dialectical process which leads from Being to reflection
really leads from reflection to Being, with the restriction that this Being
becomes visible only as the limit of reflection so that it cannot be further
thematized within the science of reason. To pursue this consequence does
not lead to the completion of idealism, bilt to its abolition (Aufhebung).
Anyone who is familiar with Marx's critique of Hegel, as it is formulated
in the final chapter of the 1844 Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts, will
notice the convergence of his arguments with those of Schelling. The "Ver-
kehrtheit," the "inversion," of Hegelian speculation over against reality is
without doubt his favorite objection. This is what Schelling had already
protested, when he accused Hegel of reversing the positions of subject and
predicate. Feuerbach echoed this, as did Marx, when he wrote that for Hegel,
actual man and actual nature are regarded as mere predicates, ... as
symbols of a hidden, non-actual man and non-actual nature. Subject
and predicate have been inverted. 27
Marx's arguments against Hegel on this issue were drawn, as far as I can
see, for the most part from Schelling. Negation, according to Marx, cannot
by itself generate something positive; it would sublate (aufheben) itself-not
in the Hegelian sense, but absolutely [that is, it would abolish itselfl-if
the real hypokeimenon, the ground of Being that is nature, were ever to be
withdrawn. The objection that the thought of an unconditioned reflection is
circular did not bother Marx as much as it bothered Schelling and Feuerbach.
However, Marx still followed Schelling-and here one cannot speak of
Feuerbach's influence-when he explained that Hegel's final thought is
false, since self-referential negation exists only on this side of the threshold
of its Being.
264 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
There are in fact at least three important slogans of Marx that can be read
as loose Schelling citations (in other cases they might also be allusions to
Feuerbach). One of them stems from Schelling's parody of Hegel's belief
that spirit would, after realizing its perverted relation to Being, have to
descend the same steps that it ascended, so that
through this reversal man would appear as the productive cause of the
world of animals, animals as the productive cause of plants, and
organisms as the productive cause of inorganic nature, and so forth. 28
Marx echoed the parody when he wrote:
In Hegel's philosophy of history the son gives birth to the mother, spirit
gives birth to nature, Christian religion gives birth to paganism, and in
general the result gives birth to the beginning.29
At another juncture Marx wrote "that the abstraction, or the abstract thinker,"
permitted the idea to surrender itself "in its otherness" only because "he had
been informed of its truth through experience. "30 In the Paulus transcript,
Schelling had mocked Hegel in the same terms, as the thinker who, after
the alleged completion of the idea, is compelled to work through the process
of nature, not because of the force of logical necessity, but because he has
happened to have an experience of nature. 31
Marx seems to have particularly enjoyed Schelling's sarcasm from the
Vorrede zu Cousin:
The logical self-development of the concept sustains itself, as one might
have anticipated, only as long as the system is devoted to what is purely
logical. Once it dares the difficult step into reality, the thread of the dia-
lectical development is tom apart. A second hypothesis suddenly becomes
necessary, that it occurs to the idea to let its moments fall apart in order
to create the world of nature. Why this takes place is a mystery, unless it
is to break the boring monotony of its logical development. 32
Marx wrote in a similar vein:
This entire transition from logic to the philosophy of nature is nothing
other than transition from abstraction to intuition, a step that is so diffi-
cult for an abstract thinker that it can only be presented in an adventurous
spirit. The mystical feeling, which forces the philosopher to abandon ab-
straction for intuition, is boredom, the longing for a content .... Inso-
far as the abstraction grasps itself and perceives its own infinite boredom,
Hegel is moved to describe the abandonment of such abstract thinking
which thinks only itself . . . as a decision to acknowledge nature as the
essential and to shift the emphasis to intuition. 33
For the sake of brevity I will have to end here the philological catalog of
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 265
Schelling excerpts in the early work of Marx. I have presented much more
evidence elsewhere.
I now want to speak to an objection I have often encountered. What use, one
asks, is the most complete catalog of Schelling quotations in Marx, if their dif-
ferences in spirit remain insurmountable? I am myself not very bothered by
this question. Both Schelling and Marx regarded their work as scientific. In a
scientific context, the political-moralistic position of an author is significant
only insofar as it is defended with arguments. Marx and Engels viewed Hegel
as the seismographer, indeed, as the ideological leader of the Prussian restora-
tion. This did not give them second thoughts about learning from him. One
must presume that they would have regarded Schelling in the same manner. It
is one thing to oppose Schelling as the "38th ranking officer" who had com-
mand of the entire Prussian police, and something entirely different to study
and often find agreement with the afterword to his first Berlin lecture. It is of no
use to debate the matter abstractly. The evidence indicates that Marx did both.
One observes repeatedly in the history of philosophy that systems are
appropriated by later generations that no longer share the original concerns
of the author. This does not mean that the structure of the system is violated.
According to its structure-and quite apart from the political-theological
concerns of its author-Schelling's concept of history is closer to historical
materialism than is Hegel's. "True dialectic," he taught in Berlin, "exists only
in the realm of freedom, which will solve all mysteries." By breaking the
closed circuit of "logical necessitation," freedom gained a central position in
the late phase of Schelling's philosophy. It constitutes a warning to humanity
to discover its practical essence through the contrast with a Being that it has
not itself created. This was an idea that clearly appealed to Pierre Leroux,
Michail Bakunin and August Cieszkowski. 34 Even if his personal attitude
might have been counterrevolutionary, Schelling unmasked the state as an
association of force and did so with an acidic tone that only anarchists like
Bakunin or Proudhon could reiterate.
Marx's thought of a "resurrection of nature" in communism is noteworthy,
but should not be overly emphasized. There are similar formulations in
Schelling, but even if these are the source of Marx's thought, they still point
to an entire tradition, from the neoPlatonism of the Renaissance to Jakob
Bohme, that Marx and Schelling were both equally aware of. More important
is the convergence in their idea of "alienation" (Entfremdung). Schelling
used the expression, which one finds already in the conservative critique of
capitalism developed by such thinkers as Franz Baader and Adam Miiller,
to depict a dialectical reversal of the real and the ideal, that is, of what is
and of what should be. The thesis of the primacy of being before essence
266 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
(and in the field of appearance, of nature before reason) characterizes an
ontological relationship: natural being surpasses the human powers of reason
not in terms of its dignity, but only in terms of the immediacy of its being.
In the course of its evolution, the process of nature attains a level in which
its further fate is endangered. This is the moment when human self-conscious-
ness has been produced, for the future fate of nature now rests upon an
indeterminable freedom. According to Schelling, human beings spoiled the
chance that thus presented itself. Instead of recognizing the ontical priority
of their ground in nature, they have destructively degraded nature to an
object of rule and exploitation and have thereby initiated the "catastrophe"
(Umsturz), the inhuman consequences of which we sadly confront when we
peer into our own nature or the natural world that surrounds us. This was
the act of "alienation" which tore us from nature and delivered us over to
the "state," that Leviathan of anti-physis, under whose whip we now sigh
and whose mechanical impersonality subverts our freedom.
These ideas clearly have an enormous contemporary relevance. They
reflect and help verify, moreover, Marx's concept of alienation. For Marx,
too, wanted to depict a subversion of what should be the ground of human
nature, the source of real essential human powers. The result of this subver-
sion is that, instead of deriving from our natural ground a free space for
unfolding our most genuinely human possibilities, we exhaust our essential
powers in the struggle for physical survival.
Still, the act of alienation is not a work of nature, but of human beings-
which means it could be terminated. Schelling's methodological materialism
opens up for freedom a terrain of history that is, as a matter of principle,
open-ended and interminable. He derived from the idea that Being transcends
consciousness also the realization that no thinkable level of evolution could
produce a species with a legitimate claim to have reached a final truth.
Schelling's religious option-which the more hopeful of the socialists always
scomed--thus proved always to be resistant to one thing: it did not necessi-
tate, and here the contrast to Hegel is noteworthy, an acceptance of existing
reality. It was for this reason that Schelling attacked Hegel's totalitarian
doctrines of the state in a lecture in Munich.
It would be a profitable undertaking, which I clearly cannot now pursue,
to examine the historical reception of this critique upon the Hegelian left.
I will instead close with a quotation from the early French socialist Pierre
Leroux. He makes it evident that the animosity of socialists for Schelling
is by no means a necessary or natural animosity. It derives instead from an
Hegelian faction of socialism, a faction that historically developed into a
technocratic and dogmatic Marxism that departed regrettably and tragically
SCHELLING'S CRITIQUE OF HEGEL 267
from the humanistic outlines of a socialistic utopia-a utopian vision with
clear religious components. Such socialism has opted for the politics of
worldpower and-with dissonant self-approval-insists upon being called
scientific. It is against this background that I now conclude with the quote
from Leroux:
Everything that Schelling had to say about the situation of contempor-
ary philosophy is profoundly true .... We, like he, also sense the dan-
gers which threaten philosophy. They derive not only from philosophy's
natural enemies, but from those who present themselves as philosophers,
but are only eclectics. The false interpretation of Hegel (on the part of
left-Hegelians and Marxists) has unfortunately paralyzed many spiritual
energies. The pantheism of the master has given way to the skepticism
and indifference of his followers. Deplorably enough, many today who
regard themselves as progressive believe that the goal of philosophy con-
sists in drawing everything into doubt. They regard as a mystification the
true goal of philosophy, which is to cultivate a conviction that allows one
to engage oneself wholeheartedly in the practical sphere. One wonders
how it could have come this far that obfuscating and sophistic thinkers are
now prepared to betray philosophy altogether and to deliver it over to the
prevailing powers. 35
Universitiit Tiibingen
Notes
II have verified and documented this in two publications: Der unendliche Mangel an Sein.
Schellings Hegelkritik and die Anfiinge der Marxschen Dialektik. Frankfurt am Main 1975
and in the introduction as well as in the documentation part to F. W. 1. Schelling's Philosophie
der Offenbarung 184112, Frankfurt am Main 1977.
2Schelling's Philosophie der Offenbarung, p. 421.
'Ibid., pp. 488ff.
4Ibid., p. 494.
'Ludwig Feuerbach, Vorliiufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philosophie, in: Gesammelte
Werke, ed. by W. Schuffenhauer, vol. 9, Berlin 1970, p. 260.
61 discuss this little-known connection in the introduction to Schelling's Philosophie der
Offenbarung 184112, pp. 25ff.
'Ibid., p. 461.
"F. W. 1. Schelling: Siimmtliche Werke, ed. by K. F. A. Schelling, Stuttgart 1856-1861
268 IDEALISTIC STUDIES
(vol. 13, p. 90).
9Die heilige Familie, in: MEW 2, p. 204.
iOSW (vol. to, p. 153 and vol. 11, p. 565).
I'Dieter Henrich, Hegel im Kontext, Frankfurt am Main 1971; within that mainly "Hegel
and Holderlin," esp. pp. 22ff.
l2Holderlin, Siimmtliche Werke, 7 vols., Stuttgart 1943-1972, vol. VI, p. 137, Letter to
Neuffer of to. to. 1794.
I'Compare Holderlin, vol. IV, pp. 253/4 (the long footnote on the Verfahrungsweise des
poetischen Geistes).
l4Letter to his brother in the middle of 1801 (vol. VI, p. 419).
l5Concerning Schelling's early relationship with Holderlin see M. Frank, Der unendliche
Mangel all Sein, pp. 19-31.
16A recurring term from Sinclair's "Raisonnements," first printed in Hannelore Hegel, Isaac
von Sinclair zwischen Fichte, Holderlin and Hegel, Frankfurt am Main 1971, pp. 243ff.
l7G. W. F. Hegel, Werke, ed. by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel, Frankfurt
am Main 1970 ff. (Theorie-Werkausgabe), vol. 6, p. 553.
18Feuerbach, Zur Kritikder Hegelschell Philosophie, in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, p. 40.
19Ibid., pp. 37 and 38.
2lbid., vol. to, pp. 155-56; see Schelling SW (vol. to, p. 152).
2lSW (4, 358) and (6, 185). I have reconstructed both arguments and documented them in
the Unendlichen Mangel an Sein, pp. 75ff., and pp. 109ff.
22SW (vol. to, p. 137). See Feuerbach, vol. 9, pp. 252-53.
2'MEW, 1. Additional Volume, p. 574.
24HegeJ, Werke, vol. 5, p. 70.
25lbid.
26Cf. (vol. 10, p. 234).
27MEW, 1. Additional Vol., p. 584.
28SW, (vol. 10, pp. 158-59).
29MEW, Vol. 2, p. 178.
,oMEW, I. Additional Vol., pp. 585-86.
3lSchelling's Philosophie der Offenbarung 184112, p. 130.
'2SW (vol. 10, pp. 212f.).
"MEW, 1. Additional Vol., pp. 586f.
34
1 have documented these assertions in the introduction and in the documentation of my
edition of Schelling's 1841142 lecture. See pp. 24ff., 460ff., 468ff., and 476ff.
"Pierre Leroux, "De Dieu," in: La Revue Independante, Vol. 3 (April 1842), pp. 29-30.
translated by Joseph P. Lawrence

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