Legacy of Neoplatonism

I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f P h i lo s o p h ic a l S t u d i e s Vo l .
1 0 ( 4 ) , 3 9 3 4 28
The Legacy of Neoplatonism in

F. W. J. Schellings Thought*
Werner Beierwaltes
Translated from the German by
Peter Adamson
Abstract
F. W. J. Schelling, one of the essential thinkers in the development of German
Idealism, formed his own thought not only in a critical dialogue with Kants
and Fichtes transcendentalism and Hegels earlier conception of thinking,
but also in an intensive discussion with Plato and Aristotle. Over and above
that, Neoplatonism especially Plotinus, Proclus and the Christian Dionysius
the Areopagite played a decisive role in Schellings reception and transformation of ancient philosophy.
Selecting the manifold aspects which could be reected on in this eld, I
want to make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus concept of
self-knowledge Schellings requirement for a raising-up and transformation
of the nite I into the form of the Absolute, whose central features converge
with the goal of the Plotinian self-transformation of thought into a timeless
self-thinking and its ground.
A main part of this paper discusses Schellings and Plotinus concept of
nature as a dynamic process constituted by an immanent creating theoria.
Furthermore we nd in Schellings theory of the Absolute as the utterly One
a union of Plotinus notion of a pure One beyond Being with that of the
reexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood as an
All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality because it is in itself
the most unifying self-afrmation or self-mediation. What follows is a reection on the anagogical function of art, especially from the viewpoint of
Plotinus non-Platonic rehabilitation of art as an imitation of nature. The last
perspectives focus on Schellings concept of matter and emanation as
different from and at the same time coherent with that of Plotinus and on
Schellings theory of an absolute self-willing will in connection with Plotinus
Enneads VI.8, On free will and the will of the One as a causa sui.
Keywords: Schelling; Plotinus; Neoplatonism; Absolute; self-knowledge; art
Historical Connections
The history of the analysis of German Idealism has, with varying degrees
of intensity, placed it in a close association with the temporally distant
International Journal of Philosophical Studies

ISSN 09672559 print 14664542 online 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0967255021016741 4
I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES
tradition of Neoplatonism. This is primarily apparent in the afnity or

analogy between the structure and content of the philosophy of Hegel
and Schelling and that form of thought of Plotinus and Proclus. Indirectly,
Neoplatonic ideas had a sustained formative inuence on Idealism through
the reception of Dionysius Areopagita, John Scottus Eriugena, Jakob
Bhme and, above all, through Giordano Bruno, who experienced a true
renaissance in the context of Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis and Schellings
momentous analysis of Spinoza.1
Schellings2 philosophy was at the time of its development connected to
the structures of Neoplatonic thought, both in a positive and in a critical
sense. 3 Thus Friedrich Schlegel said outright that Plotinus system is almost
completely that of Schelling, and that Schellings later work obviously contained nothing but a completion of Spinozism and Plotinian philosophy.4
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who tried to explain various signicant points
of agreement between his philosophy and Schellings by referring to the
common starting point in Kant, the polar logic and dynamic philosophy
of Bruno and Bhme, and the Neoplatonic tradition,5 wavers between
Proclus and Plotinus in his historical identications of Schelling when he
says, for instance, that the Wissenschaftslehre of Fichte and Schelling is pura
parte the Alexandrine philosophy . . . Fichte = Plotinus, Schelling = Proclus,
or that Schelling is a sort of Plotinised Spinozism.6
Because of their sweeping nature and their totalizing claims, such
identications as a whole are no more accurate than such national characterizations and renamings as, for instance, that Hegel is the German
Aristotle or the German Proclus, while Jacobi is the German Plato.7
But analysed seriously from certain perspectives, they indicate essential
moments in the newer philosophical theory, which, despite differences, are
quite comparable to Neoplatonism, and show its intellectual persuasiveness and formative inuence in a new context.
By concentrating here on Schellings relation to Plotinus8 as a paradigm
of Neoplatonic thought,9 it will be possible not only to make a structural
comparison of a few points that are crucial for the potential of Schellings
thought as a whole. Such an attempt can also prove the following historical supposition: Schelling must have taken his knowledge of Neoplatonism
not only from the inuential accounts of the history of philosophy at that
time (for example, by Johann Jakob Brucker, Dietrich Tiedemann,
Wilhelm Gottlieb Tennemann), or from other sources dealing with Platos
philosophy and Platonism (for example, from Nicolas Souverains
Platonisme devoil10), but also from direct access to Plotinus for
instance, from Marsilio Ficinos Latin translation of the Enneads, via the
Stellen aus Plotinos made available to Schelling in a German translation
in 1805 by the philosopher Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, and
further from Friedrich Creuzers translation of Plotinus Enneads III.8
On Nature and Contemplation and the One, in the Studien of 1805, from
394
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
Creuzers edition of Plotinus Enneads I.6 (De Pulcritudine) in 1814,

which Schelling owned as a gift from Creuzer, and not least, from Creuzers
attempt at a critical edition of the complete Greek texts of Plotinus (with
Ficinos translation), from 1835.11
Schellings statements about Plotinus and the Neoplatonists are of an
ambivalent nature. On the one hand, these statements recognize with
admiration the philosophical importance of Neoplatonism, especially when
they facilitate a productive connection to recent thought and the thought
of Schelling himself. On the other hand, he sometimes indicates the material deciency of this philosophy, especially in his critique of the so-called
theory of emanation.12
In what follows, I shall reect on various aspects of Schellings early,
middle and late periods, in order to make clear that an examination of
his historical and philosophical relations with Neoplatonic thought can
shed light on the structure of his own philosophy, and at the same time,
show the enduring importance of Neoplatonism for one of the forms of
philosophy that shaped modernity.13
II
Self-consciousness and Subjectivity
Schellings interest in the Neoplatonic elements that reveal themselves

more or less openly in his philosophy springs, in my view, not so much
from a radical break with his earlier pure transcendental philosophy, but
rather is closely connected to a specic mode of thought and conceptualization which becomes clear in his rst fundamentally transcendental
writing, Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingte
im menchlichen Wissen (On the I as Principle of Philosophy, or, on the
Unconditional in Human Knowledge) (1795), 14 where we nd notable
connections to Neoplatonic and, specically, Plotinian theories. This is
governed by a constant critical engagement, both explicit and implicit,
with Kants transcendental dialectic and his concept of the I am and I
think, with Fichtes dialectic of I and Not-I, and with Spinozas concept
of substance, the unconditional, the absolute.
In an implicit move against the metaphysical determination of a (divine)
Absolute, which stands in a denitive relation to human thought as a
Unity of thought and being transcendent in itself above all things, or as
a pure Unity not constituted through a thinking relationality, for
Schelling in this work in contrast to later modications of his thought
it is exclusively the I that is Absolute, or the Absolute is the absolute
I. This absolute I is, however, not a being given a priori, already
completed in its origin, but is rather given to the empirical, nite, I,
bound up with time, as something to be reached. (This line of thought
anticipates Schellings conception of a history of self-consciousness which
he develops in his System des transzendentalen Idealismus (1800): 15 through
395
various epochs, thought becomes or develops via consciousness of sensation, intuition, intelligence, reection and the absolute act of the will into
an absolute act of self-consciousness,16 which is itself outside all time as
the unmediated unity of the subject and object of thought.) From the
concept of the absolute I as the highest reality, it follows that the empirical I must assimilate itself to it, and thus fullling its own highest
possibility become identical with it. Thus from the concept itself there
logically follows the imperative be absolute identical with yourself,17 or
become identical, raise (in time) the subjective forms of your being to the
form of the Absolute.18 In this becoming-identical with the Absolute, the
striving of the nite I for pure eternity19 fulls itself: the nal goal of
the nite I is thus expansion to identity with the innite.20 The achievement of the state of being of an absolute, timeless I implies the
annihilation of the world as the sum total of nitude,21 in favour of a
pure, eternal being. This I, as the goal of rising out of the nite, was
not, will not be it is.22 This foundational conception in Schelling, of
the raising of the nite to the absolute I as the unity of productive intuition (imagination) and thought with the object of thought realized by it,
shows in my opinion an afnity with a central thought of Plotinus: that
knowledge and thus the thinking possession of ones own, true self can
only be achieved through the self-transformation of the dianoetic thinking
of the soul (and the forms of multiplicity, including time, that go along
with this) into the self-identity (Selbst-Stand) of the timeless, absolute
Intellect (Geist). In this act of noothenai23 an immanent transcending of
the soul into a higher, more intensive form of being and unity the unconscious nous, operating in soul and not wholly fallen (that is, absolutely
remaining in itself ), is made conscious of itself. Thereby the soul in itself
is taken into the self-thinking of the absolute nous, in its self-illumination
as the identity of thinker and thought, of thinking and being, unied with
itself and these modes of thinking. Schellings annihilation of the nitude of the world in a self-consciousness identical with itself would
correspond to Plotinus demand for an increasingly intense abstraction
from all forms of multiplicity (aphairesis, aphele panta24), which at once
accompanies and promotes the transition to the consciousness of timelessness and the self-identity of nous. Thus Schelling and Plotinus, both
considering the elevation of the nite I to the absolute I, or to the selftransformation of discursive thinking into the thought of the timeless nous
that operates within it, converge in the basic motion towards freedom
from sensibility and nitude. Hence in Philosophie und Religion,25
Schelling says perhaps in an allusion to Platos requirement for a
katharsis of the soul that the goal of philosophy in relation to man is
not so much to give him something, as to separate him as purely as possible
from the accidental things brought to him by the esh, the world of appearances, the life of the senses, and to lead him back to the original.
396
Some essential characteristics of Plotinus absolute nous, as ground

and goal of self-knowledge of the soul, can be seen as quite analogous
to Schellings Absolute, despite certain differences between these two
conceptions as a whole. They indicate mutatis mutandis, though not by
their surface semantics analogous content in the thought of both. Once
Schellings I takes the role of the Absolute, that which is utterly First
and Last, its attributes can be related to Plotinus Absolute or First, the
One itself. That is to say: for Plotinus, despite a certain relation between
the two principles, the First (the One itself) is distinguished by otherness
from the second, which is a dimension or sphere of being and thought
(nous) produced from the First; thus the First remains transcendent
above and distinct from the second,26 so that the two also receive different
predicates. For Schelling, on the other hand, the Absolute unies both
perspectives in itself as absolute I. I refer now to the predicative determinations of the absolute I, which seem to me at once compatible with
the Plotinian absolute Oneness and with his One-Many, or, in which the
two levels of predication from the perspective of the Plotinian One and
Intellect are concentrated in Schellings I as the One Absolute. I cannot,
however, give here a specic interpretation for each such predicate.
The absolute I and thus the Absolute itself is complete Oneness (Vom
Ich, p. 182); it contains all reality, or it is absolute reality (p. 208); all that
is is in it and for it, and outside of it is nothing (p. 192); it is ground and
goal of a philosophy of hen kai pan (p. 193); as this All-Oneness, it is not
only unitary in itself but also a unique substance (pp. 192f.); it is
completely innite (p. 192); it is absolute, pure, timeless, eternal being
(p. 202), absolute Oneness and absolute reality in every innite sphere
in which all is intellectual (p. 21527); the nite I should strive to make
all that is possible in it actual, and all that is actual, possible (p. 232), so
as to achieve a perfection of possibility in actuality (cf. the Cusan possest),
as a necessary oneness of both; further, the absolute I is indivisible
because of its oneness (p. 192), unchangeable because of its pure being
(192); its self-identity or sameness with itself (pp. 216f.) is one of pure
thought with itself, without relation to any object other than itself: it is,
insofar as it thinks itself (pp. 193; 204A); it is absolute power (p. 195)
and freedom through itself (p. 179). I would wish for myself the language
of Plato, or that of his fellow spirit, Jacobi . . . (p. 216), so as to be able
to describe adequately this absolute act of self-grounding. This fundamental suspension (epoche) in relation to the power of language to grasp
the Absolute corresponds, to a startling degree, with Plotinus use of hoion
as a qualication (in VI.8) of afrmative statements about the One,
which, even when they are negated upon further reection, still have very
much the power to elucidate the highest intensity of actuality (i.e. the
One/Good).28 What language, despite all conceptual efforts, cannot achieve
through its structure of difference, namely a precise grasp of the Absolute
397
in itself, is in fact reached for Plotinus in the mystical-ecstatic experience

of identication with the One Origin at least in a timeless instant
(exaiphnes).29 Already in Schellings early thought this kind of Plotinian
henosis nds a correspondence in intellectual intuition. This is shown in
the statement following the above-cited wish for Platos language: . . . and
I think that this Absolute in us is not bound by the mere words of human
language, and that only an intuition of the intellectual achieved by oneself
can help the incomplete work of our language.30
For the specic legitimization of the intimate afnity between Schelling
and basic Neoplatonic ideas, even from his early transcendental philosophy, a Neoplatonic commentary would be required regarding the predicates
of the Absolute and the absolute I mentioned here. Such a commentary
would need to make the linguistic and thematic connections and differences
in both modes of thinking and types of philosophical theory more precisely
clear than I have just done, in more of a suggestive fashion. But for the
present indication of a Neoplatonic impulse in Schellings thought as a
paradigm of philosophizing in German Idealism, the following should be
borne in mind as an essential difference between the two. The utterly
Absolute is unique and everything (all reality) at the same time, it is
through itself, insofar as it posits itself (pp. 216, 221, 234), it brings itself
to be (p. 208, causa sui), it has thus no being or nature transcending it,
no being before or above it. This lack of transcendence, due to its
own absolute transcendence above (all) others, does hold true for the
Neoplatonic One and the First beyond which one cannot go. This is, however, transcendent precisely over that which, as thought related back to
itself, limits itself at the very First, and thus posits itself in relation to its
origin as its own hypostasis, nous. Schelling at least in the transcendental period of his thought (here: in Ich als Princip der Philosophie) never
allows the Absolute qua pure identity or sameness with itself to go out of
itself (p. 217). The Absolute of Plotinus, on the other hand the One as
the Good itself despite the difcult question of the why of its self-explicating, is positioned precisely to be the origin or the self-giving ground of
something which becomes and is through it, but also comes to be or is generated outside it. This is something present to itself, related to itself through
thinking itself: nous as the thinking self-identity with its own being does
not ground itself in an absolute sense, but by a reexive return to and in
its origin, the One itself. Schellings Absolute, on the other hand, sets itself
as Absolute in and for itself and is thus to be thought as selforiginating in a pure sense. While for Plotinus, the One is thus the determining point of beginning and end for the self-constitution of nous,
Schellings Absolute qua absolute I is a spontaneous act bringing itself
from itself, that is, out of freedom: origin and end of self-motion in One.
In indicating the inner afnities to Neoplatonism in Schellings early
work Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, I was chiey concerned to
398
make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus concept of selfknowledge 31 Schellings requirement for a raising-up and transformation
of the nite I into the form of the Absolute, whose central features
converge with the goal of the Plotinian self-transformation of thought in
a timeless self-thinking, and thus in a thinking of its own ground (Plotinus
V.3). A central feature of this Plotinian concept is that there be a conversion of dianoetic thought into the pure self-reection of nous or as
Schelling would say, self-consciousness as an absolute act [completing
itself outside time].32 From this point of view, Schelling must later
(1805) have especially welcomed the passages from V.3, 6 and 7 in
Windischmanns Stellen aus Plotinos (Passages from Plotinus):33
Reason, remaining within itself, and tending towards another neither
through act nor affect, acts always upon itself through knowledge of
itself. In this self-knowledge, remaining and never deviating from
itself, it also knows God. With this knowledge of God self-knowledge is achieved again: for it knows what it has from God, and
knowing this, necessarily knows itself, for it is indeed all that is given.
If it should not comprehend Him clearly, because that of which we
say that it sees is the same as what is seen, then especially in this
way will a vision and knowledge of itself remain, insofar as seeing
is the same as what is seen.
The identity of seeing or seer and seen, knowing and known, in the act
of self-knowledge thematized here through Plotinus corresponds to a
central principle in Schellings lectures from 1821 ber die Natur der
Philosophie als Wissenschaft (On the Nature of Philosophy as Science).34
The absolute subject (or the divine Absolute) is to be thought of as eternal
freedom above all [human] knowledge which knows itself and thus
is as object subject, and as subject object, without being two. Since there
is nothing outside it, there is nothing for it to know other than itself:
there is no knowledge of it whatsoever, other than that in which the same
knows the same. If there is supposed to exist for humans at least an
unmediated knowledge (in the sense of an intellectual intuition) of this
very eternal freedom, then the only possibility of such [a knowledge]
would be if such self-knowledge of eternal freedom were our consciousness, that is, the other way around, if our consciousness were a selfknowledge of eternal freedom. Or, since this self-knowledge lies in turning
from the objective to the subjective, if that turning were to happen in us,
i.e. if we were ourselves the eternal freedom reestablished from the object
to the subject. This notion of Schellings has, at the heart of its expression, a thematic connection with Plotinus treatise on self-knowledge (V.3):
in the self-knowledge of the timeless, absolute nous, the same thinks,
knows, sees, gazes upon the same (auto hauto) in a unity mediated only
399
by itself, related only to itself. This is the goal or the completion of selfknowledge in the realm of true or pure thought. It is achieved through,
as Schelling would say, a conversion towards ourselves, i.e. through selftransformation of discursive thought into absolute thought, which for
humans means the realization of the true, authentic self. Through this very
knowledge of the true self, in the sense of a noothe nai, we ourselves on
the path of an assimilation to God having become quite other think
absolute thought, and are with it a thinking One. For Plotinus, however,
this act would only be a self-knowledge of eternal [i.e. absolute] freedom
if his expression in VI.8 were also without doubt valid in this context: that
is, that the One which is absolutely free in truth, because it is the cause
of itself, could be determined in itself through self-thinking still more
intensely than nous. Of course the achievement of identity between
humans and absolute thought can be understood as a pregnant form of
their freedom, insofar as this corresponds to a high level of abstraction
(aphairesis) or freedom from sensibility and multiplicity, achieving ever
greater structures of unity through thought. Such concentration on the self
is the prerequisite for the highest mode of union: with the One itself.
III
Nature
Schelling published, especially during the years from 1797 to 1801, a series
of writings on the philosophy of nature, for example: On the World Soul,
an Hypothesis of Higher Physics (Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der
hheren Physik (1798)), a First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of
Nature, and an Introduction to the Outline of a System of the Philosophy
of Nature, or, On the Concept of Speculative Physics (1799), then On the
True Concept of the Philosophy of Nature (1801), later (1806): Aphorismen
zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie, furthermore Aphorisms on the
Philosophy of Nature, and still later, in 1830, an Account of Philosophical
Empiricism to name only those texts which are externally marked as
relating to the philosophy of nature. Schellings early engagement with
Platos Timaeus, in a commentary (1794) pursuing mainly his own interests, remained determinative of his later reections on the categorial
understanding of nature, in the spirit of Kants transcendental philosophy.
It was, however, one of Schellings basic intentions to construe nature not
only conceptually, in a transcendental way to philosophize about nature
is to create nature 35 but also to mediate between nature as object of
empirical experience and nature as subject, towards which alone all theory
is directed.36 In this mediation, both spheres or powers form a unity differentiated in itself so that also the two sciences, whose different orientations
are equally necessary for a reliable insight into the whole of the phenomenon of nature namely transcendental philosophy and the philosophy
of nature basically represent one science. This unity differentiated within
400
itself reects the fact that subject and object work together one organic
whole, in or as nature. Even the idea that nature as subject is spirit born
into the objective, which is the being (essence) of God introduced into
form,37 makes clear that nature cannot be objectied or reied in a positivistic, mechanistic way, but must rather be grasped on the basis of a
spirit unfolding itself in nature. From this basic movement, nature can
refer to this very ground in itself and beyond itself, beyond its objectivity
as an empirical appearance: nature is the step towards the world of
spirit.38 With this conception Schelling solved that postulate which had
already been formulated by The Oldest Programme for a System of
German Idealism (1796/7): I would like to once again give wings to our
slow physics, which by means of experiments proceeds so arduously.39 A
restriction of the intention of the philosophy of nature to only those objects
given in sensation would thus miss what is essential to nature, its constitutive ground spirit and instead remain caught in the supercial.
When, in accordance with the dialectical relationship or dynamic identity of nature and spirit, the system of nature proves to be at once the
system of our spirit,40 then all experience of the so-called empirically
given is utterly speculative. True physics is thus speculative physics. Its
principles are that nature is visible spirit, and that spirit as its ground is
invisible nature,41 so that both condition and explicate each other, or even
that nature is not only the appearance or revealing of the eternal, but is
rather at the same time this very eternal itself .42 The protreptic to physics
is thus the protreptic for speculative philosophy, which has the timeless,
absolute ground as its object: come to physics and know the eternal.43
In opposition to a mechanistic, and hence for Schelling spiritless physics,
the speculative philosophy of nature attains a victory of the subjective
over the objective [roughly imagined as independent of consciousness].44
In and through such a philosophy, nature itself as subject stands opposite
to thought and contemplation. As the visible appearance of the Absolute
included in the absolute act of knowing nature itself becomes an inner
moment of the philosophical theory of the Absolute of absolute idealism.
Thus speculative philosophy of nature, so conceived, is, for Schelling, incorporated into a process of the wholly modern period, which is essentially
characterized idealistically through the reigning spirit in it, as a return
inwards.45
Because of the prerequisite that nature and spirit interpenetrate and
condition one another in nature as a whole, speculative physics cannot
as I have already indicated be directed towards that in nature which
could be seen immediately as objective, but rather towards that
which is hidden to the senses, but open to spirit: that which expresses the
mystery of nature.46
This foundation of nature in reason, spirit or subject implies for
Schelling, from his concept of spirit, that it is essentially productivity,
401
being or productivity itself ,47 entirely or absolutely active, absolute

activity,48 or in its own free development action itself.49 Just as nature
should not be seen merely as object, but rather primarily as the result of
the immanent subjectivity of the creative spirit, so also nature cannot be
understood merely as a nite product, but rather, at once as a self-limiting
unity of productivity and product in its own active expansion. The activity
or productivity of spirit, so understood, actualizes itself in nature as
organism, which organizes itself in its productive motion into a self-moving
Unity-Being. 50
Schellings conception of nature as a dialectical, dynamic unity of the
productivity of spirit with the product of its activity is demonstrably
inspired by Spinozas linking of natura naturans with natura naturata.51
Schelling bears witness to this inspiration in many ways.52 Approached
from this context natura naturans in the sense of absolute activity we
can also understand Schellings notion that the spirited or enthusiastic
researcher of nature cannot declare nature to be the dead aggregate of
an indeterminable number of objects, or as the mere spatial containment of things, but can and must grasp nature as the holy, eternally
creative originative power of the world, which generates and actively
brings forth all things from itself.53
Despite differences between their basic intentions, there is also a certain
inner afnity between Schellings philosophy of nature and Plotinus
concept of nature. This is shown not only by essential moments of both
theories, but also by the terminology used. In Schelling, this is especially
true for Plotinus thirtieth treatise, III.8: Peri phuseos kai theorias kai tou
henos. Friedrich Creuzer, the learned editor of the collected Plotinus and
a friend of Schelling,54 was the rst to translate this text of Plotinus into
German, and published it in 1805 under the title Von der Natur, von der
Betrachtung und von dem Einen (On Nature, on Contemplation and on
the One) in the rst volume of the Studien edited by himself along with
the theologian Carl Daub, with commentary. He did this evidently because
of the insight into the relevance of the Plotinian theory of nature for
some ideas of the most recent philosophy, or even because of the clear
correspondences with the ideas of Schelling.55 That Schelling read this
text of Plotinus with devoted attention is clear from his excerpts that I
have found in Windischmanns Stellen aus Plotinos (Selected Passages from
Plotinus) in the Berlin Schelling archives.56
Without wishing to force Schellings philosophy of nature together with
Plotinus conception of nature (phusis) into an asymmetrical unity, I nd
convincing thematic afnities between the two in this area. Both agree
primarily upon the idea that nature cannot be imagined as the whole
of the merely objective of the empirical facta bruta but rather that a
certain form of reason, spirit or contemplation lies at the foundation of
the being and working of nature, that only this is the universal foundation
402
and operation in its various forms, and that this very contemplation is
equivalent to a form-creating actuality, and the result of this active contemplation is again a theorema that which is contemplated.57
Even though Plotinus reections on phusis in Enneads III.8 as before
with the conception of self-consciousness demand an exact comparison,
not minimizing the differences between the two, and could be given various
elucidatory support from Friedrich Creuzers translation of the Plotinus
text, I must limit myself here to some key passages in Plotinus that may
open a way to Schelling.
From the principles of the Greek theory of nature, in this case statements transmitted from the Stoics, nature has at its disposal no phantasia
(imagination); 58 it is, therefore, aphantastos.59 The conclusion which follows
from this is that nature is alogos, deprived of reason (or of a rational
structuring principle). Plotinus agreed with the rst assertion,60 though he
accepted the second one in other contexts, restricting it by giving it a
different sense.61 In III.8 (and also in V.8.1), however, he conceives of
logos or the logoi as rational principles (Creuzer: Begriffe), creating form
from reason, as operational moments of theoria and thus, through their
operation as that which gives shape (III.8.2.3), as the foundations of nature
itself: nature is the formative power, which brings forth [creates: poiei]
other formative powers.62 Logos comes then from contemplation itself,
as the essential moment of nature (3.10f., 4.6), and is at the same time
the result or product (apotelesma) of its poietic operation through logos
(3.12, 21). Thus there is a determination of nature differentiated in itself,
with different degrees in its foundation: its being (3.17, 22f.) and life
(3.15) are a contemplation which creates through a rational, teleological
formative power: what it brings forth, it creates through contemplation
(1.23); the logoi are (in vegetative and sensitive nature) creative (powers),
or what is creative in nature (2.28), because they are grounded in theoria,
or are operative because of it, insofar as they create forms in matter (2.3,
22, 27, 34), and thus shape these into delimited beings.
Hence, if logos 63 itself comes forth from theoria, and so is given at
the same time as its productive activity, or if logos itself is even to be
thought of as identical with theoria (3.3), and logoi appear forth from it
as its operative, forming powers, then physis, as the form which is becoming
or has become the total product of contemplation, can also be grasped
consistently as logos or as dunamis poiousa creative power or potency
(3.15). Because it has or immediately is contemplation, it immediately
creates without a further cause following from its origin, that is, it creates
from itself: Being, for it, means creating. . . . It is contemplation and
contemplated at the same time, for it is logos. Through its being contemplation and contemplated [as the unity of both] and logos, it creates, in
so far as it is this. So the creation [of nature] has revealed itself to us as
contemplation.64
403
The assumption that nature is grounded in rational formative principles, coming forth from the act of contemplation, existing with it
immanently as one, at the same time refers nature in relation to the
totality of the being given forth by the One to its own origin in Intellect,
which reects upon itself (4.13). Nature becomes the basis of its mediation, mediately through nous, and immediately through the demiurgic soul
that orders the cosmos.65 Even taken alone, this foundation of nature in
contemplation which operates in nature, and through the means of this
contemplation even if this is the most extended and weakest form of
theoria66 in soul and nous, is a sufcient reason not to be able to explicate nature mechanistically, for example, on the model of Epicurean
physics, as pushes and levers (othismos, mochleia: 2.4, 5). On the contrary,
nature requires a thoroughly theoretical reection of the philosophical
contemplator, on the principle that like knows like. Such a reection is
found in Plotinus precisely in III.8, as the rst part of a lengthy, formally
and thematically united writing,67 in the context of a conceptually powerful
attempt to prove that the entire cosmos, in the face of opposing forces
(for example, those noted by the Gnostics68), is one grounded in reason,
intellect, and mathematical structure, and thus as one characterized in the
end by Unity, Goodness and Beauty, which are due to the structuring
emergence of the One itself.
Such a harmony or sympathy among the different and even opposed
forces in the cosmos, a unity of productive motion and the stillness which
preserves the constitution of the whole, founded in or mediated by the
logoi, which has its origin in the timeless, intelligible sphere and is maintained by that sphere in its rest and activity united in themselves such
a conception could be related to with fascination by Novalis as well as
Goethe 69 and Schelling, with a respectively modied interest in nature
determined by spirit and the divine ground in a nature thought of
primarily as Natura Naturans, in nature as the unique artist creating
according to the logoi or, as a representation or appearing of the divine,
and thus, regarding the form of the reection, as a holy physics, for which
nature is the visible spirit and spirit is, as its ground, invisible nature.70
With regard to this thematic connection I have sketched between
Schelling and Plotinus concept of nature as a contemplation which brings
forth form-principles, and thus a rationally structured sensible reality, it
is instructive to note Schellings direct interest in Plotinus treatise III.8
in the translation of Friedrich Creuzer. With no comparison to the text,
he begins his excerpts71 with the note: How does nature know? An inner
eye looking upon itself. (Wie die Natur erkenne? Ein inneres Auge sich
zu schaun). He suggests, in his answer to the question of the form of
knowledge in the Plotinian physis, self-reection in the sense of an eyesight 72 (Augen-Blick) that is self-related and thus constitutive of being
thus, a self-contemplation of nature. Plotinus, meanwhile, excludes
404
expressis verbis (3.11)73 this thought-movement from the most extended,

i.e. lowest or weakest form of theoria, which nature operates, just as he
also understands natures proper contemplation not as seeking or discursive (3.13f.), so that it would not have what is in its intention, but rather
as a knowledge on the model of artistic creation (2.10ff., 5.4ff.)74 which
already has its object as understood qua object of contemplation, and
which, as indicated above, is immediately that which it has: the unmediated unity of contemplating and contemplated (3.16ff.). It comes forth,
however, from a self-reexive being: from nous or, through the active
mediation of nous, from soul (4.13f., 17).
Among the remaining excerpts, Schellings conception of a nature organizing itself through the productivity of spirit comes out most clearly from
the following paraphrase of Plotinus text (7.13): Every true existent is
contemplation. Likewise, that which is produced by contemplation is also
contemplation. For it has become such by being contemplated through
something contemplated.75
IV
Further Perspectives
Up to this point my consideration of the thematic connections between

Schellings thought and Plotinus and Neoplatonism in general supported
on the one hand by direct knowledge of the texts on Schellings part,
and on the other by the sense of an astonishing degree of analogy
and afnity in their very differences may make it plausible that
Schellings philosophy could appear as the Neoplatonism of our time in
the eyes of knowledgeable and insightful contemporary philosophers, or
as Neoplatonism in the form of the modern consciousness . . . i.e.
Neoplatonism in perfected, more scientic form.76 These considerations
of mine could now be extended in a whole series of perspectives, which
I would now like only to mention.
1. In Schellings theory of the Absolute as the simply One77 we nd
a union of Plotinus notion of a pure One beyond being with that of the
reexive self-presence of nous, so that this Absolute can be understood
as an All-Unity which grounds and embraces all actuality because it is
in itself absolute self-afrmation or self-mediation.78 Schelling thinks of the
Absolute as the simply One as immediately connected to his conception
of the Absolute as freedom and will of itself, as something beyond being,
above any being which would delimit it. This aspect of Gods essence is
retained as a fundamental motif in the theory of his late philosophy, in
conscious engagement with the Neoplatonists.79
2. In his discussion of the theory of emanation, Schelling takes up the
question, central for Plotinus and later Neoplatonism, of the reason
and manner of the (constitutive) procession of the Absolute One into
Being as a whole, and is in part critical of Plotinus. He understands the
405
externalization of the Absolute not as a continuous transformation, but

(according to his own view) not unlike the Neoplatonists, who understood
the spirit of their progenitor (Plato) more purely and deeply than all
later followers,80 as a leap, a distancing or falling away from the
Absolute, a break with the innite, or as tearing itself away from the
Absolute in the process of overow.81 This implies for Schelling, as well
as for Plotinus, the question of the production of time from eternity.
Schellings critique of the Neoplatonist theory of emanation rises to the
level of a forceful rejection in one text from the drafts of the rst book
of the Weltalter,82 which is obviously directed against Plotinus in particular. Here he disputes the closeness to Plato which he had already
attributed to Plotinus in Philosophie und Religion (I shall in each case
provide in the notes the relevant passages from Plotinus):
Those systems which wish to explain the origin of things by
descending from above are almost necessarily forced into the notion
that the outow of the highest originative power must ultimately be
lost in some most distant thing,83 where there is, as it were, only a
shadow of being,84 a minimum of reality left over, a something, which
exists only to a certain extent (i.e. which has only a quasi-existence),
and in fact really does not exist. 85 This is the meaning of non-being
for the Neoplatonists,86 who here no longer understand the truth of
Plato. We, following the opposite direction, also posit a most distant
thing under which there is nothing; but for us it is not Last, a nal
outow, but the First, from which all begins, not mere lacking or a
near total deprivation of reality, but active negation.
This may be understood in the sense of a self-delimitation of the Absolute
and its unfolding in and through the world and history towards itself, into
its absolute future after and outside the world87 a process fullling
itself in the system of ages. The end of this processive self-revelation of
God is in opposition to the Neoplatonic procession of the One/Good88
the Highest.
3. The conception in Christianity, determined particularly by Dionysius,
of creation as an ekstasis of God from Himself into the world nds a
thoroughly compatible starting-point in Plotinus: the One/Good gives
freely (without envy) from itself, i.e. from its founding, being-producing
power, itself to something different, which through this very act of free
bestowal 89 rst becomes90 what it is.
4. In Neoplatonic philosophy, being and thought as a whole are determined by respectively different forms of a return (epistrophe) of the
individual levels and their activity back to their origin: the timeless nous
turns in order to achieve self-constitution towards the One as its origin,
and nous and the soul return into themselves in a reexive self-relation
406
as the perfection of an (or the) identity of thought with its own being
(nous), which is grounded in the One itself, or as an emergent consciousness of its own noetic ground in a transformation of its being (noothenai
of the soul). These turnings of thought inwards and upwards can and
should ultimately lead to a (no longer thinking) union with the One itself:
a e x .91 In each
of the hypostases the origin and those that come forth from it the
constitutive workings of remaining (mone), procession (proodos) and
return (epistrophe) to an ever higher or more intense form of unity,
and nally to the One/Good itself, determine also the being and motion
of the cosmos as a sympathetic unity guided by and centred in the
world soul.
In Schellings philosophy this universal, circular dialectic corresponds to,
among other things, the notion that each motion is completed only by its
contrary motion. The Absolute, which as spirit is at the same time the most
intense unity, knows itself, and is a pure absolute afrmation of itself,92
removing all difference in itself through thought this is an analogue to
the Plotinian identity of thought and being in or as nous. For Schelling,
of course, this unity of the Absolute, realized through self-afrmation,
is utterly the First (as opposed to the position of the Plotinian nous).
The idea of Plotinus, developed from Platos Sophist and Aristotles
theology, that nous, despite standing in itself is an intrinsically constant,
yet living motion of self-thinking being, is very close to Schellings notion,
but the latter notion is at the same time removed from the former by its
historical aspect: God is not to be thought of as a still, standing power,
but as life, personality, progressive motion, leaving and returning to
itself.93 Absolute unity so conceived is, for Schelling, not only the creative,
ecstatic beginning of being, but rather also the immanent goal of the
motion of the same being: the Absolute-Innite is the highest unity, which
we consider to be the holy pinnacle, from which all proceeds and to which
all returns.94 Return here signies the reconciliation or dissolution of
the nite in the absoluteness of the In-nite.95
V
Art (a); Matter Emanation Will (b)
Since, in my book Platonismus und Idealismus,96 I have developed the

above questions and problems which are, mutatis mutandis, common to
both thinkers, or wherein their intentions overlap, I would like now to
thematize two further perspectives, which can be taken as both analogous
and distinct: the concept of art (a); and the meaning of those Plotinus
quotations in Schellings Weltalter which have to do with the concept of
matter and of will (b).
(a) Despite their different characterizations of the essence and function of art, and despite their different estimations of its philosophical
407
meaning in relation to the Absolute, Plotinus and Schelling agree in this

area of their thought that art can have an effect which guides thought,
showing the way to a higher dimension of being thus, an anagogical
function. While for both a determinative element of art is its imitation
or representation of nature (mimesis, imitatio naturae),97 this conception
lies at the foundation of their respective concepts of nature, and so
becomes important for art as a medium of knowledge.
Thus Plotinus, working from his theory of a nature that is active and
productive through thought and contemplation, routinely modies the
notion of mimesis through art that had come down to him above all from
Platos Republic. In the context of his educational programme for the ideal
politeia, Plato defended the position (perhaps inadequately, yet all the
more vehemently) that art is of itself completely unable to represent the
Idea as the goal of every form of knowledge. Rather, art misguiding
and confusing thought and emotion is xated on a copy far removed
from the truth, and thus is more likely to cover up the reality than to illuminate it or to transform it into a conception or picture which would
at least come close to the original. Thus, in an assertion of mimesis, art
has no relevance for knowledge. In contrast to this, Plotinus legitimizes
mimesis as an aesthetically appropriate category which in art reveals the
thing (Gegenstand) to be presented, in that he combines his own foundational concept the universal, reexive ascent to the One with the
Aristotelian estimation of mimesis. For Aristotle, poetic mimesis aims of
itself primarily towards what is universal, as can be shown by a comparison between poetry and historiography, a difference that may stand as a
paradigm for art in general.98 For Aristotle, the Universal has both in
process and end of knowing taken over the epistemic function played by
Platos Idea. Thus art of course in a different way from philosophy is
quite benecial for knowledge and has the function of revealing things.
Motivated by Aristotles poetics, Plotinus now argues as follows: if art
imitates nature, then it does not do so in the sense of a concealing double
of true reality. Its point of reference, as I tried to make clear above, is
not nature as a purely empirical, available objectivity, but rather nature
as a process of contemplation which brings forth and is related to the
logoi. In this way a foundational activity of nature itself can be understood as mimesis or the representation of the operative rational forms
immanent in itself. The result for Plotinus is a rehabilitation of the concept
of art as the mimesis of nature, which he presents vividly in his treatise
On the Intelligible Beauty:
But if anyone despises the arts because they produce their works by
imitating nature, we must tell him, rst, that natural things are imitations too. Then he must know that the arts do not simply imitate
what they see, but they run back up to the logoi from which nature
408
derives; then also that they do a great deal by themselves, and, since
they possess beauty, they make up what is defective in things. For
Pheidias too did not make his Zeus from any model perceived by
the senses, but understood what Zeus would look like if he wanted
to make himself visible.99
If then art presents, in a mimesis of nature, natures structuring logoi, and
mediates intelligible beauty through this very representation in the sensible
appearance of the work of art, then art does not speak only to the senses
and the emotions, but proves itself as an impulse towards the turning of
thought out of the sensible, into the timeless structures of being and reection belonging to intelligible being and life, which has come forth from
the One itself.100
While the question of the essence and function of art has a more peripheral signicance for Plotinus it was only implied by the more pertinent
question of a theory of nature and, above all, of beauty for the thought
of Schelling, especially in his phases of transcendental philosophy and
philosophy of identity (Identittsphilosophie), the same question had relevance which was central and nearly impossible to overestimate. His
philosophical intent comes out of many streams of thought towards a
metaphysical foundation of art: art is, for him, an historical and sensible
appearance, sensible in its various forms, an outow or emanation of the
Absolute, 101 the repetition of the philosophical system in the highest
potency.102 As the work of the productive intuition of the artist, the imaginative power (Einbildungskraft) as the In-Eins-Bildung of the opposites:
conscious and unconscious, nite and innite, real and ideal, art is even
the fullment or perfection of the intent of philosophy as simultaneously
the only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy.103 These
attempts to understand art according to its highest claims are set out
already in the ltestes Systemprogramm (1796/7), a sketch outlined by the
three friends: Schelling, Hegel and Hlderlin. Here we nd a statement
formulated precisely within the development of Schellings thought: that
the highest act of reason . . . is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are kin only in beauty, and that the philosophy of spirit is or should
be an aesthetic philosophy.104
Schelling developed the above-noted metaphysical foundation of the
concept of art and its individual categories in a highly nuanced and
engaging manner, especially in the sixth section of the System of
Transcendental Idealism (1800), the dialogue Bruno (1802), in the Lectures
on the Philosophy of Art, which he gave at Jena in the winter semester
of 1802/3, and repeated in 1804/5 at Wrzburg, and further in the Lectures
on the Method of Academic Study (1803), and nally in the Speech on the
Relationship between the Fine Arts and Nature, which he gave for the celebration of the saints day of the Bavarian king Max I. Joseph on 12 October
409
1807, as a member of the Academy of the Sciences in Munich and the

future General Secretary of the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich.105 One
of the basic lines of thought developed in this speech offers a promising
opportunity for a connection with Plotinus concept of art. In their
pronounced tendency to turn art inward as the imitation of nature, the
two are very close to one another on this issue, proceeding from a conception of nature as an activity of reason or contemplation, productive in
itself. Thus Schelling moves the act of the artist away from a presentation of the merely external: it should not be a serviceable imitation,106
which mirrors what exists with slavish accuracy and as pure externality.
In this sort of mere outlining of reality, instead of a transformative recapitulation, there are only masks with a certain similitude; no real works
of art come into being. If nature is for Schelling as I have already shown
no crude, spiritless, merely mechanistically graspable matter, but itself
spirit: visible spirit, an appearing or revealing of the eternal, indeed even
this very eternal itself, living, creative organism, unity of product and
productivity or productivity itself, then the imitation of nature through
art must be related to the phenomenon of nature so-structured. Against
a serviceable imitation, Schelling therefore poses, following his conception of nature as an active principle grounded in reection, the postulate
that art must transform the immanent concept or creative activity of
nature into an image. Only when the artist grasps the spirit of nature
which is operative in the interior of things through form and shape, as if
speaking through symbols, only when he allows his own idea to come to
the sight and expression of the in-living spirit of nature,107 may he achieve
an authentic work of art. The intelligible structure of nature is then the
innite reservoir for the imagination of the artist, itself productive because
it knows and reshapes. Thus not nature as externally visible is the norm
of artistic production, but rather the knowledge of natures inner structure, which takes its potency from the shaping power of the artist, as
opposed to a merely serviceable imitation. The living concept, immanent
in nature, forms the work of art through the transformative power of
imagination; this gives the recipient an insight into nature which he has
not previously experienced, or which was impossible to experience.
When imitation of nature is understood in this way, as an act of translation and re-forming of nature, an organism that shapes itself through
reection, then the product of art cannot wish to be realistic, copying the
external. Rather its intention is decisively the ideal, to make this ideal
objective, graspable in a temporal, historical form. Just as nature is a step
towards the world of spirit,108 so art opens up a view into the intellectual world109 comparable to Plotinus logoi, to which arts mimesis of
nature attains, so that this mimesis may possibly gain access to the dimension of intelligible beauty. Through this motion, immanent in nature and
art in different ways, both essentially have a function pointing beyond
410
themselves: their referring is their being. For Schelling, this means that
art becomes a symbol in the original sense of the word, in that it brings
together ideality and reality into a unity in which both appear in one
another. The imitation of nature through art is then not mere reproduction or a redundant mirroring of nature, but natures transformation
through knowledge of structure and through imagination-impulse. Thus
art decisively surpasses reality as such.110
Art as referentiality or as symbol corresponds to the above-noted
anagogical function Plotinus gives to art: art as a medium of return from
the sensible experience of nature to the productive logoi operative in
nature a motion which can precede abstractive reection (aphairesis)
on the ground of our thought and of absolute thought the One itself
and which perhaps for this very reason attains philosophical signicance.
I must now restrict myself to only these aspects of the 1807 Speech
which provide possible analogies to Plotinus rehabilitation of artistic
mimesis. However, I would like to look, proceeding from Schelling and
Plotinus, at a principle of modern art. The conception of the imitation of
nature which we nd in Schelling and Plotinus, according to which art
brings the inner structure of nature into appearance, anticipates the relationship to nature of abstract painting. Paul Klee, for example, realizes in
his painting the thought formulated by himself, that the artist should not
worry so much about visible nature, but rather about its law; and for
Wassily Kandinsky, abstract painting leaves behind the skin of nature,
but not its cosmic laws: the artist has the inner vision which penetrates
through the hard shell to the interior of things, and which takes the inner
pulse of things with the various senses as the germ of his works.111 The
non-realistic imitation of nature thus becomes an aesthetic reconstruction
of inner lawfulness, and at the same time the visible representation of that
which eludes sensible experience as such.112
The relatively close connection between Schelling and Plotinus sketched
here from the perspective of their understanding of art as the mimesis of
nature must be juxtaposed with the strong opposition that separates them
in their estimation of the relation of art to philosophy, and the signicance they give to art for the knowledge of truth and the absolute ground
of reality. For Plotinus, the conceptual reection on the ground of our
thinking in the nous which works within us, and in the inner ascent of
thought itself to a union beyond thought with the One itself, is taken as
the fullment of the philosophical way of life and thus as the highest and
best for mankind; Schelling, on the other hand, conceived not only the
inner identity of art and philosophy, but also sometimes113 in opposition to Hegel even raised art above philosophy, because only art could
achieve that for which philosophy can only be a preparation and presupposition. A thoroughly philosophical apotheosis of art, which is shown in
the continuation of a statement on art quoted above as simultaneously
411
the only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy, would
be unthinkable for Plotinus as a replacement for union with the One: Art
is precisely therefore the Highest for the philosopher, because it so to
speak opens to him the Holy of Holies, where in eternal and original unication it is as if in One ame there burnt what in nature and history is
separate, and what in life and in acting as well as in thinking must ee
from each other eternally.114 Regarding also the fundamental imaging
character of art, Plotinus would also reject the idea that art can be an
immediate and authentic expression of the Absolute the One/Good. It
does, however, give an impulse towards the realization of the image,115
that is by discovering in it the reference to the intelligible.
(b) A further perspective on the signicance of Plotinus (or of
Neoplatonic philosophy as a whole) for Schelling can be gleaned from his
Weltalter (The Ages). Schelling circled around this central philosophicaltheological project with various approaches, methods and routes, yet as a
work it remains a fragment. A testimony to his exertions is, among other
things, the convolution of manuscripts in the Berlin Schelling Archives.
The original versions of 1811 and 1813 were printed, but not published
during Schellings lifetime. For their rescue from the bombs of the Second
World War, which destroyed Schellings Nachlass in the Munich University
Library, we must thank the foresight of Manfred Schrter.116 Schellings
lecture on the System der Weltalter (System of the Ages) in 1827 gives us
further access to the development of this project.117 It contains principles
of Schellings late thought as a positive philosophy. In the Weltalter
Schelling attempted to think through the temporal or historical selfunfolding of God in the phases of the past, present and future: to think
of the transitus or disclosing of God not as from the empty, abstract and
timeless, but as from a circling eternity dynamic in itself, living in itself
in eternal time (Romans 16:25) into his temporal, world-positing and
historically active revelation or presence, which brings about its own
future: God as a living action in world and history, or, world and history
as a theogonic process. With this free disclosure of divinity in its own
history, however, Schelling did not intend a radical, essential temporalization and hence nitization of God.118 Or, to speak from a Trinitarian
point of view of the separation of God the Father from Himself, which
marks a true beginning: the unfolding of God the Father from his past,
potentiality and interiority into the presence, actuality and externalization
of the Son this is a central idea of his new positive philosophy.
In the Weltalter Schelling takes note of two conceptions of Plotinus
that are not insignicant for his own line of thought. The rst () rather
ambivalent indication given by Schelling touches on Plotinus theory
of the procession of being from the One/Good itself ending in matter
called by Schelling emanation or the theory of emanation. The second
() has to do with the concept of an absolute, self-willing will, which as
412
such is its own cause, connected expressly by Schelling with Plotinus

Enneads VI.8.
() Schellings ambivalent estimation of the theory of emanation is
dependent on context. From the point of view of the Weltalter, whose main
intent is to make evident an historical unfolding of the Absolute or God,
a reection upon the beginning of the self-unfolding of God in history, or
of the development of divine life up to the present, is required. This is
achieved by the theory of emanation as the rst great original system
[Ursystem] of all religion and philosophy, insofar as it does not try to
explain the origin of reality through a deed or proper motion which would
arise out of the most original simplicity [Laterkeit], pure eternity. Rather
it allows this to be, quite without mediation, only an eternal source, an
outowing, similar to beauty, which overows out of grace while in the
most peaceful remaining [mone!]. If then the principle does not go out
from itself in a self-active way, and creatively posits reality in such a procession which would correspond more to the Plotinian notion of an active
proceeding (arche, dunamis panton) or the self-unfolding of the One/Good
then as an alternative we have the idea that the overowing separates
itself from that from which it ows forth.119 Above I have noted how this
concept of overow, especially in Schellings work Philosophie und Religion
(1804), already intensies to become a separation, a break, a falling away
or leap, the reason for which is not found in the Absolute itself, but in that
which separates itself from it.120 The Weltalter, of course, see emanation as
the beginning of the history of God: it is the earliest, mythical phase of
the development a theory which must be overcome, since in Schellings
view it does not bring us to a First, Self-Fullled, Absolute. This view of
Schellings led him, already in his Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das
Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhngenden
Gegenstnde (Philosophical Inquiry on the Essence of Human Freedom and
Related Subjects) (1809), to a critique of the theory of emanation, especially in the form which seemed to him derived principally from Plotinus.121
This theory, so understood, is characterized by the idea that the transition
of the originative good into matter and evil is described insufciently,
that is, not described on signicant grounds. The First as the point of
departure of the overow loses itself in this progressive procession
through innitely many mediating levels, through a gradual weakening
in that which no longer has any semblance of the good.122 Or, as he says
in the Weltalter: the system which wishes to explain the origin of things
by descending from above is almost necessarily forced into the notion that
the outow of the highest originative power must ultimately be lost in
some most distant thing, where there is, as it were, only a shadow of being,
a minimum of reality left over, a something, which has only a quasiexistence, and in fact really does not exist. This is the meaning of non-being
for the Neoplatonists.123
413
From the point of view of this critique of the Neoplatonic concept of

emanation as a steadily increasing enervation into non-being in place
of a development of thought into the Perfected-Absolute Schellings
praise of matter seems especially surprising in the way it develops conceptually following his understanding of Plotinus. The text from the Weltalter
that touches on the Plotinian concept of matter presents itself precisely
as a mosaic of elements from Plotinus thought which attempt to circumscribe the difcult-to-describe the mystical essence of the non-being of
matter. The situation of him who reects is ambiguous. The terminology
of this circumscribing of nothingness as empty is, on the one hand, occasionally extrinsically synonymous with the negative demarcation of the
One as the nothingness of fullness. On the other hand, the two are essentially distinguished from one another intentionally, in accordance with the
position of the two modes of nothing. Schellings treatment of Plotinus
matter in the Weltalter is in the following quotation at least not so
much aimed at its signication as the end or furthest point of the selfunfolding of the One, but more at its negativity as pure potentiality, which
is in itself indeterminate, shapeless, decient, shadowy or dark:
How often have we been attracted by those descriptions made by
the Platonists, and especially by Plotinus, of the mysterious entity
that is matter, without their being able to explain it? For because
this profound spirit had already given up the Platonic pre-existence
of a lawless entity striving against order, and adopted a certain viewpoint according to which it is assumed that all has begun from the
most pure and perfect, for this reason there remained for him nally
no explanation for the existence (Dasein) of matter other than a
gradual weakening of the most perfect. Incidentally he describes this
essence of non-being124 with inimitable depth, as when he says that
matter ees from the one who wishes to grasp it, and when one does
not grasp it, it is then to some degree present.125 Reason seems to
become other, almost an un-reason, when it contemplates it,126 as
when the eye goes out of the light in order to see the darkness but
then does not see it,127 since it can be seen as little with light as
without light. It is nothing other than the lack of all properties,128
immeasurability when compared to measure, formlessness when
compared to form, insatiable and, in a word, the most extreme neediness,129 so that its lack does not seem to be accidental, but essential.
Thus it is presented in the shape of penia at each festival of Jupiter,130
as is said in the mythical speech of Diotima.131
For Plotinus and for Schelling, matter is as pure potentiality the basis which
facilitates the determinations for the various shapes through active forms132
for Plotinus this is shown in the discussion of his concept of nature, which
414
is unthinkable without determinable and formable matter. Schelling,

however, understands matter in his speculative physics as a process productive in itself, and in the Weltalter as the precondition for the dynamic
process of an historical unfolding of the Absolute, or of the Eternal in time.
Thus, in his ennobling of matter and in the attempt to overcome the
primacy or monism of spirit (a Hegelian conception, as Schelling saw it)
in favour of a spiritualizing or idealizing of the material, nite and natural, and in the thoughts of the unity of dualistically opposed pairs:
niteinnite, possibleactual, realideal, naturespirit, Schelling departs
decisively from Plotinus. This difference has less to do with the concept of
matter as an element and basis of nature than it has to do with the
progressive weakening or destruction (Zer-Nichtung) of reality (i.e. of the
ontological intensity or living activity) of being, down to matter as the furthest point of the unfolding of the One, as shown particularly in the
Plotinian theory of emanation. Hence Schelling pleads in his work on
freedom immediately following a critical treatment of Plotinus, Spinoza
and Leibniz for a mediation and reconciliation of one-sided xations:
Idealism is the soul of philosophy, realism its esh; only both together
make up a living whole . . . If a philosophy lacks this living foundation . . .
then it loses itself in some system whose abstract concepts. . . stand in the
starkest contrast to the power of life and the fullness of reality.133
() From the basic principle in his Freiheitsschrift that there is, in the
last and highest instance, no other being than willing and that that willing
is originative being,134 Schelling developed in his late philosophy a concept
of God as characterized essentially as absolute, self-willing will. The
guiding thread in this development is his own interpretation of the Old
Testament self-expression of God in Exodus 3:14: \ , Ego
sum qui sum.
The meaning Schelling gives to this statement135 characteristically goes
beyond the philosophical-theological traditions variously executed identications of God with being itself (esse ipsum, esse incommutabile):
Schelling does not understand the self-expression of God as present I
am who I am but as future: I will be. Here for Schelling is manifested
Gods freedom from being in the sense of a present essence or determinate existent, from anything that would limit Him, or freedom from
xed substantiality. Gods absolute freedom as true self-being as or through
Spirit is, however, founded in His being as will. From this point of view,
the self-expression of God in Exodus 3:14 can only adequately be understood in the following form: I will be who I will be, i.e. who I will to be
(Ich werde sein, der ich sein werde, d.h. der ich sein will). Here the
perfected Spirit presents itself as God.136 From the idea that God is
completely Himself, self-possessed and at His own disposal, is free from
His own being no less than from the being which is created by Him,
there comes to God as a consequence the name Lord of Being.137
415
In the idea that God, as willing Himself, is absolute freedom, and thus
simultaneously the First grounding itself from out of itself, in the sense
of a causa sui, Schelling adheres to Plotinus concept of the One as absolute
will, which is as the cause of itself (
) at the same time true
freedom. 138 In another context, I have discussed the problematic of this
development in Plotinus VI.8,139 and tried to elucidate the instructive
signicance of Plotinus afrmative statements about the One that proceed
from self-causality for his thought on the One in general. Here I refer to
this showing a direct connection between Schelling and this very thought
of Plotinus.
In a passage from the Munich lectures on the System of the Ages in
1827/8, 140 Schelling combines several central statements from Plotinus
VI.8141 for his own argument: From this basis, the word of a Platonist
[Plotinus] may also be understood:
God is not how He happens to be, but how He Himself acts and is
the willing cause of Himself. He is Himself before [vor perhaps
von? Cf. VI.8.14.41: von sich selbst her] Himself
and through Himself [14.41f.: d e ]. He Himself wills
to be the cause of His being, and He is what He wills to be. The
will to be that which He is is He himself He Himself is in fact
only the will to be Himself; He is not without His will.142
In VI.8 Plotinus gives numerous proofs against , e ,
(chance, that which happened to be [Schelling: wie es sich
trift], just by itself) as the supposed essence or structure of the One and
First Principle, and thus also of the world which proceeds from Him. This
rejection has as its goal the grounding of an origin which is rational, and
transparent in itself, which as absolute freedom wills what it is and can
only will this, because it is what it wills.143 The will of the One in fact has
in itself, as absolute will, no reason to will anything other than itself by
deviating from itself. The absolute will as the One itself wills, then, to be
unchangeably that which it already is without being determined by the
normal differentiation of that which intentionally plans by considering
or producing an intention and its realization. Its absoluteness or originative self-determination consists in the fact that it can be only this. In its
own self-caused being () it articulates itself as identical with itself;
in this self-relation, it will be itself ( r144); in this being-itself it
wills itself: .145
If, then, the will identical with its own being leads intentionally to its
own self-causation or self-grounding, then it wills precisely through this
and in it without any inner difference always already (and primarily
only) itself. In the self-causation of the One its will wills itself as precisely
this self-grounding of its own being and thus of its activity; the self416
grounding is then unthinkable without willing itself as one and the same
act. Since both self-causation and self-willing are to be thought of as
identical with one another with no real difference, self-causality through
willing itself or in willing of itself is the highest criterion of the absolute
freedom of the Primordial One. Taking into account also the most extreme
possibility and highest determination of humans, the following sentence
also goes for Schelling: Freedom is the highest for us and the divine,146
above which nothing higher exists and can be thought.
Of course, the relationship I have sketched between Schelling and
Plotinus in the characterization of the divine Absolute or One as selfwilling-will is only illuminating if Plotinus consistent suspension of belief
(epoche) concerning afrmative predications about the One signalled
many times by hoion (so to speak) is given an appropriate weight in
its philosophical signicance. In other words, that which is said afrmatively of the One refers (of course in the categorial language of difference)
to that which the One properly is in itself, beyond the being and thought
of nous, in that it precisely is not this in the thought and speech of the
thinkable and sayable of the intellect and the soul. Thus afrmations
as intensications of their normal sense, as their modications into the
thought of an otherness from the One appear as radicalized negations:
as the negation of negation in favour of an afrmation which at least
momentarily allows one, in a kind of intuition or estimation, to see that
content which is systematically ruled out by negation.147
Even if the self-willing will of the Absolute One as genuine freedom
can be thought of as a substantial agreement between Schelling and
Plotinus in the above sense, yet one must recognize also an essential difference between the two, which does not, however, remove this very
agreement or analogy or make it a priori impossible. The difference
consists of the being of God which reaches forth into the future, which
is shown in the interpretation of Exodus 3:14 as I will be that which I
will be, and is strengthened by Schellings theory of potencies. This goes
also, to put it paradoxically, for the timeless self-unfolding of God in
Himself towards Himself: that God of negative philosophy, related to
Himself in thought and remaining in Himself, whose model is Aristotles
characterization of God as thought thinking Himself,148 must be transformed into a God who creatively projects Himself outward, acting in
history. Instead of staying a God who is only ,149 an end; a God
holding fast to Himself, like Aristotles God in Schellings opinion, He
must become a productive beginning150 which goes out of itself, in a positive philosophy a God of absolute future.
For Plotinus, on the other hand, one may not accept for the One in
the sense of Enneads VI.8 and for the self-thinking intellect any of these
self-relations as inner developments or unfoldings analogous to history,
even if they were to be thought of as timeless. The One and the intellect
417
both thought of as God are what they are, and (in contradistinction
to Schellings conception) do not come to themselves, to their absolute
completion, rst in a theogonic process.151
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen, Germany
Notes
*
1
This paper was presented as the rst Stephen McKenna Lecture at the Royal
Irish Academy, Dublin, on Friday 22 October 1999.
I have dealt with this context in detail, above all in Platonismus und Idealismus
(Frankfurt, 1972), hereafter referred to as PI, and also in Identitt und
Differenz (Frankfurt, 1980), hereafter ID, especially in the chapter Absolute
Identitt. Neuplatonische Implikationen in Schellings Bruno, pp. 20440,
and further in: Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie
und ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1985), hereafter DdE.
The following works of Schelling will be cited by abbreviation, after the
Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) in 14 volumes by K. F. A. Schelling
(Stuttgart and Augsburg, 185661). The edition is divided into two sections
(I.110 and II.14), but I will number the volumes as a complete set, so that,
e.g., Vol. II.1 will be Vol. XI.
Vom Ich: Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingte im
menchlichen Wissen (1795), Vol. I, pp. 149ff. (See also the critical edition
of this text in: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Reihe I Werke
2, ed. Hartmut Buchner and Jrg Jantzen (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 69175.)
Ideen: Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium
dieser Wissenschaft (1797), Vol. II, pp. 1ff.
Weltseele: Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der hheren Physik zur Erklrung
des allgemeinen Organismus (1798), Vol. II, pp. 345ff.
Entwurf: Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799), Vol. III,
pp. 1ff.
Einleitung: Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie,
oder ber den Begriff der speculativen Physik und die innere Organisation
eines Systems dieser Wissenschaft (1799), Vol. III, pp. 268ff.
Idealismus: System der transcendentalen Idealismus (1800), Vol. III, pp. 327ff.
Bruno: Bruno, oder ber das gttliche und natrliche Prinzip der Dinge. Ein
Gesprch (1802), Vol. IV, pp. 213ff.
Philosophie der Kunst: (1802), Vol. V, pp. 357ff. Selections in: Schelling, Texte
zur Philosophie der Kunst, ausgewhlt und eingeleitet von W. Beierwaltes
(Stuttgart, 1982).
Philosophie und Religion: (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 11ff.
System: System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 131ff.
Rede: Ueber das Verhltni der bildenden Knste zu der Natur (1807), Vol.
VII, pp. 289ff. (also in Texte zur Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 5395).
Freiheit: Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das Wesen der menschlichen
Freiheit und die damit zusammenhngenden Gegenstnde (1809), Vol. VII,
pp. 331ff.
Weltalter: Die Weltalter. Fragmente. Published in the original versions of 1811
and 1813 by M. Schrter (Mnchen, 1946). A quite different text from
418
this version is found in Vol. VIII, pp. 195344 of the Collected Works
(3rd printing).
System der Weltalter: Mnchener Vorlesungen 1827/28 in einer Nachschrift von
Ernst von Lasaulx, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Siegbert Peetz
(Frankfurt, 1990).
Mythologie: Philosophie der Mythologie, Vols XI and XII.
Offenbarung: Philosophie der Offenbarung, Vols XIII and XIV.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A clear date cannot be given for the last two works. Cf. on this point the
edition of Manfred Schrter (Mnchen, 1927), 1. Hauptband, p. XI.
For example, by Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, Friedrich Creuzer,
Franz Berg, Friedrich Schlegel, J. F. Winzer, Johann Ulrich Wirth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Cf. PI, pp. 100ff.
Critical edition, E. Behler et al., Vol. XIX, Zur Philosophie, (1804) (Mnchen,
1971), p. 44: Many a philosophy is grounded in the spirit of their age, but there
is only one which perfects it and expresses it scientically, as Plotinus is in the
Alexandrian philosophy the only one who really understands (after which
follows the sentence cited above regarding Plotinus relationship to Schelling).
Vol. XII, Philosophische Vorlesungen (18007), ed. J. J. Anstett (Mnchen,
1964), p. 294. For Schlegels relationship to the Platonic tradition, see also
M. Elssser, Friedrich Schlegels Kritik am Ding (Hamburg, 1994).
F. A. Uehlein, Die Manifestation des Selbstbewutseins im konkreten Ich bin
(Hamburg, 1982), p. 6.
The Notebooks of S. T. Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1957), Vol.
I Notes, p. 457. Philosophical Lectures, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1949),
p. 390, characterizing Schelling: I might at one time refer you to Kant . . .
another time to Spinoza as applied to <another aspect of > his philosophy
. . . and then again I should nd him in the writings of Plotinus, and still more
of Proclus.
Compare PI, pp. 186f.; Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 106.
On Plotinus relation to Schelling: PI pp. 100ff. For Proclus, see pp. 105 (also
Mythologie, Vol. XII, p. 288), pp. 109f., 142f. For Dionysius, p. 112. See also
ber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft, Vol. IX, p. 217, where
Schelling says, of Dionysius concept or : [the absolute
subject] is not not God, and is also not God, it is also that which God is not.
It is thus above God, and if even one of the excellent mystics of earlier times
ventured to speak of an above-divinity, then we may be allowed to do the
same. Dion., De div. nom. IV. 1; 143, 10 (Suchla); XI. 6, 223, 6; XIII. 3, 229,
13. Weltalter, 16: Thus we [venture] to place simplicity of essence above God,
just as some of the ancients spoke of an above-divinity. 43: For we
explained that every original essence of simplicity as that which is even above
God and the divinity in Him. Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, p. 236. PI
p. 80, n. p. 353; 112, n. 40. See also below on beyond being, n. 79. For
Giordano Bruno: ID p. 204ff.
Cf. PI, pp. 83ff.
1700 (anonymously) translated from the French with introduction and
commentary by Josias Friedrich Christian Lfer, published in Zllichau and
Freystadt in 1792 in a second, expanded edition under the title Versuch ber
den Platonismus der Kirchenvter. Oder Untersuchung ber den Einu der
Platonischen Philosophie auf die Dreyeinigkeitslehre in den ersten Jahrhunderten. On Lfer: ID, pp. 205f. Neoplatonic texts are also found in the
Loci Theologici of Johannes Gerhard (Jena, 16101625) and Suicerus
(Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus e Patribus Graecis (Amsterdam, 1682, 1728 with
419
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
the same pagination)), which Schelling knew and used. Amongst the numerous
citations, see, e.g., for Gerhard: Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 13, 27, 100, 102; for
Suicerus, 62, 91.
For verication of these citations, see Beierwaltes, PI, pp. 100ff, 210ff. Horst
Fuhrmans has included in the third volume of his collection of letters and
documents (F. W. J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente, Zusatzband (Bonn,
1975) the Stellen aus Plotinos, published by myself (loc. cit.) for the rst time
from the Berlin Schelling archives, and the Bemerkungen regarding Plotinus
in many aspects made by Windischmann to Schellings Aphorismen zur
Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie (ibid., pp. 202ff). The claim made there by
Fuhrmans on p. 241, that Schelling cited Plotinus only (!) critically or to
reject him, is inaccurate in its sweeping one-sidedness. (He indicates one
passage in which Schelling discusses the theory of emanation; cf. on p. 413.)
This is shown already by veriable arguments in my discussion in PI and here
in what follows. Equally unreasonable is the conclusion drawn by Fuhrmans
from Schellings request (in a letter to Windischmann of 7 April 1804) for
Plotins Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini another edition is incidentally also
ne, though there is almost none other that Schelling did not know the
Plotinus editions particularly well (p. 74). One may assume that Schelling
was aware that the Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini contained only Ficinos
Latin translation, and not the Greek text of Plotinus. Which edition other
than the Editio princeps by Perna of 1580 could he have wanted in 1804?
The lightly asserted supposition of Fuhrmans that Plotinus was no longer so
important to Schelling after the appearance of Franz Bergs Sextus (1804,
cf. PI, pp. 100f.), who parodied him as Plotinus, is contradicted by Schellings
estimation of the Stellen aus Plotinos and his thereby strengthened wish for
other signicant passages about matter, time, space, death and nitude (PI,
pp. 102f; Fuhrmans, p. 253; (p. 326: I have recommended him [Plotinus] to
Caroline) without even mentioning the many other passages referred to in
what follows and Schellings reections concerning Plotinian ideas in his later
philosophy. For Friedrich Creuzer see also here, p. 402. Parts of Plotinus
Enneads (a) and the works of Dionysius (b) have been available in the translation of J. G. V. Engelhardt: (a) Die Enneaden des Plotinus, bersetzt, mit
fortlaufenden den Urtext erluternden Anmerkungen begleitet, Erste
Abteilung (Erlangen, 1820) containing only the rst Ennead. (b) Die angeblichen Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius, bersetzt und mit Abhandlunge n
begleitet, zugleich mit einer bersetzung der Elementatio theologica des
Proklos (2 vols, Sulzbach, 1823) in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mnchen
from the Library of the Bayer. Staatsminister Maximilian Joseph Graf von
Montgelas, who died in 1838.
See p. 413ff.
Given Hegels foundational engagement with the Neoplatonic texts themselves, the constitutive importance of Plotinian and Proclean philosophy for
certain areas of his philosophy must be even more evident. Cf. PI, pp. 144
ff., 154 ff.; J. Halfwassen, Hegel und der sptantike Neuplatonismus, Beiheft
40 der Hegel-Studien (Bonn, 1999).
Published for the second time in 1809 in Schellings Philosophische Schriften,
Vol. I, pp. IXXIV, 1114. I quote from the edition of 1856, in the Collected
Works, Vol. I.
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 399.
Ibid. p. 55.
Vom Ich, Vol. I, p. 199.
Ibid.
420
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Ibid., p. 200.
Ibid., p. 201.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 202.
Plot. V. 3.4.7,11f.; 29. 8.35, 48f.; VI. 7.35.5.; VI. 8.5.35.
V. 3.17.38.
VI. 26 and 60ff., 64: conscious of its immortality, the soul should already
here free itself from the bonds of sensibility as much as possible.
In contrast to a transcendence of the Absolute which is immanent in the I
itself, towards which the I itself must extend and raise itself up (in accordance with the intent of Vom Ich (1795)), Schelling in his System der
gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere of 1804 clearly,
in my view, had in mind a real transcendence of the Absolute opposed to a
self-enclosure in pure transcendental subjectivity: If there were no knowledge in our own mind, which was utterly independent from all subjectivity
and no longer a recognition of the subject as subject, but rather a recognition of that which is alone and absolutely, and which alone can be recognized
as the completely One, then we would indeed have to abandon all absolute
philosophy, and would be forever trapped with our thought and knowledge
in the sphere of subjectivity, and we would have to see the result of the
Kantian and Fichtean philosophies as the only one possible, accepting it as
our own (Vol. VI, p. 143).
Related to the statement from Liber XXIV philosophorum (end of the twelfth
century): deus est sphaera innita [intelligibilis], cuius centrum ubique,
circumferentia nusquam. For the metamorphosis of this statement up through
Idealism, see D. Mahnke, Unendliche Sphre und Allmittelpunkt (Halle, 1937)
(on Schelling: pp. 1012).
Cf. W. Beierwaltes, Causa sui. Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung des
Gedankens der Selbsturschlichkeit, in Traditions of Platonism. Essays in
Honour of John Dillon, ed. John J. Cleary (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 191226,
esp. 194ff., 206ff.
Cf. in DdE the chapter Henosis (pp. 123ff.) and see, for example, at pp.
167f., 171f., 250ff.
Cf. Plot. VI. 9.9.46f.: b r, r n . Also I. 6.7.2f.
Schelling, ber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft (1821), Vol. IX, p.
226: The entire motion [the transformation from object to subject, without
the removal of the inner polarity of the two, a transformation in which lies
the possibility of a self-knowing of eternal freedom] is only motion towards
self-knowledge. The imperative, the impulse of the entire motion, is the
, Know Thyself, whose practice is generally seen as wisdom. Know
what you are, and be, as that which you have known yourself to be: this is
the highest law of freedom. Here Schelling on the basis of the Delphic imperative alludes to an analogous understanding of an isolated sentence from
Pindars Pythian II. 72: x d , become that which you are
through knowledge [of yourself].
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 388.
Text 4, in PI, p. 213. Schelling, in a letter to Windischmann dated 5 September
1805, thanking him for the Stellen aus Plotinos: You have my greatest thanks
for the wonderful Plotinian passages . . . Would that someone had time and
desire to bring forth the works of this divine man (Briefe, ed. Plitt, Vol. II,
pp. 72f. F. Creuzer went on to do this in 1814 (I.6) and 1835 (Opera Omnia),
see n. 54. Schelling apparently did not actively consider the editio princeps
of Perna (1580)).
421
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
Vol. IX, pp. 226f.

Entwurf, Vol. III, p. 13: To philosophize about nature means to lift it out of
the dead mechanism in which it seems to be trapped, and so to speak revivify
it with freedom, and to place it in its own free development. It means, in
other words, to rip oneself free from the common point of view, which
perceives in nature only that which happens at most action as fact, not the
action itself in action.
Einleitung, Vol. III, p. 284.
Ideen, Vol. II, 66.
Weltalter, 234.
Text in: W. Beierwaltes (ed.) Schelling, Texte zur Philosophie der Kunst
(Stuttgart, 1982), p. 96.
Ideen, Vol. II, p. 39.
Cf. ibid., p. 56.
Weltseele, Vol. II, p. 378.
Ibid.
Einleitung, Vol. III, p. 272.
Ideen, Vol. II, pp. 72f.
Ibid., p. 73.
Einleitung, Vol. III, p. 272 [PI, pp. 139, 178].
Erster Entwurf, Vol. III, pp. 13f.
Ibid.
Erluterung des Idealismus, Vol. I, pp. 385f.; Entwurf, Vol. III, pp. 17f.
Ethica I, scholium to propositio XXIX: Nam ex antecedentibus jam constare
existimo, nempe, quod per Naturam naturantem nobis intelligendum est id,
quod in se est, et per se concipitur, sive talia substantiae attributa, quae
aeternam, et innitam essentiam exprimunt, hoc est, Deus, quatenus, ut causa
libera, consideratur. Per naturatam autem intelligo id omne, quod ex necessitate Dei naturae, sive uniuscujusque Dei attributorum sequitur, hoc est,
omnes Dei attributorum modos, quatenus considerantur, ut res, quae in Deo
sunt, et quae sine Deo nec esse, nec concipi possunt. For this conceptual
pairing, see, prior to Spinoza, Hieronymus Lombardus, De natura libri tres
(Patavii, 1589), II (De natura naturante et natura naturata) c. 1: nam primo
comparari potest Deus cum universo corporeo mundo, secundum quam
comparationem Deus est Natura Naturans, quia est origo, et caput universae
Naturae, Mundus vero, sive natura eius, cum pendeat ex Deo, ab eoque dirigatur, dicitur Natura Naturata.
See, e.g., Vol. II, p. 67: Nature, insofar as it is nature, that is, as this particular unity appears, is thus as such already outside the Absolute, not nature
as the absolute act of knowing itself (Natura naturans), but nature as mere
esh or symbol of the same (Natura naturata). Further, Einleitung, Vol. III ,
pp. 272, 285. The following text (p. 284) is distinguished from the previous
one by the fact that it conrms as I have just sketched the unity of subject
and object, productivity and product in nature, and thus also the unity of
natura naturans and natura naturata: Insofar as we do not posit the whole of
the objects merely as product, but at the same time necessarily as productive, it is raised for us to nature. This identity of product and productivity, and
none other, is itself signied in common speech by the concept of nature. We
call nature as mere product (natura naturata) nature as object (this alone is
what all empiricism intends). We call nature as productivity (natura naturans)
nature as subject (this alone is what all theory intends).
ber das Verhltnis der bildenden Knste zu der Natur (1807) (Rede), Vol.
VII, p. 293. The same quoted by Schelling in: F. W. J. Schellings Denkmal der
422
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
Schrift von den gttlichen Dingen etc. des Herrn Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi und
der ihm in derselben gemachten Beschuldigung eines absichtlich tuschenden,
Lge redenden Atheismus (1812), Vol. VIII, p. 28. On this concept of nature
as the precondition for Schellings conception of art as imitation of nature,
see pp. 407f.
Plotini Opera omnia . . . Apparatum criticum disposuit, indices concinnavit G.
H. Moser . . . emendavit, Indices explevit, Prolegomena, Introductiones,
Annotationes explicandis rebus ac verbis . . . adjecit F. Creuzer (3 vols, Oxford,
1835). Previously Creuzer had edited Plotinus Enneads I. 6 as Liber de pulcritudine, which Schelling also knew. Later Creuzer edited the Elementatio
theologica of Proclus, as well as Proclus and Olympiodorus commentary on
the Alcibiades I of Plato, as Initia Philosophiae ac Theologiae ex Platonicis
fontibus ducta in three parts (Frankfurt, 1820/1822), the rst volume of which
Creuzer dedicated to Hegel, and the second to Schelling, together with
J. F. Boissonade as the Platonicorum monumentorum Philosophiaeque
Interpretibus Primariis. See PI, pp. 84, 100ff.
See PI, 84, 103ff. Creuzer translated theoria consciously with Betrachtung, and
prefers this term to the concept Speculation or the immediacy suggested by
Schauen, in order to present the active intentionality (Streben, Begehren,
Trachten) of theoria: see pp. 63f. of the translation.
The text of Schellings excerpts: PI, pp. 103f.
III. 8.3.18ff.
SVF II. 1016.11.
Plotinus III. 8.1.22.
III. 6.4.23. IV. 4.13.11f.
IV. 4.28.47.
See also 7.13ff., on the physis which brings forth the logoi. Creuzer, 33: da
. . . in den Thieren wie in den Panzen die Begriffe es seyen, die hervorbringen, und da die Natur ein Begriff sey, der einen andern Begriff
hervorbringt als ihr Erzeugni.
On the various aspects of the meaning of logos for Plotinus, see E. Frchtel,
Weltentwurf und Logos (Frankfurt, 1970); M. Fattal, Logos et Image chez
Plotin (Paris, 1998).
III. 8.3.1721: e s r e d n
d e . \ b d , . s
r d d d w .
.
III. 2.7f.: . 24: (). II. 9.6.22. Nature
as : 4.16.
3.7, 4.32. See c. 7 on the levels or grades of intensity of theoria: animals act
of producing is a power or actuality of contemplation ( , see
19), a striving to bring forth eide, and thus contemplating and contemplatable, and nally to full all with contemplation ( ,
22). The most intensive, living form of contemplation ( , 8,11)
after the soul is the self-thinking nous, or the living being itself: life as
thought, logos, contemplation: 8.6ff.
I.e. the unity of III. 8, V. 8, V. 5 and II. 9. Cf. R. Harder, Eine neue Schrift
Plotins, Hermes, 71 (1936), pp. 110. Reprinted in Kleine Schriften, ed. W.
Marg (Mnchen, 1960), pp. 30313.
Especially II. 9: e f .
PI, pp. 8793 (Novalis), 93100 (Goethe).
See Ideen, Vol. II, p. 26.
423
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
See these excerpts in PI, 103f. The second excerpt is problematic because of
Creuzers unclear Greek text. 1.23f.: , d i ,
a , m , d . The (Schelling following
Creuzers translation: what it brings forth, it brings forth through a contemplation which it does not have) contradicts the immediately preceeding:
. . .
, and Plotinus entire theory. To Theilers m [d
] I prefer H-S2: m [d ], although the passage requires
further discussion.
This idea can be connected to the concept of a constitutive seeing, a creative
envisioning of actuality through God, as developed by Augustine and
Eriugena. See W. Beierwaltes, Eriugena. Grundzge seines Denkens
(Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 127f., 279ff.
For the various forms of theoria moving upwards from nature to intellect, see
n. 66 above.
See Creuzer in Studien, Vol. I, pp. 72f.
PI, p. 104.
According to Johann Ulrich Wirth, Die speculative Idee Gottes und die damit
zusammenhngenden Probleme der Philosophie (StuttgartTbingen, 1845),
pp. 412, 414 (quoted with further references to the reception of Schellings
relation to Neoplatonism in PI, pp. 107f. See there also 100ff.).
System, Vol. VI, pp. 1527. Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 367: In philosophy we do not know anything as Absolute only the utterly One, and this
utterly One only in certain forms. p. 370, on the question how, in the view
of philosophy it is at all possible . . . that something utterly One and Simple
[and the Absolute is utterly One] proceeds [] into a multiplicity and
differentiation. See also Vol. V, p. 114.
PI, 110ff. W. Beierwaltes, Absolute Identitt. Neuplatonische Implikationen
in Schellings Bruno in Identitt und Differenz (Frankfurt, 1980), pp. 20440;
on self-afrmation especially pp. 215ff.
See, e.g., Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 238, 256. Mythologie, Vol. XII,
p. 58: All that we can say thus far is that God (who is not really existent,
but is the pure freedom of being or non-being, the beyond-being, as the
ancients also called Him), that God, if He exists, 100 (quotation from
Dionysius). Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 128, 132, 165, 215, 240, 256 (as
absolute transcendence). Andere Deduktion der Principien der positiven
Philosophie, in Vol. XIV, p. 350. Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung,
ed. W. E. Ehrhardt (Hamburg, 1992), Vol. I, pp. 205, 16f. Weltalter, 226: In
all of the higher and better learned ones [including the Neoplatonists], we
hear only that the truly Highest is above all being, and thus is named by
many the Beyond-being, the beyond-real (, ). Ibid.: Just
as the Highest cannot be thought of as being, so it cannot be thought of as
exactly non-being, as denying itself as being; for this it also would be a determinate necessity: but the Highest must be free from all determination and
outside all necessity. See also Weltalter 14. 20: God, the true being, is above
His being. 67. 141: For the Highest was not being, because He is above the
being, as the ancients expressed it already, as a such (as a ). System
der Weltalter, p. 152. In the Diary (1848) (with A. v. Pechmann and M.
Schraven ed. H. J. Sandkhler (Hamburg, 1990)), p. 180, the reference:
already in Alexander Aphrodisias. This theoretical motif of
Schellings requires attention of its own in relation to the Neoplatonic tradition. See PI, pp. 71, 76, 80f, 112.
Philosophie und Religion, Vol. VI, p. 37.
424
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Ibid., pp. 38ff. Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie (1806), Vol.
VII, p. 191.
Ed. Schrter 130. Similar is the third printing of Weltalter, Vol. VIII, pp. 244f.
See, e.g., V. 8.7.22: Matter as r in the unfolding of the shapes
and forms from the One. V.2.2.1ff.: \ . I.8.1.19: the evil
(matter) as . V. 3.7.33f.: a
(of the origin). 9.35, 10.2, 16.4.
VI. 3.7.5ff.; 8: a d (). See also V. 6.6.19:
r .
II. 5.4.13ff.; III. 6.7.12: c (). For the relation of this to the
Freiheitsschrift, Vol. VII, p. 255, see PI, pp. 118ff. and below, p. 414f.
As a universal statement about the concept of non-being or nothing for the
Neoplatonists, this is inaccurate. It holds only for the nihil privativum or
also for non-being as otherness, but does not imply nihil per eminentiam: i.e.
the idea that the One is nothing of all the things whose origin it is.
Weltalter, 202.
Neoplatonically the succession [i.e. the self-raising development] is sublated:
Philosophische Entwrfe und Tagebcher 18091813 (Philosophie der Freiheit
und der Weltalter), ed. L. Knatz, H. J. Sandkhler and M. Schavan (Hamburg
1994), pp. 147, 25.
IV. 8.6.23: x ( ).
On this problematic theme, see PI, pp. 127ff. For ekstasis in particular: Th.
Leinkauf, Schelling als Interpret der philosophischen Tradition. Zur Rezeption
und Transformation von Platon, Plotin, Aristoteles und Kant (Mnster, 1998),
pp. 31ff. Jean-Franois Courtine, Extase de la raison. Essais sur Schelling (Paris,
1990), esp. pp. 151ff.
Plot. VI. 9.8.19f., 10.17: . : 9.34, 11.7ff.,
41ff.
For Schellings concept of the self-afrmation of the Absolute, see Beierwaltes,
Identitt und Differenz, pp. 216ff.
Weltalter, 67f.
Bruno, Vol. IV, p. 258. See also further presentations from the System der
Philosophie (1802), Vol. IV, p. 397, on the striving [of the caused] back to
the unity, in which alone all truly is. One must also bear in mind, in this
context, Schellings etymologizing use of universum in the sense of unum
versum: the, so to speak, turned-around One or the outward- or aroundturned One. By this he does not mean the material universe, but the world
of the pure potencies, and thus far a still pure spiritual world. As the immediate externality (or self-realization (das Sich-Entuernde)) of the divine,
these pure potencies are set in place through a universio. This universio is
the pure working of the divine will and the divine freedom: Mythologie, Vol.
XII, pp. 90f., 95: the process set in place through the universio [is] the process
of creation. For universus Schelling refers us to Lucretius. Yet it seems to
me noteworthy that Meister Eckhart had already used this etymological wordgame for the Trinitarian self-reexivity, which is meant to use the same word
to show the self-relation of the divine unity: omne creatum a patre uno unum
est iuxta quod et nomen universi accepit, ut dicatur uni-versum (dem Einen
zugewandt); esse enim sive essentia dei cum sua proprietate patris, unitatis
scilicet, descendit in omnia a se quocumque modo procedentia (Expos. S.
evang. sec. Iohannem 10 v. 30; Lat. Werke, Vol. III, n. 517, p. 447, 911). This
uni-versio pertains to the Son as well as to the world. For the comprehensive
meaning of the concepts universio and universitas see J.-F. Courtine, Extase
de la Raison, pp. 113ff.
425
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
See Philosophie und Religion, Vol. VI, p. 43: The great intention of the universe
and its history is none other than the completed reconciliation and dissolution
in absoluteness. See also pp. 44, 47 (on the return of the souls); p. 57: the
Odyssey of history as return. Return of the sciences to poetry, their owing
back into the universal ocean of poetry: Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 629.
See references to the respective issues in nn. 78ff. above.
Compare Aristotle, Physics 199a1517.
Poetics c. 9; 1451b6f. Poetry is more philosophical and more serious than
historiography (5f.).
V. 8.1.3240 (Armstrongs translation): E a ,
c , b d a
. \ , e ,
\ d f , z . r d a \
d , , e .
\ e e b e , a g x
i , f \ . There is here an echo
of Aristotles Poetics 1451b5 (x i ).
For Plotinus notion of beauty and art and its inuence on philosophy and
art in the Renaissance, see W. Beierwaltes, Marsilio Ficinos Theorie des
Schnen im Kontext des Platonismus, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger
Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Jg. 1980, 11th Abhandlung
(Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 18ff., 49ff.
Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 372.
Ibid., p. 363.
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 627. See for this problematic in general: D. Jhnig,
Schelling. Die Kunst in der Philosophie (2 vols, Pfullingen, 1966/9). In the
context of mythology: L. Knatz, Geschichte, Kunst, Mythologie. Schellings
Philosophie und die Perspektive einer philosophischen Mythostheorie,
(Wrzburg, 1999), pp. 175ff. My introduction in Schelling, Texte zur
Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 352.
In the collection cited in the previous note, p. 97.
Vol. VII, pp. 289329.
Ibid., p. 294.
Ibid., p. 301.
Weltalter, 234.
Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 369.
Rede Vol. VII, p. 295. This corresponds to the Aristotelian notion that art,
as the imitation of nature, perfects nature (ars imitatur naturam et perfecit
eam). See also above, n. 97.
Essays ber Kunst und Knstler, ed. Max Bill (Stuttgart, 1955), pp. 203, 183.
On the connections between the suprematistic painting of Kasimir
Malewitsch as radical abstraction and Plotinus aphairesis in the union with
the One, see W. Beierwaltes, Some Remarks about the Difculties in
Realizing Neoplatonic Thought in Contemporary Philosophy and Art, in
Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought, Part 2, ed. R. Baine Harris
(Albany, 2002), pp. 26984, esp. 277f.
In the sixth section of his System des transzendentalen Idealismus.
Idealismus, Vol. III, pp. 627f.: so versteht sich von selbst, da die Kunst das
einzige wahre und ewige Organon zugleich und Dokument der Philosophie sei.
. . . Die Kunst ist eben deswegen dem Philosophen das Hchste, weil sie ihm das
Allerheiligste gleichsam ffnet, wo in ewiger und ursprnglicher Vereinigung
gleichsam in Einer Flamme brennt, was in Natur und Geschichte gesondert ist,
und was im Leben und Handeln ebenso wie im Denken ewig sich iehen mu.
426
115 For the realization of the image, a foundational notion in Neoplatonic philosophy, see the chapter of the same name in DdE, pp. 73113.
116 See the reference to his edition above, n. 2
117 For which see the edition of S. Peetz, above n. 2.
118 See Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 255ff., 261f., 298.
119 Weltalter, 88f.
120 See above, p. 405f.
121 On this see PI, pp. 119ff., 130ff.
122 Freiheit, Vol. VII, p. 355. There Schelling specically mentions Ennead. I, L.
VIII. c. 8. On the possible provenance of this reference from Wilhelm Gottlieb
Tennemanns Geschichte der Philosophie, see PI, p. 121.
123 Weltalter, 230. System der Weltalter, pp. 133, 152. f. above, n. 86.
124 Plotinus II. 5.5.13, 24, I. 8.3.35: , , c s
r x r c .
125 Cf. Plotinus II. 4.10.11, 13ff., III. 6.7.1216: c . . . \
e d e , d c ,
b . 13.3ff.: ight of matter from form, its formand shapelessness (, 12.19ff.).
126 Ibid.: (II .4.10.11).
127 Ibid., especially 29. I. 8.9.20ff.: e e , e , \
y q \ s x q , a c . 4.30f.
128 : II. 4.13.7. Lack of all properties: III. 5.9.49ff. (c a ). I
8.10.2ff.
129 I. 8.3.1216: a x r e
d e d e e d d
b e , d , F , , ,
. Ibid., 31ff. Weakness of matter: III. 6.7.40.
130 III. 5.8f. (Symp. 203 bd). See also II. 4.16.22. III. 6.14.8ff.
131 Weltalter, 259; PI, pp. 140f., n. 182. S. Peetz, Die Freiheit im Wissen. Eine
Untersuchung zu Schellings Konzept der Rationalitt (Frankfurt, 1995), p. 134.
For a perceptive presentation of Plotinus concept of matter, see J.-M.
Narbonne, Plotin. Les deux matires. [Enneade II,4 (12)]. Introduction, texte
grec, traduction et commentaire (Paris, 1993).
132 Plotinus III. 8.2.25: [] c
133 Freiheit, Vol. VII, p. 356.
134 Ibid., p. 350.
135 See for this PI, pp. 6782, esp. 75ff. For the future aspect of Exodus 3:14, see
PI, p. 75, n. 325. Also System der Weltalter, p. 152: He becomes thought of
as Lord of all being, and His being is the cause of all other being, and He
says: I am what I will be, not: I am that I am. It [He?] is absolutely free,
utterly without being; for what does not exist above being cannot do what it
will, because it is bound to being. On the untranslatable name of God, which
conceals the distinction of times within it, and only in this way is true or
actual eternity: I am what I was, I was what I will be, I will be, that I am
(Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 263f.).
136 Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 269f.
137 References for Schelling and his relationship with the Neoplatonic tradition:
PI, pp. 77f. S. Peetz, Introduction to System der Weltalter, p. XVIII.
138 VI. 8.21.31: . 14.14: (translated
by Ficino as sui ipsius causa). Although Schelling knew Plotinus VI. 8 at the
time of the writing of Weltalter (see p. 414 above), he refers, for the idea of
an absolute self-causality or of absolute self-positing, to Spinoza (sometimes
with a marked difference from his concept of causa sui), but above all to
427
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
Fichte see, in addition to Vom Ich, Vol. I, p. 159 and Weltalter, 77 and 266,
esp. System der Weltalter, p. 134 and Mythologie, Vol. XI, p. 420: God is His
own beginning (of himself), his own deed, cause of Himself in a completely
other sense than that Spinoza gave to his absolute substance, a purely positing
itself [= Himself], with which Fichte achieved a greater idea than he himself
knew. Ibid., p. 464: willing is a pure self-origination, cause of itself in a
completely other sense than Spinoza said of the general substance. XII 64.
Cf. Beierwaltes, Causa sui (see n. 28 above).
In a transcript by Ernst von Lasaulx, p. 135 (see n. 2 above).
13.21, 40, 55, 14.41f., 16.38f.
This text and the immediately following reference to Plato (He actualizes
also everything other than Himself . . .: System der Weltalter, p.
135) are close to an older manuscript which Schellings son printed in his
edition of the Philosophie der Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 625. There we nd,
on p. 64: Platos words are well known: d .
More clearly, in the later Neoplatonists: God is not how He happens to be,
but how He actualizes and wills Himself. Plato, Tim. 76c5 ()
and 76d8 (), to which Peetz refers (p. 135, n. 89), comes close to
this sentence, which was obviously formulated by Schelling himself, but the
two texts do not correspond exactly to Plato.
For this and what follows, see Beierwaltes, Causa sui, pp. 203f.
VI. 8.13.37, 16.22, 38.
Ibid., 13.21. 40: e . 13.2733, 38: a
. Schelling , ber das Verhltnis der Naturphilosophie
zur Philosophie berhaupt (1802), Vol. V, p. 114: The utterly One as a will,
the utterly One [as the] utterly simple, eternal will. The absolute divine will
wills only itself: Mythologie, Vol. XI, pp. 461f.
Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, ed. W. E. Erhardt (Hamburg,
1992), I 79, 1.
Beierwaltes, Causa sui, p. 211.
See W. Beierwaltes, Aristoteles in Schellings negativer Philosophie, in
Aristotle on Metaphysics, ed. T. Pentzopoulou-Valalas (Thessaloniki, 1999),
pp. 5165, esp. 60ff.
Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 105; Mythologie, Vol. XI, p. 337.
Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 105.
Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 91ff., 130f. Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 322f., thought
of in accordance with the Trinity, with a reference to Dionysius Areopagitas
term (divinity generating the divine).
428

Legacy of Neoplatonism

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Legacy of Neoplatonism

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

I n t e r n a t i o n a l J o u r n a l o f P h i lo s o p h ic a l S t u d i e s Vo l .

The Legacy of Neoplatonism in

International Journal of Philosophical Studies

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

tradition of Neoplatonism. This is primarily apparent in the afnity or

Creuzers edition of Plotinus Enneads I.6 (De Pulcritudine) in 1814,

Self-consciousness and Subjectivity

Schellings interest in the Neoplatonic elements that reveal themselves

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

Some essential characteristics of Plotinus absolute nous, as ground

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

in itself, is in fact reached for Plotinus in the mystical-ecstatic experience

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

being or productivity itself ,47 entirely or absolutely active, absolute

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

expressis verbis (3.11)73 this thought-movement from the most extended,

Up to this point my consideration of the thematic connections between

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

externalization of the Absolute not as a continuous transformation, but

Art (a); Matter Emanation Will (b)

Since, in my book Platonismus und Idealismus,96 I have developed the

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

meaning in relation to the Absolute, Plotinus and Schelling agree in this

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

1807, as a member of the Academy of the Sciences in Munich and the

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

such is its own cause, connected expressly by Schelling with Plotinus

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

From the point of view of this critique of the Neoplatonic concept of

is unthinkable without determinable and formable matter. Schelling,

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

Vol. IX, pp. 226f.

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

I N TE R NAT IO NA L J O U R NA L O F P H ILO S O P H ICA L ST U D IES

You might also like