Chapter 8 Beauty reconsidered: freedom and virtue in Schelling’s aesthetics
Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift(1809) signals a new philosophical orientation that yields his most significant philosophical contribution and legacy.1 And yet this text also marks the point at which Schelling is understood to have lost interest in aesthetics, transferring its revelatory function to religion or mythology in his late, or “positive,” philosophy.2 It would be a loss if this were the case, since the position articulated in the Freiheitsschrift provides a number of resources for rescuing Schelling’s aesthetics from the static and lifeless system to which it is confined in his earlier Identity Philosophy. Indeed, I shall argue that Schelling did not let this opportunity go to waste. As early as 1807, in his speech to the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Munich (Über das Verhältnis der bildenden Künste zu der Natur),3 Schelling begins to augment his aesthetics on the basis of a new conception of freedom that ultimately becomes clarified in the Freiheitsschrift. Far from “abandon[ing] his philosophy of art” in this period, Schelling in fact revisits and revises his aesthetics, beginning with the Münchener Rede of 1807 and continuing through the drafts of Die Weltalter(1811–15).4
Despite the fact that freedom had been a leading motif even in his earliest writings, the Freiheitsschrift is distinctive insofar as freedom is, for the first time, defined with reference to moral evil and goodness: “The real and vital concept,” he explains, “is that freedom is the capacity for good and evil” (SW i.7: 352–3; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 23). The simplicity of this assertion belies the multiple alterations his position has undergone to allow him to make such a claim. In contrast to his earlier views, Schelling now affirms (1) the qualitative, rather than merely quantitative, distinction between the real and ideal that privileges existing over Being; (2) the resistance of the real to being taken up into thought; (3) moral “rigorism,” according to which selfhood depends upon a decisive, transcendental choice between good and evil; (4) the unity of real and ideal as a hierarchical relationship, in which one has priority over (while also being dependent upon) the other; and (5) the manifestation of unity as a dynamic interaction of principles whose outcome is unforeseeable. The first and last of these bring him into closer alignment with his pre-identity period texts; taken together, however, they show the period of the Freiheitsschrift to be distinctive in Schelling’s philosophical development.
What resources does this new position offer his aesthetics? This new philosophical outlook allows Schelling to emphasize the dynamic nature of aesthetic experience, to make the attraction of the observer to the object of beauty central to aesthetic experience, and to celebrate the irreducible particularity of beauty. In his identity period, beauty is superseded by philosophical knowledge precisely because, in contrast to the former, philosophical knowledge is self-sufficient, immediate, and transcends particularity. The intellectual intuition of the identity of subject and object, ideal and real, does not require the mediation of an external, beautiful object, as it once did in the System of Transcendental Idealism(1800). In what we might call Schelling’s “middle” period, however, the dependent, mediate, and particular, all of which are elements of aesthetic experience, are no longer viewed as liabilities but as strengths. Why is this so? First and foremost, in the middle period, the highest form of self-consciousness is not knowledge (of identity) but virtue: the ethical deed. More generally speaking, the self emerges as a self only once a hierarchy of wills is achieved in an act of freedom: either self-will subordinates itself freely to the universal will (as in moral goodness, or virtue) or self-will freely asserts itself as superior (as in moral evil). In either case, the self achieves individuality only when it forges an identity of diverse, utterly opposed, and resistant elements by bringing them into a hierarchical relationship. The dynamism and naturalism of Schelling’s early philosophy (the Philosophy of Nature and the System of Transcendental Idealism) is restored in Schelling’s middle period, except that now the ethical is made ontologically central.
By drawing upon a new view of freedom qua ethical choice, the middle period enriches Schelling’s aesthetics. We need only look carefully at his Freiheitsschriftin order to reconstruct a revised aesthetics from both the earlier Münchener Rede and the Weltalter. Not only is his aesthetics augmented in the ways described above, but it also regains at least to some extent the revelatory function it enjoyed in the System of Transcendental Idealism. In contrast to philosophical knowledge, which amounts only to knowledge of what is necessary, aesthetic experience is capable of unveiling the free and thus contingent act of the divine in which the real became ground and basis of the ideal in the divine decision to create the world. According to Schelling, because the divine became a self insofar as its decision achieves the proper, virtuous hierarchy in which real (self-will) freely subordinates itself to the ideal (universal will), aesthetic experience gives us reason to think that virtue is also possible for us.
I Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift: the foundation for a revised aesthetics
In Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, the human experience of freedom and ethical choice is the central and grounding dynamic of his metaphysics. Just as the human self is brought into existence through a fundamental and timeless ethical decision, so too are God and nature. The hierarchy achieved through ethical choice, for instance, transforms his conception of the absolute: what was once an enveloping oneness in his Identity Philosophy is now an active, contingently emerging and individuating personality thanks to the hierarchy of principles that its ethical choice achieves. Even nature must be conceived of in similar terms: going further than his Philosophy of Nature, which embraces the Kantian conception of matter as a dynamic balance of opposing forces, Schelling conceives of nature as either ordered or disordered depending upon whether the proper hierarchy of these dynamic principles has been achieved.5
Schelling’s debt to Kant’s Religion is all too often ignored in readings of this text, but its influence is undeniable.6 Schelling depends upon the Religion for his view of our transcendental choice of moral character, his moral rigorism, his understanding of a hierarchical relationship of wills, and his insistence that, contrary to rationalist accounts, evil originates solely in the will, not in nature. Kant argues in the Religion7 that, in order to explain our “propensity” [Hang] to evil, the moral choices we consciously make in time must ultimately be grounded in a fundamental decision that occurs outside of time; he calls this fundamental choice our “intelligible deed.”8 It is a choice of priority. We cannot decide against, or repudiate, the moral law (otherwise, we would repudiate the standard that informs us of our freedom, or the ability to resist our inclinations). Rather, we choose whether to prioritize either the moral law or self-love in all of our volitions.
Kant divides the will into Wille, or reason in its legislative function, and Willkür, or reason in its executive function.9 The moral law is thus distinguished from the power of choice, which is free because (as Kant explains in the Metaphysics of Morals) “it can be determined by pure reason” but not by impulses.10 Through the power of choice [Willkür], an agent decides “which of the two [the moral law or the incentives of self-love] he makes the condition of the other.”11 Kant concludes that we all choose to make “the incentives of self-love and [our] inclinations the condition of compliance with the moral law”;12 in short, all humans are morally evil. No middle ground, or mixed position, is possible: since the moral law sometimes fails to move each of us adequately (fails to serve as our sole incentive), we must have subordinated the moral law to other incentives.13
Kant assumes that we all know the moral law and that it affects us as incentive through moral feeling; this is our predisposition to humanity, or “the susceptibility of respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice.”14 But this predisposition does not entail our moral goodness, since as human beings we also have inclinations toward pleasure and happiness and these inclinations offer ends that, if pursued or attained, might lead us to violate the moral law. This is why goodness for us is the result of a choice: it requires us to place the moral law above self-love and thus to pursue those ends only if our principle of action is compatible with or required by the moral law. Similarly, we choose an evil moral character by actively subordinating the moral law to self-love. For Kant, the reason why one’s power of choice is affected by inclination in experience is because one has already, in the original intelligible deed, freely chosen to subordinate the moral law to self-love. In doing so, we open ourselves up to temptation in experience, having freely relinquished what matters most – our own dignity and the dignity of other human beings – and we do so for the sake of ends simply given to us through inclination. As a result, we have no disinterested way of determining which ends to pursue and which ones not to pursue. In this original choice to reject our (and others’) dignity we “make it [our] basic principle to have no basic principle.”15
Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift is largely in agreement with Kant’s view so far. Thus, many commentators miss the mark when trying to identify the true disagreement between Kant and Schelling. Those who attend only to Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals or second Critique applaud Schelling for being able to explain the possibility of evil by defining freedom, in its positive sense, as the freedom of choice between good and evil.16 For others, Schelling apparently distinguishes himself by refusing to identify self-love as the origin of evil and to render it “comprehensible,” as Kant purportedly does.17 But Kant himself admits that “there is no conceivable ground for us … from which moral evil could first have come in us”;18 for Kant, in other words, explaining evil as the prioritization of self-love over the moral law does not render evil comprehensible.
At the same time, we should not conclude that Kant’s inability to explain evil shows that he takes evil to be irrational and thus ultimately endorses the rationalistic position that Schelling criticizes in the Freiheitsschrift.19 Kant admits that evil is incomprehensible because of his insistence that all of our “predispositions” are “not only (negatively) good (they do not resist the moral law) but they are also predispositions to the good (they demand compliance with it).”20 These predispositions include not only the predisposition to personality, but also the two predispositions to self-love: the predisposition to animality, which includes the inclinations for self-preservation, species propagation, and “the social drive,” and the predisposition to humanity, which includes the inclination to gain equal worth in comparison with others.21 We have to exert extra effort to convert these inclinations into vices,22 and this is what sets Kant’s view apart from other rationalistic theories. Kant, like Schelling, refuses to lay the blame for evil at the foot of nature. Kant, however, is left with the result that there is no reason for evil; its origin is “inscrutable.” The only other option, he thinks, would be to posit an original predisposition for evil, but that would absolve us from responsibility for these acts.
Schelling tries to solve this problem by accepting wholeheartedly that there is no reason for evil. The reason for evil, we might say, resists comprehension. It is that which is not capable of being taken up into thought: the will of selfhood. In effect, Schelling elevates Kant’s “self-love” to the level of will and sets it in opposition to the universal will. It is a will that is mixed with desire, or craving, for “being.” For Kant, self-love is not a will, a faculty of determination, but simply signifies the natural inclinations to preserve and gratify the self and to care about how one compares to others. It can become “self-conceit” only if given priority by Willkür. Kant protects these predispositions, and thus nature, from blame for our moral evil precisely because these predispositions are not identified with the will. Indeed, these predispositions do not stand in opposition to, but are potentially aligned with, Wille. The deck seems to be stacked against moral evil, which is why Kant finds our intelligible deed incomprehensible.
Since Schelling raises Kant’s self-love to the status of a will, he accepts an original tension between this will and the universal will. This tension cannot be articulated as a full-fledged contradiction, but must eventually be resolved one way or the other.23 So an evil character still requires a decision, to be sure, in which we prioritize self-love. Still, Schelling has posited a will that actively resists the moral law. Because he views selfhood as a will, he avoids the rationalistic position that identifies nature as the origin of evil; selfhood is that which makes both nature and virtue possible by serving as their basis. This allows him to view the ground of evil as “positive”: “The ground of evil must lie, therefore, not only in something generally positive but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains, as is actually the case in our view, since it lies in the revealed centrum or primal will of the first ground” (Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 37). In addition, positing such a “will” is not enough to predict moral evil: both virtue and moral evil still require a free and unforeseeable decision that results in a hierarchy of wills. Either the will of selfhood submits to the universal principle, thus allowing for a virtuous moral character, or the universal principle serves as the ground of selfhood, in which case an evil character takes root. The choice is not one that the already constituted self makes; it is the choice that constitutes the self to begin with. At bottom this fundamental choice is either a choice to resist one’s own “revelation,” and thus to resist taking responsibility by acknowledging one’s relation to others, or it is a choice to reveal oneself by taking responsibility in full acknowledgment of one’s relation to others.
Whereas for Kant the choice for evil is “inscrutable” because all of our predispositions aim toward the good, for Schelling the opposite is the case: the choice for good is inscrutable because virtue requires the will of selfhood to sacrifice itself, to serve as mere ground in which the universal will can reveal itself. The will of selfhood contains nothing that leads one to expect such sacrifice to occur, even as it does in the case of the divine. For Schelling, goodness, not evil, becomes the greatest mystery of all.
In addition to identifying self-love as an original will, Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift also distinguishes itself from Kant’s by generalizing our experience of freedom and of the contradiction of wills. The very dynamic at work in the ethical context operates at the metaphysical level and is used to explain individuation, divine existence, the creation of nature, and even predication (the possibility of knowledge). God’s decision in favor of revelation, for instance, brings not only nature and humanity into existence, but also the divine as an existing personality. The divine chooses to reveal itself once it decides to limit itself by descending into the real (the divine ground or basis) and allowing nature and humanity to exist independently in this ground. Furthermore, the divine becomes a fully existing personality only if humanity (as the divine within nature) makes the same free decision to allow selfhood to serve as the ground in which the universal will (the ideal principle) can reveal itself. For Kant, only human beings must make the choice between good and evil because they are the only rational beings with predispositions to self-love; other conceivable rational beings (angels, God) do not have predispositions that must be subordinated to the moral law. For Schelling, however, nothing can exist as an individual without the real principle, the will of selfhood, as its ground. In other words, even the divine has a will of selfhood that must limit itself and thereby allow itself to serve as the ground for the universal will in order for the divine personality to emerge.24
In Prädikation und Genesis Wolfram Hogrebe makes a convincing case that this metaphysical view also allows the later Schelling to address the problem of predication, or how the real has been “caught” in the “nets” of reason. Knowledge presupposes that the proposition Fx agrees with something real that is itself an x that is F. This something has a real or metaphysical structure that is compatible with the formal (ideal) structure of the proposition or judgment. Schelling believes that this structure is achieved when two originally separate and independent principles comport to one another in a certain way. The first principle – “das pronominale Sein” or “the pure subject of being” – has the character of being an individual and resists predication. It is the something [irgendetwas] that exists without being a determinate something (something that exists as something). The second principle – “das prädikative Sein” – is predicative being without the subject it predicates, and thus has the quality of beyond or outside of itself. Hogrebe describes this second principle as mere relation. In order for both to exist, something must be sacrificed from each; each must sacrifice being everything if both are to exist at once. The third proposition is the unity achieved through the Fx structure, what Schelling calls “das propositionale Sein.”25 They can only be made compatible with one another if they are brought into a relation that allows one to be the vehicle through which the other is expressed.
The divine’s free decision to create a world unifies these two mutually excluding principles. The “ground” or real in God subordinates itself to the ideal in an ethical and spontaneous act of self-sacrifice. Importantly, even once the real principle subordinates itself to the ideal as its ground or basis, the real does not thereby relinquish its tendency to resist the ideal. There is always an “indivisible remainder” that is rationally inaccessible.26 In the Weltalter we see that this resistance manifests itself materially: insofar as the real subordinates itself to the ideal, it attracts the attention, so to speak, of the ideal. This sets the stage for mutual recognition: while the real recognizes the ideal as higher, and attracts its attention through subordination, the ideal acknowledges its own dependence upon the real.
Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift allows his middle period to distinguish itself from the identity period in the following ways. Freedom is now defined as the freedom of choosing between good and evil, and the “identity” of real and ideal is a hierarchical relation of ground and consequent. Identity is thus an ethical achievement, a historical deed, contingent rather than necessary. The virtuous act that forges this identity is an act of love and sacrifice. Love, rather than reason, is the bond or link that unites real and ideal in this hierarchy. The Freiheitsschrift is not the first text to signal Schelling’s turn to the middle period, however, for we can locate these elements in the Münchener Rede. Because of this, we have good reason to expect that his aesthetics will undergo its own transformation.
II Schelling’s revised aesthetics
Because accounts of Schelling’s aesthetics tend to attend exclusively to his System of Transcendental Idealism and Philosophy of Art, the latter of which is grounded in the metaphysics of his identity period, they fail to recognize that the Münchener Rede heralds the new metaphysical position that becomes clarified in the Freiheitsschrift and the Weltalter. Even Devin Shaw, who takes care to examine both the Münchener Rede and the Stuttgart Private Lecture Course (1810), insists that only the latter is aligned with the Freiheitsschrift. To his mind, the Stuttgart Private Lecture Course marks a “decisive break with the speech” because, in contrast to the unapologetic pantheism of the latter, the former focuses on the “fall of man,” a historical event at the center of the Freiheitsschrift.27 Whereas the speech celebrates art, rather than religion, as the “expression of the highest potency” “where innocence is restored,” the seminars mark the point at which Schelling moves beyond a concern with art apparently because art is now merely “the expression of the longing for a lost object, and even a kind of naivety.”28 There are several reasons, however, why we should question this assessment.
The Münchener Rede distinguishes itself from earlier texts and brings itself into line with the Freiheitsschrift by conceiving of creation, artistic and otherwise, as a quasi-moral act of self-limitation through which the ideal achieves determinate form. Creation (and the striving for actuality), through which the ideal appears, is not conceived by the Philosophy of Nature as a moral act; and it is certainly not viewed as such by the System of Transcendental Idealism, even if both of these acknowledge the origin as a spontaneous act.29 Though the Philosophy of Art does, arguably, view creation (eternal nature) as good, its goodness is not predicated upon the ideal taking on determinate form. Rather, goodness is presented simply as the identity of freedom and necessity in the absolute: creation follows necessarily (and logically) from the idea of the absolute (SW i.5: 373–4; Schelling Reference Schelling and Scott1989b: 23).30 In the Münchener Rede, however, Schelling draws a parallel between the act of “descending into form” and the virtuous act of limiting oneself. As a result, the unifying principle according to the speech is not reason, as in the identity period, but self-sacrificial love, and the highest of all human activities is virtue, rather than philosophy. Whereas the Philosophy of Art minimizes the developmental nature of the creative process, the speech emphasizes and endorses it. Beauty, moreover, is called upon to give us insight into the divine’s historical act of creation: that goodness – the self-willed and thus free descent into form – is the “ground of creation.” Finally, the dynamic of attraction to beauty, which is spelled out most clearly in the Weltalter, also distinguishes the Münchener Rede from the Philosophy of Art.31
In the speech, for instance, Schelling invests the principles of beauty and artistic production with moral significance. He calls the unconscious the formal principle, the “energy of singleness, and thus of individuality” (SW i.7: 303–4; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 12). It is the new version of the System of Transcendental Idealism’s unconscious force and the Philosophy of Art’s principle of poesy. This principle is the source of limitation for the work of art, but this limiting energy does not produce an “empty shell … of the individual”; rather, since the “limit is a measure which the creative energy gives itself,” so too does the work produced become an “individual” (SW i.7: 303–4; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 12). This limiting energy can seem “hard” and “severe,” but without it, no life would be possible. The universal principle, in contrast, is related to the eternal Ideas; it provides content, and allows art to be grasped. Its analogues are the System of Transcendental Idealism’s conscious force and the Philosophy of Art’s principle of art. The “soul,” or bond between the two, “is not the individualizing principle in man, but that by which he elevates himself above all selfness; it is that by which he is capable of self-sacrifice and disinterested love, and what is the highest still of the contemplation and perception of the being of things, and thus of art” (SW i.7: 311–12; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 20).
Schelling argues that the midpoint (soul, or bond) becomes visible in some works of art as “grace” and “love.” In the statue of Niobe, who witnesses the destruction of her children, the link reveals itself as love: “in this is presented the mother as such, who, not being one, still is, and by an eternal link remains, united with the beloved ones” (SW i.7: 314–15; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 23). Schelling then draws the more general conclusion: “Grace is the means of connection between moral goodness and sensuous appearance, thus it is self-evident that art must tend from all sides toward it, as its center” (SW i.7: 315–16; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 23). The harmony between sensuous appearance and moral goodness is visible through grace.32
The artist can hope to locate the midpoint in part by ascending to the eternal Ideas with the help of his soul. But this is not enough: “As the entire creation is but a work of the highest [renunciation (Entäusserung)],33 the artist must first deny himself, and descend into the particular, not shunning the remoteness nor the pain, nay, torment of form” (SW i.7: 303–4; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 11). The Ideas can become manifest through the formal principle, through the self-limitation (as opposed to external limitation) of the artist and the presentation of the Ideas in finite form. This antagonism in the artist’s mind between the soul, or that which “comprehends the idea of immaterial beauty,” and the formal principle, or “that which embodies it” (SW i.7: 300; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 8), is necessary in order that “the unity of being as the highest grace and atonement of all powers should ensue” (SW i.7: 311–12; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 20).
While the moral significance of a denial of self is clear, Schelling does not explain how an artist’s “descent” into the formal, or individualizing, principle is a denial of self. We might think that it must be the other way around: denial of self occurs in the ascent to the eternal Ideas through the universalizing principle. We can make sense of this if we consider the metaphysics of the Freiheitsschrift, according to which the first principle to assert itself serves as the ground or basis of the second’s revelation. Moreover, self-sacrifice is also required for the universalizing principle, which has to be willing to relinquish its own expansiveness and accept the “torment” of form. Form is that which separates us as individuals from others, whereas the universal, on its own, dissolves divisions. In order for the universal to appear (as grace and love), there must be unity, to be sure, but without the complete dissolution of individuals. Schelling explains, “If there were no severity, mildness could not exist; and if unity must be felt, it can only be by force of individuality, isolation, and antagonism” (SW i.7: 309–10; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 19).
An important passage makes clear that the speech orients itself to the past as much as it proposes a future state of reconciliation through art. And while it may make no mention of the fall of man, the speech by no means neglects the other metaphysically and ethically significant historical event that is made central in the Freiheitsschrift, namely, the divine act of creation:
This beauty, which results from the perfect union of moral goodness with sensuous grace, wherever we find it, seizes upon and enchants us with the power of a miracle. For as the spirit of nature elsewhere universally shows itself independent of, and in a certain sense, opposing the soul, so here it seems by a voluntary coincidence, and as if by the inner fire of a divine love, to commingle with it. And the beholder is overtaken with sudden clearness, by the remembrance of the original unity of the bond of nature and of the soul, by the certainty that all antithesis or opposition is but apparent – that love is the bond of all being, and that pure goodness is the ground and significance of the whole creation. Here art seems to go beyond itself, and to make itself again a means to itself. At this height, sensuous grace becomes merely veil and body to a still higher life; what was before a whole is created as a part; and the highest relation of art to nature is thereby arrived at, in that it makes nature the medium of manifesting the soul in itself.
According to the speech, artistic beauty is significant for its ability to offer evidence of the divine’s historical deed. When we see beauty, we “remember” that love is the “bond of all being,” that it unifies every individual with the other, and that goodness is the “ground and significance” of creation. Beauty reflects the hierarchical relationship of principles in the divine decision because beauty is manifest only when the principles of individuality and universality appear to have been unified through love and sacrifice into a hierarchical relation of ground and consequent, of basis and revelation.
Schelling’s speech is continuous not only with the Freiheitsschrift, but also with the Weltalter.34 In fact, the Weltalter goes even further than the Freiheitsschrift by reiterating the speech’s new understanding of beauty and artistic creation and by providing a metaphysical explanation for an important aesthetic phenomenon that is mentioned in the speech: the attraction of the observer to the object of beauty. Without explaining why or how, the above passage insists that beauty “enchants” us, “seizes upon” us, and strikes us “with the power of a miracle.” Presumably it affects us so strongly for the same reason that it reflects the divine decision: its principles are aligned in the proper way. Still, it is only in the Weltalter that we find a metaphysical explanation for why this alignment of principles should have such an effect.
Schelling’s Weltalter continues and deepens the Freiheitsschrift’s exploration of the divine decision to create the world, illuminating a complex dynamic of subordination, withdrawal, differentiation, attraction, and love. The phenomenon of beauty plays a central role in this dynamic. The “Godhead” (God’s essence or “pure will”) becomes an actual will when “another” – God’s nature – subordinates itself to the pure will as the vehicle through which that will can be actualized. Insofar as God’s nature subordinates itself to God’s pure will, it becomes “prime matter,” or nature differentiated into three parts, the real (A1), the ideal (A2) and the bond (A3), each of which plays a role in generating images, ideas, or archetypes of a merely possible nature. These images, the “highest” of which is of humanity, are presented to the Godhead, which then becomes conscious of the decision of whether to bring this nature into existence. Prime matter, in other words, is a perfect, though as of yet uncreated, world. It has, along the lines of Hogrebe’s view, assumed the metaphysical structure necessary for predication. In addition, given Schelling’s middle period appropriation of the view of the human will in Kant’s Religion, this preliminary nature also embodies an inner ethical structure that can be characterized as virtue, self-sacrifice, and love.
In one passage Schelling explains the phenomenon of beauty by likening the beautiful object to “prime matter,” or that which has proven to be the nature of God through its subordination to the Godhead. God’s nature becomes “prime matter” insofar as it prepares itself as that material or vehicle by showing that it has made the spiritual within it – the image or idea – transparent or manifest. This “being,” which is more precisely the image of “a consummate spiritual-corporeal being” (SW i.8: 281; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 60), i.e., the human being, has been “liberated” not by being released from matter but by matter becoming transparent to it:
Yet this being draws nigh to its liberation especially in organic nature. It is the oil by which the green of plants is satiated. It is the balm of life in which health has its origin. It is discernible in what shines through the flesh and the eyes, in that undeniably physical outflow whereby the presence of the pure, the healthy, and the delightful are at work on us in a charitably liberating way. Nay, it is incontestably discernible in the unspeakable, which streams forth as grace into transfigured corporeality in which even the barbarian is instinctively moved. The joyful amazement that consummate beauty posits to the cultivated perhaps has its main basis in the feeling that beauty brings matter before our eyes in its divine and, so to speak, primordial state. Nay, as if it were the object of an originary Love, this being still now, as in primordial time, draws Love to itself, and it is, because always only indicating itself, but never as something to grasp or to possess, the goal of the inclination which is always stirring, but never satiated.
According to the metaphysical underpinnings of the Weltalter, the higher potency (A2) is drawn to the now liberated “being” within A1. This is a twofold process. First, the second potency “feels” or notices the first potency as its “being” or basis only once the first potency withdraws or pulls away through its subordination to the higher. The subordination of the first potency to the second also entails the division and hierarchy of principles (A, B, and their bond) within the first potency. Second, the higher potency feels the absence or lack of the first potency and is attracted to the first potency, for the higher potency sees in the lower potency the manifestation of images which are contained within itself only prototypically. Indeed, the A2 also first becomes aware of itself because of the subordination of the first potency. A similar process of subordination, differentiation, and withdrawal occurs in the other potencies and eventually attracts the Godhead itself toward these images.35 Insofar as the Godhead desires revelation it recognizes its dependence upon the self-sacrifice of nature; indeed, it first feels itself, or becomes aware of itself, through the subordination and withdrawal of nature. Following the Godhead’s attraction to eternal nature is its free decision to reveal itself and bring nature into existence out of love.
Beauty, both natural and artistic, is a visible manifestation of the proper alignment of inner principles. To be sure, beauty is only skin deep in both cases, for what is required here is only that beauty seems to bring matter before our eyes in its primordial, perfectly ordered, state.36 In both cases, though beauty does not have to reflect an alignment of actually living principles, the “soul-like essence” can still (seem to) appear as long as the form in which it is manifest is a perfect vehicle for that essence. But since the essence is “always ready to overflow” even if it is “always held again” (SW i.8: 283; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 61), the vehicle must also appear to contain something that would seem to exceed its own limits.
Because the liberation of the essence is possible only through “love,” i.e., the free alignment of principles, so too does this “bond” also seem to appear when something is beautiful to us. This is precisely what is maintained in Münchener Rede, before Schelling had offered the metaphysical basis on which that account of beauty and artistic creativity arguably rests. There he explains that both the “unity” (the bond) and the “limitless” (or the essence) are only visible through “the force of individuality” and “limitation” (SW i.7: 309–10; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 19).
Though the unity reflected in the case of beauty is not, strictly speaking, a living unity, as it would be in the case of an organism or of human goodness, the unity that appears in beauty is anything but static. Schelling is committed in this period to a dynamic interaction of fundamental forces within unity. As he maintains in the Weltalter, the essences or images are the “inner spirit of life” (SW i.8: 284; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 62). Schelling does not spell out how the essence as a living “spirit of life” appears in the case of beauty. But we can infer from the above passage that the essence appears as a living essence and the unity appears as a living unity insofar as the object of beauty seems to us to be an individual. The Münchener Rede supports such an interpretation, where Schelling explains that “the perfection of a thing is the creative life in it, its power of asserting its own individuality” (SW i.7: 294–5; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 4). One of Schelling’s main aims in this speech is to show that, as in nature, there is no development in art without the “self-development” of the ideal (SW i.7: 295–6; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 5). But the ideal may develop only with a basis in which to do so. In other words, the beautiful object acquires “a self-sufficing life, independent of the producing life” (SW i.7: 300–1; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 9) thanks to the restricting and containing power of its particular form:
When the artist recognizes the aspect and being of the in-dwelling creative idea, and produces that, he makes the individual a world in itself – a species, and eternal type; he who has seized upon the essential need not fear hardness and severity, for they are the conditions of life.
We have arrived at the somewhat counterintuitive conclusion that the essence appears in the case of beauty as a living spirit only because its form, or basis, allows the object to appear to be an independent individual, i.e., independent of the “producing life” of the artist. The appearance of a living essence requires the appearance of a living unity. Beauty is thereby separated from craft, whose product does not appear as independent of the intent of its maker, but as utterly shaped by it. Schelling’s commitment to the basis as the “condition of life” is thereby clearly maintained.
The Weltalter’s description of the Godhead’s consciousness of prime matter allows us to infer the state of mind of the observer of beauty. In addition to the feeling of attraction to the images, the divine state of mind is described as one in which the principles are not only in harmony with one another, but also in a reciprocal relation of play. This is a state of “bliss” for the Godhead in which prime matter, or “eternal nature,” is “at play with itself ” (SW i.8: 289; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 66). The production of images for the Godhead is characterized as a time when “Wisdom played – not on the earth, for there was no earth yet – on God’s earth, on what is ground and soil to God” (SW i.8: 297; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 71). In an earlier version of the Weltalter (1811), Schelling even describes it as the “playful delight in the initial life of God” [spielende Lust im anfänglichen Leben Gottes].37
The production of natural forms and the artistic production of beautiful art are analogues of the production of images in the divine imagination. Schelling explains, “the only difference between nature and the artist is that with nature the material is not outside the artist but rather one with it and inwardly growing together with it” (SW i.8: 276; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 56). The similarity Schelling sees between the artist and productive nature leads him to describe nature in artistic terms: “Who does not know the independent soul if they have seen the art, inwardly bound yet simultaneously free, nay, arbitrarily playing, in the great ladder of the organic essence, even in the gradual cultivation of the particular parts?” (SW i.8: 276; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 56). Even the production of images within the divine imagination is taken to be artistic. Schelling claims that the creations of eternal nature, i.e., the essences, are “the exterior of an artist who grows together with her material and indicates what degree of liberation the supremely interior being has reached” (SW i.8: 279; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 58). In other words, the creations of nature are produced when nature as material works itself into a form that is transparent to the ideal at its interior.
The playful relationship among the principles within the first potency requires the soul’s love of the “confinement” within the “contracting force” (SW i.8: 278; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 57). As we have seen, without the “material” that is “handed over” to the soul as its means or vehicle, the soul would never appear (SW i.8: 278; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 57). This love of confinement is the beginning of what Schelling calls the soul’s artistic Lust, “because overcoming the contrarily striving forces gently and gradually pleases it” (SW i.8: 278; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 58). Indeed, Schelling explains that what must be accomplished in order for the soul to appear is that the forces within nature move from an antagonistic relationship to a “free” and “vital antithesis”: “The supremely interior, the soul can only become evident, however, in the relationship in which the contrarily striving forces are brought to a reciprocal freedom and independence or to a vital, mobile antithesis” (SW i.8: 278; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 58). This transition is from a striving of each principle for its own existence to a “free desire” within eternal nature that “is at play with itself ” (SW i.8: 289; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 66). The soul’s presence within eternal nature allows the other forces to subordinate freely to it, and to move from a selfish desire for existence to a “free” one.38
The new metaphysics introduced by the Freiheitsschrift and clarified in the Weltalter allows Schelling to celebrate artistic productivity as the process through which the object achieves a life of its own, much in the way that he tries to explain how humanity is both divinely created and yet freely individuates itself. Our attraction to beauty is given metaphysical underpinnings and understood in terms of the recognition of one’s dependence and lack as well as of the object’s apparent achievement of quasi-ethical hierarchy and individuation. Additionally, the pleasure in perceiving beauty is understood along Kantian lines as a free and dynamic play of these principles made possible by the hierarchical relationship they have achieved. Aesthetics may not be at the forefront of Schelling’s mind in this period, but that only seems to allow his aesthetics to come into its own.39
III Conclusion
The Münchener Rede, Freiheitsschrift, and the Weltalter transform and enrich our understanding of Schelling’s aesthetics. Perhaps this should not be surprising given that his philosophy undergoes a dramatic transformation resulting from his new view of freedom as the choice between good and evil. And yet the tendency has been to presume that Schelling simply loses his philosophical interest in beauty and art. As I have tried to show, however, beauty is not only integrated into the new metaphysics, but also plays a central role in the story of divine and human freedom. The perception of beauty, after all, is the perception of nature in its perfect and original form, whose principles have achieved, through self-sacrifice, the requisite and dynamic hierarchy. Kant’s Religion helps us to understand the hierarchy in ethical terms, as the free submission of nature to the ideal or universal. Schelling then places freedom at the heart of his metaphysical “system.” Beauty is thus called upon to confirm “the dearest and ultimate hopes of humans,” the belief “in the general capacity of matter again to be elevated into spiritual qualities” (SW 8: 284–5; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 62).40 By allowing us insight into the past that was never a present – the free act of divine creation – beauty purportedly gives us reason to hope that our own nature is capable of submitting to our practical ideals and that virtue and the construction of a loving community are within our grasp. Just like the Kant of the Religion who draws the disturbing conclusion that we are all evil, there is urgency in Schelling’s appeal to beauty, as he desperately seeks signs of our capacity to overcome ourselves.
1 For the influence of Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift on Kierkegaard, see Hühn Reference Hühn2009 and Kosch Reference Kosch2006a. Schopenhauer was also deeply influenced by this text; see Hühn forthcoming. From among Schelling’s texts Heidegger Reference Heidegger and Feich1971 singled out the Freiheitsschrift for its profundity. Vater Reference Vater1975 argues that “we must understand that it is neither the author of the system of identity who attracts Heidegger nor the Schelling of the later positive philosophy, with its emphasis on divine transcendence, but the author of The Investigations on Human Freedom, the ‘anthropomorphic’ approach to system which takes human transcendence as the key to being’s structure and integrity” (33).
2 Fackenheim Reference Fackenheim1996 is not alone in maintaining that Schelling “loses interest in art and the philosophy of art. For the system of aesthetic idealism must be replaced by a philosophy of revelation” (91). According to Braeckman Reference Braeckman2004 “Schelling’s philosophical concern with art was only granted a short life,” namely from 1798 to 1807 (552, fn. 2).
3 Hereafter Münchener Rede.
4 Seidel Reference Seidel1974 follows “experts” in placing the Münchener Rede within Schelling’s identity period (171). In his recent study of Schelling’s philosophy of art, Shaw Reference Shaw2010 argues that the Freiheitsschrift breaks with the Münchener Rede when what he views as Schelling’s new “ecstatic account of freedom takes the place of artistic production” (115). On his reading, “the texts on art are oriented toward the future and a new mythology that could overcome the fragmentary nature of humanity,” whereas from 1809 onwards Schelling’s orients himself to the past, namely, to the “Fall of humanity,” which is a “real historical event” (115). Schelling thereby “diminishes the role of art to the production of a work based either in the artist’s individuality, or as a work of nostalgia for a lost connection to nature. Art is reduced to this role because Schelling now conceives of freedom, and virtue, as the highest activity of human being” (6–7). Shaw’s study does not attend to the Weltalter and perhaps for this reason fails to acknowledge a revised aesthetics that rests on the continuity among the Münchener Rede, Freiheitsschrift, and the Weltalter.
5 While God’s free decision brings nature into existence, humanity’s choice for evil undermines and corrupts nature’s order (SW i.7: 366; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 34–5). According to Jähnig Reference Jähnig1989, Kant’s Metaphysical Foundations of the Natural Science shows him “the possibility of universalizing the principle of the organism” by allowing him to view the “core of reality … as energy rather than matter. More importantly, the idea that matter arises out of a combination of different forces implies the idea of immanently unfolding order (Gesetzmässigkeit), whereby, arising out of diversity, matter constitutes itself as a unity”; attractive and repulsive forces become, for Schelling, “attraction” and “expansion” so that the dualism can be seen to “unfold from one central point” (225).
6 In an explicit reference to Kant, Schelling remarks: “Only this evil, contracted through our own act but from birth, can on that account [daher] be called radical evil; and it is remarkable how Kant, who had not raised himself in theory to a transcendental act that determines all human Being, was led in his later investigations, merely by faithful observation of the phenomena of moral judgment, to the recognition of, as he expressed it, a subjective ground of human actions preceding every act apparent to the senses but that itself must be nonetheless an actus of freedom” (SW i.7: 388; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 53).
7 All references to Kant’s Religion are from Kant Reference Kant, Wood and di Giovanni1998.
8 Religion, Kant AA 06: 32.
9 Allison Reference Allison1990: 129. Allison Reference Allison and Lara2001b also provides an incisive defense of Kant against Hannah Arendt’s early critique of the Religion’s account of radical evil.
10 MM, Kant AA 06: 214.
11 Religion, Kant AA 06: 36.
12 Religion, Kant AA 06: 36.
13 Religion, Kant AA 06: 24–5.
14 Religion, Kant AA 06: 27.
15 MM, Kant AA 06: 420.
16 Lauer Reference Lauer2010, for instance, limits Kant’s view of freedom to its articulation in Section III of the Groundwork, arguing that “only action in accordance with the moral law is free” (Groundwork, Kant AA 04: 447) (147). Likewise, Schalow Reference Schalow1994 overlooks Kant’s Religion and the intelligible deed, claiming that Schelling distinguishes himself from Kant by “uncover[ing] the roots of human freedom beyond its confinement to the limited choices we make” (220).
17 For Wirth Reference Wirth2004, radical evil according to Kant “is human freedom’s propensity for self-love”; because of this, “Kant did not see at all … [that] radical evil cannot be said to be in any way understandable” (221).
18 Religion, Kant AA 06: 43.
19 According to Kosch Reference Kosch2006a, Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift responds to what Kosch believes Schelling views as Kant’s rationalistic notion of freedom, according to which evil is irrational. Kant’s claim in the Religion that freedom is the choice between good and evil is thus (according to Kosch’s reading) ultimately revoked in the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant characterizes evil as an “inability” (MM, Kant AA 06: 227) (Kosch Reference Kosch2006a: 62). It is true that Kant defines freedom in the Metaphysics of Morals without reference to evil, but this is because he must include the freedom of non-human agents, who have no self-love. Moreover, neither choosing against the law nor choosing for the law can be made “understandable”: freedom of choice in general cannot be made understandable because we cannot “present theoretically freedom as a noumenon” (MM, Kant AA 06: 226). Finally, though Kant characterizes evil as an “inability,” he does so because he views evil as a failure and thus a misuse of freedom that undermines itself. Schelling speaks in similar terms in the Freiheitsschrift: “This principle becomes actual for and against anyone who now provokes it by misusing self-will raised to the level of selfhood” (SW i.7: 390–1; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 55); in evil “man transgresses from authentic Being into non-Being” (SW i.7: 390–1; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 55); in choosing evil the self “loses its initial freedom” (SW i.7: 392–3; Schelling Reference Schelling, Loves and Schmidt2006: 56).
20 Religion, Kant AA 06: 28.
21 Religion, Kant AA 06: 26–8.
22 Religion, Kant AA 06: 26–8.
23 Jähnig Reference Jähnig1989 argues that “‘will’ is here to be understood not as a particular faculty existing along beside feeling [Gemüt] and spirit [Geist]. It is instead their synthesis, the synthesis of striving and thinking. It bridges the gap between nature and spirit, the real and the ideal, and thereby elevates the lower into the higher. This is the justification of Schelling’s assertion that the most profound insight of philosophy is the realization that ‘primordial being is will’” (228).
24 According to the Weltalter, “Being infinite is for itself not a perfection. It is rather the marker of that which is imperfect. The perfected is precisely that which is itself full, concluded, finished” (SW i.8: 212; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 7).
25 Hogrebe Reference Hogrebe1989: 70–2.
26 For this reason, Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift is often characterized as taking a clear step beyond idealism. See Frank Reference Frank1975 and Reference Frank1989, as well as Snow Reference Snow1996 and Schulz Reference Schulz1955. Linker Reference Linker2000 argues that “[l]ong before Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida, Schelling set out to uncover the radical finitude and contingency of all human attempts at self-sufficiency as well as to demonstrate the impossibility of a self-grounding human project” (375). In the Continental tradition, Schelling is appreciated for his resistance to the totalizing power of reason; see Wirth Reference Wirth2003 and Žižek Reference Žižek and Norman1997, who draws favorable comparisons among Schelling, Levinas, Deleuze, Kierkegaard, and Kafka.
27 Shaw Reference Shaw2010: 129–30.
28 Shaw Reference Shaw2010: 134.
29 Steinkamp Reference Steinkamp1999 facilitates the comparison of the System of Transcendental Idealism and the Freiheitsschrift by providing a reading of the System of Transcendental Idealism as a theory of the will.
30 Like the System of Transcendental Idealism and the Philosophy of Art, the Münchener Rede acknowledges an antithesis that is felt by the artist, though the Philosophy of Art does not emphasize the developmental nature of that contradiction. Indeed, the Philosophy of Art draws a favorable comparison between divine and human creativity to the extent that the developmental process is not emphasized: the creation (eternal nature) is coeternal with the absolute, and the phenomenal realm is not considered created. Because of this, the Philosophy of Art’s conception of creation should be distinguished from what we find in the Philosophy of Nature, the System of Transcendental Idealism and the Münchener Rede. Thus, the Münchener Rede returns to a concern with origins and retrieves a conception of divine creation, which is presented first in the Philosophy of Nature and informs the System of Transcendental Idealism’s conception of artistic creativity. This conception presents creativity as the developmental process through which the ideal is given determinate form. We see the re-emphasis of creation as developmental most clearly in the Münchener Rede’s conception of the essences themselves. Much like the “actants” in the Philosophy of Nature, the essences strive toward actuality: “In nature and art, the essence first strives after actuality or expression of itself in the particular … for without limitation the limitless could not appear” (SW i.7: 309–10; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 19). The essences (and thus the absolute) are no longer conceived of as immutable and self-sufficient, for expression through determinate form is a fulfillment of their lack of reality in the absolute.
31 One telling indication that Schelling has shifted away from his identity period aesthetics in the Münchener Rede is his treatment of Johann Winckelmann. While Winckelmann is only celebrated in the Philosophy of Art, the Münchener Rede qualifies this praise, arguing that his theory fails to acknowledge the “link” that binds form and idea (SW i.7: 295–6; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 5–6).
32 The contrast between the analyses of Niobe here and in the Philosophy of Art is noteworthy. In the latter, he prefaces his remarks by reminding us that “the realm of ideas is the realm of authentic and clear conceptions, just as the phenomenal realm is that of false, dark, and confused conceptions”; it is only in the realm of ideas, or the absolute, that oppositions “become one”; thus, Niobe is significant not for signifying that love is the bond of creation, but rather because it demonstrates identity in the absolute by exhibiting a “peaceful and stable soul in the midst of passion” (SW i.5: 557; Schelling Reference Schelling and Scott1989b: 153).
33 In Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845, Johnson translates Entäusserung as “manifestation” (12).
34 Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from the Weltalter are taken from the 1815 version.
35 The first “potency” (A1) ultimately serves as the ground of corporeal nature, while the second potency (A2) serves as the ground of spiritual nature. The third principle (A3), the “immediate subject” or “substratum” of the Godhead, is the “universal soul or the link between God and the world” (SW i.8: 251; Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter2000: 37). Through a complex process of withdrawal and attraction, the first two potencies project the images of a future world through the third potency to the Godhead; thus, the A³ serves as the “mirror” in which the Godhead can view these images. The A³ allows the Godhead to orient itself toward objective nature.
36 Schelling explains in the Münchener Rede that “the works of art are only in appearance and on the surface animated” (SW i.7: 302; Schelling Reference Schelling and Johnson1845: 10).
37 Schelling explains that “This playful delight in the initial life of God seems to have been well recognized by the ancients, which they eloquently called wisdom – an immaculate mirror of the divine power and an image of his goodness.” (Diese Spielende Lust im anfänglichen Leben Gottes scheinen die Alten wohl erkannt zu haben, welche sie ausdrucksvoll die Weisheit nennen, einen unbefleckten Spiegel der göttlichen Kraft und … ein Bild seiner Gütigkeit. [Schelling Reference Schelling and Schröter1946: 30, my own translation]).
38 Schelling’s description of the dynamic relationship of principles brings to mind Kant’s theory of the harmony of the faculties. By characterizing the dynamic as “free” Schelling seems to mean something similar either to what Kant describes as a “free” or “intellectual interest” in the existence of natural beauty that follows our judgment of taste (KU, §42, Kant AA 05: 300) or to what Kant views as the lack of a “purpose” in the otherwise purposive play of the faculties (KU, §§10–17, Kant AA 05: 219–37). With respect to the former, the intellectual interest that we take in the existence of natural beauty can be called “free,” according to Kant, because there is no personal “end” that the beautiful fulfills for us in its existence. This is arguably Schelling’s concern at this stage in his cosmology as well: the desire for existence is no longer a desperate and selfish striving, but a self-less desire to be the basis for the essence. Or, with respect to the latter, Schelling may describe eternal nature’s desire as “free” because, insofar as it is in a state of play with itself, it is seemingly aimed at the production of images for the sake of their being brought to life; but this is not its expressed aim in the activity. Indeed, though the activity is arguably purposive for the end of creation, the only end the activity possesses is itself, i.e., its own activity of play.
39 Even as Schelling seems to be drawing on Kant’s theory of the harmony of the faculties and of aesthetic ideas, his account of our attraction to beauty takes a step beyond Kant, for whom attraction to the object of beauty is not central to aesthetic experience per se.
40 McGrath Reference McGrath2010 rightly points out a weakness in Žižek’s Lacanian reading of Schelling, according to which “The dialectic of consciousness and unconsciousness is not the production of love but a defense against horror and meaninglessness” (82). This imposes “a theory of repression onto the Schellingian unconscious or real principle. Nowhere does Schelling say that the unconscious is constituted by acts, content, experience, which are unconscious because subjectivity could not bear them … Schelling and the romantics constructed the unconscious in order to overcome the modern split between subjectivity and nature, mind and body” (85).
