FWJ Schelling: of The I As Principle of Philosophy, or The Unconditional in Human Knowledge

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[p 11-21]
The true essence of the "newest" Kant-Fichtean philosophy is the identity of subject and object (as Hegel and Schelling came to call it) and the consequent objection to dualism. 11. Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), professor of philosophy and theology in Leipzig. Critic of Wolff. Fundamental axiom: What cannot be thought is false; what cannot be thought as false is true. Three principles: (1) principium contradictionis: nothing can at once be and not be; (2) principium inseparabilium: whatever entities cannot be thought without each other cannot exist without each other; (3) principium inconiungibilium: what cannot be thought as joint or as juxtaposed cannot exist jointly or in juxtaposition. (Willy Moog; Die Philosophie der Neuzeit bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. [Berlin, Mittler: 1924], p. 460). 12. After "the axiom of contradiction" Schelling put "(das Unbedingte)." This remark in parentheses seems to belong elsewhere (perhaps half dozen lines earlier, after "the original form of all knowledge"), since it is the philosophical method that must reach the unconditional, while the axiom of contradiction alone falls short of it. 13. It is significant that Schelling sees in Kant the thinker who turned away from the remnant of formalism in Leibniz toward a philosophy founded on the reciprocal determination of form and content, which is the mark of the I. 14. The merely analytical form cannot constitute objective reality, which requires a "transcendental synthesis." Transcendental idealism is realism, in contrast to any philosophy restricted to formal analysis. 15. Schelling may have in mind the crucial passage at the end of section 2 of the introduction to CrJ: "There must be a ground of unity of that supersensuous which is at the base of nature with the supersensuous which the concept of freedom contains practically. Though the concept of that unity neither theoretically nor practically attains definite knowledge, and therefore has no domain of its own, still it makes possible the transition of the manner of thinking according to the principles of the one [freedom] to that according to the principles of the other [nature]" (Cass. 5:244; cf. Bernard 12). 16. Schelling means the deduction of the categories from the table of judgments. He himself holds that the three forms of relation furnish a proper deduction of the other nine categories (Poss. 107). In the System of Transcendental Idealism [1800] 3: 517) he says that "the entire mechanism of the categories must be deduceable from the relation of time to the pure concepts on the one hand and, on the other, to pure intuition (Anschauung) or to space." 17. This 11 was not in the first edition (1781), but was added in the second (1787, pp. 109 13). On pages 110-11 Kant says the table of categories "contains the form of a system of all elemental concepts and therefore gives a hint of all joint traits (alle Momente) of an available speculative science" (cf. Smith 110). He emphasizes that in each group "the third category is not a mere derivative but a genuine concept of pure understanding." 18. PuR 95; Smith 105. 19. F'uR 131,8 16; Smith 152. See n. 7 above. 20. 1 Cor. 13:1. 21. Matt. 6:33.
Translator's Introduction to
Of the I as Principle of Philosophy, or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge
Schelling's son, K. F. A. Schelling, who edited the Works, (1856-61), appended to the essay Of the I a critique that Schelling had written in 1796 of a review of the essay. My translation of it also follows the essay itself, but it could equally well serve as Schelling's own introduction to the essay. Another introductory statement by Schelling may be found in his letter to Hegel dated February 4, 1795, written while he was at work on the essay. He implies that Hegel can soon learn from the essay why Schelling called himself a Spinozist. Parts of this letter are translated in notes 25 and 55. The reader may also consult note 101. As I have mentioned earlier he would do well to keep at hand both Spinoza's Ethics, which Schelling surely had before him, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The title of this essay no longer speaks hypothetically about the mere possibility of a form of all philosophy but comes right out with the thesis that the I is the principle of philosophy. To be sure, this is not the empirical I which each one of us finds in his consciousness. If it were, that would mean the subjective idealism of Berkeley, where to be is to be perceived, and where mental contents would be inexplicable illusions unless certainty came with our ideas because they themselves came to us from the mind of God, who is not a deceiver. But in that case the existence of that God would be a postulate, which begs the question. We cannot look for any unconditionality of truth in a sheerly transcendent and therefore entirely hidden God. And if that hidden God should deign to reveal himself to man, it would still be a conditional truth depending on the two conditions that the Devil had no hand in the revelation and that God felt like bestowing it. Now, even the empirical I has the unconditional form of being identical with itself, nor is this particular identity merely formal. For, if you express your awareness of your self in the sentence / am 1 and then rashly transpose
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that sentence into the formula I = I, you have a mere formal identity as in A = A. Everybody grants that, given an A, A cannot be anything but A. Yet nothing is really given in the formula I = I. It had better be written x = x. What are we talking about when we talk in terms of such letters as A or x or even I? In mathematical tradition, x means any unspecified amount. And the letter I may mean anything at all, not excluding any it. The mistake of those who cannot understand Kant and Fichte and Schelling is precisely their notion that the I probably means some mysterious it called a mind or a soul or a spirit. Now, when these three writers use the
word I, they take it strictly as a pronoun which, even in ordinary speech, cannot mean anything but the speaker or writer or reader himself who refers to himself when he says I. The pronoun I means the act by which two events are established simultaneously, the awareness of myself, and the
distinction between my I and any not-I. The self-awareness can be described in words as the identity of thinking-form and thought-content. Kant's phrasing is clearer; he says "the subject is at the same time its own object" (PuR 429). Adopting Fichte's words, Schelling says of the I, "it is because it thinks itself, and it [can] think itself because it is. It produces itself by its own thinkingby absolute causality" (Of I, 167), Of course none of these words and sentences can force you to grasp that you are an I. The I is a free act. "I am because I anal that [insight] grabs each one suddenly" (Of I, 168). Augustine says it happens by that mental "slap" by which the mind understands the word yourself. (De trinitate 10, ix, 12: eo ictu quo in-
Schelling says that the absolute I cannot occur in consciousness (180) because of the condlnality inherent in all consciousness: no subject without an object. Yet the absolute I, oi,e could say, furnishes the form of unconditionality without which no consciousness would be possible. You may feel that this kind of argumentation endeavors to hold fast what is utterly elusive. And this is what Schelling seems to do when, in that February 4 letter to Hegel, he writes, "God is nothing but the absolute I" (Plitt 1:77). He does not mean that God is a person, for in the same letter he had already said that we can (and ought to) "reach farther [meaning /deeper] than the personal being" (ibid. 76). Why then use the word I to God and the unconditional? Because the I has the form of selfpositing, that is, of absolute independence, absolute freedom. (See also n./ 25, the entirety of which could serve as a short introduction to the essay Of In 1811 Schelling wrote: "God in his highest Self is not revealed [once ' 7 and for all], he is [continuously] revealing himself; he is not real, he becomes real, precisely in order to be manifest as the very freest being" (The Ages of the World; 8:308; cf. Bolman 196-97). Around 1836 Schelling said of God, "he is entirely outside of himself, free of himself, and is thus the being that sets everything else free" (see the entire passage quoted
I.)
in n. 70).
Freedom cannot be imparted by coercion, only by invitation. No "power" of God can make man free, only "love." Terms like power and love may help some readers who do not entirely lack a religious background. To be sure, they can help only a reader who, like Schelling, is beyond what Schelling calls "orthodox concepts of God." On February 4, 1795, he wrote to Hegel: "Here is my answer to your question whether I believe that, with the moral proof, we cannot reach a person Being. ... My answer is: We reach farther than a personal being. For by now I have ./ become a Spinozist" (Plitt 1:76). Kant warned against objectifying and more especially personifying God (PuR 611 n.), a warning that, unfortunately, is not heeded to this day. The main reason may be the dependence of "modern" thinking and schooling on the objective sciences. Thus, when Nietzsche exorcised "the old God," and when William James damned "the Absolute," they were both thinking of objective entities, and they let their objectivistic thinking overrule that keen sense for the symbolic which they both possessed. The other reason for objectivism is the kind of ecclesiastic teaching which, for the sake of being "modern," ignores Kant and his warning and therefore neglects to tell
telligit quod dictum est to ipsam.) As an empirical I, I find myself not only as absolutely self-positing but also as the specific physical and historical person I am. For when I realize that I am I for myself alone, as Fichte puts it (1:98), I simultaneously distinguish my I from whatever is not I, for instance, from my own mental constitution with its historical setting and from my body with its physical environment. The empirical I is never without some object, as Kant pointed out (PuR 276). Now, there is a distinction (not a separation) between the unconditional certainty that I am I, and the unconditional as such. The former, being subjective, is never without an object. Therefore the empirical person is conditioned by objects. And there is a conditioning bond between objects. No such conditioning can pertain to the unconditional. Therefore the unconditional can be neither subject nor object. It is "no thing at all" (Of I, 177) and therefore fittingly named "absolute I," whose essence is freedom. (To absolve means to detach. Absolute means without ties.)
Schelling distinguishes it from the empirical I. The latter is subject: though it is unconditionally I, it is also conditioned as a specific person.
Yet, if its form were not the form of unconditionality, there could be no I at all. The "absolute I" is the ground of possibility of every empirical I.
the yourw the deepest truths religion has voiced. God is not one of the gods. He is "not in a genus" (Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.Q 3. Art 5), the genus gods. The gods come and go; their existence is not identical with their essence. But in God essence and existence
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are identical (ibid., Art 4). God has no essence apart from his existence or presence. "I shall be who shall be" (Exodus 3:14). A reader who has been taught and has really grasped these truths will find no insurmountable difficulty in Schelling's notion of the "absolute I." On page 200 Of I Schelling says the finite I strives to become identical with the absolute I. Religion teaches that man should strive to live in God.
And the mystic strives to lose himself in God.
2 Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge

(1795; second printing, 1809)
Say first, of God above, or Man below, What can we reason, but from what we know? Of Man, what see we but his station here, From which to reason, or to which refer? Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known, Tis ours, to trace him only in our own. Pope: Essay on Man
(Epigraph of the first edition)
[151]
Preface to the First Edition
Instead of all the pleas with which a writer can meet his readers and critics, there in only one plea here to the readers and critics of this essay; either not to read it at all or to read it in its entire contexi, and either to refrain from judgment altogether or to judge the author by the whole work and not by separate passages taken out of context. There are readers who look at a hook flret ingly, in order to grasp quickly something that they can throw at the author as a criticism, or to find a passage that has been rendered incomprehensible by being taken out of context. By such means they can 63
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[154]
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PHILOSOPHY
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prove to anyone who has not read the work that the author has written nonsense. Thus, for instance, readers of that kind could say that in this essay Spinoza is spoken of very often, not (to use Lessing's expression) "as a dead dog, and then the logic of such people is all too well known they could (jump to the conclusion that the author is trying to repeat Spinoza's errors, even though they have been refuted long ago. For such readers (if that term may be applied to them) I want to say, on the one hand, that this essay is meant to annul explicitly the very foundations of Spinoza's system, which has not yet been refuted by any means, or more aptly, to topple it by means of its own principles; on the other hand I want to say that (in spite of all its errors) Spinoza's system seems to me more worthy of high esteem, because of its bold consequences, than the popular,coalition-systems of our intellectual world, which [152] through a patchwork of all possible systems Spell death to all true philosophy. At the same time I am ready to admit to such readers that these systems, which constantly hover between heaven and earth and are not litalreetiough to penetrate to the core of all knowledge, are much more secure against the most dangerous errors than is the system of a great thinker whose speculations take great flights, and who risks_ everything, either to achieve complete truth in all its greatness, or no truth at all. And please let me remind you that whosoever is not 1 v , , brave enough to follow the truth to its fullest height will never possess it 1 even though he touch the hem of its garment, and that, in spite of I tolerable errors, posterity will judge more justly the man who dares to meet I the truth freely, than it will those who are afraid of shipwreck on the rocks ( or sandbars and prefer to drop anchor permanently in some safe cove. , I would like to remind the other kind of readers, those who prove by 1 means of passages taken out of context that the author had written nonsense, that I do not care for the praise bestowed on writers whose every word, in and out of context, conveys the same meaning. In all modesty, I am conscious of the fact that all ideas in this writing are my own, and therefore I deem it a not immodest .,-- demand that I be judged only by - readers who think for themselves.Elesides, the whole investigation deals with principles and hence can be tested only by principles. I have tried to . depict the results of critical philosophy in its regression to the last principles of all knowledge. The only question, then, which the reader of this essay has to answer is the following: Whether these principles are true or false, and (be they true or false) whether the results of critical philosophy are really based on them. What I hope for my essay is precisely such a test of the principles here elaborated. I cannot expect this testing from any readers who are indifferent to all truth, nor from those who presume that no new investigation of principles can be possible after Kant 1153J and
'J
terested in the question of the highest principle of all knowledge because his own system, even if it is the system of skepticism, can be true only through ' its principles. One cannot do anything with people who have lost all interest _ rin truth, for one could persuade them only with the truth4Th the other hand, I believe that I may say to those followers of Kant who presume that he himself has established the principles of all knowledge, that they have comprehended the letter but not the spirit of their teacher if they did not discover that the way of the Critique of Pure Reason cannot possibly be the way of phitosophy l as a science.' )As m, philosophy takes its start from the exiiigee. of original conceptions (urspriingliche Vorstellungen)
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not made possible by experience but explainable only through stlperior principles_ . For instance, the necessity and universal validity, which Kant stated as their outstanding character, cannot be based on mere feeling for it (which necessarily would have to be the case if it were not determined by superior principles, principles that must be presupposed even by skepticism, for skepticism cannot be overturned by a mere feeling of necessity). Furthermore, space and time, which are supposed to be only forms of intuition, cannot possibly precede all synthesis and therefore must themselves depend on a higher form of synthesis.* Similarly, the derivative subordinate synthesis by means of categories (Verstandesbegriffe) cannot possibly be thought of without an original form and an original content, which must be the basis of every synthesis if it is to be a synthesis at all. This is all the more obvious, since Kant's deductions tell us at first glance [154] that they presuppose superior principles. Thus Kant names the only possible forms of sense perception, space and time, without having examined them according to a principle (as for instance the categories according to the principle of logical functions of judgment). The categories are set up according to the table of functions of judgment, but the latter are not set up according to any principle [see n.49]. If we look at this matter more , , closely, we find that the synthesis contained in the judgment as well as the synthesis expressed in the categories is only a derivative synthesis; both can be understood only through a more basic synthesis shared by boththe synthesis of multiplicity in the unity of consciousness as suchand this synthesis itself can be understood only through a superior absolute unity. Therefore the unity of consciousness is determinable not through the forms of judgments, but on the contrary, the judgments together with the categories are determinable only through the principle of that unity [see n. 49]. By the same token, the many apparent contradictions in Kant's writings pointed out by his opponents should have been admitted long ago for they cannot be corrected at all except under those higher principles .1 find that Beck' expresses a similar thought in the preface to the second part of his commentary on Kant. But I cannot judge how close or how far the thoughts of this commentator, who has so visibly entered into Kant's spirit, are related to mine.
think that the highest principles of his philosophy have already been established by him4very other reader - regardless of his system must be in-
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ly, even if it could be said that Kant's theoretical philosophy maintained the most conclusive concatenation among all its parts, still his theoretical ) philosophy is not connected with the practical by a common prinicple". 3 His practical philosophy does not seem to be one-and-the-same structure with the theoretical; instead it seems to be a mere annex to his philosophy as a whole and, what is more, an annex wide open to attacks from the main building. Yet, inasmuch as the first principle of philosophy is also the last, since all philosophy, the theoretical in particular, starts from the final result of the practical in which all knowledge ends, the whole science must be possible, in its highest perfection and unity. I think the mere mention of all this will suffice to justify the need of an exposition of Kant's philosophy based on superior principles. Indeed I believe that, [155] in the case of such an author, one must explain him according to thetp inciples which he must have presupposed, and only accor../ ding to them.' ven in the face of the original sense of his words, one must assert the still-more original sense of his thoughts. Thik essay proposes to establish the principles [on which Kant's thoughts rest]) I could promise myself nothing more fortunate in this venture than to find examiners of the principles here established. I would be grateful for the most severe examination, provided only that it merit the name of examination. My gratitude would be proportionate to the importance of the subject discussed. The estimable critic of my treatise On the Possibility of a Form of All (1795, Philosophy has made a remark in the Tiibinger Gelehrten Anzeigen 12th issue) concerning the principle I stated. He has questioned the main point of this whole investigation. I believe that my present essay will alleviate his doubts. To be sure, if what I stated were an objective principle then one would not be able to understand why it should not depend on a superior one. The distinguishing feature of my new principle lies in the fact that it ought not to be an objective principle. There my critic and I agree; an objective principle could not be an ultimate one because it would have to be determined by an ulterior one. The only unresolved question between us is whether there is any principle which is not objective at all and which nevertheless furnishes the basis for all philosophy. To be sure, if we had to look at the ultimate in our knowledge as if it were a mute painthat we ting outside of us (as Spinoza put it) 5 then we would never know know. However, if that ultimate itself is a condition of all knowledge, indeed a condition of its own being known, if it is the only immediacy in our knowledge, then we know precisely through it that we know; we have found the principle of which Spinoza could say that it is the light which illuminat . itself and the darkness.' 1156, It does not behoove philosophy to ingratiate itself by an anticipatory enumeration of its results and thus to suborn the unbiased judg-
only presupposed. Finali which, in the Critique of Pure Reason, its author
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ment regarding its principles, nor can it allow an evaluation of its principles by the material interests ofleyeacky life, yet, if a well-meaning man should ask where these ostensibly new principles should lead, whether they should remain merely a tenet of some specific school or go on to benefit lift, one may well answer him, provided one does not thereby sway his judgment of the principles themselves. In this regard only, and only to accommodate the reader who asks that question, may I be permitted the following remark regarding the principles on which this treatise rests. _A.7 philosophy which is based on the nature of man himself could not aim At dead formulae, which would function as just so many prisons of man's mind, nor could it aim at being a philosophical artifice which, by deducing current concepts from apparently superior ones, would bury the living work of the human mind in - d u - . ties. If I may say it in the words of Jacobi, philosophy seeks to unveil and revealtthat which is [Da-" sein], 6 so that the nature or spirit of phirosP -PEy Cinnot lie in any formula iar letter; its highest topic must be what is immediate in man and presnet only to itself,' and cannot be what is mediated by concepts and laboriously recapitulated in concept aim of philosophy is no mere reform of its discipline but a complete l ictiAal'OE its principles, that is a revolution which one can view as the second possible revolution in its field. The first took place when the recognition of objects was set up as the principle of all knowledge. Up to the second revolution every advance made was not a change of principles but a progression from one object to another. And though it is not an indifferent matter for the schoolman as to what particular object is being served, [157] but is all the same for mankind, the progression of philosophy from one object to another cannot be the progression of the human mind as such. d_Usefaire, if one may expect any influence on human life itself from any kind of philosophy, one must expect it only fromtlie new philosophy made possible by a complete reversal of the principles) It is a daring step of reason to liberate mankind to remove it from the terrors of the objective world, but this darin venture cannot fail, because man grows in the measure in which he learns to know himself and his power. Give man the awareness of what he is and he will soon learn to be what he ought to be. Give him the theoretical self-respect and the practical will soon follow. One would hope in vain for any great progress of mankind as a result of the mere goodwill of man, because in order to become better he would have had to be good already. For that very reasor(lie revolution in man must come from the awareness of his essence; he must be good theoretic" in order to become so practically. The surest preparatory exercise for harmonious action within oneself is the knowledge that the very essence of man consists of unity and is due to it alone. Once a man has realized that, he will also understand that the unity of volition and action
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must become as natural and necessary for him as the preservation of his ex1( istence. It is the very goal of man that the unity of volition and action should become as natal v to him as the mechanism of his body and the uniI 1 ' ty of his consciousness.) In a. languid age one cannot expect much progress from a philosophy ici e that the essence of man consists of h_gitsl_pslipi which asserts as itsi l only of freedom_ that man is not a thine, not a chattel, and in freedom and his very nature no object at algEturspiritless age trembles before every authentic force which stirs in man. Therefore the representatives of the age promptly tried to tone down the first great product of this philosophy. They could do so without too much difficulty, because its language still seems to indulge the mood of the time. Consequently they saw [in the Critique of Pure Reason] nothing but the old established obsequiousness [158] under the yoke of objective truth, and/they tried at least to reduce its doctrine to the humiliating tenet that _the limitk,of objective truth are not set by absolute freedom but are the mere consequence of the well-known weakness of man's mind and are due to the limitation of his power of erception. But it would be faintheartedness unworthy of philosophy not to follow the great new lead which philosophy is beginning to take; not to map a new course for the human mind, not to give strength to the tired, courage and energy to the crushed and beaten minds, not to shake up dui slaves of objective truth by giving them an inkling of freedom, and not to i save each man, who is consistent only in his inconsistency, that._LaiA3 by strict observance of grinimself only by the unity of his action and , , 1 iples. It is difficult not to be, enthusiastic about the great thought that, while all sciences, the empirical ones not excluded, rush more and more toward the point of perfect unity, mankind itself will finally realize, as then situtive law, the principle of unity which from the beginning was the ( regulating,basis of the history of mankind. As the rays of man's knowledge and the experiences of many centuries will finally converge in one focus of truth and will transform into reality the idea which has been in many great men's minds,the idea that the different sciences must become one in the end just so the different ways and by-ways which humans have followed till now will converge in one point wherein mankind will find itself again and, as one complete person, will abey_thelawu_f freedom. No matter how far in the future this point may be, no matter how long it may be possible for some to indulge in a genteel laughter at the daring hopes for the progress of mankind, those for whom the hopes are not folly still have the great task of working jointly toward the completion of the sciences and thereby at least preparing the way for that great period of mankind. 11591 For all ideas must first be realized in the domain of knowledge before they find their realization in history, and mankind will never become one before its knowledge has matured to unity.
Nature has wisely provided for human eyes the device of dawn as a transition to broad daylight. Small wonder then that wisps of fog remain in the lower regions while the mountain peaks already shimmer in the radiance of the sun. But once the first blush of morning appears, the sun cannot fail. To bring about the beautiful day of knowledge is reserved to fewperhaps to one alonebut may it be granted to anyone who senses the coming of that day to take pleasure in it in advance. What I have said in this essay and am saying in this preface is, for many, too much, as I know only too well; for myself it is too little. But all the greater is the subject, which concerns us all. Whether is was too daring to join in the discussion of such a topic, of that only the essay itself can render an account. No matter what the verdict may be, any anticipatory answer would be futile. It is natural that any reader who likes to twist things and is victimized by misunderstandings can find fault enough, )But I on my part will not call every adverse criticism unjust, every correction irrelevant; I hope that I have made that clear through my modest plea for strict examinjation. What I wanted was truth, and I know it just as well as I know that more can be done in this matter, which does not require mere fragmentary work. I hope that some happy time may be granted to me in which it will be possible to bring to realization the idea of writing a ) counterpart to Spinoza's Ethics.* ' ) y Tubingen, March 29th, 1795.
* NOTE OF THE EDITOR OF THE COMPLETE WORKS, (1856), K. F. A. SCHELLING In Schelling's preface to the first volume of his philosophical writings, 1809, he characterizes the essay "Of the I" with the following words. "It shows idealism in its freshest form, in a sense which it may have lost later. At least the I is still taken everywhere as an absolute, or strictly as identity of the subjective and the objective as such [see n.8], and not as a subjective I."
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Synopsis
1. Deduction of a last ground of reality of our knowledge as such, 1. 2. Determination of it through the concept of the unconditioned. The unconditioned as such can be found a* neither in an absolute object, b. nor in an object conditioned by the subject, nor in a subject conditioned by the object, c. nor in the sphere of objects at all, 2, d. therefore only in the absolute I. Reality of the absolute I as such, 3.
THE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 70 162] [ [161]

a. b.
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3. Deduction of all possible a priori views of the unconditioned.

a. Principle of perfect dogmatism, 4. b. Principle of imperfect dogmatism and criticism, 5. c. Principle of perfect criticism, 6. 4. Deduction of the original form [Urform] of the I, which is identity, and of the supreme principle [Grundsatz], 7. 5. Deduction of the form of its being posited by absolute freedom, in intellectual intuition, 8. 6. Deduction of the subordinate forms of the 1. Unity, specifically absolute unity, in a. According to quantity, contrast aa. to multiplicity, bb. to empirical unity, 9. b. According to quality aa. absolute reality as such in contrast a. to the ostensible reality of things in themselves, or 13. to an objective conception of all reality, 10. bb. as absolute reality also absolute nonfiniteness [Unendlichkeit] cc. as absolute reality also absolute indivisibility dd. as absolute reality also absolute immutability, 11. c. According to relation aa. absolute substantiality, in contrast to derivative, empirical substantiality, 12. bb. absolute causality, specifically immanent causality, 13, in contrast [161] a. to the causality of the moral being [Wesen] and of the rational and sensuous being insofar as it strives for happiness. Deduction of the concepts of morality and happiness, 14. d. According to modalitypure absolute being [Sein] in contrast to empirical being as such, and specifically in contrast aa. to empirical eternity, bb. to merely logical reality, cc. to dialectical reality, dd. to all empirical determination of being, possibility, actuality, necessity (existence as such), ee. to the ostensible absolute being of things in themselves(in passing: determination of the concepts of idealism and realism), ff. to the existence of the empirical world as such, 15. 7. Deduction of the forms of all modes of being posited [Setzbarkeit]
Form of thetical propositions as such. Determination of them through the subordinate forms. aa. According to quantity unity. bb. According to quality affirmation. cc. According to modalitypure being [Sein]. Specifically this determination separates the original concepts [Urbegriffe] of being [Sein], not-being [Nicht-Sein], and existence [Dasein] from the derivative concepts of possibility, actuality, and necessity, and it considers the latter as such in relation to the finite I, as follows: a. in regard to the moral I and, in that respect, aa. discussing the concept of practical possibility, actuality, and necessity, and 1313 . deducting from these concepts the concept of transcendental freedom, and discussing the problems based on it, in regard to the theoretical subject [and its interest in] purposiveness [Zweckverknupfung] in the world.'
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He who wants to know something, wants to know at the same time that% what he knows is real. Knowledge without reality is not knowledge. What follows from that? Either our kno w wled e has no reality at all and must be an eternal round of propositions, each dissolving in its opposite, a chaos in which no element can crystallizeor else there_niust.be an ultimate point of reality on which everything depends, from which all firmness and all form of our knowledge springs, a point which sunders the elements, and which circumscribes for each of them the circle of its continuous effect in the universe of knowledge. There must be something in which and through which everything that is reaches existence, everything that is being thought reaches reality, and thought itself reaches the form of unity and immutability. This something (as we can problematically call it for the time being) should be what completes all insights within the whole system of human knowledge, and it should reignin the entire cosmos of our knowledgeas original ground (Urgritnd) of all reality.' If there is any genuine knowledge at all, there must be knowledge which I do not reach by way of some other knowledge, but through which alone all other knowledge is knowledge. In order to reach this last statement I do not have to presuppose some special kind of knowledge. If we know anything at all, we must be sure of at least one item of knowledge which we
from their ground in the
[165]
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cannot reach through some other [163] knowledge and which contains the real ground of all our knowledge. This ultimate in human knowledge must therefore not search for its own real ground in something other. Not only is it itself independent of anything superior but, since our knowledge rises from any consequence to the reason thereof and in reverse descends from that reason to the consequence, that which is the ultimate and for us the principle of all knowledge cannot be known in turn through another principle. That is, the principle of its being and the principle of its being known* must coincide, must be one, since it can be thought only because it itself is, not because there is something else. Therefore it must be thought simply because it is, and it must be because it itself is being thought, not because something else is thought." Its assertion must be contained in its thought; it must create itself through its being thought." If we had to think something else in order to reach its thought, then that other entity would be superior to the ultimate, which is a contradiction. In order to reach the ultimate I need nothing but the ultimate itself. The absolute can be given only by the absolute. Now the investigation is becoming more definite. Originally I posited 0 n othing but annia.te ground of any real knowledge. Now this criterion orl f , that it must be the last absolute ground of knowledge permits us at the same time to establish its existence (Sein). The last ground for all reality is OP OP something that is thinkable only through itself, that is, it is thinkable only through its being (Sein); it is thought only inasmuch as it is. In short,_ the priuciPie of being and thinking is one and the ..same [see n.11]. The question can now be expressed quite clearly and the investigation has a clue which can never fail.
`
Whether that progress contains all possible theories will be seen only at the end.
ultimate principle and, with it, something unconditional.
As soon as philosophy begins to be a science, it must at least assume an
To look for the unconditional in an object, in a thing, cannot mean to look for it in the generic character of things, since it is evident that a genus cannot be something that is unconditional. Therefore it must mean to look for the unconditional in an absolute object which is neither genus nor species nor individual. ' 3 (Principle of consummate dogmatism.) Yet, whatever is a thing is at the same time an object of knowing, Ni therefore a link in the chain of our knowledge. It falls into the sphere of the , knowable. Consequently it cannot contain the basis for the reality (Realgrund) of all knowledge and knowing." In order to reach an object as object I must already have another object with which it can be contrasted, and if the principle of all knowledge were lying in an object I would in turn have to have a new principle in order to find that ostensibly ultimate principle.
Moreover, the unconditional (by 1) should realize itself, create itself through its own thought; the principle of its being and its thinking should coincide. But no object ever realizes itself. In order to reach the existence of an object I must go beyond the [165] mere concept of the object. Its existence is not a part of its reality. I can think its reality without positing it as existing. Suppose, for instance, that God, insofar as some define Him as an object, were the ground of the reality of our knowledge; then, insofar as He is an object, He would fall into the sphere of our knowledge; therefore He could not be for us the ultimate point on which the whole sphere depends." Also the question is not what God is for Himself, but what He is for us in regard to our knowledge. Even if we let God be the ground of the reality of His own knowledge, He is still not the ground of ours, because for us He is an object, which presupposes some reason in the chain of our knowledge that could determine His necessity for our knowledge. The object as such never determines its own necessity, simply because and insofar as it is an object. For it is object only inasmuch as it is determined by something else. Indeed, inasmuch as it is an object it presupposes something in regard to which it is an object, that is, a subject. For the time being, I call subject that which is determinable only by contrast with but also in relation to a previously posited object. Object is that which is determinable only in contrast with but also in relation to a subject. Ihus, in the first place, the object as such cannot be the unconditional at all, because it necessarily presupposes a subject which determines the object's existence by going beyond the sphere of merely thinking the object. The next thought is to look for the unconditional in the object insofar as it is determined by the subject and is conceivable only in regard to
2
II 1
Knowledge which I can reach only through other knowledge is conditional. The chain of our knowledge [164] goes from one conditional [piece of] knowledge to another. Either the whole has no stability, or one must be able to believe that this can go on ad infinitum, or else that there must be a
some ultimate point on which the whole depends. The latter, however, in regard to the principle of its being, must be the direct opposite of all that falls in the sphere of the con 1tLWy1 hat is, it must be not only unconditional but altogethe unconditionable.
All possible theories of the Unconditional must be determinable a priori, once the only correct one has been found. As long as it has not been established, one must follow the empirical progress of philosophy.
11.1)01M/1E or"rnF. FIRS l' FM I ION' I May t his expression be taken here in its broadest sense, as long as the something we are looking for is deter ::: i :: rcl only problematically.
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the latter. Or, in the third place, since object necessarily presupposes subject, and subject object, the unconditional could be lookedior in the subject, which is conditioned by the object and can be conceived only in relatioect." Still, this kind of endeavor to realize the unconditional carries a contradiction within itself, which is obvious at first glance. Since the subject is thinkable only in regard to an object, and the object only in regard to a subject, neither of them can contain the unconditional because both are conditioned reciprocally, both are equally unserviceable. [166] Furthermore, in order to determine the relationship of the two, an ulterior reason for the determination must be presupposed, owing to which both are determined. For one cannot say that the subject alone determines the object because the subject is conceiveable only in relationship to the object, and vice versa, and it would amount to the same if I were to treat as unconor an object determined by a ditional a subject determined an bobject subject. What is more, this kind of a subject as such is also determinable as anoBject," and for this reason the endeavor to turn the subject into an unconditional fails, as does the endeavor with an absolute object. _ The question as to where the unconditional must be looked for becomes slowly clearer, owing to its inherent logic. At the outset I asked only in which specific object we could look for the unconditional, within the whole sphere of objects. Now it becomes clear that we must not look for it in the sphere of objects at all, nor even within the sphere of that subject which is also determinable as an object."
3
absolute I, it can lie only in the absolute I. Thus, for the time being, the absolute I is ascertained as that which can never become an object at all. For the moment no further determination is being made. That there is an absolute I can never be proved objectively, that is, it cannot be proved with regard to that I which can exist as an object, because we are supposed to prove precisely that the absolute I can never become an object. The I, if it is to be unconditional, must be outside the sphere of objective proof. To prove objectively that the I is unconditional would mean to prove that it was conditional. In the case of the unconditional the principle of its being and the principle of its being thought must coincide. It is_onlyliesause it is it is thounly because it is thought. The absolute can be given only by the absolute! indeed, if it is to be absolute, it must precede all thinking and imagining. Therefore it must be realized through itself ( 1), not through objective proofs, which go beyond the mere concept of the entity to be proved. 20 If the I were not realized through itself, then the sentence which expresses its existence would be, "if I am, then I am." But in the case of the I, the condition "if I am" already contains the conditioned "then I." The condition is not thinkable without the conditioned. I cannot think of myself as a merely conditional existence without knowing myself as already existing. Therefore, in that conditional sentence, the condition does not condition the conditioned but, vice versa, the conditioned conditons the condition, that is, as a conditional sentence it cancels itself and becomes unconditional: "I am because I am." e I amt My I contains a being which precedes all thinking and imagining. It is by being thought, and it is being thought because it is; and all for only one reasonthat is is only and is being thought only inasmuch as its thinking is its own. Thus it is because it alone is what does the thinking, and it thinks only itself because it is. It produces itself by its own thinkingout of absolute causality.'
The philosophically revealing formation of the languages, especially manifest in languages still well aware of their roots," is a veritable miracle worked by the mechanism of the human mind. Thus the word I have used casually thus far, the word bedingen, is an eminently striking term of which one can say that it contains almost the entire treasure of philosophical truth. Bedingen means. the action by which anything becomes a thing (Ding). Bedingt_(determined) is what has been turned into a tiling. Thus it is clear at once that nothing can posit itself as a thing, and that an unconditional thing is a contradiction in terms. Unbedin t_funconditional) is what has not been turned into a thing, and what cannot at all becoine_a_thing. The problem, therefore, which we must solve now changes into something more precise: to find something that cannot be thought of as a
[168] "I am, because I amt" That takes possession of everyone instantaneously. Say to him: "the I is because it is;" he will not grasp it quite so quickly because the I is only by itself and unconditioned inasmuch as it is at the same time unconditionable, that is, it can never become a thing, an
object." An object receives its existence from something outside the sphere of its mere conceivability. In contrast, the I is not even conceivable unless it first exists as an I. If it does not so exist it is nothing at all. And it is not at all thinkable except insofar as it thinks itself, that is, insofar as it is. Therefore we must not even say: Everything that thinks is, because that kind of statement talks .about the thinking as if it were an object. We can only say: I think, I amL2Y,Therefore it is clear that, as soon as we turn that
) r ?4;,C,
, It
thing at all.
Consequently, the unconditional can lie neither in a thing as such, nor in anything that can become a thing, that is, not in the subject. It can lie only in that 11671 which cannot become a thing at all; that is, if there is an
'C.."
nounces itself with unconditional authority (Selbstmacht).
e AIM!' I ION Al. SENTENCE. IN I IIE FIRST EDF! ION: "1 am!" is
the unique form by which it an- 44 Jo.
.fr
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which can never become an object into a logical object to be investigated, such investigations would labor under a peculiar incomprehensibility. We cannot at all confine it as an object, and we could not even talk about it nor understand each other with regard to it, if it were not for the assistance of the [intellectual]intuition [we have of our selves]. However, insofar as our knowledge is tied to an object, that intuition is as alien to us as the I which never can become an object.) Thus the I is determined as unconditional only through itself. * [169] Yet, if it is determined at the same time as that which furnishes validity in the entire system of my knowledge, then a regress must be possible; that is, I must be able to ascend from the lowest conditioned proposition to the unconditional, just as I can descend from the unconditional principle to thelowest proposition in the conditional sequence. You may therefore pick from any series of conditional propositions whichever one you want and, in the regress, it must lead back to the ab,,k solute I. Hence, to come back to a previous example, the concept of subject must lead to the absolute I. For if there were no absolute I, then the concept of that is, the concept of the I which is conditioned by an Oka, would be the ultimate. But since the concept of an object contains an antithesis, the basic determination of this concept cannot stop at a mere contrast with a subject which in turn is conceivable only in relation to an object. The determination is possible only in contrast to something which flatly excludes the concept of an object as such. Therefore both the concept of an object and the concept of a subject which is conceivable only in contrast to some object must lead to an absolute which excludes every obthat . I jest arksl thus isin absolute contrast to_any object. For if you suppose original position is that of an object which would not require the the antecedent position of an absolute I as basis for all positing, then that original object cannot be determined as object, that is, as opposed to the I
Perhaps I can make this matter clearer if I return to the above-mentioned example. For me, God cannot be the ground of the reality of knowledge if He is determined as an object because, if so determined, He would fall into the sphere of conditional knowledge. However, If I should determine God not as an object at all but as = I, then indeed He would be the real ground of my knowledge. Still, that determination is impossible in the theoretical [i.e., objectivistic' philosophy. Nevertheless, even in theoretical philosophy, which determines God as an object, a determination of God's essence as = I is necessary and then I must indeed assume that for Himself God is the absolute and real ground of His own knowledge, but not for me. For me, in theoretical philosophy, He is determined not only as I but also as object. Yet if He is an I, then, for Himself, he is not object at all but only I. Incidentally, it follows that one falsely depicts the ontological proof of God's existence as deceptive artifice; the deception is quite natural. For, whatever can say / to itself, also says / aml The pity is that, in theoretical philosophy. God is not determined as identical with my I but, in relation to my I, Is determined an an object, and an ontological proof for the existence of an object is a cunt rad fenny
since, as long as the latter is not posited, nothing can be in opposition to it. Therefore any object posited as antecedent to any I would be no object at all; the very supposition cancels itself. Or again, suppose that there is an I, but only an I conceptually contrasted (aufgehoben) by the object, that is, an origianl subject; then this supposition likewise cancels itself for, where no absolute I is posited, none can be set aside (aufgehoben) by contrast. If there is no I antecedent to any object, neither [170] can there be an object whose concept would set aside the I by contrast. ( I have in mind a chain of knowledge that is conditioned throughout and attains stability only in one supreme, unconditional point. Now, whatever is conditional in that chain can be conceived only by presupposing the absolute condition, that is, the unconditional. Thus the conditional cannot be posited as conditional antecedent to the unconditional and unconditionable, but oxilLowing_to the latter by contrast to it. Therefore, whatever is posited as only a conditional thing is conceivable only through that [logically antecedent entity] which is no thing at all but is unconditional." The object itself then is originally determinable only in contrast to the absolute I, that is, only as the antithesis to the I or as non-I. Thus the very concepts of subject and object are guarantors of the absolute, unconditionable 1. 25
4 Once the I is determined as the unconditional in human knowledge, then the whole content of all knowledge must be determinable through thci I itself and through its antithesis, and thus one must also be able to sketch a priori every possible theory regarding the unconditional. Inasmuch as the I is the absolute I, that which is not = I can be deter-I mined only in contrast to the I and by presupposing the I. Any not-I posited absolutely, as if it were in no contrast to anything, is a contradiction in terms. If, on the other hand, the I is not presupposed as the absolute I, then the not-I can be posited either as antecedent to any I or as on a par with the I. A third alternative is not possible. The two extremes are dogmatism and criticism. The principle of dogmatism is a not-I posited as antecedent to any I; the principle of criticism, an I posited as antecedent to all [that is] not-I and as exclusive of any not-I. Halfway between the two lies the principle of an I conditioned
-7
by a not-I or, what amounts to the same, of a not-I conditioned by an I. (1) The principle of dogmatism contradicts itself ( 2), [171] because it presupposes an unconditional thing (ein unbedingtes Ding)" that is, a thing that is not a thing. In dogmatism therefore, consistency (which is the first requirement for any true philosophy) attains nothing other than that which is not-I should become I, and that that which is I should become not-I, as is the case with Spinoza." But as yet no dogmatist has proved that
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OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY 79
a not-I could give itself reality and that it could have any meaning except that of standing in contrast to an absolute I. Even Spinoza has not proved anywhere that the unconditional could and should lie in the not-I. Rather, led only by his concept of the absolute, he straightway posits it in an absolute object, and he does so as if he presupposed that everybody who conceded him his concept of the unconditional would follow him automatically in believing that, of necessity, it had to be posited in a not-I. Once having assumed though not proved it, he fulfills the duty of consistency more strictly than any single one of his enemies. For it suddenly becomes clear thatas if against his own will through the sheer force of his consistency, which did not shun any conclusion based on his supposition, he elevated the not-I to the I, and demeaned the Ito a not-I. For him, the world is no longer world, the absolute object no longer object. No sense perception, no ----.. concept reaches his One Substance whose nonfinitude is present only to the intellectual intuition. As everywhere, so also in this present investigation, his system can take the place of perfect dogmatism. No philosopher was so worthy as he to recognize his own great misunderstanding; to do so and to arrive at his goal would have been one and the same for him. No recrimination is more unbearable than the one made against him so often, that he arbitrarily presupposed the idea of absolute substance, or even that the idea sprang from an arbitrary explanation of words. To be sure, it seems easier to overthrow a whole system by means of a small grammatical remark, rather than to insist on the discovery of its final fundamentals which, no matter how erroneous, must be detectable somewhere in the human mind. The first one [172] to see that Spinoza's error was not in the idea [of the unconditional] but in the fact that Spinoza posited it outside the I, had understood him and thus had found the way to [philosophy as a 'science."
ing]principle of this fact? A phenomenon, or else a thing in itself? That was the next question, once one found oneself in the world of objects. A phenomenon? And what could the principle of this phenomenon be? (Especially if, for instance, imagination [Vorstellung], which is itself a phenomenon, was postulated as principle of all philosophy." Is it in turn a phenomenon, and so on, ad infinitum? Or was it the intention that that phenomenon which was to furnish the principle of fact should not presuppose any other phenomenon? Or was the principle to be a thing in itself? Let us examine this matter more closely.
The thinginitiathe_not-I 4:?osited as_antecedent to any I. (Speculation demands the unconditional. Once the question as to where the unconditional lies is settled, by some in favor of the I, by others of the not-I, then both systems must proceed in the same manner. What the one asserts about the I, the other must assert about the not-I, and vice versa. In short, we must be able to use their theorems interchangeably, simply by substituting in one system a not-I for the I, in the other an I for the not-I. If one could not do that without damage to the system, one of the two would have to be inconsistent.) The phenomenon is the not-I conditioned by the I." [173] If the principle of all philosophy is to be a fact, and if the principle of the fact is to be a thing in itself, then every I is done away with, there is no longer any pure I, any freedom, and there is no reality in any I but instead only negation. For the I is cancelled in its very origin when a not-I is posited absolutely. In reverse, when the I is posited absolutely, all not-I is* canceled as original and posited as a mere negation. (A system which takes its start from the subject, that is, from the conditioned I, must necessarily presuppose a thing in itself which, however, can occur in the imagination (Vorstellung), that is, as an object, only in relation to the subject, that is, only as phenomenon (Erscheinung). In short, this system turns out to be the kind of realism that is most incomprehensible and most inconsistent.) If the last principle of that ultimate fact is to be a phenomenon, it cancels itself immediately as the supreme principle, because an unconditional phenomenon is a contradiction. This is why all philosophers who took a not-I for the principle of their philosophy, at the same time elevated it to an absolute not-I, posited as independent of every I, that is, to a thing in itself. The consequence is that it would be odd indeed to hear from the mouths of philosophers who affirm the freedom of the I any simultaneous assertion that the principle of all philosophy must be a fact, provided that one could really assume that they were aware of the consequence of that latter assertion, which is that the principle of all philosophy must be a not-I. (This consequellte follows necessarily for, in that case, the I is posited only as subject, that is, as conditional, and therefore cannot be the
(2) Any system that takes its start from the subject, that is, from the I which is thinkable only in respect to an object, and that is supposed to be neither dogmatism nor criticism," is like dogmatism in that it contradicts itself in its own principle, insofar as the latter is supposed to be the supreme principle. However, it is worth while to trace the origin of this principle. It was customary to presuppose to be sure, rashly that the supreme principle of all philosophy must express a fact. If, in line with linguistic usage, one understood fact to mean something that was outside the sphere of the pure, absolute I (and therefore inside the sphere of the conditional)
then, of necessity, the question had to arise: What could be the condition-
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ultimate principle. Thus, either all philosophy is nullified as an unconditional science, since its merely conditional principle cannot be the highest possible one, or else the object must be taken as original and therefore as independent of every I, and the I itself must be determined as something that can be posited only in contrast to an absolute something, that is, determined as an absolute nothing.) Nevertheless those philosophers really wanted the I, and not the not-I, as principle of philosophy, but they did not want to abandon the concept of fact .1174' In order to extricate themselves from the dilemma which confronted them, they had to choose the I, though not the absolute I, but the empirically conditioned I as the principle of all philosophy. And what could have been closer at hand than that? Now they had an I as principle of philosophy. [It looked as if] their philosophy could not be dubbed dogmatism. At the same time they had a fact, since nobody could deny
that the empirical I is the principle of a fact. True, this was satisfactory only for a time. For, when the matter was inspected more closely, it turned out that either nothing at all was gained, or only this much, that again one had a not-I as principle of philosophy. It is evident that it makes no difference whether I start from the I conditioned by the not-I, or from the not-I conditioned by the I. Also, the I conditioned by the not-I is precisely the point at which dogmatism must arrive, though belatedly; in fact, all philosophy must arrive at it. 3 ' Furthermore, all philosophers would necessarily have to explain in the same manner what the I conditioned by the not-I is, if they did not tacitly assume something superior to this fact (this conditionality of the I) about which they are secretly in disagreementthat is, assume some superior entity as
ground of explanation of the conditioned I and not-I. That ground can be nothing other than either an absolute not-I, not conditioned by the I, or
ANNOTATION. As is well-known, it was Reinhold who tried to elevate the empirically conditioned I (which exists in consciousness) to the principle of philosophy. One would show very little insight into the necessity found in the progress of science if one were to mention Reinhold's attempt without due deference. He deserves the highest esteem, though meanwhile philosophy progressed farther. It *s not his destiny to solve the intrinsic problem of philosophy, but to bring it into the clearest focus. Who is not aware of the great impact such a decisive presentation of the problem will have, precisely in philosophy where, as a rule, an intrinsic presentation is possible only owing to a fortuitous glimpse of the truth which is yet to be discovered? Even the author of the Critique of Pure Reason, in his attempt not only to arbitrate the dispute among philosophers but to resolve the antinomy in philosophy itself, did not know what else to do than to state the point at issue in an all-encompassing question, which he expressed as follows: How are synthetic judgements a priori possible? As will be shown in the course of this investigation, this question in its highest abstraction is none other than: How is it possible for the absolute I to step out of itself and oppose to itself a not-I? It was quite natural that this question (as long as it was not introduced in its highest abstraction) be misunderstood, along with its answer. The next merit, then, that a thinking man could earn was obviously to present the question in a higher abstraction and thus [176] securely prepare the way for an answer. This merit was earned by the author of the Theory of the Faculty of Imagination", by stating his principle of consciousness. In it he reached the last point of abstraction, where one had to stand before one could reach that which is higher than all abstraction. 6 The perfect system of [philosophical] science proceeds from the absolute I, excluding everything that stands in contrast to it. This, as the One Unconditionable, conditions the whole chain of knowledge, circumscribes the sphere of all that is thinkable and, as the absolute all-comprehending reality, rules the whole system of our knowledge. Only through an absolute I, only through the fact that it is posited absolutely (schlechthin gesetzt) does it become possible that a not-I appears in contrast to it, indeed that philosophy itself becomes possible. For the whole task of theoretical and
else an absolute I, not conditioned by a not-I. But the latter was already nullified by the establishment of the subject as principle of philosophy. From there on consistency would demand either that one refrain from any further determination of that principle, that is, from all philosophy, or else that one assume an absolute not-I, that is, the principle of dogmatism which, in turn, is a principle that contradicts itself (4). In short, the subject as ultimate principle would lead into contradictions no matter which way it might turn, and these contradictions could be hidden, after a fashion, only behind inconsistencies and precarious proofs. True enough, if the philosophers had agreed that the subject was the ultimate principle, peace could have been established [175] in the philosophical world, because they could readily have agreed on the mere analysis of that principle, and as soon as anyone had gone beyond the mere analysis of it and (seeing that analysis could lead no farther) had tried by synthesis to explain the analytical fact of the detemination of the I by the not-I and of the not-I by the I. he would have broken the agreement and presupposed a superior pt
practical philosophy is nothing else than the solution of the contradiction between the pure and the empirically conditioned I.
*The word empirical is usually taken in a much too narrow sense. Empirical is everything that is in contrast to the pure I, everything essentially related to a not-I, even the original positing of any contrast (Entgegensetzen) as posited in some not-I, a positing which is an act that has its source in the I itself, the very act by which any contrasting becomes possible. Pure is what exists without relation to objects. Experienced is what is possible only through objects. A priori is what is possible only in relation to objects but not through them. Empirical is that which makes objects possible.
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Theoretical philosophy, in order to solve the contradiction, proceeds from synthesis to synthesis, to the highest possible one in which I and not-I are ideutgled_(glei.cligesent..), where, because theoretical reasoning ends in contradictions, practical reason enters in order to cut the knot by means of absolute demands. If, therefore, the principle of all philosophy were to lie in the empirically conditioned I (about which dogmatism and the unfinished ciriticism basically agree), then all szontaaeity of the I, theoretical as well as practical, would be quite unexplainable.) For thelosoreticali [177] strives to posit the I and the not-I as identical and, therefore, to elevate the not-I itself to the form of the I; thegracticalstrives for pure unity by exclusion of all that is not-I. Both of them can do what they do only inasmuch as the absolute I has absolute causality and pure identity, Thus the ultimate principle of philosophy cannot be anything that lies outside the absolute I; it can be neither a phenomenon nor a thing in itself. The absolute I is not a phenomenon. Even the very concept of absoluteness forbids it. It is neither a phenomenon nor a thing in itself, because it is no thing at all, but simply and purely I, which excludes all that is not-I. The last point on which all our knowledge and the entire series of the conditional depend, cannot be conditioned by anything ulterior at all. The entirety of our knowledge has no stability if it has nothing to stabilize it, if ..., 1 it does not rest on that which is carried by its own strength. And that is nothing else than that which is real through freedom. The beginning and the end of all philosophy is freedom! 32
7 So far we have determined the I as only that which can in no way be an object for itself, and which, for anything outside of it, can be neither object nor not-object, that is, cannot be anything at all. Therefore it does not receive its own reality, as objects do, through something lying outside its sphere, but exclusively through itself alone. This concept of the I is the only one by which the I is designated as absolute and my whole furhter investigation is now nothing but a plain development of this. If the I werensiddentical with itself, if its original form were not the form (Apure identity then all we seem to have won so far would be lost again. For the I is only because it is." If it were not pure identity, that is,only that which it is then it could not be posited by itself, that is, it could also be like that which it is not. But the I is either not at all, or else only through itself. Therefore the original form '(Urform), of the I must be pure identity.
[178] Only that which is through itself gives itself the form of identity, because only that which is because it is, is determined in its own being by nothing but identitykhat is, is determined by itself. The existence of everything else that exists is determined not only by its own identity but also by something outside of it. 34 But if there were not something that is through itself, whose identity is the sole condition of its being, then there woud be nothing at all identical with itself, because only that which is through its own identity can bestow identity on everything else that is. Only in - an absolute, posited by its own being as identical, can everything that is achieve the unity of its own essence (Wesen). How could anything be posited at all if everything that can be posited were mutable, and if nothing unconditional, nothing immutable, could be acknowledged, in which and through which everything that can be posited would receive stability and immutability? What would it mean to posit something if all positing, all existence[Dasein], all reality were dispersed constantly, lost ceaselessly, and if there were no common point of unity and stability that receives absolute identity, not through something else, but through itself, by its own being, in order to gather all rays of existence in the center of its identity, and to keep together in the sphere of its power all that is posited? 35 Thus it is the I alone that bestows unity and stability on everything that is. All identity pertains only to that which is posited in the I, and pertains to it only insofar as it is posited in the I. Therefore it is the absolute I that furnishes the basis for all form of identity (A = A). If this form (A = A) preceded the I, then A could not express what is posited in the I but only that which is outside the I; therefore that form would become the form of objects as such, and even the I would be subordinated to it, as just another object determined by it. The I would not be absolute but conditional and, as a specific subform, would be subordinated to the generic concept of objects, that is, it would be one of the modifications of the absolute not-I, which alone would be selfidentical. Since the I, in its very nature (Wesen) is posited by its sheer being [179] as absolute identity, there is no difference between the two expressions of it, either / am I, or I am! 8
is I owing to its sheer unconditionality, since it cannot become a thing at
The I can be determined in no way except by being unconditional, for it
all. Thus it is exhaustively expressed when its unconditionality is expressed. Since it is only through its unconditionality, it would be nullified if any conceivable predicate of could he conceived in any way other than
t"
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through its unconditionality; a different way would either contradict its unconditionality or else presuppose something even higher in which could be found a unity of both the unconditional and the presumed predicate. i The essence (Wesen) of the I is freedom, that is, it is not thinkable except inasmuch as it posits itself by its own absolute power (Selbstmacht), not, indeed, as any kind of something, but as sheer I. This freedom can be determined positively, because we want to attribute freedom not to a thing in itself but to the pure I as posited by itself, present to itself alone, and excluding all that is not-I. No objective freedom belongs to the I because it is not an object at all. As soon as we try to determine the I as an object, it tvididraws into the most confined sphere, under the conditions of the interdependence of objectsits freedom and independence disappear. An object is possible only through some other object, and only inasmuch as it is bound to conditions. Freedom is only through itself and it encompasses the nonfinite. With regard to objective freedom we are not less knowledgeable than with regard to any other concept which contradicts itself. And our inability to think a contradiction is not ignorance. The freedom of the I, however, Can_be determined positively. For the I, its freedom is neither more nor less than unconditional positing of reality in itself through its own absolute . power (Selbstmacht). It can be determined negatively as complete independence, even as complete incompatibility with all that is not-I. [180]You insist that you should be conscious of this freedom? But are you bearing in mind that all your consciousness is possible only through this freedom, and that the condition cannot be contained in the conditioned?' 6 Are you considering in any way that the I is no longer the pure, absolute I once it occurs in consciousness; that there can be no object at all for the absolute I; and, moreover, that the absolute I never can become an - 11 [See quotation t e anger of the object e awareness implies ._, , - e_ 12:120 in n. 25Tit is not a free act of the immutable but an unfreeL.ng togrive to maintain that induces the mutable I, conditioned by the not-I,
If you want to attain this freedom as something objective, whether you want to comprehend it or deny it, you will always fail, because freedom consists in the very fact that it excludes all that is not-I absolutely. The I cannot be given by a mere corms.esit_ Concepts are possible only in the sphere of the conditional; concepts of objects only are possible. If the I ,) were a concept then there would have to be something higher in which it could find its unity, and something lower which would furnish its 6, h multiplicit} In short_thc I would_then be conditioned throughout. (Therefore the I can be determined onlyin_anintuition (Anschauun4. But since the I is I only because it can never become an object, it cannot occur in an intuition of sense, but only in an intuition which. grasps. no object at all and is in no way a sensation, in short, in fan intellectual intuition Where there is an object there is sensuous intuition, and vice versa. Where there is no object, that is, in the absolute I, there is no sense intuition, therefore either no intuition at all or else intellectual intuition: -Therefore
the I is determined for itself as mere I in intellectual intuition. 40

I know very well that Kant denied all intellectual intuition, but I also know the context in which he denied it.'"It was in an investigation which only presupposes the absolute I at every step and which, on the basis of presupposed higher principles, determines only the empirically conditioned I and the not-I in its synthesis with that I. I also know that the intellectual intuition must be completely incomprehensible as soon as one tries to liken it to sensuous intuition. Furthermore, it can occur in consciousness just as little as can absolute freedom, since consciousness presupposes an object, and since intellectual intuition 1 182 1 is possible only inasmuch as it has no object. The attempt to refute it from the standpoint of consciousness must fail just as surely as the attempt to give it objective reality through consciousness, which would mean to do away with it altogether. The I is determined only by its freedom, hence everything we say of the pure I must be determined by its freedom.
sion set them up in contrast to itself. It would simply equate everything with itself and, therefore, wherever it posits anything it would posit it as its own reality. It could not strive to save its own identity . and, therefore, could not contain any snthesis of a Manifold, any unity o etc. The empirical I, however, is determined by the original contrast is -rcOTisciousness _ nothing at all without it. Therefore it owes its reality, as empirical I, not to itself but only to the restriction by the not-I. It manifests itself not by a mere I am, but by I think, which means that it is, not by its own sheer being, but by thinking something, thinking objects. In order to save the original identity of the I, the image (Vorstellung) of the identical I must accompany all other images so that their manifoldness can be thought at all, in its inherent relation to unity." Therefore the empirical I exists only through and in relation to the unity of images and, outside of that unity, has no reality in itself at all but disappears as soon as one eliminates objects altogether along with the unity of its synthesis. Thus its reality as empircal I is determined for it by something posited outside of it, by objects. Its being is not determined absolutely, but by objective forms, and it is determined as an existence (Dasein). Yet it is only in the nonfinite I, and through it for mere objects could never bring about the image if I as a principle of their unity. '"
tY)
its identity and to reassert itself in the undertow of endless change.* (Or do you really [181] feel free in your self-awareness?) But thatstriving of the empirical I, and the consciousness stemming from it, would itself not be possible without the freedom of the absolute I, and absolute freedom is equally necessary as a condition for both imagination and action. For your empirical I would never strive to save its identity if the absolute I were not originally posited by itself, as pure identity, and out of its absolute power."
Ilt is the character of finiteness to be unable to posit anything without at the same time positing something in contrast. The form of this contrast is originally determined by the contrast of the not-I. For, while absolutely positing itself as identical with itself, the finite I must neceuarilyposit itself in contrast to every not-I. And that is not possible without positing the not-I itself. fl'he nonfinite I would exlude all contrasting entities but without letting the exclu-
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9 The I is simply unity. For if it were multiplicity it would not be through its own being but through the reality of its parts. It would not be conditioned by itself alone, by its sheer being (that is, it would not be at all) but would be conditioned by all single parts of the multiplicity for, if any one part were canceled, the completeness of the I itself would be canceled. But that would contradict the concept of its freedom, therefore (8) the I cannot contain any multiplicity; it must be simply unitynothing but simply J.-+, A .r I Wherever there is unconditionality determined_ by freedom, there is I. Therefore the I is absolutely one. If there were to be several I's, if there were to be an I beside the I, these different I's would have to be differentiated by something. But since the I is conditioned only by itself and is determinable only in intellectual intuition, it must be identical with itself (not at all determinable by number). Accordingly, the I and the I-outsidethelyzoski_catacide and would be indistinguishable. Thus the I can be naught but one. 42 (If the I were not one, the reason why there should be several I's would not lie in the I itself, in the nature (Wesen) of it, for the I is not determinable as an object (7); it would lie outside the I and thus have no meaning other than the canceling of the I.) The pure I is the same everywhere, I is everywhere = I. Wherever there is an attribute of I, there is I. The attributes of the I cannot differ from each other, since they are all determined by the same unconditionality (all are nonfinite).They would be determined as different from each other either by their mere concept, I1831which is impossible since the I is an absolute oneness, or by something outside of them, whereby they would lose their unconditionality, which again makes no sense. The I is I everywhere; it fills, as it were, the entire infinity, if it would make sense to use such an expression:13 Those who know no other I than the empirical one (which, however, is quite incomprehensible without the presupposition of the pure I), those who have never elevated themselves to the intellectual intuition of their own selves, can find only nonsense in the theorem that the I is only one. For only the completed science itself can prove that the empirical I is multiplicity. (Imagine an infinite sphereof which by necessity there is only one and inside this sphere imagine as many finite spheres as you wish. These, however, are possible only inside the one which is infinite. Thus, even if you do away with the finite ones, you still have [their locus or conditionj the infinite sphere.) Those who have the habit of thinking only of the empirical I find it necessary to assume a plurality of I's, each of which is I for itself and not-I for the others, and they do not consider that a pure I is thinkable only through the unity of its being. These adherents of the empirical I will be equally unable to think the
. -
(\
41
concept of pure, absolute unity (unitas) because, whenever the absolute unity is mentioned, they can think only of an empircial, derivative unity (which is a concept symbolized by the number scheme). The [pure] I has as little unity in the empirical sense (unicitas) as it has multiplicity. It is completely outside the sphere of determination by this concept; it is neither one nor many in the empirical sense, for both alternatives contradict its concept. The concept of a pure I not only lies outside the domain of whatever can be determined by the two concepts of empirical unity and multiplicy, but lies in an entirely opposite sphere. Whenever the talk is about a numerical unity, something is presupposed in regard to which one can speak of numerical oneness as such. What is presupposed is a generic concept under which the numerical one is comprehended as the unique member of its kind. However the (real and logical) [184] possibility still remains that it might not be the only one; that is, it is one only in regard to its existence, not in regard to its essence. In contrast, the I is one precisely in regard to its simple, pure being, and not in regard to its existence (Dasein), which is no essential attribute of it at all. Also, it cannot be thought of at all in regard to something higher; it cannot fall under a generic concept. Concept as such is something that comprehends multiplicity in oneness. Thei_therefore cannot be a concept, \ neither a pure nor an abstracted one, because it is neither a comprehen3scity. It is neither genus nor ding nor a comprehended, but an al species nor individual, because genus, species, and individual are thinkable only in regard to multiplicity. Whoever can take the I for a concept or can predicate numerical unity or multiplicity of it, knows nothing of the I. Whoever wants to turn it into a demonstrable concept, can no longer take it as unconditioned. For the absolute cannot be mediated at all, hence it can never fall into the domain of demonstrable concepts. Everything demonstrable presupposes either something already demonstrated, or else the ultimate, which cannot be further demonstrated. The very desire to demonstrate the absolute does away with it, and also with all freedom, all absolute identity, etcetera. Annotation. Someone might reverse this matter: "Just because the I is not something general, it cannot become the principle of philosophy." If, as we shall now presuppose, philosophy must start from the unconditional, then it cannot start from something general. For the general is conditioned by the singular. and is possible only in regard to conditional (empirical) knowledge. Therefore the most consistent system of dogmatism, the Spinozistic, declares itself most emphatically against the opinion that conceives of the one absolute substance as of an ens rationis, an abstract concept. Spinoza sees the unconditional in the absolute not-I, but not in an abstract concept nor in the idea of the world, nor of course in any single
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existing thing. On the contrary he inveighs vehemently[185] if one may use this word in speaking of a Spinoza against it* and declares that he who calls God one, in an empirical sense, or thinks of Him as a mere abstraction, has not even an inkling of the nature (Wesen) of God. To be sure, one cannot understand how the not-I is supposed to lie outside of all numerical determination, but one must realize that Spinoza did not truly posit the unconditional in the not-I; rather he turned the not-I into the I by elevating it to the absolute [see no. 25]. Leibniz supposedly started from the generic concept of things as such. That would be a matter to investigate more closely, but this is not the place for it. It is certain, however, that his disciples started from that concept and thus founded one of the systems of incomplete dogmatism. [186] (Question: How, in that system, can one explain the monads and the preestablished harmony? As, in criticism, theoretical reason ends with the result that the I becomes not-I, so, in dogmatism, it must end with the opposite, that the not-I becomes I. In criticism, practical reason must
*See several passages in Jacobi's book about the doctrine of Spinoza, pp. 179 ff. [Ober die Lehre des Spinoza, in Briefen an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. (Breslau, 1785); now Werke, vol. 4, pt 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968)]. See other passages also, especially Eth. 2. prop. XL, schol. 1. Furthermore, in one of his letters he says Cum multa &int, quae nequaquam in imaginatione, sed solo intellectu assequi possumus, qualia sunt Substantia, Aeternitas el al. si quis talia eiusmodi notionibus, quae duntaxat auxilia imaginationis sunt, explicare conatur, nihilo plus agit, quam si det operam, ut sua imaginatione insaniat. [Since there are many things that we can grasp by no kind of imagination but only by the intellect, such as substance, eternity, and others, if anyone tries to explain them by means of the kind of notions which are mere auxiliaries to the imagination, then, although it seems expedient to such a one, he attains nothing but unsoundness of mind, owing to his imagination Letter of April 20, 1663, to Ludovicus Meyer. Cf. the translation by A. Wolf in his The Correspondence of Spinoza (New York: Russell and Russell, 1966), letter 12, p. 1663] In order to understand this passage, one must know that Spinoza thought that abstract concepts were pure products of the power of imagination. He says that the transcendental expressions (which is what he calls expressions like ens, res, etc. [schol. 1]) arise from the fact that the body is capable of absorbing only a limited quantity of impressions, and when it is oversaturated the soul cannot imagine them except in a confused manner, without any differentiation, all under one attribute. He explains the general concepts in the same manner, e.g., man, animal, etc. Compare the passage in the Ethics referred to above, and especially his treatise De Intellect us Emendatione For Spinoza the lowest level of knowledge is the imagining of single things; the highest is pure intellectual intuition of the infinite attributes of the absolute substance, and the resulting adequte knowledge of the essence of things. This is the highest point of his system. For him, mere confused imagination is the source of all error, but the intellectual intuition of God is the source of all truth and perfection in the broadest sense of the word. In the second part of his Ethics, in the scholion to proposition XLIII, he says with regard to the idea of mind of which the scholion to proposition XXI said: the idea of the mind and the mind itself are one-and-the-same thing, which is considered under one-andthe-same-attribute, that of thought. For indeed the idea of the mind, that is to say, the idea of the idea, is nothing but the form of the idea insofar as this is considered as mode of thought without relation to any object!: "What can be more clear and certain than this idea, as a norm of truth? Indeed, as light makes manifest both itself and darkness, so is truth the norm of itself and of falsehood." What can surpass the quiet bliss of these words, the One and All
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reestablish the absolute I; in dogmatism it must end with the reestablishment of the absolute not-I. It would be interesting to devise a consistent system of dogmatism. Maybe that will yet be done). "The greatest merit of the philosophical scholar is not to establish abstract concepts nor to spin systems of them. His ultimate aim is pure absolute being; his greatest merit is to unveil and reveal that which can never be conceptualized, explained, deduced, in short, to reveal the undissectable, the immediate, the simple.""
1 0
The I contains" all being, all reality. If there were a reality outside of the I, either it would coincide with the reality posited in the I or it would not. Now, all reality of the I is determined by its unconditionality; it has no reality except by being posited unconditionally. If there were a reality outside of the I that would correspond to the reality of the I, then that outside reality would have to be unconditional also. Yet, it is only through unconditionality that the I receives all its reality, therefore any one reality of the I, if posited outside of it, would also have to contain all its reality, that is, there would be an I outside of the I, whichAtles_natmakesense (9). On the other hand, if that reality outside the I differed from the reality of the I [instead of corresponding to it], then, owing to the absolute unity of the I, the positing of the outside reality would at the same time cancel the I itself, which makes no sense. (We are talking about the absolute I, whose function is to be the generic concept of all reality. All reality must [187] coincide with it, that is, must be its reality. The absolute I must contain the data, the absolute content (Materie) that determines all being, all possible reality.) If we want to anticipate objections, then we ' st must also anticipate answers. Of course my theorem [that the I contains all being, all reality] could be readily refuted if either a not-I postulated as antecedent to all that is I were conceivable, or else if that not-I which is originally and absolutely opposed to the I were conceivable as an absolute not-I in short, the reality of the things in themselves could beproved in the philosophy hitherto prevailing, for then all original reality would be found in the absolute not-I. [We face an alternative.] Either the thing in itself is the not-I posited as antecendent to all that is I. But I have already proved that a not-I posited as antecendent to all that is I has no reality at all and is not even thinkable because, unlike the I, it does not realize itself and is therefore conceivable only in contrast to the I, that is, to the absolute I, not the conditioned I (since the latter is only a correlate of the object). Or else the thing in itself would be the not-I merely as absolutely opposed to the I as finite I. Now, it is true enough that the not-I stands in
xai nay) of our better life?"
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original opposition to the I as I.* For that reason, the original not-I cannot be a mere empirical, abstract [188] concept since, in order to find such a concept in experience, experience itself would have to be presupposed, that is, the existence of a not-I. Nor can it be a general concept a priori, because it is not simply posited but absolutely counterposited and, therefore, as antithesisAand, true to its quality as antithesis, it must be posited just as absolutely as the I, and in opposition to it. It is this original counterpositing of the not-I as such that may have led to imagining an absolute not-I antecendent to an I. For, though dogmatism pretends it can ti, conceive of a not-I antecedent to e I, not as merely opposed to the I, but as simply posited, the mere thought of an absolutely posited not-I would have been impossible had the absolute antithesis not hovered in the mind and, what is more, had that antithetical not-I not been endowed with that reality which belongs not just to the antithesis but to the not-I as posited in the I. That absolutely counterposited not-I, in fact, is not absolutely unthinkable, as is the not-I presupposed absolutely (i.e., as antecedent to all that is 1). But by itself it has no reality, not even a thinkable one. Just because it is counterposited to the I, it is posited as sheer negation, as an absolute nothing about which one can say nothing, nothing at all, except that it is mere antithesis to all reality. As soon as we try to give it reality, we transfer it from the sphere of mere antithesis to the sphere of the conditional, the sphere of what is posited in the I. Eiher it stands in Abs. te opposition to the I, as absolute not-I, that is, [absolute not ne , or it becomes something, a thingthat is, it is no 1189] longer posited absolutely but conditionally, posited in the I, that is, it ceases to be a thing in itself. If one wants to call the not-I as originally posited in opposition to the I a thing in itself, it can easily be done, as long as one means by "thin in itself" the absolute negation of all reality. But if one wants to attribute reality to this absolutely oppositional not-I, that can be done only through
'Inasmuch as the not-I is originally opposed to the I, it necessarily presupposes the I. But the opposition itself occurs absolutely, just as does the position of the I [see n.31], and on that very account that which is absolutely posited in contrast to reality is absolute negation. The I
'malts a not-I in opposition to the I, and for this one cannot give any ulterior reason, just as orw can give none for the I positing itself absolutely; in fact, the one immediately implies the
other. The positing of the I is the placing in absolute opposition, that is, the negation, of what Is mit I. But originally nothing at all can be put in opposition unless something antecedent is absolutely posited; much less can there be any absolute opposition without an antecedent position. Yet opposition occurs. The second theorem see n. 31] of any science which [by
111111111of that theorem] absolutely opposes the not-I to the I, receives its content (the opposite)
Implicitly. Its form (the opposing as such) is determinable only by the first theorem. The second theorem, however, is not to be derived from the first analytically, because no not-I can come forth from the absolute I. Instead, there is a progression from thesis to antithesis and I rum there to synt ' Of course it would br incomprehensible how the whole science could be based on one I hottellt, if one were to suppose that Mr science is, as it were, clicapallled in that theorem. But as fat as I know no philosopher has supposed that.
an illusion of the empirical power of imagination that lends it that reality which belongs to the not-I only owing to its quality of being posited in opposition to the I." , Since no reality belongs to the originally counterposited not-I but only negation, and neither pure nor empirical being but no being at all (absolute nonbeing), therefore, if it is to attain Isalit,y, it must not be posited in absolute opposition to the I but/mile I 4 itself, Inasmuch as the I originally counterposits to itself a not-I (and does not simply exclude it as does the absolute I), it posits itself as canceled. But since, at the same time, it ought to posit itself absolutely, it will in tur osit the not-I as absolutely canceled, = 0. If, therefore, it posits the not-I absolutely, it cancels itself; and if it posits itself absolutely, it cancels th not I. Yet both of them ought to be posited. This contradiction cannot be .no 51pOiiis the not-I as equal to the I. However, the form of resolved Uniess-IF the not-I forbids that. Therefore the I can only in-t _part reality to the not-I; it can posit the not-I as reality only if combined with negation. The not-I therefore has no reality as long as it is only counterposited to the I, that is, as long as it is pure, absolute not-I. As soon as reality is imparted to the not-I, it must be posited as contained in the very concept of all reality, that is, in the I; it must cease to be pure not-I, In order to posit the not-I in the I (which is necessary because the not-I ought to be posited although it is counter to the I), the I is absolutely compelled to impart to the not-I its own form of I, the form of being and reality, of unconditionality and oneness. This form, however, is incompatible with the form of [190] the originally counterposited not-I. (Therefore the transfer of the form of I to f . y.,.. the not-I is possible only by a synthesis of the two Out of this transferred form of I, the original form of not-I, and the synthesis of the two originate, the categoriee 9 through which alone the original not-I receives reality (beComes imaginable) but for this very reason ceases to be absolute not-I. Therefore the idea of a thing in itself cannot be realized at all, either through a not-I posited as antecedent to any I, or through the not-I originally counterposited to the I. However, the theorem that the I contains all reality could easily be invalidated if the theoretical idea of a sum total of objective reality outside of the I could be realized. I admit that the ultiMate synthesis through which theoretical reason tries to solve the confict between I and not-I is some x which, as a connotation of all reality, should unite the two realities, the I and the not-I posited in the I. So it seems that this x is determined as something outside the I, and thus = notI, but, by the same token, as something outside the not-I, thus = I. 5 Therefore theoretical reason appears to take refuge in an absolute connotation of all reality = I = not-I, and thus to annul the absolute I as connotation of all reality. Neverthelet, the ultimate synthesis of theoretical reason, which is nothing else than the last attempt to compose the contrast between I and
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192]
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not-I, becomes for us the most perfect guarantor , of the absolute reality of j the absolute I, even though it seems to dissolve it.)The I could never be in need of composing that contrast through the idea of an objective concept of all reality had this contrast not first become possible owing to a positing of the I as the all-embracing concept of reality, an original positing antecedent to all not-I." If this were not the case, the not-I could have a reality independent of the I, a reality which could be posited simultaneously with the reality of the I. In that case there would be no [191] opposition between the two of them, but also no synthesis of them would be needed and no objective concept of conflicting reality.* Likewise, without the premise that the absolute I is the concept of all reality, 51 , no practical philosophy can be thought of whose aim must be the end of all not-I and the recovery of the absolute I in its ultimate identity, that is, as the connotative concept of all reality. * *
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If the I contains all reality, it is nonfinite. For by what should it be limited if not either by a reality outside of it, which is impossible (10), or by a negation outside of it? The latter is also impossible since negation as such is determinable only in contrast to an absolute, and therefore the I
ADDITION TO THE FIRST EDITION: no boxerov [no receptacle].
** FOOTNOTE OF THE FIRST EDITION: (In terms of sense one can think of it in the following manner, The absolute I describes an infinite sphere which includes all reality. Counter to that another infinite sphere is set up (not only excluded) which includes all negation (absolute not1). This sphere is therefore absolutely = 0; yet it is possible only when the absolute sphere of reality has already been described, and only by contrast to it. For absolute negation does not create itself but is determinable only in contrast to absolute reality. An infinite sphere outside another and previously posited infinite sphere is already a contradiction, and its being posited .Dutside that first sphere already indicates that it must be absoluteegation. For if it were not so it would not be outside the other but would coincide with it. ffhe absolute sphere of the notI, if it were simply posited absolutely, would have to cancel the I altogether, because one infinite sphere does not tolerate another. On the other hand, the sphere of the I would cancel the sphere of the not-I, insofar as the latter is posited as infinite. And yet both are supposed to be posited. There is no remedy but the striving of the Ito draw into its own sphere the sphere of the not-I, for the latter is to be posited, and positing is possible only in the I." But this possibility is denied by the negation which is the nature of the sphere of the not-I. Consequently, this latter negation can be posited only in contrast to the sphere of the I. If it is to be posited inside the sphere of reality, the infinite sphere of negation turns into a finite sphere of reality, i.e., it can be posited only as reality necessarily connected with negation. And by that the I becomes restricted. Though the sphere of the I is not entirely canceled, it becomes necessary to posit in it a negation, i.e., a limitation [Schranke]. Now, the finite sphere can strive to absorb the infinite, and to make itself the center of the entire sphere, a center from which issue both the rays of infinity and the limitations of finitude, which is a contradiction. If the struggle between the I and the not-I is expressed in the highest possible synthesis (I not I) then, in order to resolve it, nothing remains but complete destruction of the finite sphere, i.e., an expansion of it until it coincides with the infinite sphere (practical reason)."
would have to be posited antecedently as absolutely without limitation. The third alternative would be a limitation of the I by itself, and then it could not be posited absolutely but only under the condition of a given limitation, which in turn is impossible. The I must be absolutely nonfinite." If one of its attributes were finite, then, owing to that attribute, the I itself would be finite; thus it would be nonfinite and finite at the same time. Accordingly, all attributes of the I must also be nonfinite. S 5 For the I is nonfinite only owing to what it is, that is, owing to its attributes. If one could dissect the reality of the I into several parts, these parts either would retain the nonfiniteness of that reality or would not. In the first case there would be an I outside the I (because wherever there is nonfiniteness there is I), a nonfiniteness outside the nonfiniteness, which makes no sense. In the other case, the I could cease to be, owing to division, that is it would not be nonfinite, it would not be absolute reality. (Therefor; the I is indivisible." If it is indivisible it is also immutable. For since it cannot be changed by anything outside itself ( 8) the I would have to be changed by itself, and one of its parts would determine the other, that is, it would be divisible. But the I ought always to be equal to itself, an absolute unity posited outside of all change. 12 If substpte is the same as the unconditional, then the I is the only substance. 57 If there were several substances there would be an I outside the I, which makes no sense. Therefore everything that is is in the I, and outside the I is nothing." For the I contains all reality ( 8), and everything that is, is through reality. Therefore everything is in the I. Without reality there is nothing. Now, there is no reality except in the [193] I, therefore there is nothing outside the I. If the I is the only substance, then everything that is, is merely ai. Lialitylilscidensfe th We are standing at the boundary of all knowledge, beyond which all* reality, all thinking and imagining, vanish. EverythinLis only in the Land for the I. [See n. 52.] The I itself is only for itself. In order to find something else, we have to find something before; we arrive at objective truth only through another truth. But we come to the I only_through the I, because it is at all only inasmuch as it is only for itself, and for anything outside the I, the I is nothing, that is, it is no object at all. For it is only inasmuch as it thinks itself, not insofar as it is being thought [by another]. In order to find truth, you must have a principle of all truth. Place it as high as you wish, it still must lie in the land of truth, in the land that you are as yet seeking. But if you produce all truth by yourself, if the last point on which reality hinges is the I, and if this is only through itself and for itself, then all truth and all reality are immediately present to you. By
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positing yourself as the I, you simultaneously circumscribe the whole sphere of truth, of the truth which is truth only through you and for you. Everything is only in the I and for the I. In the I philosophy has found its one-and-all (:Ev xai navy, for which it has contended as the highest price of victory until now.* Annotation. You want to measure the highest substantiality of the absolute I with your derivative concept of the substantiality of the not-I. Do you really believe that you have found the archconcept [Urbegriff] of substantiality in the not-I? To be sure, philosophy set up a concept of the substantiality of the not-I a long time ago. In order to save the immutable identity of your I, you must necessarily also elevate the not-I to the level of identity. Its [194] original form [Urform] is multiplicity, and in some way you must assimilate it to the I. Yet, in order that this not-I, that is, this multiplicity will not coincide with the I, your power of imagination sets it in space. But your synthesis of I and not-I would make the I absorb the multiplicity of the not-I and thus would totally scatter the I. In order to prevent that, you present multiplicity itself as a matter of change or succession, and for each point of this change you posit one and the same subject, as determined by its quest for identity. Thus, by means of your synthesis and of the forms of space and time produced by your synthesis, you obtain an object that perseveres in space and time during all changes. That is, you obtain a transferred (as it were, a borrowed) substantiality which, however, on that very account, is not comprehensible without the presupposition of an original and not-transferred substantiality in the absolute I. Incidentally, it is the concept of the latter substantiality that made it possible for the Critical Philosophy to clear up the origin of the category of substance." It was Spinoza who had already conceived of that archconcept of substantiality in its utmost purity. He recognized that originally something had to be the basis for all existence, a pure, immutable archbeing [Ursein] , a basis for everything that comes about and passes away, something that had to exist by itself, in which and through which everything in existence had to attain the unity of existence. Nobody proved to him that this unconditional, immutable archform [Urform] could be found only in the I. As long as the archconcept was not discovered, the derivative and transferred concept of a substantiality of appearances was merely an abstract concept, though antecedent to all possible experience, yet possible only in relation to experience. And it was this abstract concept, that everybody used as an objection to Spinoza, as if he had not been quite familiar with that concept
ADDIFION TO THE MST FroTioN All existence IDaseini rests on my I see n. 521; my I is everything: in it and tending toward it lzu ihmln" is everything that is. Take away my I, and everything that is is nothing.
and had not explained innumerable times that he was not concerned with the persistent element [das Beharrende] in time and change, but with what stands outside of time, under the archform of immutability, and as if he had not explained that the derivative concept has no meaning and no reality without the archconcept. His opponents tried to refute nonconditionality with conditionality. The outcome is familiar.
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13
If there is nothing outside the I, then the I must posit everything in itself, that is, posit it as equal to the I. Everything it posits must be nothing else than its own reality in its entire infinity. The absolute I cannot determine itself to be anything but that which posits infinite reality, that is, posits itself. If, for lack of another word, we call the positing the original cause, and if we call a cause which posits nothing outside of itself but everything in itself an immanent cause, then the I is the immanent cause of everything ?,that is." Whatever is, is only because it has reality. Its essence [Wesen] [gssentia] is reality, for it owes its beinglSein, Esse] only to the nonfinite reality;. it is only inasmuch as the original source [Urquelle] of all reality imparted reality to it. Thus the I is not only the cause of being but also the cause of the essence of everything that is. For everything that is, is only through what it is, that is, through its essence, its reality; and reality is only in the I. (Whoever wants to refute these theorems with other theorems which we shall encounter later may do so. But he will find that he could have saved himself that trouble, and that the opposition that meets these theorems stated here is precisely the problem of philosophy as a whole. Yet, he will have to grant that thesis precedes antithesis, and that both precede synthesis.)
14
The highest idea which expresses the causality of absolute substance (of the I) is the idea of absolute power [Macht] [see n. 39]. Can one measure the pure with empirical measure? If you cannot free yourself from all the empirical determinations which your imagination feeds you in regard to that idea, do not put the blame for your misunderstanding on the idea but on yourself. This idea is so far from everything empirical that it not only stands above it but even annihilates it. For Spinoza, too, it was the only designation for the causality of the 11961 absolute substance. The absolute power of the one substance was the ultimate for him in fact, the only reality. In it, according to Spinoza, there is no wisdom, for its action itself is law; no will, for it acts by the in-
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trinsic power of its essence (Wesen), by the necessity of its being (Sein). It does not act owing to any determination by any reality outside of itself (any value, any truth)." It acts owing to its essence, owing to the nonfinite perfection of its being and from unconditional power. Its very nature I Wesen] is only this power.* This most sublime idea in Spinoza's system was deemed not only theoretically wrong but also refutable by practical arguments. Spinoza's opponents said that this idea eliminates all notions of a free though lawdetermined wisdom. For they had not elevated themselves to the pure view of an absolute power which acts not according to any laws outside of it but only according to the laws of its own being, through its own being as such. On the other hand they did not consider the fact that their concept of wisdom is thinkable only under the assumption of some limitation and therefore is an absurdity unless they themselves presuppose as their ultimate aim an absolute power that simply acts out of an inner necessity of its own nature (Wesen) which is no longer will, nor virtue, nor wisdom, nor bliss, but power as such. Annotation. True enough, Kant spoke of morality and proportionate bliss as the highest good and ultimate goal." Yet he himself knew very well that morality without an ultimate goal has no reality and that it presupposes limitation and finiteness and is not thinkable as an ultimate goal in itself but only as [197] an approximation thereof." Kant also avoided a
happiness but utter elevation over its very sphere.* Therefore we must &LILT endlessly not to become happy, but no longer to need happiness, indeed to become incapable of needing it, and to elevate our very being to a form that is repugnant to the form of happiness (Gluckseligkeit) as well as to [the form of] its opposite.
For, the absolute I demands that the finite I should become equal to it, that is, that it should destroy in itself all multiplicity and all mutability. What is moral law for the finite I, limited by a not-I, is natural law for the nonfinite I that is, is given simultaneously with and in its mere being (Sein). The none, finite I is only insmuch as it is equal to itself, determined by its sheer identity; it has no task at all whereby it still ought to determine its being by sheer identity. For the nonfinite I there is moral law, and in respect to its causality it is determined only as absolute power, equal to itself." Moral law, however, although it exists only in relation to finiteness, has in itself no sense or meaning if it does not set up, as the ultimate goal of all striving, the nonfiniteness of the I and its own transformation into a
**Since the not-I should become the object of alsitying determined by freedom, it must be raised from the form of conditionality to the form of unconditionality. Yet, since the not-I as not-I is to become the object of this striving, only a sensuous, i.e., an imaginable unconditionality can be attained, i.e., the raising of the not-I itself can produce only a form which cannot be reached by any form of the intellect (Verstand) or sensibility ISinnlichkeit!. Such a mediation between conditionality and unconditionality is possible only for the power of imagination !Einbildungskraft The idea of bliss therefore arises originally only through a theoretical operation. Represented practically, it is nothing other than a necessary harmony of the not-I with the I, and since the attainment of this harmony is an infinite task for the I, it remains even in its practical meaning a mere idea which can be realized only in an infinite progress. However, in its practical significance it is also completely identical with the ultimate goal of the I. In that respect, since morality is the gradual approach to that ultimate goal, it can indeed be imagined as something that can be realized only by morality and is always in proportion to it. And only in this sense could Kant have conceived of bliss as in steady proportion to morality. One can take empirical happiness Gliickseligkeit! as a contingent harmony of objects with our I. So taken, empirical happiness cannot possibly be thought of as being connected with morality. For the latter does not aim at any contingent but at a necessary agreement of the not-I with the I. Pure bliss or beatitude! therefore consists exactly in rising above empirical happiness; the pure necessarily excludes the empirical. Still, it is quite understandable why, whenever Kant mentions bliss, some of his readers would think of mere empirical happiness. The German word Gliickseligkeit can mean both. I But it is astonishing that nobody has yet denounced the moral perniciousness of a system which imagines empirical happiness as connected with morality, not through any inner connection, but only by external causality. *If the ultimate goal of all striving of the I were not identification with the not-I, the contingent harmony of objects with our I, brought about by nature, would have no charm for us. Only when we think about such a harmony in its relation to our entire activity (which, from its lowest to its highest degree, aims at nothing else but the harmony of the not-I with the I) can we regard a contingent harmony as ajayor (not a reward), as a voluntary accomodation on the par t of !ramie, as an 0ex/weird assistance which nature bestows on the whole of our activity (not merely our 11101.11ac ts).
definite declaration concerning the relationship of bliss to morality, although he well knew that bliss, as a mere ideal of the imagination, is nothing but a schema" fit only to convey the practical presentation (praktische Vorstellbarkeit)" of the not-I,** and therefore could not pertain to the ultimate purpose (Endzweck)." The latter aims at the identification of the not-I with the I, that is, at a complete annihilation of it as not-I. For that reason the search for empirical happiness (as an agreement of the objects with the I, brought into unison by nature) would be unreasonable without the presupposition that [198] the ultimate goal of all.striving is not
*Ether+ bk.10, prop. XXXI. Prop. XXXII: Deus non ago ex ratione boni, sed ex naturae Juar perfect:one. Qui ilud statuunt, videntur aliquid extra Deum ponere, quod a Deo non
dependet, ad quo Deus tanquam ad exemplar in operando attendat, vel ad quod tanquam ad cerium scopum collimat, quod profecto nihil aliud est, quam Deum fato subjicere. Prop. X XXIII; Dei potentia est ipsius essentia. ISchelling quotes from a Spinoza edition whose proposition numbers differ from the critical edition by Bruder (1843; Tauchnitz) and there is a slight change in the first two sentences of his quotation. John Wild translates the end of schol. 2 of prop. kxxiii (Schelling's XXXII): "I confess that this opinion, which subjects all things to a certain indifferent God's will, and affirms that all things depend upon God's good pleasure, is at a less distance from the truth than the opinion of those who affirm that God dors everything for the sake of the Good. For these seem to place something outside of God which is independent of Him, to which he looks while He is at work as to a model, or at which lie aims as if at a certain mark. This is indeed nothing else than to subject God to fate. . . . Prop. X X XIV: The power of God is I Iis essence itself." (Wild 133).1
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mere natural law* of the I. The moral law in the finite being is first of all a schema of natural law whereby [199] the being of the nonfinite is determined. What the natural law presents as being, the moral law must present as an ought. Since the supreme law by which the being of the nonfinite I is determined is the law of its identity ( 7), the moral law in the finite being must present the identity not as existing but as demanded. Therefore the supreme law for the finite being is: Be absolutely identical with
yourself.**
Yet, inasmuch as this law must apply to a moral subject, that is, to an I conditioned by mutability and multiplicity, this conditioned I stands in opposition to the form of identity as such, and the moral law can apply to it only by means of a newscilematism.' For the basic moral law (Urgesetz) of the finite I, "be identical," is confronted by the natural law of the same finite I, according to which it is multiplicity and therefore not identical, and its multiplicity is no mere ought. This contradiction between the moral and the natural law of finiteness can be mediated only through a new schema, that of production in time, so that the law which aims at a demand of being becomes a law of becoming. The basic moral law, expressed in its fullest sensuous form, says: become identical, elevate (in time) the subjective forms of your being to the form of the absolute. The basic moral law in its purity already excludes all subjective forms (all forms which belong only to the object-conditioned I) and demands directly: be identical! However, those very forms are in opposition to that law, therefore a synthesis is needed by which they themselves are absorbed, yet no longer as [200] forms of the subject (of the finite) but as forms of the absolute. * * *
Through this schematism of the moral law, the idea of moral progress, of progress in infinity, becomes possible. The absolute I is the only Eternal; therefore the finite I, as it strives to become identical with it, must strive for pure eternity. Since it expresses in itself as merely becoming that which, in the nonfinite I is posited as being, it must also posit in itself a becoming, that is, an empirical eternity, an infinite duration." The ultimate goal of the finite I is therefore an expansion toward identity with the nonfinite. In the finite I there is unity of consciousness, that is, personality. The nonfinite I, however, knows no object at all and therefore no consciousness and no unity of consciousness, no pers9nality." Consequently, the ultimate goal of all striving can also be represented as an expansion of personality to infinity, that is, as its own destruction. The last goal of the finite I as well as that of the not-I, that is, the last goal of the world [201] is its destruction as a world, that is, as an embodiment of finiteness (of the finite I and the not-I). In order to approach this ultimate goal, an infinite approximation takes place, therefore an infinite continuance of the I, immortality." In the theoretical sense God is I = Not-I; in the practical sense He is absolute I, which annihilates all not-I. Insofar as the nonfinite I is represented schematically as the ultimate goal of the finite and thus outside of the latter, in practical philosophy God can indeed be represented as outside the finite I (schematically) however only as identical with the nonfinite.
Therefore one could also say that the ultimate goal of the I is to turn the laws of freedom into
and / in nature. *This law can be traced through all forms subordinate to the archform [Urform] of identity.
From these deductions it becomes clear that the causality of the nonfinite I cannot be represented at all as morality, wisdom, and the like, but only as absolute power which fills the entire infinity and, in its sphere, tolerates nothing that is in opposition, not even the not-I imagined as infinite. Therefore the moral law, even in its entire bearing on the world of sense [Versinnlichung], can have meaning and significance only in its relation to a higher law of being which, in contrast to the law of freedom, can be called law of nature. True enough, those who are trying to place the goal of our moral striving as near and as low as possible will not be satisfied with these deductions, nor will those who hastily appended a multitude of postulates of happiness to the letter of Kant and to the one and only point of their empirical system which Kant seemed to leave them. For if happiness (Gluckseligkeit) is not conceived as identical with the ultimate goal, that is, as total elevation above the whole sphere of empirical happiness, then it cannot even belong to the demands of moral reason, which alone is entitled to make demands. Also dissatisfied with our deductions are those who can believe that Kant could deem any knowledge which he thought impossible in theoretical philosophy possible in practical and thus, in practical philosophy, could again place the supersensuous world (God, etc.) as
laws of nature, and the laws of nature into laws of freedom, to bring about nature in the I,
Expressed in line with the category of quantity it says: be absolutely one. In line with quality: posit all reality in yourself, i.e., equate all reality to yourself. In line with relation: be free of all relation, i.e., of all conditionality. In line with modality: posit yourself outside the entire sphere of existence I Dasein I , posit yourself in the sphere of pure, absolute being (independent of all forms of time, etc.). If we again trace this schematized law through its subordinate forms, we receive the follow-
ing laws. According to quantity: become absolutely one. (Whatever becomes unity presupposes multiplicity, by whose elevation alone it can become unity. Thus the expression of the
totality contained
law is identical with the challenge: elevate the multiplicity in yourself to unity, i.e., become a in yourself). According to quality: simply become reality. (Whatever
brcomesreality does so in struggle with negation. Therefore the law can also be expressed as saying: elevate the negation in yourself to reality, i.e., give yourself a reality which ad in-
finit um (in time) can never be cancelled.) According to relation: become absolutely unconditional, strive for absolute causality again an expression of an original struggle, equivalent
to:make the passive causality in yourself identical with the active (create a reciprocal effect, make t hat which is passive causality in you active, and what is active passive). According to modality: strive to posit yourself in the sphere of absolute being, independent of the change of time, Stliving is possible only in time, therefore striving for liberation from all change of time means striving in all time. Thus the law can also br expressed as: lircome a tiecet +a ry bring, a bring which endures
in all time.
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OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY 101
something outside the I, as [202] an object; as if an object, no matter by what means it became an object, would not have to become an object for theoretical philosophy, that is, become objectively discernible. (Whatever is object must also be discernible [erkennbar] in the Kantian sense of the word, that is, perceptible to the senses and thinkable through categories. See below.) To be sure, according to Kant, the supersensuous leads to contradictions because theoretical philosophy [objectifies and thus] annihilates every absolute (all I). On the other hand, again according to Kant, practical philosophy leads into the supersensuous domain because, in its turn, it annihilates everything that is theoretical [i.e., object] and reestablishes what is intuited intellectually (the pure I). But since we enter the supersensuous world only through the reestablishment of the absolute I, what can we expect to find there other than the I? therefore, no God as an object, no not-I at all, no empirical happiness, etcetera, but only pure, absolute I! 15 The I is because it is, without any condition and without any restriction. Its original form (Urform) is that of the pure eternal being (Sein). We cannot say of it, it was, it will be, but simply, it is. He who wants to determine it in any way other than its being must pull it down into the empirical world. It is posited absolutely, therefore outside of time; the form of its intellectual intuition is eternity." It is nonfinite by itself; it is not a vague infinity such as the power of imagination fancies, which is itself tied to time. Instead, it is the most certain nonfiniteness, contained in its own nature Wesen ; its own eternity is the condition of its being [Sein]. Inasmuch as the I is eternal, it has no duration at all. Duration is thinkable only with regard to objects. We may speak of eternity of duration (aeviternitas), that is, of an existence in all time, but eternity_in the pute_sense of the word (aeternitas) is being in no time. The pure, original form [Urform] of eternity lies in the I. This form is at variance with [the form of] the existence of the not-I, which is in some specific time. The transcendental [203] imagination I Einbildungskraft] reunites the variance by a notion of existence in all time, that is, by the image [Vorstellung] of empirical eternity.*
*All synthesis proceeds by taking that which is absolutely posited and by positing it anew but conditionally (with qualifications). Thus, in its original opposition to the I) the not-I is posited absolutely but, on that very account, also posited as simply zero, because an unconditional not-I is a contradiction in terms, i.e., simply nothing. To be sure, in the synthesis the not I receives reality but thereby also loses its 'apparent' unconditionality, i.e., it becomes reality connected with negation, conditional (limited) reality. Thus the not-1 is originally posited outside of all time, just as the I is, but it therefore also equals zero; as it receives reality It loses its bring posited outside of all time and is posited in a .specific time. Finally a new synthesis posits it in all time, i.e., the absolute eternity of the I becomes empirical eternity in the not I inasmuch as the latter receives its reality through the I.
However, this empirical eternity (which can be represented graphically by an endlessly extended line) is not thinkable without the original concept (Url2wiff) of pure eternity, and therefore it is impossible to transfer it to the absolute I, which the original form of all being. The finite endures: the substance simply is, owing to its own nonfinite power to be.
Annotation 1. Spinoza, too, had to fight this concept of duration as a [an

alleged] form of the absolute being. For him eternity is a form of pure intellectual intuition. However, he does not mean relative or empirical but absolute, pure eternity. For him duration, even duration during all time, is nothing but a form of the (empirically conditioned) subject, and that form itself becomes possible only through the higher form of eternal being. If eternity is taken to mean empirical eternity, then, for him, absolute substance was not eternal, that is, not at all determinable through this [empirical]form, since substance exists neither in determined nor in all time, but in no time at all.*
[204] Annotation 2. Now it is time to determine the I completely and to forestall all possible confusion with other concepts. Thus far we have determined the I only as that which can never become an object. Therefore, if we wanted to say something about the I as an object we would indeed be caught in a dialectical illusion." For since it would be the object of a mere idea, it would indeed have no reality, " and if it were an object at all, then, in order to substantiate its reality, we would have to look for an objective
*Ethics 5. prop. XXIII, schol.: aeternitas nec tempore definiri, nec ullam ad tempus rekztionem habere potest. At nihilominus sentimus experimurque, nos aeternos esse. Nam mens non minus res illas sentit, quas intelligendo concipit, quam quas in memoria habet. Mentis enim oculi, quibus res videt observatque, sun[ ipsae demonstrationes. Quamvis igitur non
,.*.
tiam involvit, et eatenus tantum potentiam habet, rerum existentiam tempore determinandi easque sub duratione concipiendi. ISchelling's emphasis. John Wild translates: "eternity cannot be defined by time, or have any relationship to it. Nevertheless we feel and know by experience that we are eternal. For the mind is no less sensible of those things which it conceives through intelligence than of those which it remembers, for demonstrations are the eyes of the mind by which it sees and observes things. Although, therefore, we do not recollect that we existed before the body, we feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the body under the form of eternity, is eternal, and that this existence of the mind cannot be limited by time nor manifested through duration. Only in so far, therefore, as it involves the actual existence of the body can the mind be said to possess duration, and its existence be limited by a fixed time, and so far only has it the power of determining the existence of things in time, and of conceiving them under the form of duration." (Spinoza Selections New York: Scribner's, 19301, p. 385).1 With equal emphasis Spinoza, in his let ters, takes a stand against all confusion of the pure, original concepts (Urbegriffe) of being with the del ivative hums of empirical existence, See especially his ()pp pudh p. 167
,
definiri sive per durationem explicari non posse. Mens igitur nostra eatenus tantum dici potest durare, eiusque existentia certo tempore definiri, quatenus actualem corporis existen-
recordemur, nos ante corpus extitisse, sentimus tamen, mentem nostram, quatenus corporis essentiam sub aeternitatis specie involvit, aeternam esse, et hanc eius existentiam tempore
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intuition (Anschauung)," which would necessarily lead to contradictions. As yet we have determined the I only be stressing the impossibility of its ever becoming an object. We have also shown that it cannot be a mere idea and that therefore what we have here is the only intellectual intuition that is possible. I should like to see the impossible, a deduction of the absolute I from concepts! For that very reason Kant asserted that no philosophy is possible on the basis of concepts, because he knew that the only possible philosophy, the critical, rests on an ultimate ground which cannot be reached through any objective concept. Kant had already intimated that a deduction of the I from mere concepts isittipossible when he said that the original proposition I am is antecedent to all concepts and merely accompanies them, as it were, as a vegae. For that proposition is not a consequence of the proposition I think but is contained in it.* [205]' Now, if anyone wishes that there were no absolute I at all, then according to all the above, he would have to deny not only all freedom but also all philosophy itself. For even the least degree of spontaneity in theoretical philosophy reveals the original freedom of the absolute I as much as does the greatest possible spontaneity in practical philosophy. Furthermore, dogmatism is formally established by the denial of the absolute I. For if the existence of an empirically conditioned I cannot be explained from the position of an absolute I, then there remains no other explanation than the one from the absolute not-I, that is, from the principle of all dogmatism, which contradicts itself. Therefore the annulment of an absolute I nullifies not only a specific philosophy but all philosophy. The assertion of an absolute I is (1) least of all a transcendent assertion. It is as little transcendent as is the practical transition into the supersensuous domain." Eve assertion which tries to bypass (uberfliegen) the I is transcendent. Consequently, the assertion of an absoluin'ras to be the most immanent of all assertions: indeed, it must be the condition of all immanent philosophy. To be sure, the assertion of an absolute I would be transcendent if it were to go farther than the I, that is, if it tried at the same time to determine its existence as an object. Yet the sense of this assertion is precisely this that the I is not an object at all, and therefore, being independent of all that is not-I, indeed, in its origin excluding all that is not-I, that it has its being in itself, that it creates itself. In the Transcendental Dialectic," the paralogism exposed by Kant does not stop with the pure I; rather it tries, on the one hand, to conceive th e I as conditioned by the not-I, therefore as having become an objxct, and yet, on the other hand, as I, that is, as.absolute substance. The absolute I, however, [206] realizes itself. I must not overstep its sphere if I
...
want to reach its being, and the proposition I am differs from all other existential propositions in that it is the very one which cannot even be compared with them. The entire paralogism of transcendental psychology springs from the very attempt to conceive as an object that which really pertains only to the absolute I. (The whole [Kantian] Dialectic aims at the destruction of the absolute I and the realization of the absolute not-I as an [ostensible] I, that is, as a thing in itself.) "I think; I am!" these are purely analytical propositions. But the Transcendental Dialectic turns the I into an object and argues that whatever thinks is; and that whatever is thought as [if it were] an I is an I. This is a synthetic proposition, by which something which thinks is posited as a not-I. Yet a not-I does not create itself through its thinking, as an I does! (2) The absolute I is not synonymous with the logical I. In merely empirical thinking I encounter the I only as a logical subject, and my existence as determinable in time. In contrast, in intellectual intuition the I produces itself as absolute reality outside of all time." Therefore, when we speak of the absolute I we least of all mean to designate the logical subject contained in consciousness. After all, this logical subject itself is possible only owing to the unity of the absolute I." (My empirical I is subject to change, but in order to retain its identity in that change it strives to elevate the objects which change it, to a unity [by categories] and thus, through the identity of its striving, it establishes the identity of its existence as a lasting principle of image production [Princip der Vorstellungen] in the change of time.) Therefore the unity of consciousness determines only objects but cannot in turn determine the I as object. For, as pure I, it does not occur at all in consciousness [ see n.31] and even if it did occur there, it could never, as a pure I, become a not-I. As an empirical I it has no reality at all except [207] in the unity of apperception, and only in relation to objects. I thinkLis merely an expression of the unity of apperception which accompanies all concepts [see n.37]. Thus it is not determinable in intellectual intuition, as is the proposition I am! but can be determined only in relation to objects, that is, only empirically. It does not express an absolute unity but only a form of unity conceivable in regard to multiplicity. The latter unity determines the I neither as phenomenon nor as a thing in itself (therefore not as a thing at all) yet just as little as an absolute I, but only as a principle of something determined in the mere unity of thinking, something that loses all reality if imagined as outside the thinking. However, this merely thinkable I contained in the unity of consciousness is comprehensible only through an original and absolutely present unity of an absolute I. For if there were no absolute I, one could not comprehend how a not-I could produce a logical I, a unity of thinking, nor could one comprehend at all how any not-I would be possible."' It naturally follows
I'lle absolute I is, without relating itself to any objects. Therefore it is, not because it thinks at all, but becatue it thinks only itself. For that reason Descartes could not get very far with his togffirrgo ono, because he postulated thinking at all as a condition of the I, i.e., he had not risen to the absolute I. ''
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that anyone who is trying to do away with the absolute I in his thoughts feels compelled to elevate the not-I itself to the I. (This was the case with Spinoza.) There is nothing at all thinkable for me without the I, at least without the logaical I, and the logical I cannot possibly be produced by a not-I, but only by an absolute I. Thus if we speak of an absolute I we speak, in the first place, A (1) not of the logical I, because that can be thought of only in regard to an object, and the phrase logical I is merely an expression of the striving of the I to maintain its identity within the change of objects. For that reason, since it can be conceived only in terms of that striving, it is itself guarantor of the absolute I and its absolute identity. (2) In the second place, when speaking of the absolute I, we do not speak of the absolute subject in the Transcendental Dialectic [see n. 81]. The latter takes the logical subject, which is originally nothing but the formal principle of the unity of thinking and a mere correlate of apperception, and presents it as if it were an object, which is a direct contradiction. The dialectical subject [208] is created by mere abstraction and by the paralogistic assumption that the I of consciousness could be thought of as an object determinable as independent of consciousness. That marks the difference between the dialectical I and the logical I, on the one hand; as well as the pure I, on the other. Neither of these two was created by abstraction. The logical I is nothing other than the formal principle of the unity of thinking (and therefore of abstraction itself); the pure I is higher than all abstraction and can be posited only by itself. Thus the absolute I is neither a merely formal principle, nor an idea,
,
were a not-I, then one would have to renounce philosophy altogether. [209] For the not-I itself is originally determinable only in contrast to the I [see n.34] and has no reality if the absolute I has no reality. Annotation 3. It is remarkable that most languages have the advantage of being able to differentiate between absolute being and every kind of conditioned existence. Such a differentiation, which runs through all original languages," points to an originally existing reason which, without anyone's being aware of it, determined the differentiation at the time when language was first created. It is equally remarkable that the majority of philosophers did not make use of the advantage offered by their language. Almost all of them use the words being (Sein), presence (Dasein), existence, and reality (Wirklichkeit) as if they were synonyms. Obviously the word being expresses pure, absolute being-posited (Gesetztsein), whereas presence even etymologically signifies a conditioned and limited beingposited. Nevertheless one speaks commonly of the existence (Dasein) of God, * as if God could really exist, that is, could be posited conditionally and empirically. (That, of course, is what is desired by most people and, as it seems, even by many philosophers of all times and factions.) Anyone who can say that the absolute I exists (ist wirklich) knows nothing about it.** The word being [Sein] expresses an absolute [210] being-posited, whereas existence (Dasein) always signifies a conditioned, and reality (Wirklichkeit) a specifically conditioned being-posited, determined by specific conditions. The individual phenomenon in the total context of the world has reality; the world of phenomena as such has existence; but the absolutely posited, the I, simply is. I am! is all that the I can say about itself. The usual assumption was that pure being pertained to things in themselves. However, I believe that what Kant says about things in themselves cannot be explained at all except as a result of his persistently maintained system of condescension (Herablassun_gssystem)." According to Kant's own deductions the idea of a thing in itself must be contradictory. Thing in itself means neither more nor less than a thing which is no
*Theoretical philosophy seeks to establish God as a not-I, and in that context the expression existence has its proper place. However, it cannot be used in practical philosophy except in a
nor an object, but pure I determined by intellectual intuition as absolute reality. He who demands proof "that something else besides our idea should match it," does not know what he is demanding, because (1) it is not given by any idea, (2) it realizes itself, it creates itself, and therefore does not need to be realized beforehand. Even if it were realizable in advance, the very action by which it became realizable would already presuppose it. In other words, to make it real as something posited outside of itself would mean to annul it. It is either nothing, or else realized by itself and in itself not as an object but as I. Philosophy, by the fact that the absolute I is posited as its principle, is secure from all illusory semblance (Schein). For, as has been shown, the I as an object is possible only through dialectical semblance, and the I in the logical sense has no meaning except inasmuch as it is the principle of the unity of thinking, and thus it disappears with thinking itself and has no other than thinkable reality.* - However, if the principle of all philosophy
*Accordingly I Reinhold's' theorem of consciousness automatically vanishes as principle of philosophy. For it is clear that through it neither subject nor object is determined, except logically, so that the theorem has no real meaning, at least as long as it is supposed to be the ultimate pc int iplr No philosopher has pointed out more emphatic ally this lac k of irality in the theca cm of I MINI liolioffirw. than SAIIIIIII/II M.11111011 "
polemical way, against those who want to turn God into an object."
**Even the striving of the moral I cannot be represented as a striving for reality, because the moral I strives to posit all reality in itself. More precisely, it strives to elevate all reality to the level of pure being and, since its being conditioned by the not-I has dragged it down into the sphere of existence, it strives to raise itself again from that sphere. But pure being, as the goal of striving on the part of a moral subject, i.e., of a conditioned I, can be represented only schematically, i.e., as existence in all time. Precisely in this lies the infinite task of practical reason, to make absolute being and empirical existence identical in us. Since even in an endless time empirical existence cannot be elevated to absolute being, and since absolute being can never be presented in the domain of reality as being real in us, reason demands infinite existence for the empirical I. For the absolute I contains eternity in itself and can never be teachrd by the concept of duration, tern of infinite dictation."
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thing. Wherever there is sense perception there is not-I, and where there is not-I there is sense perception (sinnliche Anschauung). What is seen (angeschaut) intellectually is no not-I at all but sheer I. Therefore, for instance, one cannot say that God sees the things in themselves. To be sure, God sees no phenomena, but just as little does he behold things in themselves. He beholds no thing at all but only himself and all reality as posited equal to himself. (From that it is clear that God is what we can only strive to realize in infinity.) If (according to Spinoza) God is determinable as an object, though under the form of nonfiniteness, then all objects must be contained in him, and Spinozism can be refuted only by representing God as identical with the absolute I (which excludes all objects). To be sure, owing to his system of accomodation [see n.89], Kant has spoken of the forms of sense perception (Anschauung) as mere forms of human perception. However, the forms of sense perception and of the synthesis of its manifoldness are forms of finiteness as such, that is, they must be deduced from the mere concept of the I as conditioned by the not-I. Therefore, where there is an object there must also be sense perception. Consequently any not-I outside of all sense perception (a thing in itself) 12111 annuls itself, that is, is no thing at all but is mere not-I and thus absolutely nothing. It has been said that our inability to know things in themselves is due to the weakness of human reason (a phrase which has been overtaxed endlessly). More properly, one might say that the weakness lies in the fact that we perceive objects at all. The concepts of idealism and realism can be given their proper meaning only now, when the concept of the not-I has been determined in contrast to the absolute I. Their empirical meaning and their pure meaning are often confused. Pure idealism and realism have nothing to do with the determination of the relationship between the imagined object and the empirical subject. Both are concerned only with the answer to the one question of how it is possible that something could at all stand in opposition to the I, that is, how the I could be at all empirical. The idealist could answer only that the I is not empirical at all, in which case one could deny that it has any need to set anything in opposition to itself, and thus deny the claim of every theoretical philosophy.* This idealism is thinkable only as an idea (of the ultimate goal) in a practical sense (as a practical regulative) because as theoretical idealism it annuls itself. Therefore there is no pure theoretical idealism, and since the
Pure realism posits the existence of the not-I as such. Either the not-I is posited as identical with the absolute I (as one could perhaps interpret Berkeley's idealism) and thus is self-annulling realism. [212] Or else the not-I is posited as quite independent of the I (as is the case with Leibniz and also with Berkeley, who is mistakenly counted among the idealists), and that is transcendent realism. Or again, the not-I is dependent on the I, owing to the assertion that nothing exists but what the I posits, and that the not-I is thinkable only under the presupposition of an absolute I not yet conditioned by any not-I, so that the latter can be posited only by the I. (In the first place, in order to posit the not-I at all, the absolute I must be previously posited, because the not-I can be determined only in contrast to the I. For that reason the not-I is originally posited only in opposition [to the I], with absolute negation. In the second place, in order to posit it at all and to give it reality, it must be posited in the absolute I, through which alone everything that is can be posited, that is, can be raised to reality. Yet it can receive reality only through an absolutely comprehensive concept of all reality. And this is immanent Kantian realism.)* Or last, the not-I, even though originally independent of the I, yet is posited as existing in the imagination only through and for the I (transcendent-immanent and incomprehensible realism of many Kantians and [213] particularly of Reinhold** who, by the way, resented the sectarian name of a Kantian.) Empirical idealism either is a meaningless expression or makes sense only in contrast to pure transcendent realism. Thus Leibniz (like Descartes) was an empirical idealist, owing to his denial of the existence of exterior objects as bodies, yet a pure objective realist when assuming the existence of a not-I completely independent of the I.
*This realism designates at the same time the proper domain of natural science [Naturforschune which cannot at all seek "to penetrate into the inside of objects," i.e., to assume phenomena determinable as independent of the I. Instead, natural science must regard the entire reality which pertains to phenomena merely in the sense of a reality whose foundation does not lie in the objects themselves, but is a reality thinkable only in terms of relation (to the I). Therefore science must not attribute to objects any reality independent of their borrowed reality, and must not assume that they exist outside the latter reality. For, if one abstracts from their transferred reality, they are simply nothing (=--- 0). Therefore their laws can be determined only with regard to their phenomenal reality, and one cannot presuppose that the reality of the phenomenon is further determinable by the causality of any other reality not contained in the phenomenon, i.e., by some real substrate to the object (real outside the phenomenon). If one were to search, as it were behind the phenomenal (transferred) reality, for some other reality originally pertaining to the object, one would meet with nothing but negation:" **In no other way can I explain the statement that the things in themselves furnish the material for the imagination. (The things in themselves furnish nothing but the limitations of absolute reality in the imagination.) Instead of anything else, see 29 of the Theory of the Power of Imagtnatton, even though this f3, according to a later explanation of the author, was supposed to be a torte philosophical exi onion.
empirical-one is no idealism,' there can be no idealism at all in theoretical philosophy.

*Ttanscendent and immanent idealism coincide, because immanent idealism could only drily the existence of the objects represented in imagination, which transcendent idealism must also deny. just because the latter is idealism and does not admit an objective world, it would have to look in the I alone for the reasons for its assertions, and basically it would he immanent idealism.
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Transcendent realism is necessarily empirical idealism, and vice versa. Since transcendent realism views objects altogether as things in themselves, it can view what is changeable and conditional in them only as a product of the empirical I, and can see them as things in themselves only insofar as they have the form of identity and immutability. Thus, in order to save the identity and immutability of things, Leibniz had to resort to preestablished harmony. In short, dogmatism (which holds that the not-I is the absolute) must imagine things in themselves under forms which, according to criticism, are inherent in the I (as the only absolute) and which (by the synthesis) are transferred from the I to the not-I (identical substantiality, pure being, unity, etc.). On the other hand, dogmatism must view those other forms which the object receives in the synthesis from the original not-I (mutability, multiplicity, conditionality, negation, etc.) as pertaining only to the appearance of the thing in itself.* Therefore the monads of Leibniz have the original form of the [214] I (unity and reality, identical substantiality and pure being, as beings with awareness), whereas all those forms which are transferred from the not-I to the object (negation, multiplicity, accidentality, causality in the passive sense, i.e., conditionality) must be explained in an empirically idealistic way, as existing only in the sense image of the object. Thus, in a consistent dogmatism, empirical idealism makes sense and has tenable meaning, because it is the necessary conse The not-I is determinable only in absolute contrast to the I. For that very reason it is absolute negation with regard to [the categorical form of] relation, and in that original contrast it is determined as absolute conditionality. It is in contrast with the absolute, therefore conditioned by it, yet, since this contrast is absolute, the not-I is in that respect also unconditional. Whatever is in absolute contrast to the absolute is on that account conditioned and unconditioned at the same time, that is, it is simply zero ( 0). According to quantity it is determined as absolute multiplicity, but absolute multiplicity is a contradiction, because multiplicity is conditioned by unity. According to modality the not-I is a being whose absolute contrast to absolute being makes it an absolute not-being. And according to quality it is a quality in absolute contrast to absolute reality, therefore it is an absolute negation. If, therefore, the absolute not-I is to have any reality at all, that is possible only if it is posited in no absolute contrast to the absolute, that is, posited within the comprehensive concept of all reality. Now, the process of all synthesis is such that whatever is absolutely posited in both thesis and antithesis is posited in the synthesis with qualifications, that is, merely conditionally. Therefore, in the synthesis, the absolute unity of the I becomes empirical unity, thinkable only as unity in relation to multiplicity (category of unity); the absolute multiplicity of the not-I becomes empirical multiplicity thinkable only in relation to unity (category of multiplicity); the absolute reality of the I becomes conditional reality thinkable only in relation to qualifying negation; the absolute negation of the not-I becomes a negation thinkable only in relation to reality (category of negation); the absolute unconditionality of the I becomes empirical uncondiactuality thinkable only in relation to conditionality (category of substance); the absolute being of the I becomes a being determinable only in relation to not-being (category of possibility), and the absolute not-being of the not-I becomes a not-being determinable only in relation to being (category of existence)."
Note ol the editor, Schelling'A .ton: This footnote was omitted in the second edition, perhaps only by mistake since, in the first edition, it was not in the text but only in a list of emenda buns and additions,
quence of transcendent realism. Yet, if it is taken for an explanation of the not-I as such, it annuls itself. For it is a ridiculous endeavor to make the existence of the not-I comprehensible as a mere product of an empirical potency (Vermogen), for instance the power of imagination. [215] The question was how the not-I is possible at all, and consequently how any empirical potency is possible at all. Leibniz or, more precisely, consistent dogmatism views phenomena as just so many limitations of the infinite reality of the not-I. According to the critical system, they are that many limitations of the nonfinite reality of the I. (For Leibniz, phenomena differ from the I not in kind or reality but only in quantity. Leibniz was right enough when he said that the preservation of the world of phenomena is the same act of the absolute object as the creation. For, according to dogmatism, the world of phenomena is created and perseveres only through the limitation of the absolute not-I. According to the critical system, which allows only immanent assertions, creation is nothing but exhibition of the nonfinite reality of the I within the limits of the finite. Any determination of creation by a causality assumed to be real outside of the absolute Iby some infinite outside of the nonfinite, [durch ein Unendliches ausser dem Unendlichen] would mean going beyond [Uberfliegen] the I.) For Leibniz everything that exists is not-I, even God, in whom all reality is united, though outside the domain of negation. For the critical system (which starts with a critique of the subjective powers, i.e., proceeds from the I), I is everything; it contains one infinite sphere in which (limited by the not-I) finite spheres form, as is still possible only within and through the infinite sphere," and also they receive all reality only from and through that sphere.* (Theoretical philosophy.) Within that infinite sphere everything is intellectual, all is absolute being, absolute unity, absolute reality; in the finite spheres everything is conditionality, actuality (Wirklichkeit), limitation. If we break through these spheres (practical [216] philosophy), then we are in the sphere of the absolute being, in the supersensuous world where all I outside the I is nothing, and this I is only One. I wish I had Plato's gift of language or that of his kindred spirit, Jacobi, 95 in order to be able to differentiate between the absolute, immutable being and every kind of conditional, changeable existence. Yet I see that even these men had to struggle with their own language when they attempted to speak of the immutable and supersensuousand I believe that this absolute in us cannot be captured by a mere word of human
The expression of many fantasizing visionaries (vieler Schwirmer) that the sensuous is contained in the supersensuous, the natural in the supernatural, the terrestrial in the celestial, permits, therefore, a quite meaningful interpretation. At all events, their expressions very often contain a treasure of truth, though only felt and guessed at. In Leibniz's simile, such expressions are like the golden vessels of the Egyptians, which the philosopher must purloin for a more sat-red use. I Exod. 3:22; 11:2; 12:35.1
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language, and that only the self-attained insight into the intellectual in us can come to the rescue of the patchwork of our language. Self-attained insight. For the unconditional within us is clouded by the conditional, the immutalbe by the changing. And how can you hope that the conditional will ever make clear for you what is unconditional, and that the form of mutability and of change can represent the original form of your being, the form of eternity and immutability? Since your perception ties you to objects, and since your intellectual intuition is dimmed and your existence is determined for you by time, even that to which you owe your existence, that in which you live and act, think, and know, becomes in the end (and for your will) only an object of faith a something which seems different from yourself and which you are forever trying to realize in yourself as a finite creature and still never find as real in yourself. The beginning and the end of your knowledge is the same there intuition, here faith]
16 The I posits itself absolutely, and posits all reality within itself. It posits etsulhin,g_as pure identity, that is, equal to itself. Thereby the material original form (Urform) of the I is the unity of its [217] positing, inasmuch as it posits everything as equal to itself. The absolute I never steps outside of itself." Through this original material form, however, a formal form, the form of positing in the I, is necessarily determined in the I as such. For the I is determined as the substrate of positability of all reality as such [see n.46]. Inasmuch as the I in its material form is the sum-total of all reality (8), it is also at the same time a formal condition of all positing, and thus I obtain a sheer form of the possibility of positing entities in the I at all. This latter form, however, is necessarily determined by the original material form of the identity of the I (by virtue of which it identifies all reality with itself, i.e., posits all reality in itself). If the I did not originally identify everything with its own reality, that is, posit it as identical with itself, and did not posit itself as the purest identity, then nothing in the I could be posited as identical, and it would be possible to posit A = not-A. Let the I be whatever it may be (but it is nothing if it is not absolutely equal to itself, because it is posited only by itself), then, if it is posited at all as identical with itself, the general expression of positing in the I is A = A. If the I is posited as identical with itself then, no matter what the I is, everything that is posited in the 1 is posited [as identical with itself and] not as different from itself, and therefore is posited in the [self-identical] 1. Any positing in the I is possible
at all only through the pure identity of the I itself or, in other words, )4through the being of the I alone, since the I is only owing to its identity. If i the I were not identical with itself, then everything that is posited in the I would be simultaneously posited and not posited, that is, nothing at all could be posited and there would be no form of positing at all. Yet, since the I posits everything which it posits as identical with its respective reality, then, inasmuch as the form of positing anything in the I is determined only by the I itself, that which is posited is being considered only in the quality of its being posited in the I, and is not considered as something in contrast to the I. Through its original form (Urform) of identity, the I determines nothing as reality as such, and it determines no object at all as such [218] insofar as an object is in contrast with the Lcca Thus the proposition I = I is the basis of all positing. For the I can be said to be posited only inasmuch as iit is posited for alone and by itself. Everything else, however, that is posited is so posited only inasmuch as the I is posited in the first place. Furthermore, what is posited is posited absolutely only insofar as it is posited as identical with the absolutely posited I. And since the I can be posited only as identical with itself, everything else is posited only insofar as it is identical with itself." in that respect, A = A is the general formula of absolute positing, because by it nothing else is predicated except that whatever is posited is posited. Now, by arbitrary freedom I can posit in the I whatever I wish; the only thing I cannot posit is what I do not posit. Thus I posit A, and since I posit it in the I, I posit it as equal to some reality = B, and necessarily as something equal to itself. That is, I posit it either as B or as not-B = C. If it were posited both as B and as not-B = C then the I itself would be cancelled. Therefore the proposition A = A, as a general formula (for positing as equal or self-identical) precedes all other formal axioms. Insofar as it occurs as a special theorem (of special content) it belongs to the general species of theorems conditioned by the axiomatic form, theorems absolutely posited by it inasmuch as it is a mere formula, A = A. All unconditionally posited theorems, that is, all those whose positing is conditioned only by the identity of the I, can be called analytical, because their being posited can be deduced from themselves. Therefore, better yet, they can be called thetical." Thetical theorems are all those which are conditioned only by being posited in the I, that is, since everything is posited in the I, all those which are unconditionally posited. (I say, are posited, because only the being-posited belongs to the formal form.) Among thetical theorems, one kind is that of identical theorems. For instance, A = A can be taken as a special theorem (among those in which subject and predicate are the same, i.e., whose subject has only itself as predicate. Thus I is only I, God only God, but everything that lies within the sphere of existence has predicates which lie outside its essence). The
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fact that they are thetical theorems belongs to the formal form, that they are identical to the material form. Identical [219] theorems are thetical by necessity, because in them A is posited simply as such and because it is A. But thetical theorems are not necessarily identical ones, since thetical theorems are all those whose being posited is not conditioned by anything else's being posited. Thus A = B can be a thetical yet not an identical theorem if the mere positing of A also posits Bbut not vice versa, so that positing B does not also posit A. 17,-, #;(1 The form of thetical theorems is conetioned only by the pure identity of the I. Consequently, what they e2sprq is in every case only the material form of unconditionalitLwhich is determined by the I, and they express it formally. There-Tore the formal form of unconditionality must be strictly parallel to the material form of the I.' The I is only because it is, that is, because it is equal to itself, therefore it is only through the mere unity of its self-intuition (Einheit seiner Anschauung). 101 Now, thetical theorems are conditioned only as being posited in the I. The I, however, is only owing to the unity of its selfintuition. Therefore what is posited in a thetical theorem must be conditioned only by the unity of its intuition determined in the I. If I am judging A = B, then I am not making a judgment regarding A insofar as it is determined by something outside itself but only insofar as it is determined by itself, by the unity of being posited in the I, not as a determined object but as reality as such, as at all positable in the I. Thus I do not judge this or that A in this or that particular point of space or time, but A as such inasmuch as it is A through that very determination by which it is A, that is, that which makes it equal to itself and = B. Owing to this, all numerical determination is excluded, be it numerical determination of unity or of multiplicity. Numerical determination can occur in a thetical theorem, but not as belonging to its form. Thus, for instance, one can judge: body A is extended. If this theorem is to be a thetical one, the body A must be thought of only in the unity of its being posited in the I, and nost as a particular object in a particular space; or rather, inasmuch as the theorem is a thetical one, [220] A is really thought of only in the unit of its being posited. What makes it a thetical theorem is not the particualr body A, but the thingking of it in its unity. The A in the thetical theorem as such, according to its mere being posited, is determined neither as genus nor as species nor as individual. Multiplicity is posited because one item is posited several times and not because it is simply posited. Therefore a theorem which expresses multiplicity in an antithetical theorem, not only according to its content but also according to the mere form of its being posited. Only through the fact that something is originally posited in contrast with the I, and that the I itself is posited as multiplicity (posited in time), is it possible that the I can go beyond the mere unity of something's being posited in it,
and that, for instance, it can posit the posited entity several times, or that it can simultaneously posit two concepts which have nothing in common and which are not thinkable under any unity, for example, body and weight. 102 Generality is empirical unity, that is, unity produced by multiplicity. Therefore it is the form of a synthesis. Thus general theorems are neither thetical nor antithetical but synthetical theorems. There is an I only by its act of positing all reality If thetical propositions (i.e., propositions determined by their sheer positing in the I) are possible at all, they must absolutely posit (affirm) something. Negative propositions are not determined by the sheer I, which contains no negation, but by something outside the I (in contrast to the I). The affirmative proposition as such simply posits something into some sphere of reality; the theticalaffirmative proposition posits something only into the sphere of reality as such. The negative proposition merely posits,'" and does not posit into any specific sphere; but since it does not posit that which it takes away from one sphere into any other, it exludes it from the sphere of reality as such. The thetical-negative (so-called infinite) judgment not only removes A from a specific sphere but at the same time posits it into another, opposite to the first. For instance, the proposition "God is not real" takes God out of the sphere of reality without placing him into another; [221] but the proposition "God is unreal (nicht-worklich)" puts him at 'the same time into another sphere in contrast to the sphere of reality. However, in order to produce a thetical-negative judgment, a merely arbitrary connection between the negation and the predicate does not suffice; the sheer positing of the subject in the I must already posit it in a sphere opposite to the predicate. For instance, I cannot turn the negative proposition "a circle is not square" into a thetical-negative judgment, because the sheer positing of the subject, "circle," does not yet posit it in a sphere which as such is in contrast with four-sidedness. The circle could just as well be five-sided or many-sided. However, the proposition "a circle is not sweet" is necessarily an infinite judgment, because the subject, "circle," through its mere being posited, is already outside of the sphere of the sweet, therefore already posited in a sphere exactly contrary to the sphere of "sweet." For that reason, the negation in the thetical-negative judgment does not lie in the copula but in the predicate, that is, the subject is not merely being removed from the sphere of the predicate but is placed in a sphere that contrasts with the sphere of the predicate. As far as I know, Maimon was up to now the one who put the greatest emphasis on this differentiation between the infinite judgment and the affirmative and negative. [see n. The I is only through itself. Its original form (Urform) is that of pure being. If anything is to be posited in the I, merely because it is posited, it must be conditioned by nothing other than the 1; for it is conditioned only
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by its being posited in the I, and the I contains nothing that lies outside the sphere of its own essence. Thetical theorems therefore posit only a being which is conditioned by itself alone (they do not posit possibility, reality, or necessity, but sheer being). 104 Up to the present, the determination of the forms of modality has not yet been made quite clear. True, the original forms of being and not-being are basic to all other forms They contain thesis and antithesis (the contrast between I and not-I), but in an entirely general formal way. [222] If this contrast is to be mediated by a synthesis, then these general forms must express that synthesis in a likewise entirely general and formal manner. For that very reason, material (objective) possibility, reality, and necessity do not belong among the original forms which precede all synthesis. For they express materially what the original forms express only formally, that is, they express it in relation to an already accomplished synthesis. Therefore these three forms are no categories at all, since categories really are the forms through which the synthesis of the I and the not-I is determined. But the three together are the syllepsis of all categories. Since they themselves express only positing, and since the [nine real] categories (of relation, of quantity, and of quality) furnish the positability of the not-I in the I, the [other] three [of possibility, or reality, and of necessity] themselves can no
form of thesis and antithesis originally and universally, they also must contain the form of a possible synthesis, originally and before all synthesis.
This form is the determination of not-being by being, and it is the original basis of determination of all possible synthesis. Pure being is thinkable only in the I. The I is posited purely and simply [schlechthin]. The not-I, however, is in contrast with the I, and therefore, according to its original form, it is pure impossibility, that is, it cannot be posited in the I at all. Still, it ought to be posited in the I, and the synthesis brings about this positing of the not-I in the I by means of identifying the form of the not-I itself with the form of the I, that is, it strives to determine the not-being of the not-I through the being of the I.'" Since pure being is the original form of all positability in the I, and since the positability of the not-I in the I can be accomplished only by synthesis, the form of pure being, if transferable to the not-I, can be thought only in terms of strict conformity with the synthesis as such. (In Kant's language: objective possibility, i.e., possibility pertaining to an object as such, is contained only in conformity with a synthesis. And that means positability in the I.) For originally the not-I is a logical impossibility for the I. For the I there are only thetical theorems, but the not-I can never become the content of a thetical theorem and it directly contradicts the form of the I. Only inasmuch as the not-being of the not-I is determined by the being of the I, that is, inasmuch as there occurs a synthesis of being and not-being, the not-I becomes positable in the I. [See n. 106.] Therefore the possibility of so positing it can be thought only as conformity with [224] synthesis as such. Consequently, the logical possibility of the not-I is conditioned by the objective, the formal by the material possibility. It follows that problematical propositions are those whose logical possibility is conditioned by their objective possibility. In logic itself they stand under the pure form of being, which precedes all synthesis, and they cannot possibly count as a genus by itself. Since they are only an expression of a logical possibility dependent on objective possibility, and since logical possibility is the same everywhere, they belong to logic only with regard to that quality which makes them problematic propositions. I call the objective possibility, inasmuch as it furnishes the logical possibility (or is a schema of the logical) the objective-logical possibility. Prepositions that express only pure being and pure possibility* I call problematic propositions. These, therefore, occur in logic only insofar as they are at the same time essential propositions.
The expression logical, pure possibility should be abolished, since it necessarily causes misunderstanding. Properly speaking, there is only a real objective possibility. The so-called logical possibility is nothing else but pure being as expressed in the form of a thetical proposition. For instance, when we say that the theorem I -- I has the form of pure possibility. this can be easily misunderstood, but not if we say that its form is the form of pure being (in contrast to existence (Dwain), or to logical possibility, which is conditioned only by
longer be conditions of this positability, they can only be the result of synthesis, or sylleptical concepts of all synthesis. 1 5
Originally, pure being is only in the I, and nothing can be posited in this
form [of pure being] that is not posited as equal to the I. For that reason, pure being is expressed only in thetical propositions, because in them the posited is not expressed as something opposed to the I, as object, but is
determined only as the reality of the I as such.
The characteristic formula for thetical theorems is "A is," which means that it has an identical sphere of being of its own, into which everything can be posited that is conditioned only by the being of A, and by its being posited in the I. However, since A expresses being as such, there must be a general formula for the antithesis as well, which must be A > -A [A is not not-A]. By virtue of that, since A is posited in the I, -A is necessarily posited outside the I, independent of the I, in the form of not-being. In the manner in which the first formula makes possible an original thesis, the second furnishes the possiblitity of an original antithesis. Yet just this original thesis and antithesis is the problem of all synthesis in philosophy* and just as the [223] pure forms of modality express the
Amont the categories of each individual form, the first one is always the expression of the original form of the I, the second is the originasl form of the not-I, and the third and last one is the synthesis in which the two first ones are united and only now obtain sense and meaning in referring to the object. Note that the form of quality relates to the form of modality, the form of quantity to the form of relation, therefore the mathematical categories are determined by the dynamic categories and not vice versa.
objective possibility). I See Poss. 108- I 0. I
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Existential propositions are determined by the original opposition of the not-I, and th eceive their possibility only through synthesis. They are
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ieajeCliieTogTalpOssitiiiity, although they do therefore conditioned bytl express mere possibility. The objective-logical possibility posits the notnot I merely into synthesis as such but an existential_proposition posits it_into some particular synthesis. Yet the not-I, in order to be elevated to the form of the I, needs to be posited only by means of the schema of pure being, by Conditioning through just as the I is posited its mere possibility, that is, by [225] synthesis as such, by the thesis as such. (Where there is thesis there is I, and where there is I there is thesis.) But the original form of the object is conditionality. By virtue of that form, inasmuch as it can be represented by the schema of time, the objects attain existence only by reciprocally determining their position in time, that is, by their existence in some particular synthesis. Here, therefore, a new synthesis must occur, just as, originally, being and not-being could be brought together only owing to the determination of not-being by being. So the result of that synthesis, which is objective possibility, can be brought together with reality in the new synthesis, owing to the determination of the latter by the former. Now, objective-logical possibility means being posited in synthesis as such, and reality means being posited in a particular synthesis. Therefore the not-I can be posited in a particular synthesis only because it is simultaneously posited in synthesis as such. That means it is posited in all synthesis, because all synthesis is synthesis itself as well as particular synthesis.
because the not-I becomes object only by absorption into the I, and because this absorption into the I becomes possible only by a preceding synthesis itself [through categories]; conformity with synthesis as such [with the categories]; temporal existence itself.)
1. Thesis synthesis as such, i.e., through objective absorption in the I. Objective-logical possibility; existence in time as such.
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II 2. Antithesis Objective conditioning, not determined by the I alone; existence in a particular synthesis (in time), i.e., reality.
3. Synthesis Conditioning of being-posited (determined by the object) in a specific synthesis, by being posited (determined by the I) in the synthesis as such; existence (Dasein)* in all synthesis. Determination of reality by the objectivelogical possibility necessity. (Therefore the whole progression of synthesis goes 1. from being and not-being to possibility, 2. from possibility and reality to necessity.)
I believe that the whole progression of this synthesis will become clearer to the reader by being presented in the following table. [226] Table of All Forms of Modality
1. Thesis Absolute being absolute positability originally determined only in and by the I.
2. Antithesis absolute Absolute not-being, independence from the I, and absolute nonpositablity determinable only in contrast to the I.
3. Synthesis Conditional positability, by means of absorption (Aufnahme) into the I, i.e., possibility of the not-I.* (This possibility is called objective-logical possibility
Owing to its original contraposition (antithesis), the not-I is an absoluteimpossibility. In the synthesis it receives possibility, but only unconditional possibility. Thus it exchanges conditional possibility for unconditional possibility. "Either no possibility, but unconditionality instead, or else no unconditionality but possibility instead! If the not-I were the unconditional in human knowledge, it could br that only in an original contrast, i.e., Inasmuch as it is simply nothing." (Addition to the first edition.)
[228] Since time is the condition of all synthesis and, on that account, is produced by the transcendental power of imagination through and in the synthesis, one can present the whole issue in the following manner. The schema'' of the pure bei_ngAthe latterbeing posited outside of all time) is temporal existence it (owing to the action of synthesis itself). Therefore o jective possibility _paeans simply being positecl in time. Since existence in time is subject to change, the object, though posited in time as such, is positable and yet also not positable. In order to posit an object I must posit it in a specific time, which is possible only because some other object determines its position in time and, in turn, allows its own position to be determined by it.'" Yet the not-I is to be posited only by its own possibility, only by the schema of pure being. But the schema of its own particular form resists such positing through mere possibility because this schema makes it conceivable only as posited in a specific time. Now, just as time as such is the schema of complete timelessness, all time (i.e., the actual, infinitely progressing synthesis) is in turn a presentation (image)" of time as such (i.e., of the action of synthesis as
'Existence is the joint form under which possibility, reality, and necessity stand. The difference between them lies only in the determination of time itself, not in the positing or not-positing in time as such. Existence (Dasein) as such is therefore the result of the first synthesis. In the second it is determined as possibility in the thesis, as reality in the antithesis, and as necessity in the synthesis. 'That which meditates the schema with the object is always an image (Bild). Schema is that which hovers in time as such, image is that which is posited in a specific time and yet positable lot time, whetratt the object is posited lot me only in a specific time.
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such) owing to which existence in time as such becomes existence in a specific time. All time therefore is nothing else than an image of time as such, yet it is also a specific time because all time is as specific as any single part of time. Thus, insofar as the not-I is posited in a specific time, it receives its original form (of change, multiplicity, negability) and insofar as it is posited in time as such it expresses the schematic original form of the I, substantiality, unity, reality. However, it is posited in a specific time only inasmuch as it is simultaneously set in time as such, and vice versa. Its substantiality can be conceived only in regard to change, its unity only [229] in regard to multiplicity, its reality only in regard to negation (i.e., with negationbut in infinite progression).* ANNOTATIONS. 1. The I originally posits, and posits everything as equal to itself, and since it is the purest unity it posits nothing in mere contrast to itself. The thetical theorem then has really no other content than the I, because that which is posited in the I is posited only inasmuch as it is reality at all and thus equal to the I, in the form of its identity with the I. In theoretical as well as in practical respect, reason aims at nothing but absolutely thetical theorems, equal to the theorem I = I. In theoretical regard it strives to elevate the not-I to the highest unity and thus to determine its existence in a thetical theorem equal to the theorem I = I. In this theorem the question is not: is the I posited at all? But rather, it is posited because it is posited [see n. 7]. Likewise the_I strives to posit the not-I because it is posited, that is, it strives to elevate it to unconditionality.
[230] This material form of the striving of reason determines the formal one in the syllogistical regresses; both are striving jiig z2. for thetical theorems. Theoretical reason in its material use necessarily strives for a materially thetical theorem such as is possible only in the theorem I = I and never in another, which would already declare something about the not-I. And for that reason even that striving must lead to contradictions. In its formal use, though, reason strives for formally thetical theorems, whose consequence is a whole series of episyllogisms. What was impossible for theoretical reason, being restricted by a not-I, can now be done by practical reason; it obtains the only absolutely (i.e., formally and materially) thetical theorem: I = I.
2. The form of identity does not at all determine any object as such.* However, the fact that Leibniz and all the men who thought like him saw the principle of identity as the very principle of objective reality is far more easily comprehensible than many would-be experts in philosophy seemed to find it. One is used to their finding nothing more comprehensible than the sheer words of their respective masters and nothing more incomprehensible than the words to which they have not sworn allegiance. For critical philosophy, that is, for the philosophy which posits all reality in the I, the form of iclentityis the principle of all reality of the I, but on that very account it is not a principle of objective reality, that is, of reality not contained in the I.** However, for [231] dogmatism, that very form, in reverse must be the principle of objective but not of subjective reality. By means of the form of identity, Leibniz determines the thing in itself without regard to an opposite (the I), whereas Kant determines the reality of the I without regard to an opposite, that is, a not-I."' Leibniz declared strongly and strikingly that the form of identity determines the thing in itself as such, its objective reality, but not the subjective reality, that is, the perception (Erkenntnis) of the thing in itself (its issuing forth from the sphere of the thing in itself as such). Kant declared the opposite, that even
*The principle of identity is A = A. Now, it is possible that A is not real. Consequently the form of identity presents A not with regard to its being posited outside the I, but only inasmuch as it is posited by the I, i.e., not posited as an object at all. [Compare Schelling's anticritique, of f 242-44.1
The result of these deductions is that only the forms of being, of not-being, and of notbeing determined by being can belong to logic, since they precede all synthesis and are the basis of all synthesis, and since they contain the original form according to which alone any synthesis can be performed. It also follows that the schematized forms of possibility, reality, and necessity, made possible only by an antecedent synthesis, -belong to logic only because they themselves are determined by those original forms. Thus, for instance, problematical theorems do not belong to logic insofar as they express objective possibility but only inasmuch as they express objective-logical possibility; not insofar as they express a being-posited in the synthesis as such, but only inasmuch as their logical thinkability has been transmitted at all through this synthesis. In short, the three forms of the problematical, assertorical, and apodictical theorems belong to logic only inasmuch as they are simultaneously the sheerly formal forms of the original synthesis (which is the determination of the not-being by being; existence as such), and not insofar as they express the material form the existence in the synthesis as such, in the specific synthesis, and in all synthesis.** *Atiortiont to Tut: FIRST EorrioN. For that reason I reminded you above that existence is the result of the first synthesis as such, and forms only the formal basis of the second. Only in that second synthesis is existence materially determined, relative to the synthesis furnished by the categories. Therefore, the forms of the second synthesis do not occur in logic insofar as they are materially determined, but only formally, that is, inasmuch as they express the original form of the first synthesis, existence as such, be it in time as such or in a specific time or in all time. n. 109.1
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**It can also become the principle of objective reality, but only inasmuch as the positing thereof in the I is not immediate but already mediated, though even then it determines it not as objective reality but only as to the quality of its being determined in the I. The theorem of sufficient reason, says Kant, cannot be used at all in the supersensuous world, in which it can determine no object at all, because in that world everything is absolute, and that theorem expresses only the form of conditionality.'" If the supersensuous world really contained any objects and more than only an absolute I, then this theorem would be applicable in that world as well as in the world of phenomena. Therefore Kant used this theorem in the supersensuous domain only in a polcmic"" mariner or else only whenever, in line with his system of accommodation, he does in fact speak of objects of the supersensuous world. See n. 89.1
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though the subjective reality is determined by the form of identity, that is, the reality posited solely in the I, the objective reality is determinable only by moving out of the sphere of the I. 112 For dogmatism, thetical theorems become possible only through the not-I but antithetical and synthetical ones only through the I; for criticism, in reverse, thetical theorems only through the I, antithetical and synthetical ones only through the not-I. Leibniz determines the absolute sphere by the absolute not-I, yet he does \ not cancel every form of synthetical theorem but uses them in order to get out of his absolute sphere, just as Kant does. Both of them need the same bridge in order to move from the domain of the unconditional into that of the conditional. In order to leave the sphere of the thing in itself, of the being-posited absolutely, and to enter the sphere of the determined (imaginable) thing, Leibniz used the theorem of sufficient reason, exactly the same (i.e., an original form of conditionality as such) as Kant did in order to leave the sphere of the I and enter the sphere of the not-I. Thus Leibniz understood the theorem of identity as well as Kant, and he knew how to use it for his own system as well as Kant did for his. Where they differ is not [232] about its employment, but about its higher determination by the absolute in the system of our knowledge.* 3. For the absolute I there is no possibility, actuality, 113 or necessity, since whatever the absolute I posits is determined by the mere form of pure being. For the finite I, however, in theoretical and practical use, there are possibility, actuality, and necessity. And since the highest synthesis of theoretical and practical philosophy is the combination of posibility with actuality, that is, necessity, this combination can be termed the genuine task of all St ivj , though not its ultimate goal. If there were any possi ay and actuality at all for the nonfinite I, all possibility would be actuality, and all actuality possibility. For the finite I, however, there is possibility and actuality. Therefore, in regard to the two, its striving must be determined in the way in which the being of the nonfinite I would be determined if it had anything to do with possibility and actuality. Thus the finite I ought to strive to make actual everything that is possible in it, and to make possible whatever is actual. There is an imperative (Sollen) only I'm the finite I, meaning that there are practical possibility, actuality, and
necessity because the action of the finite I is not conditioned only by mere thesis (law of absolute being), but also by antithesis (natural law of finiteness) and by synthesis (moral ought). Thus practical possibility is conformity of action with practical synthesis as such; [233] practical actuality is conformity of action with a specific moral synthesis; and finally, practical necessity (the highest level a finite being can attain) is conformity with all synthesis (in a system of action in which everything that is practically possible is actual, and everything that is actual must at the same time also be possible).* On the other hand, no imperative (Sollen) at all occurs in the absolute I, [234] because whatever is practical command for the finite I must be constitutive law in the nonfinite, a law which expresses neither possibility, nor actuality, nor necessity, but only absolute being, and the expression is not imperative but categorical. The concept of ought (des Sollens), however, and of practical possibility, presupposes another concept, one that has furnished the matter for the most difficult problems of all philosophy. Here these problems must be touched upon at least briefly. If there is a practical possibility for the finite I, that is, an ought, then it , is not thinkable at all without the concept of freedom of the empirical I. 116 Previously ( 8) I predicated absolute freedom of the absolute I, that is, a
'The concept of right [and rights] as such is based upon the concept of practical possibility (conformity with synthesis as such) and so is the whole system of natural right. But the concept of duty and the whole system of ethics is based upon the concept of practical actuality. Since for the finite being everything actual is also possible, the right to act must exist wherever duty occurs, i.e., whatever conforms to a specific (moral) synthesis must also conform to'synthesis as such, but not vice versa/In the absolute I, however, there is no synthesis at all, therefore the concepts of duty and right are unthinkable. Nevertheless, the finite I must act as i f" right and duty existed for the absolute I; therefore it must determine its own action in the manner in which the being of the nonfinite would be determined if duty and right did exist for it)And in the absolute I, duty and right would be identical, because in it all that is possible would be actual, and all that is actual would be possible. Therefore the goal (Gegenstand) of all moral strife can also be represented as identification of duty and right. For, if every action to which a free being had a right were at the same time his duty, then his free actions would not presuppose any other norm than that of the moral law. For that reason in particular, the highest goal toward which the constitutions of states (which are based on the concept of duty and right) must work can be only that identification of the rights and duties of each single individual. If every individual were governed only by laws of reason, then in the state there would be no rights at all that would not at the same time be duties, for nobody would claim the right to any action not possible except by a universally valid maxim, and no individual would have in mind any but his own duty if all individuals were to follow only universally valid maxims. If all individuals fulfilled their duties, no one individual could demand more than what would already be realized by the general fulfillment of duty, not would he have any right to more. Right ceases as soon as its corresponding duty is fulfilled, for possibility is valid only as long as it is not set aside by actuality, and he who is in possession of
actuality (the fulfilled duty) worries no more about possibility (his right). This idea was also
AimiTioN To THE FIRST FIDITION: Kant was the first to establish the absolute I as the ultimate substratum of all being and of all identity (though he established it nowhere directly but at least everywhere indirectly), and the first to fix the real problem of the possibility of a certain something determinable even beyond mere identity - in a manner that (how shall one describe it? Whoever has read his deduction of the categories and his critique of the teleological power of judgment in the spirit in which everything he ever wrote must be read, sees the dept h of his meaning and insight, which seems almost unfathomable) in a manner I WI appears possible only in a genius who, rushing ahead of himself, as it were, can descend the steps from the highest point, whereas others can ascend only step by step.
the basis of Plato's republic since in it also everything that was practically possible was to become actual, and everything that was practically actual was to be possible. For that reason all coercion was to cease, because coercion of a being is needed only if that being has deprived himself of practical possibility. Suppression of the practical possibility in a subject is force, since practical possibility is conceivable only through ItertIoni.'"
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freedom which is based only on its own being and which it has only inasmuch as it is simply I, excluding in its very origin all not-I. This absolute freedom of the I is comprehensible \ only through itself. An absolute I that excludes all not-I has absolute freedom in that very respect, and that freedom ceases to be incomprehensible as soon as the I is removed from the sphere of all objects, and thus also from the sphere of all objective causality. But to transfer the I into the sphere of objectivity, and yet to attribute to it causality through freedom seems a risky enterprise. The question here is not about the absolute freedom of the absolute I ( 8), for that freedom is realized simply by itself, since it is the very causality of the I by which it simply posits itself as I. For the I is I only inasmuch as it is posited by itself, that is, by absolute causality. Thus the I, by positing itself, simultaneously posits its absolute, unconditional causality. In contrast, the freedom of the empirical I cannot possibly realize itself, because the empirical I as such does not exist through itself, [235] through its own free causality.(Neither could this freedom of the empirical I be absolute, as is the freedom of the absolute I, because the latter simply posits the mere reality of the I, whereas the causality of the freedom of the empirical I ought first to produce the absolute reality of the I\;, The freedom of the absolute I is by itself and is absolutely nonfinite, but the freedom of the empirical I is empirically infinite, because to produce an absolute reality is an empirically infinite task. The freedom of the absolute I is absolutely immanent, for it is only inasmuch as the I is pure I and is under no necessity to step out of itself. The freedom of the empirical I is determinable only as transcendental freedom, that is, as a freedom which is actual only in relation to objects, although not through them. The problem of transcendental freedom has continually had the sad fate of being always misunderstood and always brought up again. Indeed, even after the Critique of Pure Reason has shed so much light on it, the real point in dispute does not yet seem to be fixed sharply enough. The real issue was never the possibility of absolute freedom, for the very concept of an absolute excludes any determination by an extraneous causality. Absolute freedom is nothing other than the absolute determination of the unconditional by the sheer (natural) laws of its own being; it is the unconditional's independence of all laws that do not spring from its own essence, of all (moral) laws that would posit something in it which had not already been posited by virtue of its own being, through its being posited as such. Philosophy had either to deny the absolute altogether or, having conceded it, had also to grant it absolute freedom. The real issue never was the absolute but only transcendental freedom, that is, the freedom of an empirical I conditioned by objects. It is not incomprehensible that an absolute I should have freedom. The problem is how an empirical I could
,
have. freedom. It was not how an intellectual I* could be intellectual, that is, could be absolutely free, but rather how it is [236] possible that an empirical I could at the same time be intellectual, that is, could have causality through freedom. The empirical I exists only with and through objects. But objects alone could never produce an I. The empirical I owes the fact that it is empirical to objects, but it owes the fact that it is an I at all to a higher causality. In a system which asserts the reality of things in themselves, even the empirical I is incomprehensible; for the positing of an absolute not-I as antecedent to any I does away with every meaning of absolute I. Consequently, one can no longer understand how even an empirical I can be produced by those objects. Nor can such a system even speak of the transcendental freedom of an empirical I. But if the I is posited as absolute, excluding all [absolute] not-I, then not only does an absolute causality belong to it, but also it becomes comprehensible how an empirical I can be real, and how there can be a real transcendental freedom in it. The empirical I is I owing to the same causality through which the absolute I is I. It owes nothing to the objects except its limitations and the finiteness of its own causality. Thus the causality of the empirical I differs from the causality of the absolute I not at all in principle (in quality) but only in quantity. That its causality is causality by freedom it owes to its causality's identity with the absolute causality; that [237] it is transcendental (empirical**) freedom its owes only to its causality's finiteness. Thus, in the principle from which it proceeds, it is absolute freedom, and only when it meets its own limitations does it become transcendental, that is, freedom of an empirical I. Consequently, this freedom of the empirical I is comprehensible only owing to its identity with absolute freedom. Therefore no objective proofs' can reach it, for this freedom does indeed pertain to the I in regard to objects, but only inasmuch as it is contained in the absolute causality of the
'Kant remarks very correctly that the expression intellectual pertains only to insights (Erkenntnisse) and that the mere content (Gegenstand) of such insights should be called intelligible."' This remark is directed against dogmatism and its opinion that it can know intelligible objects (Objekte) which, therefore, it should not call intellectual. Criticism (at least consistent criticism) does not need that differentiation because it does not admit intelligible objects at all, and because it attributes intellectuality only to that which cannot become object at all, to the absolute I. In the absolute I, which can never become an object, the princtpium essendi and cognoscendi [the principle of being and of being known] coincide. For that reason one must apply the expression intellectual to the I as well as to the intuition thereof. In contrast, the empirical I can be called intelligible, inasmuch as its causality is contained in the causality of the absolute. It is intelligible because it must be regarded, on the one hand, as an object, on the other as determinable by absolute causality. **As has been pointed out before, in the footnote to 6, the word empirical is ordinarily used in a much narrower sense.
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absolute I. Nevertheless, it does not create its own reality since, as transcendental freedom, it is actual only in the empirical I, and nothing empirical realizes itself.ESince it is possible only through absolute causality, it is realizable in the empirical I only throughsorule fact, any fact by which it is posited as identical with the absolute freedom.; However, the empirical I is actual only through the limitation of the absolute, that is, through the _ y suspension (Aufhebung) of it as an absolute. Therefore, insofar as the empirical I is considered only in relation to objects as limits of the absolute (theoretical philosophy), its causality cannot at all be conceived as identical with the absolute( If the latter is to happen, then the causality of the empirical I must be conceived not in relation to objects but in relation ,je to the_ragaiion of all objects. For the negation of objects is precisely the point of agreement between absolute and transcendental freedom). For, although empirical freedom can aim only at empirical negation (an empirically produced negation) of objects, and not at the absolute negation of objects which the causality of the absolute I demands, still both coincide in the negation. Yet if this kind of causation on the part of the empirical I can be shown, then also shown is the fact that it does not differ from the absolute causality in its form or its principle but only in quantity (through its limitations). Absolute causality cannot be posited .categorically in the empirical I, else it would cease [238] to be empirical, therefore it can be posited in it only impratively, by a law which demands the negation of all objects, that is, demands absolute freedom. And K i Absolute causality can be demanded only by a causality which itself is not absolute freedom yet does not differ from the absolute in quality, only in rhus transcendental freedom is realized not only through the form of t moral law,'" but also through its matter or the moral law, which is possible only in the finite I (because the finite I alone can be aware that it ought to seek identity with the nonfinite), does not aim at absolute negation of all objects, constitutively. But imperatively it aims at a conditional negation of objects, which is to be brought about empirically, progressively)Tflus it aims at the absolute causality of the I, though not as something categorically posited, yet still as something that ought to be attained. But such demands can be made only of a causality which differs from absolute causality merely by its limitations. By negation of these (5 limitations, this limited causalityught to attain in itself what absolute causality as such posits absolutely.*)
'Anybody who so far as been following the trend of this investigation can readily see its difference from Reinhold's theory of freedom. The latter has great merits, but in his system (which starts frirthe merely empirical 1) that theory remains incomprehensible. And it would lir hard, even for as keen an author as lie is, to give unity to his system, and adequately to connect it with his theory of freedom, by Means of the highest principle (which should not
[239] Even though a transcendental causality of the empirical I is quite comprehensible if it is the nonfinite itself conceived under the conditions of finiteness, yet, since the empirical I has only phenomenal reality and stands under the same law of conditionality as do all phenomena, a new question arises: how can the transcendental causality of the empirical I (as determined by absolute causality) agree with the natural causality of the (me I? In a system which asserts the reality of things in themselves, this question cannot be answered at all; it cannot even be asked. or the system that posits an absolute not-I antecedent to all I therewith negates the absolute I* and cannot know anything about an absolute freedom of the I, let alone a transcendental freedom. When a system is inconsistent enough to declare, on the one hand, that- ere are things in themselves and, on the other, thattere is a transcendental freedom of the I, then it can never make comprehensible the agreement of the causality of nature with the causality through freedom, not even by means of a preestablished harmony_;Such a harmony cannot unite two absolutely contrary absolutes, [240] which would be necessary since two items are assertedan absolute not-I on the one hand and, on the other, an empirical I which is incomprehensible without an absolute. However, if the objects themselves receive reality only through the absolute I (as the essence of all reality) and therefore exist only in and with ' the empirical I (whose causality as such is possible only through the causality of the nonfinite and differs from it not in quality but only in quantity) then every causality of the empirical I is at the same time a
quantity.
3'
only form its basis but also rule in every one of its parts). A completed science shuns all philosophical artifices by which the I itself, so to speak, is taken apart and split into faculties which are not thinkable under any common principle of unity. The completed science does not aim at dead faculties that have no reality and exist only in artificial abstractions. It aims/.; rather at the living unity of the I, which is the same in all manifestations of its action. In that science all the different faculties and actions that philosophy has ever named become one faculty only, one action of the one and the same identifical I. Even theoretical philosophy is possible only in regard to the same causality of the I that is realized in practical philosophy, because its serves only to prepare the practical philosophy, and [adequately] to secure the objects proper to that causality of the I which practical philosophy determines. Finite creatures must exist in order that the nonfinite may manifest its reality in the actual world [Wirklichkeit]. All finite action aims at this manifestation of the nonfinite reality in actuality. And the only purpose of theoretical philosophy is to designate this domain of actuality for the practical causality and, in a way, to survey its boundaries. Theoretical philosophy is concerned with actuality 1Wirklichkeiti only in order that practical causality may have a domain in which that manifestation of nonfinite reality and a solution of its infinite task are possible.'" 'It is impossible that two absolutes should stand side by side. If the not-I is posited as absolutely antecedent to t he I, the I can be contrasted with it only as absolute negation. Two absolutes cannot possibly be contained (ii such in any synthesis, whether it precedes or supplements them, Fot t hat reason also, if t he I is posited as antecedent to all not I, the latter cannot be posited in any synthesis as absolute (as thing in itself).""

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[241]
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causality of objects which likewise owe their reality only to the essence of all reality, to the I. Thus we [too] arrive at a principle of preestablished harmony which, however, is only immanent, and is.sletermined only in the absolute I. Because a causality of the empirical I is possible only within the causality of the absolute I, and because the objects likewise receive their reality only through the absolute reality of the I, the absolute I is the common center in which lies the principle of their harmony. The causality of objects harmonizes with the causality of the empirical I for the single reason that they exist only in and with the empirical I. But that they exist only in and with the empirical I stems from the one fact that both the objects and the empirical I owe their reality solely to the nonfinite reality of the absolute I. Through just that preestablished harmony we are now able to understand the necessary harmony between morality and bliss (Gluckseligkeit). Since pure bliss, which is the only thing in question here, aims at the identification of the not-I and the I, and since objects as such are actual only as modifications of the absolute reality of the I, every increase in the reality of the I (every moral progress) is a reduction of the empirical limitations and an approach to identity with absolute reality, that is, to the total dissolution of the limitations. Since there is no imperative for the absolute I, no practical possibility, then, if the finite could ever fulfill its entire task, the law of freedom (of the imperative) would attain the form of a law of nature (of being). And vice versa, since then the law [241] of the finite's being would have become constitutive only through freedom, and this law itself would inherently be a law of freedom. * Therefore, the ultimate to which philosophy leads is not an objective but an immanent principle of preestablished harmony, in which freedom and nature are identical," and this principle is nothing but the absolute I, from which all philosophy has emanated. Just as there are no possibility, no necessity, and no contingency for the nonfinite I, so likewise it does not know of any purposes to be attained (Zweckverknupfung) in the world. If, for the nonfinite I, there were any mechanism or any technique of nature, then, for that I, technique would be* mechanism and mechanism would be technique, that is, both would coincide in its absolute being. Accordingly, even the theoretical inquiry
Through this we can answer the question as to which is the I that ought to progress in infinity. The answer is: the empirical I, which, however, does not progress in the intelligible world since, if it were in the intelligible world, it would cease to be the empirical I. In that world everything is absolute unity, and no progress, no finiteness is conceivable in it. Though the finite I is t only through intelligible causality,'" yet, as a finite being and as long as it is finite, it is determinable as to its existence only in the empirical world. To be sure, the finite being, whose causality is in line with the nonfinite. can always expand the limits of its finitude more and more but since this progression faces infinity, an unending expansion is possible, for if it were to stop anywhere, infinity itself would have to have limits.
must regard the teleological as mechanical, and the mechanical as teleological, and both as comprehended in one principle of unity, although nowhere realizable (as an object). 122 Y et the inquiry must presuppose that unity, in order to comprehend the unity of the two contrasting principles (the mechanical and the teleological) which is impossible in the objects themselvesin one principle that is sublimely above all objects. Just as practical reason is compelled to unify the contrast between laws of freedom and laws of nature in a higher principle in which freedom itself is nature and nature freedom,* so must theoretical [242] reason in its teleological use come upon a higher principle in which finality and mechanism coincide,** but which, on that very account, cannot be determinable as an object at all. What is absolute harmony for the absolute I is for the finite I elicited harmony, and the principle of unity is for the former the constitutive principle of immanent unity but for the latter only a regulative principle of objective unity which ought to become immanent. Therefore the finite I ought to strive to elicit in the world that which is actuality in the nonfinite, and which is man's highest vocation to turn the unity of aims in the world into mechanism, and to turn mechanism into a unity of aims.
[In an anticritique in the Intelligenzblatt zur Allgemeinen LiteraturZeitung of the year 1796, Schelling speaks of the aim of the treatise Vom Ich as follows:] The purpose of the author was none other than the following: to liberate philosophy from that stagnation into which it had unavoidably to lapse owing to ill-fated inquiries into a first principle of philosophy. He wanted to prove that true philosophy can start only from free actions, and that abstract principles as the mainstay of this science could lead only to the death of all philosophy. The question as to which (abstract) principle could furnish the starting point for philosophy seemed to him unworthy of
*Thus it becomes clear how and why teleology can be the connecting link between theoretical and practical reason.'" **Spinoza, too, wanted mechanism and finality of causes to be thought of, in the absolute principle, as contained in the same unity. But since he determined the absolute as an absolute object, he could never make comprehensible why it is that teleological unity in the finite intelligence can be determined only by the ontological unity in the nonfinite thinking of the absolute substance. And Kant is quite right when he says that Spinozism does not accomplish what Spinoza wants. Perhaps there have never been so many deep thoughts compressed into so few pages as in the critique of teleological judgment, 76. I Read the entire 76 (Cass. 5:479401; Bernard 219 53).1
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a free man who knows his own self. Since the author considers philosophy as a pure product of a free man, or as an act of freedom [243] he believes that he has higher conceptions of it than many a tearful philosopher who thought he had found the lack of unanimity among professors to be the cause of the atrocities of the French Revolution and of all unhappiness of mankind, and who wanted to remedy this unhappiness with an empty and futile principle in which he imagined philosophy to be contained as though in a box. The author believes that man was born to act, not to speculate, and that therefore his first step into philosophy must manifest the arrival of a free human being. Therefore he thought very little of written philosophy and even less of a speculative principle as a mainstay of the science. Still less does he think of a universally valid philosophy, a philosophy of which only a wiseacre should boast who, like Lessing's windmill, lives in friendship with all 32 winds. However, since the philosophical public seemed to have ears only for first principles, his own first principle in regard to his readers had to be a mere postulate. It demands the same free action as that with which, as he is convinced, all philosophizing must begin. The first postulate of all Izhilosoplly, to act free' seemed to him as necessary as the first postulate of geometry, to raw a straight line. just as little_ as the master of geometry_ proves the straight line should the_philosophex try to prove freedom. Philosophy itself is only an idea whose realization the philosopher can expect alone from practical reason. Therefore, philosophy must remain incomprehensible and even ridiculous as long as the student remains incapable of rising to ideas and also fails to learn from Kant that ideas are goals (Gegenstande) not of idle speculation but of free action, that the entire realm of ideas has reality only for the moral activity of man, and that man may not find any further objects where he himself begins to create and to make real. No wonder, then, that in the hands of a man who wants to determine ideas theoretically [i.e., as objects] anything that goes beyond the table of categories, and especially the idea of the absolute, is the same to him as some story of ]244] No-one-at-all. And at the spot where others first feel really free, he is confronted with a big void which he does not know how to fill, and which leaves him with no consciousness other than of his own vacancy of mind proof only that his mind has never learned to act freely nor to reflect on itself, and that he can maintain his own place among minds only by means of a mechanical kind of thinking.
Translator's Notes
1. Schelling is referring to the full title of Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics Which Will Be Able to Come Forth as Science. See Beck, p. vii.
2. Jakob Sigismund Beck (1761-1840) studied under Kant. The first part of his
Explanatory Summary of Kant's Critical Writings (Erlduternder Auszug aus Kants kritischen Schrzften) was printed 1793 in Riga, by Kant's own publisher, Hartknoch, to whom Kant
himself had recommended Beck as a commentator. See Kant's letter of September 27, 1791, to Beck (Cass. 10:97). 3. Kant himself was well aware of the "obligation to proceed systematically," as he says on the last page of the PuR (884; Smith 668 f.), and he cited "the celebrated Wolff as a representative" of the dogmatic procedure, and Hume of the skeptical. He said "the critical path alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy to accompany me along this path, he may now judge for himself. . .whether it may not be possible to achieve before the end of the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish." In 1790 he restated the task in that crucial sentence at the end of section 2 of the Introduction to Cr]: "There must be a ground of the unity of the supersensible which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains" (Cass. 5:244; Bernard 12). In 1787 he said of it in the preface to the first Critique: "It is a treatise on the method, not a system of the science itself' (xxii; Smith 25). And in its Introduction he called the book "the propaedeutic to the system of pure reason" (25; Smith 59). In a letter of September 21, 1798, to his friend Christian Garve he lamented that, "though being physically fairly well," he was as if "paralyzed for intellectual work. It is a Tantalic torture, though not without hope, to know the feasibility of the task, and to see before me the plenary conclusion of my account in matters which concern the whole of philosophy (in regard to both purpose and means) and yet never to see it completed" (Cass. 10:351). 4. On October 6, 1793, while still in Zurich, Fichte wrote to his friend Niethammer: 'It is my most fervent conviction that Kant merely intimated the truth but neither presented nor proved it. This marvelous, unique man either has the gift of divination by which he knows the truth without knowing its grounds, or else he did not think well enough of this age and therefore did not want to communicate what he knew, or perhaps he did not want to attract, while still alive, the superhuman veneration which sooner or later must be bestowed on him. . . .There is only one original fact in the human mind; it will furnish the ground for a comprehensive philosophy and for its two branches, theoretical and practical. Kant surely knows it but he has nowhere expressed it. He who finds it will present philosophy as a science" (Johann Gottlieb Fichte's Lehen and literarischer Briclivechsel, edited by his son Immanuel Hermann Fichte jLeipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1862j, 2:431 1.). Of course Schelling did not know this letter. On September 26, 1794, he sent Fichte his essay On the Pas.sibtlity of a Form of All Philosophy (ibid. 296 f.). And on January 6 (Epiphany), 1795, he wrtar I fee that Fichte had seat him the fascicles of Fichte's Grundlage zur Gesammten Wissenst haltslehre, whic h was it) c ome out in book Ito in by Easter 1795 (Plitt
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1:73 f.). In the Grundage (1:119) Fichte wrote: "The essence of critical philosophy consists in this, that an absolute I is set forth as wholly unconditioned and not determinable by any higher entity; and when this philosophy unfolds this principle consistently it becomes Wissenschaftslehre. In contrast, a philosophy is dogmatic when it equates or opposes aything to the I as such; and this occurs owing to the ostensibly higher concept of a thing (Ens) which is set up, quite arbitrarily, as the highest conception. Insofar as dogmatism can be consistent, Spinozism is its most consistent product" (cf. Heath 117). Meanwhile Schelling had discovered that independently. In 1797 Fichte wrote: "I know very well that Kant did not set up such a [criticall system. . .But I believe I know with equal certainty that Kant conceived such a system. . .There are hints that he did not want to present it" (1:478; cf. Heath 51). 5. Ethics 2, proposition XLIII, scholion. (See n. 44 below; cf. Wild 189.) Cf. Augustine (de vera rel. 39.72): Illuc ergo tende unde ipsum lumen rationis accenditur. 6. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, Uber die Lehre des Spinoza, in Briefen an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn (Werke 4:72): "In my opinion it is the greatest merit of the scholar to unveil and reveal what is" (Dasein zu enthiillen and offenbaren). "For him an explanation is a means, a way to the goal, but never the ultimate goal. His final goal is what cannot be explained, the indissoluble, the immediate, the simple." 7. As the title of Schelling's essay indicates, this is the I of which Fichte said: As I, "I am only for myself. Said about the I and by the I, to posit oneself and to be are identically the same." As I, "I am absolutely because I am, and I am absolutely what I am, both for myself' (1:98; cf. Heath 99). Schelling's expression "das unmittelbare nur sich selbst Gegenwartige im Menschen" may remind the reader of Augustine's summons to the mind or the self not to seek itself as if absent but to discern itself as present. De trinitate 10.ix.12: Non itaque velut absentem se quaerat cernere, sed praesentem se curet discernere. . . .Sed cum dicitur menti: Cognosce te ipsam, eo ictu quo intellegit quod dictum est te zpsam cognoscit se ipsam, nec ob aliud quam eo quod sibi praesens est. (Cf. n. 21.) 8. PuR said: "The proposition 'I think,' insofar as it amounts to the assertion, 'I exist as thinking,' is no mere logical function, but determines the subject (which is then at the same time object) in respect to its existence" (429; Smith 382. Also see n. 76 below). 9. Obviously referring to the problem of teleology in Crf (Cass. 5:435 ff.; Bernard 205 ff.). 10. This paragraph sounds as if Schelling had transcribed what he says from the first pages of Augustine's Soliloquies (1.i.2 and 3), whose sentences I here arrange in the order of Schelling's clauses: Deus per quem omnia quae per se non essent tendunt esse. Te invoco, Deus Veritas, in quo et a quo et per quem vera sunt quae vera sunt omnia. Deus Sapientia, in quo et a quo et per quem sapiunt quae sapiunt omnia. Deus intelligibilis Lux, in quo et a quo et per quem intelligibiliter lucent quae intelligibiliter lucent omnia. Deus cuius regnum est lotus mundus. . .Deus de cuius regno lex etiam in ista regna describitur. . . .Deus, I have no evidence that Schelling knew the Soliloquies. universitatis conditor. I I. This sounds exactly like Parmenides: -td yap aim!) vosiv to-utv Ti xai avat (Diels, vosi'v TE fragment 5; Plotinus 5.i.8) Or, in Parmenides' didactic poem yvatryOv cAsxsv vifelaa (Diels, fr. 8, 34; Hegel 13:296). Hegel's German formulation, translated into English, reads: "Thinking, and that for the sake of which thought is, are the same. For you will not find thinking without the being in which it expresses itself (manifests itself, is Ws stoyecialvov 'Ea-y(0." Hegel comments: "Genuine philosophizing started with Parmenides" (13:296 f.). 12. I legel continues: "Thinking produces itself; what is produced is a thought. Therefore thinking is identical with its being, for there is nothing outside of being, this great affirmation. Plotinus, in expounding this, says 'that Parmenides took this view insofar as he did not posit being in the sensuous things' " (Ennead 5.i.8; Brehier ed. 5.26.14 f.): lac cturyb
8v six iv Toffy a cerrrok t-cfeeTo Brehier says for ouvrIrxv "il reduisait a ]'unite." I should prefer to say: "he posited in one and the same act being and thought." Schelling's reminder that "this ultimate must not search for its own real ground in something other" calls to mind Augustine's de vera religione 39.72: cum ad seipsam veritas non utique ratiocinando perveniat, sed quod ratiocinantes appetunt, iposa sit. "Truth does not come to itself by ratiocination but is what argufiers seek." Cf. also Dante: Paradiso, xi: 1-3. 13. Cf. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Pt 1. Q.3. art. 5. 14. For this reason every empiricist epistemology must dispute the reality of knowledge and eventually lead to skepticism. 15. This is the valid reason for the objectivistic declaration that God is unknowable, a declaration that leads either to skepticism or to the postulate of revelation. 16. The second is the idealism, the third the realism of the textbooks. 17. Textbook idealism hypothetically assumes an entity called mind and, as does any other hypothesis, this one too induces the student's question What kind of thing is this mind? sed qualis res? (Descartes Meditatio II). Res means a real entity. But the Duc de Luynes translated res as une chose, and English translators followed suit, writing thing. Then Descartes' distinction between modes of reality falls flat. Mind is not a thing but an act. 18. In the self insofar as it is at all accessible as an object of psychology. 19. Schelling's sentence speaks of "original languages," urspriingliche Spraechen, a term current in German Romanticism. I refer to Fichte's entire fourth Address to the German Nation (1808). He says, "the words of such a language, in all its parts, are life and create life" (7:319). Originally, "language is no mediate product of arbitrary will but, as an immediate natural power, it breaks forth from intelligent life" (7:318). In 1813 he spoke of a "language ready made from being and intelligible from being" (4;485), not artificially affixed to extraneous entities by arbitrary will and intelligible only by schoolish explanations to be memorized by rote. This may not be readily understood by an English-speaking reader who does not share the belief of those German Romantics, who held that to know the German language means also to have an alive awareness of the meaning of its roots. Of course this is not so. The average German, like any human being, uses his language without giving a thought to the original and indeed revealing meanings of the roots of words. Only the educated person reminds himself of those meanings. The average writer of English spells by rote and does not say it is obvious that I must spell r-i-g-h-t because it is the same root as German Recht, and r-i-t-e because it was the Latin ritus. Nevertheless, those Romantics rightly sensed a difference between specific languages for, as my two examples show, even the educated English speaker and writer is less close to the root meanings of his words than a linguistically sensitive German who, without schooling, has a kind of innate feeling for Germanic roots. Fichte explains this by historic continuity without such breaks as that caused by the Norman conquest. But to go back to Schelling's paragraph, which furnishes an illustration of this matter of roots. In my translation I have used the verb to determine for bedingen, and the adjective conditional for bedingt. Now, when we speak of the reciprocal determination of subject and object, how readily do we think of the root word terminus? It means the end, e.g., of the road, like the main railroad terminal of Rome, Roma Termini, end of all lines. Yet we do use the word term in exactly that sense, end of the investigation, stop at some technical term. Once you have determined what a thing is, you have a term for it, e.g., atom, that which cannot be cut, or anatomy, the cutting into (a corpse). Now for Schelling's example. Ding is a thing, as even a non-German ear can tell us. And to determine, in scholarly language, means to set the limits of the thing which is under consideration, to delimit it, even to define it. Limes means boundary. Finis means end, as in land's end, lints terme, e.g., at Cap Finisterre. No thing determines or conditions itself; it requires surrounding things for that. Cutoff/1w tomes from du up, W1111'11 111e41111 11111111111011,
auvfly -ev 5v Rai voCiv, xa
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sovereignty, authority, control, rule. And it is the surrounding things which control the sway of any given thing. Each has its own jurisdiction, one might say. The unconditional is what does not depend on anything outside of it and is absolutely authoritative. Cf. n. 86. 20. In this respect Schelling, as does every true philosopher, agrees with the empiricist's objection to the kind of rationalist who will take essence for existence. Only in the case of God are essence and existence identical. See Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles 1.22 and Summa Theologica 1. q3. a4. Kant could agree; see Fritz Marti, "Aquinas and Kant on the Identity of Essence and Existence," in Proceedings of the Lewis and Clark Philosophy Conference on Aquinas and Kant, May 1974. 21. The word causality, of course, does not mean Kant's category of cause, which "constitutes" objects. Rather it recalls Spinoza's causa sut on the first line of his Ethics, with which Schelling was very familiar. The entire paragraph is a rewording of sentences in Fichte's Grundlage of the summer of 1794, whose first fascicles gave Schelling courage to join the discussion. (See n. 7 above). What is objectionable is the fact that both of them use the pronoun it when they refer to the self or I. Perhaps one should not even try to present the case in writing, but should merely challenge the reader with the question: "Just exactly what do you mean when you say I?" A clearly thinking reader could reply: "I mean myself as this thinking I which in no way can be turned into an it." And, instead of saying with Augustine that he is sibi praesens (present to himself), he should say sum mihi praesens (I am nothing but present to myself). He certainly must not look for an objective mind in himself. In 1798 Schelling wrote that "for most people the greatest obstacle to a vivid understanding of philosophy is their insuperable opinion that one must look for the object of philosophy at some infinite distance; thus it happens that when they are supposed to look at what is present they spend every effort of their mind on creating some object with which the philosophical investigation is not at all concerned" (2:377). Augustine said: Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi; in interiore homine habitat veritas (Do not go outside, go back into yourself; in the inner man dwells truth). (De vera religione 39.72.) 22. In German, condition is Bedingung. Given the proper conditions, the respective thing (Ding) will exist. Taking liberties with English, let us say that a thing is a thing because it is "thingified" (bedingt) by the conditions or "thingifiers." In contrast, the I is "unconditionable" (unbedingbar), since it does not depend on outward conditions but posits itself. The word itself, of course, is quite improper, because I am no it at all, though objectifying talk will turn the first-person pronoun I into a noun, the I. 23. Schelling may have in mind the emphatic formulation of Descartes on the second page of the Second Meditation: statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum: ego sum, ego existo, quoties a me profertur vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. I am trying to retain the emphasis by translating that we must "establish this axiom that the proposition /am, I exist is necessarily true each time I mean my own self when I pronounce it, or know that I mean my own self when I have the proposition in mind." The Duc de Luynes translated "il faut conclure," and Ralph M. Eaton (Descartes. Selections [New York: Scribner's, 1927), p. 97) wrote "we must come to the definite conclusion." These translations are not wrong, but their word conciusUm, which refers to what preceded, could induce the careless reader to think of the misleading ergo so often quoted. It is true that later, in the Response to the Second Objections, Descartes did write cogito ergo sum, but he did so while warning the reader that /IT "whosoever says I think, therefore I am or exist, does not deduce existence from cogitation by a syllogism, but rather acknowledges the existence as a reality known by itself, by a simple mental intuition." Descartes' own words are: neque cum quis dicit, ego cogito, ergo sum, sive exists, existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notam simplici mentis intuitu agnoscit. Later, in the Second Meditation, Descartes wrote: "That it is 1 who doubt, understand, will, is so manifest that nothing could occur by which it could be unfolded more evidently." (See his Latin in n.76 below.) Long before this Augustine had
pointed out the reason: "When the mind is told 'know yourself,' it knows itself by the very stroke by which it understands, what is meant by "yourself," and for no other reason than that the mind is present to itself' (De trinitate 10.ix,12: Cum dicitur menti "Cognosce te ipsam," eo ictu quo intellegit quod dictum est "te ipsam" cognoscit se ipsam, nec ob aliud quam eo quod sibi praesens est). As I, I am present to myself, and nothing is more evident than the awareness of this fact, which strikes me the moment the meaning of you yourself strikes me. In Fichte's pithy formulation of 1794, "the I is for the I" (Grundlage der Wissenschaftslehre, 1:97 f. Heath used a noun, p. 99: "The self exists for the self. . . .I exist only for myself." Meaning, of course, I as I, not the empirirical individual.) 24. Adopting the artifice of n. 22 and saying "to thingify" for bedingen, I could translate: "Therefore whatever is posited only as thingified is conceivable only through that which is no thing at all but is unthingifiable." 25. The date of the preface indicated that the treatise Of the I was finished March 29, 1795. In the letter of February 4 that Schelling wrote to Hegel he said: "It seems to me that the essential difference between critical and dogmatic philosophy lies in this, that the critical starts from the absolute I (not yet conditioned by any object) and the dogmatic from the absolute object or not-I. (In its highest consistency, the latter leads to the system of Spinoza, the former to that of Kant) Philosophy must take its start from the unconditional. The question is simply where this unconditional lies, in the I or in the not-I. If this question is answered, everything is decided. For me the highest principle of all philosophy is the pure, absolute I, that is, the I insofar as it is nothing but I, not yet conditioned by any objects, but posited by freedom. The A and 0 of all philosophy is freedom." And, using the phrase theoretical reason in the Kantian sense of reason concerned with objects, Schelling adds: "What was impossible for theoretical reason (as it is weakened by the object) is accomplished by practical reason. However in the latter we can find nothing but our absolute I, for this ." alone circumscribes the nonfinite sphere. For us there is no supersensuous world except that of the absolute I. God is nothing but the absolute I, the I insofar as it annihilates everything theoretical." (Schelling writes "das Ich insofern es Alles theoretisch zernichtet hat." This looks like a slip of his pen, or a simple mistake of the printer. It is my conjecture that Schelling meant "alles Theoretische," that is, every mere object.) Schelling continues: "Therefore in theoretical philosophy the absolute I is nothing." Every consistent "theoretical," i.e., objectivistic, philosophy must discover that there is no such object as an absolute I, or God. In Dogm Schelling will declare that the discovery (made by Kant) is shared by dogmatist and criticist alike. In his letter to Hegel he continues: "Personality springs from the unity of consciousness. But consciousness is not possible without an object. However, for God, that is, for the absolute I there exists no object at all, for with an object it would cease to be absolute. Consequently there is no personal God" (Plitt 1:76f). In January 1795 Hegel had referred to Schelling's letter, written at Epiphany, in which Schelling had sarcastically said of the Kantians in Tilbingen: "It is a joy to see how they pull at the moral proof as at a string; in the twinkling of an eye the deus ex machina jumps forth, that personal, individual being which sits up there, in heaven!" Hegel wrote that he did not quite understand that passage and asked: "Do you believe we cannot reach that far?" (Werke [Leipzig, 18871 19:13). And Schelling replied: "My answer is that we reach farther than the personal being" (Plitt 1:76). j Since to be conscious means to distinguish the I from some not-I, the clause "not yet conditioned by any object" means "before consciousness." Between 1828 and 1842 Schelling wrote: "One cannot ask how consciousness comes to God. Its very first movement is not a movement which seeks the God, but a movement which withdraws from Him. Therefore the God inheres in it a priori, that is, before its actual motion, or it inheres in its essence" (12:120). Cf. n.74 to Dogm. Schelling seldom uses the phrase "the God." Here it may he an abbreviation for "the true God" whom the aged Schelling distinguishes from "the real God," (For instance, 11:176 and
134
[i 25-33]
[i 33-36]
135
212.) The latter has historical reality, occurring in the minds of believers and therefore taking as many shapes as there are believers. In the mind of the believer his own "real God" stands for "the true God" as, obviously, it does for Paul in 1 Cor. 8:5. 26. Once God is defined as substance (Eth. 1. def. vi ) and shown as not acting freely (1. prop. XXXII, cor. ii), that is, as absolute object, then to say that God loves Himself with an infinite intellectual love (5. XXXV) must mean that the love with which God loves Himself is the intellectual love for God harbored by the mind (5. XXXVI), which is res cogitans (2. def. iii), that is, self-aware I. Vice versa, this I is maximally occupied by its love for the not-I (5. XVI) and knows itself to be in that objectified God and to be known by God (5. XXX). To be sure, at that moment, God proves to be the absolute I, that is, the substance which is defined as "what is in itself and is perceived by itself' (1. def. iii). Hegel would call this a dialectical transition into the opposite. 27. Schelling's words den Weg zur Wissenschaft presumably refer to two literary facts, first to the full title of Kant's Prolegomena "to every future metaphysics which can stand up as a science" and, second, to Fichte's term Wissenschaftslehre, coined 1794 as a substitute for the too-vague word philosophy (1:44 f.). Fichte's term meant the systematic and critical study of what a science is, as science. Philosophy could mean the same, but it could also include an uncritical dogmatism. Our twentieth-century dogmatists still seek the unconditional in some objective entity and thus "elevate the not-I" to the dignity of the absolute I, and demean the latter to a psychological entity, that is, to a not-I. 28. This is the system of those Kantians who believe that Kant was no more than a mere continuator of empiricism. 29. Schelling is referring to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's Versuch einer neuen Theorie des menschlichen Vorstellungsvermdgens Uena, 1789). 30. This, in Fichtean language, is Kant's doctrine taken in its narrowest sense; the categories of reason constitute the objectivity of things. 31. For instance, Fichte's second theorem, that there is no awareness of I without the simultaneous distinction from some not-I (Grundlage, 1:104, item 10; Heath 104,10). 32. In his letter of February 4, 1795, to Hegel, Schelling wrote: "The A and 0 of all philosophy is freedom." (See n. 25.)33. As earlyas 1792, in the Recension des A enesidemus, Fichte wrote!' "The I is what it is, and because it is, for the I" (1:16). In the essay of 1794, Ober den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre, he said: "I am, because I am" (1:69). In the same year, in the Grundlage, he wrote: "The I posits itself, and it is owing to this sheer positing by ifself. . . .As soon as it posits itself, it is; and because it is, it posits itself' (1:96 f.). Fichte enjoyed a lifelong reputation as an effective orator, and he well knew the principle of effective teaching. In his ldeen fur die innere Organisation der Universitdt Erlangen, 1805/6, he wrote: "The entire presentation in the classroom must be changed from the form of an unbroken argument which it has in a book and be transformed into back and forth discussion" (11:278). But since he seldom had fewer than 200 students in his class, it required Fichte's imperious presence to bring about in the student mind that silent discussion with the lecturer which alone can produce understanding, particularly the understanding of the nature of I. Heinrich Steffens attended a class of Fichte's in 1798, and he relates that Fichte started by saying: "Gentlemen, get hold of yourselves; observe yourself, for we speak of nothing outward but only of your selves." Steffens reports that the students would either sit up alertly, or bend in contempation. Then Fichte said: "Gentlemen, think the wall- Have you thought the wall? - Now think the one who has thought the wall!" (Fritz Medicus, Fichtes Leben 'Leipzig, 1922], p. 78). Even in print the summons may help the reader realize what the concern is. For many, the physical presence of the teacher and the challenge of his voice seem indispensable and may count more than the mere choice of words. As for Fichte's words quoted above, the semantic purist ought to object, on more than mere grammatical grounds. "The 1 is" is not only had grammar but
can be pedagogically misleading. Fichte himself knew it. Maybe he should have blamed himself rather than lampooning readers who did not understand him and of whom he said, in 1801: "They may have believed that such a pure I, identical with itself and collapsing into itself, somewhat like a switchblade, must be looked for and found in the mind, somehow like the waffle iron of the categories of the Kantians. They busily looked for this switchblade, found none, and concluded that those who claim to have found it must have been mistaken" (2:365). (Cf. nn. 7 and 21.) 34. This is also the case of the empirical I. As the person I am, I am determined by my physical and historical circumstances. Hence the question: What is the ground of possibility of my autonomous self-determination? It is that question which leads to the "absolute I" - or God, as Schelling said in his letter to Hegel of February 4, 1795. (See n. 25.) It must be remembered, however, that Schelling, as a disciple of Kant, heeded Kant's warning against reifying the ens realissimum (PuR 633-36) which must not be "realisiert d.i. zum Object gemacht"(PuR 611 n.; not be made "real," i.e., not turned into an object) or personified. In 1802 Schelling wrote: "Owing to the relation of the absolute form to the essence, it is easy to see what alone can be the only true method of philosophy, that is, the method according to which everything is absolute, yet there is no Absolute" (4:406). We need not forbid ourselves the use of the word God, but we must know that "God is not Somebody" (Gott ist nicht Jemand) as my teacher Fritz Medicus used to say. See also page 118 of his book On Being Human (New York: Ungar, 1973). Later Gabriel Marcel wrote "Dieu nest pas quelqu'un qui. . ." tire et Avoir, p. 118 (Paris: Aubier, 1935). 35. The reader will rightly ask whether this long paragraph could not also have been written by a dogmatist who seeks the unconditional in an absolute object; like Spinoza's substance, or the average churchgoer's God. As the paragraph is worded, its author could be a dogmatist. But as the two subsequent paragaphs show, Schelling does not write as a theist, but as a philosopher who makes clear that the form of unconditionality is I. There is no unconditional it. Such an it would be nothing but an irresistable power. This is why Aristotle's God moves nothing by force but is efficacious only as lovable (Metaphysics 1072b4: coc cocoaEvov). In the opening prayer of the Soliloquies, Augustine addresses his God as the one "whom every being loves that can love, whether knowingly or unwittingly" (quem amat omne quod potest amare, sive sciens sive nesciens; Solil. 1.i.2). And Nietzsche's last Pope says to Zarathustra, "you are more pious than you believe. Some God converted you to your godlessness. Is it not your piety which no longer lets you believe in God?;; (Zarathustra, pt. 4, "Out of Service"). Referring to Nietzsche, Paul Tillich speaks of "an atheism which is justified as the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications" (The Courage To Be [New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952]), p. 185. Tillich says of theism: " 'Personal God' does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of everything personal. 'Personal God' is a confusing symbol" (Systematic Theology [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951] 1:245). 36. This is quite true in the abstract, in objectivistic thinking. But has not Schelling stressed all along that, as far as the I is concerned, it is both conditioner and conditioned? Here, theologically speaking, he is right in stressing the hiddenness of God which, however, does not annihilate His omnipresence, manifest in the human mind. The mind experiences the challenge to seek its own ground. Augustine speaks of God "whom no one seeks unless reminded, whom no one finds unless purified" (Sold. 1.i.3)- obviously, purified of the natural trend to seek outside: "Do not want to go outside, go back into yourself; in the inner man dwells truth" (De vera religione xxxix.72). "As I hope, God will surely grant that I may be able to answer you or, rather, that He Himself will answer you through that inwardly teaching truth which is the highest teacher of all" (De !Mem arhitrio 2.ii.4); "Oh eternal truth. . . you are my Godl" (Con/eimott., 7. x.16); "God toward whom to reach means to love, whom to see means to have" (Soh/ I.i .3); "Father of the security whereby we are reminded to go back to Thee" (ibid. I.i.2).
[i 43-47] 136
137
[i 37-43]
37. This is what Kant called "the original synthetic unity of apperception" (PuR 131, 16). He said: "The I think must potentially accompany all my images [Vorstellungen], otherwise something would be imagined, in me, that could not be thought at all, which means that the image would either be impossible, or else be nothing at all for me." 38. Religion says we live in God. For Augustine, God is the "true life," and in Him "live all who truly live" (Sold. 1.i . 3). We may not know this because, as Schelling says, the very first movement of our consciousness is a movement away from God (12:120). Yet life is life, and it desires to find its ground and home. On the first page of the Confessions Augustine says in prayerful meditation: "It is You who stir us (excitas, rouse us from our numbness) so that we delight in praising You, because you made us for You (ad te, directed toward you) and our heart is restless until it rests in You." Since we love life, we love God, "whom every being loves that can love, knowingly or unwittingly" (Solil.1.i.2). When it dawns on us that we do love God unwittingly, we want to "know Him." Yet to know means to posit an object. And God is no object at all. Therefore we speak of the hidden God. And then we declare that He reveals Himself, which is what, by definition, the thing in itself cannot do. So we define God as Love. The mystic desires to lose himself in God, by a kind of blessed death. But the ordinary man does not want to die. Therefore he worships. Prayer comes close yet keeps a distance. It identifies the empirical I with the absolute and, at the same time, retains the distinction. "It is the character of finiteness to be unable to posit anything without at the same time positing something in contrast." 39. My word power may mislead the reader. It derives from the Latin posse, to be able. All ability has a measure and is conditional. Unconditional power is a contradiction in terms. Scholastics will tell us that there is no potency in God. Schelling says Macht which, like English might, has a root in Gothic magan and German mogen or yermiigen which, in turn, mean to be able. "Gott vermag alles": God can do anything-not by exorbitant power, but unconditionally. All power is limited. (See my 1946 paper, "The Power of the Gods and the Freedom of God," in Faith and Freedom [Liverpool, 1953]. The German original, "GOttermacht and Gottesfreiheit," appeared in Natur and Geist [Zurich: Rentsch, 19461.) The so-called power of God is his freedom. In 1811 Schelling wrote: "With respect to his highest self, God is not revealed [since the revelatory visions present a God already past, not his face but his "back parts" (Exodus 33:23)1, he is revealing himself; he is not real, he becomes real, for the very purpose of being manifest as the most free" (Die Weltalter, 8: 308). (Cf. Frederick Bolman's translation, The Ages of the World [New York: Columbia University Press, 19421, p. 196). 40. The English term intuition is here less misleading than the German word Anschauung Schauen does not mean to show, as the same root has come to mean in English, but to look, and anschauen means to look at. Since there is here no object, there is nothing to look at. Instead we are required to look into ourselves. This is why Augustine says "go back into yourself' (n. 21). 41. PuR 152-59. Cf. pp. 68, 135, and 308. In contrast, and close to Schelling's assertion, 42. Spinoza argued that there can be only one substance, God. (Ethics, pt. 1, prop. XIV: Praeter Drum nulla dari neque concipi potest substantia.) 43. It makes no sense. In fact, spatial infinity can accommodate an infinite number of points. A point is the better symbol for the I. But Parmenides had already fallen into the temptation of visualizing when he blew up his Being into a sphere which looks the same from all sides and thus seemed to symbolize identity. In 1827, in the Logic of the second edition of the Encyclopedia (I3 94) Hegel wrote: "This infinity is the bad or negative infinity, being only the negation of the finite which, however, reoccurs as soon as it is canceled. In short, this infinite says only that the finite ought to he set aside. The infinite progression stops at
expressing the contradiction which everything finite contains" (6:184). Language has the means to distinguish the negative infinite from the positive nonfinite. Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling, by failing to distinguish between u ...t4LAc r_ llih and nichttndlich, all gave license to the Romantic confusion which the word infinite still causes in many minds. The present translation calls the I nonfinite rather than infinite. Cf. the whole page of Zusatz 2 to 104 of the Encylopedia (6:209), where Hegel says that, in order to reach the truly nonfinite, "we must renounce the progressus in infinitum" (6:210). 44. In the copy of the essay Poss. which Schelling sent to his friend Pfister, he wrote as a dedication the same words of Spinoza that he quotes here, and he added the same exclamation in German that he adds here (Plitt 1: 55n): Quid idea vera clarius et certius dari potest, quod norma sit veritatis! Sane sicut lux se ipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est. Was geht Ober die stille Wonne dieser Worte, das EY sat nay of a better life. Tubingen, at the end of the year 94. This is Schelling's satirical paraphrase of Jacobi's passage quoted in n.6 above. Schelling does say entlitilt, i.e., contains by its strict form of mat, and not as a container like that "infinite sphere" of page 183 of Of I, which accommodates any number of finite spheres (but also gives each of them its spherical form, owing to which all are "contained" in sphericity). Parmenides discovered the formal identity of thinking and being (Diels, fr.5; Plotinus Enn. 5.i.8). (See n. 47.) Spinoza says whatever is, is in God. (Ethics, pt. 1, prop. XV: Quicquid est in Deo est, et nihil sine Deo concipi potest.) 47. Compare Schelling's footnote to his page 214 of Of I: "Now, the process of all synthesis is such that whatever is absolutely posited in both thesis and antithesis is posited in the synthesis with qualifications, that is, merely conditionally." When Schelling wrote Of the I he had at hand the second fascicle of Fichte's Grundlage (see bottom line of Plitt 1:73) to which he may be referring here. Fichte wrote (1:115; cf. Heath 113): "7. Just as antithesis is not possible without synthesis, nor synthesis without antithesis, so are both impossible without thesis, that is, without an absolute positing by which an A (the I) is simply posited without positing it as identical with another nor as opposed to another." It was Kant who had referred to this logic of triplicity, in the second of his "pretty observations" (artige Betrachtungen; Smith [115] quite aptly says "nice points") regarding the interrelation between any three categories among the four groups of them. Kant wrote: "It is my second remark that there is the same number of categories in each gr . oup, namely three. This is a challenge to reflect on, because otherwise all a priori subdivision of concepts must proceed by dichotomy. Add to this that in each group the third category springs from the connection of the second with the first" (Pur 110). Dichotomy is indeed the procedure of abstract logic and of popular thinking: either A or not-A; either for us or against us; either God or the Devil. As a child of the Enlightenment, Kant was inured to this mode of thinking. But as a genuine, responsible thinker he senses the challenge of this "nice point," although he does not yet fully accept it, not quite aware of the danger that the triplicity could be abused and turned into a dead rote such as the textbooks falsely attribute to Hegel: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Gustav E. Muller reminded us that Hegel "refers to 'thesis, antithesis, and synthesis' in the 45. 46.
ire pp. 429 and 157n.
Preface of the Phaenomenology of Mind, where he considers the possibility of this 'triplicity'
as a method or logic of philosophy. According to the Hegel-legend one would expect Hegel to recommend this 'triplicity'. But, after saying that it was derived from Kant, he calls it a 'lifeless schema', 'mere shadow' and concludes: 'The trick of wisdom of that sort is as quickly acquired as it is easy to practice. Its repetition, when once it is familiar, becomes as boring as the repetition of any hit of sleight of hand once we see through it. The instrument for pr od ucing t his monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle that the palette of a
138
[i 47-55]
[January 1958].
[i 55-64]
139
painter, on which lie only two colors...' " (2:39 f.; Lasson ed. 2:41-43). (See "The Hegel Legend of 'Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,' "Journal In the
1, prop. X). He defined substance as "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; in other words, that, the conception of which does not need the conception of any other things
of the History of Ideas
Muller calls the legend a Marxistic smear and shows how Marx got his twisted idea (ibid. 414).
[res, i.e.,
reality] from which it must be formed." This, of course, correspondes precisely to
Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
Hegel spoke of the "mindless schema of
Schelling's definition of the I. In his February 4, 1795, letter to Hegel he said: "Meanwhile I have become a Spinozist! Don't be amazed. You will soon hear in what way. For Spinoza the world (the object in simple contrast to the subject) was everything, for me it is the I" (Plitt 1:76; what then follows in the letter is quoted in n.25). Schelling's is a Spinozism in reverse, replacing it by I. The word God stands for either of the two. If it stands for it (in "dogmatism") then, Paul Tillich would say, "atheism is justified as the reaction against" a theism in which "God appears as the invincible tyrant." Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952], p. 185. Cf. Chicago Press, 1951], 1:237 and 245.) 56. Spinoza says: "No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it would follow that substance can be divided" (ibid. prop. XII). The reader may wish to compare Spinoza's demonstration with Schelling's argument. 57. Spinoza says: "Besides God, no substance can be nor can be conceived." (ibid., prop. XIV.) In a long letter dated 'Tschugg near Erlach, via Bern, August 30, 1795" the lonely Hegel thanked Schelling profusely for the gift of
triplicity." "Thus Kant prescribed a rhythm of knowledge, of scientific movement, as a universal schema, and set up everywhere thesis, antithesis and synthesis" (15:551). "In a historical manner, Kant listed the moments of the whole and determined and distinguished them correctly; it is a good introduction to philosophy. But the defect of the Kantian philosophy lies in the disintegration (Auseinanderfallen) of the moments of absolute form" (15:552). See the entire passage, 15:550-53. 48. Parmenides speaks of the "deceitful world of words" (Diets fr. 8:52) which would lead to the "unthinkable" declaration "that Not-Being necessarily is" (Diets fr. 4:6 and 5), as the "opinions of mortals" (fr. 8:51) would hold. I know that Kirk and Raven endeavor to tone down the Hegelian reading of Parmenides (The Pr-esocratic Philosophers,[ Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962]. I side with Hegel
(The Courage to Be [New Haven, Systematic Theology [Chicago: University of
(Lectures on the History of Philosophy,
13:296 et passim). / 49. This is the principle of the deduction of the categories to which Schelling referred in the preface (154 of 50.
Of I). Dogm.
that, on the basis of Kant's
This leads to the thesis of
Critique,
dogmatism is as
Of I. However,
he says: "You cannot expect
critical remarks on your essay. Here I am only an apprentice. I am trying to study Fichte's
possible as criticism, theoretically speaking. The reader may by now be well beyond the need of being reminded of the 51. Parmenidean discovery that the form of isness is I, i.e., vostv 52. Of course, not in the empirical I, where idealists like Berkeley try to posit it. 53.0n the first page of his Attempt at a Critique of All Revelation, written in 1791 and published in 1792, Fichte wrote that the concept of revelation ought to be investigated and, since it is a religious concept, "the investigation must be made from a priori principles of practical reason" (5:15), because we must "attribute to practical reason a dominant power over theoretical reason, though only in line with the laws of the former" (5:49). On January 6, 1795, Schelling wrote to Hegel that Fichte himself had sent him the first part of the
Grundlage.
But permit me one remark to show my good will to satisfy your desire for such
remarks. In 12 you give the I the attribute of being the only substance. It seems to me that, insofar as substance and accident are interdependent concepts, the concept of substance could not pertain to the absolute I but only to the empirical I as it occurs in self-consciousness. Yet the preceding [11] makes me believe that you are not speaking of the latter I (which unites the highest thesis and antithesis), for in that you attribute indivisibility to the I, a predicate which would pertain only to the absolute I, not to the I that occurs in self-consciousness. In the latter the predicate could posit only a part of the reality [of the empirical I]"
(Briefe von and an Hegel,
ed. Karl Hegel [Leipzig, 1887], 1921). Schelling's delayed answer
of January 1796 ignored Hegel's query but mentioned the second installment of to appear in issue 5 of Niethammer's
Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre
(Plitt 1:73). There (1:126) Fichte wrote "that it is
Dogm.
soon
Philosophical journal.
(Plitt 1:93 and Hegel 19:22 n. 3.)
not in fact the theoretical faculty which makes possible the practical, but on the contrary, the practical which first makes possible the theoretical (that reason in itself is purely practical, and only becomes theoretical on application of its laws to a not-self that restricts it)" (Heath 123). Spinoza defines God as "Being absolutely infinite" (ibid., def. vi.) Per Deum intelligo 54. ens absolute infinitum. This definition does away with any objective God, if we will but replace the word (Spinoza. should have obscured the fact that, in form, Spinoza was what Schelling calls a dogmatist. I
58. Spinoza says: "Whatever is is in God and nothing can either be or be conceived without God" (Ethics 1. prop. XV). 59. Spinoza defines modes as "the affections of substance" (def. v) and he says they "can be only in the divine nature, and through it alone can they be conceived" (prop. XV, demonstr.). 60. 61. Augustine says of God "fecisti nos
infinite by nonfinite. I am not saying that John Wild, in his 1930 translation Selections 'New York: Scribner's], p. 94) should have replaced it and thereby
ad te" (Confessions
1.1.1).
It is obvious that Schelling is addressing the Kantians in their predicament of trying to
synthesize the not-I as such with the I as such. 62. Spinoza says: "God is the immanent and not the transitive cause of all things" (Ethics 1 prop. XVIII). John Wild (117) adds a footnote: "Transiens, passing over and into from the outside." Popular theism turns God into an outside cause. But before they act, outside causes are mere potentialities. Popular imagination locates God outside in space and thus, perhaps unintentionally, conceives of Him as a body (called "a spirit"). Aquinas says "to be pure act properly belongs to God" (S. Th. Ia. IIae. Q. 50, art. 6: esse actum purum est proprium dei). 63. This could explain the standpoint of a purely voluntaristic and antirational theology, perhaps starting with Tertullian. 64.
do suggest that the student make the replacement and, in that way, be able to find a tenable sense of Spinoza's definition vi and its explanation. In the essay of 1794 (Poss. 102) Schelling said that Spinoza "transposed the original form I Uriorm of knowledge from his own Ito a very different concept, quite independent of the I, the conception of a connotation of all possibility." And in a footnote to the preceding page ( Puri. 101 11.) Schelling said that our awareness of this kind of transposition will stop "the idle talk about objective proofs for the existence of God," and "then there will also be an end to the persistent question as to whether a thing in itself exists (in other words, whether something that does not appear can be an appearance)." Spinoza said: "Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself, For an 55. attribute is that which the intellect perceives of substance as if constituting its substance by definition iv), and therefore (by definition iii) it must be conceived through itself' (Ethics, pt.
PuR
842:
Gliickseligkeit,
bliss or (as Norman Kemp Smith translates) "happiness, in
exact proportion with the morality of rational beings who are thereby rendered worthy of it, alone constitutes the supreme good of that world wherein, in accordance with the commands of a pure but practical reason, we are under obligation to place ourselves." Cf. 883 f., 837, 839.
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65. PuR 837-38, e.g. (Smith 638 f.): "a system of self-rewarding morality is only an idea, the carrying out of which rests on the condition that everyone does what he ought, that is, that all the actions of rational beings take place just as if they had proceeded from a supreme will that comprehends in itself, or under itself, all private wills. . . .The alleged necessary connection of the hope of happiness with the incessant endeavor to render the self worthy of happiness cannot therefore be known through reason. It can be counted upon only if a Supreme Reason [eine h8chste Vernunft] that governs according to moral rules [Gesetzen] be likewise posited as underlying nature as its cause." 66. PuR 597 (Smith 486): "As the idea gives the rule [Regel], so the ideal. . .serves as the archetype [Urbild] for the complete determination of the copy [Nachbild]." 67. PuR 581 (Smith 476:) "In respect of the intelligible character. . .the empirical character is the sensible schema." 68. In the later part of his Grundlage (1:286) Fichte wrote: "If Wissenschaftslehre were confronted with the question How are the things in themselves really structured Ebeschaffenl,
it could not answer except by saying, the way we ought to structure [machen] them" (Cf. Heath 252; see below, N.R. , n. 32). Fichte may have taken his cue from the Critique of judgment ( 84, Cass. 5: 515; Bernard 285 f.), where Kant says that the existence [Dasein] of man contains in itself "the highest purpose to which, as far as is in his power, he can subject the whole of nature." Schelling may have known the passage in Fichte, though it is not likely since the Grundlage appeared in book form only at Easter 1795 and Schelling's preface is dated March 29. On January 6 he had written to Hegel that he had just received "from Fichte himself the beginning [emphasis added] of Fichte's exposition, the Grundlage. . .which is not yet available as a book but only as manuscript [in printed fascicles] for Fichte's students" (Plitt 1:73 f.).
69. PuR 425 (Smith 379): "man alone can contain in himself the final end of all this order" of nature. PuR 868 (Smith 658): "the ultimate end. . .is no other than the whole
vocation of man." The latter phrase may have furnished the title of Fichte's book of 1800, Die Bestimmung des Menschen. (Cf. PuR 492. However also cf. Fichte 6:289.) 70. The.old Schelling (but before 1836) says Lord (Herr) instead of power (Macht). "One could say: God is really nothing in itself; he is nothing but relation, and pure relation, for he is only the Lord. Everything else that we might add would turn him into a sheer substance. He is, as it were, really good for nothing but for being Lord of all being. For he is the only nature not concerned with itself, rid of itself, and therefore absolutely free. Everything substantial is concerned with itself, confined within itself, afflicted by itself. God alone has nothing to do with himself, he is sui securus (sure of himself and therefore rid of himself) and therefore is concerned only with other entities he is, one might say, entirely outside of himself, free of himself, and is thus the being that sets everything else free" (Darstellung des phdosophischen Empirtlintu.s, Munich lectures, first given 1836, 10:260). Still later (see 11:v-vi) Schelling wrote that God "manifests his reality, which is independent of the idea and subsists even along with an annulment of the idea; he reveals himself as the real Lord of being" (11:571). 71. Schelling sees a parallel to Kant's schematism which treats "of the sensible condition under which alone pure concepts of understanding can be employed" with regard to appearances. "Pure concepts of understanding, being quite heterogeneous from empirical Intuitions I Anschauungen, imagery] and indeed from all sensible intuitions, can never be met with in any intuition I image'. For no one will say that a category, such as that of causality,
ourselves as belonging to a moral world. Yet the senses present us nothing but a world of appearances [Erscheinungen]. Therefore we must assume that moral world to be a consequence of our conduct in the world of sense and (since the latter exhibits no such connection) to be for us a future world" (PuR 839; cf. Smith 639). In 1792, in the Critique of All Revelation (5:118) Fichte wrote: "That we are immortal follows immediately from the challenge to turn the highest good into a reality. Yet our natures, insofar as they are finite, cannot fully meet that challenge. However, they ought to become more and more capable to fulfill it. Therefore they must be able to do so." Kant had said: "To put everything else after the holiness of duty and to know that we can do it because our own reason acknowledges it as its law and says that we ought to do itthat is, as it were, to lift ourselves altogether out of the world of sense" (PuR, Cass. 5:171; Beck 163). What follows is that "pure eternity" is here already, but young Schelling still wants to save the "empirical eternity" which Kant and Fichte assume. 73. From this can be drawn Spinoza's inference that "the intellectual love of the mind towards God is the very love with which He loves Himself." However, Spinoza adds: "not in so far as He is nonfinite but in so far as He can be manifested through the essence of the human mind considered under the form of eternity" (Ethics 5.xxxvi; John Wild's translation except for the word nonfinite in lieu of infinite.) 74. One of the inconsistencies of PuR is that Kant replaces his "System of Transcendental Ideas" (390), whose "advance from the knowledge of oneself (the soul) to the knowledge of the world, and by means of this to the original being, is so natural that it seems to resemble the logical advance of reason from premisses to conclusion" (394), with a new trinity of metaphysical ideas, added in the second edition: "God, freedom, and immortality" (395 n.). Even so, he says about immortality that its "merely speculative proof has never been able to exercise any influence upon the common reason of men. It so stands upon the point of a hair, that even the schools preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it unceasingly spinning round like a top; even in their own eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything could be built" (424). "Yet nothing is thereby lost as regards the right, nay, the necessity, of postulating a future life in accordance with the principles of the practical employment of reason" (ibid.). Man "feels an inner call to fit himself, by his conduct in this world. . .for citizenship in a better world upon which he lays hold in idea" (426; Smith 322, 325, 379, 380). The argument based on morality leads only to a postulate. PrRsays that "complete fitness of the will to the moral law is holiness, which is a perfection of which no rational being in the world of sense is at any time capable. But since it is required as practically necessary, it can be found only in an endless progress to that complete fitness" (Cass. 5.132; Beck 126). In his supplementary volume on Kants Le ben and Lehre (11:282), Ernst Cassirer wrote: "More than in any other passage, Kant here stands in the continuity of the philosophical world view of the eighteenth century" (see n. 119 below). "This infinite progress is possible, however, only under the presupposition of an infinitely enduring existence and personality of the same rational being; this is called the immortality of the soul. . .and the latter, as inseparably bound to the moral law, is a postulate of pure practical reason" (PrR 127; Cass. 5:132 f.). Kant is wholly consistent when he speaks of the "impossibility of dogmatically determining, in regard to an object of,experience, anything that lies beyond the limits of experience" (PuR 424; Smith 378). Reading "objectivisitic" for "dogmatic," one can say that it is Kant's unresolved objectivism which makes him write that "our concept of an incorporeal nature is
can be intuited through sense and is itself contained in appearance. . . .Obviously there must
be some third form, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the other hand with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter possible." This is "the transcendental schema" (PuR 175.77; Smith 179-81). The reader
may wish to consult the entire chapter on schematism, pp. 176-87 (Smith 180-87). 72. Kant declared: "We arc necessarily constrained by 'practical] reason to conceive of
merely negative" (827; Smith 631). This assertion, however, is not consistent with his truer insight that "in the consciousness of myself in sheer thought I am the being itself' (das Wesen selbst) (429; Smith 382). It is the latter insight which led to Fichte's unconditional certainty of self and to Schelling's I as principle of philosophy. True enough, Kant adds to the sentence
just quoted the proviso "although nothing in myself is thereby given for thought." Of course, he means objectivistic thought. Fichte and Schelling could ask what more could be given when the I, the being itself, is given.
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In this context, Schelling's next sentence is significant. I paraphrase: "In the theoretical sense," that is, objectivistically, God appears in two ways. First, as the omnipresent Being of beings, the Self of all selves, the supreme I which, however, transcends every understanding and, as the hidden God, is absolutely not-I, thus "I = not-I." Second, for the strict objectivist, who thinks only in conditional terms ., this unconditional God is not only incomprehensible but nonexistent. "In the practical sense," however, that is, for the moral being who is aware of standing under an irrefutable authority, God is "absolute I," holy, not fallible and failing as we are. For each one of us is an empirical I who still clings to many a not-I in spite of the divine summons to annihilate in ourselves worldly desires. Even -so, without the form of absoluteness none of us could be his own I. In "schematic" form, sermonizing presents "the nonfinite I as the ultimate goal of the finite." 75. Perhaps some Augustinian insights lingered in the theological instruction at Tubingen. Around 390 Augustine wrote: Aeterna enim vita vitam temporalem vivacitate ipsa superat, nec quid sit aeternitas nisi intelligendo conspicio. . . .Nihil autem praeterit in aeterno et nihil futurum est. . . .Aeternitas autem tantummodo est. "By its own vivacity the eternal life surpasses the temporal life, nor can I see what eternity is except by understanding In intellectual intuition]. . . .For in the eternal nothing is past and nothing future. . . .But eternity merely is" (De vera religione 49,97. Cf. Confession 9.x.24; De trinitate 4, proem 1; De civitate Dei 11.vi). 76. Kant uses this term in the first edition (A) of PuR (396), where he says that all illusion (Schein) springs from mistaking "the subjective condition of thinking for a knowledge of an object ." He also points out that "der dialektische Schein" cannot be a mere empirical illusion. In the second edition (B) he says that "every human reason, as it progresses, must necessarily
78. Anschauung is defined as "that representation [Vorstellung; or image] which can be given prior to all thought [Denken]" (PuR 132; Smith 153). It is implied that thought finds its object, because objects are constituted by the forms of objectivity which Kant calls categories. As potentially antecedent to and independent of thought, intuition need not have an object. This is the case of dream images the most obvious illustration. In Kant's mind, an objective intuition is a contradiction in terms, and for the moment Schelling adopts this Kantian doctrine. But his next paragraph shows that he, like Fichte, affirms the intellectual intuition which Kant denies. Kant wrote (PuR 68): "The consciousness of self is the simple representation [Vorstellung; better: presentation] of the 'I', and if all that is manifold in the subject were given by the activity of the self, the inner intuition would be intellectual" (Smith 88). Fichte and Schelling hold that the sheer activity of the self by which the I posits itself is
intellectual intuition, although the empirical I cannot be aware of itself except by distinguishing itself from some not-I. For Fichte the not-I is posited by the I. If that makes
Fichte an "idealist," then Schelling takes his stand with the "realist" Kant, who gives the name of sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) to the mode in which any manifold [of not-I] is "given in the mind without spontaneity" (ohne Spontaneitat im Gemiite gegeben). But whereas Kant speaks of the mind as being affected, presumably by things-in-themselves, in a very pre-Kantian manner, Schelling sees in all knowledge an identity of subject and object. The form of that identity is "I am I." In truly critical manner, Kant himself emphasized it in his 16: "All the manifold of intuition I Anschauungl has a necessary relation to the 'I think' in the same subject in which this manifold is found. But this representation [Vorstellung] is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility" (132; Smith 153). As early as the first edition of 1781 he had written: "I must have ground for assuming another kind of intuition, different from the sensible" (A 252; Smith 270). And in both editions we read that distinctly post-Kantian statement quoted in n. 8 aboye. This statement could be called the very definition of intellectual intuition. It also furnishes the formula subject-object. (See n. 76.) 79. "Thinking at all" includes thinking of objects, that is, conditional thinking. Unconditionality is found only in the identity of "I am I." Hence Schelling's definition of the "absolute I" as not relating itself to objects. Perhaps Descartes's cogito should not be translated as "I think" but "I am aware," as is clear from Descartes's own illustrations of res cogitans. (See n. 76.) The absolute I thinking only itself, when coupled with Schelling's declaration in his letter to Hegel of February 4, 1795, that "God is nothing but the absolute I," sounds like Aristotle's statement that God thinks only himself. See the long quotation from 10:260 in n. 70. "The being that sets everything else free" is not a personage and empirically exists only in its revelation. And that would be fully in line with Spinoza's proposition XXXVI in the fifth part of the Ethics: "The mind's intellectual love for God is God's own love wherewith God loves himself." 80. PuR said: "We shall entitle the principles whose application is confined entirely within the limits of possible experience, immanent; and those, on the other hand, which profess to pass beyond these limits, transcendent" (352; Smith 298 f.). Using the word objective in the sense of valid, PrR says: "The objective reality of the moral law can be proved through no deduction." The law proves its reality "in beings who acknowledge it as binding upon them. The moral law is, in fact, a law of causality [not in the sense of the category of coercive cause! through freedom and, thus, a law of the possibility of a supersensuous nature. . . . Thus reason, which with its ideas always became transcendent (Oberschwenglich I when proceeding in a speculative 'i.e., objectivistic[ manner, can be given for the first time an objective I i.e., undeniably valid!, all hough still only practical, reality; its transcendent use is changed into an iinnuinrnt use" (Cass 5. 53 f ; Beck 48 f.). Kant's word practical strictly retains the meaning of its Greek runt, prattrin, to act, and in no way pa them, to be anent upon Responsibility c arom Inc given or enforced; it roust be f !rely
come upon" some "dialectical doctrine" (449f.). Like the Duc de Luynes, who unhesitatingly translated Descartes's reality of awareness (res cogitans) as "une chose qui pense," many a beginner in philosophy is tempted to ask what kind of thing the I is. Decartes himself asked in the Second Meditation: Sed quid igitur sum Iemphasis added!? Res cogitansl Quid est hoc? He does not ask: quid est haec [res]. The neuter hoc cannot mean the feminine res. It points at "reality of awareness," and Descartes immediately replaces the phrase res cogitans by present participles, that is by the acts of "doubting, understanding, affirming, denying, willing, not willing, even imagining and feeling." And to make his case still stronger he adds: Nam quod ego sim qui dubitem, qui
Intelligam, qui velim, tam manifestum est, ut nihil occurrat per quod evidentius explicetur.
(See n. 23.) Augustine had already made the same point in De trinitate 10.ix.12: "When the mind is told, 'Know thyself,' at the very flash of understanding what is meant by 'thyself,' it knows itself, and for no other reason than that it is present to itself." (See the Latin in n. 23.) Augustine's sentence should be quoted in every introduction to philosophy, especially since he indulges In the academic mannerism of talking of the mind in the third person instead of the first. Mint stands strictly on the AugustinianCartesian line when he dissolves the dialectical Illusion in those two core sentences of PuR, which I here quote (without Kant's own uncritical anti decidely pre-Kantian provisos): "In the awareness of myself in sheer thought I am the essence itself Idas Wesen selbstk . . .The proposition I exist as thinking is no mere logical
function but determines the subject (which then is at the same time object) with regard to its
existence" (B 429). Kant himself furnishes the favorite phrase of his successors, subject-object. (See n. 8.) 77. NH (672) says that "transcendental ideas never allow of any constitutive
employment. When regarded in that mistaken manner, and therefore as supplying concepts of certain objects, they are but pseudorational, merely dialectical concepts" (Smith 533). And Inasmuch as they "contain the unconditioned, they are concerned with something to which all experience is subordinate, but which is never itself an object of experience, . . .which is never Itself a member of the empirical synthesis" (367 f.; Smith 308 f.).
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taken. And as long as we are not saints we can always renege. But even then we are still in the supersensuous domain. 81. PuR 399-428 (Smith 328-80). 82. When you really ask yourself, "just exactly what do I mean when I say I?" you are setting aside whatever pertains to you as a temporal being, your being male or female, old or young, and when you answer, "I am I for myself alone," you realize that this is true in exactly the same sense in which it was true when, as a young child, you first discovered your own identity. Of course, you are now more articulate. 83. If you prefer the jargon of Kant to that of Schelling, you can fall back on n. 37 above. 84. The dogmatist seems incapable of realizing that it is he who quite dogmatically posits the very not-I which is supposed to furnish the objectivistic basis of his specific system of dogmatism, be it materialistic or spiritualistic, be he a Hobbes or a Berkeley. In the third fascicle of the Grundlage of 1794 (surely known to Schelling; see n. 68) Fichte wrote that "critical philosophy is immanent, since it posits everything in the self; dogmatism is transcendent, since it goes on beyond the self," though perforce starting from the self as all thinking must. Fichte adds: "So far as dogmatism can be consistent, Spinozism is its most logical outcome." And since every system has the right to be evaluated by its own principles, we ought to inquire of dogmatism "why it now assumes its thing-in-itself, without any higher ground, when it demanded such a ground in the case of the self, . . .and we are thus quite justified in demanding, on its own principle of assuming nothing without a ground, that it whould again furnish a higher genus for the concept of thing-in-itself, and another higher one for that, and so on without end" (1:120; Heath 117). This open-endedness leads to skepticism. Dogmatism (objectivism) is the natural because unreflective way of human thinking. We cannot do without it, just as we cannot do without our childhood. Dogm stresses that there are two ways of philosophizing-dogmatism and criticism. To be sure, consistently persued dogmatism results in skepticism. Short of that, natural thinking must assert the absolute transcendence of the supersensuous and must reject the findings of criticism as heresies. Quite naturally, for dogmatistic theology any philosophy is suspect which yields an insight into the predicament of dogmatism. Accordingly, as Schelling says on his next page, "if the principle of all philosophy were a not-I, one would have to renounce philosophy altogether." 85. Salomon Maimon, Versuch fiber die Transzendentalphilosophie (Berlin, 1790); Versuch einer neuen Logik oder Theorie des Denkens (Berlin, 1794). (See the page 611 by Willy Moog in Die Philosophie der Neuzeit bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts [Berlin: Milder, 1924] and the book by F. Kuntze, Die Philosophie Salomon Maimons [Heidelberg, 1912].) 86. In the Addresses to the German Nation of 1807-08 Fichte has half a dozen pages (7: 317.23) which explain that the words of an original language offer sense images functioning as Immediately explanatory symbols (Sinnbilder) of supersensuous concepts. Borrowed by another, and in that respect no longer original, language, such words lose the vividness of the Image. For instance, when we borrow the word idea from the Greek, we no longer are aware of the connection between the root verb idein, to see, and its derivative, sight or view, which is the precise translation of idea and thus furnishes a vivid symbol for any supersensuous insight. Fichte gives examples from the Latin. In the mind of a Roman, the word, popular would Immediately evoke the "clear and vivid sense image" of the "fawning complaisance displayed dally by ambitious candidates" for office, or the word liberality would evoke the image of its opposite, servility, shown by cringing or by peevish slaves (serve). When we borrow the words popularity and liberality, they do not immediately supply us with those vivid images; they arise in our mind only through schoolish instruction. Cf. n. 19. 87. In the narrow and really pre-Kantian sense, theoretical philosophy is concerned only with objects, i.e., phenomena, whereas practical philosophy discovers the noumenon in the truly critical sense, as self.positing, in contrast to the precritical sense of the word as a synonym of thing in itself.
88. Here Schelling still speaks as the disciple of Kant. In 1802 he wrote, "time does not exclude eternity; and science, though it manifests itself at the phenomenal level as a product of time, introduces an element of eternity. The true, like the good and the beautiful, is by nature eternal, and in the midst of time is independent of time" (5:224; On University Studies, trans. Norbert Guterman [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1966], p. 18). And in aphorism CCXVIII of 1805 he said: "True eternity is not eternity in contrast to time, but eternity which comprehends time itself and posits it as eternity in itself -not being in contrast to becoming, but being in eternal unity with eternal becoming" (7:238 f.). 89. The precritical remnants in Kant can hardly be explained by a cavalier condescension which ill agrees with the honesty of Kant, who surely would not want to accommodate the uncritical believers in things in themselves. On page 231 n. of Of I, Schelling speaks of a "system of accommodation." 90. Because "the I is not empirical at all," as Schelling said in this very paragraph. According to Kant, theoretical philosophy deals only with objects. 91. About "the inner" Kant says: "As objects of pure understanding every substance must have inner determinations and powers which [affect] its inner reality. But what inner accidents can I [think] save only those which my inner sense presents to me? They must be something which is either itself a thinking or analogous to thinking. For this reason Leibniz, regarding substances as noumena, took away from them. . .whatever might signify outer relation. . .and so made them all, even the constituents of matter, simple subjects with powers of representation [Vorstellungskrdften], in a word, MONADS." (PuR 321 f.; Smith 279 f.). 92. This footnote clearly presents Kant's phenomenalism, which is opposed to Berkeleyan idealism (see its refutation 274 f. Smith 244) and is, as Schelling rightly says, "immanent Kantian realism." 93. The reader may want to consult the exposition of the categories in PuR (106 ff.; Smith 113 ff.). 94. Every imaginable sphere, no matter how large, is finite, but by mathematical extrapolation one can speak of an infinite sphere. However, that expression obscures rather than explains why the finite receives its reality from the nonfinite. On the other hand, to translate unendliche Sphdre as nonfinite sphere is nonsense, unless the word sphere means no sphere at all but indicates the domain of the nonfinite. Cf. n. 43. 95. See Hegel's presentation of lacobian Philosophy" in G. W. F. Hegel. Faith and Knowledge, trans. Walter Cerf and H. S. Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977), pp. 97-152. 96. Outside is absolute nothingness. (See n. 58.) Augustine says: Deus per quem omnia quae per se non essent tendunt esse. "God, through whom all things, which on their own would not be, tend to be" (Solit 1.i.2. See the entire 2, and especially 3, which is a counterpart to Schelling's stress on the life of reality in us.) 97. In 1796 Schelling wrote: "Kant started from this that the first in our knowledge is the 4 intuition [Anschauung]. Very soon this gave rise to the proposition that intuition is the lowest grade of knowledge. Yet it is the highest in the human mind [Geist], it is that from which all other knowledge borrows its worth and its reality" (1:355). The differentiation between object and subject is secondary, not primary. In 1800, on one of the last pages of his System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling wrote: "If the aesthetic intuition is only the intellectual intuition turned objective, it is obvious that art is the only true and eternal organon of philosophy and at the same time the document of philosophy, furnishing again and again new documentary proof of what philosophy cannot represent outwardly, to wit, the unconscious in action and production, and its original identity with the conscious" (3: 627 f.). 98. The form of being is t he same as the form of thinking. See nn. 46 and 47. 99. Fichte coined the term thetical, In the Grundlage or 1794 he wrote: "A thetical judgment would be one whit n p o sits motorthiog unit bet as equal to mallet !ling rime e.g., a Hid
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is an animal] nor as unequal [a plant is not an animal] but simply as equal to itself. . . .The original and highest judgment of this kind is 'I am' in which. . .the place of the predicate is left empty. If the reader of the proposition "I am" takes it to refer to somebody else he will ask, "how do I know that he or she is a self?" And indeed only his or her action will furnish a ground for the affirmation of selfhood in him or her. But if the reader says of himself "I am" (as the two words challenge him to do) then he discovers that, in this challenge, he has (as Fichte says) "a task for a ground" (Cf. the entire passage in Heath 114-15. Instead of task, Heath translates Aufgabe as requirement, which is misleading.) Fichte derives his term from the word thesis. The "absolute thesis is that there ought to be a system at all" (the passages here quoted are in 1:115-16; cf. n. 23 and n. 63 to the Letters). 100. The formal form of the self is I = I which, taken thus abstractly, reduces to the purely logical principle that any A = A. Consequently, as Kant says, the mere "logical unity of the subject (simplicity)" can not yet let me "know the real [wirkliche] simplicity" of myself. (A 356; also see n. 101.) My real self is the act by which I grasp that "I am I." And it is this act which amounts to the material form Qf nnconclitionathy, To put it in different words, the purely logical form of unconditionality can be expressed by "this x cannot not be so," or in two words "x is." Parmenides pointed out that this form of isness is also the form of strict thinking or real knowing, in distinction from mere guessing and surmising. Now, while Parmenides, bent upon what strictly is, does not reflect explicitly on the thinking I as I, we can, with Plotinus and Augustine, and with Fichte and Schelling, so reflect and, admitting with Kant (see n. 101) that the I is not a substance, we can stress that what is "real," and therefore is "material," is our autonomous act. 101. The core term of PuR is "transcendental unity of apperception" (139, 18; Smith 157). On page 232 n. of Of I. Schelling says, "Kant was the first one who established the absolute 1 as the ultimate substrate of all being and all identity, though nowhere immediately," but everywhere by implication. (I would agree with Hegel, 13:296, and Plotinus, 5.v.4, that the very first one was Parmenides, although, like Kant, also by implication. See n. 100.) In the first edition of Pur Kant says: "The proposition 1 am simple' must be regarded as an immediate expression of apperception, just as what is referred to as the Cartesian inference, cogito, ergo sum, is really a tautology, since the cogito [sum cogitans] asserts my existence immediately" (A 354 f.; Smith 337). "This much, then, is certain, that through the 'I,' I always conceive an absolute, but logical unity of the subject [simplicity" (A 356; Smith 337 f.). Kant then goes on to say it does not follow that I am a simple substance. In so saying he substitutes the concept of a substance for what, more critically, he had just called "the actual I wirklichel simplicity" (ibid.) of my self. The category of substance pertains to objects which are manifest in observable facts. But I, as I, am an act, not an objective fact. Fichte, in his early critical publication, the Review of Aenesidemus (1794), stressed the pi Imcay of practical reason even in the theoretical field. In 1792 Gottlob Ernst Schulze, professor at Ghttingen, had published his attack against Kant and Reinhold anonymously, and Fichte refers to him only by the book's title, Aenesidemus, the name of the Alexandrian skeptic of the later part of the first century a c Fichte says the basic mistake of Aenesidemus is his assumption that philosophy must start from a fact. "To be sure, we must have a fundamental principle which is real, not merely formal. But such a first axiom need not be a /act ITatmachel, it can be the expression of an act I Tathandlune (1:8). And, in line with statement that "in the consciousness of myself, in sheer thought, I am the essence Itself' (Pun 429; cf. Smith 382), Fichte recognizes the noumenal dignity of the self. By intellectual intuition 1 know that "I am simply because I am. All objections of Aenesidemus are based on his desire to prove an absolute existence and autonomy of the 1 nobody knows how and fur whom while this existence and autonomy are valid only for the I. The 1 is what it is and because it is, for the I" (1:16). In short, it is not an object. And it is the I as outerror us act which alone can furnish what Kant calls the transcendental unity of
apperception. "The synthetic unity of apperception is therefore the highest point to which we must ascribe all employment of the understanding, even the whole of logic" and of metalogic or "transcendental philosophy. Indeed, this faculty is the understanding itself" (PuR 134 n.; Smith 154 n.). 102. This, of course, is pre-Newtonian speech. A Platonic body is not necessarily subject to gravity. Nor, perhaps, is every Cartesian res extensa heavy. 103. Schelling's German sentence makes no sense without a comma. It is my conjecture to place it here and add the words and does. 104. PuR (106; Smith 113) counts possibility, reality, and necessity as the three categories of modality. Schelling's next paragraph says they are no categories at all. 105. Thus Schelling disposes of the artifice by which Kant derived the table of categories from the table of judgments. (PuR 95 and 106; Smith 107 and 113.) 106. Plato, in the Sophist, discusses at length the thinkability of not-being. Jowett translates: "He who says that falsehood exists has the audacity to assert the being of not-being" (237a). And, against Parmenides' denial of any being of not-being, Plato's Stranger says, "we have not only proved that things which are not are, but we have shown what form of being not-being is" (258d). And in the Republic Glaucon asks: "how can that which is not ever be known?" (477a). 107. Kant says, "an application of the category [i.e., of categories] to appearances becomes possible by means of the transcendental determination of time (Zeitbestimmung), which, as the schema of the concepts of understanding, mediates the subsumption of the appearances under the category" (PuR 178; Smith 181. See that entire chapter "The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding," PuR 176-87; Smith 180-87). 108. In the first edition of the PuR Kant declared: "Both space and time can be found only in us" (A 373; cf. Smith 348). He taught that the categories are what constitutes the objectivity of objects. Schelling here makes time a constitutive element of objects, because objects determine each other's position in time. This seems to sound like Einstein, but I must leave that to the physicists, having missed their boat in 1917. 109. Kant says "the principle of sufficient reason is [only] the ground of possible experience, that is, of objective knowledge or appearances in respect to their relation in the order of time" (PuR 246; Smith 226). and of the alleged supersensuous "objects" he says: "If we are pleased to name this object noumenon for the reason that its representation is not sensible, we are free to do so. But since we can apply to it none of the concepts of our understanding, the representation remains empty for us" (PuR 345; Smith 293 f.). This emptiness is particularly obvious in the category of possibility. The I = I is always actual and necessary. However cf. Of I 232 nn. 3. and 234. Kant considers the categories of modality on a level with quantity, quality, and relation. Schelling derives the three others from relation. See nn. 16 and 17 to Poss. Also page 222 of OF I and n. 105. Compare Schelling's long footnote to page 229 of Of I. 110. "The discipline of pure reason in respect of its polemical employment" (PuR 766; Smith 593). 111. This does not tally with the emphatic statement of Kant that "only insofar as I can unite a manifold of given representations [Vorstellungen[ in one consciousness, is it possible for me to represent to myself the identity of the consciousness in these representations" (PuR 133; Smith 153). Of the Leibnizian monads Kant says that they "have no other active power save only that which consists in representations, the efficacy of which is confined, strictly speaking, to the selves. For this very reason his principle of the possible reciprocal community of substances had to be a preestablished harmony and could not be a physical influence. For since everything is merely inward, i.e., concerned with its own representations, the state of the representations of (inc substance could not stand in any effective connection whatever with that of another" (PIM 330 I.; Smit h 285). The monads have no windows and therefore have no regard fo r art opposite, another I
148
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[i 120-123]
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112. This tallies with Kant's statement that "the consciousness is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me" (PuR 276 f.; Smith 245.) It may also clear tip the discrepancy pointed out in n. 111. 113. I translate Realitt as reality, Wirklichkeit as actuality. Schelling uses the two words indiscriminately. See pp. 209 f. of Of I. 114. PuR says, "when reason itself is regarded as the determining cause, as in the sphere of freedom, that is to say, in the case of practical principles, we have to proceed as if [Kant's own emphasis, omitted by Smith] we had before us an object, not of the senses, but of the pure understanding" (713; Smith 559). 115. This footnote amounts to a preview of N.R. 116. In 1809, at a decisive turn of his road, Schelling wrote his Philosophical Inquiries
into the Essence of Human Freedom and into Matters Connected Therewith. He said: "The
thought of making freedom the sum and substance of philosophy has emancipated the human spirit in all its relationships, and not only with respect to itself, and it has given to science in all its parts a more powerful reorientation than any earlier revolution. . .Whoever does not approach philosophy in this way merely follows others and copies what they do without feeling why they do it" (7:351; see James Gutmann's translation, Of Human Freedom (New York: Open Court, 1936), pp. xvii, 24-25, and 105). 117. A footnote added in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason says: "We must not, in place of the expression mundus intelligibilis, use the expression 'an intellectual world,' as is commonly done in German exposition. For only modes of knowledge [ Erkenntnisse] are either intellectual or sensuous. What can only be an object [Gegenstand] of the one or the other kind of intuition [Anschauungsart] must be termed (however harsh sounding) either intelligible or sensible" (312 n.; Smith 273 n.). 118. As Kant would have it. For instance, in PrR (Cass. 5:90-91; Beck 84-85) he stresses that, in order to be moral, an action must be done "from duty and from respect for the law, and not from love for or leaning toward that which the action is to produce." And he adds: "No other subjective principle must be assumed as incentive, for though it might happen that the action occurs as the law prescribes, and thus is in accord with duty but not from duty, the intention to do the action would not be moral. . . .Respect for the moral law is therefore the sole and undoubted moral incentive" (Cass. 5:86; Beck 80). 119. The preface to the second edition of PuR speaks of "that notable characteristic of our nature, never to be capable of being satisfied by what is temporal (as insufficient for the capacities of its whole destination)" (xxxii; Smith 31). And PrR says that "complete fitness of the will to the moral law is holiness, which is a perfection of which no rational being in the world of sense is at any time capable. But since it is required as practically necessary, it can be found only in an endless progress to that complete fitness." (Cass. 5:132 f.; Beck 126 f.; also we n. 74 above.) Fichte's stress on this infinite task is well known. As late as 1812 he speaks of the "task for the whole" of humanity. Though this task is never finished, yet we believe that, "at some time or other, the goal must be reached" (11:73). 120. Schelling's footnote refers to the core problem of Kant's third Critique. Cr] must be kept In mind in order to understand the paragraph on pages 241 and 242. For here is the point where Schelling goes beyond Kant's mere as i f In the third Critique, Kant pointed out a parallelism between the moral "ought" and the purposiveness we find in nature. "Just as reason in the theoretical consideration of nature must assume the idea of an unconditioned necessity of its original ground, so also it presupposes in the practical sphere its own (in respect of nature) unconditioned causality, or freedom, in that it is conscious of its own moral I" (Cass. 5:482; Bernard 251). The command is "a universal regulative principle. This principle does not objectively determine the constitution of freedom, as a form of causality, but it makes the rule of actions according to that idea a command for everyone, with no less validity than if it did so determine it" (5:483; 252). A parallel case is found in our
teleological judgments regarding what faces the mechanist as contingent in nature. "The particular, as such, contains something contingent in respect of the universal, while yet reason requires unity and conformity to law in the combination of particular laws of nature. This conformity of the contingent to law is called purposiveness; and the derivation of particular laws from the universal, as regards their contingent element, is impossible a priori through a determination of the concept of the object. Hence, the concept of the purposiveness of nature. . .is a subjective principle of reason for the judgment, which as regulative (not constitutive) is just as necessarily valid for our human judgment as if it were an objective principle" (5:483; 252-53). 121. Here of course the word causality does not stand for the category which is one of the a priori forms that constitute objectivity in the world of sense. It is moral autonomy that is manifest in "intelligible causality." The "intelligible world" is the moral world, the world as it ought to be. In the "absolute 1" popularly speaking, in heaven or for Godthere is no ought. But in the world of sense we ought to progress in justice and truth. Now, there can be no I at all without the autonomous act by which an I posits itself. And that act alone can produce the "I think" without which mental images "would be impossible, or at least be nothing to me" (PuR 132; Smith 153). The world of sense, that is, the world of objects, exists for us owing to the a priori forms of "the original synthetic unity of apperception" (ibid.) and the "I think" contains "the form of every rational judgment" and "accompanies all categories as their vehicle"). Only responsible thinking can lead to an objective world. Therefore Kant stresses "the primacy of pure practical reason" in the twofold aspect of reasonpractical and "speculative," i.d., theoretical (PrR, Cass. 5:130; Beck 124). 122. This was the very problem of Cr]. It was one of the incentives that led Schelling to his
Naturphilosophie. 123. PuR says: "Thus, in the end, it is always pure reason alone, though only in its
practical use, that has the merit of tying to our highest interest a knowledge which for mere speculation is nothing but an empty guess lacking validity, and of having thereby shown this knowledge to be not, indeed, a demonstrated dogma, but an absolutely necessary presupposition when dealing with reason's most essential ends" (846; cf. Smith 643, who obscures the issue by translating blosse Spekulation kann nur wiihnen as "reason can think only" instead of "speculation can only make an empty guess").

FWJ Schelling: of The I As Principle of Philosophy, or The Unconditional in Human Knowledge

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58

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And the mystic strives to lose himself in God.

2 Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy or On the Unconditional in Human Knowledge

(Epigraph of the first edition)

Preface to the First Edition

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THE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 70 162] [ [161]

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3. Deduction of all possible a priori views of the unconditioned.

from their ground in the

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ultimate principle and, with it, something unconditional.

As soon as philosophy begins to be a science, it must at least assume an

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nounces itself with unconditional authority (Selbstmacht).

the unique form by which it an- 44 Jo.

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[178,179] OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY 83

is I owing to its sheer unconditionality, since it cannot become a thing at

The I can be determined in no way except by being unconditional, for it

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the I is determined for itself as mere I in intellectual intuition. 40

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xai nay) of our better life?"

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THE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [191,

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THE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [199,200]

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THE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [202,203]

OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY 101

Annotation 1. Spinoza, too, had to fight this concept of duration as a [an

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empirical-one is no idealism,' there can be no idealism at all in theoretical philosophy.