THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF AND THE NOTION OF EXPERIENCE IN SCHELLING

Alessandro Medri

Abstract: In this article I show how Schelling elaborates the fundamental topic of the ontological proof, from the first phase of his philosophy on. I make clear how he keenly penetrates the formulation of Descartes, establishing that it is insufficient in order to demonstrate the existence of God. The fact is, Descartes says that it would be contradictory with the nature of the perfect being that he existed only accidentally; so that it can exist only necessarily. But it is different to say that God can exist only necessarily, and to say that He in fact exists necessarily. From the first sentence, descends only that He exists necessarily if He exists, but this does not imply that He exists in fact. To arrive to the existence, the only possible way is through experience: the reason gives the concept, the experience gives the existence. On this difference is based the hendiadys between negative and positive philosophy, the nature of which I cleared up in the last part of the article.

Wollen wir irgend etwas auer dem Denken Seyendes, So mssen wir von einem Seyn ausgehen, Das absolut unabhngig von allem Denken, Das allem Denken zuvorkommend ist. (F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung) It is very common to read, or hear, about the theme of the ontological proof1 with reference to Descartes, or Kant. Rarer are the analysis of this topic in the work of Schelling,2 which is a mistake, especially considering that the confrontation with this aspect of modern philosophy characterizes Schellings thought since its very beginning. In the third paragraph of a work published in 1795, when he was only twenty years old, Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie oder ber das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen,3 Schelling thinks over the meaning of the word Bedingen (to condition), which would be supposed to contain the whole treasure of the philosophical truth. Bedingen means the action, through which something becomes Ding (thing); bedingt is what has been made into a thing. From this, it is clear that nothing is posed as a thing through itself, that an unconditioned thing is a contradictio in adjecto. Unbedingt is therefore what has not been made into a thing, what cannot absolutely become a thing. The central problem of philosophy is like the one of finding something, which cannot absolutely be thought of as a thing, as an object.

2011. Idealistic Studies, Volume 41, Issues 12. ISSN 0046-8541.

pp. 6982

70

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

So, the Unconditioned can be neither in the thing in general, nor in what can become a thing, but only in the Absolute Egoif there is something like that. The Absolute Ego, in case it exists, would be determined as what can never become object. That an Absolute Ego exists can by no means be demonstrated objectively, that is considering the ego as an object, because what has to be proved is exactly that it cannot become an object. The ego, if it must be unconditioned, has to stay outside the whole sphere of the objective demonstrability: to prove objectively that the ego is unconditioned would mean to prove that, in fact, it is conditioned. In the Unconditioned, the principle of its own being must coincide with the principle of its thought. It is, just because it is, it is thought of, just because it is thought of. The Absolute can be given only through the Absolute, or better, if it must be absolute, it must precede each thinking or representing, so that it is realized not by means of objective demonstrationswhich fall out its own dominionbut only through itself.4 Should not the ego be realized through itself, then the sentence which expresses its own being should be this one: if I am, then I am. Only, the condition of this sentence includes in itself the conditioned: the condition itself is not thinkable without the conditioned, I cannot think of myself under the condition of my being, without thinking of me as already existent. In this sentence, then, the condition does not condition the conditioned, but on the contrary the conditioned [conditions] the condition, that is it removes itself [hebt sich auf]5 as a conditioned sentence, and becomes the unconditioned: I am because I am. I am! My ego contains a being which precedes every thinking and representing. It is, inasmuch as it is thought of, and it is thought of because it is; therefore, it is, and it is thought of, insofar as he thinks of itself. So it is only because it thinks of itself, and it thinks of itself only because it is. It produces itself through its own thinking.6 The ego is through itself, unconditioned, inasmuch as it is at the same time unconditionable, that is it can never become thing, object. The object expects its own existence from something that is outside seines blossen Gedachtwerdens; only the ego is nothing, and even not thinkable, if its own being is not at the same time posed, which means that it is not absolutely thinkable, unless he thinks of itself, in other words unless it is. At this point, the author puts an explicative footnote: Maybe I can render this even clearer, if I recover the instance I used before.God cannot absolutely be for me actual principle of my knowing [Wissen], because He is determined as an object, and therefore He falls within the sphere of the conditioned Wissen. Didnt I on the contrary determine God as an object, but as = ego, then He would be without any doubt real fundament of my Wissen. But such a determination of God is impossible in the theoretical philosophy. And yet it is at the same time necessary in the theoretical philosophy itself, which determines God as an object, a determination of the Wissen = ego, so that I really have to assume that God is per se absolute real fundament of His Wissen, but not for me, so that for me He is determined in the theoretical philosophy not simply as ego, but also as object, since on the contrary, if He is = ego, for itself he is absolutely no object, but only ego. To say it incidentally, from here we see that we expose very falsely the ontological proof for the existence of God as a mere artificial deceit: much more the deceit is altogether natural. Because who

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

71

can say to himself: I! Can also say: I am! It is a real shame that God in the theoretical philosophy is determined not as identical with my ego, but in relationship with it as an object, and an ontological proof of the existence of an object is a contradictory concept.7 In this phase, Schellings thought is still strongly under the influence of Fichte or, better, his thought is influenced by his own interpretation of what he knew of Fichtes work (knowledge which did not even include the whole Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre [1794]): the one unconditioned is the Absolute Ego; every other being or idea is conditioned, because it is thinkable only in connection with the ego; and God is considered a being among the other ones: although He is the Supreme, He is the supreme of the existing beings, not something ganz anders. The argument proceeds as follows. If there were no Absolute Ego, then the concept of the subject, that is the concept of the ego conditioned through an object, would be the highest. Only, since the concept of the object contains an antithesis, then it must be originally determined only in opposition to another, which excludes absolutely its concept, and cannot be determinable merely in opposition to the subject, which is thinkable only in connection with an object, not with its exclusion. So, the concept of the object, and the concept of the subject thinkable only in connection with that concept, must lead to an Absolute, which is absolutely opposed to every object, which, that is, excludes every object. We figure a conditioned chain of knowledge, which is sustained by a supreme unconditioned point. The conditioned can be thought in the chain only (berhaupt nur) presupposing the absolute condition, namely the Unconditioned. The object itself is originally determinable only in opposition to the Absolute Ego, only as the opposite of the ego, as non-ego. After a few years, and the deepening of the speculation, Schellings viewpoint gradually becomes more precise, even thank to the passage through that interesting form of Neoplatonism,8 which is the philosophy of Identity and culminates in the Bruno and in the Philosophie der Kunst.9 Now, it is evident to anyone who deeply knows Schellings work, that his Absolute is anything but die Nacht worin alle Khe schwarz sind.10 Moreover, the idea of God, that he presents, is extraordinarily complex and articulated. As he says in the Philosophie der Kunst: The Absolute, God that is, is that of which we can say that the being, meaning the reality, derives immediately, due the mere law of identity, from the idea; or also: God is the immediate affirmation of Himself. ... God as infinite affirmation of Himself comprehends Himself as infinitely affirming, as infinitely affirmed, and as indifference of both, but He is not any of these three in particular.11 As we can easily see, in the first place the inner dynamic of the Absolute is far from allowing to think of it as a confused indifference, in spite of what Hegel might seem to believe; secondly, the transcendence of God-Absolute is preserved, according to the assertion of the fact that He cannot be reduced to any of the three potencies (Potenzen), which determine His development, but He is beyond them. These aspects are widely discussed in the Philosophie der Mythologie, especially in the first six lessons about monotheism.

72

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

Even the verbal affirmation of God presupposes eo ipso the Einheit (unity) and the Einzigkeit (uniqueness): God is God, not a god. He has no peer; He cannot be inasmuch as He participates of the being: He must be ipsum esse, the Being itself. The uniqueness affirmed in monotheism is not necessary, it is factual: we can say that it is, not that it cannot not-be. There are two ways to intend the Einheit: 1) it is not attributed to God; rather He himself is the One, it cannot be conceived but as One; 2) or we distinguish God from the merely being (wesend), we think that in God there is something different from the simple being. The true God must be the Being itself before Himself; He has as a fundament of His divinity the fact that He is the universal Essence. This way, it is ab origine denied the very possibility of a second God, because the fundament of divinity is the absolute Unity of the universal Essence, the One itself.12 Schelling exposes an actual phenomenology of our mind, in the act of thinking of God. In conceiving Him, we start from the universal possibility of being, without any real being. But the real being is that in view of which the possibility of being is as such: if there is a progress, it aims at the real being. This is a purely negative concept, ergo insufficient. Philosophy must lead God out of this identity of essentia and existentia, towards the effective being distinguished from the essence. God is in a free relationship with the being, He is not immer schon, but He can be or not be; He is Geist: because Spirit is exactly what can be or not be, manifest itself or not, what must not manifest itself.13 The mere possibility of being is blind and necessary, not free; as soon as the possibility of being is, it rises necessarily and naturaliter to the effective being. The possibility that becomes being is no more a possibility: it is alienated possibility, which ceased to be subject of the being to become mere objective being. God, on the other hand, is not only ipsum esse, but He is the Being itself which, even when it is actu, does not stop being ipsum esse. The authentic concept of God is that of being the essence, which can be qua talis only by means of negation of the opposite essence. God is the possibility of being, He does not exist blindly and necessarily, but He has the being as purely possible, as simple beginning and fundament of His being; a beginning in which God is not posed once for all, but where He eternally starts to pose Himself. In the concept of God, there is that immediate being, which would be posed through the instantaneous passage a potentia ad actum; but this being is posed in the concept of God as that which must be negated. God poses Himself in the first being as not-being, only to pose Himself in a second being as purely being. The first being is, in its negation, the possibility of the second; the second one has in the first, inasmuch as negated, its possibility. God is neither only [1] the first, negated, nor only [2] the second, posed, but He is only in [1] + [2], that is He is posed as being by means of the negation of [1] in [2]. The Being in its first moment is pura potentia; in its second moment is purus actus; but it is pura potentia in the first only insofar as it is purus actus in the second, and vice

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

73

versa. The first is subject of the second, pure subject without object, infinite subject; the second is object of the first, pure object without subject, infinite object. Each one is infinite, considered by itself, but finite considered in connection with the other one. The Being is, therefore, an effective plurality: [1] and [2] co-exist, but they are absolutely different and reciprocally excluding each other, opposita. Objectas Kant and Schopenhauer would sayis always object-for-a-subject: so, Being can be posed in the first moment only as subject, pure possibility of being with the explicit determination of the not-being. In the second moment, Being is posed as objective, in the guise of subject-posed-asobject, that is his own opposite. In [1], Being is completely latent; in [2], the subject is completely latent. Philosophy looks for the subject which, without ceasing to be subject, is also object, and the object which, without ceasing to be object, is also subject. Right now, the two determinations are opposed, but in a third moment we will be able to pose the subject/objectobject/subject. The possibility of being which owns itself is act without ceasing to be possibility, it is possibility being, nonetheless, act: only the Spirit is this potentia actualis and actus potentialis: [S]hould we call the being itself A, then the Being is in the first moment or in the first Potenz of its being A...; in the second Potenz of its being it is +A..., in its third Potenz or figure it is the possibility of being qua talis, the power of being as such, so A. ... To use these signs right now, so I say: with all that precedes nothing is given but the concept of God; God is till now merely the possibility of being in these three forms, A, +A, A, but not yet the being, the real one. Only the form of the divine life is given, not yet the actual life, the living God itself.14 What is given is the form of the divine life, not the real divine life: this is the point. Through the concept of God, we determine a priori that He is the immediate possibility of being, which can either remain possibility or become real. God is none of the three forms (A, +A, A), but the indissoluble unity of them. This is the authentic concept of monotheism: outside the actual unity, they would be nothing; each one is what it is only in the actual unity with the other two. What we have so far is the concept a priori of God: if God is, then He is who can be only in these three forms. But that He is is not yet established. This is the problem that the ontological proof has to face. The most interesting interpretation of the proof is led in the lessons about the history of modern philosophy, taught by Schelling in Mnchen.15 According to Schelling, Descartes wanted to find the point, where thought or representation (the two things are the same for Descartes) and being immediately coincide: this point he thought he found in the cogito ergo sum. His opinion is that the sum is included in the cogito, given at once in it without any mediations. The sum cogitans cannot have other meaning, but this one: I am nothing but thinking, I exist only inasmuch as I think, the thought is the substance of my being. The thought is just a determination, a modus essendi; better, cogitans means that I am constantly in the state of thinking. The sum of the famous sentence means only: sum qua cogitans, I am in that particular way of be-

74

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

ingdifferent, for example, from that of body, that only fills in the spacewhich is said thinking. The sum cogitans is not unconditioned, but means only that I am in a certain way, that I have a certain feature. Now, we can doubt only that things are unconditionally, not that they are in a certain way. It is in fact correct to say: I doubt the reality of things, ergo they are, or at least they are not absolutely nothing, otherwise I would not even be able to doubt them. We can go further, and doubt the ego cogito itself. It is in fact funded on two things: what in me thinks and doubts, and what thinks about this thinking and doubting. Only if the latter recognizes the former as identical to itself we say: I think. This is not immediate, but rises through a meditation that, in me, involves my own act of thinking. In Schellings opinion, Descartes did not want to reach the perfect idealism (the system which affirms that things do not objectively exist outside us, but only in our representations, although necessarily). So he elaborated another concept: Since representations have no guarantee in themselves, then he [Descartes] needs someone who guarantees for the truth of his representations of external things here he tries to come from the Subjective to the Objective (metavbasi~)and this guarantee he finds in God, the existence of which, nonetheless, must be proved before. He works this out briefly in this way: there is in me the concept of the most perfect Essence. (This is presupposed as an empirical fact, as the I think is also only an empirical fact). ... to the concept of the most prefect Essence belongs the concept of the necessary existence. So that as soon as I just think of God, I must as well realize that he exists. This is by the way the proof of the existence of God, known under the name of ontological argument.16 The Kantian objection against Descartess argument is based, according to Schelling, on the wrong opinion that its structure is the following: I find in me the idea of the perfect being; existence is a perfection; ergo, in the idea of the perfect being, existence must be included. The confutation consists in the negation of the minor premise: existence is by no means a perfection; it only expresses that the thing, with its perfections, exists; so that the existence is not one of these perfections, but merely the condicio per quam thing and perfections exist. But Descartes does not reason this way. He says, that it would be contradictory with the nature of the perfect being that he existed in a merely accidental way; ergo it can exist only in a necessary way. But it is different to say that God can exist only necessarily, and to say that He exists necessarily. From the first sentence, descends only that He exists necessarily if he exists, but this does not imply that He exists in fact. In the main premise, we read about a way of being; in the consequence, we read about existence in general. So the conclusion contains more than premises actually allow, and the syllogism is formally incorrect. The true meaning of the alternative is: either God does not exist at all, or, if He exists, He exists necessarily. But, this way and again, the existence remains unproved. The concept of God and the concept of the being that exists necessarily are not absolutely identical: otherwise, it would be immediately evident that God exists. In every being, we distinguish:

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

1) what is, the subject of being, the essence; 2) the being itself, the predicate, what is really predicate in each predicate.

75

The blindly existing being is what was never preceded by any possibility of itself, so it could never exist or not exist. What is is the prius, the primordial state, the possibility of being; it cannot stay in this priority, so that its passage into the being is irresistible: it is not possible, that what is does not get to be, ergo it is impossible to think of it as notexistent. But that, to which not-being is impossible, cannot even be, since the possibility of being includes as well the possibility of not-being. If God were the being existing necessarily, it could be defined only as rigid being, immobile, absolutely not free, unable to make progress and to go out of Himself.17 God is not only the being which exists necessarily, blindly, but He is, at the same time, that which can change His necessary being into accidental being, into a being that He posed by Himself, so that the necessary being is His fundament, but His effective being is not simply the necessary being. Life consists in the freedom that a being has to surpass his own being as posed immediately and independently from itself. In the concept of God, we ought to think that He is free with regard to His own existence, He is not tied to it, and He can make of it a means: He can surpass its absoluteness. These themes are duly developed in the Berlin period: it is whilst elaborating and exposing at the University the Philosophie der Offenbarung, that Schelling conceives the difference between negative and positive philosophy.18 First of all, it is interesting to analyze the pages specifically dedicates to the ontological proof.19 The most ancient (Anselmian) version of the ontological proof was this one: the Highest, above which nothing is, quo majus non datur, is God, but the Highest would not be the Highest, if it did not exist, because we could then imagine an Essence, which had, more than Him, the existence, and it would not be the Highest anymore.20 The following argument, which repeats the one of the Mnchener Vorlesungen, appears four times,21 in the eighth lesson of the Philosophie der Offenbarung: But what does this mean, if not that we have already thought the existence in the highest essence? So certainly the highest Essence exists, it is good to note, if there is a highest Essence, in the sense that it includes the existence, but the sentence that [in fact] it exists is, to be sure, only tautological.22 In the version of Descartes the logical mistake is clear: the essence of God refuses to exist only accidentally; this premise concerns only the necessary existence, a way of existence that is, so that the conclusion cannot concern the existence in general. The conclusion sounds: God exists necessarily if He exists, which leaves undecided (unentschieden) whether it exists or not. But if the ontological argumentat least in this versionis not able to prove the existence of God, it can anyway lead to positive philosophy. The negative philosophy (and its greater representative, Hegel) moves on the level of pure concepts, and, starting from the mere possibility of being, arrives to the idea of the existent.

76

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

The positive philosophy starts from the existent itself and then turns to the dominion of reality.23 The two philosophies do not necessarily sink into one another, but the very fact of their living together raises the question of their com-possibility, and, consequently, of the theorization of a passage from one to the other. As they are radically different, the end of the negative is not the beginning of the positive: there is an actual crisis on the threshold, which gives to the passage the shape of a Kehre, of a jump. This turning-point, that abruptly throws a bridge between two banks, otherwise stranger to one another, is what Schellingto be sure, in very few pages of the introduction to the Philosophie der Offenbarungcalls ecstasy (Ekstase).24 Negative philosophy is also called science of reason; as such, its content is properly only the bestndige Umsturz (consistent turning upside down) of reason, and its result is that the reason, misunderstanding itself as fount and principle, does not produce any real knowledge: So what to it [the reason] always becomes at the same time being and knowable, is something that goes beyond reason, and which it must leave to another knowledge, namely the experience. Reason has in this process nothing for her, it sees only its content flee away, and it cannot either begin by itself anything, not even with the one thing that remains, or take it to knowledge.25 The reason cannot reach the reality, because it works only with concepts; even its highest expression, the thought of the being as necessarily existent, does not offer the actual being, but only its idea. Therefore, it is the reason itself, conscious of its own limitations, which accepts to go out of itself, in order to find the existence, real only outside the thought. The reason becomes ec-static (= to stay outside) to reach the being outside the thought. It experiences the authentic transcendence, when she recognizes the inadequacy of its own idea of the necessary being. So far, it used only its material, and everything was already known to it: its nature was analytical: The pure Existent is the Being in which, rather, every idea, every possibility that is, is excluded. We could call it therefore only the upside down idea, the idea in which the reason is posed outside itself. The reason can pose the existent, in which there is not yet anything of a concept, of a something, only as an absolute Out-ofit (certainly, just to look at it again, a posteriori, as its own content, and so at the same time to take it again inside itself): the reason is therefore, in this posing, posed outside itself, absolutely ecstatic.26 Going out of itself, it deals with the irrational, the aconceptual; this event generates astonishment.27 The initial state of aphasia, originated by the encounter with the unheard, can be won only if and when the reason inverts its path and embraces the way of the positive philosophy (which would be, in conclusion, the negative one, transformed and regenerated by the ecstatic encounter with the actual existence). In the Erlanger Vortrge of 1821, along with the word ecstasy, appears the more familiar one of intellektuelle Anschauung;28 only, if the intellectual intuition of the young Schelling used to reach directly its goal, in a form of gnosis that still the Weltalter call

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

77

Mitwissenschaft (a con-scientia based on the similia similibus, which makes us coeternal to the creation in the act of intuition),29 now it has a less triumphal aspect, because it does not catch its object but per viam negationis: while the intellektuelle Anschauung offers the Absolute in its full reality and actuality, the ecstasy hands only the existent, pure and simple, ineffable and irreducible to a determination whatsoever, and which only afterwards will be namable being. In Hegel, das Wissen is das absolute Wissen, and it coincides with the reason; the ecstasy, instead, implies a negative relationship with its own object, since it gets it only by negation and self-transcendence, along with the consciousness of insufficiency and fallibility: the ecstasy is not the finishing lineas instead the intuition thought wrongly to be, in its pretentiousness to reveal the Absolutebut the starting point, from the existent to the Being. In the description of the ecstatic experience, Schelling insists on the nullity and the impotence of reason: it meets an object which destroys its pride and humiliates it: The merejust existent is precisely that through which all that could spring from the thought is made cease, that in front of which the thought falls silent, in front of which the reason itself bows, because the thought deals only with possibility; where this is excluded, the thought has no power.30 In all the mystical traditions, as in the ancient rituals, the acquirement of purity presupposes the annihilation of the previous life. In the ecstasy, the pure existent, in its radical inconceivability, happens to appear the necessary correlate of reason, its complement, which, while humiliating it, at the same time leads it again to its purest nature. To the reason, as infinite possibility to know, can correspond only the infinite act of the infinitely existent. Another aspect of the reason in front of the existent is that it turns to stone: since the being is inconceivable, no word can be meaningfully enough pronounced in front of it. The silent dimension of ecstasy makes more sense than any discourse, because the existent cannot be reduced to any logical and rational determination. The pure being can be known only abandoning the intentionality which pertains to any form of knowledge: when we stop wanting to know it, it finally reveals itself. The submission of reason to the existent is the extreme point of negative philosophy. The ecstatic reason, realizing that it cannot own its content as a real content, decides to start from the Being which precedes every possible thought. It now poses the question about what this antecedent Being is. The positive philosophy, as an attempt to define the pure existent, proceeds from the trauma of reason. After the astonishment, the reason meets the amazement, namely in front of God, the Wunderbare par excellence. He is so marvelous, that He requires an exceeding measure, compared to which all human measures are worthless: He is das absolut-Erstaunenswerthe. We cannot reach the pure existent through any presupposition, otherwise it would not be absolutely pure, unconditioned prius. It is intransitive. Potentia is transitive by definition, because it must become actus; the pure Being, instead, is immer schon original coincidence of potentia and actus, actus purus. As such, the pure Being is absolutely immediate. What exists before every potentia exists eo ipso undoubtedly (there is doubt only where there is possibility, that is where there is a potential residue).

78

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

Not only here the coincidence of Thought and Beingthe principle of idealism, that isis broken, violated, but there is not in perspective other Being but the one which precedes and transcends the Thought itself; the motto that Schelling opposes to idealism is: not because there is a thought there is also a being, but because there is a being there is a thought. Before the Being, nothing is; the Being is, as in the works of the period 18011806, the absolute identity, the complexio oppositorum, which establishes the possibility of every opposition, the preliminary positive which, like in Parmenides, funds the possibility of the opposition, and the possibility of the Nothing itself, as an inner determination of the Being. It has no past, it is its own past, the absolute past which comes before everything: it is das Unvordenkliche. It precedes the possible itself, to which everything appears as future. How is it possible to think the unthinkable? The pure existent is an Ab-grund (Heidegger borrows the word from Schelling): the fundament of everything cannot be in turn funded.31 Here, on the verge of the abyss (which is the regular meaning of Abgrund), the reason experiences its more dramatic vertigo, caught by the most radical anguish.32 This crisis leads the reason to feel the weird proximity between being and not-being, so that it cannot avoid what Heidegger calls the Grundfrage: why the being and not rather the nothing? In this situation, the reason has two options: to get lost or to dominate the vertigo. But a nuance of tragedy remains, inasmuch as what rescues the reason from the precipiceif this ever happens, by the wayis that same Being, which manifested Itself as abyss, which led the reason to the precipice. Object and cause of the anguish is not the nothing, but the Being in its irreducible inexplicability. On the one hand, Schelling insists on the fact, that the final term of negative philosophy cannot be the first one of the positive, because the concept of the necessary being, to which the former arrives, is just a concept, while the pure being, from which the latter starts, is a real existence; on the other hand, he tries hard to bring near the two terms. There is, then, something in common between the two philosophies: the last moment of the negative determines a relationship with the positive. This Mittelpunkt is exactly the ecstasy, which nonetheless generates a crisis at the same moment as it unites. The two philosophies are close but not coincident rational processes, separated as they are by the intuition of the existence. The experience marks the difference; an experience, which no rational approach will never deliver. Negative philosophy tends to reality, but gets it only through an act of self-transcendence of the reason; positive philosophy aims to the qualification of existence, but after suffering a terrible humiliation. The first one accumulates finer and finer concepts of an existence, which will be given only by the ecstasy; the second one tries to dominate rationally a reality that is imposed to it in the ecstasy as an impenetrable and mysterious datum. After the ecstasy, the philosophical speech maintains its rational nature, but in a different sense. While earlier the reason dealt only with pure concepts (it was analytical), now, after tasting ecstatically the existence, it deals with the experience (it became synthetic). The route of Metaphysics is inverted, because it is no more matter of elevating to the Transcendent starting from the immanent, but rather to make immanent the Transcendent. So that, in the end, the basic stages of philosophy are: definition of the concept (negative philosophy), acquisition of existence through the experience (ecstasy) and denomination of the existent newly experienced (positive philosophy).

Bologna, Italy

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

Notes

79

1. About the actual meaning of the proof, and the opportunity to call it ontological proof, see Alessandro Medri, Anselms unum argumentum and Its Development in Bonaventure, Lyceum, vol. 11, no. 2 (2010): pp. 4865. 2. I limited, as much as possible, the quotations of critical literature, even because, surprisingly, this area is not among the most explored by Schelling scholars. I conducted, therefore, this research through the direct examination of every significant passage that I found in the authors opera omnia. Consequently, I translated all of them from the original German texts, since translation is the first step to hermeneutic. For a general introduction to the topic that is still important, see Dieter Henrich, Der ontologische Gottesbeweis. Sein Problem und seine Geschichte in der Neuzeit (Tbingen: Mohr [Siebeck], 1960). 3. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, pp. 64175 (Stuttgart: FrommannHolzboog, 1980). 4. See I. 5. It should here be kept in mind the sense of the verb aufheben in Hegel: it is not a removing without residue, but something close to the meaning of tollere in Latin; it is a negation which saves what it negates, in order to increase and intensify the essence of what remains. In the Wissenschaft der Logik, this leads to the process of a logical and ontological dialectics, where what is negated is just an inessential determination, which disappears in order to let the essential appear. 6. Schelling, Historisch-Kritische Ausgabe, pp. 9091 (authors italics): Sollte das Ich nur durch sich selbst realisiert seyn, so mte der Saz der sein Seyn ausdrckte, dieser seyn: wenn ich bin, so bin ich. Allein die Bedingung dieses Sazes schliet selbst schon das Bedingte in sich: die Bedingung ist selbst nicht ohne das Bedingte denkbar, ich kann mich nicht unter der Bedingung meines Seyns denken, ohne mich als schon seyend zu denken. In jenem Saz, also bedingt nicht die Bedingung das Bedingte, sondern umgekehrt das Bedingte die Bedingung, d. h. er hebt sich selbst als bedingter Saz auf, und wird zum unbedingten: Ich bin, weil Ich bin. Ich bin! Mein Ich enthlt ein Seyn, das allem Denken und Vorstellen vorhergeht. Es ist, in dem es gedacht wird, und es wird gedacht, weil es ist; dewegen, weil es nur insofern ist, nur insofern gedacht wird, als es sich selbst denkt. Es ist also, weil es nur selbst sich denkt, und es denkt sich nur selbst, weil es ist. 7. Ibid., pp. 9192: Vielleicht kann ich die Sache noch deutlicher machen, wenn ich das oben gebrauchte Beyspiel wieder aufnehme.Gott kann fr mich schlechterdings nicht Realgrund meines Wissens seyn, insofern er als Object bestimmt ist, weil er dadurch selbst in die Sphre des bedingten Wissens fllt. Wrde ich hingegen Gott gar nicht als Object, sondern als = Ich bestimmen, so wre er allerdings Realgrund meines Wissens. Aber eine solche Bestimmung Gottes ist in der theoretischen Philosophie, die Gott als Object bestimmt, doch zugleich eine Bestimmung seines Wesens = Ich nothwendig, so mu ich allerdings annehmen, dass Gott fr sich absoluter Realgrund seines Wissens seye, aber nicht fr mich, denn fr mich ist er in der theoretischen Philosophie nicht blo als Ich, sondern auch als Object bestimmt, da er hingegen, wenn er = Ich ist, fr sich selbst gar kein Object, sondern nur Ich ist. Beylufig zu sagen, sieht man hieraus, da man den ontologischen Bewei frs Daseyns Gottes sehr flschlich als blo knstliche Tuschung darstellt: vielmehr ist die Tuschung ganz natrlich. Denn was zu sich selbst: Ich! sagen kann, mu auch sagen knnen: Ich bin! Nur Schade, dass Gott in der theoretischen Philosophie nicht als identisch mit meinem Ich, sondern in Bezug auf dieses als Object bestimmt, und ein ontologischer Beweis vom Daseyn eines Objects ein widersprechender Begriff ist. 8. See Werner Beierwaltes, Platonismus und Idealismus (Frankfurt am Mein: Klostermann, 1972); idem, Identitt und Differenz (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1980).

80

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

9. See Rosario Assunto, Estetica dellidentit: lettura della Filosofia dellarte di Schelling (Urbino: S.T.E.U., 1962); Luigi Pareyson, Estetica dellidealismo tedesco III. Goethe e Schelling (Milano: Mursia, 2003). 10. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phnomenologie des Geistes, p. 17 (Hamburg: Meiner, 1937). 11. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, vol. 5, p. 367 (Stuttgart: Cotta, 18561861). 12. I talked before of a neoplatonic inspiration in Schellings philosophy of identity; here, more than twenty years later, that same ascendance evidently remains. It is perhaps the case to remind, that he was one of the greatest scholars of ancient culture of his times, with an erudition which went back to his childhood, when his father, a well-known student of eastern literature, used to teach him the ancient languages. Like Leibniz, he was a little child when he could speak fluently Greek and Roman, but unlike Leibniz he was also proficient in Aramaic and Hebrew, together with a whole bunch of other old and modern tongues. 13. Denn Geist ist eben das, was seyn und nicht seyn, was sich uern oder nicht uern kann, was sich nicht uern mu. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Mythologie. Erstes Buch. Der Monotheismus, in Schelling, Smtliche Werke, II/2, p. 33. 14. Nennen wir das Seyende selbst A, so ist also das Seyende im ersten Moment oder in der ersten Potenz seines Seyns A ... ; in der zweiten Potenz seines Seyns ist es +A..., in seiner dritten Potenz oder Gestalt ist es das als solches seyn Knnende, die als solches seyende Macht zu seyn, also A. Um diese Bezeichnungen gleich hier anzuwenden, so sage ich: es ist mit allem Bisherigen nichts gegeben als der Vorbegriff des gttlichen Seyns; Gott ist uns vor jetzt noch blo der nur in diesen drei Formen, als A, +A, A, seyn Knnende, aber noch nicht der Seyende, Wirkliche. Nur die Form des gttlichen Lebens ist gegeben, noch nicht das wirklichen Leben, das lebendige Gott selbst. Ibid., II/2, pp. 5859. 15. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie. Mnchener Vorlesungen (aus dem handschriftlichen Nachlass), in Schelling, Smtliche Werke, I/10, pp. 3200. 16. Ibid., p. 13: Weil die Vorstellungen keine Brgschaft in sich selbst [haben], so bedarf er eines Brgen fr die Wahrheit seiner Vorstellungen von Auendingenhier sucht er aus dem Subjektiven ins Objektive zu kommen (metavbasi~)diese Brgen findet er in Gott, dessen Daseyn aber dann vorher bewiesen seyn mu. Die bewerkstelligt er den krzlich auf folgende Art: Es ist in mir der Begriff eines allervollkommensten Wesens. (Die wird als empirische Thatsache vorausgesetzt, wie das Ich denke eben auch nur ein empirisches Faktum ist). ... [E]s gehrt zum Begriff des allervollkommensten Wesens auch der Begriff der nothwendigen Existenz. Sowie ich also Gott nur denke, mu ich auch einsehen, dass er existiert. Die ist also der unter den Namen des ontologischen bekannte Erweis der Daseyns Gottes. 17. For Schelling, these are the characteristics of Spinozas substantia; see ibid., pp. 4041. 18. Whereas, earlier, he proclaimed the exclusiveness of the positive philosophyalthough articulated in two procedures, big empiricism and big rationalism, the former ascendant and regressive, the latter descendant and progressivelater, until his death, he plans a reprise of the negative philosophy, as purely rational, that is as science of sciences, science of principles. On the topic, see, of course, Xavier Tilliette, Schelling: Une philosophie en devenir (Paris: Vrin, 1992); see also Walter Kasper, Das Absolute in der Geschichte. Philosophie und Theologie der Geschichte in der Sptphilosophie Shellings (Mainz: Matthias-Grnewald-Verlag, 1965); and Francesco Tomatis, Schelling e il passaggio dalla filosofia negativa alla filosofia positiva, Il pensiero (1997/2): pp. 5563. 19. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, II/3, p. 156ff.

THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF IN SCHELLING

81

20. Die lteste (Anselmische) Wendung des ontologischen Beweises war die: Das Hchste, worber nichts ist, quo majus non datur, ist Gott, aber das Hchste wre nicht das Hchste, wenn es nicht existierte, denn wir knnten uns alsdann ein Wesen vorstellen, das die Existenz vor ihm voraus hatte, und es wre dann nicht mehr das Hchste, ibid., p. 157. Two things are peculiar: Schelling is one of the few, as far as I know, who tries to spot the original source of the ontological proof, without taking for granted that it appears with Descartes; in spite of this, Schelling, who is always so careful under the philological point of view, do not quote the actual Anselmian argument, as it is formulated in the Proslogion. Nonetheless, this does not affect so much the global structure of his reasoning, although he could have found in Anselm a helpful forerunner. 21. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung. Erster Teil, in Smtliche Werke, vol. 13, pp. 156, 157, 159 (wenn er existiert, kann nur das nothwendig Existierende seyn), 167 (eighth lesson). 22. Was heit die aber anders, als da wir im hchsten Wesen schon die Existenz gedacht haben? Also freilich das hchste Wesen existiert, wohl zu merken, wenn es ein hchstes Wesen in dem Sinne gibt, da es die Existenz einschliet, dann ist der Satz: da es existiert, allerdings nur noch ein tautologischer, ibid., p. 157. 23. In a footnote (ibid., p. 152), Schelling calls negative philosophy philosophia ascendens, and positive philosophy philosophia descendens. The ground of these definitions can be found a few pages later: Mit dem Begriff Gottes, so wie er das Ende der negativen Philosophie ist, ist mir zugleich das prius der Gottheit gegeben. Dieses Prius aber ist an sich das unwidersprechliche, unzweifelhaft Gewisse, von dem ich daher auch fr sichauch ausgehen kann, wenn ich den Begriff Gott fallen lasse. Ich kann also zwar nicht vom Begriff Gott ausgehen, um Gottes Existenz zu beweisen, aber ich kann vom Begriff des blo unzweifelhaft Existierenden ausgehen und umgekehrt die Gottheit des unzweifelhaft Existierenden beweisen. Ist nun die Gottheit das Was, das Wesen, die Potenz, so gehe ich hier nicht von der Potenz zum Seyn, sondern umgekehrt vom Seyn zum Wesen, das Seyn ist hier prius, das Wesen posterius, ibid., p. 159. 24. It might seem, that Schelling uses weird terms. This is due to the fact, that he tries something at the limit of philosophy, which lets foresee a further and, so to speak, superrational dimension. So he borrows the lexicon from the conspicuous German mystical tradition, especially from the classic Jacob Boehme and from his friend Franz von Baader. But he is always preoccupied about distinguishing the mystical from the rational ecstasy, for example where he attributes mysticism the pretentiousness to know also the essence beyond the existence. The essence, instead, is matter of concepts, and pertains to the reason; the existence, on the contrary, given its aconceptual nature, can be seen only ecstatically. About this point, a page by Schopenhauer can be illuminating: Es kann keine Wahrheit geben, die unbedingt allein durch Schlsse herauszubringen wre; sondern die Nothwendigkeit, sie blo durch Schlsse zu begrnden, ist immer nur relativ. Ja subjektiv. Da alle Beweise Schlsse sind, so ist fr eine neue Wahrheit nicht zuerst ein Beweis, sondern unmittelbare Evidenz zu suchen, und nur so lange es an dieser gebricht, der Beweis einstweilen aufzustellen. Durch und durch beweisbar kann keine Wissenschaft seyn; so wenig als ein Gebude in der Luft stehn kann: alle ihre Beweise mssen auf eine Anschauliches und daher nicht mehr Beweisbares zurckzufhren. Denn die ganze Welt der Reflexion ruht und wurzelt auf der anschaulichen Welt. Alle letzte, d. h. ursprngliche Evidenz ist eine anschauliche: dies verrth schon das Wort, Arthur Schopenhauer, Smtliche Werke, hrsg. von Arthur Hbscher, 3. Auflage, Band 2 und 3: Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Erster und zweiter Band, I, 78, 14 (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1972). 25. Denn was ihr nur immer zugleich zum Seyenden und Erkennbaren wird, ist ein ber die Vernunft Hinausgehendes, welche sie darum einer anderen Erkenntni, nmlich der Erfahrung, berlassen mu. Die Vernunft hat also in diesem Fortgange nichts fr sich, sieht nur ihren Inhalt sich

82

IDEALISTIC STUDIES

entwerden, und auch mit dem Einen, was stehen bleibt, kann siesie fr sichnichts anfangen, noch es mit ihm zur Erkenntni bringen. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung, pp. 152153. 26. Das blo Seyende ist das Seyn, in dem vielmehr alle Idee, d. h. alle Potenz, ausgeschlossen ist. Wir werden es also nur die umgekehrte Idee nennen knnen, die Idee, in welcher die Vernunft auer sich gesetzt ist. Die Vernunft kann das Seyende, in dem noch nichts von einem Begriff, von einem Was ist, nur als ein absolutes Auer-sich setzen (freilich nur, um es hintennach, a posteriori, wieder als ihren Inhalt zu gewinnen, und so zugleich selbst in sich zurckzukehren), die Vernunft ist daher in diesem Setzen auer sich gesetzt, absolut ekstatisch. Ibid., pp. 162163. 27. Schelling uses an equivalent Italian expression, quasi attonita; ibid., pp. 165166. 28. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, I/9, pp. 229230: Man hat dieses ganz eigenthmliche Verhltnis [zwischen Subjekt und Objekt] sonst wohl auszudrcken gesucht durch das Wort intellektuelle Anschauung. Anschauung nannte man es, weil man annahm, da im Anschauen oder (da die Wort gemein worden) im Schauen das Subjekt sich verliert, auer sich gesetzt ist: intellektuelle Anschauung, um auszudrcken, dass das Subjekt hier nicht in das sinnliche Anschauen, in ein wirkliches Objekt verloren sey, sondern verloren, sich selbst aufgebend in dem, was gar nicht Objekt seyn kann. Allein eben weil dieser Ausdruck erst der Erklrung bedarf, so ist es besser, ihn ganz bei Seite zu setzen. Eher knnte man fr jenes Verhltnis die Bezeichnung Ekstase gebrauchen; see Xavier Tilliette, Recherches sur lintuition intellectuelle de Kant Hegel (Paris: Vrin, 1995). 29. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Die Weltalter, I, 4 (Mnchen: Biederstein und Leibniz, 1946): Dem Menschen mu ein Princip zugestanden werden, das auer und ber der Welt ist; denn wie knnte er allein von allen Geschpfen den langen Weg der Entwicklungen, von der Gegenwart an bis in die tiefste Nacht der Vergangenheit zurck verfolgen, er allein bis zum Anfang der Zeiten aufsteigen, wenn in ihm nicht ein Princip vor dem Anfang der Zeiten wre? Aus der Quelle der Dinge geschpft und ihr gleich hat die menschliche Seele eine Mitwissenschaft der Schpfung. In ihr liegt die hchste Klarheit aller Dinge und nicht sowohl wissend ist sie als selber die Wissenschaft. 30. Das blodas nur Existierende ist gerade das, wodurch alles, was vom Denken herkommen mchte, niedergeschlagen wird, das, vor dem das Denken verstummt, vor dem die Vernunft selbst sich beugt; denn das Denken hat eben nur mit der Mglichkeit, der Potenz zu thun; wo also diese ausgeschlossen ist, hat das Denken keine Gewalt. Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, II/3, p. 161. 31. Schelling tried with extreme difficulty to solve the impasse in the Philosophische Untersuchungen ber die menschlichen Freiheit of 1809, hypothesizing the presence in God of a fundamentwhat in God is not like Godeven more original than God; see Friedrich W. J. Schelling, Smtliche Werke, VII, pp. 359360. 32. Kantquoted at page 164 by Schelling, according to the edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft prepared in 1838 by Hartensteintalked about the abyss of reason (Abgrund fr die menschliche Vernunft), remarking the inevitability and the unbearable weight of such a thought: it is a mix of attraction and repulsion.