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Historical Connections
The history of the analysis of German Idealism has, with varying degrees
of intensity, placed it in a close association with the temporally distant
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
various epochs, thought becomes or develops via consciousness of sensation, intuition, intelligence, reection and the absolute act of the will into
an absolute act of self-consciousness,16 which is itself outside all time as
the unmediated unity of the subject and object of thought.) From the
concept of the absolute I as the highest reality, it follows that the empirical I must assimilate itself to it, and thus fullling its own highest
possibility become identical with it. Thus from the concept itself there
logically follows the imperative be absolute identical with yourself,17 or
become identical, raise (in time) the subjective forms of your being to the
form of the Absolute.18 In this becoming-identical with the Absolute, the
striving of the nite I for pure eternity19 fulls itself: the nal goal of
the nite I is thus expansion to identity with the innite.20 The achievement of the state of being of an absolute, timeless I implies the
annihilation of the world as the sum total of nitude,21 in favour of a
pure, eternal being. This I, as the goal of rising out of the nite, was
not, will not be it is.22 This foundational conception in Schelling, of
the raising of the nite to the absolute I as the unity of productive intuition (imagination) and thought with the object of thought realized by it,
shows in my opinion an afnity with a central thought of Plotinus: that
knowledge and thus the thinking possession of ones own, true self can
only be achieved through the self-transformation of the dianoetic thinking
of the soul (and the forms of multiplicity, including time, that go along
with this) into the self-identity (Selbst-Stand) of the timeless, absolute
Intellect (Geist). In this act of noothenai23 an immanent transcending of
the soul into a higher, more intensive form of being and unity the unconscious nous, operating in soul and not wholly fallen (that is, absolutely
remaining in itself ), is made conscious of itself. Thereby the soul in itself
is taken into the self-thinking of the absolute nous, in its self-illumination
as the identity of thinker and thought, of thinking and being, unied with
itself and these modes of thinking. Schellings annihilation of the nitude of the world in a self-consciousness identical with itself would
correspond to Plotinus demand for an increasingly intense abstraction
from all forms of multiplicity (aphairesis, aphele panta24), which at once
accompanies and promotes the transition to the consciousness of timelessness and the self-identity of nous. Thus Schelling and Plotinus, both
considering the elevation of the nite I to the absolute I, or to the selftransformation of discursive thinking into the thought of the timeless nous
that operates within it, converge in the basic motion towards freedom
from sensibility and nitude. Hence in Philosophie und Religion,25
Schelling says perhaps in an allusion to Platos requirement for a
katharsis of the soul that the goal of philosophy in relation to man is
not so much to give him something, as to separate him as purely as possible
from the accidental things brought to him by the esh, the world of appearances, the life of the senses, and to lead him back to the original.
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N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
make plausible as a transcendental analogy to Plotinus concept of selfknowledge 31 Schellings requirement for a raising-up and transformation
of the nite I into the form of the Absolute, whose central features
converge with the goal of the Plotinian self-transformation of thought in
a timeless self-thinking, and thus in a thinking of its own ground (Plotinus
V.3). A central feature of this Plotinian concept is that there be a conversion of dianoetic thought into the pure self-reection of nous or as
Schelling would say, self-consciousness as an absolute act [completing
itself outside time].32 From this point of view, Schelling must later
(1805) have especially welcomed the passages from V.3, 6 and 7 in
Windischmanns Stellen aus Plotinos (Passages from Plotinus):33
Reason, remaining within itself, and tending towards another neither
through act nor affect, acts always upon itself through knowledge of
itself. In this self-knowledge, remaining and never deviating from
itself, it also knows God. With this knowledge of God self-knowledge is achieved again: for it knows what it has from God, and
knowing this, necessarily knows itself, for it is indeed all that is given.
If it should not comprehend Him clearly, because that of which we
say that it sees is the same as what is seen, then especially in this
way will a vision and knowledge of itself remain, insofar as seeing
is the same as what is seen.
The identity of seeing or seer and seen, knowing and known, in the act
of self-knowledge thematized here through Plotinus corresponds to a
central principle in Schellings lectures from 1821 ber die Natur der
Philosophie als Wissenschaft (On the Nature of Philosophy as Science).34
The absolute subject (or the divine Absolute) is to be thought of as eternal
freedom above all [human] knowledge which knows itself and thus
is as object subject, and as subject object, without being two. Since there
is nothing outside it, there is nothing for it to know other than itself:
there is no knowledge of it whatsoever, other than that in which the same
knows the same. If there is supposed to exist for humans at least an
unmediated knowledge (in the sense of an intellectual intuition) of this
very eternal freedom, then the only possibility of such [a knowledge]
would be if such self-knowledge of eternal freedom were our consciousness, that is, the other way around, if our consciousness were a selfknowledge of eternal freedom. Or, since this self-knowledge lies in turning
from the objective to the subjective, if that turning were to happen in us,
i.e. if we were ourselves the eternal freedom reestablished from the object
to the subject. This notion of Schellings has, at the heart of its expression, a thematic connection with Plotinus treatise on self-knowledge (V.3):
in the self-knowledge of the timeless, absolute nous, the same thinks,
knows, sees, gazes upon the same (auto hauto) in a unity mediated only
399
by itself, related only to itself. This is the goal or the completion of selfknowledge in the realm of true or pure thought. It is achieved through,
as Schelling would say, a conversion towards ourselves, i.e. through selftransformation of discursive thought into absolute thought, which for
humans means the realization of the true, authentic self. Through this very
knowledge of the true self, in the sense of a noothe nai, we ourselves on
the path of an assimilation to God having become quite other think
absolute thought, and are with it a thinking One. For Plotinus, however,
this act would only be a self-knowledge of eternal [i.e. absolute] freedom
if his expression in VI.8 were also without doubt valid in this context: that
is, that the One which is absolutely free in truth, because it is the cause
of itself, could be determined in itself through self-thinking still more
intensely than nous. Of course the achievement of identity between
humans and absolute thought can be understood as a pregnant form of
their freedom, insofar as this corresponds to a high level of abstraction
(aphairesis) or freedom from sensibility and multiplicity, achieving ever
greater structures of unity through thought. Such concentration on the self
is the prerequisite for the highest mode of union: with the One itself.
III
Nature
Schelling published, especially during the years from 1797 to 1801, a series
of writings on the philosophy of nature, for example: On the World Soul,
an Hypothesis of Higher Physics (Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der
hheren Physik (1798)), a First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of
Nature, and an Introduction to the Outline of a System of the Philosophy
of Nature, or, On the Concept of Speculative Physics (1799), then On the
True Concept of the Philosophy of Nature (1801), later (1806): Aphorismen
zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie, furthermore Aphorisms on the
Philosophy of Nature, and still later, in 1830, an Account of Philosophical
Empiricism to name only those texts which are externally marked as
relating to the philosophy of nature. Schellings early engagement with
Platos Timaeus, in a commentary (1794) pursuing mainly his own interests, remained determinative of his later reections on the categorial
understanding of nature, in the spirit of Kants transcendental philosophy.
It was, however, one of Schellings basic intentions to construe nature not
only conceptually, in a transcendental way to philosophize about nature
is to create nature 35 but also to mediate between nature as object of
empirical experience and nature as subject, towards which alone all theory
is directed.36 In this mediation, both spheres or powers form a unity differentiated in itself so that also the two sciences, whose different orientations
are equally necessary for a reliable insight into the whole of the phenomenon of nature namely transcendental philosophy and the philosophy
of nature basically represent one science. This unity differentiated within
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N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
itself reects the fact that subject and object work together one organic
whole, in or as nature. Even the idea that nature as subject is spirit born
into the objective, which is the being (essence) of God introduced into
form,37 makes clear that nature cannot be objectied or reied in a positivistic, mechanistic way, but must rather be grasped on the basis of a
spirit unfolding itself in nature. From this basic movement, nature can
refer to this very ground in itself and beyond itself, beyond its objectivity
as an empirical appearance: nature is the step towards the world of
spirit.38 With this conception Schelling solved that postulate which had
already been formulated by The Oldest Programme for a System of
German Idealism (1796/7): I would like to once again give wings to our
slow physics, which by means of experiments proceeds so arduously.39 A
restriction of the intention of the philosophy of nature to only those objects
given in sensation would thus miss what is essential to nature, its constitutive ground spirit and instead remain caught in the supercial.
When, in accordance with the dialectical relationship or dynamic identity of nature and spirit, the system of nature proves to be at once the
system of our spirit,40 then all experience of the so-called empirically
given is utterly speculative. True physics is thus speculative physics. Its
principles are that nature is visible spirit, and that spirit as its ground is
invisible nature,41 so that both condition and explicate each other, or even
that nature is not only the appearance or revealing of the eternal, but is
rather at the same time this very eternal itself .42 The protreptic to physics
is thus the protreptic for speculative philosophy, which has the timeless,
absolute ground as its object: come to physics and know the eternal.43
In opposition to a mechanistic, and hence for Schelling spiritless physics,
the speculative philosophy of nature attains a victory of the subjective
over the objective [roughly imagined as independent of consciousness].44
In and through such a philosophy, nature itself as subject stands opposite
to thought and contemplation. As the visible appearance of the Absolute
included in the absolute act of knowing nature itself becomes an inner
moment of the philosophical theory of the Absolute of absolute idealism.
Thus speculative philosophy of nature, so conceived, is, for Schelling, incorporated into a process of the wholly modern period, which is essentially
characterized idealistically through the reigning spirit in it, as a return
inwards.45
Because of the prerequisite that nature and spirit interpenetrate and
condition one another in nature as a whole, speculative physics cannot
as I have already indicated be directed towards that in nature which
could be seen immediately as objective, but rather towards that
which is hidden to the senses, but open to spirit: that which expresses the
mystery of nature.46
This foundation of nature in reason, spirit or subject implies for
Schelling, from his concept of spirit, that it is essentially productivity,
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N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
and operation in its various forms, and that this very contemplation is
equivalent to a form-creating actuality, and the result of this active contemplation is again a theorema that which is contemplated.57
Even though Plotinus reections on phusis in Enneads III.8 as before
with the conception of self-consciousness demand an exact comparison,
not minimizing the differences between the two, and could be given various
elucidatory support from Friedrich Creuzers translation of the Plotinus
text, I must limit myself here to some key passages in Plotinus that may
open a way to Schelling.
From the principles of the Greek theory of nature, in this case statements transmitted from the Stoics, nature has at its disposal no phantasia
(imagination); 58 it is, therefore, aphantastos.59 The conclusion which follows
from this is that nature is alogos, deprived of reason (or of a rational
structuring principle). Plotinus agreed with the rst assertion,60 though he
accepted the second one in other contexts, restricting it by giving it a
different sense.61 In III.8 (and also in V.8.1), however, he conceives of
logos or the logoi as rational principles (Creuzer: Begriffe), creating form
from reason, as operational moments of theoria and thus, through their
operation as that which gives shape (III.8.2.3), as the foundations of nature
itself: nature is the formative power, which brings forth [creates: poiei]
other formative powers.62 Logos comes then from contemplation itself,
as the essential moment of nature (3.10f., 4.6), and is at the same time
the result or product (apotelesma) of its poietic operation through logos
(3.12, 21). Thus there is a determination of nature differentiated in itself,
with different degrees in its foundation: its being (3.17, 22f.) and life
(3.15) are a contemplation which creates through a rational, teleological
formative power: what it brings forth, it creates through contemplation
(1.23); the logoi are (in vegetative and sensitive nature) creative (powers),
or what is creative in nature (2.28), because they are grounded in theoria,
or are operative because of it, insofar as they create forms in matter (2.3,
22, 27, 34), and thus shape these into delimited beings.
Hence, if logos 63 itself comes forth from theoria, and so is given at
the same time as its productive activity, or if logos itself is even to be
thought of as identical with theoria (3.3), and logoi appear forth from it
as its operative, forming powers, then physis, as the form which is becoming
or has become the total product of contemplation, can also be grasped
consistently as logos or as dunamis poiousa creative power or potency
(3.15). Because it has or immediately is contemplation, it immediately
creates without a further cause following from its origin, that is, it creates
from itself: Being, for it, means creating. . . . It is contemplation and
contemplated at the same time, for it is logos. Through its being contemplation and contemplated [as the unity of both] and logos, it creates, in
so far as it is this. So the creation [of nature] has revealed itself to us as
contemplation.64
403
The assumption that nature is grounded in rational formative principles, coming forth from the act of contemplation, existing with it
immanently as one, at the same time refers nature in relation to the
totality of the being given forth by the One to its own origin in Intellect,
which reects upon itself (4.13). Nature becomes the basis of its mediation, mediately through nous, and immediately through the demiurgic soul
that orders the cosmos.65 Even taken alone, this foundation of nature in
contemplation which operates in nature, and through the means of this
contemplation even if this is the most extended and weakest form of
theoria66 in soul and nous, is a sufcient reason not to be able to explicate nature mechanistically, for example, on the model of Epicurean
physics, as pushes and levers (othismos, mochleia: 2.4, 5). On the contrary,
nature requires a thoroughly theoretical reection of the philosophical
contemplator, on the principle that like knows like. Such a reection is
found in Plotinus precisely in III.8, as the rst part of a lengthy, formally
and thematically united writing,67 in the context of a conceptually powerful
attempt to prove that the entire cosmos, in the face of opposing forces
(for example, those noted by the Gnostics68), is one grounded in reason,
intellect, and mathematical structure, and thus as one characterized in the
end by Unity, Goodness and Beauty, which are due to the structuring
emergence of the One itself.
Such a harmony or sympathy among the different and even opposed
forces in the cosmos, a unity of productive motion and the stillness which
preserves the constitution of the whole, founded in or mediated by the
logoi, which has its origin in the timeless, intelligible sphere and is maintained by that sphere in its rest and activity united in themselves such
a conception could be related to with fascination by Novalis as well as
Goethe 69 and Schelling, with a respectively modied interest in nature
determined by spirit and the divine ground in a nature thought of
primarily as Natura Naturans, in nature as the unique artist creating
according to the logoi or, as a representation or appearing of the divine,
and thus, regarding the form of the reection, as a holy physics, for which
nature is the visible spirit and spirit is, as its ground, invisible nature.70
With regard to this thematic connection I have sketched between
Schelling and Plotinus concept of nature as a contemplation which brings
forth form-principles, and thus a rationally structured sensible reality, it
is instructive to note Schellings direct interest in Plotinus treatise III.8
in the translation of Friedrich Creuzer. With no comparison to the text,
he begins his excerpts71 with the note: How does nature know? An inner
eye looking upon itself. (Wie die Natur erkenne? Ein inneres Auge sich
zu schaun). He suggests, in his answer to the question of the form of
knowledge in the Plotinian physis, self-reection in the sense of an eyesight 72 (Augen-Blick) that is self-related and thus constitutive of being
thus, a self-contemplation of nature. Plotinus, meanwhile, excludes
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Further Perspectives
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
as the perfection of an (or the) identity of thought with its own being
(nous), which is grounded in the One itself, or as an emergent consciousness of its own noetic ground in a transformation of its being (noothenai
of the soul). These turnings of thought inwards and upwards can and
should ultimately lead to a (no longer thinking) union with the One itself:
a e x .91 In each
of the hypostases the origin and those that come forth from it the
constitutive workings of remaining (mone), procession (proodos) and
return (epistrophe) to an ever higher or more intense form of unity,
and nally to the One/Good itself, determine also the being and motion
of the cosmos as a sympathetic unity guided by and centred in the
world soul.
In Schellings philosophy this universal, circular dialectic corresponds to,
among other things, the notion that each motion is completed only by its
contrary motion. The Absolute, which as spirit is at the same time the most
intense unity, knows itself, and is a pure absolute afrmation of itself,92
removing all difference in itself through thought this is an analogue to
the Plotinian identity of thought and being in or as nous. For Schelling,
of course, this unity of the Absolute, realized through self-afrmation,
is utterly the First (as opposed to the position of the Plotinian nous).
The idea of Plotinus, developed from Platos Sophist and Aristotles
theology, that nous, despite standing in itself is an intrinsically constant,
yet living motion of self-thinking being, is very close to Schellings notion,
but the latter notion is at the same time removed from the former by its
historical aspect: God is not to be thought of as a still, standing power,
but as life, personality, progressive motion, leaving and returning to
itself.93 Absolute unity so conceived is, for Schelling, not only the creative,
ecstatic beginning of being, but rather also the immanent goal of the
motion of the same being: the Absolute-Innite is the highest unity, which
we consider to be the holy pinnacle, from which all proceeds and to which
all returns.94 Return here signies the reconciliation or dissolution of
the nite in the absoluteness of the In-nite.95
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N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
derives; then also that they do a great deal by themselves, and, since
they possess beauty, they make up what is defective in things. For
Pheidias too did not make his Zeus from any model perceived by
the senses, but understood what Zeus would look like if he wanted
to make himself visible.99
If then art presents, in a mimesis of nature, natures structuring logoi, and
mediates intelligible beauty through this very representation in the sensible
appearance of the work of art, then art does not speak only to the senses
and the emotions, but proves itself as an impulse towards the turning of
thought out of the sensible, into the timeless structures of being and reection belonging to intelligible being and life, which has come forth from
the One itself.100
While the question of the essence and function of art has a more peripheral signicance for Plotinus it was only implied by the more pertinent
question of a theory of nature and, above all, of beauty for the thought
of Schelling, especially in his phases of transcendental philosophy and
philosophy of identity (Identittsphilosophie), the same question had relevance which was central and nearly impossible to overestimate. His
philosophical intent comes out of many streams of thought towards a
metaphysical foundation of art: art is, for him, an historical and sensible
appearance, sensible in its various forms, an outow or emanation of the
Absolute, 101 the repetition of the philosophical system in the highest
potency.102 As the work of the productive intuition of the artist, the imaginative power (Einbildungskraft) as the In-Eins-Bildung of the opposites:
conscious and unconscious, nite and innite, real and ideal, art is even
the fullment or perfection of the intent of philosophy as simultaneously
the only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy.103 These
attempts to understand art according to its highest claims are set out
already in the ltestes Systemprogramm (1796/7), a sketch outlined by the
three friends: Schelling, Hegel and Hlderlin. Here we nd a statement
formulated precisely within the development of Schellings thought: that
the highest act of reason . . . is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are kin only in beauty, and that the philosophy of spirit is or should
be an aesthetic philosophy.104
Schelling developed the above-noted metaphysical foundation of the
concept of art and its individual categories in a highly nuanced and
engaging manner, especially in the sixth section of the System of
Transcendental Idealism (1800), the dialogue Bruno (1802), in the Lectures
on the Philosophy of Art, which he gave at Jena in the winter semester
of 1802/3, and repeated in 1804/5 at Wrzburg, and further in the Lectures
on the Method of Academic Study (1803), and nally in the Speech on the
Relationship between the Fine Arts and Nature, which he gave for the celebration of the saints day of the Bavarian king Max I. Joseph on 12 October
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themselves: their referring is their being. For Schelling, this means that
art becomes a symbol in the original sense of the word, in that it brings
together ideality and reality into a unity in which both appear in one
another. The imitation of nature through art is then not mere reproduction or a redundant mirroring of nature, but natures transformation
through knowledge of structure and through imagination-impulse. Thus
art decisively surpasses reality as such.110
Art as referentiality or as symbol corresponds to the above-noted
anagogical function Plotinus gives to art: art as a medium of return from
the sensible experience of nature to the productive logoi operative in
nature a motion which can precede abstractive reection (aphairesis)
on the ground of our thought and of absolute thought the One itself
and which perhaps for this very reason attains philosophical signicance.
I must now restrict myself to only these aspects of the 1807 Speech
which provide possible analogies to Plotinus rehabilitation of artistic
mimesis. However, I would like to look, proceeding from Schelling and
Plotinus, at a principle of modern art. The conception of the imitation of
nature which we nd in Schelling and Plotinus, according to which art
brings the inner structure of nature into appearance, anticipates the relationship to nature of abstract painting. Paul Klee, for example, realizes in
his painting the thought formulated by himself, that the artist should not
worry so much about visible nature, but rather about its law; and for
Wassily Kandinsky, abstract painting leaves behind the skin of nature,
but not its cosmic laws: the artist has the inner vision which penetrates
through the hard shell to the interior of things, and which takes the inner
pulse of things with the various senses as the germ of his works.111 The
non-realistic imitation of nature thus becomes an aesthetic reconstruction
of inner lawfulness, and at the same time the visible representation of that
which eludes sensible experience as such.112
The relatively close connection between Schelling and Plotinus sketched
here from the perspective of their understanding of art as the mimesis of
nature must be juxtaposed with the strong opposition that separates them
in their estimation of the relation of art to philosophy, and the signicance they give to art for the knowledge of truth and the absolute ground
of reality. For Plotinus, the conceptual reection on the ground of our
thinking in the nous which works within us, and in the inner ascent of
thought itself to a union beyond thought with the One itself, is taken as
the fullment of the philosophical way of life and thus as the highest and
best for mankind; Schelling, on the other hand, conceived not only the
inner identity of art and philosophy, but also sometimes113 in opposition to Hegel even raised art above philosophy, because only art could
achieve that for which philosophy can only be a preparation and presupposition. A thoroughly philosophical apotheosis of art, which is shown in
the continuation of a statement on art quoted above as simultaneously
411
the only true and eternal organon and document of philosophy, would
be unthinkable for Plotinus as a replacement for union with the One: Art
is precisely therefore the Highest for the philosopher, because it so to
speak opens to him the Holy of Holies, where in eternal and original unication it is as if in One ame there burnt what in nature and history is
separate, and what in life and in acting as well as in thinking must ee
from each other eternally.114 Regarding also the fundamental imaging
character of art, Plotinus would also reject the idea that art can be an
immediate and authentic expression of the Absolute the One/Good. It
does, however, give an impulse towards the realization of the image,115
that is by discovering in it the reference to the intelligible.
(b) A further perspective on the signicance of Plotinus (or of
Neoplatonic philosophy as a whole) for Schelling can be gleaned from his
Weltalter (The Ages). Schelling circled around this central philosophicaltheological project with various approaches, methods and routes, yet as a
work it remains a fragment. A testimony to his exertions is, among other
things, the convolution of manuscripts in the Berlin Schelling Archives.
The original versions of 1811 and 1813 were printed, but not published
during Schellings lifetime. For their rescue from the bombs of the Second
World War, which destroyed Schellings Nachlass in the Munich University
Library, we must thank the foresight of Manfred Schrter.116 Schellings
lecture on the System der Weltalter (System of the Ages) in 1827 gives us
further access to the development of this project.117 It contains principles
of Schellings late thought as a positive philosophy. In the Weltalter
Schelling attempted to think through the temporal or historical selfunfolding of God in the phases of the past, present and future: to think
of the transitus or disclosing of God not as from the empty, abstract and
timeless, but as from a circling eternity dynamic in itself, living in itself
in eternal time (Romans 16:25) into his temporal, world-positing and
historically active revelation or presence, which brings about its own
future: God as a living action in world and history, or, world and history
as a theogonic process. With this free disclosure of divinity in its own
history, however, Schelling did not intend a radical, essential temporalization and hence nitization of God.118 Or, to speak from a Trinitarian
point of view of the separation of God the Father from Himself, which
marks a true beginning: the unfolding of God the Father from his past,
potentiality and interiority into the presence, actuality and externalization
of the Son this is a central idea of his new positive philosophy.
In the Weltalter Schelling takes note of two conceptions of Plotinus
that are not insignicant for his own line of thought. The rst () rather
ambivalent indication given by Schelling touches on Plotinus theory
of the procession of being from the One/Good itself ending in matter
called by Schelling emanation or the theory of emanation. The second
() has to do with the concept of an absolute, self-willing will, which as
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N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
In the idea that God, as willing Himself, is absolute freedom, and thus
simultaneously the First grounding itself from out of itself, in the sense
of a causa sui, Schelling adheres to Plotinus concept of the One as absolute
will, which is as the cause of itself (
) at the same time true
freedom. 138 In another context, I have discussed the problematic of this
development in Plotinus VI.8,139 and tried to elucidate the instructive
signicance of Plotinus afrmative statements about the One that proceed
from self-causality for his thought on the One in general. Here I refer to
this showing a direct connection between Schelling and this very thought
of Plotinus.
In a passage from the Munich lectures on the System of the Ages in
1827/8, 140 Schelling combines several central statements from Plotinus
VI.8141 for his own argument: From this basis, the word of a Platonist
[Plotinus] may also be understood:
God is not how He happens to be, but how He Himself acts and is
the willing cause of Himself. He is Himself before [vor perhaps
von? Cf. VI.8.14.41: von sich selbst her] Himself
and through Himself [14.41f.: d e ]. He Himself wills
to be the cause of His being, and He is what He wills to be. The
will to be that which He is is He himself He Himself is in fact
only the will to be Himself; He is not without His will.142
In VI.8 Plotinus gives numerous proofs against , e ,
(chance, that which happened to be [Schelling: wie es sich
trift], just by itself) as the supposed essence or structure of the One and
First Principle, and thus also of the world which proceeds from Him. This
rejection has as its goal the grounding of an origin which is rational, and
transparent in itself, which as absolute freedom wills what it is and can
only will this, because it is what it wills.143 The will of the One in fact has
in itself, as absolute will, no reason to will anything other than itself by
deviating from itself. The absolute will as the One itself wills, then, to be
unchangeably that which it already is without being determined by the
normal differentiation of that which intentionally plans by considering
or producing an intention and its realization. Its absoluteness or originative self-determination consists in the fact that it can be only this. In its
own self-caused being () it articulates itself as identical with itself;
in this self-relation, it will be itself ( r144); in this being-itself it
wills itself: .145
If, then, the will identical with its own being leads intentionally to its
own self-causation or self-grounding, then it wills precisely through this
and in it without any inner difference always already (and primarily
only) itself. In the self-causation of the One its will wills itself as precisely
this self-grounding of its own being and thus of its activity; the self416
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
grounding is then unthinkable without willing itself as one and the same
act. Since both self-causation and self-willing are to be thought of as
identical with one another with no real difference, self-causality through
willing itself or in willing of itself is the highest criterion of the absolute
freedom of the Primordial One. Taking into account also the most extreme
possibility and highest determination of humans, the following sentence
also goes for Schelling: Freedom is the highest for us and the divine,146
above which nothing higher exists and can be thought.
Of course, the relationship I have sketched between Schelling and
Plotinus in the characterization of the divine Absolute or One as selfwilling-will is only illuminating if Plotinus consistent suspension of belief
(epoche) concerning afrmative predications about the One signalled
many times by hoion (so to speak) is given an appropriate weight in
its philosophical signicance. In other words, that which is said afrmatively of the One refers (of course in the categorial language of difference)
to that which the One properly is in itself, beyond the being and thought
of nous, in that it precisely is not this in the thought and speech of the
thinkable and sayable of the intellect and the soul. Thus afrmations
as intensications of their normal sense, as their modications into the
thought of an otherness from the One appear as radicalized negations:
as the negation of negation in favour of an afrmation which at least
momentarily allows one, in a kind of intuition or estimation, to see that
content which is systematically ruled out by negation.147
Even if the self-willing will of the Absolute One as genuine freedom
can be thought of as a substantial agreement between Schelling and
Plotinus in the above sense, yet one must recognize also an essential difference between the two, which does not, however, remove this very
agreement or analogy or make it a priori impossible. The difference
consists of the being of God which reaches forth into the future, which
is shown in the interpretation of Exodus 3:14 as I will be that which I
will be, and is strengthened by Schellings theory of potencies. This goes
also, to put it paradoxically, for the timeless self-unfolding of God in
Himself towards Himself: that God of negative philosophy, related to
Himself in thought and remaining in Himself, whose model is Aristotles
characterization of God as thought thinking Himself,148 must be transformed into a God who creatively projects Himself outward, acting in
history. Instead of staying a God who is only ,149 an end; a God
holding fast to Himself, like Aristotles God in Schellings opinion, He
must become a productive beginning150 which goes out of itself, in a positive philosophy a God of absolute future.
For Plotinus, on the other hand, one may not accept for the One in
the sense of Enneads VI.8 and for the self-thinking intellect any of these
self-relations as inner developments or unfoldings analogous to history,
even if they were to be thought of as timeless. The One and the intellect
417
both thought of as God are what they are, and (in contradistinction
to Schellings conception) do not come to themselves, to their absolute
completion, rst in a theogonic process.151
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt Mnchen, Germany
Notes
*
1
This paper was presented as the rst Stephen McKenna Lecture at the Royal
Irish Academy, Dublin, on Friday 22 October 1999.
I have dealt with this context in detail, above all in Platonismus und Idealismus
(Frankfurt, 1972), hereafter referred to as PI, and also in Identitt und
Differenz (Frankfurt, 1980), hereafter ID, especially in the chapter Absolute
Identitt. Neuplatonische Implikationen in Schellings Bruno, pp. 20440,
and further in: Denken des Einen. Studien zur neuplatonischen Philosophie
und ihrer Wirkungsgeschichte (Frankfurt, 1985), hereafter DdE.
The following works of Schelling will be cited by abbreviation, after the
Gesamtausgabe (Collected Works) in 14 volumes by K. F. A. Schelling
(Stuttgart and Augsburg, 185661). The edition is divided into two sections
(I.110 and II.14), but I will number the volumes as a complete set, so that,
e.g., Vol. II.1 will be Vol. XI.
Vom Ich: Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie, oder ber das Unbedingte im
menchlichen Wissen (1795), Vol. I, pp. 149ff. (See also the critical edition
of this text in: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Reihe I Werke
2, ed. Hartmut Buchner and Jrg Jantzen (Stuttgart, 1980), pp. 69175.)
Ideen: Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur als Einleitung in das Studium
dieser Wissenschaft (1797), Vol. II, pp. 1ff.
Weltseele: Von der Weltseele, eine Hypothese der hheren Physik zur Erklrung
des allgemeinen Organismus (1798), Vol. II, pp. 345ff.
Entwurf: Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799), Vol. III,
pp. 1ff.
Einleitung: Einleitung zu dem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie,
oder ber den Begriff der speculativen Physik und die innere Organisation
eines Systems dieser Wissenschaft (1799), Vol. III, pp. 268ff.
Idealismus: System der transcendentalen Idealismus (1800), Vol. III, pp. 327ff.
Bruno: Bruno, oder ber das gttliche und natrliche Prinzip der Dinge. Ein
Gesprch (1802), Vol. IV, pp. 213ff.
Philosophie der Kunst: (1802), Vol. V, pp. 357ff. Selections in: Schelling, Texte
zur Philosophie der Kunst, ausgewhlt und eingeleitet von W. Beierwaltes
(Stuttgart, 1982).
Philosophie und Religion: (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 11ff.
System: System der gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere (1804), Vol. VI, pp. 131ff.
Rede: Ueber das Verhltni der bildenden Knste zu der Natur (1807), Vol.
VII, pp. 289ff. (also in Texte zur Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 5395).
Freiheit: Philosophische Untersuchungen ber das Wesen der menschlichen
Freiheit und die damit zusammenhngenden Gegenstnde (1809), Vol. VII,
pp. 331ff.
Weltalter: Die Weltalter. Fragmente. Published in the original versions of 1811
and 1813 by M. Schrter (Mnchen, 1946). A quite different text from
418
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
this version is found in Vol. VIII, pp. 195344 of the Collected Works
(3rd printing).
System der Weltalter: Mnchener Vorlesungen 1827/28 in einer Nachschrift von
Ernst von Lasaulx, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Siegbert Peetz
(Frankfurt, 1990).
Mythologie: Philosophie der Mythologie, Vols XI and XII.
Offenbarung: Philosophie der Offenbarung, Vols XIII and XIV.
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
A clear date cannot be given for the last two works. Cf. on this point the
edition of Manfred Schrter (Mnchen, 1927), 1. Hauptband, p. XI.
For example, by Carl Joseph Hieronymus Windischmann, Friedrich Creuzer,
Franz Berg, Friedrich Schlegel, J. F. Winzer, Johann Ulrich Wirth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. Cf. PI, pp. 100ff.
Critical edition, E. Behler et al., Vol. XIX, Zur Philosophie, (1804) (Mnchen,
1971), p. 44: Many a philosophy is grounded in the spirit of their age, but there
is only one which perfects it and expresses it scientically, as Plotinus is in the
Alexandrian philosophy the only one who really understands (after which
follows the sentence cited above regarding Plotinus relationship to Schelling).
Vol. XII, Philosophische Vorlesungen (18007), ed. J. J. Anstett (Mnchen,
1964), p. 294. For Schlegels relationship to the Platonic tradition, see also
M. Elssser, Friedrich Schlegels Kritik am Ding (Hamburg, 1994).
F. A. Uehlein, Die Manifestation des Selbstbewutseins im konkreten Ich bin
(Hamburg, 1982), p. 6.
The Notebooks of S. T. Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1957), Vol.
I Notes, p. 457. Philosophical Lectures, ed. Kathleen Coburn (London, 1949),
p. 390, characterizing Schelling: I might at one time refer you to Kant . . .
another time to Spinoza as applied to <another aspect of > his philosophy
. . . and then again I should nd him in the writings of Plotinus, and still more
of Proclus.
Compare PI, pp. 186f.; Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 106.
On Plotinus relation to Schelling: PI pp. 100ff. For Proclus, see pp. 105 (also
Mythologie, Vol. XII, p. 288), pp. 109f., 142f. For Dionysius, p. 112. See also
ber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft, Vol. IX, p. 217, where
Schelling says, of Dionysius concept or : [the absolute
subject] is not not God, and is also not God, it is also that which God is not.
It is thus above God, and if even one of the excellent mystics of earlier times
ventured to speak of an above-divinity, then we may be allowed to do the
same. Dion., De div. nom. IV. 1; 143, 10 (Suchla); XI. 6, 223, 6; XIII. 3, 229,
13. Weltalter, 16: Thus we [venture] to place simplicity of essence above God,
just as some of the ancients spoke of an above-divinity. 43: For we
explained that every original essence of simplicity as that which is even above
God and the divinity in Him. Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, p. 236. PI
p. 80, n. p. 353; 112, n. 40. See also below on beyond being, n. 79. For
Giordano Bruno: ID p. 204ff.
Cf. PI, pp. 83ff.
1700 (anonymously) translated from the French with introduction and
commentary by Josias Friedrich Christian Lfer, published in Zllichau and
Freystadt in 1792 in a second, expanded edition under the title Versuch ber
den Platonismus der Kirchenvter. Oder Untersuchung ber den Einu der
Platonischen Philosophie auf die Dreyeinigkeitslehre in den ersten Jahrhunderten. On Lfer: ID, pp. 205f. Neoplatonic texts are also found in the
Loci Theologici of Johannes Gerhard (Jena, 16101625) and Suicerus
(Thesaurus Ecclesiasticus e Patribus Graecis (Amsterdam, 1682, 1728 with
419
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
the same pagination)), which Schelling knew and used. Amongst the numerous
citations, see, e.g., for Gerhard: Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 13, 27, 100, 102; for
Suicerus, 62, 91.
For verication of these citations, see Beierwaltes, PI, pp. 100ff, 210ff. Horst
Fuhrmans has included in the third volume of his collection of letters and
documents (F. W. J. Schelling, Briefe und Dokumente, Zusatzband (Bonn,
1975) the Stellen aus Plotinos, published by myself (loc. cit.) for the rst time
from the Berlin Schelling archives, and the Bemerkungen regarding Plotinus
in many aspects made by Windischmann to Schellings Aphorismen zur
Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie (ibid., pp. 202ff). The claim made there by
Fuhrmans on p. 241, that Schelling cited Plotinus only (!) critically or to
reject him, is inaccurate in its sweeping one-sidedness. (He indicates one
passage in which Schelling discusses the theory of emanation; cf. on p. 413.)
This is shown already by veriable arguments in my discussion in PI and here
in what follows. Equally unreasonable is the conclusion drawn by Fuhrmans
from Schellings request (in a letter to Windischmann of 7 April 1804) for
Plotins Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini another edition is incidentally also
ne, though there is almost none other that Schelling did not know the
Plotinus editions particularly well (p. 74). One may assume that Schelling
was aware that the Enneades edit. Marsil. Ficini contained only Ficinos
Latin translation, and not the Greek text of Plotinus. Which edition other
than the Editio princeps by Perna of 1580 could he have wanted in 1804?
The lightly asserted supposition of Fuhrmans that Plotinus was no longer so
important to Schelling after the appearance of Franz Bergs Sextus (1804,
cf. PI, pp. 100f.), who parodied him as Plotinus, is contradicted by Schellings
estimation of the Stellen aus Plotinos and his thereby strengthened wish for
other signicant passages about matter, time, space, death and nitude (PI,
pp. 102f; Fuhrmans, p. 253; (p. 326: I have recommended him [Plotinus] to
Caroline) without even mentioning the many other passages referred to in
what follows and Schellings reections concerning Plotinian ideas in his later
philosophy. For Friedrich Creuzer see also here, p. 402. Parts of Plotinus
Enneads (a) and the works of Dionysius (b) have been available in the translation of J. G. V. Engelhardt: (a) Die Enneaden des Plotinus, bersetzt, mit
fortlaufenden den Urtext erluternden Anmerkungen begleitet, Erste
Abteilung (Erlangen, 1820) containing only the rst Ennead. (b) Die angeblichen Schriften des Areopagiten Dionysius, bersetzt und mit Abhandlunge n
begleitet, zugleich mit einer bersetzung der Elementatio theologica des
Proklos (2 vols, Sulzbach, 1823) in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek Mnchen
from the Library of the Bayer. Staatsminister Maximilian Joseph Graf von
Montgelas, who died in 1838.
See p. 413ff.
Given Hegels foundational engagement with the Neoplatonic texts themselves, the constitutive importance of Plotinian and Proclean philosophy for
certain areas of his philosophy must be even more evident. Cf. PI, pp. 144
ff., 154 ff.; J. Halfwassen, Hegel und der sptantike Neuplatonismus, Beiheft
40 der Hegel-Studien (Bonn, 1999).
Published for the second time in 1809 in Schellings Philosophische Schriften,
Vol. I, pp. IXXIV, 1114. I quote from the edition of 1856, in the Collected
Works, Vol. I.
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 399.
Ibid. p. 55.
Vom Ich, Vol. I, p. 199.
Ibid.
420
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
Ibid., p. 200.
Ibid., p. 201.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 202.
Plot. V. 3.4.7,11f.; 29. 8.35, 48f.; VI. 7.35.5.; VI. 8.5.35.
V. 3.17.38.
VI. 26 and 60ff., 64: conscious of its immortality, the soul should already
here free itself from the bonds of sensibility as much as possible.
In contrast to a transcendence of the Absolute which is immanent in the I
itself, towards which the I itself must extend and raise itself up (in accordance with the intent of Vom Ich (1795)), Schelling in his System der
gesammten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere of 1804 clearly,
in my view, had in mind a real transcendence of the Absolute opposed to a
self-enclosure in pure transcendental subjectivity: If there were no knowledge in our own mind, which was utterly independent from all subjectivity
and no longer a recognition of the subject as subject, but rather a recognition of that which is alone and absolutely, and which alone can be recognized
as the completely One, then we would indeed have to abandon all absolute
philosophy, and would be forever trapped with our thought and knowledge
in the sphere of subjectivity, and we would have to see the result of the
Kantian and Fichtean philosophies as the only one possible, accepting it as
our own (Vol. VI, p. 143).
Related to the statement from Liber XXIV philosophorum (end of the twelfth
century): deus est sphaera innita [intelligibilis], cuius centrum ubique,
circumferentia nusquam. For the metamorphosis of this statement up through
Idealism, see D. Mahnke, Unendliche Sphre und Allmittelpunkt (Halle, 1937)
(on Schelling: pp. 1012).
Cf. W. Beierwaltes, Causa sui. Plotins Begriff des Einen als Ursprung des
Gedankens der Selbsturschlichkeit, in Traditions of Platonism. Essays in
Honour of John Dillon, ed. John J. Cleary (Aldershot, 1999), pp. 191226,
esp. 194ff., 206ff.
Cf. in DdE the chapter Henosis (pp. 123ff.) and see, for example, at pp.
167f., 171f., 250ff.
Cf. Plot. VI. 9.9.46f.: b r, r n . Also I. 6.7.2f.
Schelling, ber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft (1821), Vol. IX, p.
226: The entire motion [the transformation from object to subject, without
the removal of the inner polarity of the two, a transformation in which lies
the possibility of a self-knowing of eternal freedom] is only motion towards
self-knowledge. The imperative, the impulse of the entire motion, is the
, Know Thyself, whose practice is generally seen as wisdom. Know
what you are, and be, as that which you have known yourself to be: this is
the highest law of freedom. Here Schelling on the basis of the Delphic imperative alludes to an analogous understanding of an isolated sentence from
Pindars Pythian II. 72: x d , become that which you are
through knowledge [of yourself].
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 388.
Text 4, in PI, p. 213. Schelling, in a letter to Windischmann dated 5 September
1805, thanking him for the Stellen aus Plotinos: You have my greatest thanks
for the wonderful Plotinian passages . . . Would that someone had time and
desire to bring forth the works of this divine man (Briefe, ed. Plitt, Vol. II,
pp. 72f. F. Creuzer went on to do this in 1814 (I.6) and 1835 (Opera Omnia),
see n. 54. Schelling apparently did not actively consider the editio princeps
of Perna (1580)).
421
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
422
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
Schrift von den gttlichen Dingen etc. des Herrn Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi und
der ihm in derselben gemachten Beschuldigung eines absichtlich tuschenden,
Lge redenden Atheismus (1812), Vol. VIII, p. 28. On this concept of nature
as the precondition for Schellings conception of art as imitation of nature,
see pp. 407f.
Plotini Opera omnia . . . Apparatum criticum disposuit, indices concinnavit G.
H. Moser . . . emendavit, Indices explevit, Prolegomena, Introductiones,
Annotationes explicandis rebus ac verbis . . . adjecit F. Creuzer (3 vols, Oxford,
1835). Previously Creuzer had edited Plotinus Enneads I. 6 as Liber de pulcritudine, which Schelling also knew. Later Creuzer edited the Elementatio
theologica of Proclus, as well as Proclus and Olympiodorus commentary on
the Alcibiades I of Plato, as Initia Philosophiae ac Theologiae ex Platonicis
fontibus ducta in three parts (Frankfurt, 1820/1822), the rst volume of which
Creuzer dedicated to Hegel, and the second to Schelling, together with
J. F. Boissonade as the Platonicorum monumentorum Philosophiaeque
Interpretibus Primariis. See PI, pp. 84, 100ff.
See PI, 84, 103ff. Creuzer translated theoria consciously with Betrachtung, and
prefers this term to the concept Speculation or the immediacy suggested by
Schauen, in order to present the active intentionality (Streben, Begehren,
Trachten) of theoria: see pp. 63f. of the translation.
The text of Schellings excerpts: PI, pp. 103f.
III. 8.3.18ff.
SVF II. 1016.11.
Plotinus III. 8.1.22.
III. 6.4.23. IV. 4.13.11f.
IV. 4.28.47.
See also 7.13ff., on the physis which brings forth the logoi. Creuzer, 33: da
. . . in den Thieren wie in den Panzen die Begriffe es seyen, die hervorbringen, und da die Natur ein Begriff sey, der einen andern Begriff
hervorbringt als ihr Erzeugni.
On the various aspects of the meaning of logos for Plotinus, see E. Frchtel,
Weltentwurf und Logos (Frankfurt, 1970); M. Fattal, Logos et Image chez
Plotin (Paris, 1998).
III. 8.3.1721: e s r e d n
d e . \ b d , . s
r d d d w .
.
III. 2.7f.: . 24: (). II. 9.6.22. Nature
as : 4.16.
3.7, 4.32. See c. 7 on the levels or grades of intensity of theoria: animals act
of producing is a power or actuality of contemplation ( , see
19), a striving to bring forth eide, and thus contemplating and contemplatable, and nally to full all with contemplation ( ,
22). The most intensive, living form of contemplation ( , 8,11)
after the soul is the self-thinking nous, or the living being itself: life as
thought, logos, contemplation: 8.6ff.
I.e. the unity of III. 8, V. 8, V. 5 and II. 9. Cf. R. Harder, Eine neue Schrift
Plotins, Hermes, 71 (1936), pp. 110. Reprinted in Kleine Schriften, ed. W.
Marg (Mnchen, 1960), pp. 30313.
Especially II. 9: e f .
PI, pp. 8793 (Novalis), 93100 (Goethe).
See Ideen, Vol. II, p. 26.
423
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
See these excerpts in PI, 103f. The second excerpt is problematic because of
Creuzers unclear Greek text. 1.23f.: , d i ,
a , m , d . The (Schelling following
Creuzers translation: what it brings forth, it brings forth through a contemplation which it does not have) contradicts the immediately preceeding:
. . .
, and Plotinus entire theory. To Theilers m [d
] I prefer H-S2: m [d ], although the passage requires
further discussion.
This idea can be connected to the concept of a constitutive seeing, a creative
envisioning of actuality through God, as developed by Augustine and
Eriugena. See W. Beierwaltes, Eriugena. Grundzge seines Denkens
(Frankfurt, 1994), pp. 127f., 279ff.
For the various forms of theoria moving upwards from nature to intellect, see
n. 66 above.
See Creuzer in Studien, Vol. I, pp. 72f.
PI, p. 104.
According to Johann Ulrich Wirth, Die speculative Idee Gottes und die damit
zusammenhngenden Probleme der Philosophie (StuttgartTbingen, 1845),
pp. 412, 414 (quoted with further references to the reception of Schellings
relation to Neoplatonism in PI, pp. 107f. See there also 100ff.).
System, Vol. VI, pp. 1527. Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 367: In philosophy we do not know anything as Absolute only the utterly One, and this
utterly One only in certain forms. p. 370, on the question how, in the view
of philosophy it is at all possible . . . that something utterly One and Simple
[and the Absolute is utterly One] proceeds [] into a multiplicity and
differentiation. See also Vol. V, p. 114.
PI, 110ff. W. Beierwaltes, Absolute Identitt. Neuplatonische Implikationen
in Schellings Bruno in Identitt und Differenz (Frankfurt, 1980), pp. 20440;
on self-afrmation especially pp. 215ff.
See, e.g., Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 238, 256. Mythologie, Vol. XII,
p. 58: All that we can say thus far is that God (who is not really existent,
but is the pure freedom of being or non-being, the beyond-being, as the
ancients also called Him), that God, if He exists, 100 (quotation from
Dionysius). Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 128, 132, 165, 215, 240, 256 (as
absolute transcendence). Andere Deduktion der Principien der positiven
Philosophie, in Vol. XIV, p. 350. Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung,
ed. W. E. Ehrhardt (Hamburg, 1992), Vol. I, pp. 205, 16f. Weltalter, 226: In
all of the higher and better learned ones [including the Neoplatonists], we
hear only that the truly Highest is above all being, and thus is named by
many the Beyond-being, the beyond-real (, ). Ibid.: Just
as the Highest cannot be thought of as being, so it cannot be thought of as
exactly non-being, as denying itself as being; for this it also would be a determinate necessity: but the Highest must be free from all determination and
outside all necessity. See also Weltalter 14. 20: God, the true being, is above
His being. 67. 141: For the Highest was not being, because He is above the
being, as the ancients expressed it already, as a such (as a ). System
der Weltalter, p. 152. In the Diary (1848) (with A. v. Pechmann and M.
Schraven ed. H. J. Sandkhler (Hamburg, 1990)), p. 180, the reference:
already in Alexander Aphrodisias. This theoretical motif of
Schellings requires attention of its own in relation to the Neoplatonic tradition. See PI, pp. 71, 76, 80f, 112.
Philosophie und Religion, Vol. VI, p. 37.
424
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
Ibid., pp. 38ff. Aphorismen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie (1806), Vol.
VII, p. 191.
Ed. Schrter 130. Similar is the third printing of Weltalter, Vol. VIII, pp. 244f.
See, e.g., V. 8.7.22: Matter as r in the unfolding of the shapes
and forms from the One. V.2.2.1ff.: \ . I.8.1.19: the evil
(matter) as . V. 3.7.33f.: a
(of the origin). 9.35, 10.2, 16.4.
VI. 3.7.5ff.; 8: a d (). See also V. 6.6.19:
r .
II. 5.4.13ff.; III. 6.7.12: c (). For the relation of this to the
Freiheitsschrift, Vol. VII, p. 255, see PI, pp. 118ff. and below, p. 414f.
As a universal statement about the concept of non-being or nothing for the
Neoplatonists, this is inaccurate. It holds only for the nihil privativum or
also for non-being as otherness, but does not imply nihil per eminentiam: i.e.
the idea that the One is nothing of all the things whose origin it is.
Weltalter, 202.
Neoplatonically the succession [i.e. the self-raising development] is sublated:
Philosophische Entwrfe und Tagebcher 18091813 (Philosophie der Freiheit
und der Weltalter), ed. L. Knatz, H. J. Sandkhler and M. Schavan (Hamburg
1994), pp. 147, 25.
IV. 8.6.23: x ( ).
On this problematic theme, see PI, pp. 127ff. For ekstasis in particular: Th.
Leinkauf, Schelling als Interpret der philosophischen Tradition. Zur Rezeption
und Transformation von Platon, Plotin, Aristoteles und Kant (Mnster, 1998),
pp. 31ff. Jean-Franois Courtine, Extase de la raison. Essais sur Schelling (Paris,
1990), esp. pp. 151ff.
Plot. VI. 9.8.19f., 10.17: . : 9.34, 11.7ff.,
41ff.
For Schellings concept of the self-afrmation of the Absolute, see Beierwaltes,
Identitt und Differenz, pp. 216ff.
Weltalter, 67f.
Bruno, Vol. IV, p. 258. See also further presentations from the System der
Philosophie (1802), Vol. IV, p. 397, on the striving [of the caused] back to
the unity, in which alone all truly is. One must also bear in mind, in this
context, Schellings etymologizing use of universum in the sense of unum
versum: the, so to speak, turned-around One or the outward- or aroundturned One. By this he does not mean the material universe, but the world
of the pure potencies, and thus far a still pure spiritual world. As the immediate externality (or self-realization (das Sich-Entuernde)) of the divine,
these pure potencies are set in place through a universio. This universio is
the pure working of the divine will and the divine freedom: Mythologie, Vol.
XII, pp. 90f., 95: the process set in place through the universio [is] the process
of creation. For universus Schelling refers us to Lucretius. Yet it seems to
me noteworthy that Meister Eckhart had already used this etymological wordgame for the Trinitarian self-reexivity, which is meant to use the same word
to show the self-relation of the divine unity: omne creatum a patre uno unum
est iuxta quod et nomen universi accepit, ut dicatur uni-versum (dem Einen
zugewandt); esse enim sive essentia dei cum sua proprietate patris, unitatis
scilicet, descendit in omnia a se quocumque modo procedentia (Expos. S.
evang. sec. Iohannem 10 v. 30; Lat. Werke, Vol. III, n. 517, p. 447, 911). This
uni-versio pertains to the Son as well as to the world. For the comprehensive
meaning of the concepts universio and universitas see J.-F. Courtine, Extase
de la Raison, pp. 113ff.
425
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
See Philosophie und Religion, Vol. VI, p. 43: The great intention of the universe
and its history is none other than the completed reconciliation and dissolution
in absoluteness. See also pp. 44, 47 (on the return of the souls); p. 57: the
Odyssey of history as return. Return of the sciences to poetry, their owing
back into the universal ocean of poetry: Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 629.
See references to the respective issues in nn. 78ff. above.
Compare Aristotle, Physics 199a1517.
Poetics c. 9; 1451b6f. Poetry is more philosophical and more serious than
historiography (5f.).
V. 8.1.3240 (Armstrongs translation): E a ,
c , b d a
. \ , e ,
\ d f , z . r d a \
d , , e .
\ e e b e , a g x
i , f \ . There is here an echo
of Aristotles Poetics 1451b5 (x i ).
For Plotinus notion of beauty and art and its inuence on philosophy and
art in the Renaissance, see W. Beierwaltes, Marsilio Ficinos Theorie des
Schnen im Kontext des Platonismus, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger
Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-hist. Klasse, Jg. 1980, 11th Abhandlung
(Heidelberg, 1980), pp. 18ff., 49ff.
Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 372.
Ibid., p. 363.
Idealismus, Vol. III, p. 627. See for this problematic in general: D. Jhnig,
Schelling. Die Kunst in der Philosophie (2 vols, Pfullingen, 1966/9). In the
context of mythology: L. Knatz, Geschichte, Kunst, Mythologie. Schellings
Philosophie und die Perspektive einer philosophischen Mythostheorie,
(Wrzburg, 1999), pp. 175ff. My introduction in Schelling, Texte zur
Philosophie der Kunst, pp. 352.
In the collection cited in the previous note, p. 97.
Vol. VII, pp. 289329.
Ibid., p. 294.
Ibid., p. 301.
Weltalter, 234.
Philosophie der Kunst, Vol. V, p. 369.
Rede Vol. VII, p. 295. This corresponds to the Aristotelian notion that art,
as the imitation of nature, perfects nature (ars imitatur naturam et perfecit
eam). See also above, n. 97.
Essays ber Kunst und Knstler, ed. Max Bill (Stuttgart, 1955), pp. 203, 183.
On the connections between the suprematistic painting of Kasimir
Malewitsch as radical abstraction and Plotinus aphairesis in the union with
the One, see W. Beierwaltes, Some Remarks about the Difculties in
Realizing Neoplatonic Thought in Contemporary Philosophy and Art, in
Neoplatonism and Contemporary Thought, Part 2, ed. R. Baine Harris
(Albany, 2002), pp. 26984, esp. 277f.
In the sixth section of his System des transzendentalen Idealismus.
Idealismus, Vol. III, pp. 627f.: so versteht sich von selbst, da die Kunst das
einzige wahre und ewige Organon zugleich und Dokument der Philosophie sei.
. . . Die Kunst ist eben deswegen dem Philosophen das Hchste, weil sie ihm das
Allerheiligste gleichsam ffnet, wo in ewiger und ursprnglicher Vereinigung
gleichsam in Einer Flamme brennt, was in Natur und Geschichte gesondert ist,
und was im Leben und Handeln ebenso wie im Denken ewig sich iehen mu.
426
N EO P LATO N IS M I N S CH E LL IN G S T H O U G H T
115 For the realization of the image, a foundational notion in Neoplatonic philosophy, see the chapter of the same name in DdE, pp. 73113.
116 See the reference to his edition above, n. 2
117 For which see the edition of S. Peetz, above n. 2.
118 See Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 255ff., 261f., 298.
119 Weltalter, 88f.
120 See above, p. 405f.
121 On this see PI, pp. 119ff., 130ff.
122 Freiheit, Vol. VII, p. 355. There Schelling specically mentions Ennead. I, L.
VIII. c. 8. On the possible provenance of this reference from Wilhelm Gottlieb
Tennemanns Geschichte der Philosophie, see PI, p. 121.
123 Weltalter, 230. System der Weltalter, pp. 133, 152. f. above, n. 86.
124 Plotinus II. 5.5.13, 24, I. 8.3.35: , , c s
r x r c .
125 Cf. Plotinus II. 4.10.11, 13ff., III. 6.7.1216: c . . . \
e d e , d c ,
b . 13.3ff.: ight of matter from form, its formand shapelessness (, 12.19ff.).
126 Ibid.: (II .4.10.11).
127 Ibid., especially 29. I. 8.9.20ff.: e e , e , \
y q \ s x q , a c . 4.30f.
128 : II. 4.13.7. Lack of all properties: III. 5.9.49ff. (c a ). I
8.10.2ff.
129 I. 8.3.1216: a x r e
d e d e e d d
b e , d , F , , ,
. Ibid., 31ff. Weakness of matter: III. 6.7.40.
130 III. 5.8f. (Symp. 203 bd). See also II. 4.16.22. III. 6.14.8ff.
131 Weltalter, 259; PI, pp. 140f., n. 182. S. Peetz, Die Freiheit im Wissen. Eine
Untersuchung zu Schellings Konzept der Rationalitt (Frankfurt, 1995), p. 134.
For a perceptive presentation of Plotinus concept of matter, see J.-M.
Narbonne, Plotin. Les deux matires. [Enneade II,4 (12)]. Introduction, texte
grec, traduction et commentaire (Paris, 1993).
132 Plotinus III. 8.2.25: [] c
133 Freiheit, Vol. VII, p. 356.
134 Ibid., p. 350.
135 See for this PI, pp. 6782, esp. 75ff. For the future aspect of Exodus 3:14, see
PI, p. 75, n. 325. Also System der Weltalter, p. 152: He becomes thought of
as Lord of all being, and His being is the cause of all other being, and He
says: I am what I will be, not: I am that I am. It [He?] is absolutely free,
utterly without being; for what does not exist above being cannot do what it
will, because it is bound to being. On the untranslatable name of God, which
conceals the distinction of times within it, and only in this way is true or
actual eternity: I am what I was, I was what I will be, I will be, that I am
(Weltalter, 3rd printing, Vol. VIII, pp. 263f.).
136 Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 269f.
137 References for Schelling and his relationship with the Neoplatonic tradition:
PI, pp. 77f. S. Peetz, Introduction to System der Weltalter, p. XVIII.
138 VI. 8.21.31: . 14.14: (translated
by Ficino as sui ipsius causa). Although Schelling knew Plotinus VI. 8 at the
time of the writing of Weltalter (see p. 414 above), he refers, for the idea of
an absolute self-causality or of absolute self-positing, to Spinoza (sometimes
with a marked difference from his concept of causa sui), but above all to
427
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
Fichte see, in addition to Vom Ich, Vol. I, p. 159 and Weltalter, 77 and 266,
esp. System der Weltalter, p. 134 and Mythologie, Vol. XI, p. 420: God is His
own beginning (of himself), his own deed, cause of Himself in a completely
other sense than that Spinoza gave to his absolute substance, a purely positing
itself [= Himself], with which Fichte achieved a greater idea than he himself
knew. Ibid., p. 464: willing is a pure self-origination, cause of itself in a
completely other sense than Spinoza said of the general substance. XII 64.
Cf. Beierwaltes, Causa sui (see n. 28 above).
In a transcript by Ernst von Lasaulx, p. 135 (see n. 2 above).
13.21, 40, 55, 14.41f., 16.38f.
This text and the immediately following reference to Plato (He actualizes
also everything other than Himself . . .: System der Weltalter, p.
135) are close to an older manuscript which Schellings son printed in his
edition of the Philosophie der Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 625. There we nd,
on p. 64: Platos words are well known: d .
More clearly, in the later Neoplatonists: God is not how He happens to be,
but how He actualizes and wills Himself. Plato, Tim. 76c5 ()
and 76d8 (), to which Peetz refers (p. 135, n. 89), comes close to
this sentence, which was obviously formulated by Schelling himself, but the
two texts do not correspond exactly to Plato.
For this and what follows, see Beierwaltes, Causa sui, pp. 203f.
VI. 8.13.37, 16.22, 38.
Ibid., 13.21. 40: e . 13.2733, 38: a
. Schelling , ber das Verhltnis der Naturphilosophie
zur Philosophie berhaupt (1802), Vol. V, p. 114: The utterly One as a will,
the utterly One [as the] utterly simple, eternal will. The absolute divine will
wills only itself: Mythologie, Vol. XI, pp. 461f.
Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, ed. W. E. Erhardt (Hamburg,
1992), I 79, 1.
Beierwaltes, Causa sui, p. 211.
See W. Beierwaltes, Aristoteles in Schellings negativer Philosophie, in
Aristotle on Metaphysics, ed. T. Pentzopoulou-Valalas (Thessaloniki, 1999),
pp. 5165, esp. 60ff.
Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 105; Mythologie, Vol. XI, p. 337.
Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, p. 105.
Mythologie, Vol. XII, pp. 91ff., 130f. Offenbarung, Vol. XIII, pp. 322f., thought
of in accordance with the Trinity, with a reference to Dionysius Areopagitas
term (divinity generating the divine).
428