10.13135/2036-542X/8032
application/pdf
2036-542X
8032
1
en
Emilio Carlo Corriero
Trópos
Acting the Absolute: 
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos
11
Monografica
2018-06-01
2023-08-08
2018-06-01
2023-08-08
47-59
1
Emilio Carlo Corriero
2018/06/01
10.13135/2036-542X/8032
47
Università di Torino
2036-542X
1
59
Acting the Absolute: 
https://ojs.unito.it/index.php/tropos/article/download/8032/6756
11
                                                                                         – ISBN 978-88-255-1945-7
                                                              DOI 10.4399/97888255194574 – pag. 47-59 (giugno 2018)




                                                             Acting the Absolute
                                            Theoretical premises of Schelling’s ethics

                                                                     E C C*




A: Is it really plausible an ethics without ontology? The controver-
sial status of moral philosophy, its lack of foundations and the difficulties
connected with its argumentation usually entail within the contemporary
philosophical debate an approach which has a bias for a theory of ethics
independent from a philosophical Weltanschauung. This is in particular due
to the fact that the widespread “naturalism” in philosophy, would eliminate
the room for freedom as necessary condition of any moral action. Indeed
the fundamental question of moral philosophy lies in the possibility to solve
Kant’s third antinomy, in a way that Kant himself seems to outline in its
Kritik der Urteilskraft.
This was at the end the main aim Schelling pursued in its philosophy
of nature, thinking of it as the grounding of the entire philosophy, ethics
included. The particular nature of the grounding, that Schelling finds in his
inquires, entails freedom as the main character of being in general and
of human being in particular. For its particular position in the world, its
Mit(t)wissenschaft of creation, the human being is able to act according to the
law of Identity, and its action — when it is ethical — repeats and continues
the action of the Absolute.

K: Schelling, Philosophy of nature, Ethics, Freedom, Absolute


    Schelling’s ethical reflection develops around the notion of freedom that
is defined as a consequence of a particular dynamic concept of Nature in
his  Philosophical Inquiries. This concept is possible for Schelling only
within a philosophy of Identity, and it is for this reason that, in order to
understand the foundations of Schelling’s ethics, it is crucial to consider
the theoretical outcomes of the  System der gesamten Philosophie und der
   ∗
       Università degli Studi di Torino; emilio.corriero@unito.it.


                                                                                                               
     Emilio Carlo Corriero


Naturphilosophie insbesondere (System of all philosophy and of philosophy
of nature in particular) where Schelling attempts to describe in a complete
way his philosophy of Identity.
    In his System of transcendental Idealism, Schelling undoubtedly intended
to continue his project of a philosophy of Identity that had already been
hinted at in his earliest writings as well as in his  Ideas for a Philosophy of
Nature, where, in questioning the relationship between the internal world
and the external one, he asserts that nature must not only express but also
truly realize the laws of our spirit, because «Nature is visible Spirit, Spirit is
invisible Nature». In the text from , however, he did not insist enough
on the importance that Nature assumed in the System as a whole, and de-
spite what he said in the foreword, that the purpose of the System was to
«extend transcendental idealism to the system of all knowledge», investigat-
ing the continuity and parallel between nature and the intelligent principle,
he found himself sketching «a progressive history of self–consciousness»,
inevitably ending up favouring the transcendental moment at the expense
of the natural one.
    If it is true that understanding of the general development of Schelling’s
thought, and of the System of Transcendental Idealism in particular, requires
the recognition of the value of previous works on the philosophy of Na-
ture, it is equally true that, as Jürgen Habermas rightly pointed out in his
doctoral thesis, Schelling was not entirely consistent with the theoretical
premises that anticipated his own System, since although he intended to
give autonomy back to the Non–I and therefore not merely raise Nature to
a simple position (Setzung) but rather to a presupposition (Voraussetzung)
of the spiritual, he did not follow this theory through to the end. On that
path, in fact, he should have described transcendental philosophy simply as
a ‘relative’ beginning, that is as the mere continuation of natural philosophy
(or process) and in no instance as an absolute beginning, as was actually the
case (Habermas : ). The fact, then, that in  Schelling published
the General Deduction of Dynamic Process in Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik,
with which he somehow balanced the “transcendental” positions of the
System by providing a real physical explanation of idealism, further testifies
how the System of Transcendental Idealism was not able to condense in a
coherent way the two sides of Schelling’s philosophy, the ideal side and the
natural one, into a complete philosophy of Identity.
    When, for example, in §  of the System Schelling presents the relation-
ship between Nature together with its dynamic process and transcendental
idealism in terms of parallelism, stating that «in physics dynamism fulfils
the function that transcendentalism has in philosophy», he juxtaposes the
natural moment and the transcendental one without yet composing them
into a single philosophy of (dynamic) Identity. This was already becoming
                                                         Acting the Absolute   


apparent when the suggested symmetry between the dynamic and the
transcendental was further clarified by the assumption that «every dynamic
movement has its ultimate foundation in the very subject of nature, that is
in the forces of which the visible world is mere structure» (SW, I/, p. ).
    For Schelling, the composition of the philosophy of Identity based on
the full recognition of the unique Subject of Nature began to assume
greater freedom and autonomy of its own after his break from Fichte,
which was anticipated by the collapse of the project to direct the Kritisches
Journal together and evident from the hasty and incomplete drafting of the
Presentation of My System of Philosophy.
    Schelling intended that this text should aim at unifying the two sides of
his philosophy in an identity vision and it contains very significant ideas for
his philosophy in its entirety, as well as the certainly clearer and more linear
exposition of the complex and differently expressed “doctrine of powers”.
However, it is a rather fragmentary work and certainly cannot be defined as
a true System. In spite of this, it was exactly from this brief text onwards
that Schelling began to reconsider the two sides of his philosophy from an
identity point of view, followed by an attempt once more, in , at a possi-
ble welding through the System of all philosophy and of philosophy of nature in
particular, this time accentuating the natural moment, in accordance with
the positions already expressed even in the Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des
Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre of /. Precisely in these early writings,
in which the guiding themes of the philosophy of Nature were expounded
in a context that was still Kantian, the passage from the I (Ich) to the Spirit
(Geist) was taking shape, a passage that was not merely terminological, but
rather directly consequent to a proper reading of the philosophical problem
of Nature. The temporary abandonment of the Fichtian I / Non–I termino-
logical conflict, which inevitably placed the emphasis on the gnoseological
moment at the expense of the ontological one, favoured the extension of
the ontological field to the graduality (Stufenfolge) of Nature and Spirit. The
choice to introduce the notion of Spirit that in itself assumed the natural
field and therefore foreshadowed the subsequent introduction of the Abso-
lute was not at all an arbitrary stylistic choice, but rather significantly the
mere consequence of a positive idea of Nature, as a position of itself and a
necessary presupposition of (subsequent) self–awareness.
    In the System of transcendental Idealism Schelling could not follow these
theoretical premises through to the end because he was hampered by the
theoretical link with Fichte’s theses of the Doctrine of Science, which he
valued at that time. The extension of the ontological field, which already in
the Abhandlungen involved a terminological shift from the I to the Spirit and
its organic structuring determined, on the one hand, by the consideration of
Nature as an essential presupposition of the spiritual and on the other hand
    Emilio Carlo Corriero


quite clearly by the influence exercised by Kant’s theses on the organism,
led Schelling after the System of transcendental Idealism to reconsider his
thinking, starting with the idea of absolute Identity in continuity, as has
been said, with his first philosophical steps developed in the wake of the
joint reading of Kant and Plato (cf. Schelling ).
    At the time of Jena, Schelling not only had to deal with Fichte’s refusal to
accept ‘natural’ integration in his Doctrine of Science, he also had to face the
hostility shown by the Allgemeine Literaturzeitung which focused precisely on
the theses and outcomes of his philosophy of Nature, which were certainly
against the positions held by Kantian criticism. In Darstellung () we see
the presentation, in open opposition to Fichte’s philosophy of reflection,
of a non–objective theory of knowledge (of the Absolute), which will be
taken up again in Further presentations () and then again in the System of
all philosophy (), and which will constitute the cognitive foundation for
the possibility of a philosophy of Identity and for the determination of the
possible relationship between the finite and infinite.
    It can be affirmed that the “realism” of Schelling’s positions, that is, his
idealism of nature and the relative estrangement from Kantian gnoseology,
certainly derived from his reflections in the field of the philosophy of Na-
ture (cf. Corriero–Dezi ), which in their turn arose not only from mere
scientific interest, but also from Schelling’s original impulse to complete
the results of Kantian philosophy in a systematic way and therefore, to
use the expressions that were nevertheless not adequately established by
Schelling in his Formschrift, to weld the form and content of Science into an
identity oneness. Herein lies evidence of the thematic continuity I men-
tioned above, whose clarification does not so much help to surpass the
now outdated interpretation of Schelling’s philosophy split into epochs — a
much–discussed interpretation strewn with controversy — and therefore
restore an underlying theoretical unity to Schelling’s course, but rather to
offer another vision of a significant part of the complex legacy of classical
German idealism, which certainly goes beyond Kantian boundaries by seek-
ing the grounding of the transcendental, and therefore the gnoseological
and epistemological guarantee in the past ‘history’ of Nature, or rather in
the ontological (and dynamic) context that always precedes any possible
reflection on it. A context, however, from which it was necessary to expect
the source of the ethical foundation of Schelling’s system.
    The writings that range from the Presentation of my system of philosophy to
the System of all philosophy and of philosophy of nature in particular, in which
Schelling develops the definitive detachment from Fichte and the philoso-
phy of reflection, effectively summarize the originality of the position of
the philosopher from Leonberg and they shed light, on the one hand, on
the developments of Hegel’s philosophy, which is known to be strongly
                                                          Acting the Absolute   


influenced by Schelling’s philosophy of Identity, and, on the other, on the
so–called turning point of Schelling’s philosophy of Freedom, which in
a hasty and malicious reading would gather its ‘theosophical–religious’
momentum with Philosophy and Religion ().
    In order to verify these findings, however, it is necessary to retrace, albeit
briefly, the stages that lead to the Würzburger System, in which the foun-
dations of the philosophy of Identity are laid, something that a scholar like
Manfred Frank does not hesitate to define as the true original contribution
given by Schelling to Western philosophy (Frank : ; cf. Frank ).
Only from the understanding of the foundations of this system can it be
understood how Schelling’s ethical vision cannot in any way set aside a
consideration of a general ontological nature determined by a particular
concept of nature as absolute subject, which is both an inexhaustible origin
and a continuous dynamic process.
    As Schelling’s son himself states in the introduction, the  System is
the only place where his father presented the philosophy of Identity in its
entirety. In particular, although the natural part has a predominant role both
theoretically and for the number of pages dedicated to it, the Würzburger
System presents for the first time the complete exposition of the ideal series,
which had seen the explication of the moment of knowledge (Erkenntnis) in
the Bruno dialogue and the moment of action (Handeln) in the Philosophy
and Religion text. In the System of all philosophy, these two moments are
described in the last part, Construction of the ideal world and of its powers,
precisely as the first and second powers, followed by art (Kunst) as the third
and last power of the ideal series. The System of all philosophy is divided, in
fact, into two parts: the first, which focuses on general philosophy, poses
and thematizes the concept of the Absolute which is then described, in the
second part, by way of its manifestations and its differentiations through the
doctrine of the powers. This second part is itself divided into three sections:
(a) the philosophy of Nature in general, that is the construction of Nature or
of the real totality, (b) the philosophy of special Nature, i.e. the construction
of individual powers, and (c) the construction of the ideal world and of its
powers.
    As Schelling’s son, editor of the work published posthumously, always
observed, within the System (to be precise, from §  to § ) the doctrine
of infinite knowledge is taken up again, as self–knowing of the absolute
Identity and described here as an absolute affirmation. Despite the ter-
minological shift (typical of Schelling) this doctrine of knowledge and
transcendental logic is the same as the one we find underlying Bruno and
it had already been presented in the Jena lectures in which Hegel himself
had been able to take part. In fact, that is where the real leap from transcen-
dental philosophy to the monism of the philosophy of Identity lies, which
      Emilio Carlo Corriero


Schelling openly presented right at the beginning of his Presentation in 
and which was what Fichte’s criticism focused on. As can be seen from the
correspondence between the two philosophers in the months following the
publication of Darstellung, and in particular from the letter to Schelling dated
 May , Fichte’s accusation is directed at the proposition that opened
that text in which Schelling claimed (without further proof ) that absolute
reason coincides with «the total Indifference of the subjective and of the
objective», thus emphatically excluding any grounding of transcendental
knowledge and any recourse to subjectivation. Although this work does not
seek to justify its position nor oppose the idealistic objection, according to
which even if it is true that reason is the indifference of the subjective and
objective it still remains to be clarified who is to know that eternal identity
of Subject and Object, Schelling will return to the problem in the subse-
quent Further Presentations and then again in the  System of all philosophy,
through the redefinition of intellectual Intuition and the determination of
a non–Objectifiable Absolute, whose definition will still be at the heart of
Philosophical Inquiries and, later, of the Erlangen Lectures. It is here that the
idea is formulated that the non–objectifiable subject (Urständlich) actually
coincides with nature as a continuous and never objectifiable arché, and
therefore with the Absolute as such (schlechtin betrachtet).
   On the role assigned to intellectual Intuition and its distance from the
mere subjectivation typical of an abstraction, Schelling’s discourse appears
quite clear when intellectual Intuition is described in a natural and not only
spiritual context; once again we see confirmation of how the philosophy
of Nature decides the theoretical course of Schelling’s entire philosophical
project. In his essay On the True Concept of Philosophy of Nature, published in
, Schelling states:

     The reason that those who have grasped idealism well have not understood philos-
     ophy of nature is because it is difficult or impossible for them to detach themselves
     from the subjective [element] of intellectual intuition. — For the purpose of philos-
     ophy of nature, I demand intellectual intuition as it is demanded in the doctrine
     of science; however, I demand, in addition, abstraction from the intuiting in this
     intuition, an abstraction which leaves behind for me the purely objective [element]
     of this act, which in itself is merely
     subject–object, but in no way = I (SW, I/, p. ).

    In this passage the distance that Schelling takes from the philosophy
of reflection is ultimately established, but at the same time it is affirmed
that intellectual Intuition is an act (Akt) — certainly distinct from the I,
in that it precedes it — through which Nature affirms itself. A few pages
further on, in fact, we see that Schelling deals with that Subject–Object
in the philosophy of Nature, which defines Nature, in its self–construction
                                                                    Acting the Absolute        


and that to understand this we must already be elevated to the intellectual
Intuition of Nature (in the subjective sense of the genitive; cf. SW, I/, p. ).
The link between intellectual Intuition and construction in philosophy is
well clarified in a note in the fourth section of the  Further Presentations,
where the movement of the subject–objectifying itself of the Absolute is
clearly expressed and therefore also the way in which the Infinite and the
Finite arise from the Absolute:

   Since one asks reason not to think of the Absolute as either a thought or a being,
   and yet to think of it, from such a reflection comes a contradiction since in the
   thinking of it everything about it is either a thought or a being. But it is precisely in
   this contradiction that intellectual Intuition intervenes and exhibits the Absolute.
   In this passage we find the moment in which the Absolute is positively intuited. (In
   the reflection, therefore, intellectual Intuition is only negative. Only through this
   positive intuition is the philosophical construction or — which is the same thing —
   the presentation of the Absolute possible in general (SW, I/ , p.  ff.).

    The concept of construction (and self–construction), which to under-
stand fully one must first of all read the writings on the philosophy of
Nature starting with Ideas from , is central to the entire philosophy
of Identity in general and to the Würzburger System in particular, and in
this context it echoes the initial theses of the First Outline of a System of the
Philosophy of Nature (), which states that «philosophizing about Nature is
to create Nature», which, far from being simply a fancy aphorism, typical of
a certain romantic culture, means instead freeing Nature from being a mere
product (which in this case would be nothing but the sum of evanescent
Schein–produkte) and lead it back to the activity, to therefore restore it back
to life and to its free creative development. Such a description of the natural
aspect inserted in a philosophy of Identity implies, in Schelling’s journey,
the extension of the gnoseological–constructive problem of the idea of an
evolving Absolute, that is of the idea of a dynamic monism.
The controversy with Fichte regarding subjectivation leads Schelling to
argue in the  System that such a cognitive approach always leads to
a regression to the infinite in an attempt to identify the last in the series
from which knowledge derives, and also that demanding a subjectivation of
absolute reason would always shift the in–itself (of reason itself ) into the
position of object (or product) with the result that it would definitively lose
its status, that is its essential characteristic. Schelling’s solution is therefore
that of an Absolute that knows itself and constructs itself and that can never
become the object of knowledge, because as soon as it becomes one, it
ceases to be the Absolute. This inevitably brings with it problems, which
are unsolvable for the philosophy of reflection, regarding the relationship
that this Absolute has with the finite and on the possibility of grasping the
     Emilio Carlo Corriero


‘passage’ from the infinite of the Absolute to the finite of its manifestations,
but it does leave the door open to an understanding that presupposes an
action that conforms to the original act that characterizes the Absolute.
    On the theoretical level, the solution offered by the  System is that of
a finite that has a double life in the Absolute, one as a single thing separate
from itself and one as an infinite idea, so that however — as Dieter Henrich
observes in his Andersheit und Absolutheit des Geistes (Henrich : –)
— the Absolute also has a double relationship with respect to the single finite
thing, since it is always one and the same with respect to the constitution
and removal of the finite, that is to say to the placing and the denial of it. If it
is true that the formula One–All dominates in monism, here ‘One’ surpasses
the ‘All’. Henrich writes that the One is not only the individual, but rather in
relation to what it includes within itself, it is exactly what the natural image
of the world presupposes as immeasurable multiplicity: the One is at the
same time the All. Only the thought of absolute Identity allows us to think
of this One as a totality, but it is evident that such a perspective leads to
problems of an epistemological nature as soon as this Oneness is deprived
of its own dynamics. In order to make the Difference inside the Identity of
the Absolute possible, Schelling denies that it can be of a qualitative order
— since this would contradict the very essence of Identity — and admits
only differences of a quantitative order which he can explain through the
doctrine of the powers. Now, if we admit the Difference inside the Absolute
through the powers, which by Schelling’s explicit admission do not apply
to the Absolute par excellence (schlechthin Betrachtet) but exclusively to its
manifestations, we have not thereby clarified the nature of the Absolute nor
the relationship that it has with the finite. Moreover, without having to
refer to Philosophy and Religion, which, in controversy with Eschenmayer,
testifies to the difficulty of explaining such a relationship, we find already in
the System of  an explicit reference to the ‘fall’ (Ab–fall), a sort of defectio
of finite things to clarify their non–being–in–God, even if fundamentally they
are in God (SW, I/, p. ).
    The term “fall” should not surprise nor can it enable easy interpretations
that cast a dark light on the course of subsequent speculation: it simply
describes in evocative terms, terms with a “religious” background (in accor-
dance with the entire course of Schelling’s philosophy), the non–being of
particular things with regard to the Absolute par excellence. Since this, as an
absolute form, coincides with absolute knowledge and therefore consists of
the particular and universal oneness, nothing is outside of this oneness and
every particular thing is only because it is in relation to the Absolute (that is,
it has a double life in the Absolute), but in itself it is a mere nothingness. An
Absolute understood in this way, however, cannot be grasped by reflexive
thought, since it is in no way reduced to the complex relationship with the
                                                                Acting the Absolute      


finite, from which any effort of thought inevitably comes. Every attempt
to think of the Absolute through reflexive thought is doomed to failure:
the hypothetical form, the categorical one and in the end the disjunctive
one that Schelling presents in the Würzburger System (cf. § ), and which
he then develops in a more articulated way in Philosophy and Religion (SW,
I/,  ff.), cannot grasp the Absolute par excellence. Moreover, already in a
note in Further Presentations Schelling clarified the cognitive tension for the
Absolute and the impossibility of realizing this aspiration:

   Everyone is driven by nature to seek the Absolute, but when they try to grasp it
   through reflection, it slips away. It floats eternally around them, but they cannot
   grasp it (SW, I/, ).

     The Absolute cannot be grasped through reflection because it does not
precede Identity, rather it is the Identity itself of the Absolute that always pre-
cedes every possible reflection. Since the Absolute is the Identity of Identity or
copula, it cannot be grasped through reflection. This thought, which has its
roots in Schelling’s very first philosophical passages and which in the Form-
schrift () had a provisional and still simply formal definition as “Urform
der Wissenschaft” (original form of science), will go through a progressive
conceptual expansion, especially in the Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence
of Human Freedom. The idea of an antepredicative and prereflective Identity
will be clarified, so to speak, through the introduction of the Indifference
that precedes every distinction and that alludes to a “practical” ambit, that
is, to the original will. If the Absolute of Identity is in and of itself involved
in the dynamics that allow for its internal differentiations, the Indifference
of Philosophical Inquiries does nothing but point out the difference between
the Identity of Identity, of the Absolute par excellence, and the Identity of
the Absolute and its relationships. This is clearly not an addition, but only a
redefinition of it. If the strength in Schelling’s early philosophy of Nature
had been, as we have seen, to request the expansion of the ontological space
determining the passage (even if temporary) of the I to the Spirit, then in
Philosophical Inquiries Schelling gave the philosophy of Nature the credit
of having clarified the distinction between essence (Wesen) as grounding
and essence as existence. In his Philosophical Inquiries however, prior to this
distinction Schelling inserted the non–grounding (Ungrund), namely the
Indifference, that is that X (which strictly speaking is = ) which can be in a
transitive sense A and B, and which constitutes, once entered into difference,
their identity, the copula, that is, the “=” of the A = B equation. This nothing-
ness of the X constitutes in fact the “essence” of the Absolute par excellence; a
nothingness that, however, has nothing to do with the nullity of finite things,
since this is a simply relative nothingness, so to speak. The nothingness of the
    Emilio Carlo Corriero


Absolute is instead the ontological (and dynamic) guarantee for existence,
the absolutely free grounding/non–grounding that allows the distinction
and the manifestation of the Absolute itself. As is clear, it is not about a
being–in–power, since, on the one hand, this would already involve some
form of existence in itself and, on the other, because the being–in–power
can be the object of a reflexive knowledge, which, as we have seen, is in no
way able to describe the Absolute par excellence.
    The Absolute thus described, which will still be the object of investigation
in the Berlin lectures as a non–deductible Principle of all, already appears
aporetically in the pages of the Würzburger System, as an inevitable outcome
of monism. The problem, however, remains when one thinks about what
determines, or commands, the passage from this absolute nothingness to
the manifestations of the Absolute itself which, on the one hand, allows the
actuality of the One–All of the Absolute and, on the other, the nothingness
of the single finite expressions. Schelling will continue to ask himself the
question, even if directed differently, in the years in Berlin in the Another
deductions of the principles of positive philosophy, when he will ask himself what
ultimately drives the Seinkönnende opposition to the unvordenkliches Sein,
thus allowing the Beginning of being and its possible forms (cf. Corriero,
).
    The solution should probably be sought in the dynamic meaning (or
it would be more correct to say supradynamic, since the exposition of the
dynamic process concerns the Absolute in its manifestations) that Schelling
assigns to the Identity of Identity as the intimate “essence” of the Absolute.
In §  of the Presentation of My System of Philosophy, Schelling resolutely
affirms that «the essence of absolute Identity, as it is immediately a Grund of
reality (Realität), is strength», thus inserting in the X of the Absolute, which
can determine and command A and B and has always contained them in an
indistinct Oneness, a supranature capable of being (in a transitive sense) its
manifestations and of starting the movement distinctive of the becoming
Absolute.
    We can say, of course coercing Schelling’s words a little (but quite legiti-
mately I think), that Nature so affects the constitution of the idea of Absolute,
in its highest exposition that can be found, in fact, in the Würzburger System,
that it also directly influences point  of the beginning, where in some way
a supradynamic that allows and commands the ontology that follows can be
seen. In my opinion, and with the right perspective (or rather within the
context of a wider philosophy of Nature), one can bring together under
this viewpoint the introduction of the idea of Wollen (Will) coinciding with
Ursein (original being) in Philosophical Inquiries and the subsequent descrip-
tion of ewiges Mögen in the Erlangen Lectures (where, moreover, the theme
of the non–objectifiable Absolute explicitly returns), which holds together
                                                         Acting the Absolute   


the concepts of power and will. These concepts are to be read as the attempt
to make the supradynamic sphere of the Absolute par excellence “humanly
comprehensible”, never completely graspable through reflective reason: a
sphere to which the philosophy of Identity directly refers in its intrinsic and
essential link with Nature, hinting at an ethical solution, as recognition of
its own belonging to nature and of the deep original consciousness.
    In reading and re-reading §  of the Presentation of my System of Philosophy
one cannot help thinking about the affinity of this “force” (Kraft), placed
as the “essence of absolute identity”, with the “absolute will” that in the
 Philosophical Inquiries is described as coinciding with the original being:
Wollen ist Urseyn. The way I see things, therein lies the knot that needs to
be untied in order to grasp the (supra)relationship that binds nature and
freedom in Schelling’s system and that allows us to understand the practical
solution to the theoretical problem.
    When the transcendental (and still formal) freedom that Schelling in-
troduces with Kant as a principle of theoretical philosophy and practical
philosophy, in a context that is still very much linked to Fichte’s criticism
and philosophy, is recognized as a seal of the autonomy of nature (Krings
: –; cf. Grant ), as a prerequisite for an identity–dynamic de-
velopment of nature and spirit (cf. Corriero ), it becomes the original
principle and dynamic essence of the existent generally commanded by
the original Wollen, which is expounded and manifested according to the
different degrees of spirit and nature. The identification of the original being
(or rather the essence of absolute identity) with the “force” in Darstellung
() and the Wollen in Philosophical Inquiries, should be read initially in
continuity with the passage from the First Outline of a System of the Philosophy
of Nature where Schelling states that «the concept of being as an originary
substratum should be absolutely eliminated from the philosophy of nature,
just as it has been from transcendental philosophy» (SW, I/, p. ) and, after
with a passage from Einleitung in die Philosophie which underlines how the
absolute prius, the beginning of being, always presupposes «something posi-
tive, therefore will, freedom, action, and not something merely negative,
penetrable through the sole necessity of thought» (Schelling : ). In
both cases it is clarified how at the foundation of being there is a tension, a
power and not something that can be conceptually grasped. This potential
tension identified by the philosophy of nature with the “force”, corresponds
to the original Wollen of Philosophical Inquiries and with what this entails in
relation to Schelling’s overall ontology, as well as the ethical articulation
that comes from it.
    Now, this original Wollen splits into a selfish will or will of grounding
and a universal will or will to love. For Schelling, the ethical position evi-
dently responds to the latter in that it repeats the original creative act of the
      Emilio Carlo Corriero


unification between grounding and existence through the will to love or
the copula, that is to say of the Absolute, since this latter binds the finite
beings to the infinite and to each other. On the strength of an original
Mit(t)–wissenschaft of creation, that is both co–scientia and central science,
man is in a position to act ethically, that is to say freely in accordance with
the universal will to love. For Schelling, the freedom of man lies in that
superior possibility, offered and guaranteed by the degree of spirituality
possessed, of recovering through the Grund der Seele (grounding of the soul)
that superior power which, on the one hand, unites him to every other
being (within which a double life tosses and turns) and, on the other, binds
him to the original act of creation through an original Mit–wissenschaft that
distinguishes him as «that One [..] in which the bond completely breaks the
concrete and returns to itself in its eternal freedom» (SW, I/, p. ). In one
passage from the Erlangen Lectures, the role assigned to human freedom is
further clarified:


     a) Only man returns to that abyssal freedom [...]; he is allowed to go back to
     being the beginning; he is therefore the restored beginning. b) In man the dark
     memory of having once been the beginning, the force (Macht), the absolute centre
     of everything, certainly tosses and turns. And he is in fact just that in a double
     sense: ) Because he is the same eternal freedom that existed at the beginning, but
     he is this freedom because he is restored; therefore he would be the absolute centre
     first and foremost because he is that beginning, and also ) because he is freedom
     restored (SW, I/, p. ).



     By virtue of his superior cum–scientia of the original act, resisting the
“will of grounding” that intends to abstract the finite from its relationship
to the infinite (isolating it in its nothingness), man is placed in a position to
be able to convert the mere Wollen into a will to love, that is, to restore the
creative function of the copula (its being first and foremost natura naturans),
conforming to an action that must be able to produce creations (concrete or
abstract) that preserve their relationship to the infinite, their freedom in and
of itself. It can therefore be affirmed that in the freedom of man, in so far as
it is translated into ethical action, there is a passage from the pure Wollen —
still blurred between the selfish principle and the universal principle — to
the “will to love”, or universal will, as the adhesion of human reason (as
the power of the absolute) to the eternal copula. It is in fact in acting that
the particular “knowledge” of the Absolute of Nature is achieved, which as
a non–objectifiable Subject cannot be known–grasped but only participated
in on the basis of a Mitwissenschaft that allows the individual subject its
continued belonging to that one subject.
                                                               Acting the Absolute    


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