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ABSTRACT
This essay examines the ways in which Schelling’s narration of the two wills in his Ages of the World addresses existential questions about our experience of time and our desires. Divided into four sections, it focuses primarily on Schelling’s philosophy of time, the problem of overcoming the past, and the role of narration in this process.
KEYWORDS:
Notes on contributor
Katia Hay completed a double PhD in Munich and Paris on Schelling and the Tragic in 2008. She completed a 6 year post-doc at the University of Lisbon on Nietzsche and the Comic and is now working at the University of Leiden with a project on Images and Censorship. She is author of Die Notwendigkeit des Scheiterns. Das Tragische als Bestimmung der Philosophie bei Schelling (Beiträge zur Schelling-Forschung 2, Alber-Verlag: Freiburg 2012) and has co-edited several volumes, such as Nietzsche, German Idealism and its Critics (de Gruyter, 2015).
Notes
1 “How few people know what a real past is! Without a strong present that emerges through a rupture within or from oneself [Scheidung von sich selbst] there is none. Men who are not able to oppose themselves to their past, have no past, or rather they never come out of it, live permanently in it. Likewise, those who wish back the past … prove that they are unable to have any effect in the present” (Schelling Citation1946, I: 11). For other Schelling texts I will refer to Schelling (Citation185Citation6). Unless specified otherwise, all translations from German into English are mine. Throughout the text, the first (1811) and second (1813) versions of the Weltalter are referred to as 1946, I and 1946, II, respectively.
2 “Die Gewalt jedes Lebens besteht in der Kraft, die es hat, eine Vergangenheit auszuschließen, … ; in dieser Kraft besteht seine Gesundheit und seine Stärke.”
3 I will be referring primarily to Schelling’s first version from 1811.
4 Schelling makes this point explicit in the second version of the Weltalter from 1813 (Citation1946, II: 122).
5 I follow the translation by John Owen in Novalis (Citation184Citation2). Novalis’ unfinished novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen was published posthumously in 1802. Schelling’s friendship with Novalis, Ludwig and Amalie Tieck, Friedrich, August and Caroline Schlegel is often depicted as being the origin of the so-called Frühromantik (see Pikulik Citation2000, especially chapter 2; as well as Novalis Citation2007).
6 “[S]o muss der Anfang, der wirklich Anfang ist, den Ablauf derselben [der Vergangenheit, KH] nicht erst zu erwarten haben, sondern sie muss gleich anfangs vergangen sein. Ein Anfang der Zeit ist also undenkbar, wenn nicht gleich eine ganze Masse als Vergangenheit, eine andre als Zukunft gesetzt wird; denn nur in diesem polarischen Auseinanderhalten entsteht jeden Augenblick die Zeit.” Deleuze’s understanding of time, which he develops both in his book on Bergson and in his book Le Cinéma II, is very similar to Schelling’s: “We can always say that it [the present] becomes past when it no longer is, when a new present replaces it. But this is meaningless. It is clearly necessary for it to pass on for the new present to arrive, and it is clearly necessary for it to pass at the same time as it is present … . The past does not follow the present that it is no longer, it coexists with the present it was” (Deleuze Citation1989, 78–79. My italics).
7 “In reality it’s by the end that one begins. The end is there, invisible and present, and that is what gives words the pomp and ceremony of a beginning” (Sartre Citation1964, 63).
8 Not to be mistaken with the “real beginning [wirklicher Anfang]” (Citation1946, I: 18).
9 The differences between Schelling and St. Augustine concerning the “beginning of time” and the possibility of some sort of being or existence “before the beginning” already indicate quite clearly the extent to which Schelling’s Weltalter—considered as theological texts—are profoundly controversial. For, as Ricœur points out in his book Time and Narrative, according to St. Augustine: “Even if there were a time before time, this time would still be a created thing since God is the maker of all time. A time before all creation is thus unthinkable” (Ricœur Citation1984, 25).
10 In a sense, then, Schelling’s solution to the problem of thinking or writing about what there was before time is to situate it “above time.” It is worth mentioning, that despite the differences mentioned above, we find a similar idea in St. Augustine’s Confessions when he writes: “Nor dost Thou precede any given period of time by other period of time. Else thou wouldst not precede all periods of time. In the eminence [or as Ricœur translates: hauteur = height] of thy ever-present eternity, thou precedest all times … ” (St. Augustine XIII, 16). However, while St. Augustine is clearly identifying this something that precedes all times with God, for Schelling it is not God but the “divine tenderness [zarte Gottheit]” that is “above God” (Citation1946, I: 21).
11 It is not easy to find the appropriate translation of Lauterkeit. This is partly due to the way in which Schelling uses the term. For Schelling, Lauterkeit designates a “will that does not will,” but also “eternity” or a “time before time,” as well as “purity” or even “love.” It is for this reason that I will generally use the German term “Lauterkeit.”
12 “Wie wir denn diese Lauterkeit erkennen? Die einzige Antwort ist: werde in dir selber eine gleiche Lauterkeit, fühle und erkenne sie in dir als das Höchste und du wirst sie unmittelbar als das absolut Höchste erkennen.”
13 Schelling already talks about a “duplicity within ourselves” and describes us as being the result of a “secret intercourse” between two opposite essences or principles in the introduction to the three versions of the Weltalter (Citation1946, I: 4–5).
14 “For sure it is a nothing [ein Nichts], but in the same way that pure freedom [lauter Freiheit] is a nothing; such as the will that does not will, that does not crave anything … Such a will is nothing and everything” (Citation1946, I:15).
15 “It [the Lauterkeit, KH] was, but it was as is if it was not, and therefore could not precede anything active [tätig], or be the beginning of anything” (Citation1946, I: 17).
16 Compare with Schelling (Citation1856), 3: 603 (System of Transcendental Idealism), where Schelling develops a similar thought when he says in reference to God: “If he were to be, then we would not be.”
17 “Es ist die reine Frohheit in sich selber, die sich selbst nicht kennt, die gelassene Wonne, die ganz erfüllt ist von sich selber und an nichts denkt, die stille Innigkeit, die sich freut ihres nicht Seins […]. Sie ist im Menschen die wahre Menschheit, in Gott die Gottheit.”
18 “wie sich ein Wille im Gemüt des Menschen, bewusstlos, ohne sein Zutun erzeugt, den er nur findet, nicht macht, und der ihm, gefunden, erst zum Mittel der Äußerung seines Innersten wird.”
19 As he writes in the Introduction: “Everything, absolutely everything, also what is naturally external, must first become internal to us before we may be able to represent [darstellen] it externally or objectively” (Citation1946, I: 6).
20 See Arthur Schopenhauer: World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer [Citation1819] 1972, I: 38 “Willing always arises from a need, and hence from lack, and hence from suffering [Alles Wollen entspringt aus Bedürfniß, also aus Mangel, also aus Leiden].” In this sense, Schelling is much closer to Nietzsche, and there are indeed many similarities in their “philosophies of the will/drives” (see Hay Citation2015).
21 In a sense, these “primeval images” or “Urbilder” are similar to the images emerging in dreams. But these dreams or images do not represent, as Freud might put it, repressed desires, because at this point in Schelling’s argument there is no difference between the real and the ideal, in the same way that there is no difference between the physical and the spiritual.
22 Lacan also identifies a prefiguration of what he calls an “alienating destination” in the mirror-stage (2).
23 In Hölderlin’s words from the first version of The Death of Empedocles: “Oh eternal mystery, what we are/ And what we seek, we cannot find; what/ We find, we are not – […]”. (Hölderlin Citation[1797—1800] 1986: 161–163; I follow the translation by David Farrel Krell in Schelling (Citation2008), 43).
24 In contrast to Fichte for instance, who in his Science of Knowledge argues that there is no transition from nature to reason, but rather an unbridgeable leap.
25 “Since nothing is prior to, or outside of [außer], God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. All philosophies say this; but they speak of this ground as of a mere concept without making it into something real [reell] and actual [wirklich]. This ground of his existence, which God has in himself, is not God considered absolutely, that is, in so far as he exists; for it is only the ground of his existence. It is nature – in God, a being indeed inseparable, yet still distinct, from him.” (Citation1856, 7: 357–358) [I am following here the translation by Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt in Schelling (Citation2006, 27.)].
26 “Certainly, mythology has no reality [Realität] outside of consciousness; but if it only takes its course in the determinations of consciousness, that is, in its representations, then nonetheless this course of events, this succession of representations themselves cannot again be such a one that is merely imagined; it must have actually taken place, must have actually occurred in consciousness. This succession is not fashioned by mythology, but rather—contrariwise—mythology is fashioned by it. For mythology is just precisely the whole of those doctrines of the gods that have actually succeeded each other, and thus it has come into being through this succession” (Citation1856, 11: 124–125).
27 We find a similar argumentation in the Freedom Essay in relation to the problem of evil. Thus he writes: “Evil could not in any way lie in lack or deprivation. The devil … was not the most limited creature, but rather the least limited one … . The ground of evil must lie, therefore, not only in something generally positive but rather in that which is most positive in what nature contains” (Citation1856, 7: 368–369) [Again I follow the translation in Schelling (Citation2006, 36–37)].
28 Although we are now analyzing the initial developments within the Urwesen, it is important to note that, for Schelling, the tension and conflict between the two wills informs everything that exists. Each form of existence is, hence, to be conceived as an expression of a particular unity and balance between the two wills, a unity that in some way has overcome a previous state that was leading to a mutual destruction or implosion.
29 Even for God, for it is “God’s strength through which He appears as being Himself before the others [vor allem andern Er Selbst als Er Selbst ist]” (Citation1946, I: 20; my emphasis).
30 It is especially in the third version of the Weltalter that Schelling thematizes the problem of repetition through the notion of the “wheel.”
31 See footnote 1.
32 Freud develops his theory on the relation between past traumas and the compulsion to repetition especially in his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle from 1920.
33 “A beginning of time is thus unthinkable unless a whole bulk [of time] is immediately posited as past, another as future, for time emerges at every instance only through this polarization” (Citation1946, I: 75).
34 “What is past is known, what is present is discerned, what is future is divined. The known is narrated [erzählt], the discerned is represented, the divined is foretold [Das Vergangene wird gewusst, das Gegenwärtige wird erkannt, das Zukünftige wird geahndet. / Das Gewusste wird erzählt, das Erkannte wird dargestellt, das Geahndete wird geweissagt]” (Citation1946, I: 3).
35 “All being longs to reveal itself and therefore also to develop itself; all entity has within itself the sting of progress, of expansion, it contains within itself infinite things that it would like to express, for every entity wants to be what it is, not only internally, but also externally [Alles Sein strebt zu seiner Offenbarung und in sofern zur Entwicklung; alles Seiende hat den Stachel des Fortschreitens, des sich Ausbreitens in sich, Unendliches ist in ihm verschlossen, das es aussprechen möchte; denn ein jedes Seiendes verlangt nicht bloß innerlich zu sein, sondern das, was es ist, auch wieder, nämlich äußerlich zu sein]” (Citation1946, I: 14).
36 “Auch das Existierende sucht ja in der zunehmenden Fülle jenes Inneren nichts anders als das Wort, durch das es ausgesprochen, befreit, entfaltet werden könne, und überall löst das gezeugte … Wort die Innere Zwietracht.”