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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
As one of the bare handful of scholars working on Schelling, I should heartily like to accept Professor Harris's argument, for all these black cows hang around one's neck more heavily than did the albatross on the ancient mariner's. I find myself obliged, however, to closely test his argument. I regret that, viewed in the context of the whole of the Phenomenology's Preface, Harris's argument is not fully convincing. I shall argue that, since the Preface's plain intent is to contrast the vitalism of a method of thought that is spirit's coming into its own with all styles of fixated propositional thinking, the “formalism” Hegel attacks is a loose aggregate of the philosophical styles of Fichte, Schelling, Reinhold and Bardili. Hegel is content to leave the label loose and unspecified and not to name names. It is not strictly fair to let the scope of the term resonate upon Schelling's “first scientific grasp of the idea”, at least not for an author who knew Schelling's work so well. But as Harris points out, it is not fair to Hegel for his public to read him with the sole, simplistic question of what positions he supports and what positions he rejects.
1 Schellings Werke, vol. 4, ed. Schroeter, Manfred (Munich: C. B. Beck, 1965), 258–259Google Scholar. See also 329.
2 Ibid., 313. Pantheistic assertions are found throughout Schelling's corpus. For example, “Hence philosophy is the exhibition of God's self-affirmation in the infinite fruitfulness of its consequences” (Schellings Werke, 6, 167–177).Google Scholar
3 Ibid., 4, 259.
4 Schellings Werke, 4, 259Google Scholar. Schelling himself is largely responsible for confusion over the nature of his absolute. In 1804 he announced that the three chief ways the Identity philosophy had formulated absolute identity were all works of reflection, viz., (1) that the absolute is both the real and the ideal in identical ways, (2) that in itself it is neither real nor ideal, (3) that it is the common essence of both the real and the ideal. In truth, the absolutely ideal is immediately the absolutely real, and not in need of being integrated with it (ibid., 6, 24–25). See also 7, 213 where Shelling argues there is a necessary difference between the finite individual and substance as the ground and essence of all things. Schelling struggled in vain through the whole period of Identity philosophy to figure out how, with good logical conscience, one could maintain ontological commitment both to an absolute and to individuals.
5 Hegel organizes much of his treatment of Schelling in the Lectures on the History of Philosophy on the Darstellung of 1801 and the Fernere Darstellungen. See vol. 3, trans. Haldane and Simpson (London: Routledge & Regan Paul, 1955), 529–540.
6 Schellings Werk, 4, 271.Google Scholar
7 Hegel, G. W. F., The Difference Between the Fichtean and Schellingean Systems, trans. Surber, J. P. (New York: Ridgeview, 1978), 14.Google Scholar
8 Novalis, , Hymns to the Night, trans. Higgens, Dick (New York: McPherson, 1984), 12.Google Scholar
9 As noted above, conflicting texts can be found on the status of the finite individual vis à vis the absolute. For example, in 1801 he writes, “Absolute identity is not the cause of the universe, it is the universe itself …. Identity subsists only as the universe” (4, 129–130). But in 1802 he writes, “Only for reason is there a universe, and to comprehend something rationally means first and foremost to grasp it as a member of the absolute totality” (4, 390). The idea of the absolute as an organic community of individuals is certainly different than the abyss of dark night.
10 Schellings Werke, 4, 313.Google Scholar
11 The beauty of Harris's paper is the way boldness of argument is matched by appropriate qualification at every point.
12 In the Lectures on the History of Philosophy, Hegel is quite critical of Schelling's philosophy of nature; in fact he says things very much like the Preface's paragraph 51: “With Schelling, on the other hand, form is really an external schema, and his Method is the artificial application of this schema to external objects. This externally applied schema takes the place of dialectical development; and this is the special reason that the philosophy of nature has brought itself into discredit, that it proceeded on an altogether external plan, has made its foundations a ready-made schema, and fitted into it nature as we perceive it” (3, 542). Yet on the very next page Hegel cautions his listeners not to confuse Schelling with his pupils: “It is therefore of the greatest importance to distinguish Schelling's philosophy, on the one hand, from that imitation of it which throws itself into an unspiritual farrago of words regarding the absolute; and, on the other hand, from those imitators who, owing to a failure to understand intellectual intuition, give up comprehension, and with it the leading moment of knowledge, i.e. they take a glance at the thing in question, and having fastened on it some superficial analogy or definition, they fancy they have expressed its whole nature, while in fact they put an end to all capacity of attaining to scientific knowledge” (3, 543–544). It is obvious that these texts are of little help in figuring out who is the formalist of natural philosophy mentioned in paragraph fifty-one.
13 Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (London: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, paragraph 51.
14 Ibid.
15 See the Bruno's presentation of the philosophy of nature in the guise of the Timaeus (4, 260–279).
16 Hegel, , PhenomenologyGoogle Scholar, paragraph 50.
17 Harris, H. S., “The Cows in the Dark Night”, Dialogue, this issue, 627–643.Google Scholar