URL originale : https://books.openedition.org/europhilosophie/1087
Men at Work
Philosophical Construction in Fichte and Schelling
Dédicace
-- Im Andenken an Reinhard Lauth (1919-2007)
Texte intégral
1The idea that philosophy is in some sense a "constructive" enterprise has a long and distinguished pedigree. Equally venerable is the claim that there are deep parallels between the methods employed by the mathematician, especially the Euclidian geometer, and the philosopher. To be sure, there is an equally long tradition that disputes these claimed affinities and insists that philosophy is not mathesis and is incapable of constructing its concepts. A close examination of these same debates reveals that partisan enthusiasm has often been allowed to obscure the fact that both advocates and critics of philosophical construction have all too often held very different understandings of what is -- and what is not -- involved in, required for, and implied by "construction" in philosophy.1 This is particularly true of the debates concerning philosophical construction that occupied the attention of German philosophers in the immediate wake of Kant's unequivocal proscription of the same.
2It what follows I will make no attempt to summarize these debates,2 but will instead focus narrowly upon the competing conceptions of philosophical construction championed by Fichte and Schelling in their writings of the last years of the eighteenth and first years of the nineteenth centuries -- in the case of Fichte, upon the writings of his so-called Jena period, and, in the case of Schelling, upon those associated with his Philosophy of Identity.3 I will first indicate and discuss six central features of the methods of philosophical construction espoused by Fichte and Schelling during this period, and I will then call attention to four significant differences between their respective conceptions of philosophical construction, before concluding with a question concerning the problem of evaluating claims based upon philosophical construction and selecting one method of construction over the other.4
Fichte
3During the winter of 1793-94, while he was living in Zurich and working on the first-draft version of the system with which his name would forever be linked, Fichte -- who was still widely thought to be a more or less orthodox Kantian, though his allegiance to Kant had recently been shaken by his study of the writings of Reinhold, Maimon, and Schulze -- was actively reconsidering the role of construction in philosophy and the relationship between the methods of philosophy and mathematics (particularly geometry). This reconsideration of the proper method of transcendental philosophy coincided with his first systematic efforts to go beyond both Kant's Critical Philosophy and Reinhold's Elementary Philosophy, as is evidenced by the manuscript "Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie/Praktische Philosophie"5 and by the fourth of his "Zurich Lectures," both of which contain extended reflections on the possibility of construction in philosophy and draw explicit parallels between the methods of geometry and philosophy.6
4Fichte certainly made no secret of this dramatic advance in his own understanding of the method of transcendental philosophy; indeed, by the time of his arrival in Jena it was common knowledge that he intended to become nothing less than the "Euclid of philosophy."7 It may therefore come as something of a surprise to find that the text of his first (and only) published presentation of the foundations of his new system, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre, does not, at least at first glance, appear to fulfill its author's promise to employ the method of a priori construction in intuition in order to construct an entirely new system of philosophy; and indeed, the terms intellektuelle Anschauung and Construktion appear nowhere in this work. But a closer examination of the actual method of the Foundations reveals that it in fact does employ the new method of a priori construction Fichte had conceived in Zurich, not, to be sure, in the dialectical deductions that fill most of Parts I and II, but rather in the "Deduction of Representation" at the end of Part II and in all of Part III, which the author famously describes as constituting a "pragmatic history of the human mind."8
5Any lingering questions concerning Fichte's allegiance to his new "constructivist" program are completely dispelled by his lectures and writings over the next five or six years,9 above all by the new version of his prima philosophia that he presented three times in his lectures on Wissenschaftslehre nova methoda and began publishing in the unfinished Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre. If anything, Fichte's commitment to the method of philosophical construction in intuition only intensified over these years, and indeed, the version of the early or Jena Wissenschaftslehre that most closely and literally models itself on the method of Euclidian geometry is the very last version of the same: the unfinished Neue Bearbeitung composed in Berlin in the latter half of 1800,10 just as his most explicit published comments on his own method of construction are to be found in the Sonnenklarer Bericht of 1801.
Confining ourselves to these same writings and lectures, we find Fichte firmly committed to a method of philosophical construction that displays the following six distinctive features:
6(1.) The postulate or summons to engage in philosophical construction. Just as geometrical construction begins with a postulated act -- e.g., "draw a line at right angles to another line" -- so philosophical construction begins with a "postulate" of its own: an invitation or summons or challenge (Aufforderung, Aufgabe) to engage in an act of abstraction (from all that is not the I) and reflection (upon whatever remains in consciousness following such an act of abstraction). Not only did Fichte view the system that begins in this way as his own construction, he further insisted that each reader must reconstruct it for himself and do so by "re-enacting" each of the stages of this process. Like geometrical construction, philosophical construction is, for Fichte, always to be understood as a discursive process, a kind of doing or making, and the "theorems" (Lehrsätze) that are deduced or derived (abgeleitet) in the course of such a construction are to be understood as the products of the same. Hence, as in the case of geometry, one cannot hope to become acquainted with philosophy simply by memorizing the results of the same. Philosophical construction is something everyone must achieve for oneself and can accomplish only by accepting Fichte's invitation or by responding to his challenge to engage freely in a certain complex act of thinking.
7(2.) The first prerequisite for philosophical construction: the act of global abstraction. How should one go about responding to Fichte's challenge "to think the I"? Since ordinary consciousness is always preoccupied with its various "objects," in the presence of which the I itself is, as Fichte puts it, simply "lost," the first requirement for thinking the I and thus the first step in the construction of a transcendental account of the necessary, self-constitutive acts of the same, is simply to turn one's attention away from everything that is not the I, that is, from all the objects of ordinary empirical consciousness -- including empirical self-consciousness Philosophical construction thus begins with an act of radical abstraction from the "objective" or "empirical" contents of consciousness, with a freely motivated redirection of one's attention from the latter back upon oneself. 11
In doing this, one elevates oneself from the "ordinary" to the "philosophical" standpoint,"12 and, according to Fichte, only a person who has done this is in any position to engage in further philosophical construction or even to discuss the results of the same. This is because the true objects of philosophy and thus the constituent elements of the Wissenschaftslehre simply do not occur within ordinary consciousness, but are "created only through freedom and abstraction and determined through their connection with one another, and no one who has not undertaken this act of abstraction and construction and carried it through to its goal is in any position to pass the least judgment on these objects."13
8(3.) The organ of philosophical construction: the capacity for reflection, attentiveness, or intellectual intuition. Since the sort of formal awareness or pure self-consciousness that is supposed to become possible after performing the postulated act of global abstraction is not discursive nor mediated by concepts, but is supposed to be a direct awareness only of what "happens" when one tries to think the I, it deserves be called Anschauung or "intuition"; and since it occurs only after one has first "abstracted" from everything sensible, including the pure forms of sensibility, it deserves to be called "intellectual." Some of Fichte's other names for this distinctive power of what he called "the mind's inner eye"14 include: "reflection," "attentiveness" [Aufmerksamkeit], "circumspection" [Besonnenheit], "perception" [Wahrnehmung], "inner sense," and "inner intuition." But call it what one will, a third and crucial requirement for engaging in philosophical construction is the acquired ability to focus one's attention upon the self-reverting act of pure self-consciousness that has been laid bare by one's initial act of abstraction and to retain one's focus upon any additional acts that might reveal themselves to be necessary for the occurrence of the originally posited act of pure self-reversion. To be sure, it is the elicitation of these additional acts that constitutes the real labor of philosophical construction, a labor that, as we shall soon see, requires the cooperation of the powers of thinking and imagining; but the only way the philosopher can confirm any concepts arrived at in this way is by witnessing or "exhibiting" them directly in inner intuition.
9The indispensability of intuition for philosophical proof reinforces the parallels between the methods of philosophy and geometry. According to Fichte, what the geometer is inwardly aware of whenever he "demonstrates" the truth of a theorem is not this or that particular figure he may have constructed, but rather, of his own inner activity of constructing, and, more specifically, of the necessity revealed thereby, which is the basis of his conviction that he had to act as he did in order to construct the postulated figure.15 This immediate awareness of what is involved in and required by one's own inner acting (e.g., the act of drawing a line) is, according to Fichte, precisely what is meant by "intuition" in the case of geometry, and it is also what is meant by intuition in the case of the method of the Wissenschaftslehre.16
10For a person who actually performs the postulated acts of geometrical construction, the theorems based upon such constructions are not simply true; they are necessarily true, universally valid, and self-evident, inasmuch as "immediate self-evidence is always based only upon intuition"17 And the same, according to Fichte, can be said of the claims of the Wissenschaftslehre: they are not simply true in themselves, but universally valid and self-evident, though this can be recognized only by a person who has obtained these results directly, by constructing them in inner intuition and thus "seeing" them for himself, with his own "inner eye."18 "The philosopher's intuition of himself in the performance of the very act through which the I originates for him is what I call intellectual intuition. It is the immediate consciousness that I act and of what I do when I act." The philosopher has an immediate intuition of this act precisely because "he does it."19
11(4.) The role of thinking in philosophical construction. Despite the vital role played by intuition in Fichte's method of philosophical construction, it would quite wrong to conclude that the latter consists of nothing but passive self-observation. It is true that Fichte described transcendental philosophers as "spectators in the theaters of our own minds."20 But the philosopher is not merely a passive observer of this closet drama; he is also the stage director and even the leading actor in the same. And he is able to perform all of these roles because he is engaged not just in observing or intuiting what happens on the stage, but also in designing and performing it -- tasks he accomplishes by thinking, and indeed, by thinking in accordance with specific rules.
12We are already acquainted with the first rule of philosophical thinking -- abstract from everything that is not I and then pay attention to what remains. But once one has succeeded in constructing for oneself the concept of the pure I as a self-reverted activity one must then, so to speak, think again and ask oneself, what else is involved in this act of self-positing? What other acts are presupposed by this one and must therefore also be posited along with it? In order to answer such questions, the philosopher has to engage in what Fichte calls "synthetic thinking." This kind of thinking is "synthetic" because the point is not to analyze something already contained in some preceding concept, but rather to attach to some previously constructed concept a new concept, one not already contained in the previous one, but instead somehow presupposed by it. And in order to engage in this kind of thinking, the philosopher must be acquainted with the rule or principle of the same.
13Admittedly, Fichte is not always as clear as one might wish concerning this same rule (or rules) of synthetic thinking. Indeed, he offers several different descriptions of the same, all of which would seem to be merely variations on the same Leibnizian theme: the principle of synthetic thinking tells us to treat anything determinate -- and therefore anything that can be thought at all -- as in some sense conditioned by or grounded in something outside of itself and directs us to seek out this condition or ground. Thus, in its most general form, the principle of synthetic thinking is simply the Satz des Grundes, though Fichte never refers to it by that name. Instead, employing a term that betrays the strong influence of Maimon, he often refers to the principle in question as the Grundsatz der Bestimmbarkeit or "principle of determinability,"21 which is the rule that directs us, when faced with anything determinate (bestimmt) in one way or another, to posit in opposition thereto a more general domain that is "determinable" in this way and in therefore "presupposed" by this determinate something. But he also characterizes the rule of synthetic thinking -- in a manner that seems to hearken back to the Spinozistic principle that omnis determinatio negatio est -- as the "principle of determination though opposition" or the "law of reflection by means of opposition" [Reflexionsgesetz des Entgegensetzens],22 understood as a rule that directs us to juxtapose any determinate thought with the thought of something opposed to it in some essential respect, since "it is only through opposition that it is possible to obtain a specific and clear consciousness of anything whatsoever."23 Once we have posited such an essential opposition, then this same principle of synthetic thinking, which now functions as a principle of dialectical synthesis, directs us to look for a still higher thought or concept in which this opposition is somehow "overcome"and in which the previously posited opposites are now posited as united.24 Guided in this way by the principle of determinability, the law of reflective opposition, and the rule of dialectical synthesis, the philosopher is able to "think up" the next step in his a priori construction of self-consciousness: that is, to construct a concept of an act or state of the I that must be posited in order to posit the previously posited ones.
14These rules of synthetic thinking do not, however, provide us with a reliable algorithm for solving philosophical problems; instead, they might best be described merely as "heuristic" principles or rules of discovery. They tell us the kind of thing we ought to be looking for (something determinable in relation to some determinate something, something in opposition to which something else can be defined or understood, something that can overcome within itself a manifest contradiction); they point us in the general direction of a solution, but they do not tell us precisely where to find what we are seeking nor precisely what it may be that solves our problem. In order to discover this, we must engage in a further kind of thinking that is determined by no rule at all, the kind of thinking that is sometimes characterized as "creative problem solving," but is generally described by Fichte as an employment of the power of productive imagination, which is therefore also an essential ingredient in his method of philosophical construction.
15(5.) The role of imagination in philosophical construction. The power of imagination plays a dual role in Fichte's methodology: First, understood as “spirit in the higher sense,” Einbildungskraft is the mental power that allows one to become explicitly conscious of those mental acts by means of which one actually posits oneself and one's world, and not simply (as is normally the case) of the products of these acts. It is, according to Fichte, only by cultivating this higher mental power that one becomes able to grasp a pure mental activity, first, by means of a direct intuition of the activity in question and, second, by constructing a concept or mental image [Bild] of the same. Lacking such "mental spontaneity," the philosopher would be unable to "attend to" or to "intuit" these necessary acts of his own mind,25 in which case he would be barred from engaging in the labor of philosophical construction for the simple reason that he would lack access to the raw materials for the same.26
16Secondly, the power of imagination is required not only in order to raise to consciousness those acts of the mind upon which the philosopher must initially reflect when he begins to philosophize; it is also an indispensible guide and supplement to the previously indicated activity of synthetic thinking, which is never by itself sufficient to allow one to "deduce" one act of the I as the necessary condition of another. In order to accomplish this, our philosophical construction worker must employ his power of productive imagination in order to propose hypothetical solutions to the new problems he encounters at every stage of the process of construction.
17Philosophical construction thus requires substantially more than an initial act of abstraction, a highly developed capacity for inner intuition, and the ability to think in accordance with the rules of synthetic thinking. It also requires what Fichte sometimes calls the "feeling" or "sense" or "drive" for truth itself,27 "a presentiment that something might be found in a particular place and that one should pursue this or that path in order to find out."28 A person guided by such a "feeling for truth" is a person able to imagine possible new solutions to specific problems of thinking. Understood in this way, "philosophical spirit" or "philosophical genius"29 is simply the capacity to think creatively, to engage in "inspired guesswork," a capacity that will surely be familiar to investigators of all kinds, from police detectives to transcendental philosophers. In order to call attention to this feature of his method of construction Fichte sometimes characterized his method as an experimental one.30
18It is however vital to note the strict limits that Fichte's method of construction places upon the contribution to the same of "genius" or "imagination." Just because some solution can be imagined and conforms to the rules of synthetic thinking, this does not, by itself, guarantee that it is correct or that some imagined act of the I is in fact necessary. This is where Fichte's method of philosophical construction returns to its starting-point and re-invokes the philosopher's capacity for rigorous self-observation or "inner" or "intellectual intuition." For the only way to confirm that the newly postulated act is in fact necessary to the self-construction of the I is for the philosopher to perform this hypothetically posited act for himself and "see" if it is fact related in the postulated manner to the previous act. Conclusions arrived at by imaginatively informed thinking remain mere hypotheses until they have been directly demonstrated in the geometrical sense of the term, that is to say, until they have been exhibited in inner intuition; for this alone confirms their "reality" and establishes the universal validity of concepts grounded in such intuitions. Yet it is equally true that without the prior work of rule governed thinking and creative imagining the philosopher would be quite unable to advance from one step in his deduction to the next.
19(6.) The limits of philosophical construction. Last, but by no means least, we must call attention -- as Fichte himself was always careful to do -- to the limited scope of what can be accomplished by such a method. Given the preceding description of Fichte's method of philosophical construction, it clearly follows that such a method has applicability only within the domain of the pure subject-object that is accessible by means of the radical act of abstraction and reflection with which the Wissenschaftslehre commences. However great Fichte's methodological departures from Kant may have been, his system -- and certainly the Jena version of the same --ultimately remains true to its strictly transcendental, Kantian roots, as a philosophy ultimately grounded in the deepest structure of I-hood itself and applicable only to the domain of the same. Everything lying within this domain not only can but must be "constructed" by the philosopher trying to grasp and explicate the necessary conditions for the very possibility of self-hood, and anything outside it lies entirely beyond the scope of philosophical construction.
20Concluding remarks on Fichte's conception of philosophical construction. Fichte's method of construction is obviously synthetic or progressive, inasmuch as the very point of such a method is to keep attaching newly discovered "conditions" to previously postulated and established acts of the I and to do so not by analysis of the concept of the latter but rather by a combination of creative imagination, rule-governed thinking, and rigorously purified self-intuition. It is equally easy to grasp why Fichte would also characterize his method of construction as genetic, since what such a method displays is precisely a transcenentally ordered process in which each stage in the philosophical construction of the self springs necessarily from the preceding one as the condition for the very possibility of the same. Such a method is "genetic" in the strong sense, inasmuch as it demonstrates that the various realms and structures of ordinary actual life can be grasped philosophically only as products of the transcendental self-construction of the I.31
21An obvious implication of Fichte's rejection of the Kantian distinction between the methods of mathematics and philosophy is that philosophy too is capable of genuine demonstration -- which, after all, is just another for that "exhibition in intuition" that is the central feature of both the mathematical and philosophical methods of construction, at least as understood by Fichte. But Fichte did not reject Kant's general characterization of the basic task of transcendental philosophy, which he continued to describe in terms of deducing or deriving the conditions necessary for the possibility of self-consciousness. The difference is simply that for Fichte the only way the philosopher can actually succeed in providing a transcendental deduction or derivation of these conditions is by employing a method of a priori construction, which instructs him in how "to posit, in accordance with the rules with which we are already familiar, the conditions of consciousness, and, as it were, to construct consciousness before our very eyes."32
Schelling
22Prior to his first writings on Philosophy of Identity, Schelling had, particularly in his System of Transcendental Idealism, defended and deployed with his customary panache a largely Fichtean conception of philosophical construction as a discursive, synthetic process that begins with a postulate or problem and that proceeds to seek out -- strictly within the realm of inner sense or intuition -- new acts of consciousness that are presupposed by the initially posited one and are hence "deriviable" or "deducable" therefrom. But at the same time, in his writings on Philosophy of Nature, he was also employing a rather different and more ambitious method of construction, one that extends the domain of constructability far beyond the strict boundaries to which Fichte would confine it and boldly proclaims that intellectual intuition is not limited to the sphere constituted by the acts of the I. Instead, according to Schelling, the Philosopher of Nature can and must abstract entirely from his own subjectivity in order to obtain a genuinely "objective" and a priori intellectual intuition of nature itself.33
Despite their apparent differences, Schelling nevertheless insisted that the methods of construction employed in his system of transcendental philosophy and his Philosophy of Nature are fundamentally the same. Rather than dwelling on this problematic claim, let us instead turn to an examination of the new and strikingly different method of philosophical construction that Schelling introduced and employed in his writings on Identitätsphilophie in the period between 1801 to 1804, including Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie, Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums, and Ueber die Construction in der Philosophie.34 Six of the more salient features of this new method are as follows:
23(1.) The "absolute" standpoint of philosophical construction. What is philosophy? According to Schelling's Darstellung meines Systems, philosophy is distinguished from every other science in that it can be pursued only from "the standpoint of reason," which is also "the standpoint of the absolute." 35Neither "objective" nor "subjective," the standpoint of philosophy is the highest and most universal standpoint possible. Philosophy pursued from this absolute standpoint rejects the exclusive standpoints of both "realism" and "idealism," each of which defines itself primarily by its opposition to the other, whereas genuine philosophy, like absolute reason itself, begins by rejecting the kind of thinking that posits a fundamental opposition between subject and object, ideal and real, mind and nature, or knowing and being.
24This new Philosophy of Identity also begins with an act of radical abstraction, and with one even more radical than the one postulated by Fichte, whose "pure I," according to Schelling, though a kind of "subject-object" in its own right, is nevertheless not the absolute. In order to move from the standpoint of consciousness to that of reason (or the absolute), philosophy must dispense once and for all with the kind of thinking associated with the former's "method of reflection," which "works only from oppositions and rests on oppositions."36 Instead, one must view philosophy as a kind of "primordial knowing" or Urwissen, a "knowing of knowing," which contains within itself all other instances of cognition, as particulars included in "universal" or "absolute" cognition. Since all knowing involves some reference to the object known, and since the absolute cannot, by definition, be conditioned by its object (in the way that ordinary knowledge clearly is), then in the case of absolute knowledge we must posit the identity of the knowing subject and the known object, of ideality and reality; i.e., we must posit "the pure dissolution of the particular in the universal," in which the "opacity" of the former is illuminated by the "transparency of a universal rational cognition."37 We must, in other words, think of absolute cognition as identical to the absolute itself. This breathtaking abolition of the opposition between thought and being, which is and has always been the goal of all theoretical cognition as well as of all practical striving, is thus not the conclusion but the starting point of the Philosophy of Identity.
25(2.) The principle of philosophical construction (the law of rational identity). If philosophy begins with the claim to have overcome the eternal oppositions that have plagued nearly all previous philosophy, then, one may well wonder, what is left for it to accomplish? Schelling's answer is that the philosopher's new task is to show or to demonstrate precisely how those oppositions and differences that are and remain such a fundamental feature of actual human experience, both sensible and intellectual, appear when viewed from his lofty new absolute perspective -- and thus to grasp and to exhibit them as they truly are. The distinctive character of this new task of philosophy was-- albeit unwittingly -- suggested by Kant in his characterization of mathematical construction as the "exhibition of the universal in the particular" or the presentation of a concept in a pure intuition. However, the task of philosophy, according to Schelling is precisely the reverse: namely, "the exhibition of the particular in the universal"38; or rather, since the opposition between "particular" and "universal" is itself abolished from the standpoint of the absolute, the task of philosophy may be described as the "exhibition of the unity of the particular and the universal in their absolute indifference."39
26The proper task of philosophy is therefore not to prove anything by means of discursive arguments, but rather to display or to exhibit directly the identity it begins simply by asserting, and the proper name for such an exhibition is construction. Schelling thus understands construction not simply as the "method" of philosophy, but rather as identical to philosophy itself, the proper and sole business of which is to exhibit the particular in the universal.
The rule or principle guiding the kind of "construction" envisioned by Schelling is the same as the principle of his philosophy as a whole: namely, the principle of identity, understood not merely as a formal law of analytic thinking (A=A) but also as a synthetic principle (i.e., as the "law of rational identity," a law that, unlike the purely formal law of identity, asserts the identity of opposites). As the principle of philosophical construction, what this law asserts is the identity of particular and universal.40 Since the proper business of philosophy simply is construction, and since the principle of construction is the law of rational identity in this form, then it follows that anything that cannot be subordinated to this principle, that is, anything that cannot be constructed, simply has no place whatsoever within philosophy.41
27Any talk of a rule or principle of philosophical construction can, however, in the case of Schelling, be misleading; for the function of such a rule in the Philosophy of Identity in no way resembles the function of the "law of synthetic thinking" in the Wissenschaftslehre. Instead, the principle of rational identity serves for Schelling not as a law of thinking, but rather, as we shall see, as a rule for intuiting particulars in their relationship to the universal or absolute, as a guideline, therefore, not for intellectual inference but for seeing with the mind's eye. Thus Schelling's method of construction is not a discursive means for deriving one thing from another, but is instead a strategy for articulating and displaying the indifferent unity that is grasped all at once in the original intuition of the absolute unity of the real and the ideal, which which philosophy begins.
There can, Schelling cheerfully admits, be no "argument in favor" of the kind of constructions encountered in his Philosophy of Identity. Such constructions do not constitute proofs in the logical sense, in which one proposition is formally deduced from or entailed by another, from which it acquires its certainty; instead, each philosophical construction must stand purely on its own as a self-contained whole, and it can obtain its certainty from nowhere else, but must be self-evident. Neither are philosophical constructions explanations in the scientific sense, in which one thing or event is "explained" by relating it to another. Properly understood, philosophical construction does not "explain" anything, but simply "articulates [Aussprechen] or resents [Darstellen]" it.42 For similar reasons, Schelling also refuses to characterize his new method of construction as one of "deduction" or "derivation."43
28(3.) The organ of philosophical construction (intellectual intuition). According to Schelling, the essential unity of the indifferent absolute with which philosophy begins simply cannot be "proven" [beweisen], that is, cannot be inferred or derived from anything else (though, he says, one can prove that without presupposing this indifferent unity there can be genuine science whatsoever).44 This, however, is not to say that philosophy must begin with a "hypothesis" or "postulate"45; for even though it cannot be proven (i.e., cognized indirectly by means of something else), the absolute can, according to Schelling, be cognized directly -- not simply thought of as possible, but intellectually intuited as real.46 In fact, intellectual intuition functions in two distinct ways in the context of Schellingian construction: first, it is the indispensable means by which one gains initial access to that absolute standpoint from which philosophical construction stricto sensu becomes possible in the first place; and, second, it is the instrument or organ by means of which one accomplishes the actual labor of philosophical construction from this absolute standpoint. Both of these functions are essential to philosophy as Schelling understands it during this period; hence his stark admonition: "without intellectual intuition, no philosophy."47
29Regarding the first of these functions, Schelling claims that to occupy the absolute standpoint, that is, to see directly [erblicken] for oneself the unity of thought and being, "not in this or that context, but simply in and for itself, and thus as the self-evidence of all self-evidence, the truth of all truth, that which is purely known in everything that is known: this is to elevate oneself to the intuition of absolute unity and thereby to intellectual intuition as such."48 This "preliminary and purely formal kind of absolute cognition,"49 which has as its content nothing but the indifferent unity of form and essence, is thus described as "the first speculative cognition," an intellectual intuition that is "the principle and ground of all philosophy."50
It is, however, the second function of intellectual intuition that most clearly illuminates Schelling's distinctive method of philosophical construction. Intellectual intuition in this sense is the "overall capacity to see the universal in the particular, the infinite in the finite," and, as such, is described as the "unchangeable organ" or tool that is an indispensible condition of all genuine knowing.51 To illustrate what this means, Schelling uses the example of the botanist who "sees through" the individual specimen before him in order to grasp "the plant as such," in order, that is, “to see the concept or indifference within the difference,” something that according to Schelling is possible only by means of intellectual intuition. It is therefore only by virtue of this second function of intellectual intuition that the philosopher is able to move beyond the indifferent unity of his absolute starting point and "give birth," as Schelling puts it, to a "totality of cognition," that is, to a complete system of philosophy.52
30(4.) The actual method of philosophical construction or demonstration (exhibition of the particular in the universal). As we have now seen, Schelling's method of philosophical construction is neither synthetic nor analytic; instead, it is "demonstrative."53 In every genuine "demonstration" something particular or finite is demonstrated or exhibited in something universal or infinite; and the essence of philosophical demonstration consists in the absolute identification or equation [Gleichsetzung] of the former and the latter.
Mathematics, especially geometry, which, for Schelling as for Fichte, provides the closest and best illustration of the method of construction employed by philosophy, provides no "explanations," but demonstrates the truth of its theorems directly. But for Schelling, the key to understanding the universality and self-evidence of mathematics lies not (as it did for Fichte) in the activity of constructing, but rather in what one becomes able to see when one exhibits the universal in the particular in this manner of the mathematician. Philosophy displays the same unity that mathematics does, the unity of the finite and the infinite, of being and of thinking, of the particular and the universal; but it has the more difficult task of "intuiting this unity immediately in the essence of the eternal itself and exhibiting it in reason."54
31Thus, once he has attained his "absolute" standpoint, the chief job for the philosophical construction worker is simply to look around and see for himself how particularity presents itself from this universal standpoint and reconciles itself therewith. Since philosophy as such considers things only as they are "in themselves," that is "as infinite and absolute identity," then, according to Schelling, "true philosophy" -- as Spinoza alone of all previous philosophers clearly grasped -- "consists in the proof that absolute identity (the infinite) has not stepped outside of itself and that everything that is, insofar as it is, is infinity itself.”55 And such a "proof" can consist only in the immediate "demonstration" or "exhibition" of the truth of this claim with respect to some particular thing or unity. Hence the distinctive task of philosophical construction is to show or to reveal this asserted identity of the particular and the universal, and to do so, more specifically, by "displaying" the former in the latter, thereby directly demonstrating -- i.e. constructing -- the truth in question.56
32The whole point of a philosophical construction is therefore simply to make evident or to "demonstrate" the general claim that is already present, albeit only abstractly and as a mere promissory note, in the first, absolute cognition with which the system begins: namely, that all really is one -- hen kai pan.57 And the only way to demonstrate the truth of this claim, to cash this promissory note, is by actually viewing the particular "through the lens," as it were, of the universal, thereby "exhibiting" the particular not merely in the absolute, but, with respect to its reality or essence, as identical with it.58 Though this profound insight -- that "nothing is clearly cognized in both its particularity and it absoluteness except when the all is actually comprehended in the all" -- was grasped obscurely by certain philosophers of the past, the only way, says Schelling, to represent this "divine chaos both in its unity and confusion is by means of a construction that is carried through to totality, that actually grasps all in all."59 No longer, therefore, will this remain a matter of accidental insight, inasmuch as the declared aim of the Identitätsphilosophie is precisely to lay this truth before our eyes and to exhibit it in a form as absolute and unchanging as the content itself -- thereby transforming the "night of the absolute into day"60 -- by means of philosophical construction.
33(5.) The elements of philosophical construction (ideas of reason). Genuine philosophy, says Schelling, "cannot acknowledge the actuality of the world of appearances as such, not even insofar as what it is in-itself is contained in the absolute, but can recognize only its absolute lack of actuality."61 Inasmuch as philosophical construction succeeds in exhibiting the particular in the universal, this means that "the particular is annihilated as a particular -- that is, in its opposition to the universal."62 It follows that the "particulars" that philosophy "displays within the universal" are neither finite spatio-temporal things nor sensible Bilder nor generalized concepts derived from such things and images; instead, they are the archetypes or Urbilder of sensible things: not finite things or particulars, but particulars that are also universals. Though Schelling employs a variety of different names for these "particular universals" that are the direct objects of philosophical construction -- including: "particular unities,"63 "particular schematisms of world-intuition," "eternal prototypes of things,"64 and "potencies" of the absolute65 -- by far his favorite name for them is simply "ideas" (in the Platonic rather than the Kantian sense), and thus he describes philosophy itself as "the science of ideas,"66
It follows that the only way to engage in philosophical construction, that is, the only way to "exhibit particulars in the absolute," is to cognize them as ideas, which Schelling rapturously describes as "blessed beings," indeed, as "gods themselves, inasmuch as each idea is for itself absolute and yet is comprised in the absolute form."67 More soberly expressed: the task of philosophical construction is to cognize (1.) how everything is in principle one and (2.) how within this absolute unity every particular form is, as particular, distinct from every other, while still sharing with all these others the same absolute essence or reality.
34Schelling's name for the kind of cognition that is required for such construction is "urbildliche" cognition,68 and it should be obvious that such cognition is not simply a component of philosophical construction, but is identical with it. Both "construction" and "urbildliche cognition" designate the same thing: namely, seeing the particular in the universal and doing so in a way that both abolishes and preserves the distinction between the particular and the universal. Insofar as the particular is truly exhibited in the universal, then the former displays the absolute in its entirety and the difference between the two is purely ideal. Schelling thus compares the difference between the idea and the absolute to that between an original and a copy, both of which have the same real essence.69 But to grasp an idea in this manner, via intellectual intuition, as contained in the absolute, is precisely to construct it as an idea, and indeed the only things that philosophy can truly construct are "ideas" in this sense.70
35(6.) The product of philosophical construction (the system of identity). The task of philosophical construction is to demonstrate -- that is to show in intuition -- how each particular idea is not merely "contained in" but is, at least with respect to its being or essence, "identical to" the absolute. And the philosopher accomplishes this by displaying the relation of each particular idea to all the other ideas, i.e. to the totality, of the same. This is why the final product of philosophical construction in the Schellingian sense is not, as with Fichte, an accurate Bild of concrete self-consciousness and its world of experience, but rather, a complete and self-enclosed system of ideas (or Urbilder), in which all differences between "particular unities" are merely ideal, whereas essential reality is one and self-identical.
From this it follows that philosophy itself, insofar as it merely describes what it has constructed in intuition must take a rigorously systematic form. The systematic structure of philosophy is simply a reflection of the systematic structure of the absolute itself, as expressed and cognized in the universe of ideas. ”Only for reason," writes Schelling, 'is there one universe; and to grasp something rationally means to grasp it above all as an organic member of an absolute whole, in its necessary connection with the same, and thereby as a reflection of absolute unity."71 To "construct" something philosophically is therefore simply to see or to recognize its proper place in a larger, systematic whole.
36Concluding remarks on Schelling's conception of philosophical construction. Let us conclude by recalling some of the various ways in which Schelling defines philosophical construction: as exhibition in intellectual intuition,72 as demonstration of the identity of the infinite and the finite,73 as exhibition of the real in the ideal,74 as exhibition of the particular in the universal,75 as exhibition in the idea,76 and as the determination of the position of everything within the universe as a whole.77 And let us also recall what philosophical construction, as understood by Schelling, is not and does not purport to be: it is not an experiment, not a proof, not a derivation, not a deduction (transcendental or otherwise), and not a genetic account of experience. It cannot accurately be described as a "synthetic" or "progressive" method, nor does it purport to provide an explanation of anything. Instead of trying to accomplish any of these things, philosophical construction as practiced by Schelling limits itself to the task of "articulation and presentation." It purports to do no more (and no less) that to "exhibit" or to "demonstrate" the true nature of things, to allow everything to appear in its true light. It is therefore perhaps best understood simply as a mode of vision, as a way of looking at things, a way of seeing them "in the idea" and of seeing the ideas "in the absolute." Thus it seems entirely appropriate to describe Schelling's philosophy during this period, as well as the method of construction employed therein, as speculative or contemplative. For the possibility of such a philosophy, everything of course depends upon the possession and cultivation of the correct organ of intellectual vision, without which one will literally "see nothing" in Schelling's constructions and might therefore be led to characterize them as "the night in which all cows are black."
Fichte vs. Schelling on Construction in Philosophy
37The preceding survey will have made it clear that even though Fichte and Schelling agree that philosophy can move beyond what Schelling called "the narrow limits of Kantian criticism"78 only if it consciously adopts a method of pure "construction" in which "intellectual intuition" plays a central and indispensible role,79 they in fact adopt very different and profoundly incompatible conceptions of both intellectual intuition and philosophical construction. We have already mentioned some of these differences, but let us now make them more explicit. The major differences between Fichte and Schelling with respect to philosophical construction include, though they are not limited to, the following:
38(1.) Construction, deduction, derivation, and explanation. For Fichte, construction is a method of transcendental deduction, a means for explaining one thing (i.e. one necessary act of the mind) in terms of another, and ultimately for deriving the basic and necessary features of ordinary experience, both theoretical and practical, from that pure self-reverting act of self-positing with the postulation of which the Jena Wissenschaftslehre begins, as conditions necessary for the possibility of the latter. Philosophical construction is therefore an elaborate, intricately structured, and thoroughly discursive process, one guided by the rules of synthetic thinking.
For Schelling, in contrast, construction must be sharply distinguished from any kind of deduction or derivation or explanation. It is not a discursive process, and it is not guided by any rules of thinking.80 To be sure, Schelling does recognize as his "principle of construction" the "law of rational identity," but this principle tells us only what every philosophical construction is supposed to accomplish (namely, an exhibition of the identity of a determinate particular unity or "idea" with the universal or absolute) and does not provide the philosopher with any rule or law that can guide his actual practice of construction.81 Instead, Schellingian construction always comes down to a matter of correct "seeing," of immediately contemplating an idea in its relation to the absolute and to the entire system of ideas.
39(2.) The role of intellectual intuition in philosophical construction. There are significant differences between Fichte's and Schelling's conceptions of the function of intellectual intuition within philosophical construction. Whereas for Schelling, construction basically just is intellectual intuition, and to "exhibit the particular in the universal" (that is, to construct the idea) is simply a matter of actually "seeing" it in the absolute, for Fichte there is much more to philosophical construction than simply engaging one's power of inner observation or intellectual intuition. The primary methodological role of the latter within the Wissenschaftslehre is to confirm results that have already been arrived at, that is, "constructed in thought" by a combination of rule-governed inference and creative imagination. For Fichte, therefore, philosophical construction is a complex and thoroughly discursive process and is not simply identical to the immediate inner intuition of the results of the same, though the later certainly has a vital role to play in the larger process of philosophical construction.
40(3.) The scope and limits of philosophical construction. For Fichte the domain open to philosophical construction is circumscribed by what can legitimately appear within inner intuition, which is limited to the realm of pure interiority or subjectivity. Just as experience itself, according to Fichte, is always only "for consciousness," so too is the transcendental philosopher confined within what one might call "the circle of transcendental consciousness." Hence Fichte confines the scope of philosophical construction to those acts of the pure I that must necessarily be posited by the philosopher as he seeks to exhaust the conditions for the possibility of self-consciousness. Though he notoriously maintained that everything that is a posteriori is also, in another sense, a priori,82 Fichte did not claim that the philosopher can actually construct a priori everything that is encountered in experience, inasmuch as the empirical content of the same is determined by something entirely unconstructable: namely, by what Fichte called the inscrutable "original limits" of the finite I, as revealed through the Anstoß as a primitive manifold of sheer "feeling"83 -- and this is the point at which "all deduction comes to an end."84
41For Schelling, in contrast, philosophical construction deals with reality as it is "in itself," in abstraction not merely from the experiencing or philosophizing subject, but from the very distinction between subject and object. Because he endorses a notion of "absolute cognition" that relies upon the possibility of "objective intellectual intuition," Schelling does not share Fichte's scruples concerning the capacity of philosophical construction to extend to things beyond the circle of consciousness. To be sure, he would agree with Fichte that philosophy cannot hope to "construct' the detailed content of empirical experience. But for Schelling this is not because of any supposed "limits" of the I, in the face of which philosophy must concede defeat; instead, Schelling thought that philosophical construction does not extend to the level of empirical individuality only because the latter lacks any genuine reality whatsoever, and because philosophy -- and hence philosophical construction -- is properly concerned only with what is truly real. For Schelling, what is truly real is wholly identical to what can be "constructed in the absolute." So even though both Fichte and Schelling recognize limits to the scope of philosophical construction, these are very different kinds of limits, which they acknowledge for very different reason.
42 (4.) Doing vs. seeing. A particularly illuminating way to underscore the differences between Fichte's and Schelling's rival conceptions of philosophical construction is to compare the different verbs they use to describe or define the process of philosophical construction. In the case of Fichte these are all active verbs, verbs that describe something the philosopher has to accomplish, such as "deriving" or "deducing" one act from another. A central feature of the early Wissenschaftslehre is its fundamentally genetic character, in which the philosopher is always, so to speak, at work, explicitly positing one mental act after another, confirming this hypothetical relationship of internal dependence in inner intuition, and then employing a combination of thought and imagination to conceive of the next act, and so on. And indeed, one might surmise that there is a more than coincidental parallel between the object of Fichte's philosophy -- the dynamic, restlessly striving I itself, which is, says Fichte, nothing but an act or a kind of doing85 -- and what has been aptly described as the "dynamic-operational" method employed by Fichte to explain this object.86
43In contrast, there is something fundamentally passive or contemplative about Schelling's conception of philosophical construction, and this too is reflected in the terms that he favors for describing it: namely, Darstellung -- that is, "presentation" or "exhibition" -- and Demonstration. When, in the course of philosophical construction, one views the particular as "exhibiting the universal," it is not the philosopher himself who does the exhibiting. It is, instead, the ideas that exhibit themselves to him as absolute; it is the absolute that presents itself to him as articulated into a universe of ideas; and it is the particular that shows itself to be universal. Assuming that he has managed to raise himself to the standpoint of reason and that he has either been born with or somehow managed to acquire the requisite organ of intellectual intuition, then all the philosopher has to do in order to accomplish his self-imposed task of philosophical construction is simply to open his inner eye, so to speak, in order to see for himself what reveals itself thereto. Unlike the hard-working Fichtean, therefore, the philosopher engaged in the Schellingian variety of speculative construction is a passive mirror of the universe, and his rational or urbildliche comprehension of the same is simply a matter of "contemplating" it clearly.87
Concluding Question
44How is one to evaluate philosophical claims based on the "self-evidence" of "intellectual intuition"? (The competing dangers of psychologism and Schwärmerei.) As even Schelling had to concede: it is not sufficient for the purposes of philosophy that one simply construct for oneself anything whatsoever; what matters "is that it be constructed correctly."88 And Fichte would surely agree; but this agreement only points to a further problem: namely, how is one supposed to determine whether a philosophy that claims to be grounded in universally valid, self-evident intellectual intuition has indeed been constructed "correctly"? How can such claims be evaluated and disputes between rival philosophies, each allegedly grounded in just such immediate evidence, be adjudicated?
45To be sure, there is, as we have seen, more to Fichte's method of construction than a simple reliance upon the evidence of intuition, and one test of the correctness of a transcendental construction of the I is whether the results of the same mesh with what is revealed in everyday experience. And even Schelling sometimes suggests that a test of the correctness of his philosophical constructions is whether they conform with what experience teaches us -- though it is hard to know what to make of this, inasmuch as the product of his constructions (the universe of ideas) appears to be accessible to us only by means of such constructions. Thus, in the end, the only truly applicable criterion that Schelling recognizes for the correctness of his philosophical constructions is that of self-evidence in intellectual intuition. And even if this is not the sole criterion for evaluating the truth of the Wissenschaftslehre, it would nevertheless appear to be the most important one. Precisely because its claim to truth and universal validity rests ultimately upon construction in intuition, declares Fichte, "there can be no dispute whatsoever concerning the Wissenschaftslehre and no argument against it. Either one sees [einsieht] its principle, in which case one will immediately accept it, or one does not, in which case it is not present for one at all." 89
46Indeed, the whole point of philosophical construction for both Fichte and Schelling, the reason for their emphasis upon the parallels between the methods of philosophy and geometry and for their characterization of the former as the "mathesis of reason," is precisely because this allows them to dispense with philosophical arguments and to base their claims upon evidence that is supposed to be, by its very nature, immediate, universally valid, and utterly indefeasible.
The objections to and dangers of such reliance upon the alleged self-evidence of intellectual intuition are only too obvious. Suppose, for example, that Fichte is simply wrong about the necessity and universal validity of his inner intuitions; suppose that, despite his best efforts to abstract from everything empirical, all he has produced is an exceptionally abstract account of the workings of the human mind? Suppose, in other words, that he has unwittingly fallen prey to what is sometimes called "psychologism." His response, of course, to such an objection would be to point out that, unlike psychology, the Wissenschaftslehre is unconcerned with the empirical "facts of consciousness" and concerned instead only with the pure, non-empirical acts of the I.90 But is this an adequate self-defense? Does the empirical I not "act" as well? Can we really be so sure that we have actually "abstracted" from everything but the pure I? And, if we have, then what happens if we should then be unable to confirm through our own efforts that there remains within consciousness anything left to "intuit"?
47In the case of Schelling, the dangers of relying upon a method of "exhibition in intuition," utterly uncontrolled by anything outside itself, including the laws of thinking, are even more obvious. If construction in intuition comes down in the end to nothing but entertaining a certain immediate vision of reality and asserting that every other qualified observer must necessarily share this same vision, then what happens should this simply prove not to be the case? What happens when one someone else reports an alternate and incompatible "immediate vision" of reality? On what basis might one accept one of these visions while rejecting the other as mere Schärmerei?
Faced with such objections, each of our philosophers would make the same response: namely, that failure to confirm their claims within one's own intellectual intuition is evidence not of the problematic character of the claims in question, but rather, of one's own failure to intuit and thus to construct correctly. But will this really do? And what about the differences between Fichte's and Schelling's actual methods of construction? On what basis might one prefer one of these methods over the other? In the end, are such differences simply "irreconciliable"?
48That this is indeed the case is strongly suggested by Fichte's published and unpublished criticisms of Schelling's Philosophy of Identity and by Schelling's many criticisms of Fichte's early Wissenschaftslehre, as well as by the extensive correspondence between them during the period that concerns us.91 Over and over again one finds each of them simply repeating the same points against the another: Fichte censuring Schelling for going beyond the limits of consciousness, and hence beyond the limits of philosophy; Schelling excoriating Fichte for inexplicably remaining within these same limits and thus failing even to arrive at the standpoint of philosophy; Fichte vociferously rejecting any notion of "objective intellectual intuition" as fundamentally incoherent; Schelling chastising Fichte for an overly narrow and impoverished conception of intellectual intuition as mere "reflection"; Fichte slandering the Philosophy of Identity as an embarrassing lapse into pre-Kantian dogmatism; and Schelling stigmatizing the Wissenschaftslehre as the last relic of philosophizing from the "standpoint of understanding." For all their biographical pathos, these documents are deeply unilluminating as speciments of genuinely philosophical debate.
49In the end, therefore, the differences between the methods of philosophical construction employed by Fichte in his Jena Wissenschaftslehre and by Schelling in his Philosophy of Identity point to deeper differences concerning the task and limitations of philosophy itself -- differences not over the best way to accomplish a common goal, but rather concering what the goal of philosophy should actually be. Thus, if there is any lesson to be learned from the foregoing comparative study, perhaps it is lies in the recognition of the intimate connection between one's philosophical methodology and the actual content of one's philosophy. If what one desires is an inspiring vision of the ultimate unity of all that exists and an a priori account of the eternal universe of ideas, then one would be well advised not to adopt a method of genetic construction like that of Fichte. And if what ones desires is a transcendental deduction of the necessary conditions for pure self-positing, one that unites the "theoretical" and "practical" moments of the same in a manner that had eluded Kant, then one will be equally well advised to avoid Schelling's contemplative method of "exhibiting the particular in the universal."
So which will it be? Transcendental epistemology in the Kantian vein or speculative metaphysics à la Plato? And on what rational grounds could this decision possibly be based? With this question it would appear that we have finally arrived at a genuine impasse, which is always a good place to stop.
Bibliographie
The following abbreviations are employed in these notes. (For the convenience of the reader, the author has, whenever possible, supplied references to published English translations of the works cited, but all translations in this paper are by the author. In the case of passages cited from the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, both the original and an English translation are provided. Secondary literature is cited only in its original language. )
FICHTE
FSW = Fichtes Werke, ed. I. H. Fichte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1971 [vols. 1-9, orig. 1845/46; vols. 10-11, orig. 1834/35])
GA = J. G. Fichte-Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, ed. Reinhard Lauth†, Hans Gliwitzky†, and Erich Fuchs (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964ff.)
BWL = Fichte, Ueber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre (1794); Eng. trans. in EPW.
EPW = Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988).
FTP = Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992).
GB = Über dem Imterschied des Geistes und des Buchstabens in der Philosophie (1794); Eng. trans. "Concerning the Difference between the Spirit and the Letter within Philosophy," in EPW.
GNR = Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts (1796/97); Eng. trans. Michael Baur, Foundations of Natural Right (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
GWL = Fichte, Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre (1794/95); Eng. trans. John Lachs and Peter Heath, Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
IWL = Fichte, Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994).
NBWL = Neue Bearbeitung der Wissenschaftslehre (1800).
SB = Sonnenklarer Bericht an das größere Publikum über das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie. Ein Versuch, die Leser zum Verstehen zu zwingen (1801); Eng. trans. John Botterman and William Rash, A Crystal Clear Report to the General Public Concerning the Actual Essence of the Newest Philosophy: An Attempt to Force the Reader to Understand, in Philosophy of German Idealism, ed. Ernst Behler (New York: Continuum, 1987).
SS = Fichte, System der Sittenlehre (1798); Eng. trans. Daniel Breazeale and Günter Zöller, System of Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
VS = Vergleichung des vom Herrn Prof. Schmid aufgestellten System mit der Wissenschaftslehre (1796); Eng. trans."A Comparison between Prof. Schmid's Philosophy and the Wissenschaftslehre, in EPW.
VWL = Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre (1797-98); Eng. trans. "Attempt at a New Presentation of the Wissenschaftslehre," in IWL.
WLnm[H] = Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo ("Halle Nachshrift," 1796/97).
WLnm[K] = Fichte, Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo ("Krause Nachschrift,"1798/99).
SCHELLING
SSW = Schelling, Friederich Willhelm Joseph Schellings sämmtliche Werke, ed. F. K. A. Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1856 [Abteilung I] and 1857 [Abteilung II]).
HKA = Schelling, Historische-Kritische Ausgabe, ed. Thomas Buchheim, Jochem Hennigfeld, Wilhelm G. Jacobs, Jörg Jantzen, and Siegbert Peetz (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1976ff.)
AAE = Schelling, Anhang zu dem Aufsatz des Herrn Eschenmeyer betreffend den wahren Begriff der Naturphilosophie und die richtige Art ihre Probleme aufzulosen (1801), pub. in SSW I/4 as Ueber den wahren Begriff der Naturphilosophie und die richtige Art ihre Probleme aufzulösen
AU = Schelling, Allgemeine Übersicht der neuesten philosophischen Literatur (1797/98); Eng. trans. Thomas Pau, Treatise Explicatory of the Idealism of the Wissenschaftstlehre, in Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling, pp. 62-138 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
CP = Schelling, Ueber die Construction in der Philosophie (1802); Eng. trans.Andrew A. Davis and Alexi I. Kukelijevic, "On Construction in Philosophy," Epoché 12 (2008): 260-88.
DSP = Schelling, Darstellung meines system der Philosophie (1801); Eng. trans. (through § 54) by Michael Vater, "Presentation of my System of Philosophy," Philosophical Forum 32 (2001): 339-71.
EE = Schelling, Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1st ed., 1799); Eng. trans. Keith R. Peterson, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004).
FD = Schelling, Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie (1802, though probably written in 1801); partial Eng. trans. Michael Vater, "Further Presentations from the System of Philosophy," Philosophical Forum 32 (2001): 373-97.
PK = Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst (unpublished, based on lecture texts from WS 1802-03 and WS 1803-04); Eng. trans. Douglass W. Stott, The Philosophy of Art (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).
StI = System des transcendentalen Idealismus (1800); Eng. trans. Peter Heath, System of transcendental Idealism (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1978)
VM = Schelling, Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums (delivered 1802,. pub 1803); Eng. trans. E.S. Morgan, rev. Norbert Guterman, On University Studies (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1966).
VNP = Schelling, Ueber das Verhältniß der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie überhaupt (1802); Eng. trans. George di Giovanni and H.S. Harris, "On the Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General," in Between Kant and Hegel: Texts in the Development of Post-Kantian Idealism, pp. 363-81 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985).
Notes de bas de page
1 For a general survey of the history of the concept of philosophical construction -- albeit one that excludes Fichte altogether! -- see Bernard Taureck, Das Schicksal der philosophischen Konstruktion (Wien/München: Oldenbourg, 1975).
2 A full and adequate survey of the controversy over philosophical construction, even during this limited period, would also have to take into account not just the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, but also those of many other philosophers, including F.H. Jacobi, J.S. Beck, Salomon Maimon, and C.H. Hojer -- not to mention, in the case of Schelling at least, Plato and Spinoza. For a rather superficial survey of the views of these and other authors (including Lambert, Keisewetter, Fries, Apelt, Schopenhauer, Krug, Herder, Beneke, Schleiermacher, Novalis, Krause, F. Schlegel, Wagner, Bachman, Jacobi, Harms, Baumann, Hegel, Bayrhoffer, and Rosenkranz -- all in less than 100 pages!), see Helga Ende, Der Konstruktionsbegriff im Umkreiss des Deutschen Idealismus (Meisenheim am Glan: Anton Hain, 1973).
3 I understand Fichte's "Jena period" to have begun in the winter of 1793/94, while he was in Zurich, and not to have ended until early 1801, when he was in Berlin. Schelling's writings on Philosophy of Identity somewhat overlap with his work on Philosophy of Nature and system of transcendentalism, around 1798 and continue until 1803 or 1804. Of course, "construction" continued to be an important theme in the later writings of both philosophers, especially those of Fichte, beginning with the 1801/02 Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre and continuing through the later versions of the Wissenschaftslehre and the lectures on Formal and Transcendental Logic.
4 The much longer version of this paper that is posted on-line, includes (in addition to a preliminary section on Kant's conception of mathematical construction in the first Kritik and his "dynamic construction" of matter in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe des Naturwissenschaften) discussions of several additional topics that have been eliminated from the present version for reasons of time, viz:: (1.) the "fictional" vs. the "real" status of the elements of philosophical construction; (2.) whether the capacity for philosophical construction can can be taught and cultivated or whether it is an innate ability that some people simply lack altogether; and (3.) the complex relation of philosophical construction to the object of the same -- and to this object's alleged self-construction.
5 "Isn't construction possible in Elemenatry Philosophy? Isn't it possible that there could be an inner inturition that would explain and prove thinking? If so, then Aenesidemus would be refuted." ["Ist in der ElementarPhilosophie nicht das Construiren möglich: nicht möglich eine innere Anschauung zu geben die den Gedanken erkläre, u. beweise. Wenn das geschähe, so wäre Aenesidemus widerlegt"] (GA, II/3: 23-24). "This would be self-contradictory, if a third factor, namely, difference, which is obtained by combining identity and opposition, were not possible: this is something that has to be constructed in intuition." ["Das würde sich widersprechen, wenn nicht noch ein drittes, nemlich Verschiedenheit durch Zusammensetzung der Identität, u. des Gegensatzes entstanden möglich wäre. -- In der Anschauung zu construiren"] (GA, II/3: 32). See too pp. 34, 44, 50, and 52, as well as the remark in another manuscript from the same period (Nov.-Dec., 1793, "Bei Lesung der K[antische] K[ritik] d[er] r[einen] V[ernun]ft," regarding what Fichte calls "my idea for constructing empirical experience," an idea he that he says is directly inspired by Kant's conception of mathematical intuition (GA, II/2: 237-28).
6 For a detailed study of the methodological signicance of this lecture for Fichte's Jena system, see Knut Radbruch, "Die Bedeutung der Mathematik für die Philosophie bei Fichte," Fichte-Studien 22 (2003): 251-63. In an attempt to explain why there is no trace of the contents of this fourth Zurich lecture in BWL, which is otherwise largely a revision and expansion of material contained in these lectures, Radbruch suggests that Fichte might have felt that he did not need to discuss the relationship between the methods of mathematics and philosophy in his Jena writings, because, important as this parallel may have been for his own discovery of the basic concept of the Wissenschaftslehre, it contributed nothing to his actual presentation of the same (Radbruch. 259). But, in fact, Fichte's subsequent Jena writings -- following the publication BWL and GWL -- make frequent references to the significance of the parallels between the methods of geometry and philosophy, and the actual presentations contained in several of them (including WLnm, SS, and NBWL) are unmistakeably patterned on that of Euclid's Elements. This, therefore, is not a plausible explanation for the omission of this topic from BWL and GWL.
7 See the announcement of the first edition of Part One of GWL published in October of 1794 in the Intelligenzblatt of the A.L.Z. by Fichte's publisher Gabler, which describes Fichte's ambitious plans to establish philosophy upon entirely new foundations and adds that even a superficial study of Fichte's writings should be sufficient to convince every professionally expert reader, that "if there is any mortal person who is destined to become for philosophy what Euclid has been for mathematics, it is Hr. Fichte:" ["daß wenn es irgend einem Sterblichen beschieden ist, für die Philosophie das zu werden, was Euklid für die Mathematik geworden ist, es Hen. Fichte bescheiden" (Fichte in Gespräch, ed. Erich Fuchs [Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1978] [= FiG], I: 209n.). As Heinrich Steffens reported, it was widely believed in Jena that Fichte himself was in fact the source of this astonishing boast (FiG, I: 343). See too the roughly contemporary report by Friedrich Karl Forberg: "Fichte makes no secret of the fact that he has resolved to to become the Euclid of philosophy" ["Fichte macht indessen kein Geheimniß daraus, daß er wirklich enschlossen sey, der Euclid für die Philosophie zu werden"] (FiG, I: 242).
8 Fichte famously describes the Wissenschaftslehre as a "pragmatic history of the human mind" (GWL, FSW, I: 222; GA, I/2: 364-65; Eng. trans., p. 198 and BWL, FSW, I: 177; GA, I/2: 147; EPW, p. 131) or simply as "the history of the human mind " (GA, II/3: 107) or as "the history of consciousness as it comes to be [die Geschichte des entstehenden Bewußtseins]" (WLnm[K], GA, IV/3: 464; FTP, p. 342). A "pragmatic history of the human mind" is a genetic account of self-constitution of the I in the form of an ordered description of the various acts of thinking that are presupposed by the act of thinking the I, a description based on a priori construction of the same. See Fichte's note in his Platner lectures (GA II/4: 51-52): "Now, however, Platner establishes the following […:] What is it? It is a pragmatic history, and something of this sort is what I want to lay down [verzeichen] -- though from directly opposed first principles [viz., not from mere "facts of consciousness"] -- 'pragmatic'= how it comes into being. 'History' is fiction, indicates the genetic manner of the presentation [pragmatisch wie es zu Stande kommt. -- Geschichte, ist Fiktion, giebt den genetischen Gang des Vortrags]." For a detailed discussion of this entire, much-misunderstood topic, see Breazeale, "Fichte's Conception of Philosophy as a 'Pragmatic History of the Human Mind' and the Contributions of Kant, Platner, and Maimon," Journal of the History of Ideas 62 (2002): 685-703 and "What is a 'Pragmatic History of the Human Mind'? Some Methodological Remarks on Fichte's Jena Project," in Fichte: Crença, imaginaçãi e temporalidade, ed. Fernando Gil, Viginia López Dominguez, and Luisa Couto Soares, pp. 89-108 (Porto: Campos das Letras 2002).
9 Though the term "construction" appears only once in GNR and twice in SS, the deductions presented in these texts are clearly "constructions" in the Fichtean sense. The term is used frequently in all the student transcript of the WLnm lectures.
10 One must therefore object vigorously to Jürgen Weber's thesis that among Kant's followers Schelling was the only one who grasped the significance of Kant's conception of construction as articulated in KrV A713/B741ff. and who then tried to use the same to resolve various problems in Kant's system. This in an honor (if it is one) that belongs not to Schelling, but to Fichte. "Schelling war wohl der einzige unter den mehr oder weniger berühmten Nachfolgern Kants, der die Bedeutung des Konstruktionstheorems in der KrV erkannte und zur Lösung der offenen Prämessenfrage des kritischen Systems einsetzte" (Weber, Begriff und Konstruktion Rezeptionsanalytische Untersuchungen zu Kant und Schelling [Göttingen, I.D., 1995], p. 94).
11 See NBWL, where Fichte explains that in order to "think the I," that is, to construct for ourselves the concept of the same, we must first intuit the I's act of reverting into itself, and that in order to do this we must first abstract rigorously from everything that is not the I. Hence "we will seek to accomplish this [construction of the concept of the I] by means of abstraction, which actually is here construction, and will leave everything else behind." ["Dieses beabsichtigte wollen wir nun durch Abstraction; die eigentlich hier Construction ist, aufsuchen u. alles übrigen liegen lassen"] (GA II/ 5: 336).
12 See Breazeale "The 'Standpoint of Life' and 'The Standpoint of Philosophy' in the Jena Wissenschaftslehre," in Transzendentalphilosophie als System: Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen 1794 und 1806, ed. Albert Mues, pp. 81-104 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1989).
13 "Also, innerhalb des gemeinen Bewußtseyns, and der Grenzen, des jedem billigerweise zuzutrauenden Urtheils fallen die Bestandtheile, and Sätze dieses Systems nicht. Sie werden nur durch Freiheit, und Abstraktion erschaffen, und sind durch ihren Zusammenhang bestimmt, und keiner, der nicht diese Abstraktion und Construktion vorgenommen, und sie bis zum Ziele fortgeführt, auch das ganze immer gegenwärtig und ohne Wanken fest hält, hat über Gegenstände dieser Art das mindeste Urtheil?" (SB, FSW, II: 385; GA, I/7: 238; Eng. trans., p. 88). See too SB, FSW, II: 381; GA, I/6: 235; Eng. trans., p. 85: "Only in this intuition of his own act of constructing does he obtain the object about which something is asserted, and without this act of constructing nothing whatsoever is present for him." ["Nur in dieser Anschauung seines Construirens erhält er den Gegenstand, von dem etwas ausgesagt wird; und ohne dieses Construiren ist für ihn gar nichts da, wovon geredet wurde."]
14 VS, FSW, II: 444-45; GA, I/3: 255-56; EPW, p. 326.
15 "In order for it to be able to serve as the ground for my universal claim, this intuition of my act of constructing a triangle must be immediately connected with the absolute conviction that I could never and in no case construct it differently. It follows that in this intuition I grasped and encompassed my entire power of construction all at once and in single glance, by means of an immediate consciousness -- not of this determinate act of constructing, but rather of all of my constructing in general, and indeed, of it as such. It thus follows that the proposition 'any three parts of a triangle determine the other three parts' actually means 'my own act of constructing the first three parts of the triangle determines my constructing of the remaining three parts.' And thus it also follows that the universality I posit by no means arises from apprehending the manifold under the unity, but rather, from deriving the infinite manifold from the unity of the same, a unity that is grasped in a single glance." ["Mit dieser Anschauung meines Construirens eines Triangels müßte nun, um meine allgemeine Behauptung zu begründen, unmittelbar verknüpft seyn die absolute Ueberzeugung, daß ich nie, und in keinem Falle anders construiren könne; in der Anschauung sonach ergriffe, und umfaßte ich mein ganzes Construktions= Vermögen mit Einem Male, und auf Einen Blick, durch ein unmittelbares Bewußtseyn, nicht dieses bestimmten Construirens, sondern schlechthin alles meines Construirens überhaupt, und zwar, als eines solchen. Daß sonach der Satz: durch die drei Stücke des Triangels sind die andern drei bestimmt, eigentlich so viel hieße: durch mein Construiren der drei Stücke ist mein Construiren der übrigen drei Stücke bestimmt: und die Allgemeinheit, die ich setze, keinesweges durch Auffassung des Mannigfaltigen unter der Einheit, sondern vielmehr durch Herleitung des unendlich Mannigfaltigen aus der in Einem Blicke aufgefaßten Einheit desselben, entstanden ware"] (SB, FSW, II: I/7: 373; GA, I/7: 228-29; Eng. trans., p. 79).
16 See SB, FSW, II: 372; GA I/7: 227; Eng. trans., p. 77.
17 "…sondern immer nur auf Anschauung der unmittelbaren Evidenz beruht" (SB, FSA, II: 370; GA, I/7: 225; Eng. trans., p. 76).
18 Of course, not everyone will actually do this, which is why Fichte rejected Reinhold's demand for a philosophical science that would be not only "universally valid" (allgemeingültig) but also universally recognized as valid (allgemeingeltend). See VWL, FSW, I: 511; GA, I/4: 262; IWL, p. 96.
19 "In diesem Acte sage ich, sieht der Philosoph sich selbst zu, er schaut sein Handeln unmittelbar an, er weiß, was er thut, weil er es thut. [….] Dieses dem Philosophen angemuthete Anschauen seiner selbst im Vollziehen des Acts, wodurch ihm das Ich entsteht, nenne ich intellectuelle Anschauung. Sie ist das unmittelbare Bewusstseyn; daß ich handle, und was ich handle: sie ist das, wodurch ich etwas weiß, weil ich es thue. Daß es ein solches Vermögen der intellectuellen Anschauung gebe, lässt sich nicht durch Begriffe demonstriren, noch, was es sey, aus Begriffen entwickeln. Jeder muß es unmittelbar in sich selbst finden, oder er wird es nie kennen lernen" (VWL, FSW, I: 464; GA, I/4: 216; IWL, p. 46).
20 "Wir sind Zuschauer auf dem Theater unsers Geistes" (Eigne Meditationen über ElementarPhilosophie/Practische Philosophie, GA II/4: 70).
21 See, e.g., WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 359-60; FTP, p. 146 and WLnm[H], GA IV/2: 46 FTP, p. 146.
22 See, e.g., WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 352; FTP, p. 125.
23 Nur durch Gegensatz ist ein bestimmtes klares Bewustsein möglich" (WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 348; FTP, p. 116). See too WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 352; FTP, p. 123.
24 "In accordance with the familiar rule of synthetic thinking, the antithesis just set forth is supposed to be resolved through a synthesis of what is conditioned with the condition thereof, in such a way that the two would be posited as one and the same. In our present case this would mean that the activity itself would appear as the cognition we are seeking, the cognition itself would appear as the activity we are seeking, and that all consciousness would [therefore] proceed from something that absolutely unites both predicates within itself. So all that one has to do is to think the unification just described, and then the contradiction will actually be resolved." ["Nach den bekannten Regeln der synthetischenMethode ist die eben aufgestellteAntithesis zu lösen durch Synthesis des Bedingten und der Bedingung, so daß beide als Eins, und eben dasselbe gesetzt würden: in unserm Falle, daß die Thätigkeit selbst als die gesuchte Erkenntniß, und die Erkenntniß selbst als die gesuchte Thätigkeit erscheine, und alles Bewußtseyn von etwas ausginge, das beide Prädicate absolut in sich vereinigte. Man denke sich die jetzt beschriebene Vereinigung, und der Widerspruch ist wirklich gelöst"] (SS, FSW, IV, 104; GA, I/5: 104 Eng. trans., pp. 100-101).
25 "Der Philosoph soll willkührlich, mit Bewußtseyn, u. durch die Selbstthätigkeit seines Geistes eine vorhandne Vorstellung verdrängen, er soll abstrahiren; er soll eine bestimmte andere an deren Stelle setzen, er soll reflectiren. Dieses ganze Geschäft nennt man Aufmerksamkeit; u. es bedarf der Erinnerung nicht, daß derjenige nichtphilosophiren könne, welcher nicht aufmerken kann" (GB, GA II/3: 327; EPW, p. 202).
26 "Thus is there anyone who cannot see that the material of philosophy presupposes spirit for its very possibility, and that all philosophizing that lacks spirit is completely empty and absolutely about nothing?" ["Wer sieht demnach nicht, daß die Möglichkeit des Stoffes aller Philosophie Geist voraussetze; und daß ohne Geist alles Philosophiren völlig leer, u. ein Philosophiren über das absolute Nichts ist"] (GB, GA II/3: 329; EPW, p. 204). "Thus not even the material of philosophy is possible without spirit" ["Ohne Geist ist demnach nicht einmal der Stoff der Philosophie möglich"] (GB, GA II.3: 334; EPW, p. 209).
27 See GB, GA, II/3: 334-40; EPW, pp. 209-13.
28 "Hier tritt der Wahrheitstrieb in das Mittel, welcher, wenn man ihn sich ausbilden läßt, u. ihn ausbildet[,] Wahrheitssinn wird. - Die Ahnung, dort, oder dort dürfte etwas liegen - dieses Weges, oder jenes Weges muß man gehen, um zu finden. Man finde nun, oder man finde nicht, so hat man immer gewonnen; im ersten Falle Wahrheit, im zweiten die Belehrung, daß auf diesem Wege nichts zu finden, und daß er von der Summe der einzuschlagenden Wege abzuziehen sey" (GB, GA, II/3: 337-38; EPW, p. 210).
29 On Fichte's understanding of the role of "genius" in philosophy, see BWL, FSW, I: 73n; GA, I/2: 143n.; EPW, p. 128n. and GNR, FSW, III, p. 5; GA, I/3: 316; Eng. trans., p. 6. Note that the term genius, as applied to philosophy, encompasses both of the applications of the power of imagination discussed above (that is, the capacity to propose new, creative hypothesis that satisfy the laws of thinking) and the ability to raise to clear, explicit consciousness those activities of the human mind of which we are ordinarily quite unaware.
30 "In this course we will be conducting experiments. I.e., we will compel reason to provide us with answers to specific, systematically calculated questions; then, for the purpose of science and as an aid to memory, we will formulate the results of our experiments in concepts." ["In diesem collegio wird experimentirt, das heißt die Vernunft wird gezwungen uns auf gewiße planmäsige Fragen zu antworten, die Resultate unserer Experimente faßen wir dann in Begriffe zum Behuf der Wißenschaft und des Gedächtnißes"] (WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 350; FTP, p. 120). "The philosopher is not a mere observer; instead, he conducts experiments with the nature of consciousness itself and turns to himself for answers to his specific question. This is a system for persons who are able to think for themselves. It cannot be grasped merely by reading and studying. Every person must produce it within himself, particularly since no fixed terminology will be introduced." ["Der Philosoph ist nicht ein bloßer Beobachter, sondern er macht Experimente mit der Natur des Bewustseins, und läßt sich auf seine bestimmten Fragen antworten. Das System ist für Selbstdenker, durch bloßes Lernen kann es nicht gefaßt werden[.] Jeder muß es in sich hervorbringen, bes[onders] weil keine feste Terminologie wird] (WLnm[K], GA IV/3: 339; FTP, pp. 101-2).
31 This is a point stressed in Fichte's 1795 essay comparing his own philosophy to the desiccated Kantianism of his colleague C. E. Schmid: "If one philosophizes in Professor Schmid's manner, the object about which one philosophizes is always something static and fixed. In the Wissenschaftslehre the object is something active, and it is exhibited in its activity. This latter science does not propose to justify any system of things, but rather to describe a series of acts. It allows the I to act before its eyes, while it observes this acting. The I which it observes is not what might be called the 'philosophizing I,' which, as always happens when one contemplates anything, is lost in contemplation; instead, it is the common, ordinary I. All descriptions in the Wissenschaftslehre are, therefore, genetic descriptions. Thus the curtain that keeps the unconsecrated from entering the Wissenschaftslehre veils the entire domain of this science as well, for those who are unable to produce within themselves the act we have described and who do not actually produce this act really do see nothing and obtain nothing. It is only in this way that the Wissenschaftslehre is able to accomplish what was demanded of philosophy. We have, for example, been told frequently enough which predicates describe representation. But what we wanted to know was what the act of representing really is. And this is something that can be exhibited only genetically, that is, insofar as one's own mind is engaged in this very act of representing." ["Bei allem Denken kann man unterscheiden das Denken selbst, von dem Objecte des Denkens; so auch bei dem Philosophiren. Bei allem Philosophiren nach Herrn Schmids Weise sind die Objecte des Philosophirens etwas Ruhendes, und Festes; in der Wissenschaftslehre ist das Object ein thätiges, in seiner Thätigkeit Dargestelltes. Der Zweck der letztern Wissenschaft ist nicht der, ein System von Dingen zu rechtfertigen, sondern eine Reihe von Handlungen zu beschreiben. Sie läßt das Ich unter ihren Augen handeln, und sieht ihm zu: ihr Ich ist nicht etwa das philosophirende, welches sich, wie dies bei jeder Betrachtung geschieht, in dem Betrachteten verliert, sondern das gemeine. Daher sind alle Beschreibungen derselben genetisch. Dadurch deckt die Scheidewand, welche dem Ungeweihten gleich den Eingang verwehrt, das ganze Gebiet derselben, weil derjenige wirklich nichts sieht, und nichts erhält, der nicht die beschriebene Handlungen in sich selbst hervorzubringen vermag, und wirklich hervorbringt. Dadurch allein aber leistet auch die Wissenschaftslehre, was von der Philosophie zu fodern war. Es ist uns z. B. zur Genüge gesagt worden, welche Prädicate der Vorstellung zukommen; was aber das Vorstellen eigentlich sei, wollten wir wissen. Dies aber läßt sich nur genetisch darstellen, so daß man den Geist zum Vorstellen selbst in Handlung setze"] (FSW, II: 445; GA I/3:256-57; EPW, pp. 325-26).
32 In this same passage Fichte goes on to explain that the task of the philosopher is even more difficult than that of the geometer, because the latter does not have to inquire about the origin of that pure space within which he constructs his figures nor the origin of his ability to draw lines, whereas the transcendental philosopher not only has to assemble actual consciousness from its various conditions, but also has to derive -- that is, construct in intuition -- these conditions as well. And indeed, this dual task seems to have suggested to Fichte the organizing principle for the Wissenschaftslehre nova method itself, the first half of which is devoted to the sequential construction of the various conditions for consciousness as such and the second half to the "construction" of consciousness itself from these previously constructed conditions: "Unsere Aufgabe ist längst die: die Bedingungen des Bewustseins nach den schon bekannten Regeln zusammen zu setzen, und das Bewustsein vor unseren Augen gleichsam zu construiren, nur nicht wie der Geometer thut[,] der sich um die Frage[,] woher die Fähigkeit Linien zu ziehen und und Raum herkomme, nicht bekümmert, dieser sezt schon Wißenschafts-Lehre voraus; denn die WißenschaftsLehre muß das womit sie verfährt sich selbst erkämpfen und in dieser Rücksicht hat das System bestimmt 2 Theile, bis dahin wo gezeigt wurde[,] reiner Wille ist das ‹wa›hre Object des Bewustseins, wurde ausgemittelt womit verfahren werden sollte[.] Von da gieng der andere Theil an[;] wir construiren nun würklich. – wir haben nun Feld und Boden gewonnen und nun ein Verfahren zu schildern und anzuwenden" (WKnm[K], GA IV/3: 470; FTP, p. 354) See too WLnm[H], GA, IV/2: 178; FTP, p. 354.
33 Schelling's clearest discussion of the differences between the "subjective" intellectual intuition found in Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and the "objective" variety employed in his own Philosophy of Nature is contained in his editorial appendix to an article by August Eschenmeyer in the first issue of volume two of the Zeitschrift für Specultive Physik. "For the purposes of Philosophy of Nature I require intellectual intuition in the sense required in the Wissenschaftslehre; but I also require an abstraction from the intuiting subject in this intuition, an abstraction that leaves me with what is purely objective in this act, which in itself is the pure subject-object and by no means the I, for reasons which I have already frequently indicated." ["Ich fordere zum Behuf der Naturphilosophie die intellectuelle Anschauung, wie sie in der Wissenschaftslehre gefordert wird; ich fordere aber außerdem noch die Abstraction von dem Anschauuenden in dieser Anschauung, eine Abstraction welche mir das rein Objective dieses Acts zurückläßt, welches an sich bloß Subjet-Object, keinesweges aber= Ich ist, aus dem mehrmals angezeigten Grunde"].
"What I call nature is the purely objective aspect of intellectual intuition, the pure subject-object […], which is necessary if a purely objective, that is, a genuinely theoretical philosophy is to come into being." ["Denn was ich Natur nenne, ist mir eben nichts anders, als das rein-Objective der intellectuellen Anschauung, das reine Subject-Object […], die doch nothwendig ist, wenn eine rein-objective, d.h. wirklich theoretische Philosophie zu Stande kommen soll"] (AAE, SSW, I/4: 87-88; HKA, I/10: 92).
34 These include: Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie [= DSP]; Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie [= FD]; Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums [VM]; the posthumously published lectures on the philosophy of art [= PK]; and several important essays published in 1802 in the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie, including: Ueber das Verhältniß der Naturphilosophie zur Philosophie überhaupt [= VNP], and Ueber die Construction in der Philosophie [= CP].
35 DSP, SSW, I/4: 115-16; HKA, I/10: 117; Eng. trans., p. 350.
36 DSP, SSW, I/4: 113; HKA, I/10: 115; Eng. trans., p. 348.
37 "As the knowing of knowing, it must be that which most perfectly fulfills and contains the demand and presupposition that is made in every kind of knowing -- not just for particular cases, but absolutely universally. This presupposition may be described as agreement with the object, as the pure dissolution of the particular in the universal or however one may wish to express it. In any case, such agreement is unthinkable, either in general or in any particular case, without a higher presupposition: namely, that what is purely ideal, alone and without any further mediation, is also what is truly real and that there is no other kind of ideality. [….] This is the presupposition that unconsciously underlies what the various sciences boast of as universal laws of things or of nature as a whole, and it also underlies their striving for cognition. What they want is for what is concrete and opaque in particular appearances to resolve itself for them into pure self-evidence and into the transparency of a universal rational cognition." ["Als das Wissen alles Wissens muß es dasjenige seyn, was die Forderung oder Voraussetzung, die jeder Art desselben gemacht wird, aufs vollkommendste und nicht nur für den besondern Fall, sondern schlechthin allgemein erfüllt und enthält. Man mag nun diese Vorausetzung als Uebereinstimmung mit dem Gegenstande, als reine Auflösung des Besondern ins Allgemeine oder wie immer ausdrücken, so ist diese weder überhaupt noch in irgend einem Falle ohne die höhere Vorausetzung denkbar, daß das wahre Ideale allein und ohne weitere Vermittlung auch das wahre Reale und außer jenem kein anderes sey. [….] Bewußtlos liegt diese Vorausetzung allem dem, was die verschiedenen Wissenschaften von VS, FSW, II: 444-45; GA, I/3: 255-56; EPW, p. 326. allgemeinen Gesetzen der Dinge oder der Natur überhaupt rühmen, so wie ihrem Bestreben nach Erkenntniß derselben zum Grunde. Sie wollen, daß das Concrete und das in besondere Erscheinungen undurchdringliche sich für sie in die reine Evidence und Durchsichtigkeit einer allgemeinen Vernunfterkenntniß auflöse"] (VM, SSW, I/5: 215-16; Eng. trans., p. 9).
38 "Darstellung des Besonderen im Allgemeinen" (CP, SSW, I/5: 131; Eng. trans., p. 275).
39 "Darstellung der Einheit in absoluter Indifferenz" (CP, SSW, I/5: 131; Eng. trans., p. 275).
40 This rational law of identity, which rejects the opposition of analytic and synthetic "is the sole principle of all construction and of all demonstrative cognition [welches einziges Princip aller Construction und demonstrative Erkenntniß ist]" (FD, SSW, p. I/4: 345).
“There is only one principle of construction, one, with which one constructs in both mathematics and philosophy. For the geometer, this is the identical and absolute unity of space in all his constructions; for the philosopher it is the unity of the absolute.” ["Es ist nur Ein Princip der Construktion, Eines, womit construirt wird, in der Mathematik wie in der Philosophie. Dem Geometer ist es die in allen Construktionen gleiche und absolute Einheit des Raums, dem Philosophen die des Absoluten"] (CP, SSW, I/5: 134-35; Eng. trans., p. 277). On the same page Schelling gives a somewhat narrower definition of this same principle: "Regress in the process of constructing – of, if one refused to grant this, regress in the process of thinking – simply cannot come to a halt until it reaches the point at which constructing and constructed, thinking and thought, come together as one. Only this point can be called the principle of construction." ["Der Ruckgang im Construiren -- oder, weil dieß nicht zugegeben ist -- im Denken überhaupt, kann nicht eher als bei dem Punkt aufhören, wo das Construirende und Construirte -- Denkende und Gedachte -- schlechthin in eins zusammenfällt"] (CP, SSW, I/5: 134; Eng. trans., p. 277).
See too Schelling's marginal note to DSP, in which he writes that “all construction proceeds from relative identity. Absolute identity is not constructed, but simply is.” ["Alle Construktion geht von relative Identität aus. Die absolute wird nicht construirt, sondern ist schlechthin"] (DSP, SSW, I/4: 140n.; HKA, I/10: 142n.; Eng. trans., p. 368n.). The point here is that all philosophical construction of particulars ("relative identities") must obtain its law or principle from "absolute identity."
41 CP, SSW, I/5: 134; Eng. trans., p. 277.
42 In discussing the differences between "theory" and philosophy, Schelling remarks that, properly understood (as they generally have not been) both theory and experimentation "limit themselves to mere articulation and presentation of appearances themselves, and in this they are the same as construction, which is equally unconcerned with explaining anything." ["den beide beschränken sich auf das bloße Ausprechen oder Darstellen der Erscheinungen selbst, und sind hierin der Construktion gleich, welche ebensowenig sich mit Erklären abgibt"] (VM, SSW, I/5: 322; Eng. trans. p. 121).
43 See FD, SSW, I/4: 340-42: if one begins with the unity of the infinite and the finite, then one has no need to "deduce" or "derive" either from the other. Nor is it the proper business of philosophy to "deduce" the conditions necessary for the possibility of actual experience, inasmuch as philosophy, according to Schelling, is not at all concerned with the world of appearances, but confines itself entirely to the a priori realm of the absolute. It is therefore quite wrong to claim (as does Helga Ende, pp. 50-51) that it was Schelling who first combined the idea of "derivation" with that of philosophical construction. As we have seen, it was not Schelling but Fichte who first accomplished this, and, by the time of the Identity Philosophy Schelling was explicitly denying that philosophical construction constitutes a "derivation" of anything. "Von dieser absoluten Methode ist, was man in der letzten Zeit die synthetische genannt hat, zwar das wahre, aber in der Reflexion auseinander gezogene Bilde. Denn was diese als einen Fortgang und in der Thesis, Antithesis und Synthesis außereinander vorstellt, ist in der wahren Methode und in jeder ächten Construktion der Philosophie eins und ineinander" (FD, SSW, I/4: 399; Eng. trans., p. 390).
44 VM, SSW, I/5: 215; Eng. trans., p. 9.
45 Only five years earlier Schelling had explicitly praised Fichte's strategy of beginning the Wissenschaftslehre with a postulate. See "On Postulates in Philosophy," AU, SSW, I/1: 444-51; HKA, I/4: 170-78; Eng. trans., p. 132-38. But by the 1801 he explicitly rejects such a strategy.
46 As Schelling explains, this immediate cognition of the absolute deserves to be called “intellectual intuition” because all intuition involves an identification of thought and being, an immediate grasp of "what is" (which is, of course, also how Kant had characterized intuition and is why both he and Schelling agree that reality can be given only by means of intuition). For this reason the mere thought of the absolute (as that which is immediately through its concept) is not sufficient, for, as a thought, it is not a true or real cognition of the absolute. The reality of the absolute must therefore be discovered in the same way all reality is discovered: that is, directly or by means of intuition. But in the case of the absolute, of course, we are concerned not with an intuition of any sensible reality, but with the reality of the absolute itself. "We call this cognition intellectual intuition. Intuition, because all intuition is the identification of thinking and being, and because reality as such is present only in intuition. [….] We call this intuition intellectual because it is an intuition of reason, and because, as cognition, it is at the same time absolutely one with the object of cognition.” ["We nenne dies Erkenntniß intellektuelle Anschauung. Anschaung; den all Anschauung ist Gleichsetzen den Denken und Seyn, and nur in der Anschauung überhaupt ist Realität: […] Intellektuell nennen wir diese Anschauung, weil sie Vernunft-Anschauung ist und als Erkenntnis zugleich absolute eins mit dem Gegenstand der Erkenntniß"] (FD, SSW, I/4: 368-69; Eng. trans., p. 382).
47 "Exhibition in intellectual intuition is philosophical construction, but, like the universal unity that lies at the basis of everything, so can the particular unities, in each of which the same absoluteness of primordial knowledge is assimilated, also be contained only in rational intuition, and they are to this extent ideas. Philosophy is therefore the science of ideas or of the eternal prototypes of things. No intellectual intuition, no philosophy!" ["Darstellung in intellektueller Anschauung ist philosophischen Construktion; aber wie die allgemeine Einheit, die allen zu Grunde liegt, so können auch die besondern, in deren jeder die gleiche Absolutheit des Urwissens aufgenommen wird, nur in der Vernunftanschauung enthalten seyn, und sind insofern Ideen. Die Philosophie ist also die Wissenschaft der Ideen oder der ewigen Urbider der Dinge. Ohne intellektuelle Anschauung keine Philosophie!"] (VM, SSW, I/5: 255; Eng. trans., p. 49).
48 "Diese selbe Evidenz nun, oder die Einheit des Denkens und Seyns nicht in dieser oder jener Beziehung, sondern schlechthin an und für sich selbst, mithin als die Evidenz in aller Evidenz, die Wahrheit in aller Wahrheit, das rein Gewuste in allem Gewußten erblicken, heißt, sich zu der Anschauung der absoluten Einheit und dadurch überhaupt zur intellectuellen Anschauung erheben" (FD, SSW, I/4: 364; Eng. trans., p. 378).
49 "eine vorläufig und nur formell absolute Erkenntnißart" (FD, SSW, I/4: 366; Eng. trans. 380).
50 "Thus there an immediate cognition of the absolute (and only of the absolute, for only in this case is the condition for immediate self-evidence -- that is, the unity of essence and form -- possible); and this is the first speculative cognition, the principle and ground of the possibility of all philosophy." ["Es gibt also eine unmittelbare Erkenntniß des Absoluten (und nur des Absoluten, weil nur bei ihm jene Bedingung der unmittelbaren Evidenz: Einheit des Wesens und der Form, möglich ist), and jene ist die erste speculative Erkenntniß, das Princip und der Grund der Möglichkeit aller Philosophie"] (FD, SSW, I/4: 368; Eng. trans., pp. 381-82).
51 "Die intellektuelle Anschauung nicht nur vorüberhehend, sondern bleibend, als unveränderliches Organ, ist die Bedingung des wissenschaftlichen Geistes überhaupt und in allen Theilen des Wissens. Denn sie ist das Vermögen überhaupt, das Allgemeine im Besondern, das Unendliche im Endlichen, beide zur lebendige Einheit vereinigt zu sehen" (FD, SSW, I/4: 362; Eng. trans., p. 377).
52 "Da wir jetzt zu dem anderen Theil unserer Untersuchung fortgehen, welcher von der Wissenschaft handelt und davon, wie aus der Einheit der ersten Erkenntniß ein Ganzes der Erkenntniß geboren werden […]" (FD, SSW, I/4: 391; Eng. trans. 384).
53 "The exhibition of the universal and the particular in unity is called 'construction,' which is truth is no different than 'demonstration.'" ["Die Darstellung des Allgemeinen und Besonderen in ihre Einheit, heißt Construktion, die von der Demonstration wahrhaft nicht unerschieden ist"] (VM, SSW, I/5: 252; Eng. trans., p. 46).
54 "Der Philosophie, da sie dieselbe Einheit zu betrachten hat, bleibt auf diese Nothwendigkeit und die Aufgabe, sie unmitttelbar in Wesen des Ewigen selbst anzuschauen und in der Vernunft darzustellen. [….] Die Philosophie, aber, da sie ihre Construktionen überhaupt unmittelbar nur dem Wesen des Ewigen selbst darstellen kann, kann sie nur im absoluten Erkennen, im Ansehung dessen Unendliches und Endliches, Denken und Seyn selbst ungetrennt ist, ausdrücken" (FD, SSW, I/4: 346-47).
55 "… und da es ferner die Natur der Philosophie ist, die Dinge zu betrachten, wie sie an sich, […] insofern sie unendlich, und die absolute Identität selbst sind, so besteht also die wahre Philosophie in die Beweis, daß die absolute Identität (das Unendliche), nicht aus sich selbst herausgetreten, und alles was ist, insofern es ist, die Unendlichkeit selbst sey, ein Satz, welchen von allen bisherigen Philosophen nur Spinoza erkannt hat, obgleich er den Beweis dafür nich vollständig geführt" (DSP, SSW, I/4: 120; HKA, I/10: 121; Eng. trans., p. 353).
56 "From this one can immediately comprehend that the true method of philosophy can only be the demonstrative one [...]. Demonstration does not precede construction; instead, the two are one and inseparable. In construction the particular (the determinate unity) is exhibited in the absolute, that is, it is exhibited as for itself the absolute unity of the ideal and the real." ["Hieraus ist nun unmittelbar zu begreifen, daß die wahre Methode der Philosophie nur die demonstrative seyn könne […]. Der Demonstration geht die Construktion nicht voran, sondern beides ist eins und unzertrennlich. In der Construktion wird das Besondere (die bestimmte Einheit) als absolute, nämlich für sich als absolute Einheit des Idealen und Realen dargestellt"] (FD, SSW, I/4: 407; Eng. trans., p. 393).
57 For a provocative and original alternative interpretation of Schelling's conception of philosophical construction, particular as applied to the Philosophy of Nature and derived almost entirely from VNP, see Paul Ziche, "Die 'eine Wissenschaft der Philosophie' und die 'verschiedene philosophischen Wissenschaften': Wissenschafts-systematik und die Darstellung des Absoluten in Ueber das Verhältnis der Naturphilosophie zur Philosphie überhaupt," in Gegen das 'unphilosophische Unwesen': Das Kritische Journal der Philosophie von Schelling und Hegel, ed. Klaus Vieweg, pp. 211-22 (Würzburg: Königshause & Neumann, 2002). Ziche contends that for Schelling the absolute is not itself an element of philosophical construction nor an object of the same. Instead, he argues, that it is intuited only as the "allgemeinste Ermöglichsbedingung" of philosophical construction and is thus "das Medium, innerhalb dessen konstruirt wird, die Bedingung der Konstruierbarkeit" (p. 220). The role of the absolute in such a construction is similar to that of space in the construction of a geometrical figure: it is the universal medium within which such construction occurs, the medium "das den Horizon jeder einzelnen Kontruktionshandlung liefert" (p. 220). Ingenious as this interpretation may be, it raises more questions than it answers concerning Schelling's conception of construction, since it utterly fails to explain what it might mean to construct a particular "within the horizon" of the absolute or how one can do this without "intuiting the absolute itself," which is, after all, the real content of what Schelling describes as "absolute cognition."
58 “All of construction is based upon this conflict between the absolutely universal, insofar as it contains nothing particular, and the particular insofar as it is not adequate to the universal.” ["Auf diesem Streit zwischen dem schlechthin Allgemeinen, das insofern nichts Besonderes enthällt, und dem Besonderen, das insoferen dem Allgemeinen nicht adäquat ist, beruht alle Construktion"] (CP, SSW, I/5: 139; Eng. trans., p. 180).
In his essay Ueber Construction in der Philosophie, which includes his most detailed discussion of Kant's understanding of construction, Schelling does not directly challenge the Kantian conception of construction, understood as the unity in intuition of the universal and the particular. Instead, he credits Kant for being the first to grasp the “universal concept of construction deeply and truly philosophically”: namely, as the “identification [Gleichsetzung] of concept and intuition,” which “thereby requires a non-empirical intuition that must, on the one hand, express itself as an intuition that is singular and concrete, and, on the other, express itself as the construction of a concept, which possesses universally validity for all possible intuitions belonging under the same concept.” ["Er beschreibt Construktion durchgängig als Gleichsetzung des Begriffs und der Anschauung, und fordert dazu eine nicht-empirsche Anschauung, die einerseits, als Anschauung, einzeln oder concret ist, anderseits als Construktion eines Begriffs Allgemeingültigkeit für alle möglichen Anschauungen, die unter denselben Begriff gehöhren, ausdruücken muß"] (CP, SSW, I/5: 128; Eng. trans. p. 273).
Nor does Schelling deny Kant's claim that such a unity of concept and intuition, universal and particular, is the criterion for all purely rational cognition. What he denies, of course, is that only mathematics can meet this criterion. And he goes on to offer an ingenious explanation for the failure to recognize that philosophy too is capable of such construction, a failure that he attributes to Kant's failure to recognize that geometry too requires intellectual intuition in general, as well as a second, "pure sensible" intuition (which, of course, has no place in philosophy). On this point see CP, SSW, I/5: 140; Eng. trans. 289.
In this same essay Schelling further emphasizes that it was Kant himself, in his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaften, who opened the door for a broader, metaphysical concept of construction. With Höyer (the review of whose monograph on philosophical construction was the occasion for Schelling's essay on this topic), Schelling claims to recognize in Kant’s construction of matter from the opposed forces of repulsion and attraction that dualism that is essential to all construction, and which Schelling promotes to a universal law of both nature and spirit, by means of which he is able to construct in pure intuition not only the unity of the absolute but the unity of the same with the totality of determinate unities or particulars (the ideas). See CP, SSW, I/5: 149-50; Eng. trans., pp. 26-87. Schelling also acknowledges his debt to Kant's construction of matter in VM, SSW, I/5: 332; Eng. trans., p. 130.
59 "Nichts in seiner Besonderheit zugleich und Absolutheit klar erkannt ist, ehe kraft einer bis zur Totalität durchgeführten Construktion, das Alles in Allem wirklichen begriffen, und jenes fast göttliche Chaos in siener Einheit zugleich und seiner Verwirrung vogestellt ist" (FD, SSW, I/4: 402). Compare this with the very similar passage in Bruno, SSW, I/4: 307-10.
60 My intention, says Schelling in this same passage, is at last to provide this "exalted cognition," this "noble material," with a form worthy of it, "to clad its wealth in absolute form and to move it from the piecework of individual knowing to the totality of knowledge [ihre Fülle in der absoluten Form zu gestalten und von dem Stückwerk einzelnen Wissens zur Totalität der Erkenntniß überzughen]" (FD, SSW, I/4: 400). "… thus I will here show in an even more precise manner how, for cognition, that night of the absolute transforms itself into day." ["… so will ich doch hier noch bestimmter zeigen, wie sich jene Nacht der Absoluten für die Erkenntniß in Tag verwandele" (FD, SSW, I/4: 404; Eng. trans., p. 391).
61 "Es kann also von der erscheinenden Welt, als solche, auch insofern nicht, als ihr An-sich im Absoluten ist, die Wirklichkeit, aber vielmehr nur die absolute Nichtwirklickeit erkannt werden" (FD, SSW, I/4: 409; Eng. trans., p. 395).
62 "Hiermit ist klar, wie in jeder Construktion, wenn sie wahr and ächt ist, das Besondere, als Besondere, in der Entgegensetzung gegen des Allgemeine, vernichtet wird" (FD, SSW, I/4: 393).
63 "In this way, every philosophical construction is for itself a universe and each construction in turn, in order that its particular can separate itself from the essence and has division in itself, comprises within itself both unity and multiplicity, without itself being either one or many in this sense." ["Auf solche Art ist eine jede Construktion der Philosophie für sich ein Universum, und begreift, jede in sich wieder, dadurch daß ihr Besonderes sich als Form vom Wesen trennen und in sich inzweien kann, Einheit und Vielheit, ohne selbst in diesem Sinne eines oder vieles zu seyn"] (FD, SSW, I/4: p. 398; Eng. trans., p. 390).
64 "Exhibition in intellectual intuition is philosophical construction, but, like the universal unity that lies at the basis of everything, so can the particular unities, in each of which the same absoluteness of primordial knowledge is assimilated, also be contained only in rational intuition, and they are to this extent ideas. Philosophy is therefore the science of ideas or of the eternal prototypes of things." ["Darstellung in intellektueller Anschauung ist philosophischen Construktion; aber wie die allgemeine Einheit, die allen zu Grunde liegt, so können auch die besondern, in deren jeder die gleiche Absolutheit des Urwissens aufgenommen wird, nur in der Vernunftanschauung enthalten seyn, und sind insofern Ideen. Die Philosophie ist also die Wissenschaft der Ideen oder der ewigen Urbilder der Dinge"] (VM, SSW, I/5: 255; Eng. trans., p. 49).
65 "Auch der Philosoph also kennt nicht verschiedene Wesen, sondern nur Ein Wesen in allen ursprünglichen Schematismen der Weltanschauung; er construirt nicht die Pflanze, nicht das Thier, sondern [die absolute Form, d.h.] das Universum in Gestalt das Pflanze, das Universum in Gestalt des Thiers" (FD, SSW, I/4: 395; Eng. trans. p. 387).
In his lectures on The Philosophy of Art Schelling also calls these ideas "potencies" (Potenzen) of the absolute and maintains that "philosophy is concerned […] not at all with the particular as such, but is always immediately concerned only with the absolute, and it is concerned with the particular only to the extent that it takes up the entire Absolute within itself and exhibits it in itself. [….] To be sure, we can extract one of these individual potencies from the whole and treat it by itself, but only to the extent that we actually exhibit the absolute in it is this exhibition itself philosophy." ["Philosophie geht […] überhaupt nicht auf das Besondere als solches, sondern unmittelbar immer nur auf das Absolute, und auf das Besondere nur, sofern es das ganze Absolute in sich aufnimmt und in sich vorstellt. [….] Wir können nun allerdings die einzelne Potenz herausheben aus dem Ganzen und für sich behandeln, aber nur, sofern wir wirklich das Absolute in ihr darstellen, ist diese Darstellung selbst Philosophie"] (PK, SSW, I/5: 367; Eng. trans., p. 15).
66 VM, SSW, I/5: 255; Eng. trans., p. 49. "In contrast [to mathematics] philosophy, since it has to exhibit this unity in absolute cognition, can only intuit its Urbilder in the ideas, and thus only intellectually, since the idea is the immediate mode of absolute cognizing, which is itself the idea of all ideas, the form of all forms." ["Die Philosophie dagegen, da die die Einheit im absoluten Erkennen darstellt, kann ihre Urbilder nur in den Ideen, sonach nur intellektuelle, anschauen, den die Idee ist der unmittelbar Modus des absoluten Erkennens, dieses aber die Idee aller Ideen, die Form aller Formen"] (FD, SSW, I/4: 347).
67 "Denn in dieser Form und durch sie werden die Ideen erkannt, die einzige Möglichkeit, in der absoluten Einheit die absolute Fülle, das Besondere im Absoluten, aber eben damit auch das Absolute im Besonderen zu begreifen -- selige Wesen, welche einige die ersten Geschöpfe nennen, die in dem unmittelbare Anblicke Gottes leben, von den wir aber richtiger sagen werden, daß sie selbst Götter sind, den jede für sich ist absolute, und doch jede begreiffen der absoluten Form" (FD, SSW, I/4: 405; Eng. trans., p. 392).
68 FD, SSW, I/4: 347.
69 See FS, SSW, I/4: 393-94; Eng. trans., p. 396. It has recently been argued by Christian Danz ("Schellings Wesensbestimmung des Christentums in den Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums," HTS 63 [2007]: 863-83) that the absolute itself does not appear, as such Schelling's philosophical constructions, which explicitly construct only the idea, as the "representative' of the absolute, which functions in such a construction only as a "medium" or "universal horizon": "Die philosophische Konstruktion ist somit eine solches methodisches Verfahren, in dem nicht etwa das Absolute selbst konstruiret wird, sondern das Besondere in Medium der Vernunft. Das Absolute ist der Allgemeinheitshorizont, in den das Besondere durch die philosophische Konstruktion gestellt ist und gerade dadurch wissenschaftliche erkannt wird" (p. 869). "[Das Absolut] repräsentiert dann gleichsam das Allgemeine so, daß beide sowohl in einen Zusammenhang gesetzt als auch unterschieden werden. Schelling nennt diesen Verweisungszusammenhang Idee und ordent ihr die Anschuung zu" (p. 869).
According to Danz, this implies that "durch die Konstruktion kommt das Absolute freilich nur gebrochen zur Darstellung, nämlich dadurch, daß das Besondere das Absolute repräsentiert. Es steht gleichsam für diejenige Unbestimmtheit, die bei jeder Bestimmtheitssetzung mitgesetzt wird. Unbestimmtheit ist daher als die Bedingung der Möglichkeit von Bestimmtheit anzuspreichen, die bei jeder weiteren Setzung der Bestimmtheit reproduziert wird" (p. 870).
Though this (like Ziche's similar interpretation) is an ingenious interpretation of Schelling's notion of construction, it is also one that is very difficult to reconcile with Schelling's own insistence that the philosopher must begin with a direct intuition of the absolute (with absolute cognition), within which it is then the distinctive task of philosophical construction to "exhibit the particular." This surely implies that the absolute functions in this process in a more positive way than as a mere "medium" or "horizon" and that is present in this process of construction (if not in the product of the same, the idea) not in a "broken" or incomplete way and not as the "indeterminate" counterpart to the "determinacy" of the constructed idea. (Indeed, this is much closer to something that Fichte might have said about the process of transcendental construction in accordance with the "principle of determinability" than it is to Schelling's own account of his method of philosophical construction.)
70 "As has been said, only one thing is constructed, namely ideas, and everything that is derived is constructed not as something derived, but rather in its idea.” ["Es ist, wie schon gesagt, nur Eins, was construirt wird, nämlich Ideen, und alles Abgeleite wird nicht als Abgeleitetes, sondern in seiner Idee construirt"] (CP, SSW, I/5: 134; Eng. trans., p. 277).
See too CP, SSW, I/5: 140; Eng. trans., p. 289, where Schelling declares that it would be possible neither to "exhibit the particular in the universal" (which is how Kant understands the way philosophy proceeds with its concepts) nor to "derive the universal from the particular" (which is how many other philosophers have conceived the task of philosophy), "unless, in intellectual intuition, the particular were to obtain the undivided unity of the universal, as a construction or idea [wofern nicht das Besondere in intellektuellen Anschauung, als Construktion oder Idee die ungethilte Einheit des Allgemeinen empfängt]."
71 "Nur für die Vernunft ist ein Universum, und etwas vernünftig begreifen heißt: es zunächst als organische Glied des absoluten Ganzen, im notwendigen Zusammenhang mit demselben, und dadurch als einem Reflex der absoluten Einheit begreifen" (FD, SSW, I/4: 390). This is the feature of Schellingian construction that is emphasized by Frederick C. Beiser in his German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-180 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). As Beiser points out, what Schelling was trying to accomplish with his conception of philosophical construction by means of intellectual intuition was nothing less than to redefine the nature of reason itself, not as a power of "explaining" or "deriving" things by relating them to something else in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, but rather, as a capacity for contemplation. "When I contemplate an object I see how it is part of a wider whole, how it represents the entire universe from its own point of view, because in themselves all objects are one and the same" (Beiser, p. 580). And Beiser correctly points out that Schelling's holistic conception of the function of reason is not an arbitrary or stipulate redefinition of reason, but is instead based upon the ordinary idea that "knowing the reason for a thing involves seeing its place in a whole" (Beiser, p. 581).
72 "Darstellung in intellektueller Anschauung ist philosophischen Construktion" (VM,, SSW, I/5: 255; Eng. trans., p. 255).
73 FD, SSW, I/4: 393; Eng. trans., p. 386.
74 "Construktion überhaupt ist Darstellung des Realen im Idealen, des Besondern im schlechthin Allgemeinen, der Idee" (VM, SSW, I/5: 325; Eng. trans., p. 123). See too PK, SSW, I/5: 364; Eng. trans., p. 13.
75 VM, SSW, I/5: 325; Eng. trans., p. 123; FD, SSW, I/4: 393-94.
76 VM, SSW, I/5: 325; Eng. trans. p. 123; PK, SSW, I/5: 386; Eng. trans., p. 32.
77 "Die Kunst construiren heißt, ihre Stellung im Universum bestimmen" (PK, SSW, I/5: 373; Eng. trans., p. 23). See too PK, SSW, I/5: 418; Eng. trans., pp. 53-54: "By means of construction itself the objects immediately occupy their true position, and this position that they have been assigned during the process of construction is, at the same time, their only correct and true explanation." ["Die Gegenstände treten unmittelbar, durch die Construktion selbst, an ihre wahre Stelle, und diese Stelle, die sie in der Construktion erhalten, ist zugleich ihre einzig wahre und richtige Erklärung."]
78 "Daß die Philosophie weder die engen Grenzen des Kantischen Kriticismus überschreiten, noch auf dem von Fichte eingeleiteten Weg zu einer positive und apodiktischen Philosophie weiter fortschreiten könne, ohne die Methode der Construktion in ihrer größten Strenge in sie eingefürte werde" (CP, SSW, I/5: 125; Eng. trans. p. 271).
79 One must therefore agree with Bernard Taureck that the chief value of Kant's account of construction for his immediate successors was to serve as a stimulus for the development of an alternative, positive account of philosophical construction: "so bleibt uns zur Characterisierung seiner postiven Leistung nur noch die Bestimmung des Anstoßes, der von seiner Verneinung der philosophischen Konstruktion ausgeht" (Taureck, p. 43).
80 In his review of Höyer's book on philosophical construction, Schelling quotes with approval the latter's definition of science as "rule-governed construction" and then proceeds to take Fichte to task for engaging in philosophical construction in an arbitrary and subjective way, not guided by any rules (CP, SSW, I/5: 140; Eng. trans., p. 281). This is surely an ironic criticism, inasmuch as it is Fichte rather than Schelling who emphasizes the importance of the "rules of synthetic thinking" for philosophical construction, whereas Schelling seems to recognize no rules at all for "exhibiting the particular in the universal."
81 It is therefore misleading to describe, as Tamiolo van Zantwijk does, the principle of identity as Schelling's "einzige Konstrukionsregel" or to maintain that Schelling's conception of philosophical construction "verlangt jedoch die Explikation von Regeln," which function as "Folgerungsregeln für Konstruktion im engeren Sinne, also die Ableitung besonderer Dinge aus dem Absoluten" (p. 112). Schelling indeed does, as van Zantwijk notes, explicitly introduce the law of identity in DSP, but only as "the ultimate law for the being of reason" ["das höchste Gestz für das Seyn der Vernunft"] (SSW, I/4: 116; HKA, I/10: 118; Eng. trans., p. 350), and by no means as a "rule of inference" for philosophical construction.
It is equally misleading to refer to these so-called "rules of construction" as "Regeln für die Ableitung des Besondern aus der Differenz zwischen der Vernunft als Identität und der Form des Ausgesagtes, in der sie als absolute Identität gegeben ist" (p. 112), inasmuch as Schelling often and explicitly denies that construction can be characterized as "derivation." Continuing in this same vein, van Zantwijk maintains that Schelling also needs and identifies an additional "rule of construction" in order to assert the identity of the particular and the universal, a rule van Zantwijk purports to discover in one of the three different sense of "identity" he attributes to Schelling: namely, identity as the indifferent identity of the absolute and the specific form of individual things (the principle of the "identity of identity"). Supposedly, this provides the philosopher with a "rule" that dictates that he cannot, in constructing such an "identity of identity," represent the particular as particular, but can do so only in the form of a statement in which something universal is predicated of it. Hence the rule in question reads as follows: "Das Besondere läßt sich als Fall des Absoluten darstellen, indem es sich nicht als Ideal (A) oder Reales (B), sondern als bestimmetes Vehältnis von Idealem und Realem (A=B) gesetzt wird" (p. 113).
Schelling does in fact endorse such a thesis, but it is quite unclear in what sense it is supposed to serve as a "rule of philosophical construction." And indeed, after insisting that Schelling is committed to a notion of philosophical construction as a "procedure of derivation," guided by "rules of inference," van Zantwijk then criticizes these same alleged rules of construction as ambiguous and inadequate to the task he (van Zantwijk) has assigned them, inasmuch as they plainly provide us with no real guidance whatsoever in determining how to define determinate relations of the particular and universal or ideal and real. ("Schellings Konstruktions kann folglich nicht als ein Beweisverfahren betrachten, als das sie auftritt" [Zantwijk, p. 113].) Faced with such an unhappy result, perhaps it might be more prudent to seek an alternative understanding of Schelling's method of construction?
82 See Fichte, Annalen des philosophen Tons, FSW, II: 471-79; GA, I/4: 304-19; EPW, pp. 347-52.
83 Regarding these limits and Fichte's frequently misunderstood notion of the "check" or Anstoß, see Breazeale, "Check or Checkmate? On the Finitude of the Fichtean Self," in The Modern Subject: Conceptions of the Self in Classical German Philosophy, ed. Karl Ameriks and Dieter Sturma, pp. 87-114 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995) and "De la Tathandlung à l'Anstoß -- et retour: Liberté et facticité dans les Principes de la Doctrine de la Science," Les cahiers de philosophie, "Le bicentenaire de la Doctrine de la Science de Fichte (1794 - 1994)," Numéro hors série, Printemps 1995 (Lille, France.): 69-87.
84 See VWL, FSW, I: 489; GA, I/4: 242; IWL, p. 75.
85 "das Ich ist ursprünglich nur ein Thun" (VWL, FSW, I, p. 495; GA, I/4: 249; IWL, p. 81).
86 This is the name proposed by Helge Ende for Fichte's method of construction. I call this kind of construction "dynamisch-operational," she writes, "weil das Handeln, die Bewegung, hier als Konstruktionsprinzip fungiert" (Ende, p. 39). This seems exactly right.
87 This same fundamental difference between an "active" and "contemplative" view of philosophical construction is reflected in the strikingly different ways in which our two philosophers interpret the method of geometrical construction and in the very different lessons each professes to have learned from the latter (as well as from Kant's discussion of the same). Whenever he discusses geometrical construction Fichte always emphasizes the same thing: namely: that the distinctive self-evidence, necessity, and universal validity of geometry is crucially dependent upon the fact that the geometer actually has to draw the lines that are required for the construction of his figures, that he literally constructs for himself the truth about these figures and does so through his own deliberate, rule-governed actions. This same feature of geometrical construction, however, is almost wholly ignored by Schelling, who instead focuses his attention upon the fact that, by virtue of his constructions or demonstrations, the geometer is able directly to see the unity of the particular and the universal: to see "the triangle as such," for example, in this particular triangle. Thus, for Schelling the essence of mathematical construction lies not so much in what the geometer does, than in what it he is able to see. On this point, see H. Krings, "Die Konstruktion in der Philosophie. Ein Beitrag zu Schellings Logik der Natur," in J. Stahl, ed. Aspekt der Kultursoziologie: Aufsätze zur Soziologie, Philosophie, Anthropologie und Gesichte der Kirche (Berlin: Dieter Reiner Verlag, 1982), p. 347.
88 "Es ist gar nicht davon die Rede, daß überhaupt construirt werden soll (dies versteht sich von selbst) es ist davon die Rede, daß richtig construirt werde" (AAE, SSW, I/4: 96; HKA, I/10: 100).
89 "Es lässt über die Wissenschaftslehre, und gegen die Wissenschaftslehre sich gar nicht disputiren. Entweder man sieht ihren Saz ein; so giebt man ihn unmittelbar zu. Oder man sieht ihn nicht ein; sodann ist er für uns gar nicht vorhanden" ("[Ankündigung:] Seit sechs Jahren," GA, I/7: 160-1; IWL, p. 196-97).
90 This argument began as a criticism of Platner and was employed as a part of Fichte's criticism of the appeal by "Kantian" philosophers such as Schmid to "the facts of consciousness." But it is only in the immediate wake of the Atheism Controversey, in "Aus einem Privatschreiben" (1800) and "Antwortschrieben an Herrn Professor Reinhold" (1801), that Fichte clearly distinguishes Wissenschaftslehre from psychology by emphasizing that whereas the latter deals only with what one happens to discover among the empirical "facts of consciousness," the Wissenschaftslehre deals only with "what one finds to be the case only when one discovers oneself" (GA I/6: 387n.; IWL, p. 174n.) -- and what one discovers in this case are not empirical facts, but necessary acts.
91 Fichte's first public criticism of Schelling's conception of "objective intuition" is contained in SB (see FSW, II: 386; GA, I/7: 239; Eng. trans., p. 90). This criticism is continued, along with a new attack on what Fichte takes to be Schelling's "arbitrary and ungrounded" method of philosophical construction, in a series of later, unpublished writings, including: "Vorarbeiten gegen Schelling" (1801), GA, II/5: 483-85; "Zur Darstellung von Schellings Identitätssystem" (1801), GA, II/5: 487-509; "Berichts über den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre," Kapitel 2 (1806/7), GA, II/10: 43-65; and "Wissenschaftslehre 1812," GA, II/12: 143-299 (see esp. pp. 160-63). Schellings criticisms of Fichte are generally contained in the very writings on Philosophy of Identity that we have been examining, especially FD and CP, as well as in his later, unpublished lectures on the history of modern philosophy (SSW, I/10: 90-98). For the Fichte/Schelling Briefwechsel, which is of course available in GA, III, see the excellent new edition, edited with valuable and extensive commentary by Hartmut Traub, Schelling-Fichte Briefwechsel (Neuried: Ars Una, 2001).
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Fichte und Schelling: Der Idealismus in der Diskussion
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