New Essay Volume 3

Appendix 18. (1396)

[Schelling's error about feeling]

Fichte had said that the ego posited, created itself with the identical act with which it posited, created the world, the non-ego. Schelling noted that it was possible to conceive of an act of the ego devoid of objects, and that we must begin from this first act. But this act is a feeling not a thought; feeling differs from thought precisely because it has no objects, and is simple and one, as I have said (cf. vol. 2, 488 ss.). Schelling's error consists in allowing this first act of feeling greater activity than it has. He thus erred as Fichte had, except that the latter exaggerated the activity of reflection, while Schelling exaggerated the activity of feeling.

He says: 'The only way that the spirit can be conscious of itself as such is by raising itself above all that is objective. But if the spirit isolates itself from everything, it no longer finds itself.' This first proposition, which he states as if it were clear and evident, contains in germ and supposes his whole system. It supposes that when our spirit separates itself from all its objects and is left only as a subject, it is raised higher than its previous state. But, in my opinion, this is exactly what needs to be demonstrated, not supposed. If the subject is nobler than all its objects, we can in some way say that its concentration on itself is a kind of elevation, but if the objects in its thought are nobler and higher than itself, abandoning them to isolate itself leads only to self-abasement. I would go further and say that what is really clear is the very opposite of what Schelling is saying, namely, that the intellectual object is always essentially more noble than the subject perceiving it. To take away every object of our understanding is to reduce us to a state of perfect ignorance, a state of pure feeling, where our activity is much less than it was previously. To argue from this pure subject, present in us through abstraction, to a first, absolute subject is to set ourselves on the false path of analogy; we would be attempting a fatal jump from the psychological order into the ocean of ontology.

Schelling continues: 'This action, through which the spirit separates itself from every object, can only be explained through the spirit's determining itself. The spirit determines itself to act, and in so doing acts.' This, statement, confidently proclaimed as obvious by our author, has no foundation whatsoever. Why couldn't our spirit, instead of determining itself, be determined? Why couldn't it be passive (or receptive) rather than active in its first movement? It is absurd to say that the spirit, which is first supposed as perfectly inactive and even nothing, determines itself without a sufficient reason, and thus, as is said, posits, creates itself. A negative cannot produce a positive; nothing cannot produce something.

'The spirit gives impetus in order to raise itself above the finite. It annihilates through itself all that is finite, and then contemplates itself in the positive absolute which remains.' But it must be shown that the infinite presents itself to our spirit when the latter divests itself of all finite objects. Facts show the opposite: our spirit has positive ideas of finite objects alone; do away with these and our spirit is stripped of every act of knowledge. Schelling's reasoning is similar to that of a person who tries to prove that the sun would shine if at night-time we extinguished our candles.

'The spirit's self-determination is called "willing": the spirit wills, and is free. No foundation can be given to its willing because its action is precisely to will and to will absolutely.' People will freely, but because they have no objects to be willed, they do not know what they will! Here again the same fanciful hypothesis applies: human beings, without sufficient reason, determine themselves to their first act in such a way that they are absolutely and uniquely active without any passivity. But the opposite can he demonstrated: human beings, on the occasion of the first act of feeling, are moved and determined passively and necessarily.

However, relative to what Schelling says here, it is sufficient to reply: Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur [What is freely stated, is freely denied]. From this first act Schelling then extracts simultaneously practical reason, intelligence, law and truth. But it would be possible to extract anything from a supposed action fashioned solely to the liking of an extremely active imagination (cf. the philosophical journal published by Schelling in collaboration with Hegel, vol. 6, number 2).