Since this summer you have brought up Schelling here and there. I was
working Schelling at the same time and have wanted to respond to some of
this. Perhaps because I have less time now than then, it seems more urgent
to carry on with this topic. I wanted to and had been reading Schelling's
works before tackling the '36 lecture. There must be reason why H praises
Schelling whereas his usual response to every philosopher is that they do
not recognize the ontological difference. There is difference in
Schelling - of several sorts. And we can't miss from H, "And Schelling's
treatise is thus one of the most profound works of philosophy because it is
in a unique sense ontological and theological at the same time." To use the
distinction Derrida mentions in How Not to Speak, Does H read Schelling as
theiology or theology? Being profound, is he more entrenched in
ontotheology, or is a distinction between the divinity in man and of theos
even possible in Schelling? I think you are definitely onto something
given the temporal coincidence of his reading Schelling and of writing
Beitraege.
While I am slow to respond, if the list takes the direction you suggest
toward the texts on the table, at least one person here would be more
attentive.
M
Marylin,
I don't know how to answer your question. I would have to track down that essay by Derrida. But here is something from the Stuttgart Seminars (1910) found in _Idealism and Endgame of Theory_. A note to the text says that the lecture is a link between the essay on freedom 1809 and the Ages of the World. Schelling writes, "... if the universe cannot be anything but the manifestation of the absolute, and if philosophy is nothing but the spiritual presentation of the universe, philosophy, in general is itself the manifestation, i.e., the ongoing proof of God". If this means God is everywhere and not external or transcendent anywhere then it is a COSMIC philosophy. Later he writes that this ongoing dynamic involves three powers or potencies or periods that are the self-explication of God. The begining of all of this is an act of differentiation, a discovery that is always being opposed by a withdrawal of obscurity. It's a dualistic unity whose vibrant tension is the life of the universe, its energetic motor. We have these two principles just like God does and they are called consciousness and unconsciousness: "... the process of self-creation [act of differentiation out of which emerges a fouthfold] always involves our raising to consciousness what exists in us in unconscious form, to turn our innate darkness into light, in short, to attain a state of clarity. The same holds true for God. Darkness precedes him, and clarity only breaks through the night of his essence." This "night of his essence" already contains its other within it; "In the as yet unconscious state, God contains the two aspects (a superior and inferior aspect). As Heidegger realized there is always something that remains to be thought and is withdrawn into unconsciousness and tends towards non-being. This is a limit for knowledge, a frontier or door, an aporia that interrupts the propensity of thought towards a consequent or conclusion, towards a discovery without doubts or hidden obscurity. If thought
remains for awhile in this limit or border state then it slows down and pauses... before the questioning of questions so to speak where a question is allowed to be as a question, as an unknown and immesurable X..., as a hyphenating interval or in-between, emergence of difference as the reception of that which is unique and unexpected. Other words for the unconscious in Schelling are the Real and consciousness is the ideal and also non-being and being. We are talking mature Schelling who has broken free from the influence of Fichte. This Schelling tells us that "It is precisely the investigation of this nonbeing that constitutes the most difficult burden, the crux of all philosophy. We try forever to grasp it but are unable to hold on to it [...] A nonbeing frequently impresses on us as a being, when seen from another perspective. What, for example is a disease? A state that is adverse to nature, consequently a state that could not be and nevertheless is, a sate that has no real ground and yet possesses undeniably a MONSTROUS reality. Evil is for the moral world what disease is for the physical world." Schelling to talk about these two principles that are part of the dynamics of God uses letters such as B = nonbeing. Schelling then as he clearly says is not making a reference to the transcedental rational being of abstract systems but to a dualistic dynamics of a cosmic unfolding, to a more oriental dynamic energetics as found in the I Ching imo.
tympan
p.s. marylin most of your post was pretty messed up. I'm trying to figure out if that is you or me. I checked to see how it looked in the archives and there it was messed up too. I can't change much on hotmail. All I changed to see what happens is that I turned on a rich text editor which still doesn't offer many options. Why don't you check your settings to see if we can clean it up a bit.
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