58
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
p 11-21]
The true essence of the "newest" Kant-Fichtean philosophy is the identity of subject and ob-
ject (as Hegel and Schelling came to call it) and the consequent objection to dualism.
11.Christian August Crusius (1715-1775), professor of philosophy and theology in Leipzig.
Critic of Wolff. Fundamental axiom: What cannot be thought is false; what cannot be
thought as false is true. Three principles: (1) principium contradictionis: nothing can at once
be and not be; (2) principium inseparabilium: whatever entities cannot be thought without
each other cannot exist without each other; (3) principium inconiungibilium: what cannot be
thought as joint or as juxtaposed cannot exist jointly or in juxtaposition. (Willy Moog;
D
Phlph dr Nzt b z nd d 8. Jhrhndrt.
[Berlin, Mittler: 1924], p. 460).
12.
After "the axiom of contradiction" Schelling put "(das Unbedingte)." This remark in
parentheses seems to belong elsewhere (perhaps half dozen lines earlier, after the original
form of all knowledge"), since it is the philosophical method that must reach the uncondi-tional, while the axiom of contradiction alone falls short of it.
13.It is significant that Schelling sees in Kant the thinker who turned away from the rem-nant of formalism in Leibniz toward a philosophy founded on the reciprocal determination of
form and content, which is the mark of the I.
14.
The merely analytical form cannot constitute objective reality, which requires a
"transcendental synthesis." Transcendental idealism is realism, in contrast to any philosophyrestricted to formal analysis.15.Schelling may have in mind the crucial passage at the end of section 2 of the introduc-
tion to
rJ:
"There
t
be a ground of unity of that supersensuous which is at the base ofnature with the supersensuous which the concept of freedom contains practically. Though the
concept of that unity neither theoretically nor practically attains definite knowledge, andtherefore has no domain of its own, still it makes possible the transition of the manner of
thinking according to the principles of the one [freedom] to that according to the principles of
the other [nature]" (Cass. 5:244; cf. Bernard 12).
16.Schelling means the deduction of the categories from the table of judgments. He himselfholds that the three forms of relation furnish a proper deduction of the other nine categories
(P.
107). In the
t f Trnndntl dl
[1800] 3: 517) he says that "the entire
mechanism of the categories must be deduceable from the relation of time to the pure con-
cepts on the one hand and, on the other, to pure intuition (Anschauung) or to space."
17.
This §11 was not in the first edition (1781), but was added in the second (1787, pp.
109 13). On pages 110-11 Kant says the table of categories "contains the form of a system of
all elemental concepts and therefore gives a hint of
ll
joint traits (alle Momente) of an
available speculative science (cf. Smith 110). He emphasizes that in each group the thirdcategory is not a mere derivative but a genuine concept of pure understanding.
8.
PR
95; Smith 105.
.
FR
131,8 16; Smith 152. See n. 7 above.20.1 Cor. 13:1.
21.
att. 6:33.
Translator's Introduction to
f th Prnpl f Phlph, rn th nndtnl n
Hn nld
Schelling's son, K. F. A. Schelling, who edited the
r, (866,
ap-
pended to the essay
f th
a critique that Schelling had written in 1796
of a review of the essay. My translation of it also follows the essay itself, but
it could equally well serve as Schelling's own introduction to the essay.Another introductory statement by Schelling may be found in his letter
to Hegel dated February 4, 1795, written while he was at work on the essay.
He implies that Hegel can soon learn from the essay why Schelling calledhimself a Spinozist. Parts of this letter are translated in notes 25 and 55.
The reader may also consult note 101. As I have mentioned earlier he
would do well to keep at hand both Spinoza's
th,
which Schelling surely
had before him, and Kant's
rt f Pr Rn.
The title of this essay no longer speaks hypothetically about the mere
possibility of a form of all philosophy but comes right out with the thesis
that the I is the principle of philosophy. To be sure, this is not the em-
pirical I which each one of us finds in his consciousness. If it were, that
would mean the subjective idealism of Berkeley, where to be is to be
perceived, and where mental contents would be inexplicable illusions
unless certainty came with our ideas because they themselves came to usfrom the mind of God, who is not a deceiver. But in that case the existenceof that God would be a postulate, which begs the question. We cannot lookfor any unconditionality of truth in a sheerly transcendent and therefore
entirely hidden God. And if that hidden God should deign to reveal
himself to man, it would still be a conditional truth depending on the twoconditions that the Devil had no hand in the revelation and that God feltlike bestowing it.Now, even the empirical I has the unconditional form of being identicalwith itself, nor is this particular identity merely formal. For, if you express
your awareness of your
lf
in the sentence / am 1 and then rashly transpose
6
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
that sentence into the formula I = I, you have a mere formal identity as
in
A = A.
Everybody grants that, given an A, A cannot be anything but
A.Yet
nothing is really given in the formula I = I. It had better be written x
=
x.
What are we talking about when we talk in terms of such letters as A
or x or even I? In mathematical tradition, x means any unspecified
amount. And the letter
may mean anything at all, not excluding any
t.
The mistake
of those who cannot understand Kant and Fichte and
Schell-
ing is
precisely their notion that the I probably means some mysterious
t
called
a mind or a soul or a spirit. Now, when these three writers use
the
word
,
they take it strictly as a pronoun which, even in ordinary speech,
cannot mean anything but the speaker or writer or reader himself who
refers to himself when
he says I. The pronoun
means the act by which two
events are established simultaneously,
the awareness of myself, and the
distinction between my I and any not-I. The self-awareness can be describ-
ed
in words as the
identity of thinking-form and thought-content. Kant's
phrasing is
clearer; he says "the subject is at the same time its own object"
(PR
429). Adopting Fichte's words,
Schelling says of the I, "it is because it
thinks itself, and it [can] think itself because it is. It produces itself by
its
own thinking—by absolute
causality"
(f ,
167),
Of course none of these
words and sentences can
force you to grasp that you are an I. The I
a free
act.
"I
am
because I anal— that [insight] grabs each one suddenly"
(f ,
168). Augustine
says it happens by that mental "slap" by which the
mind
understands the
word
rlf. (D trntt
10, ix, 12: eo ictu quo in-
telligit quod dictum est
t p.
As an empirical I, I find
myself not only as absolutely self-positing but
also as the
specific physical and historical person I am. For when I realize
that I am I
for myself alone, as Fichte puts it (1:98), I simultaneously
distinguish my I
from whatever is not I, for instance, from my own mental
constitution with
its historical setting and from my body with its physical
environment.
The empirical I is never without some object, as Kant
pointed out
(PR
276).
Now, there is
a distinction (not a separation) between the
unconditional
certainty that
I am I,
and the unconditional
as such. The former, being
subjective, is
never without an object. Therefore the empirical person is
conditioned by
objects. And there is a conditioning bond between objects.
No such conditioning can pertain to the unconditional. Therefore the un-
conditional can be neither subject
nor object. It is "no thing at all"
(f ,
177) and therefore fittingly named absolute I,
whose essence is freedom.
(To
blv n
to detach.
blt
means without ties.)
Schelling distinguishes it from the empirical I. The latter is subject:
though it is unconditionally I, it is also conditioned as a specific
person.
Yet, if its form were not the form of unconditionality, there could be no Iat all. The absolute I is the ground of possibility of every empirical
I.
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
61
Schelling says that the absolute I cannot occur in consciousness (180)
because of the condlnality inherent in all consciousness: no subject
without an object. Yet the absolute I,
oi,e could
say, furnishes the form ofunconditionality without which no consciousness would be possible.
You may feel that this kind of argumentation endeavors to hold fast
what is utterly elusive. And this is what Schelling seems to do when, in that
February 4 letter to Hegel, he writes, "God is nothing but the absolute I"
(Plitt 1:77). He does not mean that God is a person, for in the same letter
he had already said that we can (and ought to) "reach
frthr
[meaning
/deeper] than the personal being" (ibid. 76). Why then use the word
to
God and the unconditional? Because the I has the
fr
of self-positing, that is, of absolute independence, absolute freedom. (See also n./
25, the entirety of which could serve as a short introduction to the essay
f.
In 1811 Schelling wrote: "God in his highest Self is not revealed [once '
7
and for all], he is [continuously] revealing himself; he is not real, he
becomes real, precisely in order to be manifest as the very freest being"
(Th f th rld
8:308; cf. Bolman 196-97). Around 1836 Schell-
ing said of God, "he is entirely outside of himself, free of himself, and is
thus the being that sets everything else free" (see the entire passage quoted
in n. 70).
Freedom cannot be imparted by coercion, only by invitation. No
"power" of God can make man free, only "love." Terms like
pr
and
lv
may help some readers who do not entirely lack a religious
background. To be sure, they can help only a reader who, like Schelling, isbeyond what Schelling calls "orthodox concepts of God." On February 4,
1795, he wrote to Hegel: "Here is my answer to your question whether I
believe that, with the moral proof, we cannot reach a person Being. ... My
answer is: We reach
frthr
than a personal being. For by now I have
./ become a Spinozist" (Plitt 1:76).Kant warned against objectifying and more especially personifying God
(PR
611 n.),
a warning that, unfortunately, is not heeded to this day. Themain reason may be the dependence of "modern" thinking and schoolingon the objective sciences. Thus, when Nietzsche exorcised "the old God,"and when William James damned "the Absolute," they were both thinkingof objective entities, and they let their objectivistic thinking overrule thatkeen sense for the symbolic which they both possessed. The other reason
for objectivism is the kind of ecclesiastic teaching which, for the sake of be-
ing "modern," ignores Kant and his warning and therefore neglects to tell
the yourw the deepest truths religion has voiced.
God is not one of the gods. He is not in a genus (Aquinas,
Thl .
3. Art 5), the
genus gods. The gods come and go; their ex-
istence is not identical with their essence. But in God essence and existence
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62
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
are identical (ibid., Art 4). God has no essence apart from his existence orpresence.
shall be who shall be" (Exodus 3:14). A reader who has been
taught and has really grasped these truths will find no insurmountable dif-
ficulty in Schelling's notion of the "absolute I."On page 200
f
Schelling says the finite
strives to become identicalwith the absolute I. Religion teaches that man should strive to live
n
God.
nd th t trv t l hlf n d.
2
Of the I as the Principle of
Philosophyor
On the Unconditional inHuman Knowledge
(1795; second printing, 1809)
Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?Of Man, what see we but his station here,From which to reason, or to which refer?Through worlds unnumber'd though the God be known,
Tis ours, to trace him only in our own.Pope:
n n
(Epigraph of
the first edition)
rf t th Frt dtn
Instead of all the pleas with which a writer can meet his readers and critics,there in only one plea here to the readers and critics of this essay; either not
to read it at all or to read it in its entire contexi, and either to refrain fromjudgment altogether or to judge the author by the whole work and not byseparate passages taken out of context. There are readers who look at a
hook flret ingly, in order to grasp quickly something that they can throw at
the author as a criticism, or to find a passage that has been rendered in-comprehensible by being taken out of context. By such means they can
63
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64
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [152,153]
prove to anyone who has not read the work that the author has writtennonsense. Thus, for instance, readers of that kind could say that in this
essay Spinoza is spoken of very often, not (to use Lessing's expression) "as a
dead dog,” and then— the logic of such people is all too well known — theycould (jump to the conclusion that the author is trying to repeat Spinoza's
errors, even though they have been refuted long ago. For such readers (if
that term may be applied to them) I want to say, on the one hand, that thisessay is meant to
annul
explicitly the very foundations of Spinoza's system,which has not yet been refuted by any means, or more aptly, to topple it bymeans of its own principles; on the other hand
I
want to say that (in spite of
all its errors) Spinoza's system seems to me more worthy of high esteem,
because of its bold consequences, than the popular,coalition-systems of ourintellectual world, which [152] through a patchwork of all possible systems
Spell death to all true philosophy. At the same time I am ready to admit to
such readers that these systems, which constantly hover between heaven
and earth and are not litalreetiough to penetrate to the core of all
knowledge, are much more secure against the most dangerous errors than
is the system of a great thinker whose speculations take great flights, and
who risks_ everything, either to achieve complete truth in all its greatness,
or no truth at all. And please let me remind you that whosoever is not 1
brave
enough to follow the truth to its fullest height will never possess it 1
v
,
even though he touch the hem of its garment, and that, in spite of I
tolerable errors, posterity will judge more justly the man who dares to meet I
the truth freely, than it will those who are afraid of shipwreck on the rocks
or sandbars and prefer to drop anchor permanently in some safe cove. ,I would like to remind the other kind of readers, those who prove by
means of passages taken out of context that the author had written
nonsense, that I do not care for the praise bestowed on writers whose every
word, in and out of context, conveys the same meaning. In all modesty,
I
am
conscious of the fact that all ideas in this writing are my own, and
therefore I deem it a not immodest demand that I be judged only by
.
- readers who think for themselves.Elesides, the whole investigation dealswith principles and hence can be tested only by principles. I have tried todepict the results of critical philosophy in its regression to the last prin-ciples of all knowledge. The only question, then, which the reader of thisessay has to answer is the following: Whether these principles are true orfalse, and (be they true or false) whether the results of critical philosophy
are really based on them. What I hope for my essay is precisely such a test
of the principles here elaborated. I cannot expect this testing from any
readers who are indifferent to all truth, nor from those who presume that
no new investigation
of principles
can be possible after Kant 1153J and
think that the highest principles of his philosophy have already been estab-
lished by him4very other reader - regardless of his system must be in-
[154]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF
PHILOSOPHY
5
terested in the question of the highest principle of all knowledge because
his own system, even if it is the system of skepticism, can be true only through '
its principles. One cannot do anything with people who have lost all interest _
r
in truth, for one could persuade them only with the truth4Th the other
-
hand, I believe that I may say to those followers of Kant who presume that
he himself has established the principles of all knowledge, that they havecomprehended the letter but not the spirit of their teacher if they did not
discover that the way of the
rt f Pr Rn
cannot possibly be the
way of phitosophyl
as a science.' )As m, philosophy takes its startfrom the exiiigee
of original conceptions (urspriingliche Vorstellungen)
not made possible by experience but explainable only through stlperior
principles. For instance, the necessity and universal validity, which Kant
stated as their outstanding character, cannot be based on mere feeling for
it (which necessarily would have to be the case if it were not determined by
superior principles, principles that must be presupposed even by skep-
ticism, for skepticism cannot be overturned by a
r fln
of necessity).
Furthermore, space and time, which are supposed to be only forms of in-
tuition, cannot possibly precede
ll
synthesis and therefore must
themselves depend on a higher form of synthesis.* Similarly, the derivative
subordinate synthesis by means of categories (Verstandesbegriffe) cannotpossibly be thought of without an original form and an original content,
which must be the basis of every synthesis if it is to be a synthesis at all. This
is all the more obvious, since Kant's deductions tell us at first glance [154]
that they presuppose superior principles. Thus Kant names the only possi-
ble forms of sense perception, space and time, without having examinedthem according to a principle (as for instance the categories according tothe principle of logical functions of judgment). The categories are set upaccording to the table of functions of judgment, but the latter are not set
up according to any principle [see n.49]. If we look at this matter more ,
closely, we find that the synthesis contained in the judgment as well as thesynthesis expressed in the categories is only a derivative synthesis; both can
be understood only through a more basic synthesis shared by both—the
synthesis of multiplicity in the unity of consciousness as such—and this syn-
thesis itself can be understood only through a superior absolute unity.
Therefore the unity
of consciousness is determinable not through the forms
of judgments, but on the contrary, the judgments together with the
categories are determinable only through the principle of that unity [see n.
49]. By the same token, the many apparent contradictions in Kant's
writings pointed out by his opponents should have been admitted long ago
for they cannot be corrected at all except under those higher principles
.1
find that Beck' expresses a similar thought in the preface to the second part of his commen-tary on Kant. But I cannot judge how close or how far the thoughts of this commentator, who
has so visibly entered into Kant's spirit, are related to mine.
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66
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [155,156]
i which, in the
rt f Pr Rn,
its author
nl prppd.
Final-
ly, even if it could be said that Kant's theoretical philosophy maintained
the most conclusive concatenation among all its parts, still his theoretical
—)
*
philosophy is not connected with the practical by a common prinicple".
3
His
practical philosophy does not seem to be one-and-the-same structure withthe theoretical; instead it seems to be a mere annex to his philosophy as a
whole and, what is more, an annex wide open to attacks from the main
building. Yet, inasmuch as the first principle of philosophy is also the last,
since all philosophy, the theoretical in particular, starts from the final
result of the practical in which all knowledge ends, the whole science mustbe possible, in its highest perfection and unity.I think the mere mention of all this will suffice to justify the need of an
exposition of Kant's philosophy based on superior principles. Indeed I
believe that, [155] in the case of such an author, one must explain him ac-cording to the
t
p inciples which he must have presupposed, and only accor-
../ ding to them.' ven in the face of the original sense of his words, one mustassert the still-more original sense of his thoughts. Thik essay proposes to
establish the principles [on which Kant's thoughts rest]) I could promise
myself nothing more fortunate in this venture than to find examiners of the
principles here established. I would be grateful for the most severe ex-
amination, provided only that it merit the name of examination. My
gratitude would be proportionate to the importance of the subject discuss-
ed. The estimable critic of my treatise
n th Pblt f Fr f ll
Phlph
has made a remark in the
Tbnr lhrtn nzn
(1795,
12th issue) concerning the principle I stated. He has questioned the main
point of this whole investigation. I believe that my present essay will
alleviate his doubts. To be sure, if what I stated were an objective principlethen one would not be able to understand why it should not depend on a
superior one. The distinguishing feature of my new principle lies in the
fact that it ought not to be an
bjtv
principle. There my critic and I
agree; an objective principle could not be an ultimate one because it would
have to be determined by an ulterior one. The only unresolved question
between us is whether there is any principle which is not objective at all
and which nevertheless furnishes the basis for all philosophy. To be sure, if
we had to look at the ultimate in our knowledge as if it were a mute pain-ting outside of us (as Spinoza put it)
5
then we would never know
tht
we
know. However, if that ultimate itself is a condition of all knowledge, in-
deed a condition of its own being known, if it is the only immediacy in our
knowledge, then we know precisely through it
tht
we know; we have
found the principle of which Spinoza could say that it is the light which il-luminat •. itself and the darkness.'
1156,
It does not behoove philosophy to ingratiate itself by an an-
ticipatory enumeration of its
rlt
and thus to suborn the unbiased judg-
[157]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
7
ment regarding its
prnpl,
nor can it allow an evaluation of its prin-
ciples by the material interests ofleyeacky life, yet, if a well-meaning man
should ask where these ostensibly new principles should lead, whether they
should remain merely a tenet of some specific school or go on to benefit
lift, one may well answer him, provided one does not thereby sway his
judgment of the principles themselves. In this regard only, and only to ac-
commodate the reader who asks that question, may I be permitted the
following remark regarding the principles on which this treatise rests. _A.7philosophy which is based on the nature of man himself could not aim
At
dead
formulae,
which would function as just so many prisons of man's
mind, nor could it aim at being a philosophical artifice which, by deduc-ing current concepts from apparently superior ones, would bury the living
work of the human mind in • - d u - • . • ties. If I may say it in the
words of Jacobi,
philosophy seeks to unveil and revealtthat
which is [Da-"
sein],
6
so that the nature or spirit of phirosP
PEy
—
Cinnot lie in any formula
iar
letter; its highest topic must be what is immediate in man and presnetonly to itself,' and cannot be what
is mediated by concepts
and laboriously
recapitulated in concept aim of philosophy is no mere reform of its
discipline but a complete l
ctiAal'OE its principles, that is a revolution
which one can view as the second possible revolution in its field. The firsttook place when the recognition of objects was set up as the principle of all
knowledge. Up to the second revolution every advance made was not achange of principles but a progression from one object to another. And
though it is not an indifferent matter for the schoolman as to what par-ticular object is being served, [157] but is all the same for mankind, theprogression of philosophy from one object to another cannot be the pro-
gression of the human mind as such. d_Usefaire, if one may expect any in-fluence on human life itself from any kind of philosophy, one must expect
it only fromtlie new philosophy made possible by a complete reversal of
the principles)
It is a daring step of reason to liberate mankind to remove it from the
terrors of the objective world, but
this darin• venture cannot fail,
because
man grows in the measure in which he learns to know himself and his
power. Give man the awareness of what he is and he will soon learn to be what he ought to be. Give him the theoretical self-respect and the practicalwill soon follow. One would hope in vain for any great progress of mankindas a result of the mere goodwill of man, because in order to become betterhe would have had to be good already. For that very reasor(lie revolution
in man must come from the awareness of his essence; he must be goodtheoretic" in order to become so practically. The surest preparatory ex-
ercise for harmonious action within oneself is the knowledge that the very
essence of man consists of unity and is due to it alone. Once a man has
realized that, he will also understand that the unity of volition and action
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68
60
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [158,159]
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
9
•
must become as natural and necessary for him as the preservation of his ex-
1( istence. It is the very goal of man that the unity of volition and action
I
hould become as natal to him as the mechanism of his body and the uni-
1 ' ty of his consciousness.)
n a. languid age one cannot expect much progress from a philosophy
which asserts as itsi l
_gitsl_pslipi
ci e that the essence of man consists of
freedom and
only of freedom_ that man is not a thine, not a chattel, and in
his very nature no object at algEtur—spiritless age trembles before every
authentic force which stirs in man. Therefore the representatives of the age
promptly tried to tone down the first great product of this philosophy.
They could do so without too much difficulty, because its language still
seems to indulge the mood of the time. Consequently they saw [in the
Criti-que of Pure Reason]
nothing but the old established obsequiousness [158]
under the yoke of objective truth, and/they tried at least to reduce its doc-trine to the humiliating tenet that _the limitk,of objective truth are not set
by absolute freedom but are the mere consequence of the well-knownweakness of man's mind and are due to the limitation of his power of
erception. But it would be faintheartedness unworthy of philosophy not
t
follow the great new lead which philosophy is beginning to take; not tomap a new course for the human mind, not to give strength to the tired,courage and energy to the crushed and beaten minds, not to shake up duislaves of objective truth by giving them an inkling of freedom, and not to
each man, who is consistent only in his inconsistency, that._LaiA3
i save
imself only by the unity of his action andby strict observance of grin-
ipes
1
It is difficult not to be, enthusiastic about the great thought that, whileall sciences, the empirical ones not excluded, rush more and more toward
the point of perfect unity, mankind itself will finally realize, as thensitutive law, the principle of unity which from the beginning was the
( regulating,basis of the history of mankind. As the rays of man's knowledgeand the experiences of many centuries will finally converge in one focus of
truth and will transform into reality the idea which has been in many great
men's minds,the idea that the different sciences must become one in theend just so the different ways and by-ways which humans have followed
till now will converge in one point wherein mankind will find itself again
and, as one complete person, will abey_thelawu_f freedom. No matter howfar in the future this point may be, no matter how long it may be possiblefor some to indulge in a genteel laughter at the daring hopes for the pro-
gress of mankind, those for whom the hopes are not folly still have the
great task of working jointly toward the completion of the sciences and
thereby at least preparing the way for that great period of mankind.
11591 For all ideas must first be realized in the domain of knowledge before
they find their realization in history, and mankind will never become onebefore its knowledge has matured to unity.
Nature has wisely provided for human eyes the device of dawn as a tran-
sition to broad daylight. Small wonder then that wisps of fog remain in the
lower regions while the mountain peaks already shimmer in the radiance of
the sun. But once the first blush of morning appears, the sun cannot fail.To bring about the beautiful day of knowledge is reserved to few—perhapsto one alone—but may it be granted to anyone who senses the coming ofthat day to take pleasure in it in advance.
What I have said in this essay and am saying in this preface is, for
many, too much, as
know only too well; for myself it is too little. But all
the greater is the subject, which concerns us all. Whether is was too daring
to join in the discussion of such a topic, of that only the essay itself canrender an account. No matter what the verdict may be, any anticipatory
answer would be futile. It is natural that any reader who likes to twist
things and is victimized by misunderstandings can find fault enough, )But
on my part will not call every adverse criticism unjust, every correction ir-
relevant;
hope that
have made that clear through my modest plea forstrict examinjation. What
wanted was truth, and
know it just as well as
know that more can be done in this matter, which does not require mere
fragmentary work.
hope that some happy time may be granted to me in
which it will be possible to bring to realization the idea of writing a
) counterpart to Spinoza's
Ethics.* )
Tubingen, March 29th, 1795.
*
NOTE OF THE EDITOR OF THE COMPLETE WORKS, 1856), K. F. A. SCHELLING
In Schelling's
preface to the first volume of his philosophical writings, 1809, he
characterizes the essay "Of the
"
with the following words. "It shows
idealism in its freshest form, in a sense which it may have lost later. At least
the
is still taken everywhere as an absolute, or strictly as identity of thesubjective and the objective as such [see n.8], and not as a subjective
.
60
np
1.Deduction of a last ground of reality of our knowledge as such, § 1.2.
Determination of it through the concept of the unconditioned. The
unconditioned as such can be found
a*
neither in an absolute object,
b.
nor in an object conditioned by the subject, nor in a subject
conditioned by the object,
c.nor in the sphere of objects at all, § 2,
d. therefore only in the absolute I. Reality of the absolute
such,
§ 3.
0
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
6
Deduction of all possible a priori views of the unconditioned.
a.Principle of perfect dogmatism, § 4.b.Principle of imperfect dogmatism and criticism, § 5.
c. Principle of perfect criticism, § 6.4. Deduction of the original form [Urform] of the I, which is identity,
and of the supreme principle [Grundsatz], § 7.
5.
Deduction of the form of its being posited by absolute freedom, in
intellectual intuition, § 8.6.Deduction of the subordinate forms of the
.
a.
According to quantity,
— Unity, specifically absolute unity, in
contrast
aa. to multiplicity,bb. to empirical unity, § 9.
b.According to qualityaa. absolute reality as such in contrast
a
o the ostensible reality of things in themselves, or
13.
to an objective conception of all reality, § 10.bb. as absolute reality also absolute nonfiniteness [Unendlich-
keit]
cc. as absolute reality also absolute indivisibilitydd. as absolute reality also absolute immutability, § 11.c.According to relation
aa. absolute substantiality, in contrast to derivative, empirical
substantiality, § 12.
bb. absolute causality, specifically immanent causality, § 13, in
contrast
6
o the causality of the moral being [Wesen] and
of the rational and sensuous being insofar as it strives
for happiness. Deduction of the concepts of morality
and happiness, § 14.
d.
According to modality—pure absolute being [Sein] in contrast toempirical being as such, and specifically in contrast
aa. to empirical eternity,bb. to merely logical reality,cc. to dialectical reality,dd. to all empirical determination of being, possibility, actu-
ality, necessity (existence as such),
ee. to the ostensible absolute being of things in themselves—(in
passing: determination of the concepts of idealism and
realism),
ff. to the existence of the empirical world as such, § 15.
7. Deduction of the forms of all modes of being posited [Setzbarkeit]
fr thr rnd n th
62
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
1
a.
Form of thetical propositions as such.
b.
Determination of them through the subordinate forms.
aa. According to quantity— unity.
bb. According to quality— affirmation.
cc. According to modality—pure being [Sein]. Specifically this
determination separates the original concepts [Urbegriffe]
of being [Sein], not-being [Nicht-Sein], and existence
[Dasein] from the derivative concepts of possibility, actu-
ality, and necessity, and it considers the latter as such in re-
lation to the finite I, as follows:
a.
in regard to the moral
and, in that respect,
aa.
discussing the concept of practical possibility,
actuality, and necessity, and
deducting from these concepts the concept of
transcendental freedom, and discussing the prob-lems based on it,in regard to the theoretical subject [and its interest in]purposiveness [Zweckverknupfung] in the world.'
62
He who wants to know something, wants to know at the same time that%what he knows is real. Knowledge without reality is not knowledge. Whatfollows from that?Either our knowled e has no reality at all and must be an eternal round
of propositions, each dissolving in its opposite, a chaos in which no element
can crystallize—or else there_niust.be an ultimate point of reality on whicheverything depends, from which all firmness and all form of our knowledgesprings, a point which sunders the elements, and which circumscribes for
each of them the circle of its continuous effect in the universe of
knowledge.There must be something in which and through which everything that is
reaches existence, everything that is being thought reaches reality, and
thought itself reaches the form of unity and immutability. This something(as we can problematically call it for the time being) should be what com-
pletes all insights within the whole system of human knowledge, and it
should reign—in the entire cosmos of our knowledge—as original ground
(Urgritnd) of all reality.'°
If there is any genuine knowledge at all, there must be knowledge whichI do not reach by way of some other knowledge, but through which aloneall other knowledge is knowledge. In order to reach this last statement I do
not have to presuppose some special kind of knowledge. If we know
anything at all, we must be sure of at least one item of knowledge which we
[165]
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
372
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
163,164]
cannot reach through some other [163] knowledge and which contains the
real ground of all our knowledge.
This ultimate in human knowledge must therefore not search for its own
real ground in something other. Not only is it itself independent of
anything superior but, since our knowledge rises from any consequence tothe reason thereof and in reverse descends from that reason to the conse-
quence, that which is the ultimate and for us the principle of all knowledge
cannot be
known
in turn through another principle. That is, the principleof its being and the principle of its being known* must coincide, must be
one,
since it can be thought only because it itself is, not because there issomething else. Therefore it must be thought simply because it is, and itmust be because it itself is being thought, not because something else is
thought." Its assertion must be contained in its thought; it must createitself through its being thought." If we had to think something else in
order to reach its thought, then that other entity would be superior to theultimate, which is a contradiction. In order to reach the ultimate I neednothing but the ultimate itself. The absolute can be given only by the ab-
solute.
Now the investigation is becoming more definite. Originally I posited
rl
0
nthn bt nn.t rnd f n rl nld. N th rtrn
hat it
must be the last absolute ground of knowledge permits us at the
OP
`
P
ame time to
establish its existence (Sein). The last ground for all reality issomething that is thinkable only through itself, that is, it is thinkable onlythrough its being (Sein); it is thought only inasmuch as it is. In short,_ the
priuciPie
of being and thinking is one and the ..same
[see n.11]. The ques-
tion can now be expressed quite clearly and the investigation has a cluewhich can never fail.
II 1
§2
Knowledge which I can reach only through other knowledge is
condi-
tional.
The chain
of our knowledge [164] goes from one conditional [piece
of] knowledge to another. Either the whole has no stability, or one must be
able to believe that this can
go on ad infinitum, or else that there must be
a
some ultimate point on which the whole depends. The latter, however, inregard to the principle of its being, must be the direct opposite of all thatfalls in the sphere of the
con 1tLWy1 hat is, it must be not only uncondi-
tional but altogethe
unconditionable.
All possible theories of the Unconditional must be determinable a priori,
once the only correct one has been found. As long as it has not beenestablished, one must follow the empirical progress of philosophy.
•11.1)01M/1E
or rnF. FIRS l' FM I ION' I May t his
expression be taken here in its broadest sense, aslong as the something we are looking for is deter ::: i :: rcl only problematically.
Whether that progress contains all possible theories will be seen only at theend.
As soon as philosophy begins to be a science, it must at least
assume an
ltt
principle and, with it, something unconditional.To look for the unconditional in an
object,
in a
thing,
cannot mean to
look for it in the generic character of things, since it is evident that a genus
cannot be something that is unconditional. Therefore it must mean to look
for the unconditional in an
absolute
object which is neither genus nor
species nor individual. '
3
(Principle of consummate
dogmatism.)
Yet, whatever is a thing is at the same time an
object
of knowing, Nitherefore a link in the chain of our knowledge. It falls into the sphere of the ,
knowable. Consequently it cannot contain the basis for the reality
(Realgrund) of all knowledge and knowing." In order to reach an object
as
object I must already have another object with which it can be con-trasted, and if the principle of all knowledge were lying in an object I
would in turn have to have a new principle in order to find that ostensiblyultimate principle.
Moreover, the unconditional (by § 1) should realize itself, create itself
through its own thought; the principle of its being and its thinking should
coincide. But no object ever realizes itself. In order to reach the existenceof an object I must go beyond the
[165]
mere concept of the object. Its ex-
istence is not a part of its reality. I can think its reality without positing it asexisting. Suppose, for instance, that God, insofar as some define Him as an
object, were the ground of the reality of our knowledge; then, insofar as He
is an object, He would fall into the sphere of our knowledge; therefore He
could not be for us the ultimate point on which the whole sphere
depends. Also the question is not what God is for Himself, but what He is
for us in regard to our knowledge. Even if we let God be the ground of the
reality of His own knowledge, He is still not the ground of ours, because for
us He is an object, which presupposes some reason in the chain of our
knowledge that could determine His necessity for our knowledge.The object as such never determines its own necessity, simply becauseand insofar as it is an object. For it is object only inasmuch as it is deter-
mined by something else. Indeed, inasmuch as it is an object it presupposes
something in regard to which it is an object, that is, a subject.
For the time being, I call subject that which is determinable only by con-
trast with but also in relation to a previously posited object. Object is thatwhich is determinable only in contrast with but also in relation to a sub-
ject. Ihus, in the first place, the object as such cannot be the uncondi-
tional at all, because it necessarily presupposes a subject which determines
the object's existence by going beyond the sphere of merely thinking theobject. The next thought is to look for the unconditional in the object in-
sofar as it is determined by the subject and is conceivable only in regard to
74
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [166,167]
the latter. Or, in the third place, since object necessarily presupposes sub-
ject, and subject object, the unconditional could be lookedior in the sub-ject, which is conditioned by the object and can be conceived only in rela-
tioect." Still, this kind of endeavor to realize the unconditional
carries a contradiction within itself, which is obvious at first glance. Sincethe subject is thinkable only in regard to an object, and the object only in
regard to a subject, neither of them can contain the unconditional because
both are conditioned reciprocally, both are equally unserviceable. [166]
Furthermore, in order to determine the relationship of the two, an ulterior
reason for the determination must be presupposed, owing to which bothare determined. For one cannot say that the subject alone determines the
object because the subject is conceiveable only in relationship to the object,and vice versa, and it would amount to the same if I were to treat as uncon-
ditional a subject determined bobject
n or an object determined by a
subject. What is more, this kind of a subject as such is also determinable asanoBject," and for this reason the endeavor to turn the subject into an un-
conditional fails, as does the endeavor with an absolute object. _
The question as to where the unconditional must be looked for becomes
slowly clearer, owing to its inherent logic. At the outset I asked only in
which specific object we could look for the unconditional, within the whole
sphere of objects. Now it becomes clear that we must not look for it in the
sphere of objects at all, nor even within the sphere of that subject which is
also determinable as an object."
§
3
The philosophically revealing formation of the languages, especially
manifest in languages still well aware of their roots," is a veritable miracle
worked by the mechanism of the human mind. Thus the word I have used
casually thus far, the word
bdnn,
is an eminently striking term of
which one can say that it contains almost the entire treasure of
philosophical truth.
Bdnn
means. the action by which anything
becomes a
thn
(Ding).
Bdnt(dtrnd
is what has been turned into
a tiling. Thus it is clear at once that nothing can posit itself as a thing, andthat an unconditional thing is a contradiction in terms. Unbedin t_funcon-
ditional) is what has not been turned into a thing, and what cannot at all
becoine_a_thing.
The problem, therefore, which we must solve now changes into
something more precise:
t fnd thn tht nnt b thht f
thn t ll.
Consequently, the unconditional can lie neither in a thing as such, norin anything that can become a thing, that is, not in the subject. It can lie
only in that 11671 which cannot become a thing at all; that is, if there is anabsolute
,
it can lie only in the
blt .
Thus, for the time being, the
absolute
is ascertained as
tht hh n nvr b n bjt t ll.
For the moment no further determination is being made.
That there is an absolute I can never be proved objectively, that is, it
cannot be proved with regard to that
which can exist as an object,
because we are supposed to prove precisely that the absolute
can neverbecome an object. The I, if it is to be unconditional, must be outside the
sphere of objective proof. To
prv
objectively that the
is unconditional
4
would mean to prove that it was conditional. In the case of the uncondi-
tional the principle of its being and the principle of its being thought must
coincide. It
nll
it is it is
thounly
b
it is thought.
The absolute can be given only by the absolute •‘ indeed, if it is to be ab-solute, it must precede all thinking and imagining. Therefore it must be
realized through itself ( § 1), not through objective proofs, which go beyond
the mere concept of the entity to be proved.
20
If the I were not realized
through itself, then the sentence which expresses its existence would be, "if
I am, then I am." But in the case of the I, the condition "if I am" alreadycontains the conditioned "then I." The condition is not thinkable without
the conditioned. I cannot think of myself as a merely conditional existence
without knowing myself as already existing. Therefore, in that conditional
sentence, the condition does not condition the conditioned but, vice versa,
the conditioned conditons the condition, that is,
a conditional sentence
it cancels itself and becomes unconditional: "I
b ."
I amt My I contains a being which precedes all thinking and imagining.It
by being thought, and it is being thought because it
and all for only
one reason—that is
only and is being thought only inasmuch as its think-ing is its
n.
Thus it
because it alone is what does the thinking, and it
thinks only itself because it is. It produces itself by its own thinking—out of
absolute
lt.
68
I am, because I amt That takes possession of everyone instantane-
ously. Say to him: "the I
because it is;" he will not grasp it quite so quickly
because the I is only
b tlf
and
nndtnd
inasmuch as it is at the
same time
nndtnbl,
that is, it can never become a thing, an
object. An object receives its existence from something outside the sphere
of its mere conceivability. In contrast, the I is not even conceivable unless it
first exists as an I. If it does not so exist it is nothing at all. And it is
nt t
ll thnbl xpt nfr t thn tlf,
that is,
nfr t .
Therefore we must not even say: Everything that thinks is, because thatkind of statement talks .about the thinking as if it were an object. We can
only say: I think, I amL2Y,Therefore it is clear that, as soon as we turn that
It
r?4,C 0
C..
AIM ' I
ION Al. SENTENCE. IN I IIE FIRST EDF ION:
1
am " is
the unique
fr b hh t n
44
nounces itself with unconditional authority (Selbstmacht).
o.
[168]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
5
.fr
76
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
169]
170,
171]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
7
which can never become an object into a
ll
object to be investigated,such investigations would labor under a peculiar
nprhnblt.
We
cannot at all confine it as an object, and we could not even talk about it
nor understand each other with regard to it, if it were not for the
assistance of the [intellectual]intuition [we have of our selves]. However,
insofar as our knowledge is tied to an object, that intuition is as alien to us
as the I which never can become an object.)
Thus the I is determined as unconditional only through itself. *
[169] Yet, if it is determined at the same time as that which furnishesvalidity in the entire system of my knowledge, then a regress must be
possible; that is, I must be able to
nd
from the lowest conditioned
proposition to the unconditional, just as I can
dnd
from the
unconditional principle to thelowest proposition in the conditional
sequence.
You may therefore pick from any series of conditional propositions
whichever one you want and, in the regress, it must lead back to the ab-,,k solute I. Hence, to come back to a previous example, the concept of sub-
ject must lead to the absolute I. For if there were no absolute I,
then the
concept of that is, the concept of the I which is conditioned by an
Oka, would be the ultimate. But since the concept of an object contains
an antithesis, the basic determination of this concept cannot stop at a mere
contrast with a subject which in turn is conceivable only in relation to anobject. The determination is possible only in contrast to something which
flatly excludes the concept of an object as such. Therefore both the con-
cept of an object and the concept of a subject which is conceivable only incontrast to some object
must lead to an
absolute which excludes
every
ob-.
I jest arksl
thus
isin absolute contrast to_any object. For if you suppose
that
the
original position is that of an object which would not require the
antecedent position of an absolute I as basis for all• positing, then
that
original object cannot be determined
object, that is, as opposed to the I
•Perhaps I can make this matter clearer if I return to the above-mentioned example. For me,
God cannot be the ground of the reality of knowledge if He is determined as an object
because, if so determined, He would fall into the sphere of conditional knowledge. However,If I should determine God not as an object at all but as = I, then indeed He would be the real
ground of my knowledge. Still, that determination is impossible in the theoretical [i.e.,
objectivistic' philosophy. Nevertheless, even in theoretical philosophy, which determines God
as
an object, a determination of God's essence as = I is necessary and then I must indeed
assume that for Himself God is the absolute and real ground of His own knowledge, but not
for me. For me, in theoretical philosophy, He is determined not only as I but also as object.
Yet
if He is an I, then,
for Himself,
he is not object at all but only I. Incidentally, it follows
that one falsely depicts the ontological proof of God's existence as deceptive artifice; the
deception is quite natural. For, whatever can say / to itself, also says / aml The pity is that, intheoretical philosophy. God is not determined as identical with my I but, in relation to my I,
Is determined an an object, and an ontological proof for the existence of an object is a
cunt rad fenny
since, as long as the latter is not posited, nothing can be in opposition to it.
Therefore any object posited as antecedent to any I would be
n
object at
all; the very supposition cancels itself. Or again, suppose that there is an I,
but only an I conceptually
contrasted (aufgehoben)
by the object, that is,an origianl subject; then this supposition likewise cancels itself for, whereno absolute I is posited, none can be set aside (aufgehoben) by contrast. Ifthere is no I antecedent to any object, neither
[170] can
there be an objectwhose concept would set aside the I by contrast. ( I have in mind a chain ofknowledge that is conditioned throughout and attains stability only in onesupreme, unconditional point. Now, whatever is conditional in that chaincan be conceived only by presupposing the absolute condition, that is, the
unconditional. Thus the conditional cannot be posited as conditional
antecedent to the unconditional and unconditionable, but oxilLowing_to
-
the latter
by contrast to
it. Therefore, whatever is posited as only a condi-tional thing is conceivable only through that [logically antecedent entity]
which is no thing at all but is unconditional." The object itself then is
originally determinable only in contrast to the absolute I, that is, only as
the antithesis to the I or as non-I. Thus the very concepts of subject and ob-
ject are guarantors of the absolute, unconditionable 1.
25
§4
Once the I is determined as the unconditional in human knowledge,
then the whole content of all knowledge must be determinable through thci
I itself and through its antithesis, and thus one must also be able to sketch
a priori every possible theory regarding the unconditional.
Inasmuch as the I is the absolute I, that which is not = I can be deter-I
mined only in contrast to the I and by presupposing the I. Any not-I
posited absolutely, as if it were in no contrast to anything, is a contradic-
tion in terms. If, on the other hand, the
I
is not presupposed as the ab-
solute I, then the not-I can be posited either as antecedent to any I or as on
a par with the I. A third alternative is not possible.
The two extremes are dogmatism and criticism. The principle ofdogmatism is a not-I posited as antecedent to any I; the principle of
criticism, an I posited as antecedent to all [that is] not-I and as exclusive of
any not-I. Halfway
btn
the two lies the principle of an I conditionedby a not-I or, what amounts to the same, of a not-I conditioned by an I.(1) The principle of dogmatism contradicts itself ( §2), [171] because it
presupposes an unconditional thing (ein unbedingtes Ding) that is, a
thing that is not a thing. In dogmatism therefore, consistency (which is the
first requirement for any true philosophy) attains nothing other than thatwhich is not-I should become I, and that that which is I should become
not-I, as is the case with Spinoza. But as yet no dogmatist has proved that
-7
8
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
not-I could give itself reality and that it could have any meaning except
that of standing in contrast to an absolute I. Even Spinoza has not proved
anywhere that the unconditional could and should lie in the not-I. Rather,
led only by his concept of the absolute, he straightway posits it in an ab-
solute object, and he does so as if he presupposed that everybody who con-
ceded him his concept of the unconditional would follow him automatical-
ly in believing that, of necessity, it had to be posited in a not-I. Once hav-ing assumed though not proved it, he fulfills the duty of consistency morestrictly than any single one of his enemies. For it suddenly becomes clear
that—as if against his own will— through the sheer force of his consistency,
which did not shun any conclusion based on his supposition, he elevated
th
not-I to the I, and demeaned the Ito a not-I. For him, the world is no
longer world, the absolute object
no longer object. No sense perception, no
----..
concept reaches his One Substance whose nonfinitude is present only to the
intellectual intuition. As everywhere, so also in this present investigation,
h t
can take the place of perfect dogmatism. No philosopher was so
rth
as he to recognize his own great misunderstanding; to do so and to
rrv
at his goal would have been one and the same for him. No
recrimination is more unbearable than the one made against him so often,
tht h
arbitrarily presupposed the idea of absolute substance, or even that
th d
sprang from an arbitrary explanation of words. To be sure, it
easier to overthrow a whole system by means of a small grammatical
rr,
rather than to insist on the discovery of its final fundamentalswhich, no matter how erroneous, must be detectable somewhere in the
hn nd.
The first one
2
to see that Spinoza's error was not in the
d f th
unconditional] but in the fact that Spinoza posited it outside
th ,
had understood him and thus had found the way to [philosophy as a
'science."
§5
(2
Any system that takes its start from the subject, that is, from the I
hh thnbl nl n
respect to an object, and that is supposed to be
nthr dt
nor criticism," is like dogmatism in that it contradicts
tlf n t n
principle, insofar as the latter is supposed to be the
pr prnpl.
However, it is worth while to trace the origin of this
prnpl.
t
customary to presuppose— to be sure, rashly— that the supreme
prnpl f ll phlph
must express a
ft.
f, n ln
with linguistic
, n ndrtd ft t n thn
that was outside the sphere
f th pr,
absolute I (and therefore inside the sphere of the conditional)
then, of necessity, the question had to arise: What could be the condition-
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
79
ing]principle of this fact? A phenomenon, or else a thing in itself? That was
the next question, once one found oneself in the world of objects. A
phenomenon? And what could the principle of this phenomenon be?(Especially if, for instance, imagination [Vorstellung], which is itself a
phenomenon, was postulated as principle of all philosophy. Is it in turn a
phenomenon, and so on, ad infinitum? Or was it the intention that that
phenomenon which was to furnish the principle of fact should not presup-
pose any other phenomenon? Or was the principle to be a thing in itself?Let us examine this matter more closely.
Th
thinginitiathe_not-I 4:?osited as_antecedent to any I. (Specula-
tion demands the unconditional. Once the question as to where the uncon-ditional lies is settled, by some in favor of the I, by others of the not-I, then
both systems must proceed in the same manner. What the one asserts
about the I, the other must assert about the not-I, and vice versa. In short,
we must be able to use their theorems interchangeably, simply by
substituting in one system a not-I for the I, in the other an I for the not-I.
If one could not do that without damage to the system, one of the two
would have to be inconsistent.) The
phnnn
is the not-I conditioned
by the I."
[173] If the principle of all philosophy is to be a fact, and if the principle
of the fact is to be a
thn n tlf,
then every I is done away with, there is
no longer any pure I, any freedom, and there is no reality in any I but in-stead only negation. For the I is cancelled in its very origin when a not-I isposited absolutely. In reverse, when the I is posited absolutely, all not-I is*
canceled as original and posited as a mere negation. (A system which takes
its start from the subject, that is, from the conditioned I, must necessarily
presuppose a thing in itself which, however, can occur in the imagination(Vorstellung), that is, as an object, only in relation to the subject, that is,only as phenomenon (Erscheinung). In short, this system turns out to be
the
nd
of realism that is most incomprehensible and most inconsistent.)
If the last principle of that ultimate fact is to be a phenomenon, it
cancels itself immediately as the supreme principle, because an uncondi-tional phenomenon is a contradiction. This is why all philosophers who
took a not-I for the principle of their philosophy, at the same time elevatedit to an absolute not-I, posited as independent of every I, that is, to a thing
in itself.
The consequence is that it would be odd indeed to hear from the mouthsof philosophers who affirm the freedom of the I any simultaneous assertion
that the principle of all philosophy must be a fact, provided that one could
really assume that they were aware of the consequence of that latter asser-
tion, which is that the principle of all philosophy must be a not-I.(This consequellte follows necessarily for, in that case, the I is posited
only as subject, that is, as conditional, and therefore cannot be the
[172]
8
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [174,175]
ultimate principle. Thus, either
all
philosophy is nullified as an uncondi-tional science, since its merely conditional principle cannot be the highestpossible one, or else the object must be taken as original and therefore asindependent of every I, and the I itself must be determined as something
that can be posited only in contrast to an absolute something that is
determined as an absolute nothing.)
Nevertheless those philosophers really wanted the I, and not the not-I, as
principle of philosophy, but they did not want to abandon the concept of
fact
.1174
In order to extricate themselves from the dilemma which con-fronted them, they had to choose the I, though not the absolute I, but the
empirically conditioned I as the principle of all philosophy. And what
could have been closer at hand than that? Now they had an I as principle
of philosophy. [It looked as if] their philosophy could not be dubbed
dogmatism. At the same time they had a fact since nobody could
deny
that the empirical I is the principle of a fact.
True this was satisfactory only for a time. For when the matter was
in-
spected more closely, it turned out that either nothing at all was gained,
oronly this much that again one had a not-I as principle of philosophy. It isevident that it makes no difference whether I start from the I conditioned
by the not-I, or from the not-I conditioned by the I.
Also, the I condition-
ed
by the not-I is
precisely the point at which dogmatism must arrive,
thou h
belatedly; in fact, all philosophy must arrive at it.
3
Furthermore,
all philosophers would necessarily have to explain in the same manner
what the I conditioned by the not-I is, if they did not tacitly assume
something superior to this fact (this conditionality of the I) about whichthey are secretly in disagreement—that is,
assume some superior entity as
ground of explanation of the conditioned I and not-I. That ground can be
nothing other than either an absolute not-I, not conditioned by the I,
or
else an absolute I, not conditioned by a not-I. But the latter was alreadynullified by the establishment of the subject as principle of philosophy.
From there on consistency would demand either that one refrain from anyfurther determination of that principle, that is, from all philosophy, or else
that one assume an absolute not-I, that is, the principle of dogmatism
which, in turn, is a principle that contradicts itself
§4). In
short, the sub-
ject as ultimate principle would lead into contradictions no matter which
way it might turn, and these contradictions could be hidden, after a
fashion, only behind inconsistencies and precarious proofs. True enough,if the philosophers had agreed that the subject was the ultimate principle,
peace could have been established [175] in the philosophical world,
because they could readily have agreed on the mere analysis of that princi-
ple, and as soon as anyone had gone beyond the mere analysis of it and
(seeing that analysis could lead no farther) had tried by synthesis to explainthe analytical fact of the detemination of the I by the not-I and of the not-I
by the
I.
he would have broken the agreement and presupposed a superior
pt
[176]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
ANNOTATION. As is well-known, it was Reinhold who tried to elevate theempirically conditioned I (which exists in consciousness) to the principle ofphilosophy. One would show very little insight into the necessity found inthe progress of science if one were to mention Reinhold s attempt without
due deference. He deserves the highest esteem, though meanwhile
philosophy progressed farther. It *s not his destiny to
solve
the intrinsic
problem of philosophy, but to bring it into the
clearest focus. Who is notaware of the great impact such a decisive presentation of the problem willhave, precisely in philosophy where, as a rule, an intrinsic presentation ispossible only owing to a fortuitous glimpse of the truth which is yet to bediscovered? Even the author of the
Critique of Pure Reason
in his attempt
not only to arbitrate the dispute among philosophers but to resolve the an-tinomy in philosophy itself, did not know what else to do than to state the
point at issue in an all-encompassing question which he expressed as
follows: How are synthetic judgements a priori possible? As will be shown
in the course of this investigation, this question in its highest abstraction is
none other than: How is it possible for the absolute I to step out of itself
and oppose to itself a not-I? It was quite natural that this question (as long
as it was not introduced in its highest abstraction) be misunderstood, along
with its answer. The next merit, then, that a thinking man could earn was
obviously to present the question in a higher abstraction and thus
[176]
securely
prepare the way for an answer. This merit was earned by the author of the
Theory of the Faculty of Imagination ,
by stating his principle of
con-
sciousness. In it he reached the last point of abstraction, where one had tostand before one could reach that which is higher than all abstraction.
§6The perfect system of [philosophical] science proceeds from the ab-
solute I, excluding everything that stands in contrast to it. This, as the One
Unconditionable, conditions the whole chain of knowledge, circumscribesthe sphere of all that is thinkable and, as the absolute
all-comprehending
reality rules the
whole system of our knowledge. Only through an absolute
I, only through the fact that it is posited absolutely (schlechthin gesetzt)
does it become possible that a not-I appears in contrast to it, indeed thatphilosophy itself becomes possible. For the whole task of
theoretical and
practical philosophy is nothing else than the solution of the contradiction
between the pure and the empirically conditioned I.
*The word
prl
is usually taken in a much too narrow
n
Empirical is everything thatis in contrast to the pure I, everything essentially related to a not-I, even the original positingof any contrast (Entgegensetzen) as posited in some not-I, a positing which is an act that hasits source in the I itself, the very act by which any contrasting becomes possible.
Pr
what
exists without relation to objects.
xprnd ht
is possible only through objects.
prr ht
is possible only in relation to objects but not through them.
prl
is that
which makes objects possible.
82
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
[177]
Theoretical philosophy, in order to solve the contradiction, proceeds from
synthesis to synthesis, to the highest possible one in which I and not-I are
ideutgled_(glei.cli—gesent..), where, because theoretical reasoning ends incontradictions, practical reason enters in order to cut the knot by means
of absolute demands.
If, therefore, the principle of all philosophy were to lie in the empirically
conditioned I (about which dogmatism and the unfinished ciriticism
basically agree), then all szontaaeity of the I, theoretical as well as prac-
tical, would be quite unexplainable.) For thelosoreticali [177] strives to posit
the I and the not-I as identical and, therefore, to elevate the not-I itself tothe form of the I; thegracticalstrives for pure unity by exclusion of all that
is not-I. Both of them can do what they do only inasmuch as the absolute I
has absolute causality and pure identity, Thus the ultimate principle ofphilosophy cannot be anything that lies outside the absolute I; it can beneither a phenomenon nor a thing in itself.
The absolute I is not a phenomenon. Even the very concept of ab-
soluteness forbids it. It is neither a phenomenon nor a thing in itself,
because it is no thing at all, but simply and purely I, which excludes allthat is not-I.
The last point on which all our knowledge and the entire series of the con-
ditional depend, cannot be conditioned by anything ulterior at all. The
entirety of our knowledge has no stability if it has nothing to stabilize it, if..., 1 it does not rest on that which is carried by its own strength. And that isnothing else than that which is real through freedom. The beginning andthe end of all philosophy is
freedom
32
§
7
So far we have determined the I as only that which can in no way be anobject for itself, and which, for anything outside of it, can be neither ob-ject nor not-object, that is, cannot be anything at all. Therefore it does notreceive its own reality, as objects do, through something lying outside its
sphere, but exclusively through itself alone. This concept of the I is the on-
ly one by which the I is designated as absolute and my whole furhter in-vestigation is now nothing but a plain development of this.
If the I werensiddentical with itself, if its original form were not theform
(Apure identity
then all we seem to have won so far would be lostagain. For the I is only because it is." If it were not pure identity, that
is,only that which it is then it could not be posited by itself, that is, it could
also be like that which it is not. But the I is either not at all, or else onlythrough itself. Therefore the original form '(Urform), of the I must be pure
identity.
[178179
F TH
AS
PRNPLFPHLPH
83
[178] Only that which is through itself gives itself the form of identity,
because only that which is because it is, is determined in its own being by
nothing but identitykhat is, is determined by itself. The existence of
everything else that exists is determined not only by its own identity butalso by something outside of it.
34
But if there were not something that isthrough itself, whose identity is the sole condition of its being, then there
woud be nothing at all identical with itself, because only that which is
through its own identity can bestow identity on everything else that is. Only
in
-
an absolute, posited by its own being as identical, can everything that is
achieve the unity of its own essence (Wesen). How could anything be
posited at all if everything that can be posited were mutable, and if
nothing unconditional, nothing immutable, could be acknowledged, inwhich and through which everything that can be posited would receive
stability and immutability? What would it mean to posit something if allpositing, all existence[Dasein], all reality were dispersed constantly, lostceaselessly, and if there were no common point of unity and stability thatreceives absolute identity, not through something else, but through itself,
by its own being, in order to gather all rays of existence in the center of its
identity, and to keep together in the sphere of its power all that is
posited?
35
Thus it is the I alone that bestows unity and stability on everything that
is. All identity pertains only to that which is posited in the I, and pertainsto it only insofar as it is posited in the I.
Therefore it is the absolute I that furnishes the basis for all form of iden-
tity (A = A). If this form (A = A) preceded the I, then A could not ex-
press what is posited
in
the I but only that which is
outside
the I; thereforethat form would become the form of objects as such, and even the I wouldbe subordinated to it, as just another object determined by it. The I would
not be absolute but conditional and, as a specific subform, would be
subordinated to the generic concept of objects, that is, it would be one of
the modifications of the absolute not-I, which alone would be self-
identical.
Since the I, in its very nature (Wesen) is posited by its sheer being [179]
as absolute identity, there is no difference between the two expressions of
it, either / am I, or
I am
§8The I can be determined in no way except by being
unconditional,
for it
is
I owing to its sheer unconditionality, since it cannot become a thing at
all. Thus it is exhaustively expressed when its unconditionality is expressed.
Since it is only through its unconditionality, it would be nullified if any
conceivable predicate of could he conceived in any way other than
t
84
HE UNCONDITION L IN HUM N KNOWLEDGE
[180,181]
182]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
5
t
through its unconditionality; a different way would either contradict its
unconditionality or else presuppose something even higher in which couldbe found a unity of both the unconditional and the presumed predicate.
i
Th n
(Wesen)
f th frd,
that is, it is not thinkable ex-cept inasmuch as it posits itself by its own absolute power (Selbstmacht),not, indeed, as any kind of
thn,
but as sheer I. This freedom can be determined
ptvl,
because we want to attribute freedom not to a thing
in itself but to the pure I as posited by itself, present to itself alone, and ex-
cluding all that is not-I. No objective freedom belongs to the I because it is
not an object at all. As soon as we try to determine the I as an object, it
tvididraws into the most confined sphere, under the conditions of the in-
terdependence of objects—its freedom and independence disappear. An
object is possible only through some other object, and only inasmuch as itis bound to conditions. Freedom
only through itself and it encompassesthe nonfinite.
With regard to objective freedom we are not less knowledgeable than
with regard to any other concept which contradicts itself. And our inability
to think a
contradiction is not ignorance. The freedom of the I,
however,
Can_
be
determined
ptvl.
For the I, its freedom is neither more nor
less
than
unconditional positing of reality in itself through its own absolute
. power
(Selbstmacht). It can be determined
ntvl
as complete in-dependence, even as complete incompatibility with all that is not-I.
[180]You insist that you should be conscious of this freedom? But are
you bearing in
mind that all your consciousness is possible only through
this freedom,
and that the condition cannot be contained in the condition-
ed?'
6
Are you considering in any way that the I is no longer the pure,
ab-
solute I once
it occurs in consciousness; that there can be no object at
all
for the absolute I; and,
moreover, that the absolute I never can become an
object e awareness
implies
t e anger of the
11 [See quotation
._
2:120 in n. 25Tit is not
a free act of the immutable but an unfreeL.ng
e_
that induces the mutable I, conditioned by the not-I,
togrive to maintain
its identity and to reassert itself in the undertow of endless change.* (Or do
you really [181] feel free in your self-awareness?) But thatstriving of the
empirical I, and the consciousness stemming from it, would itself not be
possible without the freedom of the absolute I, and absolute freedom is
equally necessary as a condition for both imagination and action. For your
empirical I would never strive to save its identity if the absolute I were not
originally posited by itself, as pure identity, and
out of its absolute power."
•
Ilt is the character of finiteness to be unable to posit anything without at the same time
positing something in contrast. The form of this contrast is originally determined by the con-
trast of the not-I. For, while absolutely positing itself as identical with itself, the finite I must
neceuarilyposit itself in contrast to every not-I. And that is not possible without positing the
not-I itself. fl he nonfinite I would exlude all contrasting entities but without letting the exclu-
If you want to attain this freedom as something objective, whether you
want to comprehend it or deny it, you will always fail, because freedom
consists in the very fact that it excludes all that is not-I absolutely.
The I cannot be given by a mere
r
t
Concepts are possible only in
the sphere of the conditional; concepts of objects only are possible. If the I ,)were a concept then there would have to be something higher in which it
could find its unity, and something lower which would furnish its
multiplicit} In
6,
hrtth
I would_then
be conditioned throughout.
(Therefore
the I can be
determined onlyin_anintuition
(Anschauun4. But
since the I is I only because it can never become an object, it cannot occurin an intuition of sense, but only in an intuition which grasps no object at
all and is in no way a sensation, in short, in fan
ntlltl
intuition
Where there is an object there is sensuous intuition, and vice versa. Where
there is no object, that is, in the absolute I, there is no sense intuition,
therefore either no intuition at all or else intellectual intuition:
-
herefore
th dtrnd fr tlf r n ntlltl nttn.
40
I know very well that Kant denied all intellectual intuition, but I also
know the context in which he denied it.'"It was in an investigation whichonly
prpp
the
blt
I at every step and which, on the basis of
presupposed higher principles, determines only the empirically condition-ed I and the not-I in its synthesis with that I. I also know that the intellec-tual intuition must be completely incomprehensible as soon as one tries toliken it to sensuous intuition. Furthermore, it can occur in consciousnessjust as little as can absolute freedom, since consciousness presupposes anobject, and since intellectual intuition
182
is possible only inasmuch as it
has no object. The attempt to refute it from the standpoint of con-
sciousness must fail just as surely as the attempt to give it objective realitythrough consciousness, which would mean to do away with it altogether.The I is determined only by its freedom, hence everything we say of the
pure I must be determined by its freedom.
sion set them up in contrast to itself. It would simply equate everything with itself and,
therefore, wherever it posits anything it would posit it as
t n
reality. It could not strive tosave its own identity
.
and, therefore, could not contain any snthesis of a Manifold, any unity
o
cOTisciousness etc. The empirical I, however, is determined by the original contrast is
_
nothing at all
without
it. Therefore it owes its reality, as
prl
I, not to itself but only to
the restriction by the not-I. It manifests itself not by a mere
,
but by
thn,
which means
that it
,
not by its own sheer being, but by thinking
thn, thnn bjt.
In order to
save the original identity of the I, the image (Vorstellung) of the identical I must accompany
all other images so that their manifoldness can be thought at all, in its inherent relation tounity. Therefore the empirical I exists only
thrh
and
n rltn
to the unity of images
and, outside of that unity, has no reality in itself at all but disappears as soon as one
eliminates objects altogether along with the unity of its synthesis. Thus its reality as
prl
is determined for it by something posited
td
of it, by
bjt.
Its being is not determinedabsolutely, but by objective forms, and it is determined as an
xtn
(Dasein). Yet it is only
n th
nonfinite I, and through it for mere objects could never bring about the image if I as a
principle of their unity. '
•
86
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
183]
184]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
7
§
9
The I is simply unity.
For if it were multiplicity it would not
be
throughits own being but through the reality of its parts. It would not be condition-
ed by itself alone, by its sheer being (that is, it would not be at all) but
would be conditioned by all single parts of the multiplicity for, if any one
part were canceled, the completeness of the I itself would be canceled. But
that would contradict the concept of its freedom, therefore (§8) the I can-not contain any multiplicity; it must be simply unity—nothing but simply
I
.-+, A
r
Wherever there is unconditionality determined_ by freedom, there is I.
Therefore
the I is absolutely one.
If there were to be several I's, if there
were to be an I beside the I, these different I's would have to be differen-
tiated by something. But since the I is conditioned only by itself and is
determinable only in intellectual intuition, it must be identical with itself(not at all determinable by number). Accordingly, the I and the I-outside-
thelyzoski_catacide
and
would be indistinguishable. Thus the I can be
naught but one.
42
(If the I were not one, the reason why there should be
several I's would not lie in the I itself, in the nature (Wesen) of it, for the I
is
not determinable as an object (§7); it would lie outside the I and thus
have no meaning other than the canceling of the I.) The pure I is the sameeverywhere, I is everywhere = I. Wherever there is an attribute of I, there is
I. The attributes of the I cannot differ from each other, since they are alldetermined by the same unconditionality (all are nonfinite).They would be
determined as different from each other either by their mere concept,
I1831which is impossible since the I is an absolute oneness, or by something
outside of them, whereby they would lose their unconditionality, which
again makes no sense. The I is I everywhere; it fills, as it were, the entireinfinity, if it would make sense to use such an expression:
13
Those who know no other I than the empirical one (which, however, isquite incomprehensible without the presupposition of the pure I), those
who have never elevated themselves to the intellectual intuition of their
own selves, can find only nonsense in the theorem that the I is only one. For
only the completed science itself can prove that the empirical I is
multiplicity. (Imagine an infinite sphere—of which by necessity there is
only one — and inside this sphere imagine as many finite spheres as youwish. These, however, are possible only inside the one which is infinite.
Thus,
even if you do away with the finite ones, you still have [their locus
or conditionj the infinite sphere.) Those who have the habit of thinking
only of the empirical I find it necessary to assume a plurality of I's, each ofwhich
is
I for itself and not-I for the others, and they do not consider that a
pure I is thinkable only through the unity of its being.
These adherents of the empirical I will be equally unable to think the
concept of pure, absolute unity (unitas) because, whenever the absoluteunity is mentioned, they can think only of an empircial, derivative unity(which is a concept symbolized by the number scheme).The [pure] I has as little unity in the empirical sense (unicitas) as it hasmultiplicity. It is completely outside the sphere of determination by thisconcept; it is neither one nor many in the empirical sense, for both alter-
natives contradict its concept. The concept of a pure I not only lies outside
the domain of whatever can be determined by the two concepts of em-
pirical unity and multiplicy, but lies in an entirely opposite sphere.
Whenever the talk is about a numerical unity, something is presupposed in
regard to which one can speak of numerical oneness as such. What is
presupposed is a generic concept under which the numerical one is com-
prehended as the unique member of its kind. However the (real and
logical) [184] possibility still remains that it might not be the only one; that
is, it is one only in regard to its existence, not in regard to its essence. Incontrast, the I is one precisely in regard to its simple, pure being, and not
in regard to its existence (Dasein), which is no essential attribute of it at all.
Also, it cannot be thought of at all in regard to something higher; it cannot
fall under a generic concept.
Concept
as such is something that com-
prehends multiplicity in oneness. Thei_therefore cannot be a concept, \
neither a pure nor an abstracted one, because it is neither a comprehen-ding nor a comprehended, but an al
3scity. It is neither genus nor
species nor individual, because genus, species, and individual are
thinkable only in regard to multiplicity. Whoever can take the I for a con-cept or can predicate numerical unity or multiplicity of it, knows nothing
of the I. Whoever wants to turn it into a demonstrable concept, can no
longer take it as unconditioned. For the absolute cannot be mediated at
all, hence it can never fall into the domain of demonstrable concepts.
Everything demonstrable presupposes either something already
demonstrated, or else the ultimate, which cannot be further
demonstrated. The very desire to demonstrate the absolute does away with
it, and also with all freedom, all absolute identity, etcetera.
Annotation.
Someone might reverse this matter: "Just because the I isnot something general, it cannot become the principle of philosophy."
If, as we shall now presuppose, philosophy must start from the uncondi-
tional, then it cannot start from something general. For the general is con-ditioned by the singular. and is possible only in regard to conditional (em-
pirical) knowledge. Therefore the most consistent system of dogmatism,the Spinozistic, declares itself most emphatically against the opinion thatconceives of the one absolute substance as of an
ens rationis,
an abstractconcept. Spinoza sees the unconditional in the absolute not-I, but not in an
abstract concept nor in the idea of the world, nor of course in any single
\
88
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
8,86
existing thing. On the contrary he inveighs vehemently[185] —if one mayuse this word in speaking of a Spinoza— against it* and declares that he
who calls God one, in an empirical sense, or thinks of Him as a mere
abstraction, has not even an inkling of the nature (Wesen) of God. To besure, one cannot understand how the not-I is supposed to lie outside of allnumerical determination, but one must realize that Spinoza did not trulyposit the unconditional in the not-I; rather he turned the not-I into the Iby elevating it to the absolute [see no. 25].Leibniz supposedly started from the generic concept of things as such.
That would be a matter to investigate more closely, but this is not the place
fr t. t
is certain, however, that his disciples started from that concept
nd
thus founded one of the systems of incomplete dogmatism.[186]
(tn:
How, in that system, can one explain the monads andthe preestablished harmony? As, in criticism, theoretical reason ends withthe result that the I becomes not-I, so, in dogmatism, it must end with the
opposite, that the not-I becomes I. In criticism, practical reason must
*See several passages in Jacobi's book about the doctrine of Spinoza, pp. 179 ff.
[Ober dieLehre des Spinoza, in Briefen an Herrn Moses Mendelssohn.
(Breslau, 1785); now
Werke,
vol.
4, pt 1 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968)]. See other passages also,especially
Eth.
2. prop. XL, schol. 1. Furthermore, in one of his letters he says Cum multa
&int, quae nequaquam in
imaginatione,
sed solo
intellectu
assequi possumus, qualia sunt
Substantia, Aeternitas
el al. si quis talia eiusmodi notionibus, quae duntaxat auxilia
imagina-
tionis
sunt, explicare conatur, nihilo plus agit, quam si det operam, ut sua imaginatione in-saniat. [Since there are many things that we can grasp by no kind of imagination but only by
the intellect, such as substance, eternity, and others, if anyone tries to explain them by means
of the kind of notions which are mere auxiliaries to the imagination, then, although it seemsexpedient to such a one, he attains nothing but unsoundness of mind, owing to his imagina-
tion
Lttr f prl 20, 66, t Ldv r. f. th trnltn b . lf n h
Th
Correspondence of Spinoza
(N r: Rll nd Rll, 66, lttr 2, p. 66 nrdr t
understand this passage, one must know that Spinoza thought that abstract concepts
were pure products of the power of imagination. He says that the transcendental expressions(which is what he calls expressions like
ens, res, etc. [schol.
1]) arise from the fact that thebody is capable of absorbing only a limited quantity of impressions, and when it is over-
saturated the soul cannot imagine them except in a confused manner, without any differen-tiation, all under one attribute. He explains the general concepts in the same manner, e.g.,
n, nl,
etc.
Compare the passage in the
Ethics
referred to above, and especially his
treatise
De Intellect us Emendatione
For Spinoza the lowest level of knowledge is the imagin-
ing of single things; the highest is pure intellectual intuition of the infinite attributes of the
absolute substance, and the resulting adequte knowledge of the essence of things. This is the
hht pnt
of his system. For him, mere confused imagination is the source of all error, but
th
intellectual intuition of God is the source of all truth and perfection in the broadest sense
of
th rd. n
the second part of his
Ethics,
in the scholion to proposition XLIII, he says
with regard to the idea of mind of which the scholion to proposition XXI said: the idea of the
nd nd th
mind itself are one-and-the-same thing, which is considered under one-and-
thttrbt,
that of thought. For indeed the idea of the mind, that is to say, the idea of
th d,
is nothing but the form of the idea insofar as this is considered as mode of thought
tht rltn t
any object : "What can be more clear and certain than this idea, as a
norm of truth? Indeed, as light makes manifest both itself and darkness, so is truth the normof itself and of falsehood." What can surpass the quiet bliss of these words, the One and All
( C/
x n f r bttr lf"
8
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
89
reestablish the absolute I; in dogmatism it must end with the reestablish-
ment of the absolute not-I. It would be interesting to devise a consistentsystem of dogmatism. Maybe that will yet be done).
"The greatest merit of the philosophical scholar is not to establish
abstract concepts nor to spin systems of them. His ultimate aim is pure ab-solute being; his greatest merit is to unveil and reveal that which can never
be conceptualized, explained, deduced, in short, to reveal the undissec-
table, the immediate, the simple.""
§1
The I contains"
ll bn, ll rlt.
If there were a reality outside ofthe I, either it would coincide with the reality posited in the I or it would
not. Now, all reality of the I is determined by its unconditionality; it has no
reality except by being posited unconditionally. If there were a realityoutside of the I that would
rrpnd
to the reality of the I, then that
outside reality would have to be unconditional also. Yet, it is only throughunconditionality that the I receives
ll
its reality, therefore any
n
reality
of the I, if posited outside of it, would also have to contain all its reality,
that is, there would be an I outside of the I, whichAtles_nat—makesense
(§9). On the other hand, if that reality outside the I differed from the
reality of the I [instead of corresponding to it], then, owing to the absolute
unity of the I, the positing of the outside reality would at the same time
cancel the I itself, which makes no sense. (We are talking about the
blt
I, whose function is to be the generic concept of all reality. All
reality must
8
coincide with it, that is, must be
t
reality. The absoluteI must contain the data, the absolute content (Materie) that determines all
being, all possible reality.) If we want to anticipate objections, then we '
s
must also anticipate answers. Of course my theorem [that the I contains all
being, all reality] could be readily refuted if either a not-I postulated as
ntdnt
to all that is
were conceivable, or else if that not-I which is
originally and absolutely
ppd
to the I were conceivable as an absolute
not-I in short, the reality of the things in themselves could beproved
in the philosophy hitherto prevailing, for then all original reality would befound in the absolute not-I.
[We face an alternative.]
thr
the thing in itself is the not-I posited asantecendent to all that is I. But I have already proved that a not-I posited
as antecendent to all that is I has no reality at all and is not even thinkable
because, unlike the I, it does not realize itself and is therefore conceivable
only in contrast to the I, that is, to the absolute I, not the conditioned I(since the latter is only a correlate of the object).
r l
the thing in itself would be the not-I merely as absolutely
opposed to the I as finite I. Now, it is true enough that the not-I stands in
90
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
188,189]
190]
F THE
I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
1
original opposition to the I as I.* For that reason, the original not-I cannot
be a mere empirical, abstract [188] concept since, in order to find such aconcept in experience, experience itself would have to be presupposed,that is, the existence of a not-I. Nor can it be a general concept a priori,
because it is not simply posited but absolutely counterposited and,
therefore, as antithesisAand, true to its quality as antithesis, it must be
posited just as absolutely as the I, and in opposition to it. It is this original
counterpositing of the not-I as such that may have led to imagining an
t,
bsolute not-I antecendent to an I. For, though dogmatism pretends it can
conceive of a not-I antecedent to e I, not as merely opposed to the I, butas simply posited, the mere thought of an absolutely posited not-I would
have been impossible had the absolute antithesis not hovered in the mind
and, what is more, had that antithetical not-I not been endowed with that
reality which belongs not just to the antithesis but to the not-I as posited
n
the I.
That absolutely counterposited not-I, in fact, is not absolutely unthink-
able, as is the not-I presupposed absolutely (i.e., as antecedent to all that is1). But by itself it has no reality, not even a thinkable one. Just because it is
counterposited to the I, it is posited as sheer negation, as an absolute
nothing about which one can say nothing, nothing at all, except that it is
mere antithesis to all reality. As soon as we try to give it reality, we transfer
it from the sphere of mere antithesis to the sphere of the conditional, the
sphere of what is posited in the I. Eiher it stands in
bs
te opposition to
the I, as absolute not-I, that is, [absolute not ne , or it becomes
something, a thing—that is, it is no 1189] longer posited absolutely but
conditionally, posited in the I, that is, it ceases to be a thing in itself.
If one wants to call the not-I as originally posited in opposition to the I a
thing in itself, it can easily be done, as long as one means by thin initself the absolute negation of all reality. But if one wants to attribute
reality to this absolutely oppositional not-I, that can be done only through
'Inasmuch as the not-I is originally opposed to the I, it necessarily presupposes the
I
But
the opposition itself occurs absolutely, just as does the position of the I [see n.31], and on thatvery account that which is absolutely posited in contrast to reality is absolute negation. The I
malts a
not-I in opposition to the I, and for this one cannot give any ulterior reason, just as
orw can give none for the I positing itself absolutely; in fact, the one immediately implies theother. The positing of the I is the placing in absolute opposition, that is, the negation, of whatIs mit I. But originally nothing at all can be put in opposition unless something antecedent is
absolutely posited; much less can there be any absolute opposition without an antecedentposition. Yet opposition occurs. The second theorem see n. 31] of any science which [by
111111111of
that theorem] absolutely opposes the not-I to the I, receives its content (the
opposite)
Implicitly.
Its
form (the
opposing
as such) is determinable only by the first theorem. The
second theorem, however, is not to be derived from the first analytically, because no not-I cancome forth from the absolute I. Instead, there is a progression from thesis to antithesis and
rum there to synt ' Of course it would br incomprehensible how the whole
science
could
be
based on
one
I hottellt,
if one were to
suppose that
Mr
science is,
as it were,
clicapallled
that theorem. But as fat as I know no philosopher has supposed that.
an illusion of the empirical power of imagination that lends it that reality
which belongs to the not-I
nl n t t lt f bn ptd n
pptn t th . ,
Since no reality belongs to the originally
counterposited not-I but only negation, and neither pure nor empirical
being but no being at all (absolute nonbeing), therefore, if it is to attain
Isalit,y, it must not be posited in absolute opposition to the I but/mile I 4
itself, Inasmuch as the I originally counterposits to itself a not-I (and doesnot simply exclude it as does the absolute I), it posits itself as canceled. But
since, at the same time, it ought to posit itself absolutely, it will in tur
t
osit the not-I as absolutely canceled, = 0. If, therefore, it posits the not-I
not I. Yet both of them
o
absolutely, it cancels itself; and if it posits itself absolutely, it cancels th
ought
to be posited. This contradiction cannot be
resolved Uniess
IF
1pOiiis the not-I as equal to the I. However, the form ofthe not-I forbids that. Therefore the I can only
nt
prt
reality to the not-I;
it can posit the not-I as reality only if combined with negation. The not-I
therefore has no reality as long as it is only counterposited to the I, that is,
as long as it is pure, absolute not-I. As soon as reality is imparted to the
not-I, it must be posited as contained in the very concept of all reality, that
is, in the I; it must cease to be
pr
not-I, In order to posit the not-I in the I
(which is necessary because the not-I ought to be posited although it iscounter to the I), the I is absolutely compelled to impart to the not-I its
own form of I, the form of being and reality, of unconditionality and
oneness. This form, however, is incompatible with the form of [190] theoriginally counterposited not-I. (Therefore the transfer of the form of I to
. ..
the not-I is possible only by a synthesis of the two Out of this transferredform of I, the original form of not-I, and the synthesis of the two originate,
the
categoriee
through which alone the original not-I receives reality
(beComes imaginable) but for this very reason ceases to be absolute not-I.
Therefore the idea of a thing in itself cannot be realized at all, either
through a not-I posited as antecedent to any I, or through the not-Ioriginally counterposited to the I. However, the theorem that the I
contains all reality could easily be invalidated if the theoretical idea of a
sum total of objective reality outside of the I could be realized. I admit that
the ultiMate synthesis through which theoretical reason tries to solve the
confict between I and not-I is some x which, as a connotation of all reality,
should unite the two realities, the I and the not-I posited in the I. So it
seems that this x is determined as something outside the I, and thus = not-
I, but, by the same token, as something outside the not-I, thus = I.
5
°
Therefore theoretical reason appears to take refuge in an absolute
connotation of all reality = I = not-I, and thus to annul the absolute I asconnotation of all reality.
Neverthelet, the ultimate synthesis of theoretical reason, which is
nothing else than the last attempt to compose the contrast between I and
92
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [191,
192]
not-I, becomes for us the most perfect guarantor
of the absolute reality ofj the absolute I, even though it seems to dissolve it.)The I could never be inneed of composing that contrast through the idea of an
bjtv
conceptof all reality had this contrast not first become possible owing to a positing
of the I as the all-embracing concept of reality, an original positing
antecedent to all not-I." If this were not the case, the not-I could have areality independent of the I, a reality which could be posited simultane-
ously with the reality of the I. In that case there would be no [191]
opposition between the two of them, but also no synthesis of them would be
needed and no objective concept of conflicting reality.* Likewise, withoutthe premise that the absolute I is the concept of all reality,
51
, no practicalphilosophy can be thought of whose aim must be the end of all not-I and
the recovery of the absolute I in its ultimate identity, that is, as the
connotative concept of all reality. * *
[192 §1
If the I contains all reality, it is nonfinite. For by what should it be
limited if not either by a reality outside of it, which is impossible (§10), orby a negation outside of it? The latter is also impossible since negation assuch is determinable only in contrast to an absolute, and therefore the I
•ADDITION TO THE FIRST EDITION: no
boxerov [no receptacle].
**
FOOTNOTE OF THE FIRST EDITION:
(In terms of sense one can think of it in the following
manner,
The absolute I describes an infinite sphere which includes all reality. Counter to thatanother infinite sphere is set up (not only excluded) which includes all negation (absolute not-
1).
This sphere is therefore absolutely = 0; yet it is possible only when the absolute sphere ofreality has already been described, and only by contrast to it. For absolute negation does not
create itself but is
determinable only in contrast to absolute reality. An infinite sphere outsideanother and previously posited infinite sphere is already a contradiction, and its being posited.Dutside that first sphere already indicates that it must be absoluteegation. For if it were not
so it would not be outside the other but would coincide with it. ffhe absolute sphere of the
not•I, if it were
simply posited absolutely, would have to cancel the I altogether, because oneinfinite sphere does not tolerate another. On the other hand, the sphere of the I would cancel
the
sphere
of the not-I, insofar as the latter is posited as infinite. And yet both are supposed to
be posited.
There is no remedy but the striving of the Ito draw into its own sphere the sphere
of the not-I,
for the latter is to be posited, and positing is possible only in the I." But this
possibility is denied by the negation which is the nature of the sphere of the not-I.
Consequently,
this latter negation can be posited only in contrast to the sphere of the I. If it is
to be
posited inside the sphere of reality, the infinite sphere of negation turns into a finite
sphere
of reality, i.e., it can be posited only as reality necessarily connected with negation.
And by that the I
becomes restricted. Though the sphere of the
I
is not entirely canceled, it
becomes
necessary to posit in it a negation, i.e., a limitation [Schranke]. Now, the finite
sphere
can strive to absorb the infinite, and to make itself the center of the entire sphere, a
center from which issue both the rays of infinity and the limitations of finitude, which is a
contradiction. If the struggle between the I and the not-I is expressed in the highest possible
synthesis (I not I) then, in order to resolve it, nothing remains but complete destruction of
the
finite sphere, i.e., an expansion of it until it coincides with the infinite sphere (practical
reason)."
[ 93
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
93
would have to be posited antecedently as absolutely without limitation.The third alternative would be a limitation of the I by itself, and then it
could not be posited absolutely but only under the condition of a given
limitation, which in turn is impossible. The I must be
bltl
nonfinite." If one of its attributes were finite, then, owing to that
attribute, the I itself would be finite; thus it would be nonfinite and finite
at the same time. Accordingly,
ll ttrbt f th t l b
nnfnt.
5
For the I is nonfinite only owing to
ht
it is, that is, owing to
its attributes. If one could dissect the reality of the I into several parts,
these parts either would retain the nonfiniteness of that reality or wouldnot. In the first case there would be an I outside the I (because whereverthere is nonfiniteness there is I), a nonfiniteness outside the nonfiniteness,which makes no sense. In the other case, the I could cease to be, owing to
division,
that is
it would not
be nonfinite, it would not be
blt
reality.
(Thrfr th
ndvbl."
If it is indivisible it is also immutable. Forsince it cannot be changed by anything outside itself (§ 8) the I would have
to be changed by itself, and one of its parts would determine the other,
that is, it would be divisible. But the I ought always to be equal to itself, anabsolute unity posited outside of all change.§ 12
If
btpt
is the same as the unconditional,
thn th th nl
btn.
57
If there were several substances there would be an I outsidethe I, which makes no sense. Therefore
vrthn tht n th , nd
td th nthn.
For the I contains all reality (§ 8), and
everything that is, is through reality. Therefore everything is in the I.Without reality there is nothing. Now, there is no reality except in the
[193] I, therefore there is nothing
td
the I. If the I is the only
substance, then
vrthn tht
is,
rl .
ltlldnf
h
We are standing at
the boundary of all knowledge, beyond which all*
reality, all thinking and imagining, vanish. EverythinLis only
in
the Land
fr
the I. [See n. 52.] The I itself is only
fr
itself. In order to find
something else, we have to find something before; we arrive at objective
truth only through another truth. But
we come to the I
only_through
the I,
because it
at all only inasmuch as it is only
fr
itself, and for anythingoutside the I, the I is nothing, that is, it is no object at all. For it is only
inasmuch as it thinks itself, not insofar as it is being thought [by another].In order to find truth, you must have a principle of all truth. Place it ashigh as you wish, it still must lie in the land of truth, in the land that youare as yet seeking. But if you produce all truth by yourself, if the last point
on which reality hinges is the I, and if this is only through itself and for
itself, then all truth and all reality are immediately present to you. By
4
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
194]
195,196]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
5
positing yourself as the I, you simultaneously circumscribe the whole
sphere of truth, of the truth which is truth only through you and for you.Everything is only in the
and for the I. In the I philosophy has found itsone-and-all (:Ev
xai navy
for which it has contended as the highest priceof victory until now.*
nnttn.
You want to measure the highest substantiality of the ab-solute I with your
drvtv
concept of the substantiality of the not-I. Do
you really believe that you have found the archconcept
rbrff
of
substantiality in the not-I?To be sure, philosophy set up a concept of the substantiality of the not-I
a long time ago. In order to save the immutable identity of your I, youmust necessarily also elevate the not-I to the level of identity. Its
4
original form [Urform] is multiplicity, and in some way you must
assimilate it to the I. Yet, in order that this not-I, that is, this multiplicity
will not coincide with the I, your power of imagination sets it in space. But
your synthesis of I and not-I would make the I absorb the multiplicity of
the not-I and thus would totally scatter the I. In order to prevent that, you
present multiplicity itself as a matter of change or succession, and for each
point of this change you posit one and the same subject, as determined by
t
quest for identity. Thus, by means of your synthesis and of the forms of
space and time produced by your synthesis, you obtain an object thatperseveres in space and time during all changes. That is, you obtain a
transferred (as it were, a borrowed) substantiality which, however, on that
very account, is not comprehensible without the presupposition of an
original and not-transferred substantiality in the absolute I. Incidentally,
t
the concept of the latter substantiality that made it possible for theCritical Philosophy to clear up the origin of the category of substance."
It was Spinoza who had already conceived of that archconcept of
substantiality in its utmost purity. He recognized that originally something
had to be the basis for all existence, a pure, immutable archbeing [Ursein] ,
b
for everything that comes about and passes away, something that
hd t
exist by itself, in which and through which everything in existence
hd
to attain the unity of existence. Nobody proved to him that this uncon-
ditional, immutable archform [Urform] could be found only in the I. As
ln
as the archconcept was not discovered, the derivative and transferred
concept of a substantiality of appearances was merely an abstract concept,
though antecedent to all possible experience, yet possible only in relation
to experience. And it was this abstract concept, that everybody used as anobjection to Spinoza, as if he had not been quite familiar with that concept
ADDIFION TO THE MST
FroToN• Al existence IDaseini rests on my I
see n.
521; my I is
everything: in it and tending toward it lzu ihmln" is everything that is. Take away my I, and
everything that is is nothing.
and had not explained innumerable times that he was not concerned with
the persistent element [das Beharrende] in time and change, but with what
stands outside of time, under the archform of immutability, and as if he
had not explained that the derivative concept has no meaning and no
reality without the archconcept. His opponents tried to refute noncondi-tionality with conditionality. The outcome is familiar.
13
If there is nothing outside the I, then the I must posit everything in itself,
that is, posit it as equal to the I. Everything it posits must be nothing elsethan its own reality in its entire infinity. The absolute I cannot determineitself to be anything but that which posits infinite reality, that is, posits
itself.
If, for lack of another word, we call the positing the original cause, andif we call a cause which posits nothing outside of itself but everything initself an immanent cause, then the I is the immanent cause of everything ?,-
that is." Whatever is, is only because it has reality. Its essence [Wesen]
nt
is reality, for it owes its beinglSein,
only to the nonfinitereality;. it is only inasmuch as the original source [Urquelle] of all reality
imparted reality to it. Thus the I is not only the cause of being but also the
cause of the essence of everything that is. For everything that is, is only
through what it is, that is, through its essence, its reality; and reality is only
in the I. (Whoever wants to refute these theorems with other theorems
which we shall encounter later may do so. But he will find that he couldhave saved himself that trouble, and that the opposition that meets thesetheorems stated here is precisely the problem of philosophy as a whole.
Yet, he will have to grant that thesis precedes antithesis, and that both
precede synthesis.)
4
The highest idea which expresses the causality of absolute substance (of
the I) is the idea of absolute power [Macht] [see n. 39].Can one measure the pure with empirical measure? If you cannot free
yourself from all the empirical determinations which your imagination
feeds you in regard to that idea, do not put the blame for your
misunderstanding on the idea but on yourself. This idea is so far from
everything empirical that it not only stands above it but even annihilates it.
For Spinoza, too, it was the only designation for the causality of the
6
absolute substance. The absolute
pr
of the one substance was the
ultimate for him in fact, the only reality. In it, according to Spinoza,
there is no wisdom, for its action itself is law; no will, for it acts by the in-
96
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
197]
198]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
7
trinsic power of its essence (Wesen), by the necessity of its being (Sein). It
does not act owing to any determination by any reality outside of itself (any
value, any truth)." It acts owing to its essence, owing to the nonfiniteperfection of its being and from unconditional power. Its very nature
I Wesen] is only this power.*
This most sublime idea in Spinoza's system was deemed not only
theoretically wrong but also refutable by practical arguments. Spinoza'sopponents said that this idea eliminates all notions of a free though law-
determined wisdom. For they had not elevated themselves to the pure view
of an absolute power which acts not according to any laws outside of it butonly according to the laws of its own being, through its own being as such.
On the
other hand they did not consider the fact that their concept ofwisdom is thinkable only under the assumption of some limitation andtherefore is an absurdity unless they themselves presuppose as their
ultimate aim an absolute power that simply acts out of an inner necessity of
its own nature (Wesen) which is no longer will, nor virtue, nor wisdom, nor
bliss, but
power as such.
Annotation.
True enough, Kant spoke of morality and proportionate
bliss as the highest good and ultimate goal. Yet he himself
knew very well
that morality
without an ultimate goal has no reality and that it presup-
poses
limitation and finiteness and is not thinkable as an ultimate goal in
itself but only as [197] an
approximation thereof." Kant also avoided a
definite declaration concerning the relationship of bliss to morality,
although he well knew that bliss, as a mere ideal of the imagination, is
nothing but a
schema"
fit only to convey the practical presentation
(praktische Vorstellbarkeit)"
of the not-I,** and therefore could not per-
tain to the ultimate purpose (Endzweck). The latter aims at the identifica-tion of the not-I with the I, that is, at a complete annihilation of it as not-I.
For that reason the search for empirical
happiness (as an agreement of
the
objects with the I, brought into unison by nature) would be unreasonable
without the presupposition that [198] the ultimate goal of all.striving is
not
*thr
bk.10, prop. XXXI. Prop. XXXII: Deus non
x rtn bn,
sed
x ntr
Jr prft:n.
Qui ilud statuunt, videntur aliquid extra Deum ponere, quod a Deo non
dependet, ad quo Deus tanquam ad exemplar in operando attendat, vel ad quod tanquam ad
cerium scopum collimat, quod profecto nihil aliud est, quam Deum fato subjicere. Prop.
X XXIII; Dei
potentia
est ipsius
nt.
ISchelling quotes from a Spinoza edition whose pro-
position numbers differ from the critical edition by Bruder (1843; Tauchnitz) and there is a
slight change in the first two sentences of his quotation. John Wild translates the end of schol.
2 of prop.
kxxiii
(Schelling's XXXII): I confess that this opinion, which subjects all things
to
a
certain indifferent God's will, and affirms that all things depend upon God's goodpleasure, is at a less distance from the truth than the opinion of those who affirm that God
dors everything for the sake of the Good. For these seem to place something outside of God
which is independent of Him, to which he looks while He is at work as to a model, or at which
l
as
if at a certain mark. This is indeed nothing else than to subject God to fate. . . .
Prop. X X XIV: The power of God is I Iis essence itself. (Wild 133).1
happiness but utter elevation over its very sphere.* Therefore we must
&LILT endlessly not to
become
happy, but no longer to need happiness, in-
deed to become
incapable
of needing it, and to elevate our very being to aform that is repugnant to the form of happiness (Gluckseligkeit) as well asto [the form of] its opposite.For, the absolute I demands that the finite I should become equal to it,that is, that it should destroy in itself all multiplicity and all mutability.What is
moral
law for the finite I, limited by a not-I, is
natural
law for thenonfinite I — that is, is
given
simultaneously with and in its mere
being
(Sein). The none, finite I
is
only insmuch as it is equal to itself,
determined
by its sheer identity; it has no task at all whereby it still
ought to determine
its being by sheer identity. For the nonfinite I there is moral law, and inrespect to its causality it is determined only as absolute
power,
equal to
itself. Moral law, however, although it exists only in relation to finiteness,
has in itself no sense or meaning if it does not set up, as the ultimate goal of
all striving, the nonfiniteness of the
I
and its own transformation into a
**Since the not-I should become the
bjt
of alsitying determined by freedom, it must be
raised from the form of conditionality to the form of unconditionality. Yet, since the not-I
not-I is to become the object of this striving, only a sensuous, i.e., an imaginable uncondi-tionality can be attained, i.e., the raising of the not-I itself can produce only a form whichcannot be reached by any form of the intellect (Verstand) or sensibility ISinnlichkeit .
Such a mediation between conditionality and unconditionality is possible only for thepower of imagination Einbildungskraft The idea of bliss therefore arises originally only
through a
thrtl
operation. Represented
prtll, t
is nothing other than a necessary
harmony of the not-I with the I, and since the attainment of this harmony is an infinite task
for the I, it remains even in its practical meaning a mere idea which can be realized only in aninfinite progress. However, in its
prtl
significance it is also completely identical with theultimate goal of the I. In that respect, since morality is the gradual approach to that ultimategoal, it can indeed be imagined as something that can be realized only by morality and isalways in proportion to it. And only in this sense could Kant have conceived of bliss as insteady proportion to morality. One can take empirical happiness Gliickseligkeit as a
n
tnnt
harmony of objects with our I. So taken, empirical happiness cannot possibly bethought of as being connected with morality. For the latter does not aim at any contingentbut at a necessary agreement of the not-I with the I. Pure bliss or beatitude therefore con-sists exactly in rising above empirical happiness; the pure necessarily excludes the empirical.
Still, it is quite understandable why, whenever Kant mentions bliss, some of his readers would
think of mere empirical happiness. The German word
llt
can mean both. I But itis astonishing that nobody has yet denounced the moral perniciousness of a system which im-
agines empirical happiness as connected with morality, not through any inner connection,but only by external causality.*If the ultimate goal of all striving of the I were not identification with the not-I, the con-
tingent harmony of objects with our I, brought about by nature, would have no charm for us.Only when we think about such a harmony in its relation to our entire activity (which, from itslowest to its highest degree, aims at nothing else but the harmony of the not-I with the I) can
we regard a
contingent harmony as
jr
(not a reward), as a voluntary accomodation on
the par t of ramie, as an
0xrd tn hh
nature bestows on the whole of our ac-
tivity (not merely
our 11101.11ac
ts).
98
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE [199,200]
mere natural law* of the I. The moral law in the finite being is first of all a
h
of natural law whereby
[199]
the being of the nonfinite is deter-
mined. What the natural law presents as
bn,
the moral law must pre-
sent as an
ht.
Since the supreme law by which the being of the nonfinite
I is determined is the law of its identity (§ 7), the moral law in the finite be-ing must present the identity not as existing but as demanded. Therefore
the supreme law for the finite being is:
B bltl dntl th
rlf.**
Yet, inasmuch as this law must apply to a moral
bjt,
that is, to an Iconditioned by mutability and multiplicity, this conditioned I stands in op-position to the form of identity as such, and the moral law can apply to it
only by means of a new—scilematism.' For the basic moral law (Urgesetz) of
the finite I, be identical, is confronted by the natural law of the same
finite I, according to which it
multiplicity and therefore not identical,
and its multiplicity is no mere
ht.
This contradiction between the
moral and the natural law of finiteness can be mediated only through a
new schema, that of production in time, so that the law which aims at a de-
mand of
bn
becomes a law of
bn.
The basic moral law, expressed
in
its fullest sensuous form, says:
b
identical,
lvt
(in time) the
subjective forms of your being to the form of the absolute. The basic moral
law
in its purity already excludes all subjective forms (all forms which
belong only to the object-conditioned I) and demands directly: be iden-
tical However, those very forms are in opposition to that law, therefore a
synthesis is needed by which they themselves are absorbed, yet no longer as
[200] forms of
the subject (of the finite) but as forms of the absolute. * * *
•Therefore
one could also say that the ultimate goal of the I is to turn the laws of freedom into
laws of nature, and the laws of nature into laws of freedom, to bring about
nature
in the I,
and / in nature.
•*This law can be traced through all forms subordinate to the archform [Urform] of identity.Expressed in line with the category of
quantity
it says: be absolutely
one.
In line with
quality:
posit all reality in yourself, i.e.,
equate
all reality to yourself. In line with
relation:
be free of
ll
relation, i.e., of all conditionality. In line with
modality:
posit yourself outside the entiresphere of
existence I
Dasein I , posit yourself in the sphere of pure, absolute being (independent
of all forms of time, etc.).
•••If we
again trace this schematized law through its subordinate forms, we receive the follow-
ing laws. According to
quantity:
become absolutely one. (Whatever becomes unity presup-poses multiplicity, by whose
elevation
alone it can become unity. Thus the expression of thelaw is identical with the challenge: elevate the multiplicity in yourself to unity, i.e., become a
ttlt
contained in yourself). According to
quality:
simply become reality. (Whatever
brcomesreality does so in struggle with negation. Therefore the law can also be expressed as
saying: elevate the negation in yourself to reality, i.e., give yourself a reality which
ad
n
fnt
um (in time) can never be cancelled.) According to
rltn: b
absolutely uncondi-
tional,
trv
for absolute causality again an expression of an original struggle, equivalent
to:make the passive causality in yourself identical with the active (create a reciprocal effect,make t hat which is passive causality in you active, and what is active passive). According to
modality:
strive to posit yourself in the sphere of absolute being, independent of the change oftime,
Stliving
is possible only in time, therefore striving for liberation from all change of timemeans striving in all time. Thus the law can also br expressed as: lircome a
tiecet
+a ry bring, a
bring which endures
n ll t.
[201]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
9
Through this schematism of the moral law, the idea of moral
prr,
of progress in infinity, becomes possible. The absolute I is the only Eternal;
therefore the finite I, as it strives to become identical with it, must strive
for pure eternity. Since it expresses in itself as merely becoming that which,in the nonfinite I is posited as being, it must also posit in itself a becoming,
that is, an empirical eternity, an infinite duration." The ultimate goal of
the finite I is therefore an expansion toward identity with the nonfinite. Inthe finite I there is unity of consciousness, that is, personality. The non-
finite I, however, knows no object at all and therefore no consciousness and
no unity of consciousness, no pers9„nality." Consequently, the ultimate
goal of all striving can also be represented as an expansion of personality to
infinity, that is, as its own destruction. The last goal of the finite I as wellas that of the not-I, that is, the last goal of the world
[201] is
its destruction
as a world, that is, as an embodiment of finiteness (of the finite I and thenot-I). In order to approach this ultimate goal, an infinite approximation
takes place, therefore an infinite continuance of the I, immortality."
In the theoretical sense God is I = Not-I; in the practical sense He is
b
lt
I, which annihilates all not-I. Insofar as the nonfinite I is
represented schematically as the ultimate goal of the finite and thus out-side of the latter, in practical philosophy God can indeed be represented as
td th fnt
(schematically) however only as
dntl
with the non-
\
inite.
From these deductions it becomes clear that the causality of the
nn
fnt
I cannot be represented at all as morality, wisdom, and the like, but
only as absolute power which fills the entire infinity and, in its sphere,
tolerates nothing that is in opposition, not even the not-I imagined as in-
finite. Therefore the moral law, even in its entire bearing on the world of
sense [Versinnlichung], can have meaning and significance only in its rela-tion to a higher law of
bn
which, in contrast to the law of freedom, can
be called law of nature. True enough, those who are trying to place the
goal of our moral striving as near and as low as possible will not be satisfied
with these deductions, nor will those who hastily appended a multitude ofpostulates of happiness to the letter of Kant and to the one and only point
of their empirical system which Kant seemed to leave them. For if hap-
piness (Gluckseligkeit) is not conceived as identical with the ultimate goal,that is, as total elevation above the whole sphere of empirical happiness,then it cannot even belong to the demands of
rl
reason, which alone is
entitled to make demands. Also dissatisfied with our deductions are those
who can believe that Kant could deem any knowledge which he thought
impossible in theoretical philosophy possible in practical and thus, in prac-
tical philosophy, could again place the supersensuous world (God, etc.) as
2 4
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY 101
However, this
empirical
trnt
(which can be represented graphically byan endlessly extended line) is not thinkable without the original concept
(Url2wiff) of pure eternity, and therefore it is impossible to transfer it to
the absolute I, which the original form of all being.
Th fnt n
dr:
the
btn
simply
,
owing to its own nonfinite power to be.
nnttn .
Spinoza, too, had to fight this concept of duration as a [analleged] form of the absolute being. For him eternity is a form of pure in-tellectual intuition. However, he does not mean relative or empirical but
absolute, pure eternity. For him duration, even duration during all time, is
nothing but a form of the (empirically conditioned) subject, and that form
itself becomes possible only through the higher form of eternal being. If
eternity is taken to mean empirical eternity, then, for him, absolute
substance was
nt
eternal, that is, not at all determinable through this [em-
pirical]form, since substance exists neither in determined nor in all time,
but in no time at all.*
204 nnttn 2.
Now it is time to determine the I completely and to
forestall all possible confusion with other concepts. Thus far we have deter-mined the I only as that which can never become an object. Therefore, if we
wanted to say something about the I as an object we would indeed be
caught in a dialectical illusion." For since it would be the object of a mere
d,
it would indeed have
n
reality, " and if it were an object at all, then,in order to substantiate its reality, we would have to look for an objective
*Ethics 5.
prop. XXIII, schol.:
aeternitas nec tempore definiri, nec ullam ad tempus rekz-tionem habere potest.
At nihilominus sentimus experimurque, nos
aeternos
esse. Nam mens
non minus res illas sentit,
quas intelligendo concipit,
quam quas in memoria habet.
Mentis
enim oculi, quibus res videt observatque, sun[ ipsae demonstrationes.
Quamvis igitur nonrecordemur, nos ante corpus extitisse, sentimus tamen, mentem nostram, quatenus
corporis
essentiam sub
aeternitatis specie
involvit, aeternam esse,
et hanc eius existentiam tempore
definiri sive per durationem explicari non posse. Mens igitur nostra eatenus tantum dici
potest durare, eiusque existentia certo tempore definiri,
quatenus actualem corporis existen-
tiam involvit, et eatenus tantum potentiam habet, rerum existentiam
tempore
determinandi
easque sub
duratione
concipiendi. ISchelling's emphasis. John Wild translates: "eternity can-not be defined by time, or have any relationship to it. Nevertheless we feel and know by ex-
perience that we are eternal. For the mind is no less sensible of those things which it conceivesthrough intelligence than of those which it remembers, for demonstrations are the eyes of the
mind by which it sees and observes things. Although, therefore, we do not recollect that we
existed before the body, we feel that our mind, in so far as it involves the essence of the bodyunder the form of eternity, is eternal, and that this existence of the mind cannot be limited by
time nor manifested through duration. Only in so far, therefore, as it involves the actual ex-
istence of the body can the mind be said to possess duration, and its existence be limited by afixed time, and so far only has it the power of determining the existence of things in time, and
of conceiving them under the form of duration."
(Spinoza Selections
New York: Scribner's,19301, p. 385).1With equal emphasis Spinoza, in his let ters, takes a stand against all confusion of the pure,
original concepts (Urbegriffe) of being with the del ivative hums of empirical existence, Seeespecially his
pp pdh
p. 167
1
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
[202,203]
something
td
the I, as [202] an
bjt
as if an object, no matter bywhat means it became an object, would not have to become an object fortheoretical philosophy, that is, become objectively discernible. (Whateveris object must also be discernible [erkennbar] in the Kantian sense of theword, that is, perceptible to the senses and thinkable through categories.
See below.) To be sure, according to Kant, the supersensuous leads to con-
tradictions because theoretical philosophy [objectifies and thus] an-
nihilates every absolute (all I). On the other hand, again according to
Kant, practical philosophy leads into the supersensuous domain because,
in its turn, it annihilates everything that is theoretical [i.e., object] and
reestablishes what is intuited intellectually (the pure I). But since we enter
the supersensuous world only through the reestablishment of the absolute
I, what can we expect to find there other than the I? therefore, no God as
an
bjt,
no not-I at all, no empirical happiness, etcetera, but only pure,
absolute I §15The I is because it is, without any condition and without any restriction.
t rnl fr
(Urform)
tht f th pr trnl bn
(Sein). We can-
not say of it,
t , t ll b,
but simply,
t .
He who wants to determine
it in any way other than its being must pull it down into the empirical
world. It is posited absolutely, therefore outside of time; the form of its in-tellectual intuition is eternity." It is nonfinite by itself; it is not a vague in-
finity such as the power of imagination fancies, which is itself tied to time.
Instead, it is the most certain nonfiniteness, contained in its own natureWesen ; its own eternity is the condition of its being [Sein]. Inasmuch asthe I is eternal, it has no duration at all. Duration is thinkable only withregard to objects. We may speak of eternity of duration (aeviternitas), that„is, of an existence in
ll
time, but eternity_in the pute_sense of the word(aeternitas) is being in
n
time. The pure, original form [Urform] of eter-
,.*.
nity lies in the I. This form is at variance with [the form of] the existence of
the not-I, which is in some specific time. The transcendental [203] im-
agination I Einbildungskraft] reunites the variance by a notion of existence
in
ll
time, that is, by the image [Vorstellung] of empirical eternity.*
*All synthesis proceeds by taking that which is absolutely posited and by positing it anew but
conditionally
(with qualifications). Thus, in its original opposition to the I) the not-I is
posited
absolutely
but, on that very account, also posited as simply zero, because an uncondi-
tional not-I is a contradiction in terms, i.e., simply nothing. To be sure, in the synthesis thenot I receives
reality
but thereby also loses its 'apparent' unconditionality, i.e., it becomesreality connected with negation, conditional (limited) reality. Thus the not-1 is originally
posited outside of all time, just as the I is, but it therefore also equals zero; as it
receives reality
It loses its bring posited outside of all time and is posited in a
.specific time.
Finally a new syn-
thesis posits it in all time, i.e., the
absolute
eternity of the I becomes
empirical
eternity in the
not I inasmuch as the latter receives its reality through the I.
102
HE
UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
205,206]
2
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
03
A
intuition (Anschauung)," which would necessarily lead to contradictions.As yet we have determined the I only be stressing the impossibility of itsever becoming an object. We have also shown that it cannot be a mere ideaand that therefore what we have here is the only intellectual intuition that
is possible. I should like to see the impossible, a deduction of the absolute I
from concepts For that very reason Kant asserted that no philosophy is
possible on the basis of concepts, because he knew that the only possible
philosophy, the critical, rests on an ultimate ground which cannot be
reached through any objective concept. Kant had already intimated that adeduction of the I from mere concepts isittipossible when he said that theoriginal proposition
am is antecedent to all concepts and merely accom-
panies them, as it were, as a vegae. For that proposition is not a conse-
quence of the proposition I
thn
but is contained in it.* [205]' Now, if anyone
wishes that there were no absolute I at all, then according to all the above,he would have to deny not only all freedom but also all philosophy itself.For even the least degree of spontaneity in theoretical philosophy reveals
the original freedom of the absolute I as much as does the greatest possible
spontaneity in practical philosophy. Furthermore, dogmatism is formallyestablished by the denial of the absolute I. For if the existence of an em-
pirically conditioned I cannot be explained from the position of an ab-
solute I, then there remains no other explanation than the one from the
blt
not-I, that is, from the principle of all dogmatism, which con-
tradicts itself. Therefore the annulment of an absolute I nullifies not only aspecific philosophy but all philosophy. The assertion of an
...
absolute I is
(
least of all a
trnndnt rtn.
It is as little transcendent as is
th
practical transition into the supersensuous domain." Eve assertion
which tries to bypass (uberfliegen) the I is transcendent. Consequently, theassertion of an absoluin'ras to be the most immanent of all assertions: in-
dd, t
must be the condition of all immanent philosophy. To be sure, the
assertion of an absolute I would be transcendent if it were to go farther
than the I, that is, if it tried at the same time to determine its existence as
n
object. Yet the sense of this assertion is precisely this that the I is not an
object at all, and therefore, being independent of all that is not-I, indeed,in its origin excluding all that is not-I, that it has its being in itself, that itcreates itself. In the Transcendental Dialectic," the paralogism exposed by
nt
does not stop with the pure I; rather it tries, on the one hand, to con-
ceive
th
I as conditioned by the not-I, therefore as having become an ob-jxct, and yet, on the other hand, as I, that is, as.absolute substance. The
absolute I, however,
206
rlz tlf.
I must not overstep its sphere if I
••I lle absolute I is, without relating itself to any objects. Therefore it is, not because it thinks
at all, but becatue it thinks only itself. For that reason Descartes
could
not get very far with his
togffirrgo
ono
because he postulated thinking at all as a condition of the I, i.e., he had notrisen to the absolute I.
want to reach its being, and the proposition
differs from all other ex-istential propositions in that it is the very one which cannot even be com-pared with them. The entire paralogism of transcendental psychology spr-ings from the very attempt to conceive as an object that which really per-
tains only to the absolute I. (The whole [Kantian] Dialectic aims at the
destruction of the absolute I and the realization of the absolute not-I as an
[ostensible] I, that is, as a thing in itself.)
"I think; I am " — these are purely analytical propositions. But theTranscendental Dialectic turns the I into an object and argues that
htvr
thinks is; and that
htvr
is thought as [if it were] an I is an I.This is a synthetic proposition, by which something
hh
thinks is posited
as a not-I. Yet a not-I does not create itself through its thinking, as an I
does
(2) The absolute I is not synonymous with the
ll
I. In merely em-
pirical thinking I encounter the I only as a logical subject, and my ex-
istence as determinable in time. In contrast, in intellectual intuition the Iproduces itself as absolute reality outside of all time." Therefore, when wespeak of the absolute I we least of all mean to designate the logical subjectcontained in consciousness. After all, this logical subject itself is possible
only
n t th nt f th blt ."
(My empirical I is subject to
change, but in order to retain its identity in that change it strives to elevate
the objects which change it, to a unity [by categories] and thus, through
the identity of its striving, it establishes the identity of its existence as a
lasting principle of image production [Princip der Vorstellungen] in the
change of time.) Therefore the unity of consciousness determines only ob-
jects but cannot in turn determine the I as object. For, as pure I, it does
not occur at all in consciousness [ see n.31] and even if it did occur there, it
could never, as a pure I, become a not-I. As an empirical I it has no realityat all except [207] in the unity of apperception, and only in relation to ob-
jects.
thnL
merely an expression of the unity of apperception which
accompanies all concepts [see n.37]. Thus it is not determinable in in-
tellectual intuition, as is the proposition
but can be determined onlyin relation to objects, that is, only empirically. It does not express an ab-solute unity but only a form of unity conceivable in regard to multiplicity.The latter unity determines the I neither as phenomenon nor as a thing initself (therefore not as a thing at all) yet just as little as an absolute I, butonly as a principle of something determined in the mere unity of thinking,
something that loses all reality if imagined as outside the thinking.
However, this merely thinkable I contained in the unity of consciousness iscomprehensible only through an original and absolutely present unity ofan absolute I. For if there were no absolute I, one could not comprehend
how a not-I could produce a logical I, a unity of thinking, nor could one
comprehend at all how any not-I would be possible."' It naturally follows
104
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
2 8
209,210]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
05
that anyone who is trying to do away with the absolute I in his thoughtsfeels compelled to elevate the not-I itself to the I. (This was the case with
Spinoza.) There is nothing at all thinkable for me without the I, at least
without the logaical I, and the logical I cannot possibly be produced by anot-I, but only by an absolute I.Thus if we speak of an absolute I we speak, in the first place,
A 1)
not of the logical I, because that can be thought of only in regard to
an object, and the phrase
logical
is merely an expression of the striving of
the I to maintain its identity within the change of objects. For that reason,
since it can be conceived only in terms of that striving, it is itself guarantor
of the absolute I and its absolute identity.
(2) In the second place, when speaking of the absolute I, we do not speak
of the absolute subject in the Transcendental Dialectic [see n. 81]. The lat-
ter takes the logical subject, which is originally nothing but the formalprinciple of the unity of thinking and a mere correlate of apperception,
and
presents it as if it were an object, which is a direct contradiction. The
dialectical subject
[208]
is created by mere abstraction and by the
paralogistic assumption that the I of consciousness could be thought of as
an
object determinable as independent of consciousness. That marks
,
the
difference between the dialectical I and the logical I, on the one hand; as
well
as the pure I, on the other. Neither of these two was created by
abstraction. The logical I is nothing other than the formal principle of theunity of thinking (and therefore of abstraction itself); the pure I is higherthan all abstraction and can be posited only by itself.
Thus
the absolute I is neither a merely formal principle, nor an idea,
nor an object, but pure I determined by intellectual intuition as absolute
reality. He who demands proof "that something else besides our idea
should match
it," does not know what he
is
demanding, because (1)
it
is
not given by any idea, (2) it realizes itself, it creates itself, and therefore
does not need to be realized beforehand. Even if it were realizable in ad-
vance, the very action by which it became realizable would already presup-pose it. In other words, to make it real as something posited outside of itselfwould mean to annul it. It is either nothing, or else realized by itself and in
itself
not as an object but as I.Philosophy, by the fact that the absolute I is posited as its principle, issecure from all illusory semblance (Schein). For, as has been shown, the
I
as an object
is possible only through dialectical semblance, and the I in the
logical sense has no meaning except inasmuch as it is the principle of theunity of thinking, and thus it disappears with thinking itself and has noother than thinkable reality.* - However, if the principle of all philosophy
*Accordingly I Reinhold's' theorem of consciousness automatically vanishes as principle ofphilosophy. For it is clear that through it neither subject nor object is determined, except
logically, so that the theorem has no real meaning, at least as long as it is supposed to be theultimate pc int iplr No philosopher has pointed out more emphatic ally this lac k of irality inthe theca cm
of
I MINI
liolioffirw. than
SAIIIIIII/II M11111011
were a not-I, then one would have to renounce philosophy altogether.
[209]
For the not-I itself is originally determinable only in contrast to the I [seen.34] and has no reality if the absolute I has no reality.
Annotation 3.
It is remarkable that most languages have the advantage of
being able to differentiate between absolute being and every kind of condi-
tioned existence. Such a differentiation, which runs through all original
languages, points to an originally existing reason which, without anyone's
being aware of it, determined the differentiation at the time when
language was first created. It is equally remarkable that the majority of
philosophers did not make use of the advantage offered by their language.
Almost all of them use the words
being
(Sein),
presence
(Dasein),
ex-
istence,
and
reality
(Wirklichkeit) as if they were synonyms. Obviously the
word
being
expresses pure, absolute being-posited (Gesetztsein), whereas
presence even etymologically signifies a conditioned and limited being-posited. Nevertheless one speaks commonly of the existence (Dasein) of
God, * as if God could really exist, that is, could be posited conditionally
and empirically. (That, of course, is what is desired by most people and, as
it seems, even by many philosophers of all times and factions.) Anyone who
can say that the absolute I
exists
(ist wirklich) knows nothing about it.**
The word
being
[Sein] expresses an absolute [210] being-posited, whereas
existence
(Dasein) always signifies a conditioned, and
reality
(Wirklichkeit)a specifically conditioned being-posited, determined by
specific
condi-
tions. The individual phenomenon in the total context of the world has
reality; the world of phenomena as such has existence; but the absolutelyposited, the I, simply is. I am is all that the I can say about itself.
The usual assumption was that pure being pertained to
things in
themselves.
However, I believe that what Kant says about things in
themselves cannot be explained at all except as a result of his persistently
maintained
t f ndnn
(Herablassun_gssystem)." According
to Kant's own deductions the idea of a thing in itself must be contradic-tory. Thing in itself means neither more nor less than a thing which is no
*Theoretical
philosophy seeks to establish God as a not-I, and in that context the expression
existence has its
proper place. However, it cannot be used in
practical
philosophy except in a
polemical way, against those who want to turn God into an object."
**Even the striving of the moral I cannot be represented as a striving for
reality,
because themoral I strives to posit all reality
in itself.
More precisely, it strives to elevate all reality to thelevel of pure being and, since its being conditioned by the not-I has dragged it down into thesphere of existence, it strives to raise itself again from that sphere. But pure being, as the goal
of striving on the part of a moral subject, i.e., of a conditioned I, can be represented onlyschematically, i.e., as existence in all time. Precisely in this lies the infinite task of practical
reason, to make absolute being and empirical existence identical in us. Since even in an
endless time empirical existence cannot be elevated to absolute being, and since absolute be-
ing can never be presented in the domain of reality as being
real in
us, reason demands in-finite existence for the empirical I. For the absolute I contains eternity in itself and can never
be teachrd by the concept of duration, tern of infinite dictation."
06
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
211]
22,2
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
07
thn.
Wherever there is sense perception there is not-I, and where there is
nt
there is sense perception (sinnliche Anschauung). What is seen
(angeschaut)
ntlltll
is no not-I at all but sheer I. Therefore, for in-stance, one cannot say that God sees the things in themselves. To be sure,
d
sees no phenomena, but just as little does he behold things in
themselves. He beholds no thing at all but only himself and all reality as
posited equal to himself. (From that it is clear that God is what we can only
trv
to realize in infinity.) If (according to Spinoza) God is determinable
n
object, though under the form of nonfiniteness, then all objects must
b
contained in him, and Spinozism can be refuted only by representing
d
as identical with the absolute I (which
xld
all objects). To be
r,
owing to his system of accomodation [see n.89], Kant has spoken of
th
forms of sense perception (Anschauung) as mere forms of
hn
perception. However, the forms of sense perception and of the synthesis of
its manifoldness are forms of finiteness as such, that is, they must be
ddd
from the mere concept of the I as conditioned by the not-I.
Therefore, where there is an object there must also be sense perception.Consequently any not-I outside of all sense perception (a thing in itself)
12111 annuls itself, that is, is no thing at all but is mere not-I and thus ab-
solutely
nthn.
It has been said that our inability to know things in
themselves is due to the weakness of human reason (a phrase which has
bn vrtxd
endlessly). More properly, one might say that the weakness
l n th ft tht
we perceive objects at all.
Th
concepts of
dl
and
rl
can be given their proper meaning
nl n, hn th
concept of the not-I has been determined in contrast to
th blt . Thr
empirical meaning and their pure meaning are often
nfd.
Pr
idealism and realism have nothing to do with the deter-
mination of the relationship between the imagined object and the em-
pirical subject. Both are concerned only with the answer to the one ques-tion of how it is possible that something could at all stand in opposition to
th , tht
is, how
th ld b t
all empirical. The idealist could answeronly that the I is not empirical at all, in which case one could deny that it
has any need to set anything in opposition to itself, and thus deny the claim
of every theoretical philosophy.*
This idealism is thinkable only as an idea (of the ultimate goal) in a prac-tical sense (as a practical regulative) because as theoretical idealism it an-
nuls itself. Therefore there is no pure theoretical idealism, and since the
prln n dl, thr n b n dl t ll n thrtl
phlph.
*Ttanscendent and immanent idealism coincide, because immanent idealism could onlydrily the existence of the objects represented in imagination, which transcendent idealism
must also deny. just because the latter is idealism and does not admit an objective world, itwould have to look in the I alone for the reasons for its assertions, and basically it would heimmanent idealism.
Pure realism posits the existence of the not-I as such. Either the not-I is
posited as identical with the absolute I (as one could perhaps interpret
Berkeley's idealism) and thus is self-annulling realism.[212] Or else the not-I is posited as quite independent of the I (as is the
case with Leibniz and also with Berkeley, who is mistakenly counted
among the idealists), and that is
trnndnt
realism.
Or again, the not-I is dependent on the I, owing to the assertion thatnothing exists but what the I posits, and that the not-I is thinkable only
under the presupposition of an absolute I not yet conditioned by any not-I,
so that the latter can be
ptd
only by the I. (In the first place, in order to
posit the not-I at all, the absolute I must be previously posited, because the
not-I can be determined only in contrast to the I. For that reason the not-Iis originally posited only in opposition [to the I], with absolute negation. Inthe second place, in order to posit it at all and to give it reality, it must be
posited in the absolute I, through which alone everything that is can be
ptd,
that is, can be raised to reality. Yet it can receive reality only
through an absolutely comprehensive concept of all reality. And this is
nnt ntn
realism.)*
r
last, the not-I, even though originally independent of the I, yet is
posited as existing in the imagination only through and for the I
(transcendent-immanent and incomprehensible realism of many Kantians
and
2
particularly of Reinhold** who, by the way, resented the sec-
tarian name of a Kantian.)
prl
idealism either is a meaningless expression or makes sense on-
ly in contrast to pure transcendent realism. Thus Leibniz (like Descartes)
was an empirical idealist, owing to his denial of the existence of exterior
objects as
bd,
yet a pure objective realist when assuming the existence
of a not-I completely independent of the I.
*This realism designates at the same time the proper domain of natural science [Natur-
forschune which cannot at all seek to penetrate into the inside of objects, i.e., to assume
phenomena determinable as independent of the I. Instead, natural science must regard theentire reality which pertains to phenomena merely in the sense of a reality whose foundation
does not lie in the objects themselves, but is a reality thinkable only in terms of relation (to the
I). Therefore science must not attribute to objects any reality independent of their borrowedreality, and must not assume that they exist
outside
the latter reality. For, if one abstracts
from their transferred reality, they are simply nothing (=--
- 0). Therefore their
laws
can be
determined only with regard to their
phenomenal
reality, and one cannot presuppose that the
reality of the phenomenon is further determinable by the causality of any other reality notcontained in the phenomenon, i.e., by some real substrate to the object (real outside the
phenomenon). If one were to search, as it were
behind
the phenomenal (transferred) reality,
for some other reality originally pertaining to the object, one would meet with nothing but
negation:"
**In no other way can I explain the statement that
th
things in themselves
furnish the
material
for the imagination. (The things in themselves furnish nothing but the limitations of
absolute reality in the imagination.) Instead of anything else, see §29 of the
Theory of the
Power
f tnttn, vn
though this f3, according to a later explanation of the author, was
supposed to be
torte philosophical
exi onion.
08
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
24
2,26
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
09
Trnndnt
realism is necessarily
prl
idealism, and vice versa.
Since transcendent realism views objects altogether as things in themselves,it can view what is changeable and conditional in them only as a product of
the empirical I, and can see them as things in themselves only insofar asthey have the form of identity and immutability. Thus, in order to save theidentity and immutability of things, Leibniz had to resort to preestablishedharmony. In short, dogmatism (which holds that the not-I is the absolute)
must imagine things in themselves under forms which, according to
criticism, are inherent in the I (as the only absolute) and which (by the syn-
thesis) are transferred from the I to the not-I (identical substantiality, purebeing, unity, etc.). On the other hand, dogmatism must view those other
forms which the object receives in the synthesis from the original not-I
(mutability, multiplicity, conditionality, negation, etc.) as pertaining onlyto the appearance of the thing in itself.* Therefore the monads of Leibniz
hv th
original form of the [214] I (unity and reality, identical substan-tiality and pure being, as beings with awareness), whereas all those formswhich are transferred from the not-I to the object (negation, multiplicity,accidentality, causality in the passive sense, i.e., conditionality) must beexplained in an empirically idealistic way, as existing only in the sense im-
age of the object. Thus, in a consistent dogmatism, empirical idealism
makes sense and has tenable meaning, because it is the necessary conse-
•
The not-I is determinable only in absolute contrast to the I. For that very reason it is ab-solute negation with regard to [the categorical form of]
relation,
and in that original contrast
it is determined as absolute conditionality. It is in contrast with the absolute, therefore condi-tioned by it, yet, since this contrast is absolute, the not-I is in that respect also unconditional.Whatever is in absolute contrast to the absolute is on that account conditioned and uncondi-
tioned at the same time, that is, it is simply zero ( 0). According to
quantity
it is determined
as
absolute multiplicity, but absolute multiplicity is a contradiction, because multiplicity isconditioned by unity. According to
modality
the not-I is a being whose absolute contrast to
absolute being makes it an absolute not-being. And according to
quality it
is a quality in ab-solute contrast to absolute reality, therefore it is an absolute negation. If, therefore, the ab-
solute not-I is to have any reality at all, that is possible only if it is posited in no absolute con-trast to the absolute, that is, posited within the comprehensive concept of all reality. Now, theprocess of all synthesis is such that whatever is absolutely posited in both thesis and antithesis
is posited in the synthesis with qualifications, that is, merely conditionally. Therefore, in the
synthesis, the absolute unity of the I becomes empirical unity, thinkable only as unity in rela-
tion to multiplicity (category of unity); the absolute multiplicity of the not-I becomes em-pirical multiplicity thinkable only in relation to unity (category of multiplicity); the absolutereality of the I becomes conditional reality thinkable only in relation to qualifying negation;
the
absolute negation of the not-I becomes a negation thinkable only in relation to reality(category of negation); the absolute unconditionality of the I becomes empirical uncondi-actuality thinkable only in relation to conditionality (category of substance); the absolute be-
ing of the I becomes a being determinable only in relation to not-being (category of possibili-ty), and the absolute not-being of the not-I becomes a not-being determinable only in relation
to being (category
of
existence)."
Note ol the editor, Schelling'A .ton:
This footnote was omitted in the second edition, perhaps
only by
mistake since,
in the first
edition,
it was not in the text but only in a list of emenda•
buns and additions,
quence of transcendent realism. Yet, if it is taken for an explanation of the
not-I as such, it annuls itself. For it is a ridiculous endeavor to make the ex-
istence of the not-I comprehensible as a mere product of an empiricalpotency (Vermogen), for instance the power of imagination.
2
The
question was how the not-I is possible at all, and consequently how any em-
pirical potency is possible at all.
Leibniz or, more precisely, consistent
dt
views phenomena asjust so many limitations of the infinite reality of the not-I. According to the
rtl
system, they are that many limitations of the nonfinite reality of the
I. (For Leibniz, phenomena differ from the I not in kind or reality but onlyin quantity. Leibniz was right enough when he said that the preservation ofthe world of phenomena is the same act of the absolute object as the crea-tion. For, according to dogmatism, the world of phenomena is created andperseveres only through the limitation of the absolute not-I. According to
the critical system, which allows only
nnt
assertions, creation is
nothing but exhibition of the nonfinite reality of the I within the limits of
the finite. Any determination of creation by a causality assumed to be realoutside of the absolute I—by some infinite outside of the nonfinite, [durch
ein Unendliches ausser dem Unendlichen] — would mean going beyond[Uberfliegen] the
.
For Leibniz everything that exists is not-I, even God,in whom all reality is united, though outside the domain of negation. Forthe critical system (which starts with a critique of the subjective powers,i.e., proceeds from the I), I is everything; it contains one infinite sphere in
which (limited by the not-I) finite spheres form, as is still possible only
within and through the infinite sphere," and also they receive all reality
only from and through that sphere.*
(Thrtl
philosophy.) Within
that infinite sphere everything is intellectual, all is absolute being, absoluteunity, absolute reality; in the finite spheres everything is conditionality, ac-
tuality (Wirklichkeit), limitation. If we break through these spheres (prac-tical [216] philosophy), then we are in the sphere of the absolute being, inthe supersensuous world where all I outside the I is nothing, and this I isonly One.
I wish
had Plato's gift of language or that of his kindred spirit,
Jacobi,
95
in order to be able to differentiate between the absolute, im-
mutable being and every kind of conditional, changeable existence. Yet I
see that even these men had to struggle with their own language when they
attempted to speak of the immutable and supersensuous—and I believe
that this absolute in us cannot be captured by a mere word of human
•
The expression of many fantasizing visionaries (vieler Schwirmer) that the sensuous is con-tained in the supersensuous, the natural in the supernatural, the terrestrial in the celestial,permits, therefore, a quite meaningful interpretation. At all events, their expressions very
often contain a treasure of truth, though only felt and guessed at. In Leibniz's simile, such ex-pressions are
like
the golden vessels of the Egyptians, which the philosopher must purloin for amore sat-red use. I Exod.
3:22; 11:2;
12:35.1
110
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
language, and that only the self-attained insight into the intellectual in us
can come to the rescue of the patchwork of our language.
lfttnd
insight. For the unconditional within us is clouded by theconditional, the immutalbe by the changing. And how can you hope that
the conditional will ever make clear for you what is unconditional, and
that the form of mutability and of change can represent the original form
of your being, the form of eternity and immutability?
Since your perception ties you to objects, and since your intellectual in-tuition is dimmed and your existence is determined for you by time, even
that to which you owe your existence, that in which you live and act, think,and know, becomes in the end (and for your will) only an object of faith — a
something which seems different from yourself and which you are forever
trying to realize in yourself as a finite creature and still never find as real inyourself. The beginning and the end of your knowledge is the same — thereintuition, here faith]
§16
The I posits itself absolutely, and posits all reality within itself. It posits
etsulhin,g_as pure identity, that is, equal to itself. Thereby the
trl
rnl fr
(Urform) of the I is the unity of its [217] positing, inasmuch
as it posits everything as equal to itself. The absolute I never steps outside
of itself.
Through this original
trl
form, however, a
frl
form, the formof positing in the I, is necessarily determined in the I as such. For the I isdetermined as the substrate of positability of all reality as such [see n.46].Inasmuch as the I in its material form is the sum-total of all reality (§8), it
is also at the same time a formal condition of all positing, and thus I obtain
a sheer form of the possibility of positing entities in the I at all. This latterform, however, is necessarily determined by the original material form of
the identity of the I (by virtue of which it identifies all reality with itself,
i.e., posits all reality in itself). If the I did not originally identify everything
with its own reality, that is, posit it as identical with itself, and did not posititself as the purest identity, then nothing in the I could be posited as iden-
tical, and it would be possible to posit A = not-A. Let the I be whatever itmay be (but it is nothing if it is not absolutely equal to itself, because it is
posited only by itself), then, if it is posited at all as identical with itself, the
general expression of positing in the I is A = A. If the I is posited as iden-
tical with itself then, no matter
ht
the I is, everything that is posited
n
the 1 is
posited [as identical with itself and] not as different from itself, andtherefore is posited in the [self-identical] 1. Any positing in the I is possible
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
11at all only through the pure identity of the I itself or, in other words, )4-
through the being of the I alone, since the I
is
only owing to its identity. If ithe I were not identical with itself, then everything that is posited in the I
would be simultaneously posited and not posited, that is, nothing at all
could be posited and there would be no form of positing at all.
Yet, since the I posits everything which it posits as identical with its
respective reality, then, inasmuch as the form of positing anything in the Iis determined only by the I itself, that which is posited is being considered
nl n th lt
of its being posited in the I, and is not considered as
something
n ntrt
to the I. Through its original form (Urform) of iden-
tity, the I determines nothing as reality as such, and it determines no
b
jt t
all as such [218] insofar as an object is in contrast with the Lcca
Thus the
proposition I =
I is the basis of all positing. For the I can be said
i
o be posited only inasmuch as it is posited for alone and by itself.
Everything else, however, that is posited is so posited only inasmuch as the
I is posited in the first place. Furthermore, what is posited is posited ab-
solutely only insofar as it is posited as identical with the absolutely posited
I. And since the I can be posited only as identical with itself, everything
else is posited only insofar as it is identical with itself. in that respect, A =
A is the
nrl frl
of absolute positing, because by it nothing else is
predicated except that whatever is posited is posited.Now, by arbitrary freedom I can posit in the I whatever I wish; the only
thing I cannot posit is what I do not posit. Thus I posit A, and since I posit
it in the I, I posit it as equal to some reality = B, and necessarily as
something equal to itself. That is, I posit it either as B or as not-B = C. If itwere posited both as B and as not-B = C then the I itself would be cancelled.
Therefore
the proposition
A = A, as a
nrl frl
(for positing as
equal or self-identical)
precedes all
other formal axioms. Insofar as it oc-
curs as a special theorem
(of special content) it belongs to the general species
of theorems conditioned by the axiomatic form, theorems absolutely
posited by it inasmuch as it is a mere formula, A = A.
All unconditionally posited theorems, that is, all those whose positing is
conditioned only by the identity of the I, can be called
nltl,
becausetheir being posited can be deduced from themselves. Therefore, better yet,
they can be called
thtl."
Thetical theorems are all those which are
conditioned only by being posited in the I, that is, since everything is
posited in the I, all those which are unconditionally posited. (I say, are
ptd
because only the being-posited belongs to the formal form.)
Among thetical theorems, one kind is that of
dntl
theorems. For in-
stance, A = A can be taken as a special theorem (among those in whichsubject and predicate are the same, i.e., whose subject has only itself as
predicate. Thus I is only I, God only God, but everything that lies withinthe sphere of existence has predicates which lie outside its essence). The
[217][218]
22
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
13
2
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
[219,220]fact that they are thetical theorems belongs to the formal form, that they are
identical to the material form. Identical
2
theorems are thetical by
necessity, because in them A is posited simply as such and because it is A.
But thetical theorems are not necessarily identical ones, since thetical
theorems are all those whose being posited is not conditioned by anything
else's being posited. Thus A = B can be a thetical yet not an identical
theorem if the mere positing of A also posits Bbut not vice versa, so that
positing B does not also posit A.
;(1
The form of thetical theorems is conetioned only by the pure identity of
the
.
Consequently, what they e2sprq§ is in every case only the materialform of unconditionalitLwhich is determined by the I, and they express it
frll.
ThereTore the formal form of unconditionality must be strictly
parallel to the material form of the I.'°°
The I
only because it is, that is, because it is equal to itself, therefore it
is only through the mere
nt f t lfnttn
(Einheit seiner
Anschauung).
101
Now, thetical theorems are conditioned only as being
posited in the I. The I, however,
only owing to the unity of its self-
intuition. Therefore what is posited in a thetical theorem must be condi-tioned only by the unity of its intuition determined in the I. If I am judgingA = B, then I am not making a judgment regarding A insofar as it is deter-
mined by something
td
itself but only insofar as it is determined byitself, by the unity of being posited in the
,
not as a determined
bjt
but
reality as such, as at all positable in the I. Thus I do not judge this or that
A in this or that particular point of space or time, but A as such inasmuch
as it is A through that very determination by which it is A, that is, that
which makes it equal to itself and = B. Owing to this, all
nrl
deter-
mination is excluded, be it numerical determination of unity or of
multiplicity. Numerical determination can occur in a thetical theorem,
but not as belonging to its form. Thus, for instance, one can judge: body A
extended. If this theorem is to be a thetical one, the body A must be
thought of only in the unity of its being posited in the I, and nost as a par-
ticular object in a particular space; or rather, inasmuch as the theorem is a
thetical one,
220
A is really thought of only in the unit of its being posited.
What makes it a thetical theorem is not the particualr body A, but the
thnn
of it in its unity. The A in the thetical theorem as such, accor-
ding to its
r
being posited, is determined neither as genus nor as speciesnor as individual. Multiplicity is posited because one item is posited several
times and not because it is simply posited. Therefore a theorem which ex-presses multiplicity in an
ntthtl
theorem, not only according to its
content but also according to the mere
fr f t bn ptd.
Onlythrough the fact that something is originally posited in contrast with the I,and that the I itself is posited as multiplicity (posited in time), is it possiblethat the I can go beyond the mere unity of something's being posited in it,and that, for instance, it can posit the posited entity several times, or thatit can simultaneously posit two concepts which have nothing in common
and which are not thinkable under any unity, for example, body and
weight.
102
Generality is empirical unity, that is, unity produced by multiplicity.Therefore it is the form of a
nth.
Thus general theorems are neither
thetical nor antithetical
but
synthetical theorems.
There is an
I
only by its act of positing all
rlt
If thetical propositions(i.e., propositions determined by their sheer positing in the I) are possible
at all, they must absolutely
pt
(affirm) something. Negative propositions
are not determined by the sheer I, which contains no negation, but by
something outside the I (in contrast to the I). The affirmative propositionas such simply posits something into some sphere of reality; the thetical-affirmative proposition posits something only into the sphere of reality assuch. The negative proposition merely posits,'" and does not posit into any
pf
sphere; but since it does not posit that which it takes away fromone sphere into any other, it exludes it from the sphere of reality as such.
The thetical-negative (so-called infinite) judgment not only removes A
from a specific sphere but at the same time posits it into another, oppositeto the first. For instance, the proposition "God is not real" takes God out ofthe sphere of reality without placing him into another;
22
but the pro-position "God is unreal (nicht-worklich)" puts him at 'the same time into
another sphere in contrast to the sphere of reality. However, in order toproduce a thetical-negative judgment, a merely arbitrary connection be-
tween the negation and the predicate does not suffice; the sheer positing ofthe subject in the
must already posit it in a sphere opposite to the predi-
cate. For instance, I cannot turn the negative proposition "a circle is notsquare" into a thetical-negative judgment, because the sheer positing of
the subject, "circle," does not yet posit it in a sphere which as such is incontrast with four-sidedness. The circle could just as well be five-sided ormany-sided. However, the proposition "a circle is not sweet" is necessarilyan infinite judgment, because the subject, "circle," through its mere being
posited, is already outside of the sphere of the sweet, therefore already
posited in a sphere exactly contrary to the sphere of "sweet." For that
reason, the negation in the thetical-negative judgment does not lie in the
copula but in the predicate, that is, the subject is not merely being
removed from the sphere of the predicate but is placed in a sphere that
contrasts with the sphere of the predicate. As far as I know, Maimon was
up to now the one who put the greatest emphasis on this differentiationbetween the infinite judgment and the affirmative and negative. [see n.The I is
nl thrh tlf.
Its original form (Urform) is
that
of pure be-
ing. If anything is to be posited in the I, merely because it is posited, it
must be conditioned by nothing other than the 1; for it is conditioned only
114
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
222,223]
224]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
15
by its being posited in the I, and the I contains nothing that lies outside the
sphere of its own essence. Thetical theorems therefore posit only a beingwhich is conditioned by itself alone (they do not posit possibility, reality, ornecessity, but sheer being).
104
Up to the present, the determination of the forms of modality has not yetbeen made quite clear. True, the original forms of being and not-being are
basic to all other forms They contain thesis and antithesis (the contrast be-tween I and not-I), but in an entirely general formal way. [222] If this contrast
is to
be mediated by a synthesis, then these general forms must express that
synthesis in a likewise entirely general and formal manner. For that very
reason,
trl
(objective) possibility, reality, and necessity do not belong
among the original forms which precede all synthesis. For they express
materially what the original forms express only formally, that is, they ex-press it in relation to an already accomplished synthesis. Therefore these
three forms are no categories at all, since categories really are the forms
through which the synthesis of the I and the not-I is determined. But thethree together are the
llp
of all categories. Since they themselves ex-
press only positing, and since the [nine real] categories (of relation, of
quantity, and of quality) furnish the positability of the not-I in the I, the
[other] three [of possibility, or reality, and of necessity] themselves can
no
longer be conditions of this positability, they can only be the result of syn-
thesis, or
llptl npt
of all synthesis.
1
°
5
Originally,
pr bn
is only in the I, and nothing can be posited in this
form
[of pure being]
that is
not posited as equal to the I. For that reason,
pure being is expressed only in thetical
propositions, because in them the
posited is
not expressed as something opposed to the I, as
bjt,
but is
determined only as the reality of the I as such.
The characteristic formula for thetical theorems is A
,"
which means
that it has an identical sphere of being of
its own,
into which everythingcan be posited that is conditioned only by the being of A, and by
its
beingposited in the I. However,
since A expresses being as such, there must be
a
general formula for the antithesis as well, which must be A > -A [A is not
not-A]. By
virtue of that, since A is posited in the I, -A is
necessarily
posited outside the I, independent of the I, in the form of not-being. In themanner in which the first formula makes possible an original thesis, the se-
cond furnishes the possiblitity of an original antithesis.Yet just this original thesis and antithesis is the problem of
ll
synthesis
in philosophy* and just as the [223] pure forms of modality express the
•
Amont the categories of each individual form, the first one is always the expression of the
original form of the I, the second is the originasl form of the not-I, and the third and last one
is the synthesis in which the two first ones are united and only now obtain sense and meaning
in referring to the object. Note that the form of quality relates to the form of modality, the
form of quantity to the form of relation, therefore the mathematical categories are determin-
ed by the dynamic categories and not vice versa.
form of thesis and antithesis originally and universally, they also must con-
tain the
fr
of a possible synthesis, originally and
bfr
all synthesis.
This form is the
dtrntn f ntbn b bn,
and it is the originalbasis of determination of all possible synthesis.Pure being is thinkable only in the I. The I is posited purely and simply[schlechthin]. The not-I, however, is in contrast with the I, and therefore,according to its original form, it is
pr pblt,
that is, it cannot be
posited in the I at all. Still, it ought to be posited in the I, and the synthesis
brings about this positing of the not-I in the I by means of identifying theform of the not-I itself with the form of the I, that is, it strives to determine
the not-being of the not-I through the being of the
I.'
Since pure being is the original form of all positability in the I, and sincethe positability of the not-I in the I can be accomplished only by synthesis,the form of pure being, if transferable to the not-I, can be thought only interms of strict conformity with the synthesis as such. (In Kant's language:
objective possibility, i.e., possibility pertaining to an object as such, is
contained only in conformity with a synthesis. And that means positabilityin the I.) For originally the not-I is a
ll
impossibility for the I. For the
I there are only thetical theorems, but the not-I can never become the
content of a thetical theorem and it directly contradicts the form of the I.Only inasmuch as the not-being of the not-I is determined by the being of
the I, that is, inasmuch as there occurs a
nth
of being and not-being,the not-I becomes positable in the I. [See n. 106.] Therefore the possibilityof so positing it can be thought only as conformity with [224] synthesis as
such. Consequently, the logical possibility of the not-I is conditioned by the
objective, the formal by the material possibility.
It follows that
prbltl
propositions are those whose logical
possibility is conditioned by their objective possibility. In logic itself theystand under the pure form of being, which precedes all synthesis, and they
cannot possibly count as a genus by itself. Since they are only an expression
of a logical possibility dependent on objective possibility, and since logicalpossibility is the same everywhere, they belong to logic only with regard to
that quality which makes them problematic propositions. I call the
objective possibility, inasmuch as it furnishes the logical possibility (or is a
schema of the logical) the
bjtvll
possibility. Prepositions that
express only
pr
being and
pr
possibility* I call
prblt
propositions. These, therefore, occur in logic only insofar as they are at thesame time essential propositions.
•
The expression
logical, pure possibility
should be abolished, since it necessarily causesmisunderstanding. Properly speaking, there is only a
real
objective possibility. The so-called
logical possibility is nothing else but pure being as expressed in the form of a theticalproposition. For instance, when we say that the theorem I -- I has the form of pure
possibility. this can be easily misunderstood, but not if we say that its form is the form of
ur
being (in contrast to existence (Dwain), or to logical possibility, which is conditioned only by
objective
possibility). I
See Poss.
108 I 0. I
Thesis
Absolute
being absolute posit-
ability
originally determined only in
and by the I.
2.
Antithesis
Absolute
ot-being,
bsolute
independence from the I, and
abso-
lute nonpositablity
determinable onlyin contrast to the I.
6
H NNDTNL N HN NLD
2
2 226
k
xtntl
propositions are determined by the original opposition of the
nt,
and th
-
eceive their possibility only through synthesis. They are
therefore conditioned bytl
eajeCliieTogTalpOssitiiiity, although they do
nt
express mere possibility. The objective-logical possibility posits the not-
merely into synthesis
h
but an
existential_proposition posits it_into
some
prtlr
synthesis. Yet the not-I, in order to be elevated to the form
of the I, needs to be posited only by means of the schema of
pr bn,
by
t
mere possibility, that is, by
22
synthesis
h,
just as the
is posited
by the thesis as such. (Where there is thesis there is I, and where there is I
there is thesis.) But the original form of the object is conditionality. By
virtue of that form, inasmuch as it can be represented by the schema oftime, the objects attain existence only by reciprocally determining their
position in time, that is, by their existence in some particular synthesis.
Hr,
therefore, a new synthesis must occur, just as, originally, being and
not-being could be brought together only owing to the determination of
not-being by being. So the result of that synthesis, which is objective
possibility, can be brought together with reality in the new synthesis, owing
t
the determination of the latter by the former. Now, objective-logical
possibility means being posited in synthesis as such, and reality means
bn
posited in a particular synthesis. Therefore the not-I can be posited
in
particular synthesis only because it is simultaneously posited insynthesis as such. That means it is posited in
ll
synthesis, because
ll
nth
is synthesis itself as well as particular synthesis.
believe that the whole progression of this synthesis will become clearer
to the reader by being presented in the following table.
226
bl f ll Fr f dlt
3.
Synthesis
Conditional
positability, by means of
absorption
(Aufnahme) into the I, i.e.,
possibility
of the not-I.* (This possibility is called objective-logical possibility
•
n t t rnl ntrptn (ntth, th nt n bltpblt. n
th nth t rv
possibility,
bt nl
unconditional
pblt. Th t xhn
ndtnl pblt fr nndtnl pblt.
thr n pblt, bt
nndtnlt ntd, r l n nndtnlt bt pblt ntd f th nt r
th nndtnl n hn nld, t ld br tht nl n n rnl ntrt, ..,nh t pl nthn." (ddtn t th frt dtn.
22,228
F TH PRNPL F PHLPH
17
because the not-I becomes
object
only by absorption into the I, and because thisabsorption into the I becomes possible only by a preceding synthesis itself [through
categories]; conformity with synthesis as such [with the categories]; temporal
existence
itself.)
[227]
I
.
Thesis
ntithesis
ndtnnthhnh
s
bjective
conditioning, not deter-
such,
.e.,
hrough
bjective
ined by the I
alone;
existence in a
absorption in the I. Objective-logical
articular synthesis (in time), i.e.,
possibility; existence in time as such.
eality.
3.
Synthesis
Conditioning of being-posited (determined by the
object)
in a
specific
synthesis, by being posited (determined by the I) in the synthesis
as such;
existence
(Dasein)* in
all
synthesis. Determination of reality by the objective-
logical possibility—
necessity.
(Therefore the whole progression of synthesisgoes 1. from being and not-being to possibility, 2. from possibility and reality
to necessity.)
[228] Since time is the condition of all synthesis and, on that account, is produced by the transcendental power of imagination through and in
the synthesis, one can present the whole issue in the following manner. The
h°
of the
pr
bei_ngAthe latterbeing posited
td f ll t
is
temporal existence it
owing to the action of synthesis itself). Therefore
o jective possibility
_paeans simply being positecl in time. Since existence in
time is subject to change, the object, though posited in time as such, is
positable and yet also not positable. In order to
pt
an object I must posit
it in a
specific
time, which is possible only because some other object
determines its position in time and, in turn, allows its own position to bedetermined by it.'" Yet the not-I is to be posited only by its own possibility,only by the schema of pure being.But the schema of its own particular form resists such positing through
mere possibility because this schema makes it conceivable only as posited in
a specific time. Now, just as time as such is the schema of complete time-
lessness,
ll
time (i.e., the actual, infinitely progressing synthesis) is in turna presentation (image)" of time as such (i.e., of the action of synthesis as
xtn th jnt fr ndr hh pblt, rlt, nd nt tnd. Th
dffrn btn th l nl n th
determination of time
tlf, nt n th ptn rntptn n t h.
Existence
(Dn h thrfr th rlt f th frt
nth. n th nd t dtrnd pblt n th th, rlt n th ntth,nd nt n th nth.
•
'That which meditates the schema with the object is always an image (Bild). Schema is that
hh hvr n t h, tht hh ptd n pf t nd t ptbl
lt
, htrtt th bjt ptd lt nl n pf t.
118
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
229]
230,231]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
19
such) owing to which existence in time as such becomes existence in aspecific time.
ll
time therefore is nothing else than an image of time as
such, yet it is also a specific time because
ll
time is as specific as any single
part of time. Thus, insofar as the not-I is posited in a specific time, it
receives its original form (of change, multiplicity, negability) and insofaras it is posited in time as such it expresses the schematic original form ofthe I, substantiality, unity, reality. However, it is posited in a specific time
only inasmuch as it is simultaneously set in time as such, and vice versa. Its
substantiality can be conceived only in regard to change, its unity only
[229]
in regard to multiplicity, its reality only in regard to negation (i.e.,with negation—but in infinite progression).*
ANNOTATIONS. 1. The I originally posits, and posits everything as equal
to itself, and since it is the purest unity it posits nothing in mere contrast to
tlf.
The thetical theorem then has really no other content than the I,
because that which is posited in the I is posited only inasmuch as it is reality
t ll
and thus equal to the I, in the form of its identity with the I. Intheoretical as well as in practical respect, reason aims at nothing butabsolutely thetical theorems, equal to the theorem I = I. In theoretical
rrd
it strives to elevate the not-I to the highest unity and thus to
determine its existence in a thetical theorem equal to the theorem I = I. In
th
theorem the question is not: is the I posited at all? But rather, it is
posited
b
it is posited [see n. 7]. Likewise the
_I strives to posit the
not-I because it is posited, that is, it strives
to elevate it to unconditionality.
The result of these deductions is that only the forms of being, of not-being, and of not-
being determined by being can belong to logic, since they precede all synthesis and are the
basis of all synthesis, and since they contain the original form according to which alone anysynthesis can be performed. It also follows that the schematized forms of possibility, reality,and necessity, made possible only by an antecedent synthesis, -belong to logic only because
they themselves are determined by those original forms. Thus, for instance, problematical
theorems do not belong to logic insofar as they express objective possibility but only inasmuchas they express objective-logical possibility; not insofar as they express a
bnptd n th
nth
as such, but only inasmuch as their
ll thnblt
has been transmitted at all
through this synthesis. In short, the three forms of the problematical, assertorical, and
apodictical theorems belong to logic only inasmuch as they are simultaneously the sheerly
formal forms of the original synthesis (which is the determination of the not-being by being;existence as such), and not insofar as they express the material form— the existence in thesynthesis as such, in the specific synthesis, and in all synthesis.**
*•Atiortiont
-
to
Tt:
FIRST
rrN. Fr tht rn rndd bv tht
xtn th rlt f th frt nth h, nd fr nl th frl b
f th nd. nl n tht nd nth xtn
trll
dtrnd,rltv t th nth frnhd b th tr. Thrfr, th fr f th
nd nth d nt r n l nfr th r
trll
dtrnd, bt
nl
frll,
tht , nh th xpr th rnl fr f th frt
nth, xtn h, b t n t h r n pf t r n ll t.
n. 0.
[230]
This
trl
form of the striving of reason determines the formalone in the syllogistical regresses;
both are striving
iig
2.
for thetical theorems.Theoretical reason in its material use necessarily strives for a
materially
thetical theorem such as is possible only in the theorem I = I and never inanother, which would already declare something about the not-I. And for
that reason even that striving must lead to contradictions. In its formal
use, though, reason strives for
formally
thetical theorems, whose
consequence is a whole series of episyllogisms. What was impossible for
theoretical reason, being restricted by a not-I, can now be done by
practical reason; it obtains the only absolutely (i.e., formally and
materially) thetical theorem:
2. The form of identity does not at all determine any object as such.*
However, the fact that Leibniz and all the men who thought like him saw
the principle of identity as the very principle of objective reality is far more
easily comprehensible than many would-be experts in philosophy seemedto find it. One is used to their finding nothing more comprehensible than
the sheer words of their respective masters and nothing more
incomprehensible than the words to which they have not sworn allegiance.For
rtl
philosophy, that is, for the philosophy which posits all reality in
the I,
the form of
iclentityis the principle of all reality of the I, but on thatvery account it is not a principle of
bjtv
reality, that is, of reality not
contained in the
.**
However, for
[231]
dogmatism,
that very form, in
reverse must be the principle of objective but not of subjective reality. By
means of the form of identity, Leibniz determines the thing in itself
without regard to an opposite (the I), whereas Kant determines the realityof the I without regard to an opposite, that is, a not-I."' Leibniz declared
strongly and strikingly that the form of identity determines the thing in
itself as such, its objective reality, but not the
subjective
reality, that is, the
perception (Erkenntnis) of the thing in itself (its issuing forth from the
sphere of the thing in itself as such). Kant declared the opposite, that even
*The principle of identity is A = A.
Now,
it is possible that A is not real. Consequently the
form of identity presents A not with regard to its being posited outside the I, but only
inasmuch as it is posited
b
the I, i.e., not posited as an
bjt
at all. [Compare Schelling's
anticritique,
f f
242-44.1
**It can also become the principle of objective reality, but only inasmuch as the positing
thereof in the I is not immediate but already mediated, though even then it determines it not
as
bjtv
reality but only as to the quality of its being determined in the I. The theorem of
sufficient reason, says Kant, cannot be used at all in the supersensuous world, in which it can
determine no object at all, because in that world everything is absolute, and that theorem
expresses only the form of conditionality.'" If the supersensuous world really contained anyobjects and more than only an absolute I, then this theorem would be applicable in that worldas well as in the world of phenomena. Therefore Kant used this theorem in the supersensuous
domain only in a
pl""
mariner or else only whenever, in line with his system of
accommodation, he does in fact speak of objects of the supersensuous world. See n. 89.1
120
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
232]
233,234]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
21
though the
bjtv
reality is determined by the form of identity, that is,the reality posited solely in the I, the objective reality is determinable onlyby moving out of the sphere of the I.
112
For dogmatism, thetical theoremsbecome possible only through the not-I but antithetical and synthetical
ones only through the I; for criticism, in reverse, thetical theorems onlythrough the I, antithetical and synthetical ones only through the not-I.
Leibniz determines the absolute sphere by the absolute not-I, yet he does
\ not cancel every form of synthetical theorem but uses them in order to get
out of his absolute sphere, just as Kant does. Both of them need the same
bridge in order to move from the domain of the unconditional into that of
the conditional. In order to leave the sphere of the thing in itself, of the
being-posited absolutely, and to enter the sphere of the
dtrnd
(imaginable) thing, Leibniz used the theorem of sufficient reason, exactly
the same (i.e., an original form of conditionality as such) as Kant did in
order to leave the sphere of the I and enter the sphere of the not-I. ThusLeibniz understood the theorem of identity as well as Kant, and he knewhow to use it for his own system as well as Kant did for his. Where they
differ is not [232] about its employment, but about its higher
determination by the absolute in the system of our knowledge.*
3. For the absolute I there is no possibility, actuality,
113
or necessity,
since whatever the
blt
I posits is determined by the mere form of pure
being. For the finite I, however, in theoretical and practical use, there are
possibility, actuality, and necessity. And since the highest synthesis of
theoretical and practical philosophy is the combination of posibility withactuality, that is, necessity, this combination can be termed the genuine
task of all St ivj , though not its ultimate
l. f
there were anypossi ay and actuality at all for the nonfinite I, all possibility would beactuality, and all actuality possibility. For the finite I, however, there is
possibility and actuality. Therefore, in regard to the two, its
trvn
must
be determined in the way in which the
bn
of the nonfinite I would be
determined if it had anything to do with possibility and actuality. Thus the
finite
ht t trv
to make actual everything that is possible in it, and
to make possible whatever is actual. There is an imperative (Sollen) onlyI'm the finite I, meaning that there are practical possibility, actuality, and
•AimiTioN To THE
FIRST FIDITION:
Kant was the first to establish the absolute I as the
ultimate substratum of all being and of all identity (though he established it nowhere directly
but at least everywhere indirectly), and the first to fix the real problem of the possibility of a
certain something determinable even beyond mere identity - in a manner that (how shall one
describe it? Whoever has read his deduction of the categories and his critique of the
teleological power of judgment in the spirit in which everything he ever wrote must be read,sees the dept h of his meaning and insight, which seems almost unfathomable) in a manner
I WI
appears possible only in a genius who, rushing ahead of himself, as it were, can
dnd
the steps from the highest point, whereas others can ascend only step by step.
necessity because the action of the finite I is not conditioned only by mere
thesis (law of absolute being), but also by antithesis (natural law of
finiteness) and by synthesis (moral ought). Thus
prtl pblt
is
conformity of action with practical synthesis as such; [233] practicalactuality is conformity of action with a specific moral synthesis; andfinally, practical necessity (the highest level a finite being can attain) is
conformity with
ll
synthesis (in a system of action in which everything that
is practically possible is actual, and everything that is actual must at thesame time also be possible).* On the other hand, no imperative (Sollen) atall occurs in the absolute I, [234] because whatever is practical
nd
for the finite I must be
ntttv
law in the nonfinite, a law whichexpresses neither possibility, nor actuality, nor necessity, but only
absolute being, and the expression is not
prtv
but
trl.
The concept of
ht
(des Sollens), however, and of practical possibility,
presupposes another concept, one that has furnished the matter for the
most difficult problems of all philosophy. Here these problems must be
touched upon at least briefly.
If there is a practical
pblt
for the finite I, that is, an ought, then it ,is not thinkable at all without the concept of freedom of the
prl .
116
Previously (§ 8) I predicated absolute freedom of the absolute I, that is, a
'The concept of
rht
[and rights] as such is based upon the concept of practical
pblt
(conformity with synthesis as such) and so is the whole system of natural right. But theconcept of duty and the whole system of ethics is based upon the concept of practical
tlt.
Since for the finite being everything actual is also possible, the right to act mustexist wherever duty occurs, i.e., whatever conforms to a specific (moral) synthesis must also
conform to'synthesis as such, but not vice versa/In the absolute I, however, there is no
synthesis at all, therefore the concepts of duty and right are unthinkable. Nevertheless, thefinite I must act
f"
right and duty existed for the absolute I; therefore it must determine
its own
tn
in the manner in which the
bn
of the nonfinite would be determined if duty
and right did exist for it)And in the absolute I, duty and right would be identical, because init all that is possible would be actual, and all that is actual would be possible. Therefore thegoal (Gegenstand) of all moral strife can also be represented as identification of duty andright. For, if every action to which a free being had a right were at the same time his duty,then his free actions would not presuppose any other norm than that of the moral law. For
that reason in particular, the highest goal toward which the constitutions of states (which arebased on the concept of duty and right) must work can be only that identification of the rightsand duties of each single individual. If every individual were governed only by laws of reason,then in the state there would be no rights at all that would not at the same time be duties, fornobody would claim the right to any action not possible except by a universally valid maxim,
and no individual would have in mind any but his own duty if all individuals were to followonly universally valid maxims. If all individuals fulfilled their duties, no one individual coulddemand
r
than what would already be realized by the general fulfillment of duty, not
would he have any right to more. Right ceases as soon as its corresponding duty is fulfilled, forpossibility is valid only as long as it is not set aside by actuality, and he who is in possession of
actuality (the fulfilled duty) worries no more about possibility (his right). This idea was also
the basis of Plato's republic since in it also everything that was practically possible was tobecome actual, and everything that was practically actual was to be possible. For that reason
all
rn
was to cease, because coercion of a being is needed only if that being has deprived
himself of practical possibility. Suppression of the practical possibility in a subject is force,since practical possibility is conceivable only through ItertIoni.'"
122
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
235]
236,237]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
23
freedom which is based only on its own being and which it has onlyinasmuch as it is simply I, excluding in its very origin all not-I. Thisabsolute freedom of the I is comprehensible
\
only through itself. An
absolute I that excludes all not-I has absolute freedom in that very respect,and that freedom ceases to be incomprehensible as soon as the
I
is removedfrom the sphere of all objects, and thus also from the sphere of all objective
causality. But to transfer the I into the sphere of objectivity, and yet to
attribute to it causality through freedom seems a risky enterprise.The question here is not about the absolute freedom of the absolute
I (§
8), for that freedom is realized simply by itself, since it is the very causality
of the I by which it simply posits itself as
I.
For the I is I only inasmuch as it
is
posited by itself, that is, by
absolute
causality. Thus the I,
,
by positing
itself, simultaneously posits its absolute, unconditional causality. In
contrast, the freedom of the empirical I cannot possibly realize itself,
because the empirical
I
as such does not exist through itself, [235] through
its own free causality.(Neither could this freedom of the empirical I be
absolute, as is the freedom of the absolute I, because the latter simply
posits the mere reality of the I, whereas the causality of the freedom of the
empirical I ought first to
produce
the absolute reality of the
I\;
The
freedom of the absolute I is by itself and is absolutely nonfinite, but thefreedom of the empirical I is empirically infinite, because to
produce
an
absolute reality is an empirically infinite task. The freedom of the absolute
I is
absolutely immanent, for it
is
only inasmuch as the
I
is pure
I
and is
under no necessity to step out of itself. The freedom of the empirical I is
determinable only as
transcendental
freedom, that is, as a freedom which
is
actual only in relation to objects, although not
through
them.
The problem of transcendental freedom has continually had the sad fateof being always misunderstood and always brought up again. Indeed, even
after the
Critique of Pure Reason
has shed so much light on it, the real
point in dispute does not yet seem to be fixed sharply enough. The real
issue was never the possibility of absolute freedom, for the very concept of
an absolute excludes any determination by an extraneous causality.
Absolute freedom is nothing other than the absolute determination of the
unconditional by the sheer (natural) laws of its own being; it is the
unconditional's independence of all laws that do not spring from its own
essence,
of all (moral) laws that would posit something in it which had not
already been posited by virtue of its own being, through its being posited as
such.
Philosophy had either to deny the absolute altogether or, having
conceded it, had also to grant it
absolute freedom.
The real issue never was
the absolute but only
transcendental
freedom, that is, the freedom of an
empirical I conditioned by objects. It is not incomprehensible that an
absolute I should have freedom. The problem is how an
empirical
I
could
have. freedom. It was not how an intellectual I* could be intellectual, that
is, could be absolutely free, but rather how it is [236] possible that an
empirical
I could at the same time be
intellectual,
that is, could have
causality through freedom.The empirical I exists only with and through objects. But objects alonecould never produce an
I.
The empirical I owes the fact that it is empirical
to objects, but it owes the fact that it is an I at all to a higher causality. In asystem which asserts the reality of things in themselves, even the empirical I
is incomprehensible; for the positing of an absolute not-I as antecedent toany I does away with every meaning of absolute I. Consequently, one canno longer understand how even an empirical I can be produced by those
objects. Nor can such a system even speak of the transcendental freedom of
an empirical I. But if the I is posited as absolute, excluding all [absolute]
not-I, then not only does an absolute causality belong to it, but also it
becomes comprehensible how an empirical I can be real, and how there
can be a real transcendental freedom in it.
The empirical I is I owing to the same causality through which the
absolute I is I. It owes nothing to the objects except its limitations and thefiniteness of its own causality. Thus the causality of the empirical I differs
from the causality of the absolute I not at all in principle (in quality) butonly in quantity. That its causality is causality by freedom it owes to its
causality's identity with the absolute causality; that [237] it is
transcendental (empirical**) freedom its owes only to its causality's
finiteness. Thus, in the principle from which it proceeds, it is
absolute
freedom, and only when it meets its own limitations does it become
transcendental,
that is, freedom of an empirical I.Consequently, this freedom of the empirical I is comprehensible only
owing to its identity with absolute freedom. Therefore no
objective
proofs'
can reach it, for this freedom does indeed pertain to the I
in regard to
objects,
but only inasmuch as it is contained in the absolute causality of the
'Kant remarks very correctly that the expression
ntlltl
pertains only to insights(Erkenntnisse) and that the mere
ntnt
(Gegenstand) of such insights should be called
ntllbl."
This remark is directed against dogmatism and its opinion that it can knowintelligible
bjt
(Objekte) which, therefore, it should not call
ntlltl.
Criticism (at
least consistent criticism) does not need that differentiation because it does not admit
intelligible
bjt
at all, and because it attributes intellectuality only to that which cannotbecome object at all, to the absolute I. In the absolute I, which can never become an object,
the
prntp nd
and
nnd
[the principle of being and of being known] coincide.For that reason one must apply the expression
ntlltl
to the I as well as to the intuition
thereof. In contrast, the empirical I can be called
ntllbl,
inasmuch as its causality iscontained in the causality of the absolute. It is intelligible because it must be regarded, on theone hand, as an object, on the other as determinable by absolute causality.
**As has been pointed out before, in the footnote to §6, the word
prl
is ordinarilyused in a much narrower sense.
124
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
238]
239,240]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
25
absolute I. Nevertheless, it does not create its own reality since, as
transcendental freedom, it is actual only in the empirical I, and nothing
empirical realizes itself.ESince it is possible only through absolute causality,
it is realizable in the empirical I only throughsorule fact, any fact by which
it is posited as identical with the absolute freedom.; However, the empirical
I is actual only through the limitation of the absolute, that is, through the_ y suspension (Aufhebung) of it
an absolute. Therefore, insofar as the
empirical I is considered only in relation to objects as limits of the absolute
(theoretical philosophy), its causality cannot at all be conceived as
identical with the absolute( If the latter is to happen, then the causality ofthe empirical
must be conceived not in relation to objects but in relation
,j
to
thrn
of all objects. For the negation of objects is precisely thepoint of agreement between absolute and transcendental freedom). For,
although empirical freedom can aim only at
prl
negation (an
empirically produced negation) of objects, and not at the absolute
negation of objects which the causality of the absolute I demands, still both
coincide in the negation. Yet if this kind of causation on the part of theempirical
can be shown, then also shown is the fact that it does not differ
from the absolute causality in its form or its principle but only in quantity
(through its limitations). Absolute causality cannot be posited
.trll
in the empirical I, else it would cease [238] to be empirical,
therefore it can be posited in it
nl prtvl,
by a law which demands
th
negation of all objects, that is, demands absolute freedom. And
i Absolute causality can be
demanded
only by a causality which
tlf
is not
absolute freedom yet does not differ from the absolute in quality, only in
ntt.
t
rhus transcendental freedom is realized not only through the
fr
ofmoral law,'" but also through its
ttr r
the moral law, which is
3
'
possible only in the finite I (because the finite I alone can be aware that it
ht
to seek identity with the nonfinite), does not aim at
blt
negation of all objects, constitutively. But imperatively it aims at a
ndtnl
negation of objects, which is to be brought about empirically,progressively)Tflus it aims at the absolute causality of the I, though not as
something
trll ptd,
yet still as something that
ht t b
ttnd.
But such demands can be made only of a causality which differs
from absolute causality merely by its limitations. By negation of these
limitations, this limited causalityught to
ttn
in itself what absolute
5
causality as such posits absolutely.*)
• 'Anybody who so far as been following the trend of this investigation can readily see itsdifference from Reinhold's theory of freedom. The latter has great merits, but in
h
syst
(which starts frirthe merely empirical 1) that theory remains incomprehensible. And it would
lir hard, even for as keen an author as lie is, to give unity to his system, and adequately toconnect it with his theory of freedom, by
Means of
the highest principle (which should not
[239] Even though a transcendental causality of the empirical I is quitecomprehensible if it is the nonfinite itself conceived under the conditions of
finiteness, yet, since the empirical I has only phenomenal reality and
stands under the same law of conditionality as do all phenomena, a newquestion arises: how can the transcendental causality of the empirical I (asdetermined by absolute causality) agree with the natural causality of the
me I?
In a system which asserts the reality of things in themselves, this question
cannot be answered at all; it cannot even be asked.
F
r the system that posits an absolute not-I antecedent to all I therewith
negates the absolute I* and cannot know anything about an
blt
freedom of the I, let alone a transcendental freedom. When a system is
inconsistent enough to declare, on the one hand, that- ere are things in
themselves and, on the other, thattere is a transcendental freedom of theI, then it can never make comprehensible the agreement of the causality of
nature with the causality through freedom, not even by means of a
preestablished harmony„_;Such a harmony cannot unite two absolutelycontrary absolutes, [240] which would be necessary since two items are
asserted—an absolute not-I on the one hand and, on the other, an
empirical I which is incomprehensible without an absolute.
However, if the objects themselves receive reality only through the
absolute I (as the essence of
ll
reality) and therefore exist only in and with '
the empirical I (whose causality as such is possible only through the
causality of the nonfinite and differs from it not in quality but only inquantity) then every causality of the empirical I is at the same time a
only form its basis but also rule in every one of its parts). A completed science shuns allphilosophical artifices by which the I itself, so to speak, is taken apart and split into facultieswhich are not thinkable under any common principle of unity. The completed science doesnot aim at dead faculties that have no reality and exist only in artificial abstractions. It aims/.;rather at the living unity of the I, which is the same in all manifestations of its action. In thatscience all the different faculties and actions that philosophy has ever named become onefaculty only, one action of the one and the same identifical I. Even theoretical philosophy ispossible only in regard to the same causality of the I that is realized in practical philosophy,because its serves only to prepare the practical philosophy, and [adequately] to secure the
objects proper to that causality of the I which practical philosophy determines. Finite
creatures must exist in order that the nonfinite may manifest its reality in the actual world[Wirklichkeit]. All finite action aims at this manifestation of the nonfinite reality in actuality.
And the only purpose of theoretical philosophy is to designate this domain of actuality for the
practical causality and, in a way, to survey its boundaries. Theoretical philosophy is
concerned with actuality 1Wirklichkeiti only in order that practical causality may have a
domain in which that manifestation of nonfinite reality and a solution of its infinite task arepossible.'"'It is impossible that two absolutes should stand side by side. If the not-I is posited as
absolutely antecedent to t he I, the I can be contrasted with it only as absolute negation. Two
absolutes cannot possibly be contained
(ii
h
in any synthesis, whether it precedes or
supplements them, Fot t hat reason also, if t he I is posited as antecedent to all not I, the latter
cannot be posited in any synthesis as absolute (as thing in itself).""
126THE
UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
causality of objects which likewise owe their reality only to the essence of all
reality, to the I. Thus we [too] arrive at a principle of
preestablished
harmony
which, however, is only
immanent,
and is.sletermined only in theabsolute I. Because a causality of the empirical I is possible only within the
causality of the absolute I, and because the objects likewise receive their
reality only through the absolute reality of the I, the absolute I is the
common center in which lies the principle of their harmony. The causality
of objects harmonizes with the causality of the empirical I for the single
reason that they exist only in and with the empirical I. But that they exist
only in and with the empirical I stems from the one fact that both the
objects and the empirical I owe their reality solely to the nonfinite reality ofthe absolute I.
Through just that preestablished harmony we are now able to
understand the necessary harmony between morality and bliss
(Gluckseligkeit). Since pure bliss, which is the only thing in question here,aims at the identification of the not-I and the I, and since objects as such
are actual only as modifications of the absolute reality of the I, every
increase in the reality of the I (every moral progress) is a reduction of the
empirical limitations and an approach to identity with absolute reality,
that is, to the total dissolution of the limitations. Since there is no
imperative for the absolute I, no practical possibility, then, if the finite
could ever fulfill its entire task, the law of freedom (of the imperative)
would attain the form of a law of nature (of being). And vice versa, since
then the law [241] of the finite's being would have become
constitutive
only
through freedom, and this law itself would inherently be a law of
freedom. * Therefore, the ultimate to which philosophy leads is not an
objective but an
immanent
principle of preestablished harmony, in which
freedom and nature are identical,"° and this principle is nothing but the
absolute
I,
from which all philosophy has emanated.Just as there are no possibility, no necessity, and no contingency for the
nonfinite I, so likewise it does not know of any
purposes
to be attained
(Zweckverknupfung) in the world. If, for the nonfinite I, there
were
any
mechanism or any technique of nature, then, for that I, technique
would
be*
mechanism and mechanism would be technique, that is, both would
coincide in its absolute being. Accordingly, even the theoretical inquiry
•Through this we can answer the question as to
which
is the I that ought to progress in
infinity. The answer is: the empirical I, which, however, does not
progress
in the intelligibleworld since, if it were in the intelligible world, it would cease to be the empirical I. In that
world everything is absolute
unity,
and no progress, no finiteness is conceivable in it. Though
the finite I is t only through intelligible causality,' yet, as a
finite
being and as long as it is
finite, it is determinable as to its existence only in the empirical world. To be sure, the finite
being, whose causality is in line with the nonfinite. can always expand the limits of its finitude
more and more but since this progression faces infinity, an unending expansion is possible,
for if it were to stop anywhere, infinity itself would have to have limits.
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
127
must regard the teleological as mechanical, and the mechanical as
teleological, and both as comprehended in one principle of unity,
although nowhere realizable (as an object).
122
Y
et
the inquiry must
presuppose that unity, in order to comprehend the unity of the two
contrasting principles (the mechanical and the teleological) — which is
impossible in the objects themselves—in one principle that is sublimely
above all objects. Just as practical reason is compelled to unify the contrast
between laws of freedom and laws of nature in a higher principle in which
freedom itself is nature and nature freedom,* so must theoretical [242]
reason in its
teleological
use come upon a higher principle in which finality
and mechanism coincide,** but which, on that very account, cannot be
determinable as an object at all.
What is
absolute
harmony for the absolute I is for the finite I
elicited
harmony, and the principle of unity is for the former the
constitutive
principle of
immanent
unity but for the latter only a
regulative
principle of
objective
unity which ought to
become
immanent. Therefore the finite I
ought to strive
to elicit in the world that which is actuality in the nonfinite,
and which is man's highest vocation — to turn the unity of aims in the world
into mechanism, and to turn mechanism into a unity of aims.
[In an anticritique in the
Intelligenzblatt zur Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung
of the year 1796, Schelling speaks of the aim of the treatise
Vom
Ich as
follows:]The purpose of the author was none other than the following: to
liberate
philosophy from that stagnation into which it had unavoidably to lapse
owing to ill-fated inquiries into
a first principle of philosophy.
He wanted
to prove that true philosophy can start only from free actions, and that
abstract principles as the mainstay of this science could lead only to the
death of all philosophy. The question as to which
(abstract)
principle
could furnish the starting point for philosophy seemed to him unworthy of
*Thus it becomes clear how and why teleology can be the connecting link betweentheoretical and practical reason.'
**Spinoza, too, wanted mechanism and finality of causes to be thought of, in the absoluteprinciple, as contained in the same unity. But since he determined the absolute as an absolute
object,
he could never make comprehensible why it is that teleological
unity
in the
finite
intelligence can be determined only by the ontological unity in the nonfinite thinking of the
absolute substance. And Kant is quite right when he says that Spinozism does not accomplishwhat Spinoza wants. Perhaps there have never been so many deep thoughts compressed into
so few pages as in the critique of teleological judgment, 76. I Read the entire 76 (Cass.
5:479401; Bernard 219 53).1
24
242
128
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
[243,244]
a free man who knows his own self. Since the author considers philosophy
as a pure product of a free man, or as an act of freedom [243] he believesthat he has higher conceptions of it than many a tearful philosopher whothought he had found the lack of unanimity among professors to be thecause of the atrocities of the French Revolution and of all unhappiness of
mankind, and who wanted to remedy this unhappiness with an empty and
futile principle in which he imagined philosophy to be contained as though
in a box. The author believes that man was born to act, not to speculate,and that therefore his first step into philosophy must manifest the arrival
of a free human being. Therefore he thought very little of written
philosophy and even less of a speculative principle as a mainstay of the
science. Still less does he think of a universally valid philosophy, a
philosophy of which only a wiseacre should boast who, like Lessing's
windmill, lives in friendship with all 32 winds. However, since the
philosophical public seemed to have ears only for first principles, his own
first principle in regard to his readers had to be a mere
ptlt.
Itdemands the same free action as that with which, as he is convinced, all
philosophizing must begin. The first postulate of all Izhilosoplly, to actfree' seemed to him as necessary as the first postulate of geometry, to
raw a straight line. just as little_ as the master of geometry_ proves thestraight line should the_philosophex try to prove freedom.Philosophy itself is only an idea whose realization the philosopher can
expect alone from practical reason. Therefore, philosophy must remainincomprehensible and even ridiculous as long as the student remains
incapable of rising to ideas and also fails to learn from Kant that ideas are
goals (Gegenstande) not of idle speculation but of free action, that theentire realm of ideas has reality only for the moral activity of man, andthat man may not find any further
bjt
where he himself begins to
create and to make real. No wonder, then, that in the hands of a man who
wants to determine ideas theoretically [i.e., as objects] anything that goesbeyond the table of categories, and especially the idea of the absolute, is
the same to him as some story of ]244] No-one-at-all. And at the spot
where others first feel really free, he is confronted with a big void which he
does not know how to fill, and which leaves
h
with no consciousnessother than of his own vacancy of mind— proof only that his mind has never
learned to act freely nor to reflect on itself, and that he can maintain hisown place among minds only by means of a mechanical kind of thinking.
Translator's Notes
1.
Schelling is referring to the full title of Kant's
Prln t n Ftr tph
hh ll B bl t Frth n.
See Beck, p. vii.
2.
Jakob Sigismund Beck (1761-1840) studied under Kant. The first part of his
xplntr r f nt rtl rtn (rldtrndr z nt rthn
hrzftn
was printed 1793 in Riga, by Kant's own publisher, Hartknoch, to whom Kant
himself had recommended Beck as a commentator. See Kant's letter of September 27, 1791, to
Beck (Cass. 10:97).
3.
Kant himself was well aware of the "obligation to proceed systematically," as he says on
the last page of the
PR
(884; Smith 668 f.), and he cited "the celebrated Wolff as a
representative" of the dogmatic procedure, and Hume of the skeptical. He said "the criticalpath alone is still open. If the reader has had the courtesy to accompany me along this path,
he may now judge for himself. . .whether it may not be possible to achieve before the end of
the present century what many centuries have not been able to accomplish." In 1790 herestated the task in that crucial sentence at the end of section 2 of the Introduction to
r:
"There must be a ground of the
nt
of the supersensible which lies at the basis of nature,with that which the concept of freedom practically contains" (Cass. 5:244; Bernard 12). In1787 he said of it in the preface to the first
rt: "t
is a treatise on the method, not asystem of the science itself' (xxii; Smith 25). And in its Introduction he called the book "the
prpdt
to the system of pure reason" (25; Smith 59). In a letter of September 21, 1798,
to his friend Christian Garve he lamented that, "though being physically fairly well," he wasas if "paralyzed for intellectual work. It is a Tantalic torture, though not without hope, to
know the feasibility of the task, and to see before me the plenary conclusion of my account inmatters which concern the whole of philosophy (in regard to both purpose and means) and yet
never to see it completed" (Cass. 10:351).
4.
On October 6, 1793, while still in Zurich, Fichte wrote to his friend Niethammer: 'It is
my most fervent conviction that Kant merely intimated the truth but neither presented nor
proved it. This marvelous, unique man either has the gift of divination by which he knows the
truth without knowing its grounds, or else he did not think well enough of this age and
therefore did not want to communicate what he knew, or perhaps he did not want to attract,
while still alive, the superhuman veneration which sooner or later must be bestowed onhim. . . .There is only
n
original fact in the human mind; it will furnish the ground for acomprehensive philosophy and for its two branches, theoretical and practical. Kant surely
knows it but he has nowhere expressed it. He who finds it will present philosophy as a science"
(Jhnn ttlb Fht Lhn nd ltrrhr Brlvhl,
edited by his son ImmanuelHermann Fichte jLeipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1862j, 2:431 1.).Of course Schelling did not know this letter. On September 26, 1794, he sent Fichte his
essay
On
th P.btlt f Fr f ll Phlph
(ibid. 296 f.). And on January 6
(Epiphany), 1795, he wrtar I fee that Fichte had seat him the fascicles of Fichte's
rndl
zr tn nt hltlhr, h
h was
it)
c
ome out in
book Ito in by Easter 1795 (Plitt
130
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
i
4-12]
i
2-
9]
F THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
31
1:73 f.). In the
Grundage (1:119)
Fichte wrote: "The essence of
critical
philosophy consists in
this, that an absolute I is set forth as wholly unconditioned and not determinable by anyhigher entity; and when this philosophy unfolds this principle consistently it becomes
Wissenschaftslehre. In contrast, a philosophy is
dogmatic
when it equates or opposes aythingto the I as such; and this occurs owing to the ostensibly higher concept of
a thing
(Ens) which
is set up, quite arbitrarily, as the highest conception. Insofar as dogmatism can be consistent,Spinozism is its most consistent product" (cf. Heath 117). Meanwhile Schelling had discoveredthat independently.
In 1797 Fichte wrote: "I know very well that Kant did not
set
up such a [criticall
system. . .But I believe I know with equal certainty that Kant
conceived
such asystem. . .There are hints that he did
not want
to present it" (1:478; cf. Heath 51).
5.
Ethics
2, proposition XLIII, scholion. (See n. 44 below; cf. Wild 189.) Cf. Augustine
(de vera rel.
39.72): Illuc ergo tende unde ipsum lumen rationis accenditur.6.
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi,
Uber die Lehre des Spinoza, in Briefen an Herrn Moses
Mendelssohn (Werke
4:72): "In my opinion it is the greatest merit of the scholar to unveil andreveal what
is"
(Dasein zu enthiillen and offenbaren). "For him an explanation is a means, away to the goal, but never the ultimate goal. His final goal is what cannot be explained, the
indissoluble, the immediate, the simple.
7.As the title of Schelling's essay indicates, this is the I of which Fichte said:
As I, "I
am
only for myself. Said about the I and by the I, to posit oneself and to be are identically the
same.
As
I, "I
am
absolutely
because I
am, and I am absolutely
what
I am, both for myself'
(1:98; cf. Heath 99). Schelling's expression "das unmittelbare nur sich selbst Gegenwartige imMenschen" may remind the reader of Augustine's summons to the mind or the self not to seek
itself
as
if absent but to discern itself as present.
De trinitate
10.ix.12: Non itaque velut
absentem se quaerat cernere, sed praesentem se curet discernere. . . .Sed cum dicitur menti:
Cognosce te ipsam,
eo ictu quo intellegit quod dictum est
te zpsam
cognoscit se ipsam, nec ob
aliud quam eo quod sibi praesens est. (Cf. n. 21.)
8.
PuR
said: "The proposition 'I think,' insofar as it amounts to the assertion, 'I exist asthinking,' is no mere logical function, but determines the subject (which is then at the same
time object) in respect to its existence (429; Smith 382. Also see n. 76 below).
9.
Obviously referring to the problem of teleology
in Crf
(Cass. 5:435 ff.; Bernard 205
ff.).
10.
This paragraph sounds as if Schelling had transcribed what he says from the first
pages of Augustine's
Soliloquies
(1.i.2 and 3), whose sentences I here arrange in the order ofSchelling's clauses: Deus per quem omnia quae per se non essent tendunt esse. Te invoco,Deus Veritas, in quo et a quo et per quem vera sunt quae vera sunt omnia. Deus Sapientia, inquo et a quo et per quem sapiunt quae sapiunt omnia. Deus intelligibilis Lux, in quo et a quo
et per quem intelligibiliter lucent quae intelligibiliter lucent omnia. Deus cuius regnum est
lotus mundus. . .Deus de cuius regno lex etiam in ista regna describitur. . . .Deus,
universitatis conditor.
have no evidence that Schelling knew the
Soliloquies.
I I. This sounds exactly like Parmenides: -td yap aim ) vosiv to-utv
Ti
xai avat (Diels,
fragment 5; Plotinus 5.i.8) Or, in Parmenides' didactic poem yvatryOv
osi'v
TE
cAsxsv vifelaa (Diels, fr. 8, 34; Hegel 13:296). Hegel's German formulation, translated
into English, reads: "Thinking, and that for the sake of which thought is, are the same. Foryou will not find thinking without the being in which it expresses itself (manifests itself, is Ws
stoyecia•lvov 'Ea-y(0. Hegel comments: Genuine philosophizing started with Parmenides
(13:296 f.).
12. I legel continues: "Thinking produces itself; what is produced is a thought. Therefore
thinking is identical with its being, for there is nothing outside of being, this great
affirmation. Plotinus, in expounding this, says 'that Parmenides took this view insofar as hedid not posit being in the sensuous things' "
(Ennead
5.i.8; Brehier ed. 5.26.14 f.): lac •cturyb
auvfly
-
ev 5v Rai voCiv, xa
8v °six iv Toffy a cerrrok t-cfeeTo Brehier says for
ouvrIrxv
"ilreduisait a ]'unite." I should prefer to say: "he posited in one and the same act being and
thought." Schelling's reminder that "this ultimate must not search for its own real ground in
something other calls to mind Augustine's
de vera religione
39.72: cum ad seipsam veritas
non utique ratiocinando perveniat, sed quod ratiocinantes appetunt, iposa sit. Truth doesnot come to itself by ratiocination but is what argufiers seek. Cf. also Dante:
Paradiso, xi:
1-3.
13.
Cf. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica
Pt 1. Q.3. art. 5.
14.For this reason every empiricist epistemology must dispute the reality of knowledgeand eventually lead to skepticism.15.
This is the valid reason for the objectivistic declaration that God is unknowable, a
declaration that leads either to skepticism or to the postulate of revelation.16.
The second is the
idealism,
the third the
realism
of the textbooks.17.
Textbook
idealism
hypothetically assumes an entity called mind and, as does any
other hypothesis, this one too induces the student's question What kind of thing is this mind?
—sed qualis res?
(Descartes
Meditatio II). Res
means a real entity. But the Duc de Luynes
translated
res as une chose,
and English translators followed suit, writing
thing.
Then
Descartes' distinction between modes of reality falls flat. Mind is not a thing but an act.
18.In the self insofar as it is at all accessible as an object of psychology.
19. Schelling's sentence speaks of original languages,
urspriingliche Spraechen,
a term
current in German Romanticism. I refer to Fichte's entire fourth
Address to the German
Nation
(1808). He says, "the words of such a language, in all its parts, are life and create life"
(7:319). Originally, "language is no mediate product of arbitrary will but, as an immediate
natural power, it breaks forth from intelligent life (7:318). In 1813 he spoke of a language
ready made from being and intelligible from being" (4;485), not artificially affixed to
extraneous entities by arbitrary will and intelligible only by schoolish explanations to be
memorized by rote.This may not be readily understood by an English-speaking reader who does not share thebelief of those German Romantics, who held that to know the German language means also to
have an alive awareness of the meaning of its roots. Of course this is not so. The average
German, like any human being, uses his language without giving a thought to the original
and indeed revealing meanings of the roots of words. Only the educated person reminds
himself of those meanings. The average writer of English spells by rote and does not say it isobvious that I must spell r-i-g-h-t because it is the same root as German
Recht,
and r-i-t-e
because it was the Latin
ritus.
Nevertheless, those Romantics rightly sensed a difference
between specific languages for, as my two examples show, even the educated English speaker
and writer is less close to the root meanings of his words than a linguistically sensitive German
who, without schooling, has a kind of innate feeling for Germanic roots. Fichte explains thisby historic continuity without such breaks as that caused by the Norman conquest.
But to go back to Schelling's paragraph, which furnishes an illustration of this matter ofroots. In my translation I have used the verb
to determine
for
bedingen,
and the adjective
conditional
for
bedingt.
Now, when we speak of the reciprocal
determination
of subject andobject, how readily do we think of the root word
terminus?
It means the end, e.g., of the road,
like the main railroad
terminal
of Rome,
Roma Termini,
end of all lines. Yet we do use the
word
term
in exactly that sense, end of the investigation, stop at some technical term. Onceyou have determined what a thing is, you have a term for it, e.g.,
atom,
that which cannot be
cut, or
anatomy,
the cutting into (a corpse).Now for Schelling's example.
Ding is
a thing, as
even
a non-German ear can tell us. And
to
determine,
in scholarly language, means to set the limits of the thing which is under
consideration, to delimit it, even to define it.
Limes
means boundary.
Finis
means end, as in
land's end,
lints terme,
e.g., at Cap Finisterre. No thing determines or conditions itself; itrequires surrounding things for that.
Cutoff/1w
tomes from
du up,
W1111'11 111e41111 11111111111011,
2
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
2
sovereignty, authority, control, rule. And it is the surrounding things which control the swayof any given thing. Each has its own jurisdiction, one might say. The unconditional is what
does not depend on anything outside of it and is absolutely authoritative. Cf. n. 86.
20.In this respect Schelling, as does every true philosopher, agrees with the empiricist'sobjection to the kind of rationalist who will take essence for existence. Only in the case of Godare essence and existence identical. See Thomas Aquinas,
Contra Gentiles
1.22 and
Summa
Theologica 1.
q3. a4. Kant could agree; see Fritz Marti, "Aquinas and Kant on the Identity of
Essence and Existence," in Proceedings of the Lewis and Clark Philosophy Conference on
Aquinas and Kant, May 1974.
21.
The word
causality,
of course, does not mean Kant's category of cause, which
"constitutes" objects. Rather it recalls Spinoza's
causa sut
on the first line of his
Ethics,
with
which Schelling was very familiar. The entire paragraph is a rewording of sentences in
Fichte's
Grundlage
of the summer of 1794, whose first fascicles gave Schelling courage to jointhe discussion. (See n. 7 above). What is objectionable is the fact that both of them use thepronoun
it
when they refer to the self or
I.
Perhaps one should not even try to present the case
in writing, but should merely challenge the reader with the question: "Just exactly what do
you
mean
when you
say
I?" A clearly thinking reader could reply: "I mean myself as this
thinking I which in no way can be turned into an it." And, instead of saying with Augustine
that he is
sibi praesens
(present to himself), he should say
sum mihi praesens
(I am nothing but
present to myself). He certainly must not look for an objective mind in himself. In 1798
Schelling wrote that "for most people the greatest obstacle to a vivid understanding of
philosophy is their insuperable opinion that one must look for the object of philosophy at
some infinite distance; thus it happens that when they are supposed to look at what is present
they spend every effort of their mind on creating some object with which the philosophical
investigation is not at all concerned" (2:377). Augustine said: Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi;in interiore homine habitat veritas (Do not go outside, go back into yourself; in the inner man
dwells truth).
(De vera religione
39.72.)22.In German, condition is
Bedingung.
Given the proper conditions, the respective thing
(Ding)
will exist. Taking liberties with English, let us say that a thing is a thing because it is
"thingified"
(bedingt)
by the conditions or "thingifiers." In contrast, the I is
"unconditionable"
(unbedingbar),
since it does not depend on outward conditions but posits
itself. The word
itself,
of course, is quite improper, because I am no
it
at all, thoughobjectifying talk will turn the first-person pronoun I into a noun,
the I.
23.
Schelling may have in mind the emphatic formulation of Descartes on the second
page of the Second
Meditation:
statuendum sit hoc pronuntiatum:
ego sum, ego existo,
quoties a me profertur vel mente concipitur, necessario esse verum. I am trying to retain the
emphasis by translating that we must "establish this axiom that the proposition
/am, I exist
is
necessarily true each time I mean my own self when I pronounce it, or know that I mean my
own self when I have the proposition in mind." The Duc de Luynes translated "il faut
conclure," and Ralph M. Eaton
(Descartes. Selections
[New York: Scribner's, 1927), p. 97)
wrote "we must come to the definite conclusion." These translations are not wrong, but theirword
conciusUm,
which refers to what preceded, could induce the careless reader to think of
the misleading
ergo
so often quoted. It is true that later, in the Response to the Second
Objections, Descartes did write
cogito ergo sum,
but he did so while warning the reader that
/
I
T "whosoever says
I think, therefore I am or exist,
does
not
deduce existence from cogitation bya syllogism, but rather acknowledges the existence as a reality known by itself, by a simplemental intuition." Descartes' own words
are:
neque cum quis dicit,
ego cogito, ergo sum, sive
exists,
existentiam ex cogitatione per syllogismum deducit, sed tanquam rem per se notamsimplici mentis intuitu agnoscit. Later, in the Second Meditation, Descartes wrote: "That it is1 who doubt, understand, will, is so manifest that nothing could occur by which it could be
unfolded more evidently." (See his Latin in n.76 below.) Long before this Augustine had
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
33
pointed out the reason: "When the mind is told 'know yourself,' it knows itself by the very
stroke by which it understands, what is meant by "yourself," and for no other reason than that
the mind is present to itself'
(De trinitate
10.ix,12: Cum dicitur menti "Cognosce te ipsam,"
eo ictu quo intellegit quod dictum est te ipsam cognoscit se ipsam, nec ob aliud quam eoquod sibi praesens est). As I, I am present to myself, and nothing is more evident than the
awareness of this fact, which strikes me the moment the meaning of
you yourself strikes
me. In
Fichte's pithy formulation of 1794, "the I is for the I"
(Grundlage der Wissenschaftslehre,
1:97 f. Heath used a noun, p. 99:
"The self
exists for the self. . . .I exist only for myself."Meaning, of course, I
as
I, not the empirirical individual.)
24.Adopting the artifice of n. 22 and saying "to thingify" for
bedingen,
I could translate:"Therefore whatever is posited only as thingified is conceivable only through that which is no
thing at all but is unthingifiable."
25.
The date of the preface indicated that the treatise
Of the I
was finished March 29,1795. In the letter of February 4 that Schelling wrote to Hegel he said: "It seems to me thatthe essential difference between critical and dogmatic philosophy lies in this, that the critical
starts from the absolute I (not yet conditioned by any object) and the dogmatic from the
absolute object or not-I. (In its highest consistency, the latter leads to the system of Spinoza,
the former to that of Kant) Philosophy must take its start from the unconditional. The
question is simply where this unconditional lies, in the I or in the not-I. If this question is
answered, everything is decided. For me the highest principle of all philosophy is the pure,
absolute I, that is, the I insofar as it is nothing but I, not yet conditioned by any objects, but
posited by freedom. The A and 0 of all philosophy is freedom." And, using the phrase
theoretical reason
in the Kantian sense of reason concerned with objects, Schelling adds:
"What was impossible for theoretical reason (as it is weakened by the object) is accomplished
by practical reason. However in the latter we
can
find nothing but our absolute I, for this ."
alone circumscribes the nonfinite sphere. For us there is no supersensuous world except that
of the absolute I.
God
is nothing but the absolute I, the I insofar as it annihilates everythingtheoretical." (Schelling writes "das Ich insofern es
Alles theoretisch
zernichtet hat." This looks
like a slip of his pen, or a simple mistake of the printer. It is my conjecture that Schellingmeant "alles Theoretische," that is, every mere object.) Schelling continues: "Therefore in
theoretical philosophy the absolute I is nothing." Every consistent "theoretical," i.e.,
objectivistic, philosophy must discover that there is no such object as an absolute I, or God. In
Dogm
Schelling will declare that the discovery (made by Kant) is shared by dogmatist andcriticist alike. In his letter to Hegel he continues: "Personality springs from the unity of
consciousness. But consciousness is not possible without an object. However, for God, that is,
for the absolute I there exists no object at all, for with an object it would cease to be absolute.Consequently there is no personal God" (Plitt 1:76f). In January 1795 Hegel had referred to
Schelling's letter, written at Epiphany, in which Schelling had sarcastically said of the
Kantians in Tilbingen: "It is a joy to see how they pull at the moral proof as at a string; in the
twinkling of an eye the
deus ex machina
jumps forth, that personal, individual being which
sits up there, in heaven " Hegel wrote that he did not quite understand that passage and
asked: "Do you believe we cannot reach that far?" (Werke [Leipzig, 18871 19:13). And
Schelling replied: "My answer is that we reach
farther
than the personal being" (Plitt 1:76). jSince to be conscious means to distinguish the I from some not-I, the clause "not yet
conditioned by any object" means "before consciousness." Between 1828 and 1842 Schellingwrote: "One cannot ask how consciousness
comes
to God. Its very first movement is not a
movement which seeks the God, but a movement which withdraws from Him. Therefore the
God inheres in it a
priori,
that is, before its actual motion, or it inheres in its essence"(12:120). Cf. n.74 to
Dogm.
Schelling seldom uses the phrase the God. Here it may he an abbreviation for the
true
God" whom the aged Schelling distinguishes from "the
real
God," (For instance, 11:176 and
22
34
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
[i 25-33]
212.) The latter has historical reality, occurring in the minds of believers and therefore takingas many shapes as there are believers. In the mind of the believer his own
"rl
God" stands
for "the
tr
God" as, obviously, it does for Paul in 1 Cor. 8:5.
26.Once God is defined as substance
(th.
1. def. vi) and shown as not acting freely (1.
prop. XXXII, cor. ii), that is, as absolute object, then to say that God loves Himself with an
infinite intellectual love (5. XXXV) must mean that the love with which God loves Himself is
the intellectual love for God harbored by the mind (5. XXXVI), which is
r tn
(2. def.iii), that is, self-aware I. Vice versa, this I is maximally occupied by its love for the not-I (5.
XVI) and knows itself to be
n
that objectified God and to be known by God (5. XXX). To be
sure, at that moment, God proves to be the absolute I, that is, the substance which is defined
as what is in itself and is perceived by itself' (1. def. iii). Hegel would call this a dialectical
transition into the opposite.27.Schelling's words
dn zr nhft
presumably refer to two literary facts,
first to the full title of Kant's
Prln
"to every future metaphysics which can stand up as
a science" and, second, to Fichte's term
nhftlhr,
coined 1794 as a substitute forthe too-vague word
phlph
(1:44 f.). Fichte's term meant the systematic and critical study
of what a science is, as science.
Phlph
could mean the same, but it could also include anuncritical dogmatism. Our twentieth-century dogmatists still seek the unconditional in someobjective entity and thus "elevate the not-I" to the dignity of the absolute I, and demean the
latter to a psychological entity, that is, to a not-I.
28.This is the system of those Kantians who believe that Kant was no more than a merecontinuator of empiricism.29.
Schelling is referring to Karl Leonhard Reinhold's
Vrh nr nn Thr d
nhlhn Vrtllnvrdn
Uena, 1789).30.
This, in Fichtean language, is Kant's doctrine taken in its narrowest sense; the
categories of reason constitute the objectivity of things.31.
For instance, Fichte's second theorem, that there is no
rn
of I without the
simultaneous distinction from some not-I
(rndl, :04,
item 10; Heath 104,10).32.
In his letter of February 4, 1795, to Hegel, Schelling wrote: "The A and 0 of all
philosophy is freedom. (See n. 25.)-
33.As earlyas 1792, in the
Rnn d nd,
Fichte wrote ' "The I is
ht
it is,
and
b t , fr
the I" (1:16). In the essay of 1794,
br dn Brff dr
nhftlhr,
he said: I am,
b
I am" (1:69). In the same year, in the
rndl,
he wrote: "The I
pt tlf,
and it
owing to this sheer positing by ifself. . . .As soon as it
pt
itself, it is; and because it is, it
pt
itself' (1:96 f.). Fichte enjoyed a lifelong
reputation as an effective orator, and he well knew the principle of effective teaching. In his
ldn fr d nnr rntn dr nvrtdt rlnn,
1805/6, he wrote: The entire
presentation in the classroom must be changed from the form of an unbroken argument
which it has in a book and be transformed into back and forth discussion" (11:278). But sincehe seldom had fewer than 200 students in his class, it required Fichte's imperious presence to
bring about in the student mind that silent discussion with the lecturer which alone can
produce understanding, particularly the understanding of the nature of I. Heinrich Steffensattended a class of Fichte's in 1798, and he relates that Fichte started by saying: "Gentlemen,
get hold of yourselves; observe yourself, for we speak of nothing outward but only of your
selves." Steffens reports that the students would either sit up alertly, or bend in contempation.
Then Fichte said: "Gentlemen, think the wall- Have you thought the wall? - Now think the
one who has thought the wall " (Fritz Medicus,
Fht Lbn
'Leipzig, 1922], p. 78). Even in
print the summons may help the reader realize what the concern is. For many, the physical
presence of the teacher and the challenge of his voice seem indispensable and may count more
than the mere choice of words. As for Fichte's words quoted above, the semantic purist oughtto object, on more than mere grammatical grounds. "The 1 is" is not only had grammar but
[i 33-36
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
135
can be pedagogically misleading. Fichte himself knew it. Maybe he should have blamed
himself rather than lampooning readers who did not understand him and of whom he said, in
1801: "They may have believed that such a pure I, identical with itself and collapsing into
itself, somewhat like a switchblade, must be looked for and found in the mind, somehow like
the waffle iron of the categories of the Kantians. They busily looked for this switchblade,
found none, and concluded that those who claim to have found it must have been mistaken"
(2:365). (Cf. nn. 7 and 21.)
34.
This is also the case of the empirical I. As the person I am, I am determined by my
physical and historical circumstances. Hence the question: What is the ground of possibilityof my autonomous self-determination? It is that question which leads to the "absolute I" - or
God, as Schelling said in his letter to Hegel of February 4, 1795. (See n. 25.) It must be
remembered, however, that Schelling, as a disciple of Kant, heeded Kant's warning against
rfn
the
n rl (PR
633-36) which must not be
"rlrt
d.i. zum Object
gemacht"(PuR 611 n.; not be made "real," i.e., not turned into an object) or personified. In
1802 Schelling wrote: "Owing to the relation of the absolute form to the essence, it is easy tosee what alone can be the only true method of philosophy, that is, the method according towhich everything is absolute, yet there is no Absolute" (4:406). We need not forbid ourselves
the use of the word
d,
but we must know that "God is not Somebody" (Gott ist nicht
Jemand) as my teacher Fritz Medicus used to say. See also page 118 of his book
n Bn
Hn
(New York: Ungar, 1973). Later Gabriel Marcel wrote "Dieu nest pas quelqu'un
qui. . ."
tr t vr,
p. 118 (Paris: Aubier, 1935).
35.
The reader will rightly ask whether this long paragraph could not also have beenwritten by a dogmatist who seeks the unconditional in an absolute object; like Spinoza's
substance, or the average churchgoer's God. As the paragraph is worded, its author could bea dogmatist. But as the two subsequent paragaphs show, Schelling does not write as a theist,
but as a philosopher who makes clear that the
fr
of unconditionality is I. There is no
unconditional
t.
Such an
t
would be nothing but an irresistable power. This is why Aristotle's
God moves nothing by force but is efficacious only as lovable
(tph
1072b4: coc
vv.
In the opening prayer of the
ll,
Augustine addresses his God as the one"whom every being loves that can love, whether knowingly or unwittingly" (quem amat omnequod potest amare, sive sciens sive nesciens;
ll.
1.i.2). And Nietzsche's last Pope says to
Zarathustra, "you are more pious than you believe. Some God converted you to your
godlessness. Is it not your piety which no longer lets you believe in God?;;
(Zrthtr,
pt. 4,
"Out of Service"). Referring to Nietzsche, Paul Tillich speaks of "an atheism which is justifiedas the reaction against theological theism and its disturbing implications"
(Th r T
B
[New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952]), p. 185. Tillich says of theism:
" 'Personal God' does not mean that God is a person. It means that God is the ground of
everything personal. 'Personal God' is a confusing symbol
(tt Thl
[Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1951] 1:245).
36. This is quite true in the abstract, in objectivistic thinking. But has not Schelling
stressed all along that, as far as the I is concerned, it is both conditioner and conditioned?
Here, theologically speaking, he is right in stressing the hiddenness of God which, however,does not annihilate His omnipresence, manifest in the human mind. The mind experiencesthe challenge to seek its own ground. Augustine speaks of God "whom no one seeks unless
reminded, whom no one finds unless purified"
(ld.
1.i.3)- obviously, purified of the
natural trend to seek outside: "Do not want to go outside, go back into yourself; in the innerman dwells truth"
(D vr rln
xxxix.72). "As I hope, God will surely grant that I maybe able to answer you or, rather, that He Himself will answer you through that inwardlyteaching truth which is the highest teacher of all" (De
rhtr
2.ii.4); "Oh eternal
truth. . . you are
my
Godl"
(ntt.,
7.
x.16);
"God toward whom to reach means to love,whom to see means to have"
(h
I.i
.3); "Father of the security whereby we are reminded to
go back to Thee" (ibid.
I.i.2).
[i 43-47]
F THE
I
AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
37
136
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
i 37-43]
37.
This is what Kant called "the original synthetic unity of apperception"
(PR
131,
16). He said: "The
thn
must
ptntll
accompany all my images [Vorstellungen],otherwise something would be imagined, in me, that could not be thought at all, whichmeans that the image would either be impossible, or else be nothing at all for me."
38.Religion says we live
n
God. For Augustine, God is the "true life," and in Him "live
all who truly live"
ld. . .
3). We may not know this because, as Schelling says, the very firstmovement of our consciousness is a movement
from God (12:120). Yet life is life, and it
desires to find its ground and home. On the first page of the
nfn
Augustine says in
prayerful meditation: "It is You who stir us
(xt,
rouse us from our numbness) so that we
delight in praising You, because you made us for You
(d t,
directed toward you) and ourheart is restless until it rests in You." Since we love life, we love God, "whom every being loves
that can love, knowingly or unwittingly"
(ll...2.
When it dawns on us that we do love God unwittingly, we want to "know Him." Yet to knowmeans to posit an object. And God is no object at all. Therefore we speak of the hidden God.And then we declare that He reveals Himself, which is what, by definition, the thing in itself
cannot do. So we define God as Love.
The mystic desires to lose himself in God, by a kind of blessed death. But the ordinary man
does not want to die. Therefore he worships. Prayer comes close yet keeps a distance. It
identifies the empirical I with the absolute and, at the same time, retains the distinction. "It is
the
character of finiteness to be unable to posit anything without at the same time positingsomething in contrast."39.
My word
pr
may mislead the reader. It derives from the Latin
p,
to be able.
All
ability has a measure and is conditional. Unconditional power is a contradiction in terms.
Scholastics will tell us that there is no potency in God. Schelling says
ht
which, like
English
ht,
has a root in Gothic
n
and German
n
or
rn
which, in turn,
mean
to be able. "Gott vermag alles": God can do anything-not by exorbitant power, butunconditionally. All power is limited. (See my 1946 paper, "The Power of the Gods and the
Freedom of God," in
Fth nd Frd
[Liverpool, 1953]. The German original,
"GOttermacht and Gottesfreiheit," appeared in
Ntr nd t
[Zurich: Rentsch, 19461.)
The
so-called power of God is his freedom. In 1811 Schelling wrote: "With respect to his
highest self, God is not revealed [since the revelatory visions present a God already past, not
his face but his "back parts" (Exodus 33:23)1, he is revealing himself; he is not real, he
becomes real, for the very purpose of being manifest as the most free"
(D ltltr,
8: 308).
(Cf. Frederick Bolman's translation,
Th f th rld
[New York: Columbia University
Press, 19421, p. 196).
40.
The
English term
nttn
is here less misleading than the German word
nhn hn
does not mean to show, as the same root has come to mean in English,
but to look, and anschauen means to look
t.
Since there is here no object, there is nothing to
look at. Instead we are required to look
nt
ourselves. This is why Augustine says "go back
into yourself' (n. 21).
4.
PR
152-59. Cf. pp. 68, 135, and 308. In contrast, and close to Schelling's assertion,
r
pp. 429 and 157n.42.Spinoza argued that there can be only one substance, God.
(th, pt.
1, prop. XIV:
Praeter Drum nulla dari neque concipi potest substantia.)
43. It makes no sense. In fact, spatial infinity can accommodate an infinite number ofpoints. A point is the better symbol for the I. But Parmenides had already fallen into the
temptation of visualizing when he blew up his Being into a sphere which looks the same fromall sides and thus seemed to symbolize identity. In 1827, in the
L
of the second edition of
the
nlpd
(I3 94) Hegel
wrote: "This infinity is the bad or negative infinity, being only
the negation of the finite which, however, reoccurs as soon as it is canceled. In short, thisinfinite says only
that the finite
ht
to he set aside. The infinite progression stops atexpressing the contradiction which everything finite contains" (6:184). Language has themeans to distinguish the negative infinite from the positive nonfinite. Fichte, Hegel, and
Schelling, by failing to distinguish between u
..
t4L
lh
and
nhttndlh,
all gave license to the
Romantic confusion which the word
nfnt
still causes in many minds. The present
translation calls the I nonfinite rather than infinite. Cf. the whole page of
Ztz 2
to § 104 of
the
nlpd
(6:209), where Hegel says that, in order to reach the truly nonfinite, "we
must renounce the
prr n nfnt"
(6:210).
44. In the copy of the essay
P.
which Schelling sent to his friend Pfister, he wrote as a
dedication the same words of Spinoza that he quotes here, and he added the same
exclamation in German that he adds here (Plitt 1: 55n):
Quid idea vera clarius et certius dari potest, quod norma sit veritatis Sane sicut lux seipsam et tenebras manifestat, sic veritas norma sui et falsi est.
Was geht Ober die stille Wonne dieser Worte, das
t n
of a better life.Tubingen, at the end of the year 94.
45.This is Schelling's satirical paraphrase of Jacobi's passage quoted in n.6 above.46.
Schelling does say
ntltlt,
i.e., contains by its strict
fr
of
t,
and
nt
ntnr
like that "infinite sphere" of page 183 of
f ,
which accommodates any number of
finite spheres (but also gives each of them its spherical form, owing to which all are
contained in sphericity). Parmenides discovered the formal identity of thinking and being(Diels, fr.5; Plotinus
nn.
5.i.8). (See n. 47.) Spinoza says whatever is, is in God.
(th,
pt.
1, prop. XV: Quicquid est in Deo est, et nihil sine Deo concipi potest.)
47. Compare Schelling's footnote to his page 214 of
f :
"Now, the process of all
synthesis is such that whatever is absolutely posited in both thesis and antithesis is posited in
the synthesis with qualifications, that is, merely conditionally." When Schelling wrote
f th
he had at hand the second fascicle of Fichte's
rndl
(see bottom line of Plitt 1:73) to
which he may be referring here. Fichte wrote (1:115; cf. Heath 113): "7. Just as antithesis is
not possible without synthesis, nor synthesis without antithesis, so are both impossible without
thesis, that is, without an absolute positing by which an A (the I) is simply posited without
positing it as identical with another nor as opposed to another." It was Kant who had referred
to this logic of triplicity, in the second of his "pretty observations"
(rt Btrhtnn
Smith [115] quite aptly says "nice points") regarding the interrelation between any three
categories among the four groups of them. Kant wrote: "It is my second remark that there isthe same number of categories in each gr
.
oup, namely three. This is a challenge to reflect on,because otherwise all a priori subdivision of concepts must proceed by dichotomy. Add to thisthat in each group the third category springs from the connection of the second with the first"
(Pr
110).
Dichotomy is indeed the procedure of abstract logic and of popular thinking: either A ornot-A; either for us or against us; either God or the Devil. As a child of the Enlightenment,
Kant was inured to this mode of thinking. But as a genuine, responsible thinker he senses thechallenge of this "nice point," although he does not yet fully accept it, not quite aware of thedanger that the triplicity could be abused and turned into a dead rote such as the textbooksfalsely attribute to Hegel: thesis, antithesis, synthesis.Gustav E. Muller reminded us that Hegel "refers to 'thesis, antithesis, and synthesis' in the
Prf
of the
Phnnl f nd,
where he considers the possibility of this 'triplicity'as a method or logic of philosophy. According to the Hegel-legend one would expect Hegel to
recommend this 'triplicity'. But, after saying that it was derived from Kant, he calls it a
'lifeless schema', 'mere shadow' and concludes: 'The trick of wisdom of that sort is as quicklyacquired as it is easy to practice. Its repetition, when once it is familiar, becomes as boring as
the repetition of any hit of sleight of hand once we see through it. The instrument for
pr
ucing t his monotonous formalism is no more difficult to handle that the palette of a
138
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
i 47 55]
painter, on which lie only two colors...' (2:39 f.; Lasson ed. 2:41-43). (See The Hegel
Legend of 'Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis,'
Journal
f th Htr f d
[January 1958].Muller calls the legend a Marxistic smear and shows how Marx got his twisted idea (ibid. 414).
In the
Ltr n th Htr f Phlph,
Hegel spoke of the mindless schema of
triplicity. Thus Kant prescribed a rhythm of knowledge, of scientific movement, as a
universal schema, and set up everywhere thesis, antithesis and synthesis (15:551). In a
historical manner, Kant listed the moments of the whole and determined and distinguished
them correctly; it is a good introduction to philosophy. But the defect of the Kantian
philosophy lies in the disintegration (Auseinanderfallen) of the moments of absolute form
(15:552). See the entire passage, 15:550-53.48. Parmenides speaks of the "deceitful world of words" (Diets fr. 8:52) which would lead
to the "unthinkable" declaration "that Not-Being necessarily is" (Diets fr. 4:6 and 5), as the
opinions of mortals (fr. 8:51) would hold. I know that Krk and Raven endeavor to tone
down the Hegelian reading of Parmenides
(Th Prrt Phlphr,
Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1962]. I side with Hegel
(Ltr n th Htr f Phlph,
13:296 et passim).
/ 49. This is the principle of the deduction of the categories to which Schelling referred in
the preface (154 of
f .
5
This leads to the thesis of
D.
that, on the basis of Kant's
rt,
dogmatism is as
possible as criticism, theoretically speaking.
51
The reader may by now be well beyond the need of being reminded of the
Parmenidean discovery that the form of isness is I, i.e., vostv
52. Of course, not in the empirical I, where idealists like Berkeley try to posit it.
53.0n the first page of his
ttpt t rt f ll Rvltn,
written in 1791 and
published in 1792, Fichte wrote that the concept of revelation ought to be investigated and,
since it is a religious concept, the investigation must be made from a priori principles of
practical reason (5:15), because we must attribute to practical reason a dominant power
over theoretical reason, though only in line with the laws of the former" (5:49). On January 6,
1795, Schelling wrote to Hegel that Fichte himself had sent him the first part of the
rndl dr tn nhftlhr
(Plitt 1:73). There (1:126) Fichte wrote "that it is
not in
fact
the theoretical faculty which makes possible the practical, but on the contrary, the
practical which first makes possible the theoretical (that reason in itself is purely practical,
and only becomes theoretical on application of its laws to a not-self that restricts it)" (Heath
123).
54
Spinoza defines God as "Being absolutely infinite" (ibid., def. vi.) Per Deum intelligo
ens absolute infinitum. This definition does away with any objective God, if we will but
replace the word
nfnt
by
nnfnt.
I am not saying that John Wld, in his 1930 translation
(Spinoza.
ltn
'New York: Scribner's], p. 94) should have replaced it and thereby
should have obscured the fact that, in form, Spinoza was what Schelling calls a dogmatist. Ido suggest that the student make the replacement and, in that way, be able to find a tenable
sense of Spinoza's definition vi and its
xplntn.
In the essay of 1794
(P.
102) Schelling said that Spinoza "transposed the original form
I Uriorm of knowledge from his own Ito a very different concept, quite independent of the I,
the conception of a connotation of all possibility. And in a footnote to the preceding page
Puri. 101 11.)
Schelling said that our awareness of this kind of transposition will stop "the idle
talk about objective proofs for the existence of God," and "then there will also be an end to
the persistent question as to whether a thing in itself exists (in other words, whether something
that does not appear can be an appearance)."
55
Spinoza said: "Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself, For anattribute is that which the intellect perceives of substance as if constituting its substance bydefinition iv), and therefore (by definition iii) it must be conceived through itself'
(Ethics,
pt.
[i 55 64]
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
139
1, prop. X). He defined substance as "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself; inother words, that, the conception of which does not need the conception of any other things
r,
i.e., reality] from which it must be formed. This, of course, correspondes precisely to
Schelling's definition of the I. In his February 4, 1795, letter to Hegel he said: "Meanwhile I
have become a Spinozist Don't be amazed. You will soon hear in what way. For Spinoza the
world (the object in simple contrast to the subject) was everything, for me it is the
I
(Plitt
1:76; what then follows in the letter is quoted in n.25). Schelling's is a Spinozism in reverse,
replacing
it
by
.
The word
d
stands for either of the two. If it stands for
it
(in
dogmatism ) then, Paul Tllich would say, atheism is justified as the reaction against atheism in which God appears as the invincible tyrant.
(Th r t B
[New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 1952], p. 185. Cf.
tt Thl
[Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1951], 1:237 and 245.)
56
Spinoza says: "No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it would
follow that substance can be divided (ibid. prop. XII). The reader may wish to compare
Spinoza's demonstration with Schelling's argument.
57
Spinoza says: "Besides God, no substance can be nor can be conceived." (ibid., prop.
XIV.) In a long letter dated 'Tschugg near Erlach, via Bern, August 30, 1795 the lonely
Hegel thanked Schelling profusely for the gift of
f .
However, he says: "You cannot expect
critical remarks on your essay. Here I am only an apprentice. I am trying to study Fichte's
rndl.
But permit me one remark to show my good will to satisfy your desire for such
remarks. In § 12 you give the I the attribute of being the only substance. It seems to me that,
insofar as substance and accident are interdependent concepts, the concept of substance
could not pertain to the absolute I but only to the empirical I as it occurs in self-consciousness.
Yet the preceding § [11] makes me believe that you are not speaking of the latter I (which
unites the highest thesis and antithesis), for in that § you attribute indivisibility to the I, a
predicate which would pertain only to the absolute I, not to the I that occurs in self-conscious-
ness. In the latter the predicate could posit only a part of the reality [of the empirical I]
(Brf vn nd n Hl,
ed. Karl Hegel [Leipzig, 1887], 1921). Schelling's delayed answerof January 1796 ignored Hegel's query but mentioned the second installment of
D.
soon
to appear in issue 5 of Niethammer's
Phlphl jrnl.
(Plitt 1:93 and Hegel 19:22 n. 3.)
58
Spinoza says: Whatever is is in God and nothing can either be or be conceivedwithout God
(th
1. prop. XV).
59
Spinoza defines modes as "the affections of substance" (def. v) and he says they "can
be only in the divine nature, and through it alone can they be conceived (prop. XV,
demonstr.).
6
Augustine says of God "fecisti nos
d t" (nfn
1.1.1).
61
It is obvious that Schelling is addressing the Kantians in their predicament of trying tosynthesize the not-I as such with the I as such.
62
Spinoza says: "God is the immanent and not the transitive cause of all things"
(th
1 prop. XVIII). John Wld (117) adds a footnote:
Transiens,
passing over and into from theoutside." Popular theism turns God into an outside cause. But before they act, outside causes
are mere potentialities. Popular imagination locates God outside in space and thus, perhaps
unintentionally, conceives of Hm as a body (called a spirit ). Aquinas says to be pure act
properly belongs to God"
(. Th.
Ia. IIae. Q. 50, art. 6: esse actum purum est proprium dei).
63
This could explain the standpoint of a purely voluntaristic and antirational theology,
perhaps starting with Tertullian.
64
PR
842:
llt,
bliss or (as Norman Kemp Smith translates) "happiness, inexact proportion with the morality of rational beings who are thereby rendered worthy of it,alone constitutes the supreme good of that world wherein, in accordance with the commands
of a pure but practical reason, we are under obligation to place ourselves. Cf. 883 f., 837,
839.
14
HE UNCONDITIONAL IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE
65 7 ]
65.
PuR
837-38, e.g. (Smith 638 f.): "a system of self-rewarding morality is only an idea,
the carrying out of which rests on the condition that
everyone
does what he ought, that is, that
all the actions of rational beings take place just as if they had proceeded from a supreme will
that comprehends in itself, or under itself, all private wills. . . .The alleged necessary
connection of the hope of happiness with the incessant endeavor to render the self worthy of
happiness cannot therefore be known through reason. It can be counted upon only if a
Supreme Reason
[eine h8chste Vernunft] that governs according to moral rules [Gesetzen] belikewise posited as underlying nature as its cause."
66.
PuR
597 (Smith 486): "As the idea gives the
rule
[Regel], so the ideal. . .serves as the
archetype
[Urbild] for the complete determination of the copy [Nachbild]."
67.
PuR
581 (Smith 476:) "In respect of the intelligible character. . .the empirical
character is the sensible
schema.
68.
In the later part of his
Grundlage
(1:286) Fichte wrote: "If Wissenschaftslehre wereconfronted with the question How are the things in themselves really structured Ebeschaffenl,
it could not answer except by saying, the way we ought to structure [machen] them (Cf.Heath 252; see below,
N.R. ,
n. 32). Fichte may have taken his cue from the
Critique ofjudgment (§
84,
Cass. 5: 515; Bernard 285 f.), where Kant says that the existence [Dasein] of
man contains in
itself "the highest purpose to which, as far as is in his power, he can subject
the whole
of nature." Schelling may have known the passage in Fichte, though it is not likely
since the
Grundlage
appeared in book form only at Easter 1795 and Schelling's preface is
dated March
29. On January 6 he had written to Hegel that he had just received "from Fichte
himself the
beginning
[emphasis added]
of Fichte's exposition, the
Grundlage. . .which
is
notyet available as a
book but only as manuscript [in printed fascicles] for Fichte's students"
(Plitt
1:73 f.).
69.
PuR
425 (Smith 379): "man alone can contain in himself the final end of all
this
order of nature.
PuR
868 (Smith 658): "the ultimate end. . .is no other than the whole
vocation of man." The latter phrase may have furnished the title of Fichte's book of 1800,
DieBestimmung des Menschen.
(Cf.
PuR
492. However also cf. Fichte 6:289.)
70.
The.old
Schelling (but before 1836) says
Lord
(Herr) instead of
power
(Macht). "One
could say: God is really nothing
in itself;
he is nothing but relation, and pure relation, for he
is only the Lord. Everything else that we might add would turn him into a sheer substance. He
is, as it were,
really good for nothing but for being Lord of all being. For he is the only naturenot concerned with itself, rid of itself, and therefore absolutely free. Everything substantial is
concerned with itself, confined within itself, afflicted by itself. God alone has nothing to do
with himself, he is
sui securus
(sure of himself and therefore rid of himself) and therefore is
concerned only with other entities— he is, one might say, entirely
outside
of himself, free of
himself, and is thus the being that sets everything else free"
(Darstellung des phdosophischen
Empirtlintu.s,
Munich lectures, first given
1836, 10:260). Still later (see 11:v-vi) Schelling
wrote that God manifests his reality,
which is independent of the idea and subsists even along
with an annulment of
the idea; he reveals himself as the real Lord of being" (11:571).
71.Schelling sees
a parallel to Kant's
schematism
which treats "of the sensible
condition
under which
alone pure concepts of understanding can be employed" with regard to
appearances. Pure concepts of understanding, being
quite heterogeneous from empirical
Intuitions I
Anschauungen, imagery] and
indeed from all sensible intuitions, can never be met
with in any intuition
I image'. For no one will say that a category, such as that of causality,
n
be intuited through sense and is itself contained in appearance. . . .Obviously there must
be some third form, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the
other hand with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the
latter possible. This is the transcendental schema
(PuR
175.77;
Smith 179-81).
The reader
may wish to consult the entire chapter on schematism, pp. 176-87 (Smith 180-87).72.
Kant
declared: We arc necessarily constrained by 'practical] reason to conceive of
[i 72 74]
OF THE I AS PRINCIPLE OF PHILOSOPHY
141
ourselves as belonging to a moral world. Yet the senses present us nothing but a world of
appearances [Erscheinungen]. Therefore we must assume that moral world to be a
consequence of our conduct in the world of sense and (since the latter exhibits no such
connection) to be for us a future world"
(PuR
839; cf. Smith 639). In 1792, in the
Critique ofAll Revelation
(5:118)
Fichte wrote: "That we are
immortal
follows immediately from the
challenge to turn the highest good into a reality. Yet our natures, insofar as they are finite,cannot fully meet that challenge. However, they
ought
to become more and more capable to
fulfill it. Therefore they must be
able
to do so. Kant had said: To put everything else after
the holiness of duty and to know that we
can
do it because our own reason acknowledges it asits law and says that we
ought
to do it—that is, as it were, to lift ourselves altogether out of the
world of sense"
(PuR,
Cass. 5:171; Beck 163). What follows is that
"pure
eternity is here
already, but young Schelling still wants to save the
"empirical
eternity" which Kant and
Fichte assume.
73.
From this can be drawn Spinoza's inference that "the intellectual love of the mind
towards God is the very love with which He loves Himself." However, Spinoza adds: "not in sofar as He is nonfinite but in so far as He can be manifested through the essence of the human
mind considered under the form of eternity"
(Ethics
5.xxxvi; John Wild's translation except
for the word
nonfinite
in lieu of
infinite.)
74.
One of the inconsistencies of
PuR
is that Kant replaces his "System of TranscendentalIdeas" (390), whose "advance from the knowledge of oneself (the soul) to the knowledge of theworld, and by means of this to the original being, is so natural that it seems to resemble the
logical advance of reason from premisses to conclusion" (394), with a new trinity of
metaphysical ideas, added in the second edition: God, freedom, and immortality (395 n.).
Even so, he says about immortality that its "merely speculative proof has never been able toexercise any influence upon
the common
reason of men. It so stands upon the point of a hair,that even the schools preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it unceasingly spinninground like a top; even in their own eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything
could be built (424). Yet nothing is thereby lost as regards the right, nay, the
necessity,
of
postulating a future life in accordance with the principles of the practical employment ofreason" (ibid.). Man "feels an inner call to fit himself, by his conduct in this world. . .for
citizenship in a better world upon which he lays hold in idea" (426; Smith 322, 325, 379, 380).
The argument based on morality leads only to a postulate. PrRsays that "complete fitness of
the will to the moral law is holiness, which is a perfection of which no rational being in the
world of sense is at any time capable. But since it is required as practically necessary, it can be
found only in an endless progress to that complete fitness (Cass. 5.132; Beck 126). In his
supplementary volume on
Kants Le ben and Lehre (11:282),
Ernst Cassirer wrote: "More thanin any other passage, Kant here stands in the continuity of the philosophical world view of the
eighteenth century" (see n. 119 below). "This infinite progress is possible, however, onlyunder the presupposition of an infinitely enduring existence and personality of the samerational being; this is called the immortality of the soul. . .and the latter, as inseparablybound to the moral law, is a postulate of pure practical reason"
(PrR
127; Cass. 5:132 f.).Kant is wholly consistent when he speaks of the "impossibility of dogmatically determining, in
regard to an object of,experience, anything that lies beyond the limits of experience"
(PuR
424; Smith 378). Reading "objectivisitic" for "dogmatic," one can say that it is Kant's
unresolved objectivism which makes him write that "our concept of an incorporeal nature is
merely negative (827; Smith 631). This assertion, however, is not consistent with his truer
insight that in the consciousness of myself in sheer thought I am the being itself'
(das Wesen
selbst)
(429; Smith 382). It is the latter insight which led to Fichte's
unconditional certainty of
self and to Schelling's I
as
principle of philosophy. True enough, Kant adds to the sentence
just quoted the proviso "although nothing in myself is thereby given for thought." Of course,
he means objectivistic thought. Fichte and Schelling could ask what more could be givenwhen the
I,
the being itself, is given.
