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The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Volume 29, Number 3, 2015,

pp. 324-334 (Article)
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In Defense of the Critical Philosophy:
OnSchellings Departure from Kant and Fichte
in Abhandlungen zur Erluterung des Idealismus
der Wissenschaftslehre (1796/1797)
Chelsea C. Harry
southern connecticut state university

abstract: This article considers the second treatise of Schellings Abhandlungen zur
Erluterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre (Treatises Explaining the Idealism of the
Science of Knowledge, 1796/97), a lesser-known work from the early Schelling. Here,
Schelling proposes to defend the critical position insofar as it purports to be a system
based on human reason, but instead he issues a backhanded critique of the assumption
on behalf of the critical philosophers to try and limit the bounds of pure reason by means
of their own use of reason. Schelling then offers an alternative way to think about the
relationship of mind (Geist) and matter in nature. This article argues that Schellings
actual explanation of the critical philosophy as a position founded by reasonable minds
ultimately belies his promise to defend it, thus calling into question that Schellings
thought prior to 1800 was a mere reiteration of Kantian/Fichtean transcendentalism.
keywords: Shelling, Naturphilosophie, Kant, Fichte, critical philosophy

Schellings Abhandlungen zur Erluterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftslehre

(1796/97; Treatises Explaining the Idealism of the Science of Knowledge)
journal of speculative philosophy, vol. 29, no. 3, 2015
Copyright 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA

on schellings departure from kant and fichte

325

is a lesser-known text from his early Naturphilosophie.1 First published in

Niethammer and Fichtes Philosophisches Journal under the title Survey
of the Most Recent Philosophical Literature (1797), the Abhandlung, a
series of essays or treatises, discusses the critical program broadly and its
implications for practical philosophy.2 Yet Schelling punctuates his discussion of the program qua ostensible defense of the critical position with his
seeming disavowal of transcendentalisms founding premise. Instead of
explicating the Kantian or Fichtean reply to the questions of how we know
something in nature and what we can know about nature, he tells against
our ability even to pose such questions. He argues against a bifurcation of
materiality from the conditions under which material comes to bea speculative enterprise that is an impossible move in reality.3 Instead, Schelling
demonstrates a middle way (I/1, 365), i.e. his own way, whereby he will
not focus on a false notion of cause and effect in nature, which results
from our need to separate the inseparable and to understand becoming as
a linear enterprise, but will inquire into the necessary presence of the idea
of an external world in our minds (Harry 2014, 67). His brief inquiry
leads him ultimately to conclude that all contraries exist cohesively as one.
Infinite and finite, subject and object, and matter and form not only define
each other but are absolutely inextricable from one another.
In what follows, I offer a reading of the second essay in support of my
thesis that despite Schellings promise at the outset to explain the critical philosophy as a position founded by reasonable minds (I/1, 363),4 he
ultimately argues for a departure from the tradition by way of a rethinking
of the way mind and matter exist for each other.5 Thus already in the early
Schelling we find his challenge to Cartesian dualism, Newtonian physics,
and Kantian and Fichtean critical philosophy.6

I. Matter and Form as Original Unity

At the outset of the second essay, Schelling announces that he has heard
it asked how the system of the critical philosophers could be conceived,
let alone seem convincing to others. He promises to respond imminently, first summarizing the transcendental position: The form of our
knowledge comes from ourselves, the material of the same thing, i.e. our
knowledge, is given to us from outside (I/1, 363).7 And he casts doubt,
on the one hand, on the idea that knowledge is a hylomorphic construct,
composed by the marriage of real outside material with the likewise real

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chelsea c. harry

internal structure of consciousness, and, on the other handas the critical

philosophy holds, limiting our knowledgeon the possibility for this marriage, by calling into question the capability of our consciousness to know
the outside world. Schelling criticizes these two tenets as inconsistent.
How can we have a theory of knowledge not grounded in our capability for
human knowledge?
The idea that the form of knowledge comes from a framework internal to
human consciousness while the material makeup of knowledgethe referent of knowledgecomes from the world external to human consciousness
is, according to Schelling, rooted in a particular understanding of human
nature. But the basis of the distinction between form and material itself is
supposed only as a philosophical exercise: Although in our knowledge itself
both form and material are intimately united, it is but clear, that philosophy
sublates this hypothetical unity in order to explain it (I/1, 364). The idea that
form is internal and material is external is meant only for the purposes of
philosophical analysis. The critical project, while purported to be an effort
to limit the reach of human reason, is undertaken on the basis of certain
assumptions about the human mind, namely, that it is fundamentally separate from nature and that its own potentiality for speculation can be used to
justify conclusions about (1) how it knows things and (2) what it can know.
Schelling puts the problem this way: in our knowledge, there is an absolute meeting between object and idea, but in speculation we can separate
the two. Once the separation has been proposed, however, it is impossible
to think again the unmediated relationship between themto immediate
the mediated. And the questions regarding cause and effect begin (I/1, 365).
The point here is that as soon as we ask about the relationship between matter and form, or object and idea, we try to respond to the question in a linear
wayone has to follow the other, one has to come firstwe ground what is
groundless. It is impossible for us to think of the two together, simultaneous, and independent at the same time. Because the task is impossible, we
never satisfactorily answer the question.

II. Indissoluble Contraries

Schelling shows the seemingly impossible as actual in self-reflection.
He argues that the only example of a being that looks at itself, that is, a
being that is in some situations both the knower and the known, the one

on schellings departure from kant and fichte

327

i ntuiting and that which is being intuited, is a human being (I/1, 366).
We are examples of this type of beinga being that has the unmediated
I, through which one knows and understands before anything else
(I/1,366). On the converse, in knowing any other external object, the I
mediates the object. In a slight twist on Kants famous claim that existence
is not a predicate, Schelling then concludes that the essence or being
[Wesen] of mind [Geistes] [is] that it is for itself and no other predicate has
an itself (I/1, 366). Schelling thus returns to his quest to identify our
impulse to understand the possibility of the correspondence between idea
and object. He argues for the need to prove that mind only intuits itself in
order to show the absolute correspondence of idea and object. This move is
based on three accepted premises: (1) Mind intuits objects overall; (2) the
reality of all our knowledge is based in the absolute correspondence of idea
and object; and (3) only in the self-intuition of a mind is there identity from
idea and object (I/1, 366).8 Schellings plan for the demonstration begins
with two steps: supposing that (1) the subject and object are in us, that is,
the intuiting and intuited are identical, and (2) the minds name is I only
when it is an object for itself (I/1, 366).
Schelling defends (2) above. Mind cannot be an object originally, as
object is something dead, calm, without ability for self-action, object is
only the object [Gegenstand] of action (I/1, 367). Thus, object cannot mean
that which acts. Instead, it is a subject, which acts itself. This becomes,
then, the primary distinction for which Schelling argues as that which separates the identity of subject from that of object. A subject, Schelling posits, is an eternal (ewiges) becoming.9 Indeed, he underlines the importance
of the self-action by which the mind, as subject, becomes object through
itself; mind as subject becomes object through the ongoing unfolding of
itself by way of acting (I/1, 367). Assuming that philosophy takes place with
the mind, he concludes that philosophy begins with deed and action, and
precisely therefore mind would not be (per se) originally object (I/1, 367).
Schelling continues, explaining that object is originally, thus necessarily, finite. Since mind is not originally finite, it is not necessarily finite.
Schelling questions, thus, whether it is infinite in nature. But he notes that
the peculiar characteristic of mind, which makes it mind in the first place,
is that it is not only originally subject but also an object by virtue of the fact
that it makes itself an object to itself. Since object is finite, mind must be
in some sense finite too. Schelling plays with the theme of inextricable contraries, concluding that since mind is both subject and, subjects contrary,

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chelsea c. harry

object, it must also be both finite and infinite. He explains this seeming
impossibility as in fact actual: It is neither infinite without becoming finite,
nor can it become finite (for itself) without being infinite. It is not of either,
neither infinite nor finite, alone, but in mind is the primordial union of the
infinite and finite (a new condition of the character of mind) (I/1, 367).
Mind, as subject, is capable of infiniteor in-finiteproduction of self as
object. It is the inextricable and original nature of the finite and the infinite,
he claims, that founds the being [Wesen] of an individual nature (the ego)
(I/1, 368).
But, as Schelling explains, it is only through the action of the mind
that one comes to know these contrary activities. Because this is the case,
however, the activities are not seen as contraries. Instead, they are thought
to be one and the same action of the mind, intuition (I/1, 368). Intuition
does not imply consciousness here, and yet it is a necessary precondition for
consciousnessthat through which one distinguishes the opposed activities.
Schelling describes the contrariness in terms of positive and negative,
illustrating them as a filled-in circle and the outline of a circle (I/1,368).
Finally, he provides an analogue for the positive filled-in circle, which is all
the actions from outside of the mind, and for the negative outline of a circle,
we have the actions internal to the mind (I/1, 369). Schelling argues that
existence is not predicated on being alive but, rather, in being conditioned.
He uses the example of a dead body, which is no longer aliveit is not
but which remains there in the world. The mind is, then, by the conditions
it imposes on itself for itself. This is to say that mind limits itself in its
activity. . . . [M]ind is itself not other than this activity and this limit, both as
simultaneously thought (I/1, 369). This is to express that minds infinite
potential for infinite action is self-limited by its finite actions.
In this vein, then, Schelling writes that by limiting itself mind is at
the same time active and passive [leidend], and because without this action
also there would be no consciousness of our nature, so would be this absolute unity of activity and passivity of character of the individual nature
(I/1,369). Without being infinite and finite, active and passive, it could not
be both subject and objectsubject and object for itself. So, the possibility
of the unity of contraries is both the necessary and the sufficient condition
for mind itself. This unity allows for subjective self-consciousness as object.
The interrelatedness between activity and passivity is picked up again
when Schelling describes passivity as not other than negative activity
(I/1, 369). Passivity does not and cannot exist without its contrary, because,

on schellings departure from kant and fichte

329

as Schelling goes on to explain, an absolutely passive being [Wesen] is an

absolute nothingness (a nihil privativum) (I/1, 369). The confluence and
absolute simultaneity of activity and passivity is the ground for the existence of mind. Schelling notes that all philosophers have realized this
(I/1, 369).
Without the unity of these contraries, ideasthough not external
objectsbecome impossible. As Schelling has previously discussed, it is
the mind as subject that acts and in that process becomes object to itself.
The infinity of possible action characteristic of the mind is made finite by
its own singular actions. But, here, Schelling declares that the grounding
for mind is in fact that simultaneity of activity and passivity; it is the possibility for mind to act and simultaneously to be acted on that allows that
it exists at all. Regarding activity and passivity in terms of mind, it is both
intuiting from the outside world, that is, being affected by outside stimuli
and external phenomena, and actively developing ideas about that which
exists outside itself.
Schelling thus writes that in us no idea is possible without passivity,
but even less so without activity (I/1, 369). This is to say that ideas are a
synthesis of the two. On the one hand, the mind requires intuition of external phenomena so as not to be an absolute nothingness, but it is then
the activity of the mind, which allows for the production of new internal
phenomena, that is, of ideas. Without actually asking what is considered
the first and most crucial epistemological questionnamely, What or who
is the starting point of knowledge?we have come upon a reply. Schelling
is keen to express this in his explicit observation that unnoticed, we have
been led through our investigations to the most difficult problem in philosophy (I/1, 369). There is no starting point; there is no before (knower)
to the after (known). Instead, there is an inextricable, necessary, and simultaneous relationship between different aspects of nature, which allow for
the production of ever-novel phenomena. To be clearer, knowledge is not
based on the simple intellectual intuition that something outside of the
mind is predicated a certain way, for example, the ball is red: (1) There is a
red ball; (2) I see the red ball; (3) I have an idea of the red ball as something
other than myself; (4) thus, I realize the existence of a red ball. Instead,
nature is less linear and not based necessarily on cause and effect, that is,
on preset conditions. Instead, the active nature of the mind allows for a
productive self-limiting. Because the interminable opposition between infinite and finite, form and matter, subject and object, and so on exists, ideas

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chelsea c. harry

come from a simultaneous working together of more than one indissoluble

aspect of naturemind or intellectual nature, on the one hand, and matter or physical nature, on the other. Through this interworking, we find
the production of even further nature by way of mental action.
The interrelation between activity and passivity is, for Schelling, that
which founds our being (Wesen), and I take him to say here that the very
subjectobject dualism he previously defended as characteristic of mind
only is in turn the very essence of human existence qua self-consciousness.10
Since the existence of opposition allows for intellectual nature, this nature is
no doubt a plain facet of nature broadly construed, which is entirely different from saying that mind is somehow outside of nature, trying to know
it.11 While the outcome might be the same, that is, that we never know
objects unfiltered by our minds, this is a clear disavowal of transcendentalism. It is one thing to posit (1) a bifurcation between mind and matter and
between what really is and what we have access to, in Kantian language,
noumena and phenomena, and another to say that (2) the mind as a
part of nature produces, in conjunction with intuition from the external
world, additional components of nature.

III. Synthesizing Unity and Difference: Schellingian Conclusions

Toward the end of the second treatise, Schelling returns to the opposition
between form and material. Suggesting an analogue between the second
vantage point given above and the way one might look to the perennial
opposition between form and material, Schelling concludes that there is
no actual difference between the two. Instead, we think that there must be
because it is only by way of our own intellective nature that we have come
to find a difference between them in the first place. We can identify form
and material as contraries only because we know each of them separately
through their opposition to each other. And yet, in identifying the pair with
the opposition in this way, we incorrectly identify them as fundamentally
separate and opposed. Schelling will in fact refer to the practice of mind
as the intuition and to the product of this practice as the concept. When
the intuition is abstracted from the concept, what is left is purely formal,
and when the concept is abstracted from the intuition, what is left is pure
material (I/1, 372). Therefore, Schelling is able to conclude that starting a
philosophical inquiry where consciousness is presented as a given, that is,

on schellings departure from kant and fichte

331

as a fact, will result in false conclusions precisely because the premise will
be false; he calls it an inconsistent system (I/1, 372).
Schellings final conclusion here, instead of defending the critical position as promised, shows it ultimately to be unfounded (I/1, 373). The last
question he briefly takes up, then, given that form and material are for him
one and the same thing, is whether form and material are both given to us
from the outside or from the inside, that is, from our intellective nature
(I/1, 373). At first blush, Schelling admits, it looks as though material must
come from outside of us. This is because we accept that material is actually
real, a Gegenstand, outside of us.12 But material without mind is only ever a
Gegenstand, as it cannot be anything for itself. And, so, does this then mean
that the material has preceded us? In order for us to know whether material
is in itself, we must be material, Schelling surmises. But, as it turns out,
he is unable to answer the question he has just posed regarding the origins
of form and material.13 Instead, he asserts that we can only really know
ourselves. We should not pretend or purport to have access to knowledge
claims about the origins of our knowledge. And we have come full circle.
The solutions of the critical philosophers fail primarily because they offer
answers that cannot, on Schellings view, be justified. They rest on the false
premise not only that form and material are separate entities but also that
we can know the original conditions and origination of the two. Whether
material comes from outside of us, or whether the challenge that it must
come from inside of us is correct, Schelling rests silentdeferring us, his
twenty-first-century readers, to his later iterations on the topic.

notes
1. At stake in this premise is not only that I locate these essays squarely in
Schellingian Naturphilosophie, instead of Identittsphilosophie, owingtoSchellings
early anchoring of the infinite in the finite, but also that I take Schelling tobe
engaged here with a theme I believedespite the view that Schellingwas
an inconsistent thinkerhe was lifelong engaged (on this point,see
Grant 2008,56: that nature philosophy is core to, rather than a phase of,
Schellingianism).
2. See Pfau 1994, 6162, for further details about the text.
3. See Richardss (2002, 13637) thesis that already in the Abhandlungen
Schelling puts forth his central ideas about organicity, which would be more fully
developed in the first iteration of Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797; Ideas
for a Philosophy of Nature) and then, according to Roberts, recast in the first version
of Von der Weltseele (1798; The Ages of the World).

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chelsea c. harry

4. Schellings motivation to defend the critical tradition, even while departing

from it in various ways, may have been based on an early decision to stand united
with Fichte as defenders of transcendentalism. See Vater and Wood 2012, 3, that
Schelling and Fichte, even when they had misgivings about each other, they
were still eager to have the public perceive them as united under the banner of
Transcendental Idealism.
5. Thanks go to Richard Velkley and G. Anthony Bruno for our conversation
about Schellings actual target here. Given that Schellings criticisms are couched
in a seeming apologetic, that he has any target is a conclusion for which I can
only submit evidence. Even still, and not unlike the performance we see from
Fichte (1985) in his own response to the critical philosopher Reinhold and skeptic
Schulze, I think we see no one spared, even if for different reasons, e.g., Kant, the
Kantians, and Fichte, in Schellings developing analytic. See, for example, Vater
and Wood 2012, 1420, on the main philosophical differences between Schelling
and Fichte after 1800. Fichte could not abide Schellings naturalisma view that
consciousness and nature (mind and matter) exist together in some sense. Already
in 1796/97 we see the emergence of this view. Despite that Kant announces that
we do not know the origins of material and form, he argues for a priori conditions
of experience and the noumenal behind the phenomenal; Schellings analytic of
nature argues against the first and renders the second untenable. Still, Schellings
jabs at the critical philosophers in the first treatise signal to us that, even if
Kant and Fichte are targets of his criticism here in the second treatise, his explicit
targets, at least at the outset, are the poor readers and mediocre explicators of Kant.
6. Cf. Sturma 2000, that even if Schelling is already departing from Kant
prior to 1800, he does not emerge from under Fichtes thumb until the System of
Transcendental Idealism.
7. Translations of the second treatise are my own, published in Harry 2014.
8. As Richards (2002, 27) notes, a consequence of this move is that
Kants Ding an sich is no longer viable. Knowledge, for Schelling, is
correspondenceaposition we see developed here.
9. The adjective Schelling uses here to express ceaselessness is ewiges, which is
not the same term he uses when contrasting the infinite (unendliche) and finite
(endlich).
10. This raises the question as to whether or not Schelling thought that only
humans are essentially mind. This type of belief seems to be in line with the
Aristotelian tradition of relegating intellectual nature to intellectual beings, i.e.,
human beings. Whether or not nonhuman animals share in an active mindin
the Schellingian sense, this means a mind that produces ideasis not discussed.
11. It is the implication of this idea that, when taken out of context, implicates
Schelling as a philosophical idealist: And because everything finite is only
graspable through opposed activities, but these are originally united only in mind,
so it follows from the self, that all outside existence comes forth and is apparent

on schellings departure from kant and fichte

333

first from intellectual nature (I/1, 369). Schelling is not implying either that all of
nature comes to be only from the mind or that there is a fundamental difference
between what we can know and what actually exists external to us, as Kant
supposed. This is to say that Schelling is not arguing for a separation between
metaphysical and epistemological conclusions.
12. In the second treatise, Schelling interchanges two German words, Objekt
and Gegenstand, both commonly rendered object in English. But, while it has
sparked discussion among commentators as to whether or not Schelling meant to
convey the same or different ideas with his use of the two different terms, it seems
clear to me, in conjunction with the foregoing reading, that he indeed meant the
terms to reference different things. By Gegenstand, literally standing against/
in opposition to, he means external phenomena opposing the subject intuiting
the objectlikewise, the way the mind as subject makes itself object by its own
action. By Objekt, he means the object as intuited by the mind, as that which
has been filtered through the lens of the subject and, likewise, that which will
simultaneously lend itself to the production of ideas.
13. It is this problem, the problem of nature, with which Schelling is occupied
in Ideen. See in particular the introduction: Schelling 1988, 942.

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