SCHELLINGS RETURN TO BHME

Schelling is the philosopher of the Ungrund. His 1809 Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and (to a lesser extent) is often seen as the highpoint of Bhmean strands of Romanticism and Idealism. However, I am going to avoid discussing this celebrated text that is, I will steer clear of the works in which Schelling talks like Bhme to instead focus on those where he talks about Bhme. Instead of analysing the 1809 Freiheitsschrift (as it is customary to do), I will concentrate on some much later works (the 1833 Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy and the 1842 Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation) where Schelling returns to Bhme. In so doing, I intend to bring something slightly fresh to the rather well-worn topic of Schelling and Bhme. The first half of this paper briefly considers the biographical detail of Schellings engagement with Bhme; the second half deals with the content of this engagement.

First, I need to provide some orientation around Schellings philosophical trajectory. The periodisation and continuity of Schellings work is a touchy subject; however, for the purpose of this paper, I will split Schellings work into three:

His early work written between 1794 and 1806 (up until he was 31 years old). This is Schellings pre-Hegelian output, comprising most famously his Naturphilosophie, aesthetics, STI and Identittssystem.

In 1806 Schelling fell silent; only to publish again in 1809 with a very different set of philosophical concerns this 1809 work is the Freiheitsschrift the most theosophical of all Schellings works. The period from the Freiheitsschrift through to 1815 is usually labelled Schellings middle period and here the influence of Bhme is at its strongest.

Third, the period stretching from 1820s until Schellings death in 1854 is considered his late period: here he develops his positive and negative

philosophies as a response to the Hegelian system. This then is the postHegelian Schelling.

So, what of Schellings relation to Bhme: It is usual to date Schellings first acquaintance with Bhme to 1799 when Ludwig Tieck, the Romantic poet and champion of Bhme, supposedly introduced him. In 1803, Schelling moved to Wrzburg where he established a friendship with Franz von Baader, one of the foremost authorities on theosophical and mystical texts of the day. By 1804, Bhme is being discussed in Schellings correspondence and at that date he asks A.W. Schlegel to procure him a copy of Bhmes works. 1807 marks the first (rather minor) mention of Bhme in Schellings publications. All this is rather insignificant, however, in comparison to the publication of the Freiheitsschrift in 1809, when Schelling publishes the Freiheitsschrift. Bhmean motifs and patterns of thought here explode into view. As Cyril ORegan puts it, Many of Schellings texts [of this period] read almost as if they are paraphrases of Bhme Bhme is the uncited Muse of the Freiheitsschrift. To briefly give an example - the Ungrund. Schellings use of Ungrund in the Freiheitsschrift marks this work apart for its obvious Bhmean influence. As we know, in the beginning for Bhme there is the Ungrund, the dormant will of God,: a divine fecundity which produces God. Schelling follows Bhme closely drawing a distinction between Gods ground which is no ground and God as such, who develops out of this ground. Gods ground, Schelling writes, is that within God which is not God himself, continuing, There must be a being before all basis and all being of existence, that is, before any duality at all; how can we designate it except as Urgrund or, rather, as the Ungrund (87). These sentences are the culmination of Schellings study of Bhme.

It is therefore certain that Bhme had some kind of influence on Schelling in the 1809 Freiheitsschrift; however, it is extremely difficult to ascertain how deep and lasting this influence was, especially on the later works of Schellings middle period. The problem is as follows: 1. Between 1807 and the 1820s, Schelling never once mentions Bhmes name in his philosophical writings not only does he not footnote any concepts he

might borrow (like the Ungrund), he neglects to thematise Bhmes presence at all. 2. Traditionally, the consensus has been that, despite this, Bhmes influence is still very great. Robert Browns 1974 book on Bhmes influence, for example, assumes this. However, in the 1970s and 1980s there was a huge anti-Bhmean backlash in Schelling scholarship Holz and Beierwaltes (to name but two) looked to neoplatonic, rather than Bhmean sources for much of the conceptual framework of the Weltalter drafts. Even recent critics such as Miklos Vet have maintained that while Bhmes shadow is indisputable in regard to the Freiheitsschrift, Eckhardt (for instance) is far more influential on the Weltalter.

It is because of this ongoing and rather interminable controversy that in this paper I want to turn away from these texts and look at another way in which Bhme becomes important to Schelling and that is as an object of discussion in his later work. That is, I want to consider the passages Schelling talks about Bhme rather than talks like Bhme. Into the 1820s, Schelling begins to distance himself from Bhme and because of this he feels able to overcome his anxiety of influence and finally mention Bhmes name in print. Bhme became a predecessor to explicitly talk about, rather than an implicit source and model. There are two such explicit discussions I want to look at today: first, Schellings very critical presentation of Bhmes thought in his 1833 Munich lectures on the history of modern philosophy and second his extremely interesting if brief invocation of Bhme in the 1842 Berlin lectures on the philosophy of revelation.

The second of these sets of lectures requires some more contextualisation. After the 1833 lectures on modern philosophy, Bhme receives little attention in Schellings writings both for the rest of his stay in Munich and also during the first set of lectures he delivered in Berlin. Schelling had, it seems, put the ghost of Bhme behind him and was now able to move on. This was not, however, the sentiment of his readers and colleagues.

The 1841 Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation were to be the crowning achievement of Schellings career. (I am here flitting between two sets of lectures with the same name: basically, the 1841 Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation do not discuss Bhme, whereas the 1842 set do.) He had been especially called to Berlin by the King of Prussia as the philosopher best suited to combat the Hegelian legacy, to slay the legions sprung from the teeth of Hegels pantheistic dragon, as the Kings own letter put it. And in attendance at these lectures was a whos who of 1840s intellectuals: Bakunin, Kierkegaard, Engels, Jacob Burkhardt, Savigny, Trendelenburg, Ranke and Alexander von Humboldt. However, ultimately the lectures fell flat and his listeners responded almost universally with scorn and derision. Kierkegaard returned to Copenhagen in disgust a third of the way through the course and Engels only stayed to the end to work on his satires for the radical press. On top of this (and this is where we come back to Bhme), a long-standing enemy of Schellings, H.E.G. Paulus, released a pirate-copy of the lectures complete with long preface and supplementary footnotes berating the mystifying, theosophical nature of Schellings Philosophy of Revelation. Schelling had returned, Paulus implicit claim was, to Bhmean philosophy and indeed Paulus was not the only one to make this connection. The young-Hegelian Arnold Ruge also noticed Bhme straightaway behind Schellings new philosophy. Schelling had a twofold response to Paulus piracy: one, to sue him and two, to add a new section to his lectures determining his relation to Bhmean theosophy more precisely and so defending the difference between his own philosophy of revelation and Bhmes thought. Thus, when Schelling repeated his Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation in 1842, he included a new lecture which dealt with his relation to Bhme. As Schelling rhetorically asks, picking up on the accusations, Have I not provided the impetus to bring positive philosophy into contact with theosophy?.

In the second half of this paper, I now want to analyse both Schellings discussion of Bhme in the 1842 Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation and also (if briefly) the discussion in the 1833 Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy. I will argue that while the latter propounds a version of the standard German Idealist critique of Bhme, suggesting that the immediacy of his vision of God impedes a

proper scientific exposition of it, the former turns on its head the typical Idealist treatment of Bhme, instead arguing that the mystic is too scientific, too rationalistic!

First then, the 1833 Lectures on the History of Modern Philosophy: Although Schelling finds in Bhme, the most pure and original example of theosophic thought, his attitude to him in this work is almost entirely negative. Theosophers are philosophers of not-knowing; instead of argument, they employ ecstatic intuition and immediate revelation. In this state of immediate ecstasy, language and knowledge cease and all communication of knowledge [becomes] impossible. Schelling continues, All experience, feeling, vision is in itself mute and needs a mediating organ to be expressed. In consequence, Schelling concludes, The true mark of mysticism is the hatred of clear knowledge. That is, mystics express their experience immediately with no thought for its rigour, truth or clarity, because they do not place it firmly before [them] to look at it in the understanding as in a mirror (in reflection). (I will return to this mirror imagery.) The theosopher, then, Schelling concludes, is not lord of the object and above the object he cannot talk about his material. This, indeed, resembles Schellings own relation to Bhme during his middle period: he mimicked him so closely, he was unable to stand back and talk about him. Instead of immediate vision, dialectical rigour is required: Everything must first be brought to real reflection, in order to achieve the highest representation. Here, then, lies the border between theosophy and philosophy which the lover of science will chastely seek to preserve, without being led astray by the apparent wealth of the material in the theosophical systems. (182) The difference between theosophy and philosophy proper is located in the method the latter employs. Schelling has no problem with the contents of theosophical doctrine, but with its claim to have achieved knowledge. This again is a very standard German Idealist treatment of the mystical tradition: it may borrow its concepts, but it criticises its lack of method, its lack of scientific rigour.

Yet, when Schelling returns to Bhme once more in the 1842 Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation, a very different approach is evident. This is no longer the standard German Idealist critique, but almost its opposite The Lectures on the Philosophy of Revelation are intended as an application of what Schelling dubs positive philosophy and their task is to obtain a direct knowledge of the divine as actually existing. I.e. the requirement is to cultivate a state of rational ecstasy where God is encountered not as a concept of thought, but as a free, acting person. Positive philosophy posits, in Schellings words, the demand for an actually existing God. The task therefore is to leave behind a philosophy of logic for a philosophy of existence, of freedom and of life. Thus on the one hand, Schelling mounts a critique of all previous philosophy as too logical, too rationalistic. Such philosophy has possessed no relation to concrete existence in the world: Rational philosophy is so independent of experience that it would be true even if nothing were to exist. Hegel is of course the target of this attack: his system, Schelling claims, remains stuck within thought: it is mere logic and an uncrossable abyss separates logical necessity from actual reality. Thought is here stuck on one side of the abyss: it can deal only with what is possible, not the actuality of being itself. Man can think what a plant might be like; yet, this is just a thought-experiment, for its actual being is inaccessible to reason: Through pure reason, I cannot even comprehend the existence of some plant... Reason can indeed, in given conditions, know by itself the nature of this plant, but not its real and present existence. Therefore, on the other hand, Schelling attempts to set out the method for a non-logical philosophy, one that does access concrete being and so escapes the confines of thought. This philosophy does not begin in thought but outside it; it rejects rationalism in favour of empiricism. Positive philosophy, thus, demands that reason be posited outside of itself, in an absolutely ecstatic manner. It demands that reason become motionless, paralysed in order that through this subordination reason may reach its true and eternal content. And this true content is extralogical existence.

It is pretty obvious how and why Bhmean theosophy could serve as a useful guide here: Bhmes visions of the divine claim make claim to the same kind of ecstasis as positive philosophy . They assume immediate access to the processes God actually undergoes, free of the dross of scholastic metaphysics. Bhmean mysticism

accesses the divine through a supposed immediate experience. Here is Schellings own definition of theosophy:
In a third type of empiricism, the supersensible is made into an object of actual experience through which a possible ecstasy of the human essence in God is assumed, the consequence of which is a necessary, infallible vision not merely into the divine essence, but into the essence of creation and every phase of that process as well. This type of empiricism is theosophy, which is predominantly a speculative or theoretical mysticism.

This theoretical mysticism found its zenith in Jacob Bhme, Schelling continues. In short, therefore, there are definite similarities between Bhmean theosophy and Schellings positive philosophy and it is no wonder Schelling was accused of Behmenism by his audience. Even Schelling recognises this: Bhmes thought, he writes, contains the demand for a positive philosophy. It exhibits the inherently laudable aspiration to comprehend the emergence of things from God as an actual chain of events.

However, while the aspiration may be there, Schelling contends that Bhme ultimately fails to fulfil it. On the one hand, Schelling here criticises Bhme in line with the bog-standard Idealist critique: theosophy is unscientific, it does not have a rigorous method and so it cannot transform its ecstatic intuition into knowledge. This was precisely the position Schelling took up in the 1833 Munich lectures. However, such a critique is now obviously insufficient for the aim of positive philosophy is precisely to access this ecstasy independently of the rigours of thought. Schelling now seems to want to be a mystic. But he also has another more sophisticated line of attack, according to which Bhme fails to encounter God as actual in ecstasy because he still remains in thrall to logic and rationalism. This is the very opposite of the previous criticism: Bhme is here seen as too scientific, too philosophical; he cannot escape thought and logic to access God as he actually exists. That is, Bhmes vision of God is too logical and too mediated to serve as a model for Schellingian positive philosophy which is rather a surprising conclusion. Schelling writes,
We have advanced theosophy primarily as the antithesis of rational philosophy, and thus of rationalism in philosophy. Yet at bottom theosophy strives to move beyond rationalism without, however, being capable of

actually wresting away rationalisms substantial knowledge [i.e. knowledge which excludes all actus].

Now, the question is why? Why does Bhme fail to escape thought, logic and rationalism? Schelling makes a basically Kantian objection to Bhmean

epistemology. Bhme wants an immediate vision of God, but no experience of the divine can ever be immediate, because experience is always formed; it is always mediated. That is, for Kantians, sense-data must necessarily undergo syntheses, forming and conceptualising it, before it is to count as experience. There is therefore no raw, nave or immediate experience of the thing itself. Bhmes attempt at immediacy must necessarily dissolve into mediacy. It is therefore Bhmes appeal to experience which is the problem, because experience, Schelling insists, can never take one out of thought: there is an element of thought an apriori element to every experience. In other words, experience is ineluctably logical. This element distances the mystic from the actuality of the theogonic process and consigns him to a merely conceptual version of this genesis. Bhme ends up a Hegelian, reducing the processes God undergoes to the movement of concepts. Mysticisms appeal to immediate experience is therefore the problem, because no experience can be immediate in the end. Immediate experience merely smuggles in mediacy. In the end, while Bhme may want to achieve positive philosophy (and goes further than most), he fails: his appeal to immediate experience lets him down.

So, Schelling contends, a different method is required than that which mystics employ. Ecstasis must be cultivated in a different way, a way that avoids appeal to experience (because experience is always mediated). Philosophy must therefore begin from what exceeds or what is above experience: a being that is absolutely external to thought beyond all experience as it is before all thought. However, of course, for a Kantian (like the late Schelling), what is outside the realm of possible experience is completely inaccessible to the human subject. In consequence, indirection or strategy is required to bring about human access to what exceeds experience and so the required ecstasis. In other words, Schelling here develops an art of ecstasy: instead of the mystics blunt instrument of immediacy, he

develops a strategic approach to the transcendent. The immediate is not (pace Bhme) immediately available, rather the immediate is only obtained as a result of mediacy. We here return to the images of speculation or reflection: in the 1833 lectures, Schelling criticises Bhmean immediacy for not being reflective enough only by reflecting itself in a mirror, he then claimed, can it attain a true rigour of thought and be labelled knowledge. Here, Schelling implicitly makes an appeal to reflection and mediation once again; however, it is for precisely the opposite reason: mediation is not here a way of incorporating vision into thought, but of escaping thought into vision. The speculative mirror and the reflective method are here employed for the sake of an anti-rationalism, for the sake of what is unthought and what cannot be thought. Instead of the standard German Idealist position where speculation transforms actuality into thought, Schelling here proposes an antirational form of speculation that dissolves all thought. Bhme is too logical because of immediacy; Schelling avoids logicism through mediacy.

Schellings return to Bhme is therefore surprising: he eschews the standard German Idealist critique for a very different position: Bhme, Schelling claims, is right to want to escape thought, but he is wrong to try and do so immediately. Escaping thought for the transcendent instead requires artifice and method an immediate vision of God as he actually is is only available via mediation.