Matthew Nini

Dieser Aufsatz bietet eine umfassende Interpretation von F.W.J. Schellings Freiheits- schrift (1809). Dabei wird die These vertreten, dass die Freiheitsschrift als ein aus- gedehnter Dialog zwischen zwei philosophischen Prinzipien gelesen werden kann: Realismus und Idealismus. Obwohl diese Begriffe für Schelling nicht neu sind, ge- winnen sie 1809 eine neue Bedeutung. Abrückend vom statischen Absoluten der Identitätsphilosophie erkennt Schelling eine produktive Spannung zwischen Rea- lismus und Idealismus, die auf einer grundlegenden Ebene ihren Ausdruck in den logischen Prinzipien der Identität und des zureichenden Grundes findet. Das Stre- ben nach einer Versöhnung dieser Prinzipien führt zur Suche nach einem höheren Realismus, der über Realismus und Idealismus steht und beide logischen Prinzipien integriert, wie durch den Ungrund als Substrat verdeutlicht wird, demgemäß das Einzelne eingewickelt oder entfaltet wird. Metaphysisch wird dies durch zwei Prinzi- pien in Gott repräsentiert: das idealistische existierende Wesen und den realistischen Grund seiner Existenz. Während diese theoretisch im Gleichgewicht bleiben, erweist sich Schellings Anwendung dieser Prinzipien auf die Moralphilosophie als proble- matisch: Insbesondere bei der intelligiblen Tat verlagert er das Gewicht einseitig zu- gunsten der idealistischen Seite und entfernt sich zu weit von der faktischen Welt. Die in diesem Aufsatz vorgeschlagenen Lösungen bestehen darin, die Freiheitsschrift abschnittsweise zu interpretieren und Schelling bisweilen contra Schelling zu lesen, um die beiden Prinzipien auszugleichen.

Abstract – While Bildung, as Gadamer affirms, was in the 19th century the element in which the sciences lived, there is traditionally no epistemological ground to justify its status. This leads to an aporia: Bildung as self- cultivation is meant to be an end in itself, yet must also provide for the unity of particular sciences and their separate goals. This paper sees a solution in Fichte’s middle period via the cultivation of Attention, allowing one simultaneously to stay within the realm of Bildung and conceive of the particulars that are its manifestations. Attention first appears in the Wissenschaftslehre (1804), where it is an existential mood and prerequisite for entering the system. Varying degrees of it then come to qualify the standpoints found in the Anweisung zum Seligen Leben (1806). Finally, in the life of the Anweisung’s Johannine Christ and the finished Scholar of the Über das Wesen des Gelehrten (1805), Fichte presents us with a model of Bildung grounded in Attention, one whose priorities are transmission and initiation. Keywords – Bildung, German Idealism, Fichte, Philosophy of Education, Wissenschaftslehre

If Fichte’s 1804 lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre present a monist system in which consciousness is the outward face of an ineffable totality or Absolute, the methods for arriving at this monism are rigorously transcendental, affirming that consciousness is inescapable and experience inevitably credible. Fichte’s new system is therefore a transcendental monism, containing an autopoietic or self-creating element, and a narrative one, accounting for subjectivity from within this self-creating system. Fichte’s reconciliation of the two elements is presented by means of a theory of manifestation: “The Absolute manifests itself to itself by means of consciousness.” Fichte argues for this transcendentally, and this argument structure itself leads to a transcendental monism. This paper traces Fichte’s argument in three steps: first, the immediate credibility of experience, or Evidenz; second, identifying this immediacy with the Absolute in order to ground transcendental monism; and third, the realisation that understanding is only possible when intelligibility has already been presumed. Crucial to this threefold argument is the fact that one’s attention to it is itself a constitutive element: to be aware of the system as self-elaborating is to participate in it.

This article argues that Fichte’s second set of lectures on the Wissenschaftslehre in 1804 offers a theory of transcendental arguments, and is itself a protracted transcendental argument. Foundationally, it employs the transcendental argument form that is common to much of Fichte’s work: the agreement of a truth-statement (what is said, sagen) and its enactment (what it does, tun). WL-1804-II will expand this twofold structure into a threefold and then into a fivefold one. The first expansion arises from the need to prove that the transcendental argument of the WL is genetic: it does not introduce an implicit third term between the content of a proposition and its enactment in discourse. The argument must be able to move from the immediacy of experience (what Fichte will call Evidenz), to its elaboration in discourse, and then back to the initial experience. What is elaborated in discourse is what is found in experience. The expansion into a fivefold structure arises from the need to prove that the standpoint from which one makes a transcendental argument must be internal to the argument itself. Fichte will claim that the contingent terms in an argument are reversible, highlighting the necessary internal relations that the juxtaposition of contingent terms always evokes. This can be summarized in the formula [1. (a + b); 2. (b + a); 3. their unity]. The result is that reason’s norms are found within the act of thinking: there is no discourse outside of reason.

In the Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen of 1810, Schelling introduces into his philosophical system the idea of a divine self-contraction. The first, preliminary step in the creation of the world would therefore be a negative moment, with God contracting himself in order to make room for creation. In 1810, this maps out onto Schelling’s theory of the potencies [Potenzenlehre], representing the function of the first potency (A1). But the idea of a divine self-contraction is much older. Its origins are in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah, where the divine self-contraction is called the zimzum. This paper argues that there is not only a conceptual link between Schelling’s first potency as divine self-contraction and the kabbalistic zim-zum, but a historical one. This link was first suggested by Franz Rosenzweig and then expanded on by other thinkers. Historically, it traces its roots back to the reception of the Kabbalah by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the 17th century, whose work was then read by Friedrich Christoph Oetinger in the 18th century. Oetinger was a source of inspiration for Schelling, who establishes his own theory of divine self-contraction in 1810, a creative appropriation that both builds on his own previous work and receives sources in an original way.