The Concept of the History of Intelligence in Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism

1 Introduction

At the end of the chapter on history in System of Transcendental Idealism (System des transcendentalen Idealismus [1800], hereafter STI),^[1] Schelling notes that, “We attributed the emergence of the objective world to a wholly blind mechanism of the intelligence” (SW, 606/Schelling 1978, 213). In the following, I argue that Schelling views history as a self (i.e., as a whole), whose absolute constitutes its own self-knowledge, meaning that I conceive it as the self-consciousness^[2] of, in Schelling’s own words, the “genus” (Gattung). In Section 2, I analyze Schelling’s concept of legality and its relation to the system, and argue that happiness (Glückseligkeit)^[3] should be viewed as given by the “I” (Ich) and, by extension, potentially conceivable by the genus. In Section 3, I interpret the route and motion of history through the evolution of the genus’s intelligence, examining the most significant elements of history’s development as Schelling conceives it. Moreover, I explore how there are two histories for Schelling, one of the will and one of “non-will”,^[4] so to speak, which further contributes to my emphasis on the polysemy of the ideal.^[5] In Section 4, I track the development of consciousness through the three periods of history that Schelling lays out, while also delineating the possible relationships between the concept of God and that of death qua dead nature. In Section 5, I probe the problem that Schelling tried to solve in STI, providing a twofold illustrative example that aims both to clarify the nature of the problem and to offer a distinct interpretative response. Finally, in Section 6, I explore some of the nuances of Schelling’s ambiguous claim about the absence of God in the current epoch, concluding that history needs to be seen as a self in the act of reflecting back on itself.

2 Preliminary Reflections: Universal Reign of Law

In the fourth main part of the STI, before dealing with the concept of history, Schelling refers to a universal constitution – a moral world order – which represents the sought-after ideal (see SW, 587f./STI, 199), suggesting that such a political system must be the distinctive feature of history.^[6] Nevertheless, owing to its form and the characteristics it bears, it is a system that can only be realized from the standpoint of the totality of history (see SW, 591f./STI, 202). The direct consequence of this is the inability to realize the ideal within history.

As a necessary condition of freedom that exists in the external world, the legal system and the legal order’s first emergence are considered a consequence of natural compulsion, and not a product of chance (Zufall) by Schelling. Similarly, the concept of order emerges unconsciously as a consequence of forces, which are not perceptible by the genus.^[7] By identifying pure will both with the external world and happiness, and since “nature cannot act in the proper sense of the word” (SW, 582/STI, 194) the need for a second nature surfaces. This second nature will maintain a rule of law as natural, or to put it another way, it will house the rule of law within itself. Thus, because the pure will that dominates in the external world is deemed the sole and supreme good, the refutation of the human being’s freedom becomes a priori impossible (see SW, 581–3/STI, 194–196).

However, despite the view that nature cannot act,^[8] and therefore cannot oppose the realization of this highest purpose in any way, the collapse of the system is inevitable from the outset; through temporality, systems carry the seeds of their own overcoming and downfall. This occurs because free beings go along with any compulsion stemming from the current system so long as they “allow themselves to be compelled”^[9] (SW, 585/STI, 197), an acceptance pivoting on the reception of advantages deriving from the system itself (see SW, 584–6/STI, 196f).

Consequently, from the suggested relationship between pure will and inclination – or “drive” (Trieb) – it can be inferred that the I cannot directly bring about happiness, even if it wishes to. This is especially the case because happiness is not a mere object of choice but rather the appearance of pure will, whereas inclination serves as the sole vehicle through which the I makes its way into the external world (see SW, 581f./STI, 194).

3 The Route and Motion of the History of Intelligence

Taking the above into consideration, as well as drawing from both mythology and the Bible, Schelling first argues that nature had initially placed human beings in the position they deserve (or, what amounts to the same, God placed them in paradise). He then sees the genus take the first step outside the domain of instinct into the Golden Age of law, identifying the start of history with the first expression of choice (der ersten Äußerung der Willkür), which is symbolically aligned with the Fall (see SW, 589/STI, 200). Therefore, at this point, the philosopher^[10] implies (albeit in a dilemmatic way) either that there is no genus before the first choice or that, because its actions are insufficient, it cannot become a part of history (which still does not exist), and yet the genus simultaneously gives birth to history, for “[n]ot everything that happens is… an object of history” (SW, 588/STI, 199). For if the history of the genus starts with the first choice, then we can infer ipso facto that whatever exists before the first choice is not history, which means a lineage of concepts capable of realizing an ideal^[11] (or moving toward it, at least).

As a consequence, if time zero for the genus of essential action and the history reaching for the ideal coincide with the expression of the first choice, then there must be an era before this. This becomes an even more difficult thought when we are prompted to picture two histories: first, the history unravelling before the first choice as the history of non-will – or human beings as unconscious – and, second, the history unravelling after the first choice as the history of will – or human beings as conscious.

Nevertheless, it will become evident in the following that the realization of the ideal constitutes a prerequisite for the existence of history, because history can exist only where a single ideal is on the one hand “realized under an infinity of deviations” (SW, 588/STI, 199) and, on the other, itself forms a progressive, historical whole, whose motion and route unfold in the absence of absolute lawfulness and absolute freedom (see SW, 588–90/STI, 199f).

With respect to the infinite deviations, they presuppose both a centripetal force, which restores the whole on the way toward the ideal, and a centrifugal force, which is the operative power of these deviations. For in some ways, the deviations are the result of the continuous appearance of the choice that started history in the first instance, although they also continue it; after all, only “when all choice shall have vanished from earth, and man^[12] shall have returned to the same point at which nature originally placed him” (SW, 589/STI, 200) will the ideal be fulfilled.

In this connection, it is clear that the idea of the desirable ideal contributes decisively to the becoming of history, which returns to itself by means of intellectual intuition (see SW, 588–90/STI, 199f). Therefore, the claim that without destination there cannot be a journey, and in order for the journey to be complete the destination should be a return to the starting point, otherwise a system of knowledge cannot be considered complete, appears to fully reflect Schelling’s attempt to project a system of knowledge by virtue of identifying the destination with the ideal starting point.

Such an ideal that essentially and indirectly moves history could not, however, be carried out by a single individual; it could only be the purpose and conquest of the entire genus (see SW, 588f./STI, 200). The individual is not a priori capable of realizing this ideal because the ideal is defined as a universal legal system, a moral world order, or an Absolute whose manifestation requires the contribution of all, which necessarily transcends the individual and particular.

Paradoxically, however, the longer it takes for the ideal to be realized, the more its non-realization is considered a failure, despite the constantly reducing distance between the genus and the ideal. This is because the intelligence of the genus acts within the non-conscious – unconscious – domain, acquiring its conscious form only once the ideal is realized, from which point it can look back and conceive the length of the route it has taken. This view reveals the presence of dead nature along the route of history. In this way, nature expresses its failed reflection through its partial death, haunting the route of history with the trace of death (i.e., what is left unactualized).^[13],[14] Thus, progress traverses a partial destruction of its past, which becomes necessary for the future no matter how damaging it is for the present.

In the following figures, I attempt to clarify Schelling’s rendering of history’s movement, as well as the framework within which it takes place. Figure 1, in particular, shows the course of the history of intelligence toward the ideal if we were to unravel this route to show how the starting point is united with the ideal on a line.

Figure 1:

The course of the history of intelligence toward the ideal.

For Schelling, everything begins solely to end up at the ideal, but this can neither be known nor perceptible before the ideal is actually realized. The harmonious coexistence of the centripetal and the centrifugal force determines both the space in which history moves and the time in which the ideal is realized. However, the particularization of the forces is impossible to estimate, such that there cannot be any accurate predictions as to where and in which direction history will move, nor how much time will need to elapse for the ideal to be encountered. For when the centrifugal force is at its minimum, the centripetal force reaches its maximum, drawing history into a more condensed trajectory, accelerating the realization of the ideal within a narrower historical space. Conversely, when the centrifugal force dominates, history expands – its course becomes more diffuse, deviations increase, and the ideal is reached more slowly across a broader historical field. What this means is that the history of intelligence as a system of knowledge is dynamic and oscillatory, although there are points at which necessity and freedom collapse.^[15]

In the particular frame of STI, centripetal force is identified with providence,^[16] which is given the hue of divinity, and throughout the course of history it is incomplete and inconspicuous. That is, it is not perceived by the genus before the realization of the ideal. Alternatively, centrifugal force expresses the opposite, a power which cannot be categorically defined, such that it is identified with absolute necessity. Throughout STI, it becomes evident that without a counteracting centrifugal force there would be no deviation, no history or iteration of difference.

However, in Figure 1 displayed above, we diagnose the movement of history upwards or downwards as an absolute deviation^[17] when it is already found beyond or below the imaginary line^[18] that unites the starting point (S.P.) with the ideal.^[19] Based on this, the deviations have the capability of infinite iteration, even without counting the array of deviations bound up with the choice instantiated by each member of a genus. Consequently, because the centrifugal force is dependent on the wills of the individuals constituting the genus, the movement of history as a whole remains constrained within the bounds of what intelligence or self-consciousness generates. In other words, historical deviations and fluctuations, though infinite in iteration, never escape the framework established by self-conscious agency.^[20]

The ideal itself appears to be inherently diverse, to the point that one could argue that it both originates from and is burdened by its own polysemy (i.e., multiple interpretations). This polysemy – which, in Schelling, refers to differences iterated through a scale of being – renders the ideal invisible within the horizon of history, or at least imperceptible to the majority of the genus, a fact that significantly contributes to the delay in its realization.

Once Schelling poses the question as to why it seems we are not moving toward the ideal, the majority (that is, the common perspective excluding that of the philosopher) responds: because people simply opt to do other things. But, and this is the innovation Schelling makes in his transcendental idealism, the more appropriate answer – which fits the schema of the philosopher – is that we must do other things first since the intelligence is yet to be sufficiently developed.

But the ideal itself is pictured in a variety of ways in STI: as a moral world order which circumvents the role of the state, an absolute which becomes visible, God who reveals himself in one of the stages of history, the full development of the intelligence. It is even framed using transcendental criteria such as truth, the infinite, and self-knowledge. For Schelling history is the sole field within which we are permitted to discuss the ideal such that an account of its development up to the point of our own intelligence is paramount.

Another formulation is that the ideal is the genus’s realization of what Schelling himself establishes in the course of the STI, namely, that if history moves as a whole premised on the will, one can act in such a manner from the very beginning so as to fully shine light upon the ideal at a textual level. Thus, during the realization of the ideal, the genus is conditioned by its wisdom of itself – its theoretical-epistemological knowing is its practical-ontological acting. However, such a fully developed circle only occurs in the third period of history, according to Schelling.

What is crucial to understand here is that the ideal constitutes the cornerstone of this system of knowledge and forms the ground of the harmony^[21] between the unconscious and conscious.^[22] For without the ideal, everything would plummet into the unconscious, which in Schelling refers to the realm of nature.^[23] The incomplete would prevail, while the absence of perspective would flatten the very course of history, transforming it into insignificance, making its movement resemble marking time. For we cannot in any way claim that, even without the ideal, there would still be meaning in experiencing a journey without a destination, since none of its passengers would perceive that they are traveling at all.^[24]

For Schelling, the aforementioned harmony between the conscious and unconscious seems to be situated in the Absolute qua the genus’s ultimate destination. The said harmony is identical to a proposed solution of the problem of freedom, which must be shown to transform into a continuous band with necessity. In other words, the issue is about action through will, which is subjective and a result of consciousness, and how it can fit with action through nature, which is objective and a result of the unconscious (see SW, 594–97/STI, 204–206).^[25] This objective world (which Schelling had already set out in his previous Naturphilosophie) is landed upon as soon as full intelligence has developed, that is, in the third period of history, where the ideal is fulfilled. In this connection, the ideal is established only by virtue of its traversal of the real; the conscious must traverse the unconscious to develop fully into what it is.

In Schelling’s system, history is perceived as a pure and continuous action – as Schelling puts it, “[t]heory and history are totally opposed” (SW, 589/STI, 200) – within which a free play of forces is observed, and this is identical to the entire course of history itself (see SW, 587/STI, 198) as well as the certainty of its obviation owing to providence. By implying that all things are incited by divine providence toward the ideal, Schelling is led to a pantheism which responds to every form of atheism by claiming to never seek for God in the present, but to seek him in the future, where you will not exist.^[26]

With the return of the genus to its original position considered as a given (or even inevitable), the question emerges as to “how a history is conceivable at all” (SW, 590/STI, 201)? In my view, the simplest answer to this question is that it is conceivable by looking back. That is, tracing back the path of action that the genus took, which resulted in the present point, after all one of the objectives of history is the explanation of the present condition of the world.^[27]

After the realization of the ideal, Schelling hopes that the question will become easy to answer since the genus will have returned with full intelligence to the point at which it started with no intelligence such that it will have all the tools of self-consciousness at its disposal. At this juncture, nature will reflect upon itself through the genus and the absolute binding of conscious and unconscious will become apparent.

Figure 2 pictures the first two periods of history. The third period, which concerns the future, presupposes that God will exist within it. Schelling does not clarify what exactly he means by this, and it remains a mystery as to how he conceived of the link between the “third period of history” and “God” or even what the wider consequences of God appearing in an epoch of history would be. Of course, if we hypothesize that the Absolute is identical to God, then, because the Absolute becomes apparent through nature’s reflection upon itself, then once this occurs it is assumed that this would mark the start of the third period, or the existence of God. On the other hand, if the third period of history is presupposed by the totality of history preceding it, then Figure 2 also depicts the third period itself.^[28]

Figure 2:

The becoming of history as nature’s reflection on itself.

4 Three Periods of History

In STI, Schelling’s overarching argument is that “History as a whole is a progressive, gradually self-disclosing revelation of the Absolute. Hence one can never point out in history the particular places where the mark of providence, or God himself, is as it were visible” (SW, 603/STI, 211). Here, Schelling implies that the third period of history cannot be particularized by the genus since it is located in the future; if we constantly find ourselves in the present, the third period of history will forever remain ahead of us in time. And, because it is identified with the future, the third period is defined in temporal terms as constantly exceeding us, resulting in the impossibility of signaling the place where providence – God himself – becomes visible.

Consequently, Schelling suggests that although a third period of history will exist in the future, the genus will not perceive it because it will still be entirely bound to the present. Therefore, even if, at some point, the genus finds itself in what we call the third period of history, its consciousness will still be bound to its present moment, making it impossible to fully grasp the third period as such. In other words, what is, from the perspective of an observer outside history, the future present of the genus (i.e., the moment when the genus actually exists in the third period) will never coincide with the present future of the third period (i.e., the standpoint from which the third period is fully realized as history). This creates a temporal misalignment – a phase difference – between the genus’s self-consciousness and nature’s own process of reflection. While nature, through the genus, may reflect back upon itself, this reflection never occurs in the genus’s own present, but always as something deferred, pushed ahead into an inaccessible future. So, the third period is doomed to invisibility with respect to itself, and eternally pushed off to an imperceptible future that forever transgresses the grasp of the genus. But even when the third period will occur, it will merely signify the end of the second period and nothing more since it is the future that will never be recognized to visibly exist for the genus.

In Table 1, I summarize Schelling’s view and tentatively consider the possibility of sub-periods within the third period. This does not imply knowledge of its exact structure but follows from Schelling’s own admission that, while he cannot determine what will happen in this period with certainty, its historical necessity allows for theoretical speculation.

Schelling divides history into three periods which are to be rendered as “necessary expressions of the Being and becoming of intelligence, since the latter is consciously aware of itself”.^[29] The core division is that of two opposing poles – destiny and providence – while nature (and all its iterations) forms the middle ground and so “supplies the transition from one to the other” (SW, 603/STI, 211). Although Schelling does not say it explicitly, the implication is that the first period belongs to the past, the second period belongs to the present, and the third belongs to the future. We are dealing, then, with three tenses: happened, happening, will happen. Schelling places himself and his era in the second period but gives us no indication – at least in STI – of what the implications of this are for the transition between the second and third period.^[30]

According to Schelling, the third period makes it visible that the true path of nature (mechanical necessity) is to be located in an imperfect providence (see SW, 604/STI, 212), which was always at work in the first and the second period. However, the main point of difference separating the third period from the first and second appears to be the development of consciousness. From the retrospective vantage point of the third period, it is recognized how what happened could only have happened in that way because no other possibility was open; it was underpinned by mechanical necessity. Everything was bound to lawful ends thanks to providence, a view that might be linked to the idea of a tactical and controlled chaos, for in the first two periods of history, it was the unconscious that dominated.

It becomes apparent that this set of views coincides in an interesting way with Schelling’s own accomplishment of having completed the System of Transcendental Idealism. For the third period concerns the future, and the only certainty that satisfies Schelling is the conclusion he draws in the text, that at some point it will take place within history, although we do not know when it will do so. And yet Schelling is not clear as to whether there will be another period after the third one or if this is simply doomed to eternally repeat itself – and thus to become simply another iterated present – after it has appeared.

From this perspective, the temporal delineation of the start of the third period is a reflection of the various ways to render the conception of God. If, for instance, God is the imperishable or the immortal, then the third period of history would start immediately after nature’s reflection upon itself through human beings.^[31] For death is present in the developmental becoming of intelligence since its characteristic of continuity or constancy through iteration signals a constant failure of nature to reflect on itself – it is for this reason, oscillatory and constantly shifting. Therefore, only when the particular failure is overcome – when nature overthrows the status of a particular defeat to keep moving – would the start of the third period of history accrue. Curiously, Schelling does not identify the conception of God with death, nor does he imply an essential relation between the two. Rather, it seems that for Schelling the presupposition of the existence of God within a determinate period of history is identical to the absence of mortality.

5 Problem & Resolution: The Self’s Consciousness of Harmony between Subjective and Objective

Although I do not believe that Schelling solves all the problems he sets out, in this section my aim is not to criticize him for the misjudgment of believing himself to have solved them. And perhaps, after all, the particular problem I am working with here is properly solved in the last chapter of STI, which deals with the production and nature of the art-product. But it would be remiss to overlook the fact that in that chapter another kind of intuition – aesthetic intuition – is at stake (see SW, 624–26/STI, 229).

The specific problem Schelling seeks to resolve here is “how the I itself can become conscious of the original harmony between the subjective and the objective” (SW, 605/STI, 212). By arguing that “all action can be understood only through an original unification of freedom and necessity” (SW, 605/STI, 212), the philosopher is almost compelled to acknowledge the existence of a pre-established harmony between the subjective and the objective at work in the appearance of action. For action, after all, constitutes a connection between the subjective and objective: our (subjective) actions begin as free, willed thoughts, while, objectively, they take place through us as determinate events in the world, subject to mechanical law (see SW, 605f./STI, 212f). Stated plainly, objective action is not performed by the subject in the same way but occurs through the subject, as if something else is acting in us or via us. Therefore, objective action is immanent to the subject. To put it differently, subjective action functions as the denominator in a fraction smaller than one, with objective action as the numerator. Through the process of objectification, this fraction is inverted, surpassing the unit. The fraction, once inverted, is none other than self-consciousness itself.

Alternatively, we can illustrate this using a different example: from the perspective of transcendental philosophy (as opposed to Naturphilosophie), the subject initially corresponds to the larger matryoshka doll, which contains within it the smaller one, representing the objective. Objectification resembles the process in which the small matryoshka comes to exist outside the larger one. Reflection, in turn, consists in the return of the small doll into the larger one – after the small doll has first been conceived. That is, reflection presupposes that, on the one hand, the objective as such has been conceived, and, on the other hand, that the difference between subjective and objective has been conceived too. During this return, however, it is crucial to note that we must consider not two, but three components (or, to use Schelling’s terminology, three “potencies”): the subjective, the objective, and the subject itself. This is because the subjective within the large doll does not constitute the entire doll but only a part of it. When the large doll encloses the small one within it, it constitutes the self.

6 Conclusion

In his attempt to interpret human freedom and reconcile the existence of order with the forces that appear to undermine it via the conception of providence, Schelling sets God in the role of both a permanent and invisible regulator of history itself.^[32] God participates in all relationships between the appearance and the material world since God inheres as the entity who determines the ending in all expressions of essential action which are a part of history.

In an approach that would deem the ontological existence of God unnecessary, intelligence plays the role of centripetal force, whereas the lack of intelligence plays the role of centrifugal force. This picture includes the view that intelligence, as a driving force within humanity, strives toward its full development but is inhibited by an opposing or counteracting pole – namely, the absence of intelligence. And yet, we often get the feeling that in Schelling’s hands the genus believes itself to leave the center because it simply wants to, while simultaneously framing it as incapable of thinking that it abstracts itself from the ideal since it is doomed to always end up at the ideal anyway. In this connection, the centrifugal force relies on the collective will. Indeed, one might argue that the centrifugal force is nothing other than the collective will. Therefore, it seems logical to align the external world with pure will and, ultimately, with happiness.

This is the case, in my view, because the philosopher at work in STI does not merely regard thought and existence as human possessions, but rather as manifestations of a higher power – of a divine substance, which may well be the universe itself, or more precisely, the Whole. This Whole, conceived as a singular Self that perpetually moves toward complete Self-Knowledge, though it will only fully grasp itself once it has attained the final shred of knowledge. This marks the moment at which a rational being turns reflexively toward itself, proclaiming: “I know that I know myself, and I know it”.