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Part 1 of 15

Introduction: The Peak of the Metaphysics of German Idealism

In 1936, Martin Heidegger delivered a lecture course on F. W. J. Schelling’s 1809 treatise Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, which scholars often refer to simply as the Freiheitsschrift (Freedom Essay).[1] In this lecture course, one extremely difficult German philosopher confronts another. Indeed, the Freiheitsschrift is possibly Schelling’s most obscure and baffling text. Matters are made even more complicated by the fact that the single most important influence on Schelling’s essay was a German philosopher even more difficult than either Schelling or Heidegger: Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), the mystical cobbler of Görlitz. Schelling never once refers to Boehme in his essay, but his influence on the text is extensive and obvious and has been universally recognized by Schelling scholars.[2]

I have dealt at length with the “early Schelling” in another essay (see “In Defense of Nature: An Introduction to the Philosophy of F. W. J. Schelling”), in which I introduced readers to his life and writings. Five years younger than Hegel, Schelling was widely seen as the rising star of philosophy in Germany in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From 1794 (when Schelling was only nineteen years old) to 1804, he published numerous books and essays introducing readers to his “system of philosophy.” After 1804, however, this remarkable output declined and then abruptly and mysteriously stopped. The Freiheitsschrift was the last major work Schelling saw through to publication during his lifetime.

In 1807, Hegel published his Phenomenology of Spirit and in a few years shot to the top of the philosophic profession in Germany, much to his younger colleague’s chagrin. Schelling’s silence after 1809 helped to create the impression that he had nothing left to say. This was not the case, however, for the Freiheitsschrift was just the beginning for the “later Schelling.” From 1809 onwards he produced a large body of works – treatises, dialogues, and lecture courses – most of which were published posthumously, and a large portion of which were devoted to elaborating the ideas in the Freiheitsschrift.

Why did Heidegger take up Schelling’s essay and lecture on it? Although Heidegger has much to say about Schelling here and there, he did not devote an entire course to any other work by him. It is obvious from Heidegger’s remarks, and the respectful, almost reverential way he treats the text, that the Freiheitsschrift had great personal importance for him. Heidegger states in the 1936 course that it is Schelling’s “greatest accomplishment and at the same time [is] one of the most profound works of German, thus of Western, philosophy.”[3] Some years later, his praise was even more effusive, as he referred to the Freiheitsschrift as “the peak of the metaphysics of German idealism.”[4]

Heidegger’s commentary in his 1936 course is almost entirely exposition – meaning that while he interprets Schelling’s essay and offers us insights that are often brilliant, he offers little criticism. The clear reason for this is that he feels Schelling to be a kindred spirit, and is sympathetic to the ideas of the essay. Any unbiased reader will be able to see that Heidegger feels quite at home in the singularly bizarre, theosophically inspired Begriffswelt (conceptual world) of the Freiheitsschrift.

At one point early in his lectures, Heidegger does make one remark that can be seen as critical, though only in a qualified sense. He believes that Schelling ceased to publish after 1809 because he was struggling – in the end, unsuccessfully – to give birth to ideas that could not actually be expressed using the vocabulary and presuppositions of German idealism. He compares Schelling in this regard to Nietzsche, who, as Heidegger puts it, “broke down in the middle of his real work The Will to Power, for the same reason.”[5]

Heidegger does not seem to be referring here to Nietzsche’s mental breakdown. Rather, he seems to mean that Nietzsche was struggling to express something in The Will to Power but could not do so within the assumptions of the metaphysical tradition. Nietzsche believed he was rejecting those assumptions, but Heidegger held that he still covertly endorsed them. Work thus “broke down” because further development was impossible without transcending metaphysical thinking itself. Heidegger believes that Schelling ceased publication because he was struggling with the same issue – without (just as with Nietzsche) ever realizing that this was the case.

A New Beginning for Philosophy

Heidegger goes on to say the following:

But this double, great breakdown of great thinkers is not a failure and nothing negative at all – on the contrary. It is the sign of the advent of something completely different, the heat lightning of a new beginning. Whoever really knew the reason for this breakdown and could conquer it intelligently would have to become the founder of the new beginning of Western philosophy.[6]

This is a highly significant statement. Beginning in the same year Heidegger gave his lectures on Schelling, he began writing what he projected as his second major work, after Being and Time: Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) (Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)). In that text, which was not published until years after Heidegger’s death, he speaks of an “other beginning” (anderer Anfang) for philosophy. The “first beginning” was with pre-Socratic philosophy. In Contributions, Heidegger states that “The basic disposition of the first beginning is wonder [Er-staunen]: wonder that beings are and that humans themselves are and are in the midst of that which they are not.”[7]

With Platonism, however, an intellectual shift begins to take place, a shift referred to in Heidegger studies as a movement toward the “metaphysics of presence.” Heidegger argues that from Plato onwards, the entirety of Western metaphysics will be marked by this metaphysics, which is essentially a hidden will to distort our understanding of the being of beings by accommodating it to the human desire that beings should be (1) permanently present to us, hiding nothing, and (2) available for our manipulation. As we shall see, the concept of “will” plays a crucial role in Schelling’s treatise, and it is a central concept for Heidegger.[8] This is particularly true of Heidegger’s later thought, in which “will” (Wille) essentially refers to the metaphysics of presence in its “final” iteration as the modern, technological “world of exploitation,” wherein the will is willed for its own sake.[9]

Heidegger regards the Western metaphysical tradition as having ended with Nietzsche’s “will to power,” which expresses the essence of the modern “will to will.” Thus, if anything now remains for philosophy, it must necessarily be “post-metaphysical” and there would need to be an “other beginning” or “new beginning.” This is the significance of Heidegger’s claim that the inability of Schelling and Nietzsche to transcend metaphysical thinking constitutes the “heat lightning of a new beginning.”

Focusing just on Schelling, as he is our central concern, Heidegger means that Schelling’s later thought contained the germ of a shift away from metaphysics, the germ of a new beginning, which Schelling ultimately could not bring to fruition because he remained confined within the strictures of metaphysical thinking. His thought thus “breaks down.” When Heidegger writes that whoever could discover the precise reason for this breakdown “would have to become the founder of the new beginning of Western philosophy,” he is referring, in fact, to himself.

It thus appears that the Freiheitsschrift was an extraordinarily important text for Heidegger. He states that “the essential core of all of Western metaphysics is able to be exposed in complete determinacy on the basis of this treatise.”[10] Thus, for Heidegger, the Freiheitsschrift provides us with a key to unlocking the nature of Western metaphysics – and thus a key to understanding the foundational ideas on which our culture rests, and to which its present decline can be traced.

F. W. J. Schelling (This is the earliest known photograph of a philosopher.)

So important was the Freiheitsschrift for Heidegger that in 1941 he again gave a lecture course on the text. Further, there is a marked difference between these lectures and the earlier ones. As noted already, the 1936 lectures are almost wholly expository, containing little criticism. The 1941 lectures, however, display more critical distance from Schelling. Heidegger apparently regarded his Schelling lectures as very important. The 1936 lecture course was one of the last texts that he prepared for publication before his death (it was published in 1971, and Heidegger died five years later). The 1941 lectures were published in 1991. Unfortunately, the text of the 1941 lectures reads more like an outline and is often frustratingly terse and cryptic. The 1936 lecture notes, by contrast, contain fully elaborated thoughts, while nevertheless exhibiting the usual Heideggerean obscurity. In my essay, all quotations and thoughts attributed to Heidegger are from the 1936 lectures, unless specified otherwise.

As I have already mentioned, Heidegger’s Schelling lectures present us with multiple layers of obscurity. Heidegger is a notoriously difficult thinker, commenting on the notoriously difficult Schelling, who is freely drawing upon the ideas and terminology of the notoriously difficult Boehme. Nevertheless, to borrow an image common to both Boehme and Schelling, there is a light discernible in this darkness. These texts are not impossible – and the effort to understand them is extremely rewarding. The Freiheitsschrift, and Heidegger’s lectures on it, does indeed provide us with a key to understanding Western metaphysics, just as Heidegger promises. I hope to make the case for this in the present essay, though the reader must be patient. Very patient.

The influence of Boehme on Schelling also opens up new vistas for Heidegger studies, and for our understanding of modern philosophy as a whole – vistas that scholars have so far not chosen to explore. Because the Freiheitsschrift is so heavily influenced by Boehme’s ideas, Heidegger’s lectures often read like a commentary on Boehme – but only for those already conversant with Boehme’s philosophy and its unique terminology. Heidegger was aware of the influence of Boehme on Schelling, but it is not clear how conversant he was with Boehme’s writings.[11]

I will make the case that Schelling’s treatise was an important influence on Heidegger’s later thought. If that is true, then Boehme was, indirectly, an important influence on Heidegger. Boehme’s writings were extremely significant for the Romantics – e.g., the Schlegel brothers, Novalis, and Ludwig Tieck – and for both Schelling and Hegel. If the case can be made for the influence of Boehmean ideas on Heidegger as well, then Boehme emerges as a kind of “secret king” of modern philosophy, neglected by most scholars because of his reputation as a mystic, and his well-deserved reputation for obscurity. However, I cannot deal with the question of Boehme’s influence in this series.

A Treatise on Evil

There is yet another reason why Heidegger’s encounter with Schelling is of signal importance. Heidegger points out in his lectures that Schelling’s title is actually misleading. From the title, one expects a treatise on “free will” (in German, Willkür), but Heidegger states, correctly, that the essay has “nothing to do with this question of the freedom of the will.” He continues:

For freedom is here [in the Freiheitsschrift], not the property of man, but the other way around: man is at best the property of freedom. Freedom is the encompassing and penetrating nature, in which man becomes man only when he is anchored there. That means the nature of man is grounded in freedom. But [according to Schelling] freedom itself is a determination of true being in general which transcends all human being. Insofar as man is as man, he must participate in this determination of being, and man is, insofar as he brings about this participation in freedom.

Then, in a move unusual for Heidegger, he adds, parenthetically: “Key sentence: Freedom is not the property of man, but rather: man the property of freedom.”[12]

Further, and as we shall discuss in detail later on, Schelling defines freedom as “the capacity for good and evil.”[13] In supporting this claim, Schelling offers a lengthy meditation on the nature of evil, with the result that the Freiheitsschrift actually has more to do with evil than with freedom. This is one of the reasons why the text is so interesting. As Heidegger puts it, “Evil – that is the keyword for the main treatise. The question of the nature of human freedom becomes the question of the possibility and reality of evil.”[14] Schelling’s concept of evil is radically different from previous philosophical theories – and it is extraordinarily fruitful. It gives us an invaluable key for understanding the standpoint Heidegger criticizes in his later writings as “will,” which is closely connected with the metaphysics of presence. There are even fascinating parallels between

Schelling’s idea of evil and the way that evil is conceived in both Classical and Norse mythology. Schelling, who produced a “Philosophy of Mythology” late in life, would have been open to such parallels.

Finally, if we graft Schelling’s conception of evil onto Nietzsche’s theory of ressentiment (which forms the basis of “slave morality”) we arrive at a powerful tool for understanding the motivations of today’s Left. It is not for nothing that in the nineteenth century, the individuals we would today call simply “Leftists” – usually avowed communists and anarchists – were routinely referred to as “nihilists” (see, for example, the works of Dostoevsky). Not long ago, Elon Musk described Leftism as a “death cult.” I would venture to say that most of us on the political Right have had such thoughts: we have intuited that the vector of Leftism is the destruction of life, health, order, and civilization itself.

But why is this? How does something as perverse and pernicious as Leftism come about? Schelling’s theory of evil can provide us with some answers. Nietzsche’s explanation for Leftism – ressentiment – is purely psychological. But in the last several years I have increasingly begun to feel that there is, for lack of a better word, some extra-human “force” at work here. Increasingly, I have begun to think seriously about “the reality of evil.” When I mention this to many of my secular friends on the Right they tend to get very quiet – and then, shyly and hesitatingly, they admit that they have had similar ruminations.

I am voicing, I believe, a thought that they had entertained themselves, but dared not admit to, perhaps because it sounds too Christian. Schelling, who was nominally a Protestant Christian, does believe in the reality of evil. Unlike numerous philosophers before him (including most ancient and medieval philosophers and many early modern philosophers, Leibniz especially) Schelling rejects the idea that evil is merely a “privation”: an absence of goodness, or absence of a principle of order or form. Instead, Schelling holds that evil is a substantive “force” in its own right, standing opposed to the good.

In this series – which is effectively a continuation of my series “Heidegger’s History of Metaphysics” – I will follow Heidegger’s example and begin by giving an exposition of the essential points of Schelling’s treatise (leaving out much, unfortunately). Along the way, I will discuss Heidegger’s remarks on Schelling. The next nine parts of this series will be devoted to that task. The last five parts of the series we will turn to some of the implications of this encounter between the two philosophers, alluded to above: how Schelling’s essay can illuminate Western metaphysics as a whole, Heidegger’s criticisms of Schelling, Schelling’s positive influence on Heidegger, and the larger implications of Schelling’s theory of evil.

Notes

[1] The full title is Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Matters (Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit und die damit zusammenhängenden Gegenstände).

[2] See Robert Brown, The Later Philosophy of Schelling: The Influence of Boehme on the  Works 1809-1815 (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1977), 19. Many other studies have been published, most of them in German.

[3] Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985), 2. Henceforth, “ST.”

[4] Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysics of German Idealism, trans. Ian Alexander Moore and Rodrigo Therezo (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021), 1. Henceforth, “MGI.”

[5] Heidegger, ST, 3.

[6] Heidegger, ST, 3.

[7] Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), 37.

[8] For a comprehensive discussion of this topic, see Bret W. Davis, Heidegger and the Will (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007).

[9] “World of exploitation” is Thomas Sheehan’s translation of Heidegger’s term Gestell, which is another term for the modern, technological deployment of will. Sheehan writes, “Heidegger reads the current dispensation [of Being] as one that provokes and even compels us to treat everything in terms of its exploitability-for-consumption: the being of things is now their ability to be turned into products for use and enjoyment. . . . Earth is now seen as a vast storehouse of resources, both human and natural; and the value and realness of those resources, their being, is measured exclusively by their availability for consumption.” See Thomas Sheehan, Making Sense of Heidegger: A Paradigm Shift (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), 258-259.

[10] Heidegger, MGI, 2.

[11] Heidegger mentions Boehme in the 1936 lectures. In the context of defending Schelling against the empty charge of “mysticism,” Heidegger writes, “but it is not the vacuous play of thoughts of a manic hermit, it is only the continuation of an attitude of thinking which begins with Meister Eckhart and is uniquely developed in Jacob Boehme. But when this historical context is cited, one is immediately ready again with jargon, one speaks of ‘mysticism’ and ‘theosophy.’ Certainly, one can call it that, but nothing is said by that with regard to the spiritual occurrence and the true creation of thought, no more than when we quite correctly ascertain about a Greek statue of a God that it is a piece of marble – and everything else is what a few people have imagined about it and fabricated as mysteries. Shelling is no mystic in the sense of the word meant in this case that is, a muddlehead who likes to reel in the obscure and finds his pleasure in veils.” Heidegger, ST, 117.

[12] Heidegger, ST, 9. Italics in original.

[13] F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 23. My italics. I have altered this translation here and there when I felt it could be made more accurate. For example, I have dropped the translators’ practice of capitalizing the initial letter of “being” (Sein). Because in German the initial letters of all nouns are capitalized, there is no justification for doing this.

[14] Heidegger, ST, 97.