Heidegger, Schelling, and the Reality of Evil
Part 7

4,280 words

Part 7 of 15 (Part 1 begins here. Part 6 here.)

The Deepest Abyss and the Loftiest Sky

We are now on the threshold of Schelling’s account of the nature of evil. He argues that in God the two wills – of the ground and of understanding/existence – are conjoined and that the dark will is subordinated to the light will. In God, further, these cannot be separated. To repeat a quotation from our last installment, Schelling writes that “To show how each succeeding process approaches closer to the essence of nature, until the innermost center appears in the highest division of forces, is the task of a comprehensive philosophy of nature.”[1] What seems to be going on in these cryptic lines is just this: in man the “innermost center” or “essence of nature” will reappear, but with the two wills divided. In man, unlike God, these are separable – and Schelling will argue that this is the origin of evil. The entire development of the whole (God, including the natural world) takes place through division – the so-called “division of forces.”

Thus, in the highest division of forces, the two wills, which are the very basis of being itself, reappear – but divided from each other. The highest division of forces is the same thing as the separation of the two wills. And this makes possible human freedom – which is the same thing as human nature. Freedom is not simply one human attribute among others, it is our nature itself. And Schelling defines freedom as the capacity for good and evil; the capacity to choose the light and the darkness. As in Schelling’s earlier philosophy (and in the philosophy of Hegel), mankind emerges as the highest expression of the natural world, and the realization in space and time of the divine essence.

“In man,” Schelling writes, “there is the whole power of the dark principle and at the same time the whole strength of the light. In him there is the deepest abyss and the loftiest sky or both centra.”[2] In God, as we have said, the two principles are inseparable, and the dark is always subordinated to the light. In man, these principles are severed, and both are present in their full power and attractiveness. Man must choose the light, and choose to subordinate the darkness to the light. Man, as we have seen, is the apex of creation – its ultimate goal. And yet Schelling says the following: “The human will is the seed – hidden in eternal yearning – of the God who is present still in the ground only; it is the divine panorama of life, locked up within the depths, which God beheld as he fashioned the will to nature.”[3

Here Schelling seems to say that man is not the end of nature but present at its beginning, as the “seed . . . hidden in eternal yearning” (i.e., in the ground). Aristotle’s understanding of telos can provide us with a plausible interpretation of this passage. The being of something is found in its telos – in what it aims to be. The telos, before it is ever realized, is present as potency or potentiality in that which strives to realize it. It is always at least dimly anticipated in some fashion or other – and remember that in this “system” there is no first and last, and each part presupposes every other. The first presupposes the last; the beginning presupposes the end.

But why does Schelling say that the human will is the “divine panorama of life”? It is because the human will emerges at the “top” of nature like the crest of a wave. No wave, no crest. All other natural forms are anticipations of man. And man, as the highest flowering of nature, “contains” within himself all “prior” forms (a fact which was noticed by the ancients). Man, in other words, is the microcosm. To say that God “beheld” the “divine panorama of life, locked up within the depths” as he “fashioned the will to nature” is poetic metaphor. What Schelling really means here is that the being of fully realized nature is present within the ground as inchoate potential. To introduce one of Aristotle’s metaphors, the oak tree is present within the acorn, as potentiality for being. The being of the acorn is the oak tree, and the being of the “will to nature” is nature.

Schelling continues:

Were now the identity of both principles in the spirit of man exactly as indissoluble as in God, then there would be no distinction, that is, God as spirit would not be revealed. The same unity that is inseverable in God must therefore be severable in man – and this is the possibility of good and evil.[4]

God reveals himself through man – in spirit and in the proclaimed word. But for this to be possible, man must at the same time be other from God. The essence of God is the inseverable unity of the two principles, working in concert, the dark necessarily subordinated to the light. But this unity is not yet actual – i.e., expressed in a world. It becomes actual in man – a being that has arisen through the division of forces, and who, like all of nature itself, is a multiple being, a divided and articulated being. In man, both principles are present yet divided from each other. This is the human essence: the duality of light and darkness, or the possibility of good and evil.

Heidegger writes that, in Schelling’s philosophy, “freedom can no longer be understood as independence of nature, but must be understood as independence in opposition to God.”[5] Why? Because, unlike God, man must choose to identify with the dark principle, or with the light – and he must choose to subordinate the darkness to the light. The dark principle is not in itself evil (except in a highly qualified sense – a point to which we will return later). But when man chooses to identify with it, and to subordinate the light to the dark, it becomes the basis for evil. What does it mean for the light principle to be subordinated to the dark? It means that there is still outward-going or expansion, but it is placed in the service of self-will. Self-will becomes the center by which all else is measured and which all else serves.

But how is it that man is able to make this choice, between darkness and light? Schelling tells us that the principle whereby man is separate from God is his “selfhood” (Selbstheit). However, when man’s selfhood is “in unity with the ideal principle [i.e., the light]” then his selfhood is spirit. “Selfhood as such is spirit; or man is spirit as a selfish [selbstisch], particular being (separated from God)—precisely this connection constitutes personality.”[6] As we discussed earlier, the ground is the source of all particularity or individuality. Such individuality and “selfhood” is not itself negative, when it remains in unity with the light.

Schelling goes on to say that man is “raised from the creaturely into what is above the creaturely,” precisely because selfhood is spirit. And this spirit is “will that beholds itself in complete freedom, being no longer an instrument of the productive [schaffenden] universal will in nature, but rather above and outside of all nature.”[7] Here Schelling articulates the familiar German idealist conception of human subjectivity as something that transcends nature. From Kant down to the later Schelling, and down to Husserl and Heidegger after him, it is insisted that human subjectivity, as that to which nature is present, cannot become present as yet another object within nature. Human subjectivity “stands apart” or exhibits what phenomenology calls “transcendence.”

Thus, spirit is aware of itself (it “beholds itself in complete freedom”) as something quite independent of the “productive universal will in nature.” Spirit is created when the soul (“the inner”; “interiority”) unites itself with the ideal principle – a.k.a. the understanding, or the universal will. Spirit is self-aware selfhood. It is not a “creature” but rather that which is aware of the creaturely and knows itself as this being that lets the creaturely presence itself. It is “no longer an instrument of the productive universal will in nature” because it is that which can be aware of the universal will in nature, and much else.

Thus, Schelling says that “Spirit is above the light as in nature it raises itself above the unity of the light and the dark principle.” It is “above” both principles. Why? Again, because it is that which is aware of both – and thus, being aware of them as object, it is not identified with either. It must have this capacity, furthermore, to separate itself from them and be aware of them as other, so that it may choose between them. “Since it is spirit,” Schelling writes, “selfhood is therefore free from both principles.”[8]

And he states, “For this reason there thus emerges in the will of man a separation of the spiritualized selfhood from the light (since spirit stands above the light), that is, a dissolution of the principles which are indissoluble in God.”[9] But, as we have noted, the self-will of man can remain in the light (he can, in other words, choose the light), and he can subordinate the will of the ground to the will of understanding.

Schelling says that the dark principle of selfhood or self-will must be “thoroughly penetrated by the light and at one with it.”[10] If that happens, then “the spirit of love prevails [in man]” and “then the will is in divine form [Art] and order.”[11] However, if self-will separates itself from the light – if, in other words, man chooses the indrawing will of the ground over the light – then the “spirit of dissension” prevails, which wants to “separate the particular [i.e., mankind] from the general principle [i.e., from the will of understanding].” Schelling remarks that “this elevation of self-will is evil.”[12]

Let us now look very carefully at this claim, as Schelling’s account of evil is central to the entire treatise, and perhaps its most important and profound contribution. Here is Schelling elaborating on how self-will becomes evil:

The will that steps out from its being beyond nature in order, as general will, to make itself at once particular and creaturely, strives to reverse the relation of the principles, to elevate the ground over the cause, to use the spirit that it obtained only for the sake of the centrum [Zentrum; i.e., the ground] outside the centrum and against creatures; from this results collapse [Zerrüttung] within the will itself and outside it.[13]

This is an obscure passage, but Schelling’s basic meaning is discernible (especially to anyone familiar with the ideas of Jacob Boehme, on which Schelling is, once again, heavily dependent). As we have already seen, human spirit is “beyond nature” in the sense that it stands apart, as nature’s witness. Nature is given to spirit; or, putting it the other way around, spirit is aware of nature. Spirit, in thus being supra-natural, is able to resist such things as natural drives and urges – the sort of things that animals, lacking any apartness from nature, are in thrall to. This separation or “transcendence” (see my earlier remarks) is what makes freedom possible, and it allows human beings to choose the light over the darkness.

To choose the light (understanding) and subordinate the darkness (the ground) to the light essentially means to place oneself in harmony with the whole. It means to subordinate one’s own self-will to the universal – for example, to embrace the necessity of acting according to moral principle, rather than selfish whim. Or to embrace the fact that one exists as a part of nature, with natural limits, existing in interdependence with other living things. Or to acknowledge the fact that one lives in interdependence with other human beings, in a community, and that one must subordinate one’s own particular, selfish will to the “general will,” living according to principles one affirms as applying to everyone, including oneself.

Choosing the Darkness

To choose the darkness and subordinate the light to the darkness means just the reverse of this. It means elevating the self above the whole. It means elevating one’s own selfish whims above any sense of obligation. It means seeing nature merely as a means to one’s own personal ends, recognizing no obligations to nature, and no limits on what one may do with it. It means raising oneself above others, seeing them merely as means to one’s own satisfaction, and recognizing no obligation to community.

In effect, the choice of the darkness over the light is the decision to regard oneself as the whole. And since the whole is God, this amounts to seeing oneself as God. “The general possibility of evil consists,” Schelling writes, “in the fact that man, instead of making his selfhood into the basis, the instrument, can strive to elevate it into the ruling and total will and, conversely, to make the spiritual within himself into a means.” When this occurs, “another spirit usurps the place where God should be, namely, the reversed god.” This being “though it never is, yet always wants to be” and thus it “borrows the appearance of being from true being.”[14]

Heidegger comments in 1936, “Evil is the revolt that consists in inverting the ground of the essential will into the reverse of God’s.”[15] And, in 1941, “evil is properly the extreme opposition and uprising of the spirit against the absolute (tearing oneself away from the universal will, the against-it, the will replacing it in the ‘against’).”[16]

Why does Schelling say that self-will stands “against creatures”? It is because when self-will elevates itself above the whole it necessarily becomes a negating will, negating otherness in a variety of ways. The spirit of the whole is universal and unifies all things within itself. It embraces “otherness” in that the distinct members of the natural world, while being expressions of the divine, are not, each of them, identifiable with the divine simpliciter. They are simultaneously within God, and expressions of God, yet at the same time they are something for themselves.

But when the self-willing individual sets itself up as a counter-whole or reversed god, it cannot, as God can, sublate the world of individuals that surrounds it. It can only negate them, in one fashion or other. Faced with otherness, it can only cancel it. Thus, as I noted above, it seeks to manipulate or transform all things for its own selfish ends – as if all else existed for its sake (as if, in other words, it were God). Where this is impossible, it acts to deny or to destroy. “This is the beginning of sin,” Schelling writes, “that man transgresses from authentic being into non-being, from truth into lies, from the light into darkness, in order to become a self-creating ground and, with the power of the centrum which he has within himself, to rule over all things.”[17]

Schelling says that “from this results collapse within the will itself and outside it.” So long as the human will exists in unity with the universal will, he says, “these same forces exist in divine measure and balance.”[18] In other words, the human will in unity with the universal will is in harmony with the whole. It recognizes its place in the whole, affirms itself as part of the whole. But when self-will becomes perverted and abandons the universal will through absolutizing the dark will of the ground, it exists in adversarial relationship to all that exists. Thus, as Schelling tells us, it must

strive to put together or form its own peculiar life from the forces that have moved apart from one another, an indignant host of desires and appetites (since each individual force is also a craving and appetite), this being possible in so far as the first bond of forces, the first ground of nature itself, persists even in evil. But since there can indeed be no true life like that which could exist only in the original relation, a life emerges which, though individual, is, however, false, a life of lies [Lüge], a growth of restlessness and corruption.[19]

This selfish will abandons the light or universal will, by means of which such things as desires and appetites are put in their proper place and moderated. The individual who embraces the dark will thus becomes consumed by such desires. His life is fundamentally “false,” in the precise sense that it is not aligned with truth, with the universal will of understanding. He lives a mere semblance of a human life, closed within himself and opening to otherness only to use or to obliterate it in the service of his appetites.

Lashing out at the world, his “growth” (Gewächs) is a descent into greater and greater “corruption” (Verderbnis) in which he finds not peace but agitation and “restlessness” (Unruhe), as the unquenchable drive to satisfy his desires pushes him onwards. No part of the whole can attempt to usurp the whole and reign as a counter god without becoming toxic to itself and all else.

Heidegger comments on these ideas in a passage worth quoting at length:

In what does the malice of evil consist? According to the given new determination of freedom, freedom is the faculty of good and evil. Accordingly, evil proclaims itself as a position of will of its own, indeed as a way of being free in the sense of being a self in terms of its own essential law. By elevating itself above the universal will, the individual will wants precisely to be that will. Through this elevation a way of unification of its own takes place, thus a way of its own of being spirit. But the unification is a reversal of the original will, and that means a reversal of the unity of the divine world in which the universal will stands in harmony with the will of the ground. In this reversal of the wills the becoming of a reversed god, of the counter-spirit, takes place, and thus the upheaval against the primal being, the revolt of the adversary element against the essence of being, the reversal of the jointure of being into the disjointure in which the ground elevates itself to existence and puts itself in the place of existence. But reversal and upheaval are nothing merely negative and nugatory, but negation placing itself in dominance. Negation now transposes all forces in such a way that they turn against nature and creatures. The consequence of this is the ruin of beings.[20]

Schelling elaborates his theory with a precise analogy between evil and disease (which certainly qualifies as what has sometimes been called “physical evil”). He refers to disease as “the disorder having arisen in nature through the misuse of freedom.” Why? Because disease involves a part separating itself from the whole – “freeing” itself, in other words.

In an organism, what Schelling calls the “irritable principle” (irritable Prinzip, a topic discussed in his earlier philosophy of nature) is a primitive reflection of the dark will of the ground. It is precisely that part or function of the organism that reacts against its environment or against otherness as a potential threat, and goads the organism to lash out in one fashion or other, or to withdraw itself.

Schelling tells us that disease occurs when the irritable principle “activates itself” and one part of the organism sets itself against the whole.[21] Schelling states that “particular disease emerges only because that which has its freedom or life only so that it may remain in the whole strives to be for itself.”[22] Put simply, disease occurs when one part of the organism “decides,” in effect, to “go it alone.”

An obvious example would be a cancerous tumor growing within an organ. Under normal circumstances, the organ functions within the whole, performing its allotted function for the sake of the whole, and not interfering with the functions of the other organs. But when an organ becomes dis-eased, it acts against the whole, damaging other organs or impeding their functions, under extreme circumstances even threatening to take the life of the whole. What is happening in the case of disease is precisely analogous to evil, or vice versa: it is as if one part of the whole desires to be the whole itself; i.e, to be that for the sake of which all else works or functions.

The diseased organ cannot, of course, accomplish this, but what it can do is to negate the other parts. The whole – whether organism or the organic God that contains all – is absolute insofar as it unifies all that exists in one holistic system. That which turns to evil – whether a diseased organ or a perverted human will – cannot be absolute in this sense, and so seeks to absolutize itself by cancelling all that which stands opposed to it as other.

In this sense, disease and evil are both literally hateful and malicious. Healing, Schelling states, consists in “the reconstruction of the relation of the periphery to the centrum.” Somewhat less obscurely, he says that healing occurs “through restoration of the separate and individual life into the being’s inner glimpse of light.”[23] In other words, healing involves restoring the harmony between the diseased part and the whole; turning the will back towards the light.

We will continue to explore Schelling’s account of evil in our next installment.

Notes

[1] 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), 31.

[2] Schelling, 32. Centra is the plural of Latin centrum, or “center.” Schelling means the two “centers” of darkness and light. When he uses centrum (singular) he almost always refers to the ground (the dark principle).

[3] Schelling, 32.

[4] Schelling, 32-33.

[5] Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1985), 62. Henceforth, “ST.” Compare the 1941 lectures: “Schelling conceives of freedom not only as independence from nature, but more essentially as independence from God, and yet before God, that is, in relation to God, that is, ‘in’ God. For everything ‘is’ – inasmuch as it ‘is’ – god-like and therefore, in some way, God. Pan estin theos [all is God].” Martin Heidegger, The Metaphysics of German Idealism, trans. Ian Alexander Moore and Rodrigo Therezo (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021), 139. Henceforth, “MGI.”

[6] Schelling, 33.

[7] Schelling, 33.

[8] Schelling, 33.

[9] Schelling, 33. I have altered the translation to make the meaning clearer.

[10] Schelling, 54.

[11] Schelling, 34.

[12] Schelling, 34.

[13] Schelling, 34.

[14] Schelling, 54. My italics. The full quotation reads as follows: “The general possibility of evil consists, as shown, in the fact that man, instead of making his selfhood into the basis, the instrument, can strive to elevate it into the ruling and total will and, conversely, to make the spiritual within himself into a means. If the dark principle of selfhood and self-will in man is thoroughly penetrated by the light and at one with it, then God, as eternal love or as really existing, is the bond of forces in him. But if the two principles are in discord, another spirit usurps the place where God should be, namely, the reversed god, the being aroused to actuality by God’s revelation that can never wrest actuality from potency, that, though it never is, yet always wants to be and, hence, like the matter of the ancients, cannot be grasped actually (actualized) by the complete understanding but only through the false imagination (logismōi nothōi), which is sin itself; for this reason, since, having no being itself, it borrows the appearance of being from true being, as the serpent borrows colors from the light, it strives by means of mirrorlike images to bring man to the senselessness in which it alone can be understood and accepted by him” (pp. 54-55). Logismōi nothōi is an allusion to the Timaeus.

[15] Heidegger, ST, 106. Heidegger italicizes the entire sentence to indicate the importance of this idea.

[16] Heidegger, MGI, 76. Italics in original.

[17] Schelling, 55. Second italics mine. The following passage is also helpful: “For the feeling still remains in the one having strayed from the centrum that he was all things, namely, in and with God; for that reason he strives once again to return there, but for himself, and not where he might be all things, namely, in God. From this arises the hunger of selfishness which, to the degree that it renounces the whole and unity, becomes ever more desolate, poorer, but precisely for that reason greedier, hungrier, and more venomous. In evil there is the self-consuming and always annihilating contradiction that it strives to become creaturely just by annihilating the bond of creaturely existence and, out of overweening pride to be all things, falls into non-being” (p. 55).

[18] Schelling, 34.

[19] Schelling, 34. I have altered the translation to make it more literal.

[20] Heidegger, ST, 143. Compare this passage from the 1941 lectures: “Evil is the will of spirit, which, as universal will, transposes itself into self-will as such, so that the latter might be the universal will. . . . This tearing itself away from the universal will does not wander off into the indeterminate; it consists, rather, in transposing itself into self-will, in order to make the latter into the universal will and thereby pervert and replace the human will. Therein consists the malice of evil, a malice which is spirituality at its highest. In evil, will wills to be the will of the ground and to possess the ground in its will as universal will. In evil, the human is the counter-god.” Heidegger, MGI, 112.

[21] Schelling, 34. In this same passage, Schelling also describes the activation of the irritable principle as “when aroused Archaeus leaves his peaceful dwelling in the centrum and steps into his surroundings.” Archaeus (Archäus) was a term used by Paracelsus to refer to a vital principle in all living things.

[22] Schelling, 35. My italics.

[23] Schelling, 34.