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Philosophy and Art in Schelling's "System des transzendentalen Idealismus"
Author(s): James Dodd

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Source: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Sep., 1998), pp. 51-85
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ANDART INSCHELLING'S
PHILOSOPHY
SYSTEMDES TRANSZENDENTALEN
IDEAUSMUS
JAMESDODD
An his System des transzendentalen Idealismus, ScheUing describes

the philosophy of art as the "key stone" of the entire "arch" of the sys
tem.1 The purpose of the foUowing essay is to explore why this is so,
why Schelling's idea of philosophy led him to take up the question of

"art" not only as philosophically interesting, but as the key to under
standing his system as a whole.

That this is an issue in understanding Schelling's System des
transzendentalen Idealismus is obvious?in several passages he
clearly states that the relation between transcendental reflection and

the philosophy of art is decisive. Transcendental philosophy can
reach goal only when
its ultimate it is in a position the to understand
essence of art.
Yet what philosophy is actually looking for in art, and
what it finds there, is not altogether clear. What does itmean that phi
losophy, within its own movement of self realization, seeks out some
thing like art, finds it and makes it its own?

In order to answer this question it is necessary to engage in meth
odological considerations having to do with system buUding, some
thing already suggested by the architectonic metaphor of "Gew?lbe"?

that is, considerations of how theoretical and practical ph?osophy are
to be presented as an organic, thus systematic whole. We wiU leave
Correspondence to: Boston CoUege, Department of Philosophy, Chest

nut Hill, MA 02167.
1". . . das der Philosophie?und
allgemeine Organon der Schlu?stein
"
ihres ganzen Gew?lbes?[ist] die Philosophie der Kunst. F. W. J. Schelling,
System des transzendentalen Idealismus, ed. Horst Brandt and Peter M?Uer,
Philosophische BibUothek 448 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1992), 19. AH transla
tions from this and other texts cited in this essay are my own.
2 The most
thorough analysis of the role of the philosophy of art in the
System is Dieter J?hnig's Schelling, Die Kunst in der Philosophie, 2 vols.
(Neske: PfuUingen, 1966). See also part 2 of Wolfgang Schneider, ?sthetische
Ontologie, Schelling's Weg des Denkens zur Identit?tsphilosophie (Lang:
Frankfurt am Main, 1983).
The Review ofMetaphysics 52 (September 1998): 51-85. Copyright ? 1998 by The Review of
Metaphysics

52 JAMESDODD
aside the question of the extent to which in the end such an organic
whole is achieved, and instead focus onthe philosophical mode as
such, the activity of constructing the system. In this way our guiding
question will be the origin of transcendental philosophy according to
Schelling. This, I believe, is where the key Ues in understanding the

relation between the philosophy of art and the system as a whole.
The basic thesis runs thus: the reason why the philosophy of art
is so important has to do with the mode of reflection that estabUshes
transcendental as a project
idealism of thinking. SpecificaUy, the ac
tivity of transcendental reflection is comparable to the production of

a work of art; thus the task posed by a reflection on "art" is not only
that of understanding the aesthetic world, but of understanding phi
losophy itself.
"
The uInner City" and the "/. However important the role of art
may be in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus, the same is
not the case when we turn to ScheUing's so-called "identity philoso
phy," first formulated in 1801. Though the ph?osophy of art is by no
means rejected, it no longer has the decisive significance it had in
1800. in no way
This impUes, however, that the philosophy of identity
has nothing to teU us about the role of art in the 1800 system. The op
posite is rather the case, and as illustrative let us cite two passages
that express succinctly two themes essential in the interpretation of
the System des transzendentalen Idealismus.
The first passage is found in the lectures ScheUing held in 1803
under the title Vorlesungen ?ber die Methode des akademischen Stu
diums. It appears near the beginning of the fourteenth lecture, which
deals with the place of the "sciences of art" in a philosophically
grounded curriculum.2 Right away Schelling confronts what in the
ph?osophical tradition would appear to be the most virulent objection
against the inclusion of the study of art in education: Plato's banish
ment of the poets from the ideal city in the Republic. What can art
2 in Bezug auf das akademische

"?ber Wissenschaft der Kunst, Stu
dium," in Vorlesungen ?ber die Methode des akademischen Studiums, in
Sche?ings S?mm?iche Werke (hereafter USW) 5, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stut
tgart/Augsburg: Cotta'scher Verlag, 1859), 344-52.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 53
teach us?so Plato?when it itself, as we philosophers well know,

proffers only a false account of the truth? "It is essential," Schelling
replies, "to recognize the particular standpoint from which Plato
passes this judgment against the poets," namely that Plato is speaking
from the standpoint of the "historical, not the philosophical, opposi
tion" between poetry and philosophy. Historically, the poet as educa
tor is the proponent of a "poetical realism," and this is what Plato re
acts against: poetics as realism, or
the claim that "truth" is itself
something sensible, a part of the sensible world. The historical figure

of the poet is a spirit wholly caught up in the real; he teaches that all
ideas are sensibles, that everything divine is at the some time objec
tive, and that all "knowing" and all sense of the sacred is a replay of
the sensible. According to Schelling, the authority, and with that the
historical role of such a poetical realism grew and found sustenance
within a particular form of state, namely within the body of the Greek
polis?and it is on this terrain, or within

this political-historical space
that poetry and philosophy stand opposed. Moreover, the contest is
uneven, since poetry is at home in this "objective and thoroughly real

form of the state," while philosophy, for which the Ideas are not sensi
ble, but on the contrary transcendent and supersensible, "recognizes

itself... as an exotic plant on Greek soil."
At this point Schelling raises the possibility of another form of
state, another terrain not only for philosophy but also for poetry.
Such an alternative "Staatsform" would offer another mode of exist
ence which, in contrast to the Greek polis, would not be wholly bound
up with the real. As such this form of the state would imply the possi
bility of another mode of relating to truth. Schelling's somewhat mod
est proposal runs thus:
Now whether in a fully ideal and as it were inner city [innerlichen

Staat], like the Platonic, poetry could be spoken of differently, and this
restriction that he imposes on it unnecessary, is a question that would
take us too far afield to answer.3
Itwould take us too far afield as well, but keep inmind this image of
an inner city, for it will serve as a metaphor for the idea of transcen
dental philosophy which will be outlined below.
The second passage Iwould like to mention appears in section IV
of the Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philosophie, which
3 SW 5.346.
Schelling,

54 JAMESDODD
appeared in 1802. Here the topic is construction, in particular the re
lationship between the ideal and the real, form and content within
construction. Any absolute division of the ideal and the real is being
denied, while an absolute identity is being affirmed as the identity of
the Absolute?that is, an identity in a sense different either from mere
intuitive revelation of oneness or a unity resulting from a synthesis.
Identity here is an identity in difference, a mocking identity that

proves itself by presenting itself in difference, as if its preferred way
of being itself were to be other than itself. At this point the System
des transzendentalen Idealismus is cited as a particular way of ap
proaching both this difference and this identity. Transcendental phi

losophy isolates the purely ideal in the form of the subject, precisely
in order to arrive at the point of identity between pure subjectivity
and objectivity. This "point" of identity is, of course, the Fichtean "I";
but more importantly, it is an identity arrived at only through radical
separation (Trennung) and isolation, which means that in a way it is
also the furthermost point of separation from that very identity which
it seeks to express?the identity of the Unconditioned:
For in that the sense of the "I" in this Idealism, which is only one side of
philosophy, is nothing other than the highest and as itwere culminating
point of separation [Trennung] from the Absolute, of being-for-itself,
activity from and towards itseif, of form, it is thus necessary that all
ideal determinations be simultaneously bound to this one point and step
forward with it in unison in order to in the totality turn back again to the
absolute Identityr.4
This separation is not erroneous, but it is ironic. The I is never re
ally separated off from the Absolute, even as it claims to set itself up
at the farthest remove from the Absolute. What this odd separation
expresses is not really an actual division, but rather a distinct pathos
of thinking, where thinking is plagued by a confusion over the differ
ence between the "being" of universality and the "being" of separation
from the universal, of "particularity." Knowing has never reached a
stable form, Schelling remarks, because this pathos generates a fun
damental ambiguity between the real and the ideal. Both particularity
and universality have a claim to being, to the truth, and both are
equaUy successful, making any attempt to base thinking on the one or

the other ultimately sp?l over into an ongoing contradiction?a
4 Fernere aus dem System der Philosophie, in

Schelling, Darstellungen
SW 4.410.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 55
"divine chaos."5 The "way out" of this chaos is to recognize the princi
ple that generates it, that is, to recognize the identity which infuses
both the real and the ideal with a common truth, thus grasping both in
their totality through the principle of "Eins inAllem."
For our purposes let us combine this description of the I as the
"culminating point" of a peculiar separation/isolation with the meta
phor of an inner city. The two together, I would Uke to suggest, de

scribe what is being attempted in the System des transzendentalen
Idealismus. The inner city, where poetry will have a new Ufe in mat
ters of truth, is built and sustained in this mode of radical self-separa
tion?a separation that is in the end false, in that its true purpose is
not isolation but a path for thinking to conceive or grasp the uncondi
tional identity of the real and the ideal.
II
The Opening Moves of Transcendental Philosophy. How is such

a city to be built? From what material is it to be constructed? In the
System des transzendentalen Idealismus there is only one possibility:
knowledge (Wissen). For Schelling transcendental philosophy is a

construction of knowledge, but not only in that the end product is a
construct of knowledge, but also in the sense that knowledge itself
serves as the material for this construction. What then is knowledge?
How can it be the "material" for a construction?
The foundation of knowledge, Schelling tells us, is truth. In a
sense, knowledge is truth, "for one knows only the true."6 Truth is then
defined by Schelling as "the correspondence of representations with
their objects." This replay of the traditional definition of truth as cor
respondence?with all of its difficulties7?is

simply notfor a criterion
what counts as truth, but is also part of a description of knowledge as
a mode of existence, one which is characterized by a certain self-obUv
iousness. As identical with itself, its own basis, an already existing
knowledge is not ipso facto an awareness of truth. Insofar as it is, it is
true; it is truth manifest, fixed. Yet in knowing itself, insofar as it is,
5
"g?ttliche Chaos." See Schelling, SW4.402.
6
Schelling, System, 9.
7For a discussion of this see Manfred Frank, Einf?hrung in die fr?hro
mantischen ?sthetik (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 171-4.

56 JAMESDODD
there is nothing to know; there is nothing to excite an activity that

would lead to knowledge?in particular, there is nothing to motivate a
transcendental reflection, the attempt to understand what knowledge
is.
Is it really the case that knowledge is not a theme in ordinary life,

that the true is something first manifest in a mode of unawareness,
and that requires a philosophical act to be brought to appearance? Or
should we on the contrary say that the question of truth is a constant
concern of everyday life? This is of course the case. The question of
the true is not only a philosophical question but is also one of life. Yet
this is consistent with Schelling's claim that "we know only the true."
It is knowledge, not life, that is being defined with the traditional con
cept as correspondence;
of truth it is knowledge that is only as truth,
not life. Thus to state that "we know only the true" does not mean
that we are only knowers, or that knowledge is the only moment of
human being?humans are not only beings of clarity.
Schelling's actual goal Ues elsewhere. The question with which

transcendental philosophy begins is not the place of truth in human
existence, but rather how to present knowledge, relate ourselves to
knowing in such a way that knowledge is fully ours, at one with that
part of ourselves that is clarity.

That knowledge is not already something that is part of this clar
ity in ourselves lies in the factual character of knowledge, its prior

manifestation in unawareness of itself. As a fact, knowing is anony
mous, it is simply, indifferent to whether its existence is or can be ex
plained. Knowledge explained ceases to be this mere fact of knowl
edge, in that any "fact" is more of a limit

of explanation rather than
the explanation itself. We may use facts in our explanations, but only
as points of orientation for a thinking that builds questions or expla
nations around facts; the fact itself simply happens. So too with
knowledge. However "dynamic" or "enlightening" knowing may be, it
always settles into the indifference of its own being as an occurrence,

a happening. Thus "while I know," knowledge has always already
gone over into its own factuality.8 Facts in the end are mute, they do
not explain themselves or even call on us to explain them. Here we
8 a unity in which neither

Schelling, System, 9?that is, it has become
the subject nor the object "stands out" of the unity of knowledge, thus under
mining it.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 57
can perhaps see what Schelling finds enticing in the traditional defini
tion of truth as correspondence. Insofar as "correspondence" is an
empty expression (that is, that knowledge is true knowledge adds

nothing to knowledge; to say that what I know is true is reaUy only to
repeat that I know), then it can serve as an apt description of this in
difference of knowledge. In this "while I know," knowledge, as an
event, as corresponding (?bereinstimmend) with itself, does not itself

come into view, but merely "happens."
In explanation, however, or in this case transcendental reflection,
knowledge becomes more than what it is by itself?it is forced to pass
beyond the facticity of the "while I know" and become, instead, some
thing understood, explicated. For this to happen, that which is at rest

"while I know" is set into motion through an act of separation. The
opening move of philosophical construction is for Schelling above all

separation (Trennung), the division of the natural (thus inarticulate)
identity-in-facticity of ordinary knowing. Here we have our first speci
fication of the separation of which the Iwill be the most extreme ex
pression, though we have not yet arrived at the appearance of the I on

the stage as a principle. The course of reflection within which the I
will arise as a theme begins with this denaturalization of ordinary
knowing, the deconstruction of the facticity of the event of knowl
edge.
Theseparation meant here is not that of analysis, of breaking
something into its parts; it is more the type of separation that charac
terizes questions. Thinking needs a question, an unresolved connec
tion, to strive after. While I know, while there is truth, there is no
question, thus no striving. While I know, truth does not result from my
"bringing" the subjective to the objective, or vice versa, thus resolving

a prior separation; where there is knowledge, I do not strive for it. Yet
reflection on knowledge?transcendental ph?osophy?is a striving,
one based on the prioritization of one or the other poles of the relation
of knowing (subject-object); for as poles, as a difference within the
unity of facticity, they offer us the opportunity of turning to one or the
other. I do this, I separate the two poles, in order precisely to pose a
question. I strain to discern some hint of responsibiUty for the estab
lishment of truth as correspondence in either the subjective or the ob
jective. What I strive after is not a fact (which ismeaningless), but the
foundation of correspondence, of the facticity of knowing. This striv
ing defines a series of ph?osophical, and only ph?osophical questions:

58 JAMESDODD
Is the correspondence the result of a hidden power, or principle, of

the subjective, or is it rather the result of a dynamic on the part of the
objective? Does the subjective bring the objective to itself, or is it

rather the case that the subjective is brought to the objective? Does
the idea of a subject contain in itself not only the rule of its own defi
nition, its own identity, but also its unity with the objective? Does the
objective contain such a principle, or is there rather only the give and
take that somehow mysteriously arises between two poles that are,
despite appearances of unity and truth, comprehensible only as mutu
ally exclusive?9
Thus for Schelling philosophical reflection, though it begins with
the recognition of the facticity of knowledge, nevertheless does not
proceed as an elaboration of factual structures, but is on the contrary

a striving for the elucidation of a hidden principle. Second, this first
step, which is passing beyond the confines of facticity, is an explicit
decision, a choice. I approach

natural knowing not on its own terms,
but as a possible answer to a question that I pose?an answer that
presupposes a division within the whole, as if one part or aspect of

the whole can reveal that upon which the whole is based.10 It is as if I
divide the whole, then set it into motion by demanding that it reconsti
tute itself for the sake of my explicit understanding. The direction
that this reconstitution wiU take is the direct object of this "decision";
in transcendental philosophy it w?l begin with a purified subjective
that w?l constitute for us its identity with the objective.
This problematization of
knowledge is not only a question of
choice, but also requires a means ("Ausscheidungsmittel") whereby

the objective is first
separated off from the subjective. The means for
this purpose is skeptical doubt.11 The existence of "nature" as exter
nal, of all that sets itself up as "objective," is cast in doubt. Yet this
doubt is not Cartesian, in that the point is not to find a piece of knowl
9
Schelling, System, "Einleitung," sec. 1: Punkte 3-4.
10See 9: "Inmy desire to eooplain this identity, Imust
ScheUing, System,
have already dissolved it. Since there is nothing else given to me (as a princi
ple of explanation), to explain it Imust set one factor above the other, set out
from the one in order to go from it to the other." For an interesting interpre
tation of ScheUing's philosophy in Ught of the problem of "radical begin
nings," see Sandkaulen-Bock, Ausgang vom Unbedingten. ?ber den Anfang
in der Philosophie Schellings (G?ttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1990).11
Schelling, System, 12-14.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 59
edge that cannot be doubted in order to in turn be employed as the

foundation of an edifice of knowledge. The Cartesian proof of the reli
ability of the knowledge of the external world consists in arguing from

particular types of connections that exist between external objects
and my thoughts, where the nature of such connections can be de
duced from the basic characteristics of "thoughts" in general. (Thus
Descartes argues that ideae are like depictions, repraesentationes,
and therefore possess the same relation that any copy has to the origi
nal.) Schelling, by contrast, uses doubt to put a distance between the
subject of reflection and the natural obliviousness of natural knowing,

ithe sense of self-certainty that pervades knowing and which is another
expression of its facticity. To doubt is to ask why it is that the exist

ence of the objective world is accepted, why the proposition "there
are things outside of us" has the air of immediate certainty. It thus
opens a perspective in which this "taking to be so," this "F?rwahrh

alten" which is a fundamental "prejudice" (Grundvorurteil),12 is
called on to be explained, clarified.
This is not a question of explaining how it is that an idea is
brought together with an object; what is doubted is not that this hap
pens, but only that it is immediately certain that it happens. This is the
manner in which Schelling isolates
the subjective from the objective.
The subjective prejudice of an immediate connection with the objec
tive, that it is "known" that "there are things outside of us," is emptied
of its obviousness and immediacy, replaced instead by the question of
why it is that this immediacy is subjectively operative as such. At this

point we have an indication of the direction
Schelling's analysis is go
ing to take. Its guiding question will be why this prejudice is a positive
characteristic of ordinary knowledge. Thus "the transcendental phi
losopher can never have
anything to do with proving the existence of
things in themselves, but only that it is a natural and necessary preju

dice to accept external objects as real."13
Something else goes with this. If this prejudice can be explained,

if it can be treated as something "mediate," then this is equivalent to
saying that the facticity of knowing itself is open to being explained.
In that the immediate certainty "there are things outside of us" is in
principle open to skeptical doubt, it lends itself to a questioning into
12 13.
Schelling, System,
13 14.
Schelling, System,

60 JAMESDODD
its origin. With respect to its actual being, it is immediate; but with re
spect to philosophical reflection, it is equally mediate.
At this point the reader comes upon an startling idea in Schell
ing's text. The explanation why the existence of the external world is
subjectively certain will be the demonstration that this prejudice is ac
tuaUy an expression of, and thus identical with, another certainty, that
of the existence of the I:
The transcendental philosopher does not know how to resolve the con
tradiction of a proposition which, in accordance with its nature, cannot
be immediately certain but is, nevertheless, and without reason, ac
cepted as certain, other than with the presupposition that this proposi
tion is covertly, and until now without being discovered, not in coher
ence, but identical and one and the same with an immediate certainty?
and to show this identity will be the actual task of transcendental phi
losophy.14
What does ScheUing actually mean by "identity" in this passage?

Let us follow the text a Uttle further. ScheUing writes: "Now for the
ordinary use of reason itself"?note well: the reflection here remains
immanent to the ordinary world of the understanding, a world where
there is
nothing immediately certain other than the proposition: I am; a proposi

tion which, because it itself loses meaning outside of immediate con
sciousness, is the most individual of all truths and the absolute preju
dice that must first be accepted if anything else is to be certain. The
proposition, "there are things outside of us" will thus be certain for the
transcendental philosopher only through its identity with the proposi
tion: I am, and its certainty will also only be equal to the certainty of the
proposition from which it borrows its own.15
What could such an assertion mean? Schelling seems to be saying

that the propositions "I am" and "there are things outside of us" are
equivalent in meaning, or are expressions of the same subject in two

of its possible significations. Is this the case?
Let us begin with the "I am." "I am" expresses the being of the act
of knowing, thus of the subjective pole of knowledge. It does this in
two senses, one of which is indicated in the passage quoted, namely
that it expresses the immediacy of consciousness. Yet something else
goes with this. The "I am" does not express the fact that I exist, but is
rather directed to the I as the subject of all knowledge whatever, that
14 13.
Schelling, System,
15 13-14.
Schelling, &/s?era,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 61
point from which knowing proceeds. ScheUing at one point contrasts

the "I am" with Kant's "I think," which plays a very simUar role. The "I
think" accompanies aU my representations, for it is the mark of a foun
dational synthesis of all possible knowledge and experience, and as
such precedes any given representation within the manifold. The "I
think" is the unity of the manifold itself, qua "my" unfolding experi
ence. Now Kant uses the expression "I think11 because he thematizes
this unity from the perspective of the conditions for a concrete experi
ence as an empirical manifold
continually moving forward in time. If,
however, Schelling suggests, we were to present this identity "itself,"
not within a situation in which it functions as a unity of the contents of
empirical experience, but rather as a position that has, so to speak, an
infinite reach for all time?then we would use the expression "I am,"
which now refers to the I in the sense of "the position of an infinity of
possible predicates."16 "To be" here is completely nonobjective, it is
the being of the universal position of the subject that thinks, the pure
positional being of the I.17
The "I am," as the positional being of thinking as such, is of
course present in ordinary cognition?and ScheUing's claim is thus
that its presence "is" the certainty that "there are things outside of us."
Yet it is this certainty as it appears "after" the act of knowing, or the
establishment of the relation to the objective. The being of the "Iam"
is that of an act, one directed outwards from itself; as such it shows it
self at most within a certain "feeling,"18 insofar as we say that knowing
has a certain feel of reliability. We cannot say, however, that we are
aware of the act of knowing: as the being of experience it has no need
to be experienced. What we have is knowledge, the accomplishment
itself; the absolute being of the act of knowing and the certainty of
what is known do not share a space in which they can be compared,
thereby showing themselves to be the "same." Still, to assert this iden
tity on unprepared ground, in the language and self-having of ordinary
16 36-7.
Schelling, System,
17This is the case as Schelling
because, indicates in this passage, the
"position" expressed by the "I am" no longer expresses an "affection" of the I,
as does the expression "I think." As such, the I no longer carries with it any
determinations that would make it something actual, "real." The sense it
makes to talk of "position" here at all hinges on what sense we can make of
ideality itself as a "locus," a "position," a "place" where thinking can begin on
a new footing, somehow free from the tasks of being "real," "actual."
18 14.
Schelling, System,

62 JAMESDODD
experience, would be nonsensical?it would be like saying "there are
things outside me as surely as I exist." Here I am betraying the fact

that I have left behind the ordinary course of thinking, of sense, for I
am stating something that is first
of aU operative only as unspoken,
never as an argument or demonstration.
Thus in ordinary knowing the "I am" and the obviousness that
"there are things outside of me" flow together (zusammenflie?en19);
but this fusion "is" only as a feeling, a pathos of being a creature that
thinks, and is in no way conceived. If transcendental philosophy is on

the contrary the attempt to understand knowing, it cannot begin with
the face that this subjectivity shows in ordinary cognition. Here the
subjective act is always already accomplished, which means that it

has already "gone over" into the objective, already expressed itself in
the mode of concrete experience (factual knowledge), leaving unspo
ken its true being as universal position in favor of fulfilling itself in the
cognition of things. Here the face of subjectivity, of universality, has
the look of a question that has been answered. It no longer bears the
traces of a Uving questioning, but instead only appears as something
at best abstract, a prefiguring of the concrete answer. It loses the irre
ality or openness of the question and becomes fused with the reality
or fixity of the object.
To "explain" knowledge transcendentally, then, is to explain this
movement of activity and result, openness and closure, this life of a
certainty that begins with absolute position and ends in knowledge of

the world. How does philosophy tap into
this dynamic character of
knowing, how does it pass beyond speaking merely of two elements

within one whole and, instead, present in reflection a movement,
which is above all a tension in time, a difference between a past and a
present, a question and an answer? Not through observation. For

how could we observe the accomplishment of a knowing, which is
here being understood as a mode of being? Knowing is part of the be
ing that we are, and Schelling's entire project begins with the recogni
tion that this being that we are does not originally concern itself with
the question of its own production, but must first of all be goaded into
recognizing that it is being only as result, only as an answer, an out
come.
19 14.
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 63
To perform this feat, Schelling's strategy is to propose a repeti
tion of the act that begins as act and results in a product. Yet this is
not simply a repetition, but a reenactment, as it were, on grounds that
fulfill not the demands of existence but rather those of demonstration
and explanation. To explain knowledge is to lay it out, to make ex
plicit structures and aspects that, in the natural progression of its
movement, are not necessarily visible or open to being understood.

To do this requires not only reflection, but the possib?ity that knowl
edge is available for its own reenactment, that it can be reconstructed,

reshaped, and reconstituted. Thus the opening moves of transcenden
tal philosophy, the problematization of knowing and its denaturaliza
tion through methodic doubt, amount to an argument for the inherent
plasticity of knowledge.
Ill
The Art of Understanding Understanding. Notice that in the

foregoing we graduaUy passed from the facticity of knowing to the
sense in which knowledge is a product. Iwould argue that these two
aspects are in fact identical for Schelling. Thus to understand what it
means to say that knowledge is produced is not the same thing as be
ing able to assign responsibility to a producing agent. That knowledge

is produced has to do with understanding it as an event, something
that happens?in short, what I have been caUing its "facticity." This
facticity is not meant to serve as a criterion for what counts as knowl
edge, but refers instead to the problem of understanding it as a mode

of existence. Thus when Schelling, for example, stresses that know
ing is oriented to what is known, what is meant is not the pure func
tion of signifying, but first and foremost an existence, a self-move
ment.
Kant also recognized this when he made intuition one of the con
ditions for the possibiUty of objective knowledge. For Kant, "know
ing" is not merely a question of objects of thinking?of predication or
identification?but has to do with objects of a "possible experience,"
which means something more than a correlate of a mental operation.
Experience has its object "here and now," in this context thinking
does not operate in a pure space of mere reference to objects but is
based on an intuitive ("immediate") relation to the givenness of

64 JAMESDODD
objects. For Kant, and with him ScheUing, knowledge ultimately de

rives its own meaning and identity from an encounter with things;
however abstract knowing may be, and must be, it is nevertheless
bound to the concreteness of an event, a happening, and not only to
its contents taken abstractly.
This is one of the reasons why transcendental logic is not identi
cal with (what Kant calls) general logic. Its subject matter is not the
forms of thought in general, emptied of any and all relation to objects,
but about thinking that is also knowledge of things.20 The same is true
of Schelling, but with his own twist. In transcendental philosophy the
object of reflection is not a thinking emptied of objects, but a thinking
that empties itself into objects. For both ph?osophers there is a prior
ity of the object expressed by the movement of subjectivity itself,

which is in turn expressive of the nonobjective character of the latter.
The act of knowing, ScheUing tells us, "disappears" into the object;21
the existence of knowing is thus an act of self-loss, which is accompa
nied at most by an imprecise feeling of being-conscious but is in no
way an objective "self."

It is this movement of knowing that Schelling seeks to grasp with
the idea of knowledge as a "product." Now in the philosophical repeti
tion of this movement the same directedness is reenacted, but with
out the self-forgetting. What would normally vanish?the "subjectiv
ity" of knowing?is instead held fast, against its nature. For the one
who reflects transcendentally, knowing as an act does not forget itself
for the sake of the object, but rather it forgets the object for the sake
of itself; I arrest the event of knowing before the product becomes
manifest, before the coincidence of subject and object?before

truth?becomes the fulfiUed significance of the event. What would
have been natural, namely the unthinking, mechanical coincidence of
subject and object, the manifestation of the thing as the thing known,
is replaced by an artificial product--not a thing known, an experience
in the ordinary sense, but rather a knowledge of knowledge.22
That which makes this mode of knowing possible is the very fact
that knowing is produced, that itmust "happen" in order to be at all.
20 Immanuel
Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (hereafter "KrV"), ed.
Raymond Schmidt, Philosophische BibUothek 37a (Hamburg: Meiner, 1990),
A50/B74-A57/B82.
21 14: "?ber dem Objekt verschwindet."
Schelling, System,
22 14: "Wissen des Wissens."
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 65
Its plasticity is really that of an "event." The "vanishing" of the subject

into the object is an expression of this productivity, insofar as any pro
ducing?any event?is also a passing over into a product, something

that is not only act but a passing over into a result. Producing or pre
senting has its "for the sake of which," its ov evexa with which it be
comes indistinguishable, for in the end it is the product that benefits
the most from the movement of producing?it is, as answer and result,
the inheritor of the full significance, it is what happens, something
that has taken of the opportunity
full advantage to be known. Schell
ing's thesis that the act that

lies behind such becoming-known can it
self be known, itself an object, means that it too can take advantage of
itself as the opportunity for being expressed, for being a "for the sake
of which" the presentive power of knowing is being exercised.
However, in this context both the movement that produces and

the result that is produced will have a different sense than in ordinary
cognition, if for no other reason than that

the producing will be ex
plicit where in ordinary knowing it naturally "vanishes." This will be

the definitive characteristic of the inner city. Here there will be no ob
ject that is not at the same time an act; the product will never stand
apart from its anonymous, producing

origin.
Another comparison can to Kant
help fix what this mode of
knowing is supposed to be. One of Kant's insights?which is by no

means his alone?was that experience itself is a type of thinking,
which means above all that experiencing involves concepts. Experi
ence is a relating to things that is based on the integration of moments
into an order in accordance with an economy of categories and, at a
higher level, descriptions of things. This form of "thinking" is not in
stricto sensu a reflection on pregiven content; content first arises by
virtue of a thinking that is always already acting in tandem with intu
ition. Which is what "experience" comes down to: an intuiting that
has found its way into the world of thought. Thus the categories of
thinking?the modes in which the understanding functions?consti

tute one set of conditions that makes experience possible at all. In
this sense the "deduction" of the categories is as much a question of
the origin of experience as it is of the justification of the indispensabU
ity of the categories in thinking rationally about experience.23
23
Kant, KrV A55/B80-A56/B81.

66 JAMESDODD
So too for Schelling. If every "something" that is experienced is

the end product of an act of conceiving, and if I turn and "hold fast" to
this act itself, then I am holding fast to the "origin" of this product. In
doing so I "grasp" it explicitly as an act, though it is now, in my hold
ing it fast, no longer an act in the sense of something that produces,

but becomes something that is thematic?something thought. This
act that is being grasped is what Schelling caUs a "concept."24
This
grasped act, however, is not an abstract schema, a set of di
rections for thinking an object. Experience is a grasping of some
thing, which means that it is a consciousness, a presentive field of ob
jectivity. The idea of concept is being employed by Schelling to

emphasize this grasping, presenting character of experience. Accord
ingly, "concept" here does not mean a device or a tool, but a capacity
within experience that enables it to open up for itself a world, that en
ables it to realize itself as experience. Kant makes this point as well
when he asserts that the various definitions of the understanding
(Verstand) are equivalent: "faculty" or "power" (Verm?gen); sponta
neity of knowledge; power of thinking; power of judging.25
Nevertheless, it is obvious that "concept" does not denote the
mere act of grasping, but also the order that is grasped or set into
place?conceiving always follows along the lines of a particular

"how" or "as" of the thing (I attend to "how" the thing is; I grasp the
thing "as" something or other). Thus to conceive an origin as a con
cept is to directly link the originary and the ordered. Experience is a

thinking not only as a grasping,
a presenting, but as an order. This is
essential; Schelling's attempt to conceive of the origin of experience,

to fix in reflection that out of which experience unfolds, is in no way
the attempt to think past an order of concepts or meanings in the
hopes of grasping pure being, pure existence as original; the being un

der consideration here is the being of an order, even to grasp it as
pure act, pure subject, is to form a concept of a concept.26

What does it mean, to conceive of a concept? It is important to
stress the strangeness of this idea. We justifiably assert that the world
has an order for ordinary consciousness, even that this world is or
dered by concepts; yet such concepts, in their original functioning,
24 14-15.
Schelling, Sciera,
25Kant,?CrVA126.
26 15: "Begriff des Begriffs."
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 67
are not immediately evident. They are part of the unfolding of my ex
perience as an event, but they are not the object of this experience. I
never witness a thing appealing to a concept as the source of its iden
tity; I never see the syntheses that underlie the fixity of one and the
same thing in time; I never see causahty providing the basis of an or
dered series of appearances. Nevertheless, Schelling claims, the activ
ity that marks each of these functions, that activity which is a being or
mode of existence, can be seized upon, made the object of a reflec
tion.
How is this possible? In part because reflection itself is not
merely abstract thinking, just as little as the concept of a concept is a
mere functional concept. Both experience and reflection?including
philosophical reflection?are the

unfolding of a concrete process,
they are not abstract orders that would be what they are without refer
ence to human existence. Thus to grasp the originary character of
concepts is a task for a living reflection, not a mere elucidation of an
order in abstract terms.
This insistence on the necessity of a living reflection?and I be
lieve this to be one of the constants of Schelling's philosophical ca
reer?means that transcendental philosophy will not provide a dy
namic "model" of consciousness, a representation of movement which
would be, in itself, something objective, a fixed plan that would at best
refer to a living activity. What is to be objectified in reflection is to be
objectified in a mode in which it does not "lose" what characterizes its
own being for the sake of its being represented. That this is possible
in principle is because it has never been the case that to make some
thing an object of thought wholly dissipates all thatis subjective, ac
tive, in favor of objectivity; that is not even the casein ordinary cogni
tion. What would itmean for all subjective involvement and activity to
cede completely to the presence of the nonactive, the pure "object?" It
certainly would have little to do with experience. Nevertheless
is there
still an act of separation operative in order for concepts to be revealed
as concepts, that is, for the presence of the active to be made into a
theme, an object?this is actually Schelling's definition of concept.27
27
ScheUing, System, 176: "The result that comes from separating the act
[Handeln] as such from what results from it [vom Entstandenem] is called
concept."

68 JAMESDODD
Yet the object of even this reflection?which is based on separa

tion from the objective, that essential move that enables us to even
conceive of the possibility of the inner city?however much its sub
jectivity may be emphasized, can still mislead us. It can easily be seen
as something like a "framework" of thinking, a set of rules or opera
tions that, once given a psychological or technical interpretation, no
longer bear any resemblance to the spontaneity of actual thinking, be
coming instead the lifeless traces of an already departed living

thought. This, Schelling claims, is what happened in Kant's philoso
phy, despite the many descriptions of thinking as a power and a spon
taneity. For in Kant the analysis quickly degenerates (so Schelling)

into a reflection on the sense of concept as order and not as act. This,
ScheUing proposes, can be avoided if transcendental philosophy pro
ceeds not by reflecting on the regularity of thinking/experience in gen
eral but rather by orienting itself around an intuition of thinking as an
originary act, thus being in the position of deducing "acts of intelli
gence as acts, not as something like concepts of acts or as catego

ries."28
Why intuition? The task of transcendental philosophy is for

thought to attend to its own movement, a movement which, in accor
dance with its essence as a conceiving and thus an experience of or
der, loses itself in the object, comes to rest in something other than it
self. This attending to itself is also a reflection, but not that only.
Philosophical reflection must also be an intuiting if it is to rescue the
sense of this act of consciousness as act, if it is to pull the act out of
its headlong, blind descent into things?"consciousness" is this blind
movement, self-consciousness the result of an intuition that recap

tures the sense of activity. However this is not a case of intuition but
tressing reflection, providing itwith a supplementary justification. In

Schelling intuition goes hand in hand with something more fundamen
a reformation of the subjective itself, a self-creation of the
tal, namely
subjective in the form of an act that continues to hold itself at a re
28
Schelling, System, 125. Nevertheless, Iwould argue that Kant is the
most important influence on Schelling from the 1790's to the end of the pe
riod of the identity system. See the work by Michaela Boenke, who argues
along similar lines, somewhat against the prevailing opinion in the literature
that would have Spinoza, Fichte, or even Plotinus as more decisive influ
ences: Boenke, Transformation des Realit?tsbegriffs, Spekulation und Er
fahrung 17 (Stuttgart: Bad Cannstatt: frommann-holzboog, 1990).

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 69
move fromthe pole towards which it "naturally" moves. The product
of this mode of thinking?which is also a mode of being, a movement
of existence?is a special type of self-having on the part of thinking, a
self-possession that is something more than the originary act of know
ing at the basis of experience. This self-having is, rather, the self-as
product, that object achieved by a thinking directed towards itself, in

its activity, through intuition: "Philosophizing is also an activity, but
not only an activity; it is at the same time a constant self-intuition in
this activity."29
It is the plasticity of knowing that enables this particular mode of
self-having to be realized. Both the "self" and "intuition" are placed in
a special context prepared by an act of separation, one that takes ad
vantage of the difference between act and product that characterizes

the being of knowing as an event. I, the philosophizing subject, re
main "in" the movement of knowing, I remain that being in whom a
subjective corresponds a being who

to an objective, has truth as the
basis of its activity. I remain such, yet I become, in a duplicity that is
only possible given the decision of radical doubt, directed toward
making this being that I am into an object; the activity that forms the
subjective side of this being becomes my irrespectivethemeof the ob
jectivity towards which it moves. This is theme

only possible given
the fact that I am treating thinking as an artifice, something that I am
reconstructing; and it is only through this act of construction that I

have the self as a theme. In this context intuition is not a passive re
ceiving of self, but is part of the introduction of the theme of self as

such into thinking, the of a self-having
introduction of a higher order
that casts the whole movement
of knowing in a different light. I be
come, make myself into a thinking aware of itself as thinking, an expe
riencing aware of itself as an experiencing, an originary activity aware

of itself as origin?"the transcendental art w?l thus consist in the ac
quired talent of holding oneself in this dupUcity of acting and think

ing."30
The expression "transcendental art" is not just a turn of phrase.
Philosophical thinking cannot be merely the activity of constructing

arguments, which could just as eas?y be expressed in texts and trea
tises as they could be in conversations. The art here is an art of self, of
29 15.
Schelling, System,
30 15.
Schelling, System,

70 JAMESDODD
an inner achievement of construction?an inner
city. And the duphc
ity involved is not merely a methodological point of departure, an op
eration that I can perform in the same manner as bisecting a line or
drawing a logically consistent conclusion. The transcendental art has

as little to do with the "use" of concepts, with the practical application
of rules or forms, as it does with the task of constructing a dynamic
model of psychic reality.
IV
The Principle of the "J." So what is it? What is ph?osophical

thinking? It is what thinking never is in ordinary experience: a being
that appears, that is manifest for itself. This is possible only if, in turn
ing to itself, thinking becomes a context
separate and free from its
own natural progression as an event of knowing. This "context" is in
wardness itself, an inner life, an inner world; yet inwardness is not so
much the pure activity of the subject, but a creative act "that is abso
lutely inward."31 This is not really an argument for "inner sense," if by

that we mean an opposite of outer perception that would be isolated
along the lines of traditional ego-metaphysics (that is, where we

would argue that the I is nonobjective because it is indivisible, thus
not part of the "outer" world of sensibility, and so forth). This inner
world is no world in the ordinary sense, for it "is" only insofar as it is
being freely built and maintained by us?"the objects of the transcen

dental philosopher do not exist at aU apart from their being freely pro
duced."32
In addition, Schelling argues that the immediate intuition we

have of ourselves is dependent on our producing such an inner life:
"The entire object of this philosophy is nothing other than the activity
of the intelUgence in accordance with particular laws. This activity is
conceivable only through one's own immediate inner intuition, which
in turn is only possible through production."33 It is to be sure an odd
state of dependency for intuition to be in. I intuit the self only in that I
at the same time (re)produce it; in producing itself I am somehow at
the same time in the position to intuit the I in its origina?ty as pure
31 19.
Schelling, System,
32 19.
Schelling, System,
33 20.
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 71
act?that is, not as a product. What sort of product would provide the
opportunity or position from which the originary activity of the I could

be intuited? Could we not object that to produce the I as a concept of
the originary act of self-consciousness necessarily excludes any possi
bility of an immediate relation to the I as act, as nothing but a "doing?"
Schelling's proposed answer is already familiar to us, though here
we have it in a more radical form. Before it was an identity between
the immediate self-certainty of the "I am" and the certainty of a medi
ated acceptance that "there are things outside of us," which we inter
preted as a unity of a movement between producing and product.

Here too Schelling speaks of an identity between a product and the act
that gives rise to it, but here this product is in no way separated off
from the freedom of the producing, but is at one with it. This identity
of mediated product and instituting act is, of course, that of self-con
sciousness, and the concept of this producing/produced is the I: "A
concept must arise for us along with the act of self-consciousness, and
this is nothing other than the concept of the 'L' Inmy making myself
into an object of self-consciousness, there arises for me the concept of
the T,' and vice versa, the concept of the T is for me the concept of the
self-becoming-object [Selbst-Objekt-Werdens]."M
This iswhat Schelling calls the principle of knowledge. Principle
not in the sense of something applied in knowing, but in the sense of
that which in the reconstruction of knowledge guides and fixes the
very sense of "knowledge" as "inner construct" for us. Let us look at
this a little closer.
As I outlinedabove, the first step in understanding knowledge, in
"knowing" or "conceiving" of knowing and conceiving, is that of sepa

ration, the methodical isolation of the purely subjective. At first this
"subjective" is nothing but the nonobjective; from the perspective of
universal doubt, the task is to empty all knowing of anything objective
in order to arrive precisely at the nonobjective, that far remove from
anything that is non-activity (anything "accepted"). Yet at this far re
move from the objective it is not as if there is "nothing" left, but rather
there is something in the sense of a self-movement towards objectiv
ity, and this iswhat Schelling calls the original I: "Now how an objec
tive would come out of this
originary nonobjective would be incon
ceivable were this nonobjective not an "/," that is, a principle that
34 35.
Schelling, System,

72 JAMESDODD
itself becomes object."35 Producing grasps itself, not as an object in
the sense of non-activity, but in the sense of an object that is only its
own becoming (ewiges Werden) or infinite movement.
The idea is astonishing. One may be inclined to accept the de
scription of "producing" or "making" as something pure when taken
by itself; when we think of a power or a force we have this inmind,

namely some
sort of energy that infuses the object in movement, that
produces it or "synthesizes" it. Yet to think of a product that is pure in

the same way, that is something very different. A product is normally
thought of as a thing, as a state of rest; it is self-possessed, but insofar

as it has been produced it is always the result of something else, pre
cisely that activity or energy that brought it into being. For a thing to
be at one with the power that produced it is to be something other
than "created." Like the ancient concept of cjwoi?, itwould be a prod
uct that carries in itself its own principle of being produced. As such
it is no longer something "pure," a free act of producing?we do not
say that a thing creates, but rather that the thing grows and develops.
In the case of Schelling's conception of the I, however, what is being
produced is the free act, and what is producing is again the selfsame
free act?that is what the I is, it is the product that produces itself as
producing.
We cannot here take up the logic that ScheUing develops to expU
cate this self-production of consciousness.36 For our purposes it is
sufficient that the I is not a simple metaphysical
to point out postu
late, but is also a concept of self-consciousness, our self-constituting
inwardness that also incorporates a moment of intuition, of immedi
acy. The I is a conception of self that is also a self-intuition?the infa
mous "inteUectual intuition" of Fichte. Yet for Schelling?and for that
matter Fichte as well?inteUectual intuition is meaningful only as the
starting point of philosophizing; though it is the initial becoming ob

jective of the self, that does not mean that it is ipso facto understood,
that we have thereby achieved knowledge of knowledge. "Intellect" is
initially objective insofar as we can speak of its manifestation in intu
ition, and that means here as an act that is performed (the I is "postu
lated"), not that something has been demonstrated or proven.37 The
35 43.
Schelling, System,
36This
logic is presented at System 47-56, and rests on a key concept
that we have not touched on here, that of the "Begrenztheit" of the I.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 73
performance of such an act is only the orientation towards inward

ness as the possibility of construction; standing alone, inteUectual in
tuition is as empty as the intuition of space without figure, without
geometrical construct. Like the intuition of space, the self-intuition of
the subject becomes an expression only in coiyunction with another
type of productive activity that sets limits and estabUshes structures.

Intellectual intuition is in fact only the recognition that the self is
available to itself for such constructions, it is the confirmation that an
inner city is possible, that inwardness is not a vanishing point of objec
tivity but offers something Uke a space within which thinking can
move and discover. This space is of course thinking itself, its own
world; and if thinking can remain within this world, the borders of
which are defined by inteUectual intuition (the self that has given itself
over to conception), all of its constructions w?l only be "determina
tions" of the same, they will all remain within the bounds of the I as
product?that is, within thinking itself, taken as concrete for itself.
This is an argument for the possibility of "thinking thinking itself," one
based on an insistence that thinking is not merely an emptying of itself
into things, but can fashion itself as an I; and what Imeans in the end
is not just the mind, but a world of the mind?which is ultimately what
philosophy as a system is going to be.
Now this positing of the I is itself only the initiation of a move
ment of thinking that will, as an outcome, be a system of knowledge, a
self-referential, organic whole of all its manifestations. This is Schell
ing's ultimate goal, but with the positing of the I all that we have ac
complished is a conception of an inwardness of thought wherein such

an organic whole is possible. Now this postulated I is not initially
such a whole, because it is still only "our" object; self-consciousness is
postulated "by us" what it is "for itself?that is, an I, self-conscious
ness. Yet this is only one aspect of self-consciousness, what Schelling
calls its objective or "real" aspect; to make the whole complete re
quires the inclusion of the subjective aspect, an inner sign of the

movement of self-grasping itself.
37
Schelling, System, 40: "... thus this intuition cannot be demonstrated,
only stipulated; but the I itself is only this intuition, thus the I, as principle of
philosophy, is itself only something that is postulated." Compare to J. G.
Fichte, S?mmtliche Werke I, ed. J. H. Fichte (Berlin: Veit und Comp, 1845),
426-9.

74 JAMESDODD
The concept we start off with is that of the I, that is, of the subject-ob
ject to which we raise ourselves in absolute freedom. Now in this act
something is posited in the I as object, for us, those who philosophize,
and because of this not yet in the I as subject (for the I itself what is pos
ited as real is also posited as ideal in one and the same act); our investi
gation will thus have to proceed to the point where the same that is pos
ited in the I as object for us is also posited in the I as subject for us, that
is, to the point in which, for us, the consciousness of our object corre
sponds to our own, thus where the I itself has arrived for us to the point
from which we began. **
That is, the whole is complete?thus a system?when the I intuits

itself as subject-object, when it becomes for itself (thus subjectively)
that unity of self-consciousness that we postulated objectively at the
beginning of transcendental reflection. The transcendental philoso

pher sets this as a task for the I by "constantly holding apart" that
which in the I is absolutely one, "in order to let this unification happen
before our eyes."39
We need to stress that the I, the object of philosophical reflec
tion, is not the act of original self-consciousness. What we have in

transcendental phUosophy is an imitation (Nachahmung)40 of this act,
though to be sure it is thinking, or subjectivity, that is imitating itself.

Transcendental reflection is an art of self-intuiting and forming con
structs in this intuition, in much the same way one constructs in ge
ometry. In a sense there is no difference between "space" and "geo

metrical construction" at all; yet in another sense there is, in that
construction is always space presented within a particular set of limi
tations, introduced by us, which so to speak set up a perspective

within space that
emphasizes space in light of its possible modes of
determination. So too with philosophical construction: the I is both a
limiting perspective that I have opened up on myself and the intu
itively present infinity that is present in the particular determinations

of this perspective. Thus "intuition" is not a prior revelation of what is
then discerned in detail. What is intuited is only present at all once it
is fixed in the product, the "construct." However, in transcendental
reflection?and here the comparison with geometry breaks down?
the construct, the I,will reflect the essence of the producing activity
^Schelling, System, 57-8.

39 58.
Schelling, System,
40 65-6.
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 75
that gave rise to it, namely it will reflect the absolute identity that de
fines self-consciousness (thus "knowledge" as such).
How does this happen? It is as if for Schelling the I takes on a Ufe
of its own, which is precisely what is necessary for it to be presented
in reflection as a progressive movement of ever more complex self-in
tuition. Neither "intellectual intuition," "construction," nor even "imi
tation" gives us a sense of how this is possible, how we can bring the I
through successive constructions to the point where it posits itself as

self-consciousness, as the identity of its producing and being-pro
duced. For that we need to understand how our construction of self
consciousness can mimic a Uving unity, how we can speak not only of
an inner city but an "inner life." The
key to this, the real basis on
which the possibility of a construction of knowing is possible, is not
intuition so much as imagination.
It is an act of imagination that ultimately renders what would oth
erwise be a dead artifice a living unity. In art, imagination, that origi
nary act of artistic production, is something that is not a mere instru
ment for making things?imagination takes us somewhere. So too
with transcendental philosophy: in imagination we pass beyond the
sense of the I as object and structure and open ourselves to thinking
of it as an alternative world, an alternative life that, once we have
taken up the thread of its narrative, will take us somewhere, unlock
the gates to a vision of things that wiU make clear to us what it is that
both moves and unites both the act of knowing and the world it opens
up before itself.
What is to be "opened up" for us is of course a mode of access to
the Absolute?the Odyssey of the I is for Schelling ultimately that of
Identity itself. At this point we could question whether in the end this
inward, imaginative self-grasping of subjectivity could be divorced
from the idea of the Absolute. Perhaps it is possible to salvage from
Schelling's writings the idea of an inner world of self-relating subjec

tivity as a history of contradiction and development, a reflected world
in which thinking presents itself in the form of a series of products
which, taken together, would demonstrate a logic of subjective be
ing?aU without making the claim that the purpose of this history of
self-consciousness is the self-revelation in thinking of the Absolute.
Perhaps there would be fewer metaphysical pitfalls with a concept of

the I as self-producing but not thereby absolute, an I not as infinite but
finite, a movement that need not be and need not continue. With such

76 JAMESDODD
a reformulation we could go on to recognize in Schelling the possibil
ity of a very contemporary conception of subjectivity, one that does
not posit the subject as an authoritative origin and master of meaning,
but rather recognizes in subjectivity a restlessness that underhes a
struggle with meaning, with the very sense of self. Such a conception
would be very much with the times: an inner Odyssey that never ar
rives at a definitive grasp of itself but is rather caught up in a negative
dialectic of forever being subject to another conflict, another chal
lenge at integration.41
Yet to drop the question of the Absolute would, of course, for
sake what was most important to Schelling. It would also close our
eyes to why in the end the ph?osophy of art plays the role that it does
in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus. The issue turns on
the fact that transcendental ideaUsm itself is understood by Schelling
as an access to the Absolute. We have the first, and I beUeve most im
portant piece to this puzzle: the idea of the inwardness of thinking as

an imaginative, aesthetic creation, a work of art?not as a thing, but
rather an inner world, an inner life, that reflects the absolute "through
an aesthetic act of imagination [Einbildungskraft]."
Philosophy rests just as much as art on the capacity to produce [das

produktive Verm?gen], and the difference between the two rests merely
on the different directions of the productive power. For instead of pro
duction being directed outward in order to reflect the unconscious [Un
bewu?te] through products, as in art, philosophical production directs
itself inwards in order to reflect it in inteUectual intuition.?Thus the
true sense in which this type of philosophy must be grasped is as aes
thetic, and the philosophy of art the true organon of ph?osophy.42
Poetry and the Crystal Chamber. Ph?osophy is comparable to a

work of art, an aesthetic production of the imagination. Thus the im
portance of a "philosophy of art" is not limited to the question of the
41There has been some recent work in

English exploring the possibiUty
of relating Schelling to contemporary debates of subjectivity and rationaUty.
See for example Thomas Pfau's introduction to Idealism and the Endgame
of Theory, Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling, trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany:
SUNY, 1994); also see Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Phi
losophy (London: Routledge, 1993).
42 20.
ScheUing, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 77
organization of knowledge into an organic whole; it is important for

the very self-understanding of philosophy itself. Let us take a closer
look at this by turning to the sixth "Hauptabschnitt" of the System des
transzendentalen Idealismus, where Schelling takes up the construc
tion of art directly.
There are two senses a given product
in which is a work of art for
Schelling. Art, in the narrow sense of the German word Kunst, is

something consciously produced, with intent and idea: art is "prac
ticed consciously with and reflection . . . and can be
thought taught
and learned, established through tradition and individual practice. . .
"43 can already see a difference
we between art and philosophy, a dif
ference that turns on the distinction between an activity that is "at
home" in objectivity and an activity that begins by turning away from
the objective for the sake of maintaining the act of thought in its free
dom. The "object" of philosophy is something that exists only in its
being freely produced, there is no "product" outside of the inwardness
of thought.
Of even more importance in contrasting art and philosophy is the
second element of art for Schelling: the "poetry" (Poesie) in art. We
can in a preliminary fashion formulate the thesis thus: what interests
philosophy about art is not really art (Kunst) but the poetry in art.
This is because philosophy does not and cannot attain the poetic; it
may be an art, but never poetry. Why is this even an issue? Because
for Schelling in the final analysis it is not transcendental philosophy
but poetry that is a standpoint from which the Absolute is expressed
as Absolute; it is poetry that brings the I to its own self-recognition as
the identity of subject and object.
The issue of imitation introduced above bears directly on this
point, in particular the three way relation between the immediacy of
intuition, the imitation animated by imagination, and the resulting
product which thus "reflects" the Absolute. What characterizes this
intuiting-imitating-producing as an inward activity, thus as philosophy,
is that it never ends, it is only a product in the sense of a continual be
ing-produced. The inner city is never finished, and can never be fin
ished and still remain "inward," a living reflection. Thus any reflection
of the Absolute occurs only within a world ruled by the difference and
flux that characterizes inwardness; that is, a difference that is not
^Schelling, System, 289.

78 JAMESDODD
merely posited, but is a living difference proper to the subjectivity of

inwardness. Inwardness is a moveable feast of progressive construc
tions, a continual self-positing of infinite differentiations. Any given

stage presents us only with a glimpse of a "finished" product, for again
and again we find that our object (the I) has in accordance with its na
ture always already passed beyond the limits we have set to define it.
Any given construction thus poses the task of formulating a new set of
limits and definitions, thus new thematizations of the self with which
to catch the next twist in the unfolding of the infinite position of the I.
in Schelling
Yet difference and identity are not therefore relative;
the movement of constructing has an end, a resolution that fulfills the
promise that is ever present in self-intuition?namely that it is possi

ble to recognize a "highest."What is the highest? An identity which no
longer lends itself to being displaced by another expression of differ
ence, another self-transcendence that would initiate another stage of
searching for identity, but holds within itself the infinitely opposing
activities, the infinite contradiction in one. Thus the highest is not
identity without difference, but a state of difference which neverthe

less does not drive towards anything more, but which forgoes the
restlessness of subjectivity in an unexpected satisfaction with an ex
pression of the conflict between the simply one and the many.
It is in the artwork (Kunstprodukt), Schelling teUs us, that such a
state of unity in difference is achieved. Yet the artwork is not itself
this identity, but is something that reflects the originary identity nor
maUy obscured by the movement of opposing activities?that is, an
opposition that we meet in transcendental philosophy in the form of a
free separation of the objective from the subjective. For
Schelling
this opposition and others related to it (oppositions in nature, history,
as well as that which drives the artist) are infinite; there is never a
"resolution" of conflict, if by that we mean an absence of opposition.
At most there are attitudes or positions with respect to this opposition
that, so to speak, do not take sides, but are instead "indifferent"?
which iswhat the work of art is. It reflects such an absolute position
with respect to an infinite conflict between the subjective and the ob
jective within human nature.
As such the work of art possesses characteristics in common
with both the products of subjectivity and of objectivity (nature). It
has the "natural" character of the real-objective and the "free" charac
ter of the ideal-subjective: "That it is produced with consciousness,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 79
the product w?l have in common with the product of freedom; with
the product of nature, that it is unconsciously produced."44
To explain what he means Schelling contrasts the work of art to
organic life, the teleologically determined product of nature. The ori
gin of the organism is wholly natural, as far removed from the level of
concepts as the I is from the level of unconsciousness, but it develops

into an expression of an order that is not merely mechanical but pur
posive (zweckm?ssig), thus which reflects precisely the order of con
cepts. This particular constellation of "consciousness" and "uncon

sciousness" results in the organic
expressing idea that we, anas
philosophers of nature, can recognize, but which does not appear on

its own in such a way that it would be purposively ordered for itself?
for the purposiveness of nature is a blind, mechanically produced pur
posiveness: "Nature begins conscious-less and ends conscious, the
production is not
purposive but the product is."45 This is something
that requires us to see; for seeing and recognizing a purpose can never
arise by mechanics alone, without the moment of freedom.
By contrast, the work of art does notrequire us to recognize in it

some sort of purpose; art does not need us to discern a message or
concept. The work of art is instead an inverted image of the natural

organism. Whereas the origin of the organism is blind mechanism,
here it is the Iwhich, in order precisely to bring about a work of art,
"must begin with consciousness (subjectively) and end in uncon
sciousness or objectively, the I is conscious with respect to produc
tion, unconscious with respect to the product."46
Whereas a natural organism, a plant or an animal, is uncon
sciously or blindly an expression of its own rationality (thus "ideal
ity"), in the work of art the I consciously expresses its unconscious
self. It does this because in its producing, in its fashioning of a prod
uct, it ceases to be free, but in such a way that it consciously recog
nizes that this very cessation of its freedom is due to a principle,
present within itself, that is necessary for the I to be itself, to be a real
ity that grasps itself, that is conscious of itself. To be an artist is thus

to consciously follow through with the highest possible expression of
the self, to become aware of the fundamental necessity that defines
44
45
46

80 JAMESDODD
the very nature of being self-conscious: "Thus the inteUigence will end
in a complete recognition of an identity expressed in the product, an
identity the principle of which lies in itself, that is, itwill end in a com
plete self-intuition."47
Is not this "complete self-intuition" of the I the very task of tran
scendental philosophy? For does not transcendental philosophy also
begin with a comparable split between subjective and objective be

hind which, as ScheUing puts it, lies the "free tendency towards self
intuition" present in that originary identity from which the artistic
"drive to produce" emanates?48 In short, is not art usurping the self
satisfaction in the absolute self-recognition that should have been the
crowning achievement of transcendental ph?osophy?

The "ph?osophy of art" may very well be the ultimate irony of
transcendental philosophy. Having created an inner self precisely in
order to reflect the Absolute, to imitate the difference-in-unity of the
Urselbst, the Absolute is in the end reflected not by the producing that
turns inward, but
by the producing that is turned outward, that cre
ates not the inner city of ideas but the work of art. It is not the philos
opher who, armed with concepts and reflection, casts aside the na
ivete of natural human existence that is the highest expression of
human self-consciousness, but the artist. The philosopher is at best a
witness.
The essential reason for this is, I would like to suggest, not so
much because philosophy is any less "k?nstUch" than art itself, but
because it is directed inward. Why is this a factor? In part because the
reason why the work of art reflects the Absolute is that it offers to the
one who creates the opportunity of experiencing free creativity being
taken over by something higher, something that is more than the free
decision to create. That the activity of the artist ceases to be free
does not
only imply the cessation of action, that everything comes to
a halt, but rather expresses the sense in which in fashioning the work
of art something happens to my freedom. To create artisticaUy is not
only to act on an impulse or an intention; instead, it is as if, having

started with an intention, I end up somewhere else, as if a "darker
power" were also at work within my freedom in the event of creation.

Art is positive not only as a release of what is "in me" in the sense of
47 285-6.
Schelling, System,
48 286.
Schelling, System,

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 81
ideas, feelings, and so forth, but is a positive expression of the unity of

my free self and something that, in other contexts, appears to be sepa
rate and a?en from this freedom (that is, "world" or objectivity in the
guise of an obstacle to my subjective purposes). Thispowerdark is
what Schelling caUs genius, and it is possible only in the work of art.49
There are two aspects of Schelling's idea of genius that Iwish to
stress. The first has to do with the idea that genius, in taking the cre
ative activity of the artist beyond what was contained in the intention
of the artist as subject, does not do so to reveal something wholly
a?en to the subject; it is not an usurpation by a deity to reveal itself to
finite humans. Art is, however, explicitly associated by ScheUing with
revelation (Offenbarung)-?0 but it is revelation in the sense that genius
opens up something with respect to ourselves; it is a nature within
ourselves that comes to light, that is revealed. Yet the artist is driven
to reveal this unity of self in the work, not by desire so much as an in
ner contradiction that must be resolved. Genius can in this sense be
taken to be a response as much as a creation; it is the response of our
whole being, a being that is not only the drive (Trieb) towards produc
tion itself but is also a being that has within itself the origin of this
drive, a whole that had been originally divided. Thus genius is, as
Schelling puts it, for art what the I is for ph?osophy, "namely the high
est, absolute real, which itself never becomes objective, but is the
cause of all that is objective."51 Yet whereas the I, as we have dis
cussed above, is only the conception of that possibUity of opening up
an inner construction, a world of thought, genius finds its "own" space
or world in something that is real, that is an actual part of the world as
an accomplishment of spirit?the artwork itself.
Along with this expression in the real is another character of art;

it is aU consuming, and in two different ways. It is aU consuming as a
production, one based on "a contradiction of activities" that is funda

mental to the being of the artist; it sets into motion "all the powers of
the whole person."52 It does not, as is the case with ph?osophy, arise
from that decision to problematize knowledge and truth, but rather
arises from an original problem and the resultant striving that is an es
sential part of human being as such, and thus is an original, Uving is
49
50
ScheUing, System, 289.
51
ScheUing, System, 290.
52
Schelling, System, 287; also see 301.

82 JAMESDODD
sue that is something I as an artist do not and cannot choose, but is
something that I am.
Art, however, is also all consuming as a product, which leads us

to the second feature of genius that I wish to stress. Genius is some
thing that the I could never be for ph?osophy, even for a philosophy
that insists on the immediacy of an intellectual intuition of a self-pro
ducing subjectivity. In ph?osophy the goal is to imitate, in an ever

complex unfolding of a construction of syntheses, the productive acts
implicit in the I, bringing them into an intuitive clarity in the inward

ness of
thought; this endeavor is systematic only to the extent in
which it can be sensitive to the play between identity and difference
that marks any life of a self, even if inward. This constructing is aes
thetic, imaginative, and productive, but its product ("system of philos
ophy") can never take on that sense of an all-consuming, complete

world; it can never really be a world in which I live?for that to hap
pen, my creation must be not only animated by imagination but also
natural, a part of my fate or being rather than the object of my atten

tion?it needs to take on the sense of that "being out of my hands"
that is crucial for objectivity to ultimately have any sense at all.
Genius, that "dark power," is as obscure and indeterminate as the

I in intellectual intuition. Yet whereas transcendental ph?osophy
makes the "world of reaUty vanish eyes,"before our precisely on the
way to inwardly reflecting the Absolute, it is art alone, as a product of
genius, that introduces us into a "real" world of ideas.53 Ph?osophy

thematizes an inward movement of knowing in its attempt to think
thinking; but art gives us an objective world appropriate to the infinite

meaning and inexhaustibility of concepts. Art, as a product, is a
world of ideas in two senses. First, as an object of infinite interpret
ability, the work of art is inexhaustible; its fuU significance never Ues
on the surface, it is never the simple result of the intention of the art
ist, but has the depth of something altogether unexpected. Second,

art is a world of ideas in that this inexhaustibUity is present in the fi
nite; it is this work "here" that opens onto a world, a totality?and it
is, as such, beautiful, insofar as we define beauty as the finite presen

tation of the infinite.54
53 21: "There are only two ways out of ordinary real

ScheUing, System,
ity: poetry, which sets us into an ideal world, and ph?osophy, which makes
the whole world of reality vanish before our eyes."

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 83
It is this presence of a world of ideas in the work of art that
Schelling calls the poetry (Poesie) in art. Its clearest example in
Schelling's eyes is Greek mythology.55 As a Kunstwelt, mythology

contains "infinite
meaning and symbol for all ideas," and has the char
acter of an objective world precisely in its being something subjective
and freely produced yet nevertheless wholly unintended. The world
of myth is not the dissolution of subjective freedom, but rather fulfills
it, raises it up into a broader sense of existence which can be referred
to as a "culture," a poetic existence of a people. Thus the poetry in art
does not in the end refer to the pleasure that we take in this or that
wprk of art, or even of some glimpse of the Absolute offered to us by

an individual work (as if we were to stand in amazement and wonder
before a painting, a sculpture); what it refers to instead is the world to
which that given work belongs, and it is into this world that the artist,
thanks to genius, enters, or rather is carried into.
It is in this sense that we can also speak of a language as a "work
of art."56 It is the one world that is "present" in each and every event
of speech and writing, a world that is the unexpected result of that
drive to put something of ourselves "into words," whether it be to
communicate, interact, affect the course show or demon

of events,
strate. The words that are used, the language we suddenly discover at
our disposal when we speak, always contains infinitely more than
whatever it was we intended to say; for a language contains the infin
ity of ideas and meanings of a people. A language as a whole is a

world created by human beings who are ultimately driven not to re
veal this or that idea but all Idea, all reality, all that they are in the uni
versal form of "world" as such.
language is not the promise
Moreover,
that this can be done, nor is mythology. Both have already done so,
this infinite task has already been accomplished by and in something
finite.
What then about philosophy? Would not philosophy, too, upon
reaching the level of the philosophy of art, be in the position to recog
nize itself as a world of ideas akin to language and mythology? Is this
not where the entire train of thought is leading us, namely to the self
recognition of philosophy as art?
54 291-3. From 291: "... das Unendliche

Schelling, System, endlich darg
estellt ist Sch?nheit."
55 291.
Schelling, System,
56 to Schelling, Philosophie der Kunst, in SW 5.358.
Compare

84 JAMESDODD
There is first a certain tension which we should point out, foUow
ing Xavier T?Uette. The section on the ph?osophy of art, though ful
fiUing a systematic role, nevertheless does not mean that genius itself,
as a power active in human life and self-creation, belongs to the evolu
tion of syntheses thatmake up the body of the system. It is rather that
the whole system is subsumed by it: "The idea of genius does not
count among the acts of evolutionary syntheses, it is rather that this
entire theoretical-practical organism is subsumed by aesthetic intu
ition."57 The philosophy of art embodies an odd double recognition.
Philosophy recognizes on the one hand the significance of art, that it
is a world of idea; but on the other hand it recognizes that art reveals
the ultimate significance of philosophy as such, that itwas this access
to a world of idea that it itself had aspired to. If this enables philoso
phy to become a system, it is not because "philosophy" is the ultimate
form of self-consciousness, but because it has discovered in art a doc
ument that such a whole is in fact achieved in human Ufe, just not by
ph?osophy. Again TilUette: "And if it is true that philosophy alone
penetrates to the secret of the work of art, inversely Art, poetic and
plastic at once, Uluminates the meaning of the history of conscious

ness."58
At the beginning of the "Allgemeine Anmerkung" at the end of the

System des transzendentalen Idealismus Schelling states that intel
lectual intuition and aesthetic intuition are two extremes between
which the system as such faUs. they are not two different
Yet modes
of intuiting available for the purposes of transcendental ph?osophy,
as if both could be appropriated by philosophical thinking. The intro
duction of aesthetic intuition as the closure of the "system" at the
same time stresses the limits of the ability of thought to fashion for it
self an idea of itself, or a world in which it can move on its own in and
for itself. This is the case because the end of ph?osophy, which is the
system, can be reached only if intellectual intuition, the borders of the
inner city, are left behind, only when the object, which is the I, reveals
a part of its being that is not contained in the sphere of the intellect:
"What intellectual intuition is for the philosopher"?namely, the intui
tive self-grasping of the very movement of thinking, the intellectual
57Xavier en devenir, vol.

TiUiette, Schelling, Une philosophie 1, Le
syst?me vivant, 179^-1821 (Paris: J. Vrin, 1970), 226.
^TiUiette, Schelling, 227.

ANDART INSCHELLING
PHILOSOPHY 85
grasp of thinking by thinking?"aesthetic intuition is for its object"59?

the I. Thus the system does not truly return to its beginning, which
was the I in intellectual intuition. The choice is made, and the philoso
pher can only honor it:
Thus to the philosopher art is the highest, because it opens to him as it

were the all-highest, where that which, in nature and history, is divided,
that which, in life and activity just as much as in thinking, must eternaUy
fly apart, instead in eternal and original unity burns, so to speak, in one
flame.60
In the end the philosopher's inner city reminds the reader more of
Blake's crystal cabinet than a Platonic city of ideas. It is more a fragile
chamber of visions incapable of holding together long enough to allow
us to grasp the innermost, the highest, which had been the purpose of
its construction in the first
place.
I strove to seize the inmost Form
With ardor fierce and hands of flame,
But burst the Crystal Cabinet,
And like a Weeping Babe became?
A weeping Babe upon the wild,

And Weeping Woman pale reclin'd,
And in the outward air again
I fill'd with woes the passing Wind.
?William Blake, "Crystal Cabinet," from the "Pickering Manuscript"61
Boston College
59 301.
Schelling, System,
^Schelling, System, 299.
61This
essay was written in coi\junction with a research project sup
ported by a feUowship from the Fritz-Thyssen Stiftung in Cologne, Germany.
I wish to thank in particular Professor Hans-Michael Baumgartner (Univer
sit?t Bonn) for his support.


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Philosophy and Art in Schelling's "System des transzendentalen Idealismus"

Author(s): James Dodd

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

An his System des transzendentalen Idealismus, ScheUing describes

why Schelling's idea of philosophy led him to take up the question of

standing his system as a whole.

clearly states that the relation between transcendental reflection and

thing like art, finds it and makes it its own?

odological considerations having to do with system buUding, some

thing already suggested by the architectonic metaphor of "Gew?lbe"?

Correspondence to: Boston CoUege, Department of Philosophy, Chest

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

question will be the origin of transcendental philosophy according to

Schelling. This, I believe, is where the key Ues in understanding the

tivity of transcendental reflection is comparable to the production of

2 in Bezug auf das akademische

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

teach us?so Plato?when it itself, as we philosophers well know,

something sensible, a part of the sensible world. The historical figure

polis?and it is on this terrain, or within

uneven, since poetry is at home in this "objective and thoroughly real

ble, but on the contrary transcendent and supersensible, "recognizes

Now whether in a fully ideal and as it were inner city [innerlichen

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

appeared in 1802. Here the topic is construction, in particular the re

Identity here is an identity in difference, a mocking identity that

proaching both this difference and this identity. Transcendental phi

This separation is not erroneous, but it is ironic. The I is never re

equaUy successful, making any attempt to base thinking on the one or

4 Fernere aus dem System der Philosophie, in

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

"culminating point" of a peculiar separation/isolation with the meta

phor of an inner city. The two together, I would Uke to suggest, de

The Opening Moves of Transcendental Philosophy. How is such

knowledge (Wissen). For Schelling transcendental philosophy is a

respondence?with all of its difficulties7?is

true; it is truth manifest, fixed. Yet in knowing itself, insofar as it is,

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

there is nothing to know; there is nothing to excite an activity that

Is it really the case that knowledge is not a theme in ordinary life,

Schelling's actual goal Ues elsewhere. The question with which

part of ourselves that is clarity.

ity in ourselves lies in the factual character of knowledge, its prior

plained. Knowledge explained ceases to be this mere fact of knowl

edge, in that any "fact" is more of a limit

always settles into the indifference of its own being as an occurrence,

8 a unity in which neither

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

empty expression (that is, that knowledge is true knowledge adds

event, as corresponding (?bereinstimmend) with itself, does not itself

thing understood, explicated. For this to happen, that which is at rest

opening move of philosophical construction is for Schelling above all

pression, though we have not yet arrived at the appearance of the I on

knowing, the deconstruction of the facticity of the event of knowl

tion, to strive after. While I know, while there is truth, there is no

"bringing" the subjective to the objective, or vice versa, thus resolving

This content downloaded on Thu, 27 Dec 2012 17:11:47 PM

Is the correspondence the result of a hidden power, or principle, of

objective? Does the subjective bring the objective to itself, or is it

despite appearances of unity and truth, comprehensible only as mutu

proceed as an elaboration of factual structures, but is on the contrary

step, which is passing beyond the confines of facticity, is an explicit

decision, a choice. I approach