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 SUNY series in THE CAGES OF THE WORLD
Contemporary Continental Philosophy

Dennis J. Schmidt, Editor (Fragment)

from the handwritten remains

Third Version (c. 1815)

by

FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH C5CHELLING

Translated, with an Introduction, by

JASON M. WIRTH

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS

 CONTENTS

Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany

(1) 2000 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America Translator's Introduction vii

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval Synoptic Table of Contents from Schelling
system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic,
electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise
without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. FIRST BOOK: THE PAST

For information, address State University of New York Press,

A. The eternal life of the Godhead as the whole
State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246 or the construction of the complete idea of God 3

Production and book design, Laurie Searl B. The life of the individual potency 55
Marketing, Fran Keneston
C. The actual assumption of Being
(= revelation = birth) by God 75
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
109
Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 1775-1854.
German-English Lexicon
[Weltalter. English]
The ages of the world / by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling ; translated, with an English-German Lexicon 121
introduction, by Jason M. Wirth
p. cm — (SUNY series in contemporary continental philosophy) 131
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
Appendix: Schelling Editions
ISBN 0-7914-4417-1 (acid free) — ISBN 0-7914-4418-X (pbk. : acid free)
1. Ontology. 2. God. I. Wirth, Jason M., 1963- IL Title. III. Series. Notes 133
B2894.W4 2000
Index 149
193—dc21 99-057334

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

An entry in Schelling's diary, dated September 15, 1810, reads: "Die 3

Weltalter in d. Nacht [The 3 Ages of the World in the night]."' And so on that
night Schelling embarked on what was perhaps his most ambitious philosoph-
ical project. Another entry, dated from the end of that year (December 27), and
following shortly after lightening and thunder storms and a "violent hurricane
in the night," proclaims that The 3 Ages of the World was "begun in earnest" (SP,
216). Schelling was to work on this magnum opus over the next two decades of
his life, announcing its pending publication several times, but never submitting
a completed version.
Schelling's failure to complete this book does not seem to have stemmed
from a lack of effort on his part. Schelling composed multitudinous versions of
Die Weltalter, including numerous versions of the first book (The Past). In 1939
Horst Fuhrmans discovered in the cellar of the Library of the University of
Munich a large chest, filled with a disorganized mass of many thousands of fo-
lio pages, each crammed with writing in Schelling's own hand. Among the
sheets were not only the lectures for his late philosophy (The Philosophy of
Mythology and Revelation, etc.), but also two corrected versions, set but not
printed, of the first book of Die Weltalter, as well as more than twelve quite dif-
ferent handwritten versions of the first book. Fuhrmans first discussed this ma-
terial in his 1940 book Schellings letzte Philosophie: Die negative and positive
Philosophie im Einsatz des Spatidealismus. Unfortunately, however, these manu-
scripts were all lost in July 1944 when the library burned after three consecutive
days of Allied bombing.'
However, the 1811 and 1813 versions had been saved from the trunk and
were published by Manfred Schroter in 1946. Schelling's son, Karl Friedrich

vii
August, had published a later and much longer version, dating from around This is all the more remarkable considering the meteoric rise of the
1815, in the eighth volume of Schellings Siimtliche Werke in 1861, claiming that young Schelling. A prodigy, five years the junior of his Tubinger Stift room-
it was "the most complete" of the versions found among his father's literary re- mates Hälderlin and Hegel, Schelling was born in 1775 in Leonberg (in
mains. Although all three versions are quite extraordinary in their own ways, I Wurttemberg) and entered the Stift at fifteen years of age. After some preco-
have chosen to translate the third and longest version. It is, in my judgment, the cious writing at the Stift, including a 1794 essay on Plato's Timaeus, Schelling
most sustained and developed of the three versions. The second or 1813 version published his first major work (Uber die Moglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie
has recently appeared in a good translation by Judith Norman with a thought- uberhaupt /Concerning the Possibility of a Form ofPhilosophy in General) when he
ful essay by Slavoj Zizek, in which he argues that it is the strongest of the three was nineteen. In 1797, at twenty-two years of age, Schelling, who had already
versions. 3 I myself do not think that it would be appropriate here to argue for published several important works of philosophy, including Vom Ich als Prinzip
the superiority of one version over another. They all merit a careful reading. der Philosophie/ On the I as Principle of Philosophy (1795) and Philosophische
The first version is the most dramatic in tone and it is my hope that it too will Briefe uber Dogmatismus and Kritizismus/ Philosophical Letters Concerning Dog-
soon appear in translation. matism and Criticism (1795), and Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur/Ideas to-
Frederick de Wolfe Bolman Jr, first translated the third or 1815 version ward a Philosophy of Nature (1797), received the call to assume a professorial
into English in 1942. 4 This edition is not without its virtues and it might be of post at Jena. Upon assuming his new post, and profiting from the company of
some benefit to consult it alongside the present translation. Die Weltalter is a very the Jena Circle (whose members included the Schlegel brothers and Novalis),
difficult text and I have tried to ameliorate these difficulties wherever possible. I Schelling accelerated his philosophical activity, publishing numerous works,
have followed Bolman's practice of inserting the page numbers of the original including the appearance in 1800 of the System des transzendentalen Idealis-
German edition (using the standard pagination) to greater facilitate the possi- mus/System of Transcendental Idealism. Not long thereafter, Schelling delivered
bility of using the German alongside my translation.' Not wanting to make the a remarkable series of lectures on the Philosophy of Art. In 1804, an essay ap-
reader an utter prisoner of my reading of Schelling—and all translations are peared, Philosophie and Religion, in which Schelling first intimated that his
readings—I have attempted to make my translation choices as transparent as negative or formal philosophy (the contemplation of the Real ascending to-
possible. I have included an extensive German/English and English/German wards the Ideal) would be complemented by a positive philosophy, or the de-
lexicon at the conclusion of the translation, in part to aid in alerting the curious scending history of the Ideal, or Freedom, among the Real. The latter project
reader as much as possible as to my plan of reading. As to the further details of would occupy Schelling for the ensuing decades of his life (up until his death
my own reading of Schelling, I shall have to defer to a future book. Die Weltlal- in 1854), and the Freedom essay, as well as The Ages of the World, are, in part,
ter is Schelling's work and, in respecting that, I do not want to co-opt it entirely transitional works to the positive philosophy. After assuming Hegel's post in
to my own purposes. I will resist the temptation to pontificate at length as to 1841, ten years after Hegel's death, Schelling's Berlin lectures on the Philoso-
why I believe that this is a text fully present to the concerns of contemporary phy of Mythology and Revelation were testimonials to the history of divine free-
philosophical debates' and as to why I think that Schelling was unduly over- dom announced in The Ages of the World.
shadowed by his former roommate Hegel. (This text is, after all, in part Yet 1809 marked a turning point in Schelling's zeal to publish. Already
Schelling' is first attempt at a response to Hegel's monumental 1807 Phenome- Schelling's reputation had been injured by Hegel's unwarranted dismissal of
nology of Spirit.) I will attempt to refrain from such hubris for the time being. the intellectual intuition as the "night when all cows are black." (In fact, this
Such restraint was not typical either of Schelling's early career or, as we was a variation of a critique that Schelling himself had made about the misin-
have seen, of the numerous reworkings of Die Weltalter. In the winter semester terpretation of the intellectual intuition. Hegel admitted as much in a letter to
of 1827, Schelling, who had not offered a lecture course for two decades, of- Schelling.)' More seriously, however, Schelling's wife, Caroline, had become
fered a course entitled Das System der Weltalter, a course he repeated in the sum- very ill. It is hard to read the Freedom essay, published in May 1809, with its
mer semester of 1833. Yet, with the exception of a minor work defending analogy between sickness and evil (sickness is to Being as evil is to human be-
himself from a hasty and virulent attack by F. H. Jacobi published in January of ing), without thinking of Caroline. In the treatise, Schelling claimed that the
1812, Schelling did not publish anything of significance after the May 1809 "veil of melancholy [Schwermut] that is spread out over all of nature is the pro-
publication of his most famous work, Philosophische Untersuchungen uber das We- found and indestructible melancholy of all life" (I/7, 399). Caroline died on
sen der menschlichen Freiheit/ Philosophical Investigations of the Being of Human September 7, 1809. Schelling was devastated. In a letter written less than a
Freedom. month after Caroline's death, Schelling claimed that "I now need friends who
are not strangers to the real seriousness of pain and who feel that the single image is, the healthier the whole is. This incomprehensible but not imper-
ceptible being, always ready to overflow and yet always held again, and
right and happy [glucklich] state of the soul is the divine mourning [Trau- which alone grants to all things the full charm, gleam, and glint of life, is
rigkeit] in which all earthly pain is immersed."' A year later, Schelling began that which is at the same time most manifest and most concealed. (283)
work on Die Weltalter, a philosophical poem about the rotatory movement of
natality and fatality, pain and joy, comedy and tragedy within God, that is,
within the whole of Being, itself "Pain is something universal and necessary in I f one were to apply this to Die Weltalter itself, one could infer that the text it-
all life, the unavoidable transition point to freedom. We remember growing self works against its own letter, endeavoring to intimate the invisible-and-in-
pains in the physical as well as the moral sense. We shall not shun presenting audible-within the rigorous orders of the text's own visibility and audibility. The
even that primordial being (the first possibility of God externally manifesting) spirit of reading, so to speak, is the call to read the unwritable and follow the
in the state of suffering that comes from growth. Suffering is universal, not movements of die verborgene Spur der Natur, the hidden trace of nature.
only with respect to humanity, but also with respect to the creator. It is the Schelling spoke of this in his address Ober das Verhaltnis der bildenden
path to glory" (335). Kiinste zu der Natur/ On the Relationship of the Fine Arts to Nature, delivered on
October 12, 1807, at the Akademie der Wissenschaften in Munich. Discussing
the relationship between the fine arts and nature, Schelling argued that, as with
II nature, art is "dead" when "you do not bring the spiritual eye to it which pene-
trates the exterior and feels the active force [wirkende Kraft] in it" (I/7, 295).
The spiritual eye "feels [empfindet]" the sublime (freedom) insofar as it has in-
I would now like to turn to the question of what it might mean to read timated itself within form. h is not the gaze of the theoretical, which only sur-
Schelling's self-composing cosmic poem. In the second of his lectures On Uni- veys manifest orders, reducing what iis most forceful to a rule-bound
versity Studies that Schelling began delivering in 1802, he commented on the
appearance. The spiritual eye, rather, intimates the unprethinkable (unvordenk-
need for live instruction. If learning were merely the mastery of the external de- lich) future in a thing, that is, its "creating life" and its "power to exist" (I/7,
tails, then students could just as well be referred to any one of a number of text- 294). However, the spiritual eye glimpses the sublimity of freedom only
books written on a given topic. But to really learn something one has to move through the proxy of the beautiful. There is no direct access to the sublime.
beyond the appropriation of a discovery's superficial details and somehow ac- This would be the way to utter madness and death. Rather, using a phrase that
quire a "sure and living feeling" for them rather than live "within his science as appears with frequency from his earliest works until his final Berlin lectures,
though on another's property."' It requires the living, so to speak, to foster Schelling claimed that "we must go through the form [iiber die Form hinausge-
somehow a living feel for what animates a discovery. Furthermore, many dis- hen] in order to gain it back as intelligible, alive, and as truly felt [empfunden]"
coveries can only be appreciated if one can somehow rediscover the spirit, as it (I/7, 299). The prepositional phrase aber etwas hinaus, literally a going through
were, of the original discovery. What is needed, then, is a kind of repetition that in order to get beyond, traces the movement (what Schelling called "negative
does not simply imitate the original, but which reproduces it in such a way that philosophy") of the spiritual eye as it intuits within form that which actively
what remains otherwise hidden in the letter of the original discovery intimates contests form. The aesthetic intuition (the spiritual eye) senses the sublime in
itself. "Many" of these discoveries "are of a kind whose inner essence can be "the pain of form" as the artist "seals the power of fire, the lightning of light, in
grasped only by a kindred genius through a rediscovery in the literal sense of hard stone and the fair soul of tone in strict timbre" (I/7, 304). Only by going
the word."' What remains hidden, accessible only to the kindred genius, does though the form can one feel its spiritual life: "Only through the completion of
not belong to the external form of the science. It belongs to its indwelling, form can the form be annihilated" (I/7, 305). Through this annihilation
manifestly nonmanifesting, yet life-granting spirit. As Schelling articulated this (through the suspension of the tyranny of the Real without thereby eradicating
in this version of Die Weltalter: the Real) lies "the highest beauty without character" in the sense that the "uni-
verse would have no determinate measurement, neither length, nor width, nor
depth because it contains all with equal infinity. Or that the art of the creative
Whoever has to some extent exercised their eye for the spiritual nature would be formless because it itself is subjected to no form" (117, 306). Or,
contemplation of natural things knows that a spiritual image, whose mere to paraphrase another one of Schelling's formulations, the spiritual eye feels the
vessel (medium of appearance) is the coarse and ponderable, is actually
what is living within the coarse and the ponderable. The purer that this soul's grace in the body. The "body is the form and grace [Anmut] is the soul,
although not the soul in itself, but the soul of form, that is, the soul of nature remain only the growing silent [das Verstummen] that the helplessness and
[die Naturseele]." Hence the soul is not, as certain traditions within Medieval faint audibility of language really seek to approach. The beginning would
theology and philosophy would have it, the quidditas or the essence of a thing have to be at the same time the end. (II/1, 312)
(then soul = form), but rather the deformative force indwelling within all form.
The soul is the excess of the form within the form, its animistic life (after all,
anima is Latin for soul as well as a life principle). The soul is a kind of Art, then, is language in love with itself, affirming both the historical and cul-
Dionysian force, squandering its force beyond the ego's capacity to preserve it- tural particularities of its mode of articulation as well as the fecund void of its
self. "Panthers or tigers do not pull the carriage of Dionysus in vain" (337). Art ground. The complete work of art affirms both poles of its potency: what is ex-
emerges in the generosity that is liberated by the suspension of the ego's hege- ternally articulated and what is inwardly inexpressible. Such a tension led
mony. "The soul in the person therefore is not the principle of individuality. Schelling to conclude quite dramatically at the end of this version of Die
Rather, it is that through which one is lifted beyond all selfhood and through Weltalter that there are three kinds of thinkers and, hence one could say by im-
which one becomes capable of sacrifice of oneself, of selfless love, and, what is plication, that there are also three kinds of readers. "Since Aristotle it is even
the highest, of contemplation and knowledge of the essence of things and with customary to say of people that nothing great can be accomplished without a
this, of art" (I/7, 312). Without soul, without "great and general enthusiasm, touch of madness. In place of this, we would like to say: nothing great can be
there are only sects" (I/7, 327). The theoretical eye (always a form of egoism) accomplished without a constant solicitation of madness, which should always
strives to find the truth in things, taking refuge in the work's hypertrophic sta- be overcome, but should never be utterly lacking" (338). At this point Schelling
tus as a thing and partitioning the results of its gaze as the truth and the good. offers the following—quite startling—strategy of assessing people. First, there
The spiritual eye, on the other hand, affirms the advent of divine fecundity are the dead intellectuals, devoid of the madness of freedom, relegated to civil
within the grace and beauty of things. This grace is a prodigality that does not service before the letter of the truth. These "sober spirits" have severed them-
hold the future in reserve, but rather releases it to the nonprecalculable advent selves from the drunken center and, if one were to apply the language of the
of freedom's grace. Freedom essay, they are, despite their apparently harmless pettiness, in a dan-
For Schelling, then, a complete work of art, of which Die Weltalter may gerous way physically and morally sick. They are dying on the periphery.
have been a candidate, is the work of both genius (the work of the productive
imagination, the graceful descent of freedom into necessity, the always ironic
One could say that there is a kind of person in which there is no
self-articulation of the Divine Word) and the work's simultaneous capacity to madness whatsoever. These would be the uncreative people incapable of
reflect upon itself as an event of freedom. It is an original work whose theme is procreation, the ones that call themselves sober spirits. These are the so-
the expression of the inscrutability of its own possibility and the inexpressibil- called intellectuals [ Verstandesmenschen] whose works and deeds are noth-
ity of its own ground. It is the Word falling in love with its anterior silence. ing but cold intellectual works and intellectual deeds. Some people in
Spirit (the irreconcilable tension between form and soul, cultural specificity and philosophy have misunderstood this expression in utterly strange ways. For
the void of divine silence) does not proclaim itself. Rather, in the moment of its because they heard it said of intellectuals that they are, so to speak, low and
greatest intensity, it grows silent [verstummt]. Verstummen is not a mere nega- inferior, and because they themselves did not want to be like this, they
good-naturedly opposed reason [Vernunft] to intellect instead of opposing
tive dialectical degeneration into muteness. Rather, in hearing the faint echoes
reason to madness. But where there is no madness, there is also certainly
of silence within discourse, discourse falls in love with always being underway no proper, active, living intellect (and consequently there is just the dead
toward its own inherent silence—a silence that speaks louder than words but intellect, dead intellectuals). (338)
which can only be approached (but never attained) through words.' Language
attempts, to borrow a phrase from Lyotard's Le diprend, "to counter Wittgen-
stein and say the unsayable." As Schelling put it later: The dead(ly) Verstandesmensch, despite her or his intellectual acumen and sobri-
ety, are purveyors of the desiccated spirit (the desert of soulless form). Their
Just as many people imagine a beginning without any presupposi- thinking ultimately belongs to the realm of BlOdsinn (imbecility) and idiocy.
tions at all, they would also not be able to presuppose thinking itself and, "The utter lack of madness leads to another extreme, to imbecility (idiocy),
for example, also not deduce the language in which they are expressing which is an absolute lack of all madness" (338-339). The truth of the sick intel-
this. But since this itself could not happen without language, there would lectual is precisely that: a truth. But it is an imbecilic truth, a piece of minutia.

xii
The sick, considered as such, can only produce more sickness. If such an argu- tellect" (339). This marks the mortal love affair with its withdrawn yet prodi-
ment sounds familiar, it is probably because this was a similar position to the one gally drunken and extravagant center. Schelling wrote not only for such lovers,
advocated by Friedrich Nietzsche. Although there is little evidence that Niet- but to arouse such love in the desert of intellectual sobriety. Schelling implies
zsche read much Schelling or that he had any sympathy with him, Nietzsche that only one who already knows the generosity of reading, which is utterly op-
nonetheless also argued that the imbecilic "truths" of the herd were part of the posed to the sectarian spirit of disciplinary camps, can read Die Weltalter in a
poisonous arsenal of the scholar. As Gilles Deleuze eloquently argues this point vital fashion.
in Nietzsche and Philosophy:
III
Stupidity is not error or a tissue of errors. There are imbecile
thoughts, imbecile discourses, that are made up entirely of truths; but these
truths are base, they are those of a base, heavy and laden soul.... In truth, I spoke above of Die Weltalter as a "philosophical poem" and there is a
as in error, stupid thought only discovers the most base—base errors and reason for this. When Schelling came to Berlin in 1841 and presented The Phi-
base truths that translate the triumph of the slave, the reign of petty val-
losophy of Revelation as his inaugural lecture course, he reflected during the first
ues or the power of an established order. 12
lecture on the status of his earlier philosophy. He reminded his audience that
the negative philosophy was "only a poetic invention." "It was a poem that reason
It does not follow from either Schelling or Nietzsche's argument that they are itselfpoeticized. For reason is bound to nothing, not even to the true. Reason excludes
glibly advocating an utter surrender to madness. This would, in the end, not be nothing, asserts nothing, and perceives everything."' Reason does not invent a
essentially different than the ascetic priest's desire to lead the herd into any philosophical poem for itself. The poem is written, and continues to be written,
other kingdom of ethical imperatives. Schelling, for his part, attempted to for reason by a ground other than reason. Who, then, is the author of philoso-
arouse a kind of theocratic sensibility, a Gesinnung or enculturated disposition phy? What is the origin of philosophy? Strictly speaking, the origin or the au-
by which Reason remains at the disposal of madness, enchanted by it, humbled thor of philosophy cannot become an object of philosophy. Theexistence of
by it, continuously solicitous of it, but not such that this drunken ground anni- reason is manifest but the ground of reason is inscrutable, what Schelling in the
hilates Reason. Rather, madness "animates" Reason. Freedom essay called "ein nie aufgehender Rest," an!rreducible remainder. Yet, if
In addition to an intellectually comatose life devoid of madness, there self-reflection cannot fathom its ground, how does reason think that which it
were "two other kinds of persons in which there really is madness" (339). One cannot grasp, the remainder that always eludes thinking's capacity to orient it-
kind of person is simply mad, that is, reason has been altogether vanquished by self to its own activity? In the 1820-21 Erlanger lectures, for example, Schelling
freedom. They haVe been, to borrow Holderlin's phrase, "struck by Apollo." called thinking's indebtedness to a ground that it cannot conceive but to which
This "kind of person is governed by madness and is someone who really is mad. it is always beholden, a "knowing not-knowing [nicht wissendes Wissen]." 14 In
One cannot say, strictly speaking, that madness originates in them. It only the inaugural Berlin lecture series, Schelling used the phrase das nichtdenkende
comes forth as something that is always there (for without continuous solicita- Denken or the "not-thinking thinking." (PO, 126), As Reason introspectively
tion of it, there would be no consciousness) and that is not now suppressed and intuits what offers itself at the limits of Reason, it finds that it cannot com-
governed by a higher force" (339). For the simply mad, the tension between pletely articulate itself. "This infinite potency of Being relates itself" to think-
freedom and necessity, madness and reason, has resulted in the incontestable ing "as simply the matter of thinking and not as the object of thinking .... The
victory of freedom. Freedom without necessity does not suit mortality for it is true prima materia of thinking cannot be the thought as the single form is the
the way of madness for survivors and annihilation for the rest. The second kind thought .... It relates itself to actual thinking only as that which is 'not-not-to-
of person copes with madness, preferring a relationship between reason and think' [das Wicht Nictzudenkendel" (PO, 126). In Die Weltalter, the true prima
-

what remains in excess of reason rather than succumbing either to the slow materia of thinking is addressed, inter alia, as Freecm, that within Being
death of the utterly reasonable life or the catastrophe of reason's complete which does not have being, the negating force of the future, the Uberseyende,
eclipse. "For in what does the intellect prove itself than in the coping with and God as the superactual, beyond that which has being, and "therefore a sublim-
governance and regulation of madness?" (338). This kind of person "governs ity beyond Being and Not-being" (238), "the devouring ferocity of purity"
madness and precisely in this overwhelming shows the highest force of the in- (236), the second potency (the A 2 ). Schelling also refers to freedom by linking

xiv
 it to Plato's xuipoc, that "wild, unruly matter or nature" (326), or to Plato's IA develops into finni I herauibildetl that which is contained in this ground as con-
8 v. The iti does not negate Being so much as to suggest a potency otherwise cealed and merely potential and elevates it to actus" (I/7, 413-414). Reason, the
than Being within Being. In a footnote in the Freedom essay, Schelling also understanding, indeed, consciousness itself, is the theater in which the divine
refers this term to a distinction that Augustine made in his critique of emana- poem is writing itself, despite the impossibility of its author's actually being an
tionism in On the Free Will (de lib. arb. L.I, C.2). Augustine argued that noth- author. Reason is an activity without agency.
ing could have come out of God's substance before God itself. Therefore, God Yet reason does find itself caught in the net of the intelligible, although it
must have created ex nihilo. "This nothing has long been the cross of the un- can ask how it came to be here. "The entire world, so to speak, lies caught in rea-
derstanding. The Scriptures offer a clue in the expression: the person is EK T(11) son, but the question is: How did it come into this net?"' This question could
p Ovrcov, created out of that which is not. This is akin to the p Ov of the serve as a possible ingress to the manner of questioning and thinking that char-
Ancients which, like the creation out of nothing, can receive a positive mean- acterizes Die Weltalter. Despite the dark night of its past and the obscurity of its
ing for the first time through the above distinction" (I/7, 373). Hence Schelling future, reason findsitself in an intelligible world. Yet the origin of the intelligible,
claims in Die Weltalter: "Precisely that which negates all revelation must be the measurable and discernable world as well as rational self-reflection, is God
made the ground of revelation" (223). (freedom, the absolute, the irreducible remainder, pure space) becoming time.
Not only does the ground of reason elude reason, it contests it. Schelling Or to put it another way: it is the nonrepresentability of the eternal ironically
emphasized this is in the inaugural Berlin lectures. Freedom announces the manifesting or representing itself as time. "The doctrine that God created the
overturn of reason" because it can have no positive content: "ft is negative be- world in time is a pillar of genuine faith. The labor of this present work would
"
,
cause it is just busy with clearing the way [ Wegschaffen]. What is its content? be adequately rewarded had it only made this thought comprehensible and in-
Only the incessant overturning of reason [der fortwahrende Umsturtz der Ver- telligible. For since there is no time in God itself; how should God create the
nunft] and its result: that reason, in so far as it takes itself as the principle, is ca- world in time if there is not a time outside of God?" (307-308). Schelling's an-
swer: the world is intelligible in time because freedom presents itself as time.

i
pable of no actual knowledge" (PO, 152). Umsturz connotes not only an utter
reversal, a turning upside down, or an overthrow, but it also has political impli- Schelling's solution anticipates, indeed, informs, for example, Soren
cations, suggesting a coup d'etat or a Putsch. In clearing the way, reason is de- Kierkegaard's (and later Martin Heidegger's) analysis of the moment (Oiblikket,
posed and its ultimate authority is stripped as it intuits the incomprehensibility das Augenblick). In The Concept ofAnxiety Kierkegaard claimed that "Thus under-
, of pure possibility. This coup reverses the priority of reason and makes it be- stood, the moment is not properly an atom of time but an atom of eternity. It is
holden to the superiority of that which, considered in itself, can have no posi- the first reflection of eternity in time, its first attempt, as it were, at stopping
tive content and can result in no completed principle. It opens reason to its time."' The present moment conceals eternity, although eternity associates with
Other. Schelling, in the Erlanger lecture series, called this indebtedness and the present as what has been lost to the past but as what returns to overturn the
, openness of reason, its wonder . Qr amazement [Erstaunen or thaumazein] before present. Hence the future "is the incognito in which the eternal, even though it
the "unprethinkability [Unvordenklichkeitr of its ground, the "ecstasy of reason is incommensurable with time, nevertheless preserves its association with time."'
_ The moment holds together irreconcilable forces: presence and its Other.
irTvViiiali it "therefore must leave its place. It must be set outside of itself as that
-

which no longer exists at all. Only in the giving up of oneself [Selbstaufgeben- For Schelling, reason, like the intelligible world, finds itself absent from
, heit] can the absolute subject rise up to us as we also glimpse it in astonishment origin and before an inconceivable future, a relation that Schelling speaks of in
[Erstaunen]" (IPU, 39). terms of intimations, not concepts. "The future is intimated" (199). The inti-
Although I may be stating the obvious, it is important to remember that mation, or inkling, die Ahnung, is the lost and irrecoverable ground of the past
Schelling is not dispensing with reason and the understanding, but rather over- suggesting itself as what is still to come, but in such a way that its coming does
turning their presumed authority. Furthermore, in this Umsturz, Schelling is not preserve the present but rather overturns it. God, the whole, the cosmos,
not thinking the ground of reason as, strictu sensu, the "author" of reason, for the das Urwesen, tha :V is the living tension of times within Being itself.`'The ex-
very notion of an author implies an organized and intentional agent. Rather, planation as to how the eternal could be conscious of its eternity poses special
the unruly is the ground of the ruly and the latter remains beholden to the for- difficulty for the deeper thinker, although most people pass over it with a spring
mer. Yet, were there only the unruly, there would be no life, no thought. "There in their step. No consciousness whatsoever can be thought in an empty, abstract
is only life in personality and all personality rests on a dark ground which is eternity. The consciousness of eternity can only be articulated in the phrase: 'I
therefore also the ground of knowledge. But it is only the understanding that am the one who was, who is, who will be" (263). Readers of Kant's Critique of

xvi xvi i
Judgment will recognize this supremely "sublime" thought as the inscription it y of time. I truce it delimits time in such a way that it becomes a mere
over the Temple of Isis (of Mother Nature). 18 The generativity or procreativity form of our representations I Voritellungod. No thing comes to being in
of Being is the generativity or procreativity of time. Nature, Being, is the auto- time. Rather in each thing time comes to being anew and does so imme-
diately from out of eternity. (WA, 78-79)
generativity of absolute space (eternity), manifesting (ironically) as time, as a
self-composing poem (the auto-production or autopoies is), writing itself in the
theatex_of_thinking. 19 As such, the poem is always alive, irreducible to its pre- Each time is alive, an inhaling and exhaling, contracting and expanding, sys-
sent revelations. The ground within existence contests the latter's capacity to tolic and diastolic, force.
take hold of itself: I lence, Schelling conceived of Die Weltalter as "the genealogy of time"
( WA, 75). It was to be a kind of Divine Comedy of Being's temporal autoprO:
duction, a circular ascent toward an empyrean discourse on futurity.' There are
As such, it always remains that if one of them has being, then the the multiple drafts of The Past, which complete the negative philosophy, nar-
other cannot have the same being. That is, it remains that both exclude
r ate poetically the point of departure that remains shrouded in dark night, and
each other with respect to time, or that God as the Yes and God as the No
prepare the way for the positive philosophy. While there are only a few extant
cannot have being at the same time. We express it intentionally in this way
for the relationship cannot be of the kind such that if the posterior, say A, pages of The Present, the history of Freedom's differential presentations
has being, then the posterior, hence B, would be sublimated, or simply (I )arstellungen], Schelling spent the next four decades of his life engaged in the
ceased to have being. Rather, it always and necessarily abides as having the articulation of such a history. Calling it a "Supplement [Beilage] to Die Weltal-
being of its time. If A is posited, then B must just still persist as the prior, ter," Schelling gave a talk called Uber die Gottheiten von Samothrake/ On the
and hence, in such a way, that they are nonetheless, at the same time, in Deities of Samothrace to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences on October 12,
different times. For different times (a concept that, like many others, has 1815, thus inaugurating the work of the analysis of Freedom as it has presented
gotten lost in modern philosophy) can certainly be, as different, at the
same time, nay, to speak more accurately, they are necessarily at the same
(presenced)
time. Past time is not sublimated time. What has past certainly cannot be Yet what of the third book, the empyrean address of futurity? How does
as something present, but it must be as something past at the same time one speak the language of premonitions and intimations? What is the form of
with the present. What is future is certainly not something that has being prophetic discourse, especially since the future announces itself through dis-
now, but it is a future being at the same time with the present. And it is ruption and dislocation? There are, at least to my knowledge, no extant frag-
equally inconsistent to think of past being, as well as future being, as ut- ments of the proposed book of The Future.
terly without being. (301-302) Yet perhaps there are some small intimations. In this version of Die Weltal-
ter, for example, Schelling speaks of the dark past that also intimates itself as the
future as the "awful" and "terrible." "If we take into consideration the many terri-
The ground of presence is what no longer has being and eludes the constitutive ble things in nature and the spiritual world and the great many other things that
workings of the understanding, yet which is also still to come. Again, it is im- a benevolent hand seems to cover up from us, then we could not doubt that the
portant to emphasize that the whole, the A 3 , is not something transpiring in Godhead sits enthroned over a world of terrors. And God, in accordance with
time. Hence, Schelling claimed in the first draft of Die Weltalter that "because what is concealed in and by God, could be called the awful and the terrible, not
each moment [Augenblick] is the entirety of time, it could only be asked—not: in a derivative fashion, but in their original sense" (268). Elsewhere in the text, he
How much time has already gone by? But—How many times have there al- links the "decisive crisis" as it expands toward freedom "to death and to magnetic
ready been?" (WA, 80). A being, an existent, both has and does not have Being sleep" (291). Concerning the latter, that is, Franz Anton Mesmer's discovery of
as a moment. The twinkling of the eye is not a moment oftime, but a produc- "animal magnetism" (what is now called "hypnosis"), 22 Schelling distinguished
tion of the rotatory movement of time, a breathing contraction and intensifica- three degrees of induced sleep. On the "lowest rung" the "healing force of that
tion of eternity into a time: sleep rests on the restoration of the uninterrupted guidance between the higher
and the lower principles." The second degree consists of becoming exposed to
No thing has an external time. Rather, each thing only has an inner one's soul. "What is spiritual in the person would become free in relationship to
time of its own, inborn and indwelling within it. The mistake of Kantian- the soul and would draw the soul to it in order to show it, as if in a mirror, the
ism with respect to time consists in it not knowing this general subjectiv- things hidden in the soul's interior and what lies still wrapped up in the soul itself

xviii x ix
(pertaining to what is future and eternal in the person)." The third degree, how- such, accounts titr the very possibility of sense. It is not a particular regime of
ever, makes inordinate demands on language and our customary modes of be- NNW, but an account of that by which any kind of sense whatsoever is possible.

havior. "Finally, we would have to search for the third degree in the relationships I is principle, by extension, must be the principle for any kind of principle, the
that lie utterly outside customarily human relationships, and, in the current con- metacritical possibility of any critical project, the Grundsatz aller Grundsatze.
text, it is better to be silent about them than to speak of them" (294). question can now be even more sharply formulated: How can one account
Schelling opted to remain silent about the third book, the third time, the (systematically) for freedom when freedom itself is incompatible with the logic
third age (birth, life, and, thirdly, death), and the third degree. This is not to say of an account? How can there be a principle of freedom without it destroying
that Schelling refused a discourse on the awful, on the alterity of futurity. Its time the very system that it would found and govern? Does not freedom threaten to
had not come, although, thought in another way, its time is always coming. "Per- erode the very movement of principle directed organization? If its enabling law
haps the one is still coming who will sing the greatest heroic poem, grasping in (its fundamental principle) governs the system, how can it be at all related to
spirit something for which the seers of old were famous: what was, what is, what the lawless and the unruly, that is, how can it be free? Does this not necessarily
will be. But this time has not yet come. We must not misjudge our time" (206). involve making the unruly a rule and the irrational somehow rational?
Perhaps this might serve as some indication of Schelling's current timeliness. Schelling's answer is stark and uncompromising: the system of freedom is
a contradiction and that, rather than being an argument against the system, is
the secret to its vitality. The system of freedom is the lucid in relationship to the
IV dark, the ruly in relationship to the unruly, identity in relationship to difference:

I would like to turn now to the question of Schelling's relation to sys- We grasp that the first existence is the contradiction itself and, in-
versely, that the first actuality can only persist in contradiction. All life
tematic thinking. There is perhaps no more prevalent impression regarding
must pass through the fire of contradiction. Contradiction is the power
cchelling than his purported status as being, along with Hegel, one of the final mechanism and what is innermost of life. From this it follows that, as an
and one of the most arrogantly ambitious of a long lineage of systematic old book says, all deeds under the sun are full of trouble and everything
thinkers. Put simply, did not Schelling try to think everything? Was not his ca- languishes in toil, yet does not become tired, and all forces incessantly
reer a series of abortive attempts to arrive at the system? Indeed, throughout all struggle against each other. (321)
three versions of Die Weltalter there is repeated talk of the system, and of the
Whole (das Ganze). In fact, the second line of the First Book reads: "It is not
given to everyone to know the end and it is given to few to see the primordial The Whole is the systematic (Being, nature) in dynamic tension with its
beginnings of life and it is given to even fewer to think through the whole of Other. Moreover, this tension is as such that its Other always holds the upper
things from beginning to end" (207). What could be more unrepentantly sys- hand, that it commands superiority over the de facto priority of nature. At the
tematic than the attempt to "think through the whole of things from beginning risk of making too extreme of a comparison, one way to think the system of
to end"? Schelling even works out a kind of formula for the Whole (312). It freedom is to think of it as akin to what the late French philosopher Georges
was this very insistence on the systematic that led Heidegger, for instance, to Bataille called a "general economy." In La part maudite, 24 for example, Bataille
conclude that "if the system is only in the understanding, then ground remains claimed that a general economy is "by definition, this movement, the effect of
and that which opposes ground is excluded from the system as the other of the which is prodigality," which "is far from being equal to itself" (PM, 45/99). Or,
system, and system is, seen from the whole of beings, no longer the system."' as Schelling put it in his fifth lecture on the Philosophy of Mythology (Monothe-
This, for Heidegger, is the "difficulty" in which Schelling "fails [scheitert]." ism): "that one and the same [dasselbe], namely God, can be one and not one"
To what extent, then, can one speak of a system of freedom? How can (11/2, 103). Or in this present work: "Were the first nature in harmony with it-
freedom retain its integrity (its ipseity so to speak) within the systematic de- self, it would remain so. It would be constantly One and would never become
mand? Is not philosophy that makes a claim of unity and holism [Ganzheit] a Two. It would be an eternal rigidity without progress" (219).
denial of freedom? A system admits subjects into its regime to the extent that In what Bataille called a "restricted economy," that is, a closed economy,
the law of the system's organizing arche or principle can order them. A philo- "the problems are posed in the first instancay a deficiency of resources" while
—

sophical system, moreover, construes itself as the system of systems and, as in a general economy the problem is first posed by luxury, by an "excess of
resources" (PM, 39/93). Participants in a restricted economy attempt to pre- appearance. "The potencies in the reciprocal exclusivity and their inverted op-
serve and enhance themselves and goods circulate in so far as they are extrinsi- position to each other Igegeneinander verkehrten Stellung1 arc only God out-
cally related to a given economy's investment goals. Restricted economies are wardly disguised [verstellter through divine irony. They are the inverted
needy and miserly, dedicated to the accumulation of what is perceived to be Iverkehrte] One in so far as, according to appearance, what is hidden, what
lacking, namely, wealth (growth). In attempting to reach its goals, that is, in at- should not be active, is obvious and active and what is positive, what should be
tempting to execute its techniques (to do its work, to perform its functions), a obvious, is negated and in the state of potency" (11/2, 90). All restricted
restricted economy concerns itself with attempting to overcome continually its economies are products of an inverted or verkehrte general economy in which
lack [manque] of means. It begins with ends and preserves them through the the energies produced by the general economy are used to restrict the further
acquisition of means. Its members circulate under the direction of an articu- circulation of their source. Even need and stinginess are ironic productions of
lated governing principle that determines what will be of relevance and of value an original prodigality. If one speaks of the general economy as a "living sys-
to the system. By establishing what matters, it establishes lines of possible tem" whose heartbeat is the always ironic and verstellte circulation of freedom
equivalence. That is, the system has come into possession of its steering mech- in all necessarily inverted restricted economies, then the abstraction of a re-
anisms. Slavoj Zizek, in one of his typical comic flourishes, likens this problem stricted economy from the movement of general economy is what Schelling
to Robert Zemeckis's cinematic adaptation of The Flintstones: called a Stoppung, a clottin
_ . The superabundant energies of the earth have
been restricted by t e exclusive investments of a particular world. Although
the relationships to freedom (the A 2 ) are always delimited by the divine irony
[W]ill the film succeed in finding a Stone Age counterpart to all of of the very appearance of a world (a restricted economy or A 1 ), there is an im-
the phenomena of our society--that is to say, will it succeed in transposing
modern high-tech inventions into Stone Age conditions without cheating
manent difference between the world that hermetically seals itself within itself
(cars run by feet; planes flown by birds attached to their wings; a parrot and the world that expands into productive tension (the A 3 ) with the extrava-
serving as a dictaphone; etc.)? ... Again, we obtain a "system" when we ac- gance of indwelling freedom. This living tension (Spannung) of the universe,
cept the premise of completing the list and including the entire history of however, defies containment by dialectical sublimation. "The divine Being is
philosophy: Thales? Sorry, he claimed that the origin of all is water, and I not sublimated [aufgehoben] in this tension. It is only suspended. But the in-
can't swim, I'm afraid of drowning. Plato? According to Plato, ideas dwell tention of this suspension is no other than to posit as actual, actu, what is oth-
in the air, far above the earth, but I have a fear of heights; the mere thought erwise not possible." There is no tension-absolving, life-halting Aufhebung and
of Plato's ideas makes me giddy ... etc., etc.'
hence the general economy does not and cannot take possession of itself. It
cannot become equal to itself or represent itself to itself because the very con-
On the other hand, a general economy, that is, a system of freedom, begins at dition of_divine expenditure is that it must eternally becorTiedisFcu—aT .
odds with itself, yet this disequillibrium is the superabundance that it expends. In the end, freedom is not free to be unfree. Freedom _ must be free. It keeps be-
The lack of a rational principle by which to guide the expenditure of its cease- coming a self that is not identical with itself and it always has more than any
lessly reproducing energies and the impossibility of ordering all of its members thing needs and hence it perpetually squanders the infinite luxury of a lack of
once and for all is precisely the spontaneity with which energies continue to re- presence to-itself. This marks its "divine force of displacement [Verstel-
produce themselves. To borrow a phrase from the Mythology lectures, der un- lungskrafd, which appears to affirm what its intention is to negate and to
endliche Mangel an Sein, the infinite lack in Being, does not damn the system to negate what its intention is to affirm" (11/2, 92). Circulating members of a
a poverty of resources. "All beginning would lie in lack [Mange& and the deep- general economy can never fully take possession of their freedom because
est potency on which all is hinged is what does not have being [das Nicht- there always remains ein nie aufgehender Rest, an indivisible remainde r or an ir-
seyende] and this is the hunger for Being" (II/1, 294). It is, rather, the remediable bill that grants goods their singularity and their extravagance.
unfathomable mystery of productivity's inexhaustibility and its unvordenkliche Freedom is like the sun, which grants a gift of life so prodigal that it can never
or unpredictable capacity to reconfigure the oblique manifestations of its plen- be matched or returned in equal measure. Or, to put it another way: ThegtIan-
itude. Or, with Bataille (and Leibniz): "tous est riche" (PM, 63).26 tity of energy in_ageneral economy or system of freedom always exceeds the
This infinite debt or irresolvable disequilibrium within Being (nature) restricted and verstellte force of its actuality. Actuality (the real or A i ) can never
which discontinuously squanders its wealth through the unprethinkable (un- assimilate or match its superabundant and eternally displaced source. Rather,
vordenklich) production of differentia implicates itself in the;divine irony'of all this displacement within Being, that is, this lack within Being, "the actual
mystery of divine Being that in itself lacks all Being" (11/2, 53), is precisely the Since the steering mechanism is not to be owned but rather remains hid-
source of its luxuriance. den within the system's inexhaustible expressivity, it is not a mechanism at all,
Furthermore, this source is as such that its designation as a source has al- htit living and spontaneous, continually multiplying itself in differential locali-
ready overdetermined it. In the Freedom essay, Schelling spoke of this source as ties. "The system must have a principle that is in itself and through itself and
not at all a source but rather the non-source of source itself or the Ungrund des that reproduces itself in each part of the whole. It must be organic: The one
Grundes (non-ground of ground) (I/7, 407-408) or the "vor allem Grund must be determined through everything and everything must be determined
vorhergehenden Ungrund' (non-ground which precedes all ground) (I/7, through the one. It may exclude nothing nor may it one-sidedly subordinate
407-408). For Schelling, what I am here calling a general economy and what he anything nor suppress anything" (SP, 102-103). Rather, the system expresses
called a system of freedom (the universum or das Ganze or das Wesen), explicates the "organic unity of all things" (SP, 103). As Schelling then articulates it in one
itself dynamically as both ideal and real, expanding and contracting, as holding of his most compact yet lucid accounts of indifference, this "organic unity" is
itself back even in exhaling yet dying (physically and morally) when, in the mo- the absolute identity of freedom and necessity:
ment of contraction, it remains peripheral to itself and cannot inhale.
In two lecture series given after the Freedom essay, Schelling continued to The thought here is not that the real and the ideal are logically or
reflect on systematicity. Not long after the death of Caroline (the first lecture numerically of the same kind [einerlei]. It is one and the same matter
was delivered on February 14, 1810), Schelling was persuaded to hold a lecture posited in both forms, but it is in each of these forms its own Wesen and
series at the home of Georgii with a small number of other people in atten- not a Wesen of the same kind. If, for example, Jacob is also called Israel, it
dance. These lectures are now collectively referred to as the Stuttgarter Pri- would always be the same individual that was not differentially individual-
ized through its differential names. This is not however the case with the
vatvorlesungen or Stuttgart Private Lectures. Coupled with a lecture series given
identity of the real and the ideal. One posits for example
during the Winter Semester of 1820-21 in Erlangen, dubbed the Initia
Philosophise Univers& by Horst Fuhrmans, they offer some of Schelling's most A
specific thoughts on the paradoxical character of the system. The following B=C
Atbeniium fragment of Friedrich Schlegel epitomizes the necessary delusion in which B and C are identical because of the Wesen of A, but they are dif-
that the thought of freedom demands: "It is equally deadly for the spirit to have ferent from each other as forms or considered with reference to them-
a system and not to have a system. It must therefore resolve itself to combine selves. B can eternally not become C and C can eternally not become B
both."' Indeed, the demand for a system, a view to the whole within which even though A is in B and A is in C as its own Wesen. Precisely because the
same [dasselbe] Wesen is in each of them, there is between them a
thinking finds itself situated, can neither be avoided nor satisfied. Although
wesentliche (i.e., not a merely formal, logical, or nominal) unity. But at the
one intuits the system's irascible steering mechanism only in perpetually failing same time it is an actual opposition or dualism in which neither can subli-
to locate it (it is everywhere yet in excess of all things), "the system is the prize mate [aufheben] the other under itself. Because A individualizes itself in B
for which our age is struggling" (IPU, 3). Yet thinking cannot appropriate the and in C, both receive an equal right to exist. (SP, 104-15)
system. Rather, thinking itself is the property of the system and thinking is
called to become aware of that within which it finds itself already circulating.
"A system in which everything is embraced as knowable is possible; only it must The system then, is God self-differentiating and, as such, it cannot be demon-
,

not be invented but rather it can only be found as a system per se, that is, as al- strated because freedom itself does not admit of demonstration. Rather, that
ready at hand [Vorhandendes] in the divine understanding" (SP, 102). To artic- any Eiia T demonstration is at all possible is already testimony of freedom.
—

ulate the system requires that one attempt to think like God, which is both Discursive activity is business conducted within the Real and the Real cannot
necessary and impossible. The system as the product of human imagination be deployed to demonstrate its Other. Such a demonstration would assimilate
[Einbildungskraft] is no longer sufficient for our time (SP, 102). Such a system the Other of reason to the regime of Reason. "The existence of the Uncondi-
"is almost like our historical novels" and in so far as they wish to assert them- tioned cannot be proven like the conditioned. The Unconditioned is the ele-
selves as the "only possible system," they are "supremely illiberal" like the ment within which all demonstration is possible" (SP, 108). God as a general
Scholastic system. One does not construct a system but rather reflects upon (or economy demands a divine thought. "One conceives the God outside of oneself
ascends toward) the living, ever-mobile heart of the Whole of which one is al- with the God within oneself One cannot know God except through a divine
ready a living expression. principle."
 Hence, "all of philosophy is only a manifestation of God, that is, a contin- Instead of the fanatical reassurance that a systematized world affords, the rela-
uing proof of God" (SP, 109). The mobility of the system assures that no princi- tionship between system and freedom quiets down the din of nature by impli-
ples are static. Only when the mobility of the system clots do individual moments cating it in the silence of the hidden trace (Spur) of freedom. The
claim sovereignty for themselves. "All errors in philosophy have originated in this representability of the whole remains in constant tension with its nonrepre-
( stalling [Stehenbleiben]. The physiologists explain miscarriages and monsters sentable ground and this dynamic tension between the excessive energies of a
through an inhibition [Hemmung] or clotting [Stockung] and the same is valid for nonrepresentable ground and the restricted energies of representable existence
systems . .." (IPU, 2). On the other hand, this does not make all "errors" simply marks the life of the whole (das Ganze). "The whole therefore stands as A that
false. Rather, as Schelling claimed in the initial version of Die Weltalter. "Each ax- from the outside is B and hence the whole = (A = B). Therefore the whole, be-
iom [Satz] is false outside the system. Only in the system, in the organic context cause God is that which does not have being (is not manifest) in it, inclines, in
of the living whole, is there a truth." The multiplicity of various systems is not the accord with its essentiality and in relation to what is other, for the most part to-
wholesale falsity of these systems. Rather, "the whole differentia [Verschiedenheit] ward not being that which has being" (323). Thinking cannot constitute, artic-
of previous systems originated through their ossification [Festwerden] into a sin- ulate, or otherwise arrest the life of the Whole. The Whole is always more than
gle point of view." The false is das Stillstehen, the coming to a halt (WA, 48). Any i t actually is. "There is a silent, exclusively passive Whole, not an actual Whole
axiom, considered with regard to itself; can at best only be relatively true. As such, that could be articulated as such. Hence it is certainly always full of life with re-
however, it is severed from the center of its life and, to continue Schelling's anal- spect to the particular parts, but considered from the outside or as a Whole, it
ogy, it will die. "Only what can no longer develop dies" (IPU, 2). Such a death re- is utterly without effect" (275).
sults from _ the_ egoism of a restricted economy that cannot maintain a dynamic There is then no last word on the system. Where exactly does the article
relationship to its restrictions. That the system will tall, however, is testimony of "the" take thinking as it tries to hear what is said by the phrase "the system"? If
the nascent pro ucrivtty o its withdrawn origin. "The true sense can only be that an articulation of the system has always said too much yet too little about the
God is without beginning of its beginning and without end of its end, that its be- system, what is there finally to be said about it? Nothing. There is always more
ginning did not itself begin and its end does not itself end; that is, it does not to be said about the concrete ways in which freedom manifests itself, yet there
cease to be an end. It is an eternal beginning and an eternal end" (II/3, 258). The is finally nothing that can really be said about freedom itself. As Schelling,
system is the affirmation of the glory of Being's incessant natality and fatality that seized by the power of Socratic ignorance, concluded toward the end of the first
is the life of divine disequilibrium. "This unity must set itself at variance with it- version of Die Weltalter.
self [sich entzweien] in order to reveal itself" (SP, 112). The continuing self-re-
striction of God into a self (the continuously metamorphisizing "personality" of
I would like to take this opportunity to say, if it were not too im-
Being) is the ongoing event of revelation (SP, 118). modest, what I so often felt, and in an especially lively way with this pre-
Yet, as such, the system contests entrapment within the order of the in- sent presentation: how much nearer I am than most people could probably
telligible. (Such entrapment is a closed economy that cannot recognize itself as conceive to this growing silent of knowledge [ Verstummen der Wissenschaft]
such.) Rather, the presentation of the system holds its own representability in which we must necessarily encounter when we know how infinitely far
the very "crisis" or "cision" [Scheidung] (i.e., the disequilibrium of the whole) out everything that is personal reaches such that it is impossible actually to
of which it emerged. Schelling was quite explicit about this in the first version know anything at all. (WA, 103)
of Die Weltalter.
The thought and the feeling, impossible as it may be, of a system of freedom I
The system is certainly possible, even actual, but it is not pre- beyond the melancholy failure of thinking to articulate its ground does not im-
sentable .... Therefore this entire knowledge is only in a continuous and pel resignation or despair or an abnegation of responsibility, butaVerstummen,
never ceasing generation [Erzeugung] so that it can never become a dead a growing silent before the sublimity of freedom's inexpressibility. In Die
possession. It is the inwardly repetitive and mimetic [nachbildende] process Weltalter, haunted by the specter Of Caroline's death, Schelling turned to the
of this great and monstrous [ungeheuer] process of all life from its still be- figure of the aporetic Socrates who inhabits all discourse in order to lead them
ginning until the present and even into the most distant future. But how
from within themselves to absurdity, to the daimonic silence that the elenchus
few have enough force [Kraft], ability [Vermogen], and self-denial to give
themselves into this process. (WA, 102) induces. Socratic ignorance is not mere ignorance bec ause its goal was "to know
- -

xxvii
that he knows nothing. But he still knew this and this certainty was not the be- In the Freedom essay Schelling called the capacity to affirm the Good
ginning but the goal of his researches" (WA, 103). The Socratic silence did not (beyond a world partitioned into good and evil) "religiosity [Reis* giositiit]." This
come from a "lack of knowledge" but a "not knowing because of the exuberance IN not to say that Schelling advocated a return to religious dogma or a lugubri-

[Uberschwenglicbkeit] of knowledge and of objects" (WA, 103). Socratic knowl- ous sentimentalism, "what a sick age names idle brooding, reverent premoni-
edge is an exuberant knowing-not-knowing. In this respect, Schelling later (in tions, or the desire to feel the divine" (I/7, 392). "Religion is higher than
the f842 Philosophy of Mythology) quite strikingly called Socrates "the true premonition [Ahnung] and feeling" (I/6, 558). Rather, religiosity ]) the exercise
Dionysus of philosophy." He was the "daimonic man" who destroyed the "im- of"true freedom" that operates in consonance with AO y necessity."It is the
mobile unity of the Eleatics" with "a destructive dialectic" (11/2, 284). The exu- same as sensitivity to the wesentliche knowledge in which the spirit and the
berant silence and iconoclastic voice of the daimonic philosopher, the heart "freely affirm what is necessary" (I/7, 341-342). Religiosity is_an ecstatic
"disruptive spirit," knew that all goods within a general economy are local and amorfati. Religiosity does not always manifest itself in the sublime agitations of
hence that "certain questions did not admit of rational but simply historical an- enthusiasm as, for example, with the Stoic Cato who, despite his reserved char-
swers" (11/2, 284). acter, always did what was right, but never out of a sense of duty, but because
Finally, the system of freedom, the ceaseless circulation of spontaneous "lie could have in no way acted otherwise" (I/7,393). Religiosity is an obsession
energies, is a divine system. It is the system of God in love with the productive with freedom, such that, if I here speak with Levinas, one is held hostage by the
tensions of its own Wesen. At this point, one could call this divine tension be- Other. Unlike the ancillary ethics, the Nebenhaus of a Kantian categorical
tween the systematic and the unruly a kind of value system. God (freedom) "is imperative, religiosity is not deontological but rather one is captured by the su-
essentially good and not so much something good as the Good itself" (237). periority of freedom such that "there is only the highest staunchness [Ent-
The system of freedom marks the relationship between the human and the ichiedenheit] for the right, without any choice." One is beyond the aequilibrium
Good. In this respect, it is not the presence of evil that drives the human away arhitrii, the choice between alternatives, which Schelling called "the plague of
from God, that is, away from freedom. Rather, it is anxiety [Angst] before the all morality" (I/7, 392). In a way not altogether dissimilar to Spinoza's "intel-
Good that drives creatures away from the divine center. Indeed, it drives the lectual love of God," one becomes the joyful hostage of the disequilibrium of
,

light of God away from the destructive force of its own center. The center is the the Whole and one cannot help_ but affirm and mirror divine generosity. Reli-
source of life, but it is also that which, in its pure form, is antithetical to all that giosity is the link holding together a living discord. It is conscientiousness
would follow from it. To come too close to the center is to be destroyed. To re- Gewissenbaftigkeit], or that one act like one knows and not contradict the light
main on the periphery is to become sick or, on the moral level, to succumb to of the understanding in one's deed. One calls religious a person for whom this
evil. Hence, in this version of Die Weltalter, Schelling claims that "anxiety is the is impossible not for human, physical, or psychological reasons, but for divine
governing affect that corresponds to the conflict of directions in Being, since it reasons" (I/7, 392). This kind of ethical obsession Schelling sometimes called
does not know whether to go in or out" (336). This conflict drives the creature faith, but not in the Kantian sense of Furwahrhalten, or assuming that some-
to the periphery, where it takes harbor in itself as it shuns the overwhelming thing is true because reason needs it to be true, but in the "original meaning of
force of its own life. Anxiety "leaves the cision [Scheidung] and brings the forces a trust [Zuversicht] and confidence [Zutrauen] in the divine that excludes all
to ever greater severance so that the contractive force, so to speak, trembles for choice." Faith resembles what Eckhart and ,Heidegger called Gelassenkeit (a
its existence" (WA, 41). term that Schelling also uses), a releasement to that which one can• no longer re-
In the Freedom essay Schelling was quite clear about this. The origin of sist because it calls one as that to which one belongs. As Schelling articulated it
human evil is anxiety before the Good, that is, anxiety before freedom as the in this version of Die Weltalter: "And perhaps precisely that releasement
source of one's life and the source of one's destruction. "The anxiety of life itself [Gelassenheit] shows that something of the qualities of that primordial stuff still
drives humans out of the center in which they were created. For life, as the dwells within them, of the stuff that is passive on the outside but on the inside
purest being [Wesen] of all willing, is a consuming fire for every particular will" is spirit and life" (286). At this point, one could wonder what Schelling would
(I/7, 381). For the inclination of the human is "not to be capable of maintain- have made of Kierkegaard's analysis in Fear and Trembling of Abraham as a
ing its gaze upon the divine and upon truth" (I/7, 390). Hence, thinking is dri- knight of faith such that his responsibility to God exceeded his capacity to jus-
ven to take refuge in Blodsinn, in imbecilic truths, much in the same way that tify himself ethically to his community. Schelling leaves unanswered the ques-
Nietzsche asked if the scientific mode (Wissenschaftlichkeit) might not be "a tion as to whether faith interrupts the ethical, or whether the ethical, now
cunning self-defense against—the truth?' thought of as faith, has already vitiated the possibility that ethics could be
 relegated to a community's code of ethics. Perhaps one could at least say this: V
that faith for Schelling is what prayer was for Kierkegaard, the unconditional
elasticity of the birds of the air and the lilies of the field that manifested the ir-
removable presence of their joy in their patient affirmation of the divine move- Finally, I would like to make a couple of very brief remarks about some
ment of time "Therefore it is that God is blessed, who eternally says, Today. potentially controversial translation choices. It is simply to say the obvious
And therefore it is that the lilies and the birds are joy, because with silence and that even the best translations arc failures and I suspect that it would be wan-
unconditional obedience they are entirely present to themselves in being to- ton hubris for me to count the present work even among the class of good
day."' Schelling called this in this work "not the will to something" but "rather translations. Nonetheless, I assume full responsibility for my scholarly crimes
the pure will without obsession and craving"(236). and welcome whatever helpful comments an intrepid reader might wish to
Hence, Schelling insists that one does not enjoy religiosity because one is ofkr ine.
ethical (in so far as this means dutiful obedience to the prevailing moral codes). One of the issues of greatest difficulty for me was the constellation of
It "is not a mere ethics [Sittlichkeit] (which always includes a relationship of meanings that forms around das Wesen, Seyn, and das Seyende. Such problems
subjugation in itself)" (I/6, 558). Rather, religiosity robs one of ethical choice. have long tormented translators of Heidegger and they return when one trans-
One could not but be ethical. It would already be unethical to ask whether or lates the work of the philosopher that Heidegger held in the highest esteem.
not one should be ethical. Or to put it another way, knowledge of freedom is as Das Wesen, or sometimes das Urwesen, prima facie suggests "essence" and
such that it is at the same time an ethical obsession. Schelling called this divine Schelling does sometimes link it to words such as "nature." Yet "essence" res-
possession character.lt is "the fundamental condition of all ethics" (I/4, 690). onates too much with a tradition of thinking that links it to transhistorical
One doesoes doijrrser, choose one's character (WA, 93). One is seized by it.
'
Iiirms (ideas) that remain the selfsame in and through the ephemeral tides of
It is "the contraction of the first true will through which the primordial purity becoming. For Schelling, das Wesen names the tension between present being
covers itself over [fiberkleided with Being" (WA, 93). Theory does not lead to (existence) and the simultaneous intimation of that which is as no longer be-
praxis but rather theory is already a praxis. As Socrates in the early dialogues ing (the past) and that which is as not yet being (the future). As my own lan-
often claimed, to know the Good is to do the Good and that failure to do so guage evidently strains as I try to articulate these distinctions, the pressure and
could only mean a lack of knowledge. "Religiosity already means according to strangeness that such words exert does offer a suggestion of the difficulty of
its origin a being bound [Gebundenseyn] of action; but in no way a choice be- Schelling's own language. The Wesen holds together what has being and what
tween contraries ... but the highest staunchness for the right, without choice" is, but which does not have being. Hence, Being, the infinitive Seyn (or Sein as
(I/6, 558). it is rendered in contemporary German) maintains a dynamic tension between
However, while the conscientious adhere to a justice beyond the good and what is present (what "has" being) and what is as either no longer or not yet.
evil of the aequilibrium arbitrii, this does not entail that one should eradicate a Since Schelling often links the infinitive Seyn with its noun form, das Seyende,
sense of justice. One cannot legislate conscientiousness and hence one needs I have tried to minimize confusion by translating the infinitive with a capital B
some preliminary structure of justice. However, these moral codes and deonto- (ileing) and das Seyende as "what has being." Hence, one can speak of the Being
logical demands can only serve as propaedeutics for freedom. They cannot pro- of what has being (presence) and the being of what does not, strictu sensu,
&ice freedom. Rather they are, at best, training exercises for freedom. Their "have" being (the past, the future). As for das Wesen, the holistic tension of
work is Gesinnung, the enculturation of the moral disposition, what Aristotle in times, I have opted for "being," but with either "a" or "the" preceding it, de-
the Politics called ethismos, the training for right action. "This rigor of encultur- pending on the context. Wesen is a critical term because it names the whole
ation, like the rigor of the life in nature, is the kernel out of which the first true (what is as having being and what is as not yet/no longer having being, i.e., "the
grace and divinity pour forth like blood" (I/7, 393). It is only in the "presuppo- eternal Yes and the eternal No"). And if the time of thinking is the time of Be-
sition" of the "steadfast seriousness of a Gesinnung," in an uncompromisingly ing writ small, the Wesen names both human being and Being itself My trans-
ethical cast of mind, that "a ray of divine love descends upon it." There comes to lation choices may well be a barbaric solution to the problem, but the demands
' be a love, a kind of holy affirmation, of the relentless beauty of the cosmos as a of both syntax and felicity drove me to them.
i kind of mad grace (for what is freedom, and thereby grace, for Schelling if not
divine madness?). That is, there comes to be the "highest transfiguration [Ver-
I have also employed the root of the word "decision," namely, "cision," to
handle die Scheidung. Schelling plays with the relationship between Scheidung,
klarung] of the moral life into grace and divine beauty" (I/7, 394). "cut" (the meaning of "cision") and Entscheidung, "decision." These words are
furthermore linked to "crisis," "critique," etc.' Since these relationships are crit-
ical to Schelling's argument, I have here risked infelicity to preserve them.
I have furthermore included what I hope are some helpful annotations in SYNOPTIC TABLE OF CONTENTS
the form of endnotes. Again, it was my wish not to covet Schelling's work for
my own, but to make it available to as wide an audience as possible. (Given the
Introduction *199
difficulty of the text, I sometimes lament just how wide that audience will be.
Nonetheless, quite remarkably and with no hint of modesty or pessimism, FIRST BOOK: THE PAST
Schelling claimed at the end of the Introduction to the second version of Die
A. The eternal life of the Godhead as the whole
Weltalter that, with a new articulation and appreciation of the being of materi-
ality, such thinking will at last achieve the popularity that it has always sought or the construction of the complete idea of God
for in vain. "Then popularity, so often sought in vain, will arise on its own"
Point of entry: The Distinction between necessity and freedom in God 207
[WA, 118]).
Lastly, anyone who has looked at the German original finds a continuous 1) What is necessary of God = the nature of God
block of writing without any chapter headings or breaks. When Schelling's son a) the triad of principles in what is necessary of God
published this version of Die Weltalter in 1861, he included a synoptic Table of or the nature of God 217
Contents. Since Karl Schelling's synopsis relies on what appear to be obvious b) the unprethinkable decision in the nature of God—
shifts of gear within the text, I have opted to insert these chapter headings into the concept of that which does not have being 220
the body of the text. My motivations were both aesthetic and practical. At the c) the complete concept of the first nature (of the nature of God) 229
least, I hoped that it might aid the reader in navigating more easily around this 2) Freedom in the being of God
labyrinthine text. Purists should just ignore this bit of enthusiasm altogether. The concept of the spirit without nature = the highest concept
of the Godhead 233
3) The connection of what is necessary in God with what is free or freedom
a) the immediate effect of what is higher in God (of freedom) on
what is necessary in, or the nature of, God—Descent of the
eternal nature to the All 239
b) the organic relationship of the three principles (in what is necessary
of God) in its subordination under the purely divine or the free
(a) the first potency as possible substratum for
(external) nature 243
03 ) the second potency as possible substratum of

the spirit world 248
the third potency = the universal soul

or the link between God and the world 252
—This organism of potencies is posited "under the form of
the past": the requirement of an (eternally posited)

past in God itself 254
—The possibility in the eternal nature of retreating
into its own life, independent of God 265
—The intensified concept of that which does not have being 267
—Short episode on the importance of the Old Testament
for tracing the concept of God 269

modii
 B. The life of the individual potency
a) The life of the first potency ( = "of the nature posited as the
beginning" or external nature) INTRODUCTION
(a) the soul, dwelling in external nature and creating within it 274
03) the concept of the first (spiritual-corporeal) matter = tirux41 281
discussion of the concept of prime matter (alchemy)
b) The being of the second potency or of that which is the
substratum of the spirit world
(a) the distinction in the placement of the principles between

nature and the spirit world and vice-versa 286
[199] The past is known, the present is discerned, the future is intimated.
(R) the similarity of the process in the emergence of the spirit The known is narrated, the discerned is presented, the intimated is
world and the analogy between the forces prevailing in the
inner life with the magnetic state (excursus on magnetism, prophesied.'
the gradations of magnetic sleep, etc.) 288 That knowledge is the simple consequence and development of its own
c) The universal soul in its relationship to God and the
concepts was a valid representation [Vorstellung] until now. Its true representa-
comportment of God with respect to Being
297 tion is that it is the development of a living, actual being [Wesen] 2 which pre-
sents itself in it.
C. The actual assumption ofBeing ( = revelation = birth) by God It is an advantage of our time that this being has been given back to sci-
ence and, indeed, it may be asserted, in such a way that it may not be easily lost

a) Its possibility 300 again. It is not too severe to have judged that, in the wake of the now awoken
b) Its actuality dynamic spirit, all philosophy that does not take its power from it can still only
be regarded as an empty misuse of the noble gift of speaking and thinking.
(a) precedence of the negating or enclosing will ( = God active
as nature, whereby God posits in the state of possibility) 305 What is living in the highest science can only be what is primordially liv-
(0) consequence of this emergence of God as negating will ing, the being that is preceded by no other and is therefore the oldest of all beings.
319 Therefore nothing precedes or is exterior to this primordial life that
aa) construction of the cosmos
might have determined it. It can develop itself; insofar as it develops itself; only
bb) hint at the simultaneously happening
334 freely, out of its own drive and conation, purely out of itself.' But it does not de-
activation of the spirit world
velop lawlessly but only in accordance with laws.' There is nothing arbitrary in
cc) relationship of this activation to that which
has being itself ( = to the pure Godhead) 335 it. It is a nature in the most complete understanding of the [200] word, just as
the person is a nature regardless of freedom, nay, precisely because of it.

General discussion of the doctrine of pantheism developed here 339 After science has reached objectivity with respect to its object, it then ap-
The necessity of a higher realism pears as a natural consequence that it seek the same with respect to its form.
Spinoza; Fichte and the Philosophy of Nature Why was or is this impossible until now? Why cannot what is known in
the highest knowledge also be narrated with the rectitude and simplicity of all
else that is known? What holds back that intimated golden age in which truth
again becomes fable and fable again becomes truth?
*Page numbers correspond to those of the original German edition and have been
A principle that is outside and above the world must be granted to the
inserted into the body of the present translation.
person. How else could the person, alone among all creatures, trace the long

xxxiv
trail of developments from the present back into the deepest night of the past? When the dialectic has become only form, it is this conversation's empty sem-
How else could the person alone climb up to the beginning of the ages if there blance and shadow.
were not in the person a principle of the beginning of the ages? Created out of Therefore, everything known, in accord with its nature, is narrated. But
the source of things and the same as it, the human soul is conscientious' of cre- t he known is not here something lying about finished and at hand since the be-
ation. In the soul lies the highest clarity of all things, and the soul is not so ginning. Rather, it is that which is always first emerging out of the interior
much knowing as knowledge itself. through a process entirely specific to itself. The light of knowledge must rise
But the supramundane principle, still in its primordial purity, is not free through an internal cision and liberation before it can illuminate. What we call
in the person but is bound to another, lower principle. This other principle is it- knowledge is only the striving toward anamnesis [Wiederbewtpwerden]' and
self something that became and is therefore, by its nature, unknowing and dark. hence more of a striving toward knowledge than knowledge itself. For this rea-
It also necessarily darkens the higher principle with which it is combined. In it son, the name Philosophy had been bestowed upon it incontrovertibly by that
rests the recollection of all things, of their original relationships, of their be- great man of antiquity. Hence the view, harbored from age [202] to age, that
coming, of their meaning. But this archetype of things sleeps in the soul as that philosophy can be finally transformed into actual knowledge through the di-
which has become dark and forgotten, even if it is not a fully dissolved image. alectic and to regard the most consummate dialectic as knowledge itself, betrays
Perhaps it would never again awaken if there did not lay in every darkness itself more than a little narrowness. The very existence and necessity of the dialectic
the intimation of and longing for knowledge. But incessantly called from this proves that it is still in no way actual knowledge.
to its ennoblement, the higher principle feels that the lower principle is not In this regard, the philosopher is situated in no other circumstances than
added to it in order to remain fettered by it. It is with it in order to have an any other historian. In order to know what they want to know, the historian
Other through which it would be able to contemplate itself, present itself; and must also question the testimonies of old documents or the recollection of liv-
be intelligible to itself [201] In the higher principle everything lies without dif- ing witnesses. They need ample discrimination or critical activity' in order to
ferentiation and as one. But in the Other it can differentiate, express, and set separate the false from the true, the erroneous from the correct, in the received
apart what in it is one. [Hence there is in the person that which must again be traditions. They also need discrimination in themselves, from whence belongs
brought back to memory, and an Other that brings it to memory; one in which the customary saying that they must seek to liberate themselves from the con-
the answer to every research question lies and the Other which brings the an- cepts and peculiarities of their time. There are still many other similarities, but
swer out of it. This Other is free from everything and is capable of thinking it would be too drawn out to speak of them here.
everything, but it is bound by this innermost witness and cannot hold anything Everything, absolutely everything, even that which by nature is eternal,
for true without the agreement of this witness. On the other hand, the inner- must have already become internal to us before we can present it externally or
most is originally bound and cannot unfurl itself; but through the Other it be- objectively. If the writer of history does not awaken in himself or herself the
comes free and reveals itself to the same.] Therefore, both yearn with equal past age whose image they want to project to us, then they will never present it
intensity for the cision [Scheidung] 6 within which one would return home to its truly, nor vividly, nor in a lively fashion. What would all history be if an inner
original freedom and reveal itself to itself' and within which the Other would sense did not come to assist it? It would be what it is for so many who indeed
thereby be able to receive from the former one and likewise become knowing, know most all that has happened, but who know not the least thing about ac-
albeit in a totally different way. tual history. Not only human events but the history of nature has its monu-
This cision, this doubling of ourselves, this secret circulation in which ments and one can surely say that they do not abandon on their wide path of
there are two beings, a questioning being and an answering being, an un- creation any stages without leaving behind something to indicate them. These
knowing being that seeks knowledge and an unknowing being that does not monuments of nature, for the most part, lie there in the open, and are explored
know its knowledge, this silent dialogue, this inner art of conversation, is the in manifold ways and are, in part, actually deciphered. Yet they do not speak to
authentic mystery of the philosopher. From the outside this conversation is us but remain dead unless this succession of actions and productions has be-
thereby called the dialectic and the dialectic is a copy of this conversation. come internal to human beings. Hence, everything remains incomprehensible
to human beings until it has become internal to them, that is, until it has been
i. It thereby again transposes itself into its original and innate knowledge. [All footnotes belong to
led back to that which is innermost in their being and to that which to them is,
Schelling or to his son. The later are indicated by ED. The endnotes are my own.] so to speak, the living witness of all truth.
 [203] Now some have always thought that it would be possible to set this out being able to hold it steadily in front of themselves and without being able
subordinate' entirely to the side and sublimate [aufheben] all duality so that we, to again look at it intellectually as in a mirror.
so to speak, see only in an interior fashion and live entirely in the supramundane, Therefore, that respective external principle is not to be given up at any
knowing everything immediately.' Who can simply deny the possibility of such price. Hence, everything must be brought to actual reflection in which it could
a transposition of the human being into its supramundane principle and hence reach the highest presentation. Here runs the boundary between theosophy and
an elevation of the powers of the mind to vision [Schauen]?' From time to time, philosophy, which the lover of knowledge will chastely seek to protect. Theoso-
every physical and moral whole needs, for its preservation, the reduction to its phy is much ahead of philosophy in depth, fullness, and vitality of content in the
innermost beginning. Human beings keep rejuvenating themselves and become way that the actual object is ahead of its image and nature is ahead of its presen-
newly blissful through the feeling of the unity of their being. It is in precisely tation. And this difference certainly approaches incomparability if a dead phi-
this that especially those seeking knowledge continually summon up fresh losophy that seeks the being in forms and concepts is taken as the point of
power. Not only poets, but also philosophers, have their ecstasies. They need this comparison. Hence, the predilection of those with inward dispositions for theos-
in order to be safe, through the feeling of the indescribable reality of that higher ophy is as easy to explain as the predilection for nature as opposed to art. The
representation, against the coerced concepts of an empty dialectic that lacks en- theosophical systems have the advantage over everything else hitherto current:
thusiasm. But it is something other than the constancy of this state of intuition at least there is in them a power, even if it does not have power over itself; while
that fights against nature and the determination of life as it is now For however in the other systems, in contrast, there is but unnatural and conceited art. But
we may consider this state's relationship to the above, it always comes back to just as little of nature is inaccessible when one has the properly understood art,
this: what in this state was together in an indivisible way, unfolds in it and is par- so is little of the fullness and depth of life inaccessible when one has the prop-
tially set apart in it. We do not live in vision. Our knowledge is piecemeal, that erly understood knowledge. [205] It only reaches it step by step, mediately, and
is, it must be generated piece by piece, according to sections and grades, all of through gradual progress, so that, on the one hand, the knower is always distant
which cannot happen without reflection. from this object and, on the other hand, this object remains separated from the
Therefore, the goal is not reached in simple vision. For there is no under- knower and the object of a level-headed, peacefully savoring contemplation.
standing in vision in and for itself. In the external world, everyone more or less Therefore, all knowledge must pass through the dialectic. Yet it is another
sees the same thing, yet not everyone can express it. Each thing, in order to question as to whether the point will ever come where knowledge becomes free
reach its perfection, passes through certain moments. A series of processes, one and lively, as the image of the ages is for the writer of history who no longer re-
following the other, where the later always meshes with the earlier, brings it to calls their investigations in their presentation. Can the recollection of the pri-
its maturity. The farmer, for example, sees the progression in the plant as well mordial beginning of things ever again become so vital that knowledge, which,
as the scholar does, and yet the farmer cannot actually contemplate the plant according to its matter and the meaning of the word, is history, could also be
[204] because he cannot hold the moments apart from each other and cannot history according to its external form? And is the philosopher able to turn back
consider them separately and in their reciprocal opposition. In this way the hu- to the simplicity of history, like the divine Plato, who, for the entire series of his
man being can let run through themselves and, so to speak, immediately expe- works is thoroughly dialectical, but who, at the pinnacle and final point of
rience that succession of processes through which the infinite manifold is, in transfiguration in all of them, becomes historical?
the end, produced out of the highest simplicity of being; nay, to speak more ac- It seems left open to our age to at least open the way to this objectivity of
curately, the human being must experience this in themselves. But all experi- science. As long as this age restricts itself to the interior and to the Ideal, it lacks
ence, feeling, and vision is, in and for itself, mute and needs a mediating organ the natural means of an external presentation. Now, after having long gone
in order to come to expression. If the visionary lacks this organ or intentionally astray, it has again developed the recollection of nature and of nature's former
pushes it away from themselves in order to speak immediately from vision, then oneness with science. Yet it did not abide by this. Hardly had the first steps in
they lose their necessary standard and are one with the object and, for any third reuniting philosophy with nature occurred when the old age of the physical had
person, they are like the object itself. For this reason, they are not a master of to be acknowledged and how it, very far from being the last, is, rather, the first
their thoughts and struggle in vain to express the inexpressible without any cer- from which everything begins, even the development of divine life.' Since
taintyVVhat they find they just find without, however, being certain of it, with- then, science no longer begins from the remoteness of abstract thoughts in

ii. The outer tool. iii. How, if only last in view of its dignity, it is first in view of all development.
 order to descend from them to the natural. Rather, it is the reverse. Proceeding
from the unconscious existence of the eternal, science guides it up to the high-
est transfiguration and into divine consciousness. The most supersensible
thoughts now receive physical power and life and, vice versa, nature becomes
ever more the visible imprint of the highest concepts. [206] Soon the contempt FIRST BOOK
with which only the ignorant still look down on everything physical will cease
and once again the following saying will be true: The stone that the builders re-
jected has become the cornerstone. Then its popularity, so often sought after to
no avail, issues itself forth from itself. Then there will no longer be a distinction THE PAST
between the world of thought and the world of actuality. There will be one
world and the peace of the golden age heralds itself first in the concordant con-
junction of the sciences.
With these prospects, which the present writing will seek to justify in
more than one way, an often mulled-over attempt, which contains some prepa-
ration for that future objective presentation of science, may well dare to come
out. Perhaps the one is still coming who will sing the greatest heroic poem,
grasping in spirit something for which the seers of old were famous: what was,
what is, what will be. But this time has not yet come. We must not misjudge
our time. Heralds of this time, we do not want to pick its fruit before it is ripe
nor do we want to misjudge what is ours. It is still a time of struggle. The goal
of this investigation has still not been reached. We cannot be narrators, only ex-
plorers, weighing the pros and cons of all views until the right one has been set-
tled, indubitably rooted forever.

xl
 THE ETERNAL LIFE OF THE GODHEAD
AS THE WHOLE OR THE CONSTRUCTION
OF THE COMPLETE IDEA OF GOD

POINT OF ENTRY:
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN NECESSITY
AND FREEDOM IN GOD

[207] As with the coming time, God self-referentially [fiirsichtig] shrouds

the point of departure for the past beginning in dark night." It is not given to
everyone to know the end and it is given to few to see the primordial begin-
nings of life and it is given to even fewer to think through the whole of things
from beginning to end. Imitation, rather than the inner drive, leads to a re-
search that confuses the senses as if by an inevitable fate. Hence, inner fortitude
is necessary in order to keep a firm hold of the interrelation of movement from
beginning to end. But they would then like, where only the deed decides, to ar-
bitrate everything with peaceful and general concepts and to represent a history
in which, as in reality, scenes of war and peace, pain and joy, deliverance and
danger alternate as a mere series of thoughts.
There is a light in this darkness. Just as according to the old and almost
hackneyed phrase that the person is the world writ small, so the events of hu-
man life, from the deepest to their highest consummation, must accord with
the events of life in general. Certainly one who could write completely the his-
tory of their own life would also have, in a small epitome, concurrently grasped
the history of the cosmos. Most people turn away from what is concealed
within themselves just as they turn away from the depths of the great life and

3
shy away from the glance into the [208] abysses of that past which are still in (dogmatic), either loses sense and meaning, or gets tangled up in contradic-
one just as much as the present. tions. Then insofar as method is a kind of progression, it is clear that here
All the more so and because I am conscious that I do not speak of some- method is inseparable from the being [ Wesen] and, outside of this or without
thing familiar or popular or of that which is in accord with what has been as- this, the matter is also lost. Whoever then believes that they may make the very
sumed, it seems necessary to me to recollect first and foremost the nature of all last the very first and vice versa, or that they can reformulate the proposition
happenings, how everything begins in darkness, seeing that no one sees the that ought only be valid in a particular place into something general or unlim-
goal, and so that a particular event is never intelligible by itself but rather that ited, may thereby indeed arouse enough confusion and contradictions for the
the whole entire transpired occurrence is intelligible. Then just as all history is ignorant. But in so doing, they have not actually touched the matter itself;
not just experienced in reality or only in narration, it cannot be communicated, much less damaged it.
so to speak, all at once with a general concept. Whoever wants knowledge of God is the oldest of beings—so Thales of Miletus is already purported to
history must accompany it along its great path, linger with each moment, and have judged. But the concept of God is of great, nay, of the very greatest, range,
surrender to the gradualness of the development. The darkness of the spirit and is not to be expressed with a single word. Necessity and freedom are in God.
cannot be overcome suddenly or in one fell swoop. The world is not a riddle Necessity is already recognized when a necessary existence is ascribed to God.
whose solution could be given with a single word. Its history is too elaborate to '11) speak naturally, there is necessity insofar as it is before freedom, because a be-
be brought, so to speak, as some seem to wish, to a few short, uncompleted ing must first exist before it could act freely. Necessity lies at the foundation of
propositions on a sheet of paper. freedom and is in God itself what is first and oldest, insofar as such a distinction
But to speak the truth, it is no less the case with true science than it is can take place in God, which will have to be cleared up through further consid-
with history that there are no authentic propositions, that is, assertions that eration. Even though the God who is necessary is the God who is free, both are
would have a value or an unlimited and universal validity in and for themselves still one and the same. What [210] is a being from nature and what is as such
or apart from the movement through which they are produced. Movement is through freedom are completely different. If God were already everything from
what is essential to knowledge. When this element of life is withdrawn, propo- necessity, then God would be nothing through freedom. And yet God is, ac-
sitions die like fruit removed from the tree of life. Absolute propositions, that cording to general consensus, the most voluntaristic being.
is, those that are once and for all valid, conflict with the nature of true knowl- Everyone recognizes that God would not be able to create beings outside
edge which involves progression. Let, then, the object of knowledge be A-ar/c1 of itself from a blind necessity in God's nature, but rather with the highest vol-
then the first proposition that is asserted would be that "A = x is the case." Now untarism. To speak even more exactly, if it were left to the mere capacity of
if this is unconditionally valid, that is, that "A is always and exclusively only x," God's necessity, then there would be no creatures because necessity refers only
then the investigation is finished. There is nothing further to add to it. But as to God's existence as God's own existence. Therefore, in creation, God over-
certainly as the investigation is a progressive kind, it is certain that "A = x" is comes the necessity of its nature through freedom and it is freedom that comes
only a proposition with a limited validity. It may be valid in the beginning, but above necessity not necessity that comes above freedom.
as the investigation advances, it turns out that "A is not simply x." It is also y, What is necessary in God we call the nature of God. Its relationship to
and it is therefore "x + y." One errs here [209] when one does not have a con- freedom is similar (but not identical) to the relationship that the Scriptures
—

cept of a kind of true science. They take the first proposition, "A = x," as ab- teach is between the natural and the spiritual life of the person. What is under-
solute and then they perhaps get, or have in mind from somewhere else in stood here by "natural" is not simply the by and large "physical," that is, the cor-
experience, that it would be the case that "A = y." Then they immediately op- poreal. The soul and the spirit, as well as the body, if not born again, that is,
pose the second proposition to the first instead of waiting until the incom- elevated to a different and higher life, belong to the "natural." The entirety of
pleteness of the first proposition would demand, from itself, the advance to the Antiquity knows as little as do the Scriptures of the abstract concept of nature.
second proposition. For they want to conceive of everything in one proposition, Even this "nature" of God is living, nay, it is the highest vitality, and it is not
and so they must only grant nothing short of an absolute thesis and, in so do- to be expressed so bluntly. Only by progressing from the simple to the complex,
ing, sacrifice science. For where there is no succession, there is no science. through gradual creation, could we hope to reach the full concept of this vitality.
From this it seems evident that in true science, each proposition has only Everyone agrees that the Godhead is the Supreme Being, the purest
a definite and, so to speak, local meaning, and that one who has withdrawn the Love, infinite communicativity and emanation. Yet at the same time they want
determinate place and has made the proposition out to be something absolute it to exist as such. But Love does not reach Being [Seyn] from itself. Being is
ipseity [Seinheid, particularity.' It is dislocation. But Love has nothing to do But in later times, ages more and more alienated from that primordial
with particularity. Love does not seek its own [das Ihre] and therefore it cannot feeling, the attempt was often made to annihilate the antithesis right at its
be that which has being [seyend seyn] with regard to itself. In the same way, a source, namely, to sublimate the antithesis right at its beginning as one sought
Supreme Being is for itself groundless and borne by nothing. It is in itself the to trace one of the conflicting modes back to the other and then sought to de-
antithesis of personality and therefore another force, moving toward personal- rive it from that other. In our age, this was true especially for the force that is
ity, must first make it a ground. An equivalently eternal force of selfhood, of set against the spiritual. The antithesis in the end received the most abstract ex-
egoity [Egoitiid, is required so that [211] the being which is Love might exist pression, that of thinking and Being. In this sense, Being always stood in op-
as its own and might be for itself. position to thinking as something impregnable, so that the Philosophy that
Therefore, two principles are already in what is necessary of God: the would explain everything found nothing more difficult than to provide an ex-
outpouring, outstretching, self-giving being, and an equivalently eternal force planation for precisely this Being. They had to explain this incomprehensibil-
of selfhood, of retreat into itself, of Being in itself. That being and this force are ity, this active counterstriving against all thinking, this active darkness, this
both already God itself, without God's assistance. positive inclination toward darkness. But they preferred to have done away en-
It is not enough to see the antithesis. It must also be recognized that tirely with the discomforting and to resolve fully the incomprehensible in com-
what has been set against each other has the same essentiality and originality. prehension or (like Leibniz) in representation [Vorstellung].
The force with which the being closes itself off, denies itself, is actual in its kind Idealism, which really consists in the denial and nonacknowledgment of
as the opposite principle. Each has its own root and neither can be deduced that negating primordial force, is the universal system of our times. Without this
from the other. If this were so, then the antithesis would again immediately force, God is that empty infinite that modern philosophy has put in its stead.
come to an end. But it is impossible per se that an exact opposite would derive Modem Philosophy names God the most unlimited being (ens illimitatissimum),
from its exact opposite. without thinking that the impossibility of any limit outside of God cannot sub-
Indeed, humans show a natural predilection for the affirmative just as limate that there may be something in God through which God cuts itself off
much as they turn away from the negative. Everything that is outpouring and from itself, in a way making itself finite (to an object) for itself. Being infinite is
goes forth from itself is clear to them. They cannot grasp as straightforwardly for itself not a perfection. It is rather the marker of that which is imperfect. The
that which closes itself off and takes itself, even though it is equivalently essen- perfected is precisely the in itself full, concluded, finished.
tial and it encounters them everywhere and in many forms. Most people would Yet also to know the antithesis is not enough if, at the same time, the
find nothing more natural than if everything in the world were to consist of unity of the being is not known, or if it is not known that, indeed, the antithe-
pure gentleness and goodness, at which point they would soon become aware of sis is [213] one and the same, that it is the affirmation and the negation, that
the opposite. Something inhibiting, something conflicting, imposes itself which pours out and that which holds on. The concept of a connection
everywhere: this Other is that which, so to speak, should not be and yet is, nay, [Zusammenhang] or of anything similar to that is much too weak for the
must be. It is this No that resists the Yes, this darkening that resists the light, thought that should be expressed here. The merely various can also connect.
this obliquity that resists the straight, this left that resists the right, and how- Precisely that which is set in opposition can only be essentially and, so to speak,
ever else one has attempted to express this eternal antithesis in images. But it personally, "one," insofar as it is only the individual nature of the person that is
is not easy to be able to verbalize it or to conceive it at all scientifically. able to unite that which is in conflict. But if one wanted to call everything that
The existence of such an eternal antithesis could not elude the first is not one and the same a connection, then one would have to say of a person
deeply feeling and deeply sensitive people. Already finding this duality in the who appears gentle, then wrathful, that the gentle person connects to the
primordial beginnings of nature but finding its source nowhere among that wrathful person in them, although, according to the truth, they are one and the
which is visible, early on one had to say to oneself that the ground of the [212] same person.
antithesis is as old as, nay, is even older than, the world; that, just as in every- If someone wanted to say further: it is a contradiction that something is
thing living, so already in that which is primordially living, there is a doubling one and the same and also the exact opposite of itself, then they would have to
that has come down, through many stages, to that which has determined itself explain this principle more precisely since, as is known, Leibniz already dis-
as what appears to us as light and darkness, masculine and feminine, spiritual puted the absoluteness of this still always repeated rule.' Thereupon they
and corporeal. Therefore, the oldest teachings straightforwardly represented might want to consider that a contradiction might not be precisely what one
the first nature as a being with two conflicting modes of activity. would want.
 The authentic, essential contradiction would be immediately sublimated t heir actions, cannot be evil. But this does not disallow that they might be evil
again, or, rather, transformed into something merely formal and literal, if the in accord with what in them is not in their character or active. In this [215]
unity of the being were taken to mean that that which has been set apart are manner, two contradictory, self-opposed predicates can certainly be ascribed to
themselves one and the same. Even the most slipshod expression: the Yes is also that person. Expressed in other words this would mean: of two things exactly
the No, the Ideal is also the Real, and vice versa, would not justify this imbecilic opposed that are stated of one and the same thing, according to the law of con-
explanation because in no judgment whatsoever, not even in the merely tauto- tradiction, if one is in force as the active and as that which has being, then the
logical, is it expressed that the combined (the subject and the predicate) are one other must become that which is respectively not acting, Being.
and the same. Rather, there is only an identity of the being, of the link (of the Now, what here should be, actually and in the strictest sense, that which
copula). The true meaning of every judgment, for instance, A is B, can only be is opposed yet is "one and the same = x," is the affirming and negating force. It
this: that which is A is that which is B, or that which is A and that which is B are therefore appears that when both actually become one, the one or the other
one and the same. Therefore, a doubling already lies at the bottom of the sim- would have to become that which respectively does not have Being and is not
ple concept: A in this judgment is not A, but "something = x, that A is." Like- acting—something like (because this seems to most people to be something
wise, B is not B, but "something = x, that B is," and not this (not A and B for hostile) the negating force.
themselves) but the "x that is A" and "the x that is B" is one and the same, that But the original equivalence (equipollence) 15 between both of them now
is, the same x. [214] There are actually three propositions contained in the appears between them. Since each, by nature, is equally originary and equally
above cited proposition. The first, "A = x," the second, "B = x," and, following essential, each also has the same claim to be that which has being. Both hold
first from this, the third, "A and B are one and the same," that is, "both are x." their own weight and neither by nature yields to the other.
It follows from itself that the link in judgment is what is essential and Therefore, it is conceded that of that which has been opposed, if they in-
that which lies at the bottom of all the parts.' The subject and the predicate are deed become one, only one of them would be active and the other would be
each for themselves already a unity and what one by and large calls the copula passive. But, enabled by the equivalence of both, it follows that if one is passive,
just indicates the unity of these unities. Furthermore, the judgment is then al- then the other must be so also, and, likewise, if one is active, then, absolutely,
ready exemplified in the simple concept and the conclusion is already contained the other must also be active. But this is impossible in one and the same unity.
in the judgment. Hence, the concept is just the furled judgment and the con- Here each can only be either active or passive. Hence, it only follows from that
clusion is the unfurled judgment. These remarks are written here for a future necessity that the one unity decomposes into two unities, the simple antithesis
and most highly desirable treatment of the noble art of reason because the (that we may designate as A and B) intensifies itself into that which has been
knowledge of the general laws of judgment must always accompany the high- doubled. It does not follow that in God one force is active and the other is in-
est science. But one does not philosophize for novices or for those ignorant of active, but rather that God itself is of two different kinds; first the negating
this art. Rather, they are to be sent away to school where, as in other arts, no force (B) that represses the affirmative being (A), positing it as the inwardly
one easily dares to put forward or to assess a musical work who has not learned passive or as what is hidden; second, the outstretching, self-communicating be-
the first rules of a musical movement. ing that in clear contrast holds down the negating power in itself and does not
Hence, it is certainly impossible that the Ideal as such is ever the Real and let it come outwardly into effect.
vice versa, and that the Yes is ever a No and that the No is ever a Yes. To assert This can also be considered another way. That which has been set apart
this would mean sublimating human comprehension, the possibility of express- [216] are already in themselves not to be brought apart. The negating and con-
ing oneself, even the contradiction itself. But it is certainly possible that one and tracting force could not be for itself without something that it negates and con-
the same = x is both Yes and No, Love and Wrath, Leniency and Strictness. tracts, and that which has been negated and contracted cannot be anything
Perhaps some now already locate the contradiction here. But the correctly other than precisely that which is in itself affirmative and flowing from itself.
understood principle of contradiction actually only says as much as that the Hence, this negating power dislocates itself from itself in order to be, so to
same as the same could not be something and also the opposite of that some- speak, its own complete being. In turn, that potency which, in accordance with
thing. But the principle of contradiction does not disallow that the same, which its nature, is spiritual and outstretching, could not persist as such were it not
is A, can be an other that is not A (contradictio debet esse ad idem). The same per- to have, at least in a hidden manner, a force of selfhood. Therefore, this also
son can be called, for example, good in accordance with their character or in dislocates itself as its own being and, instead of the desired unity, there has now
their actions and as this, namely, likewise in accord with their character or in resulted two oppositionally posited unities located apart from one another.
 Should we want to sacrifice one of the two, we would always thereby 1) WHAT IS NECESSARY OF GOD = THE NATURE OF GOD
have given up one of the two principles itself Because only one is active in it,
each of these unities then conducts itself as this one, the first as B, the other as a) the triad ofprinciples in what is necessary of God or the nature of God
A. But were these equivalent such that neither could, by nature, take second
place to the other, then also each of the two unities again maintains the equiv- And here, first after the consummate unfurling of that initial concept,
alency and each has the same claim to be that which has being [seyend zu seyn]. can we glimpse the first nature in its full vitality. We see it, in an equally origi-
And so then now if both of them were fully apart from one another and nary way, decomposed, as it were, into three powers. Each of these powers can
without reciprocal contact, then they would be the same as the two primordial be for itself Hence, the unity is a unity for itself and each of the opposite pow-
beings in the Persian teaching, one being a power insisting on closure and the ers is a whole and complete being, Yet not one.of them can be without the oth-
darkening of the being and the other insisting on its outstretching aqd revela- ers also being and hence, only together do they fulfill the whole concept of the
tion. Both do not conduct themselves as one, but as two Godheads. Godhead and only that God is necessary. Not one of them is necessary and by
But it still remains that "one and the same = x" is both principles (A and nature subordinate to the others. The negating potency is, with regard to that
B). But not just in accordance with the concept, but really and actually. Hence, 1218] inseparable primordial being, as essential as the affirming potency. And
"the same = x" that is the two unities must again be the unity of both unities the unity is, in turn, not more essential than each of the opposites are for them-
and with the intensified antithesis is found the intensified unity. selves. Therefore each also has fully the same claim to be the being, to be that
There still seems to be an unavoidable contradiction such that the two which has being. Not one of them can bring itself by nature only to Being or
unities, having been set apart, should be posited as active and as one. And yet not to be that which has being.
this still admits of resolution such that the unity here demanded has no other And the law of contradiction, which says that opposites cannot be in one
but the following meaning. That which has been set apart should be one, that and the same thing and at the same time be that which has being, here, at last,
is, a unity of the two is posited, but it is not [217] concomitantly posited that finds its application. God, in accordance with the necessity of its nature, is an
they cease being that which has been set apart. Rather, insofar as there should eternal No, the highest Being-in-itself an eternal withdrawal of its being into
be unity, there should also be antithesis. Or unity and antithesis should them- itself, a withdrawal within which no creature would be capable of living. But
selves again be in antithesis. But the antithesis is in and for itself no contradic- the same God, with equal necessity of its nature, although not in accord with
tion. It could be no more contradictory that there could be A as well as B, than the same principle, but in accord with a principle that is completely different
that just as there is unity, there is antithesis. Again, these are, between them- from the first principle, is the eternal Yes, an eternal outstretching, giving, and
selves, equivalent. The antithesis can as little surrender to unity as unity can communicating of its being. Each of these principles, in an entirely equal fash-
surrender to the antithesis. ion, is the being, that is, each has the same claim to be God or that which has
The antithesis rests on this, that each of the two conflicting powers is a being. Yet they reciprocally exclude each other. If one is that which has being,
being for itself, a real principle. The antithesis is only as such if the two con- then the opposed can only be that which does not have being. But, in an equally
flicting principles conduct themselves as actually independent and separate eternal manner, God is the third term or the unity of the Yes and the No. Just
from each other. That there should be both antithesis and unity therefore as opposites exclude each other from being what has being [vom seyend Seyn], -

means as much as: that of the negating principle, the affirming principle, and, so again the unity excludes the antithesis and thereby each of the opposites,
again, the unity of both, each of these three should be as its own principle, sep- and, in turn, the antithesis or each of the opposites excludes the unity from be-
arated from the others. But through this, the unity appears along the same lines ing what has being. If the unity is that which has being, then the antithesis, that
with the two principles that have been set in opposition. It is not something is, each of the opposites, can only be that which does not have being. And, in
like what is chiefly the being. Rather, the unity is just a principle of the being turn, if one of the opposites, and thereby the antithesis, has being, then the
and hence, perfectly equivalent with the two others. unity can only retreat into that which does not have being.
The true meaning of this unity that has been asserted in the beginning is And it is not now the case that somehow all three remain inactive so that
therefore this: "one and the same = x" is as much the unity as it is the antithesis. the contradiction itself could remain in concealment. For that which is these
Or both of the opposed potencies, the eternally negating potency and the eter- three is the necessary nature, the being that is not allowed not to be, that ab-
nally affirming potency, and the unity of both make up the one, inseparable, solutely must be. But it can only be as the inseparable One of these three. Not
primordial being. one of these for itself would fulfill the whole concept of the necessary being (of
the Godhead), and each of these three has the same right to be the being, that t hen necessarily the other does not have being and such that it at the same time
is, to be that which has being. still does not befit the first nature to have the freedom to be or not to be, so
[219] It is thus found that the first nature is, with regard to itself, in con- there is similarly in the first nature also necessitated a decision, even if only one
tradiction. It is not in contradiction by chance nor is it in one in which it would that transpires blindly. If the one has being, then the other does not have being,
have been transposed from the outside (for there is nothing outside of it). yet each should and must in the same way be that which has being. With this
Rather, it is in,a necessary contradiction, posited at the same time with its be- there is nothing left over except an alternating positing, where alternately now
ing and hence, which, more accurately said, is itself its being. one is that which has being and the other is that which does not have being and
People appear to have a greater aversion for contradiction than for any- then, in turn, it is the other of these which has being and the one which does
thing else in life. Contradiction coerces them into action and forces them from not have being. Yet, so that it thereby also comes exclusively to this alternating
their cozy repose. When, after a long time, the contradiction is no longer to be positing in that primordial urge for Being, it is necessary that one of them be
covered over, they seek to at least conceal it from themselves and to distance the the beginning or that which first has being and after this, one of them is the
moment in which matters of life and death must be acted upon. A similar con- second and one of them is the third. From this, the movement again goes back
venience was sought in knowledge through the interpretation of the law of to the first and, as such, is an eternally expiring and an eternally recommenc-
contradiction in which contradiction should never be able to be. However, how ing life.
can one put forward a law for something that can in no way be? When it is But precisely that one commences and one of them is the first, must re-
known that a contradiction cannot be, it must be known that it nevertheless in sult from a decision that certainly has not been made consciously or through
a certain way is. How else should "that which cannot be" appear to be and how deliberation but can happen rather only when a violent power blindly breaks
should the law prove itself, that is, prove to be true? the unity in the jostling between the necessity and the impossibility to be. But
Everything else leaves the active in some sense open. Only the contra- the only place in which a ground of determination can be sought for the prece-
diction is absolutely not allowed not to act and is alone what drives, nay, what dence of one of them and the succession of the other is the particular nature of
coerces, action. Therefore, without the contradiction, there would be no move- each of the principles, which is different from their general nature which con-
ment, no life, and no progress. There would only be eternal stoppage, a deathly sists in each being equally originary and equally independent and each having
slumber of all of the forces. the same claim to be that which has being. This is not like saying that one of
Were the first nature in harmony with itself, it would remain so. It would the principles would absolutely have to be the one that proceeds or the one that
be constantly One and would never become Two. It would be an eternal rigid- succeeds. Rather, just that, because it is allowed by its particular nature, the pos-
ity without progress. The contradiction in the first nature is as certain as life is. sibility is given to it to be the first, the second, or the third.
As certainly as the being of knowledge consists in progression, it necessarily has It is now clear that what is posited at the beginning is precisely that
as its first posit the positing of the contradiction. which is subordinated in the successor. The beginning is only the beginning in-
A transition from unity to contradiction is incomprehensible. For how sofar as it is not that which should actually be, that which truthfully and in it-
should what is in itself one, whole and perfect, be tempted, charmed, and en- self has being. If there is therefore a decision, then [221] that which can only be
ticed to emerge out of this peace? The transition from contradiction to unity, on posited at the beginning inclines, for the most part and in its particular way, to
the other hand, is natural, for contradiction is insufferable to everything and the nature of that which does not have being.
everything that finds itself in it will not repose until it has found the unity that Precisely the affirmative principle, the authentic being or that which has
reconciles or overcomes it. being (A) as not active, that is, as not having being, is posited in the originary
negation. This is not to say that it would, as that which has being, be altogether
b) the unprethinkable decision in the nature of God— negated (this is impossible). On the contrary, it is posited as that which has be-
the concept of that which does not have being ing, but not as having the being of that which has being or, in other words, not
as that which has been revealed actually to have being. On the other hand, that
[220] Only the contradiction brings life into the first necessary nature which is singularly active in this unity is the negating potency (B), which, as the
that we have until now only considered conceptually. Just as with the three potency that has been opposed to the being or that which actually has being,
principles whose irresolvable concatenation the first nature is, such that each in cannot be called that which has being, although it in no way because of that is
accord with its nature is that which has being, but such that if one has being, that which does not have being or nothing.
 Therefore, whether we might look at what is active in that originary out this insight, certainty would be entirely indistinguishable from doubt and
negation or at that which is posited as inactive or passive in it, we will in any truth would be entirely indistinguishable from error.'
case say that the originary negation for the most part shares in the nature of Conceptually, that which has being is always that in which the affirming
that which does not have being or itself appears as not having being. principle is active and outwardly manifest. But it does not always follow that
The concept of not having being, but especially the not being that occurs what has being in accord with the concept is, for this reason, that which indeed
everywhere in so many forms, has always led the beholder astray and, like a real really has being. For in an inverted order, or where there is still no order, level-
Proteus, manifoldly brought them into confusion. For just as it is manifest to headedness, and organization, that which in itself or essentially has being can
hardly anyone that actual power lies more in delimitation than expansion and just as well become that which does not have being, when contrasted with
that to withdraw oneself has more to do with might than to give oneself; so is what, in accord with its being, really does not have being. Just as the good per-
it natural that where they encounter that which through itself does not have be- son suppresses the evil within themselves, the evil person, conversely, silences
ing, they rather regard it as "nothing" and, when it is asserted that it "is" pre- the good within themselves and posits that what in accord with its being is that
cisely as that which does not have being, they rather explain this away as the which has being is really that which does not have being.
greatest contradiction. We still want to recall the misuse that another kind of sophistry makes of
They could have been liberated from this simple grammatical misunder- the concept of not having being. Because Being appears as the highest to blind
standing, which also prejudiced a good many interpreters of the Greek philoso- feeling and because all Being [223] is founded on the closure of the being,
phers, and from which the concept of the creatio ex nihilo, among others, also sophistry then concludes (if it has not been supplemented too much through
seems to owe its origin, with this distinction, entirely easy to learn and which this explanation) that Being is unknowable and because to them everything is
can be found, if nowhere else, certainly in Plutarch, between non-Being [nicht Being, nothing is knowable; all knowing knowledge dissolves Being and only
Seyn] (p ELVOIL) and the Being which has no being [nicht seyend Seyn] (wi the unknowing one knows. Certainly in itself only that which has being is what
Ov EZvom). This lets one also defend the expression "privation (o-rp-ricrts)" is knowable and what does not have being is not what is knowable. But it is still
with which Aristotle indicated the other, the opposed Toimarri,ov, namely, in- only incomprehensible insofar as and in as much as it is not that which has be-
sofar as the negating [222] force, which contracts the being, does not posit that ing. But insofar as it is as such and at the same time something that has being,
it is-not, but rather that it is not that which has being. it is certainly comprehensible and knowable. For that through which it does not
Even the most general consideration must incidentally lead to the con- have being is precisely that through which it has being. For it is not that which
cept of that which does not have being. For that which is in each thing the ac- does not have being on account of a comprehensive lack of light and being but
tual Being cannot, because of the antithesis, ever be one and the same with on account of an active restriction of the being and hence, on account of acting
that which has being. Rather, it is, in accord with its nature, that which does force. We may therefore look to what is interior and concealed in it or to what
not have being but, because of that, it is in no way "nothing." For how should is exterior and manifest about it. The former is precisely the essentiality itself
nothing be that which is Being itself? Being must after all be. There is no mere but the latter is an active force. Nay, we would like to say more correctly that the
Being in which there would be nothing which has being whatsoever (no A latter is the force, the absolute might, which, as such, must likewise be some-
without B). That which does not have being is not something that has being thing that has being and therefore must be something knowable.
against others (objectively), but is something that has being in itself (subjec- That God negates itself, restricts its being, and withdraws into itself; is
tively). It is only over and against that which mainly has being that it is that the eternal force and might of God. In this manner, the negating force is that
which does not have being. But in relationship to itself, it is certainly that which is singularly revealing of God. But the actual being of God is that which
which has being. Everything that has being of a humbler rank relates itself, is concealed. The whole therefore stands as A that from the outside is B and
when contrasted with being of a higher rank, as that which does not have be- hence, the whole = (A = B). Therefore, the whole, because God is that which
ing. The same A that, in contrast with another, is that which has being, can does not have being (is not manifest) in it, inclines, in accord with its essential-
appear in contrast with an A of an even higher order as that which does not ity and in relation to what is other, for the most part toward not being that
have being. which has being. This is therefore the beginning, or how we have otherwise al-
So something more or less allows itself expression in our way that Plato ready expressed it, the first potency.
already showed in the magnificent dialogue about that which does not have be- Hence, according to the oldest teachings, night is not in general the up-
ing in which he shows how that which has no being is necessary and how, with- permost being (as these teachings are misunderstood these days), but rather the
first that, precisely because of this, becomes the lowest in the progress of the There is therefore no doubt that if a succession takes place among the
movement. Precisely that which negates all revelation must be made the ground primordial powers of life, only the power that contracts and represses the being
of revelation. can be the initiating power. What is first in God after the decision or, because
The same thing allows itself to be demonstrated from another angle. A we must assume that as having happened since all eternity (and as still always
being cannot negate itself without thereby making itself turn inward and there- happening), what is altogether first in God, in the living God, the eternal be-
fore making itself the object of its own wanting and desire. The beginning of all ginning of itself in itself, is that God restricts itself, denies itself, withdraws its
knowledge lies in the knowledge of one's ignorance. [224] But it is impossible essence from the outside and retreats into itself.
that the person posits himself or herself as ignorant without thereby inwardly The currently accepted teaching about God is that God is without all
making knowledge into an object of their desire. Positing oneself as that which beginning. The Scripture to the contrary: God is the beginning and the end.
does not have being and wanting oneself are therefore one and the same. Each - We would have to imagine a being regarded as without beginning as the eter-
being primarily wants itself and this self-wanting is later precisely the basis of nal immobility, the purest inactivity. For no acting is without a point out of
egos, that through which a being withdraws itself or cuts itself off from other which and toward which it goes. An acting that would neither have something
things and that through which it is exclusively itself, and therefore is, from the solid upon which to ground itself nor a specific goal or end that it desires,
outside and in relation to everything else, negating. would be a fully indeterminate acting and not an actual and, as such, distin-
But the power of a beginning is only in wanting in general. For that guishable one. Certainly, therefore, something that is eternal without begin-
which is wanted and therefore that which should actually be in accord with ning can be thought as not actual but never as actual. But now we are speaking
the intention is posited as that which does not have being precisely because it of a necessarily actual God. Therefore, this God has no beginning only insofar
is that which is wanted. But all beginning is founded on that which is not, on as it has no beginning of its beginning. The beginning in it is an eternal be-
what actually should be (that which in itself has being). Since a being that has ginning, that is, a beginning that was, as such, from all eternity and still always
nothing outside of itself can want nothing other than simply itself, the uncon- is and one that never ceases to be a beginning. The beginning that a being has
ditioned and absolutely first beginning can lie only in self-wanting. But want- outside of itself and the beginning that a being has within itself are different.
ing oneself and negating oneself as having being is one and the same. A beginning from which it can be alienated and from which it can distance it-
Therefore, the first beginning can only be in negating oneself as that which self is different than a beginning in which it eternally remains because it itself
has being. is the beginning.
For the beginning really only lies in the negation. All beginning is, in ac- But the divine nature does not allow that it is just an eternal No and an
cord with its nature, only a desire for the end or for what leads to the end and eternal denial of itself. It is an equally valid part of its nature that it is a being of
hence, negates itself as the end. It is only the tension of the bow—it is not so all beings, the infinitely self-granting and self-communicating being. In that it
much that which itself has being as it is the ground that something is. It is not therefore conceals its being, there thereby appears, by force of the eternal ne-
enough for a beginning that now commences or becomes not to be. It must be cessity of its nature, [226] the eternal affirmation of its being as it opposes the
expressly posited as that which does not have being. A ground is thereby given negation (which is not sublimated but abiding, albeit now receding into the
for it to be. No beginning point (terminus a quo) of a movement is an empty, in- negative). In contrast, the negating force represses itself and precisely thereby
active point of departure. Rather, it is a negation of the starting point and the intensifies itself into an independent being.
actually emerging movement is an overcoming of this negation. If the move- Exactly as when the body collects itself and cools off and a perceptible
ment was not negated, then it could not have been expressly posited. Negation warmth spreads around it so that it therefore elevates the previously inactive
is therefore the necessary precedent (prius) of every movement. The beginning warmth into an active warmth, so too, and with a wholly equal necessity, that
of the line is the geometrical point—but not because it extended itself but originary negation becomes the immediate ground, the potency that begets the
rather because it is the negation of all extension. One is the beginning of all actual being. It posits this being outside of itself and independent of itself as a
number, not so much because it itself is a number but because it is the negation being removed from itself, nay, as a being opposed to it, as that which in itself
of all number, of all multiplicity. That which would intensify itself must first eternally has being.
gather itself together and transpose itself into the condition of being a root. Through this, a new light falls upon that originary negation. A being
[225] What wants to grow must foreshorten itself and hence, negation is the cannot negate itself as actual without at the same time positing oneself as the
first transition whatsoever from nothing into something. actualizing potency that begets itself. Hence, conversely, positing oneself as the

16 17
actualizing potency of oneself and, in turn, positing oneself as not having being nizable by evil; likewise evil in good, albeit mastered by the good and brought
is one and the same. to inactivity.
In the first potency (in A = B), there was also something that had being But now the unity of the being thus seems torn and hence, each of the
(A). But this was posited here as not having being (as passive, as object). In ac- opposites stands for and in itself as its own being. Yet they incline themselves
cordance with the presupposition, that which is begot by it is posited as that toward unity, or they come together in one and the same because the negating
which has being such that it has being [das Seyende als Seyendes]. It can in this force can only [228] feel itself as negating when there is a disclosing being and
way be called that which has being to the second power (we indicate it by A' the latter can only be active as affirming insofar as it liberates the negating and
in which now the negating power, B, disappears). And from this it would be repressing force. It is also impossible that the unity of the being could be subli-
clear that if that originary No is the beginning or the first, than the being op- mated. Hence, facilitated by eternal necessity through the force of indissoluble
posed to it is the second and the successive being. life, they posit outside and above themselves a third, which is the unity.
That the former can only proceed and that the latter can only succeed This third must in itself be outside and above all antithesis, the purest
can, however, still be looked at in another way. It is natural to the negating force potency, indifferent toward both, free from both, and the most essential.
that it represses the being. Once a negating force is posited, it can effect noth- From the foregoing it is clear that this cannot be the first, nor the second,
ing else but the closure of the being. But the negating force is fully alien to the only the third, and can only comport itself as having the being of the third po-
affirming principle in itself. And yet the affirming principle actually has being tency = A 3 . 1,
as that which has being only by repressing the negating force in itself. Further- jtis-ras the originary negation is the eternal beginning, this third is the
more, it would, with regard to itself, never come forth and therefore never ele- eternal end. There is an inexorable progression, a necessary concatenation, from
vate to act if the negation of the being [227] had not proceeded. In that it has the first potency to the third. When the first potency is posited, the second is
being, it certainly has it from itself. But that it again has being, that it labori- also necessarily posited, and both of these produce the third with the same ne-
ously proves itself and reveals itself as having being, has its ground in the negat- cessity. Thereby the goal is achieved. There is nothing higher to be produced in
ing potency. If there were not the No, then the Yes would be without force. No this course.
"I" without the "not-I" and in as much as the "not-I" is before the "I." That Yet having arrived at its peak, the movement of itself retreats back into its
which has being, precisely because it has being from itself, has no ground to de- beginning; for each of the three has an equal right to be that which has being.
sire that it be. But to be negated conflicts with its nature. Therefore, in that it is The former differentiation and the subordination that followed from it is only
at all negated, it follows that, excepting that in which it is negated, it is in itself a differentiation of the being, it is not able to sublimate the equivalence with re-
unnegated and in its own purity. gard to that which is as what has being. In a nutshell, it is not able to sublimate
The primordial antithesis is given with these two potencies. Yet the an- the existential _ parity [die existentielle Gleichheit].
tithesis is not such that it is based on a completely reciprocal exclusion, but only But we still cannot at all talk here of an ethical relation because we still
as such that it is based on an opposed relationship, on, so to speak, an inverted have only posited blind nature and not an ethical principle. We are taught of-
position of those first life forces. What in the proceeding potency was the exte- ten enough that the Ideal stands over the Real, that the physical is subordinated
rior, contracting, and negating, is itself, in the successive potency, the inner, to the spiritual, and other such things. There is never a lack of such instruction
contracted, and self-negated. And conversely, what was there inhibited is what for us. Indeed, this subordination seemed to be expressed as what was most de-
is here free. They are infinitely far from each other and infinitely near. Far, be- termined in that we always posited what was akin to the Real as the first po-
cause what is affirmed and manifest in one of them is posited in the other as tency and what was akin to the Ideal as the second potency. But if one begins
negated and in the dark. Near, because it only requires an inversion, a turning thereby to posit as actually subordinated that which ought to be subordinated,
out of what was concealed and a turning into what is manifest, in order to what then does one have? [229] One is already finished in the beginning.
transpose and, so to speak, transform, the one into the other. Everything has happened and there is no further progression.
Hence, we already see here the structure for a future, inner unity in That originary, necessary, and abiding life hence ascends from the lowest
which each potency comes out for itself. Hence, the day lies concealed in the to the highest, Yet when it has arrived at the highest, it retreats immediately
night, albeit overwhelmed by the night; likewise the night in the day, albeit back to the beginning in order again to ascend from it. Here we first attain the
kept down by the day, although it can establish itself as soon as the repressive consummate concept of that first nature (after which all particular concepts,
potency disappears. Hence, good lies concealed in evil, albeit made unrecog- which only had to be posited in order to attain this consummate concept, must

18 19
again be expelled), namely, that it is a life that eternally circulates within itself, I leraclitus claimed, the cosmos was created!' It is circulating within itself, con-
a kind of circle because the lowest always runs into the highest, and the highest tinuously repeating itself by moving backward and again forward as was shown
again into the lowest. Hence, it is impossible, by virtue of the nature of the in the visions of one of the prophets.' This is the object of the ancient Magi
three principles, that each as well as each not be that which has being and teachings' and of that doctrine of fire as a consequence of which the Jewish
therefore they are only thinkable in this urge toward existence as an alternating lawgiver left behind to his people: "The Lord your God is a devouring fire," 22
positing. Hence, now one, now the other, is that which has being. Taking turns, that is, not in God's inner and authentic being [ Wesen], but certainly in accor-
one prevails while the other yields. dance with God's nature.
Naturally, in this constant annular drive, the differentiation of the higher But this unremitting movement that goes back into itself and recom-
and the lower again sublimates itself There is neither a veritable higher nor a mences is incontestably the scientific concept of that wheel [231] of birth as the
veritable lower, since in turn one is the higher and the other is the lower. There interior of all nature that was already revealed to one of the apostles,' who was
is only an unremitting wheel, a rotatory movement that never comes to a stand- distinguished by a profound glimpse into nature, as well as to those who later
still and in which there is no differentiation. Even the concept of the beginning, wrote from feeling and vision.
as well as the concept of the end, again sublimates itself in this circulation. There This movement can be represented as a systole and a diastole. This is a com-
is certainly a beginning of the potency in accordance with its inherent possibil- pletely involuntary movement that, once begun, makes itself from itself. The
ity, but this is not an actual beginning. An actual beginning is only one that recommencing, the re-ascending is systole, tension that reaches its acme in the
posits itself as not having being in relationship to that which should actually be. third potency. The retreat to the first potency is diastole, slackening, upon which a
But that which could be the beginning in this movement does not discern itself new contraction immediately follows. Hence, this is the first pulse, the beginning
as the beginning and makes an equal claim with the other principles to be that of that alternating movement that goes through the entirety of visible nature, of
which has being. A true beginning is one that does not always begin again but the eternal contraction and the eternal re-expansion, of the universal ebb and flow.
persists. A true beginning is that which is the ground of a steady progression, not Visible nature, in particular and as a whole, is an allegory of this perpet-
of an alternating advancing and retreating movement. Likewise, there is only a ually advancing and retreating movement. The tree, for example, constantly
veritable end in which a being persists that does not need to retreat from itself drives from the root to the fruit, and when it has arrived at the pinnacle, it again
back to the beginning. Hence, we [230] can also explain this first blind life as sheds everything and retreats to the state of fruitlessness, and makes itself back
one that can find neither its beginning nor its end. In this respect we can say that into a root, only in order again to ascend. The entire activity of plants concerns
it is without (veritable) beginning and without (veritable) end. the production of seed, only in order again to start over from the beginning and
Since it did not begin sometime but began since all eternity in order never through a new developmental process to produce again only seed and to begin
(veritably) to end, and ended since all eternity, in order always to begin again, it again. Yet all of visible nature appears unable to attain settledness and seems to
is clear that that first nature was since all eternity and hence, equiprimordially a transmute tirelessly in a similar circle. One generation comes, the other goes.
movement circulating within itself, and that this is its true, living concept. Nature goes to the trouble to develop qualities, aspects, works, and talents to
These are the forces of that inner life that incessantly gives birth to itself their pinnacle, only again to bury them for centuries in oblivion, and then start
and again consumes itself that the person must intimate, not without terror, as anew, perhaps in a new species, but certainly only to attain again the same peak.
what is concealed in everything, even though it is now covered up and from the Yet this first being never comes to Being since only together do the three
outside has adopted peaceful qualities. Through that constant retreat to the be- potencies fulfill the concept of the divine nature, and only that this nature is so
ginning and the eternal recommencement, it makes itself into substance in the is necessary. Since there is consequently an unremitting urge to be and since it
real sense of the word (id quod substat), into the always abiding. It is the con- cannot be, it comes to a standstill in [232] desire, as an unremitting striving, an
stant inner mechanism and clockwork, time, eternally commencing, eternally eternally insatiable obsession [Sucht] 21 with Being. The ancient saying is appro-
becoming, always devouring itself and always again giving birth to itself. priate regarding this: Nature strives for itself and does not find itself (quterit se
The antithesis eternally produces itself, in order always again to be con- natura, non invenit).
sumed by the unity, and the antithesis is eternally consumed by the unity in or- Were life to remain at a standstill here, it would be nothing other than an
der always to revive itself anew. This is the sanctuary (crri,a), 18 the hearth of eternal exhaling and inhaling, a constant interchange between life and death,
the life that continually incinerates itself and again rejuvenates itself from the
ash. This is the tireless fire (IitmitpArrov wiTip) through whose quenching, as iv. O Tpox0s "-As 'yEvEcrEcus, James 3: 6 [the wheel of genesis].

20 21
 that is, not a true existence but only an eternal drive and zeal to be, without ac- sistible drive and insensate movement. So long as it is not placed outside of this
tual Being. involuntary movement, there is no freedom thinkable within it. It cannot resist
It is clear that the life could never come to an actual existence by virtue of this movement by itself. Another movement, something incontestably higher,
the simple necessity of the divine [nature] 24 and hence, certainly not by virtue can only withdraw it from it. And since that involuntary movement is based on
of necessity in general. the necessity of the reciprocal inexistence, it cannot be free of this movement
How or by virtue of what was the life redeemed from this annular drive except when a cision, a confrontation, occurs, without it having anything to do
and led into freedom? with it. The possibility is then given to it either to accept this cision and thereby
Since each of the three principles has an equal claim to be that which has redeem itself from the annular drive or not to accept it and thereby again fall
being, the contradiction cannot be resolved through one of the principles some- prey to that blind obsession and craving.
how becoming that which has being at the cost of the others. But since the Therefore, in any case, its liberation and deliverance can only come
contradiction can also not remain, and since it does so because each of the prin- through an Other that is outside of it and wholly independent of it and exalted
ciples wants to be that which has being for itself: thus no other solution is above it. Since it ought therefore to acknowledge itself as mere Being and not
thinkable other than that they all communally and voluntarily (then by what as having being before that other, this is not possible without recognizing at the
would they be coerced?) sacrifice being that which has being and hence, debase same time its truly having being in that Other.
themselves into simple Being. For thereby that equivalence (equipollence) au-
tomatically terminates that did not refer to its essence or its particular nature
(by virtue of which they form more of a gradation), but only such that each of 2) FREEDOM IN THE BEING OF GOD
them was driven by nature in the same fashion to be that which has being. As
long as this necessity continues, they must all strive to be in one and the same The concept of the spirit without nature = the highest concept of the Godhead
locus, namely, in the locus of that which has being and hence, so to speak, to be
in a single point. A reciprocal inexistence [Inexistenz] is demanded because [234] Naturally, the next object for consideration concerns what kind of
they are incompatible and when one has being, then the others must be with- Other this will be.
out being.' Hence, this necessity can only terminate if all of the potencies have First and foremost, it is obvious that the Other cannot be posited by that
sacrificed, in the same fashion, being that which has being. When one of them eternally commencing nature in a continuous series (in actu continuo, so to
has being, then all of the potencies, in accordance with their nature, must strive speak) as a potency that belongs to it. Rather, it is outside and above all potency,
to be the same. As soon as this necessity terminates, a confrontation becomes a lack of potency in itself. In the same way, it cannot again, as it was before, be
possible, that is, that each of them enters into its potency. [233] Space opens up obsession, desire, or nature; or else this could not help here. Rather it must be
and that blind necessity of reciprocal inexistence metamorphosizes into the re- free of all desire, completely without obsession and nature.
lationship of a free belonging together. But precisely because of this, it cannot be something necessarily actual.
By itself this is certainly illuminating enough. Yet a question emerges: And since we do not yet know of anything freely actual, it can in no way be
How is it possible that all of the potencies communally sacrifice being that something actual. And it is certainly not something that is not actual. It is
which has being? therefore that which in itself neither has being nor does not have being. Rather,
In itself it is clear that nothing whatsoever can give up having being ex- it is exclusively the eternal freedom to be.
cept before something higher. Just as long as the human heart feels, so to speak, There is a univocity in all of the higher and finer teaching that the high-
entitled to selfish desire until its yearning, its craving, that inner void that de- est is exclusively above all Being. The feeling is present in all of us that neces-
vours it, is not fulfilled by a higher good and just as the soul only settles and sity follows from all existence as its grim fate. The only thing actual or the only
stills itself when it acknowledges something higher than itself by which it is thing that strives to be actual is precisely thereby in contradiction and contra-
made exuberantly blissful, so too can the blind obsession and craving of the first diction is the cause of all necessity. An inner feeling tells us that the true, eter-
[nature] 26 only grow silent before something higher, before which it happily nal, freedom only dwells above Being.
) and voluntarily acknowledges itself as mere Being, as not having being. For most people, because they have never felt that freedom, to be that
Furthermore, that renunciation and subsidence into Being should be vol- which has being or a subject seems the highest, although this word "subject"
untary. But until now there has been nothing in that first nature except irre- already suggests that everything that only has being, insofar as it is this,
acknowledges something higher above itself. Therefore they ask: What then the most violent movement of all forces, the proper goal is always the will that
could be thought above all Being, or what is it that neither has being nor does wills nothing.
not have being? And they answer themselves modestly: nothing. Every creature, especially every person, actually only strives toward [236] 1
It certainly is nothing, but in the sense that the pure Godhead is nothing the state of no conation [das Nichtwollen].' This is not just done by the person'
and that as a spiritually pondering poet expressed it: who withdraws from all coveted things, but, albeit unwittingly, by the one who
abandons themselves to all of their desires, since this person too only desires the
state in which they have nothing more to will, even though this flees from them
Die zarte Gottheit ist das Nichts and Ubernichts, and the more zealously they follow it, the farther it distances itself from them.'
Wer nichts in allem sieht, Mensch glaube, dieser siehts. One usually says that the human will is for the Kingdom of Heaven and
The gentle Godhead is nothing and beyond nothing this is true if by this will the pure, naked, simple will is understood. Then the
Who sees nothing in all things, believe me, sees this.' person who would be transposed into their pure conation would alone be free
of all nature.
Hence, that which is without nature, which the eternal nature desires, is
[235] The Godhead is nothing because nothing can come toward it in a way not a being and does not have being, although it is also not the opposite. Rather
distinct from its being [ Wesen] and, again, it is above all nothingness because it it is eternal freedom, the pure will, but not the will to something, such as the
itself is everything. will to reveal itself, but rather the pure will without obsession and craving, the
It certainly is nothing, but in the way that pure freedom is nothing. It is will insofar as it actually does not will. We have expressed the Highest else-
like the will that wills nothing, that desires no object, for which all things are where as pure equivalence (indifference) that is nothing yet everything. It is
equal and is therefore moved by none of them. Such a will is nothing and nothing, just like the pure happiness that does not know itself, like the com-
everything. It is nothing insofar as it neither desires to become actual itself nor posed bliss that is entirely self-fulfilled and thinks of nothing, like the calm in-
wants any kind of actuality. It is everything because only from it as eternal free- teriority that does not look after itself and does not become aware of its not
dom comes all force and because it has all things under it, rules everything, and Being. It is the highest simplicity, not so much God itself, but the Godhead,
is ruled by nothing. which is hence, above God, in the way that some of the ancients already spoke
In general, the meaning of negation varies depending on whether it is re- of a Super-Godhead [Ubergottheit]. It is not divine nature or substance, but the
lated to the exterior or the interior. For the highest negation in the exterior devouring ferocity of purity that a person is able to approach only with an equal
sense must be one with the highest affirmation in the interior sense. That purity. Since all Being goes up in it as if in flames, it is necessarily unapproach-
which is everything in itself cannot precisely for this reason have at the same able to anyone still embroiled in Being.
time everything outside of itself Each thing has properties by which it is Everyone unanimously agrees that God, in accordance with its highest
known and comprehended and the more properties it has, the more compre- self; is pure spirit. But whether everyone has thought the full purity and feroc-
hensible it is. That which is greatest is round and without properties. Taste, or, ity of this thought can be doubted.
the gift of differentiation, finds nothing tasteful in the sublime, just as it finds Indeed, the earlier theologians explicitly teach that by the expression
little to taste in water that is scooped from the spring. Hence, in a profound "spirit," God is not posited in a special class or category of being, in something
play on words, an ancient German writer calls that will poor that, because it it- like the so-called "pure spirits," nor is God posited as if God were only spirit, in
self is enough, has nothing that it can want. contrast to the things of nature. God [237] is beyond all spirits. God is the most
Freedom or the will, insofar as it does not will anything actual, is the af- spiritual spirit, pure, inscrutable breath,' the spirit of all spirit, so to speak. Up
firmative concept of absolute eternity. We can only imagine this as that which to this point, the spirituality of God coincides with the simplicity of its being.
exceeds all time, as eternal immovabily. Everything is aimed at this, every- According to the theologians own teachings, not only is no kind of op-
thing yearns for this. All movement has only eternal immovability as its goal position compatible with this simplicity, but not even once can anything what-
and all time, even that eternal time, is nothing but the constant obsession with soever that is different than its being be ascribed to the Godhead.
eternity According to a strict understanding of this doctrine, one cannot say of
Everything only rests when it has found its proper being, its support and the Godhead that it is good since this sounds as if the "good" were supple-
continuance, in the will that wills nothing. In the greatest restlessness of life, in menting its Being as something distinct. But the good is its Being per se. It is

24 25
essentially good and not so much something good as the Good itself Likewise: t he earliest times. Or illuminated by the fact that others believed that they had
God is not actually eternal, but is itself its eternity. No activity distinct from the to dispute that unity of essence and Being even though again it was taught with
Godhead's being can be ascribed to it. Such activity would be to a being as pos- complete strictness and at the same time with the consequence that the God-
sibility is to actuality. But there is nothing potential in God. God is pure actus. head neither has being nor does not have being. They did this without intimat-
Strictly speaking, one cannot then call the Godhead "conscious," since this ing that they disputed the primordial foundation of the spirituality of God and
would presuppose a differentiation between itself and that of which it is con- without knowing that this is the most ancient doctrine: God is the superactual,
scious because the Godhead is a wholly pure consciousness and is nothing beyond that which has being [das Uberseyende] (TO iyrrEpOv), therefore a sub-
whatsoever and everything is wrapped up in its being. According to this doc- limity beyond Being and Not-being.'
trine, one cannot precisely call the Godhead willing because the Godhead is the
will, pure freedom itself, although precisely for this reason the Godhead can
also not be called the not-willing. Finally, that primordial principle, displeasing 3) THE CONNECTION OF WHAT IS NECESSARY IN GOD WITH
only to the totally ignorant, also follows from this doctrine, namely, that the WHAT IS FREE OR FREEDOM
Godhead, in itself, neither is nor is not; or in another expression, albeit not
quite as good, namely, that the Godhead is as well as is not. It is not in such a a) the immediate effect of what is higher in God (offreedom)
way that Being would befit it as something differentiated from its being, since on what is necessary in, or the nature of God—
it is itself its Being and yet Being cannot be denied to it precisely because in it Descent of the eternal nature to the All
Being is the being [Wesen] itself.
Since therefore according to the so-called ontological proof it should fol- But now in order to turn back to the context of the investigation, it is ev-
low from this unity of Being and essence that God is a necessarily existing ident from these remarks that the concept of that which in [239] itself neither
essence, then that idea was not properly understood. Since the concept of hav- has being nor does not have being, that state without nature, that we posit out-
ing being includes a differentiation [238] from Being in it, a distinction that is side and above the eternal nature, is one and the same with the concept that
denied in regard to the Godhead, and, according to the ancient saying, what is was always contemplated as the highest concept of the Godhead.
Being itself, has no Being (Ejus quod est Esse, nullum est Esse). By virtue of the simple necessity of its nature (this is proven), actual ex-
God, in accordance with its highest self, is not a necessarily actual istence never occurs either in God itself or outside of God. Therefore, we had
essence, but the eternal freedom to be. to acknowledge still something else outside and beyond that necessity of God
But it is equally obvious how that unity of essence and Being (that pre- that in the three potencies constitutes eternal nature. This Other is eternal free-
sents itself here spontaneously as the expression of the highest spirituality) in dom, pure conation itself. Or expressed otherwise: we had to acknowledge that
no way exhausts the full concept of the living God. Science can be as little sat- in the actual, living God.is a unity of necessity and freedom.
isfied as feeling with a God who is not because it is Being itself, who is not vi- It is first incumbent upon us to present how the contradiction is re-
tal because it is life itself, who is not conscious because it is pure consciousness deemed by that which is higher, how the blind being that is in conflict with it-
itself. Both demand a God who is there in a particular way that is differentiated self could be delivered from necessity.
from its being, who is not, in accordance with its being, knowledge, but who First of all, the possibility of coming to be is already given to it by that
knows something explicitly and in particular; a God whose activity is not which is higher since, on the one hand, it can only give up being that which has
wrapped up in its essence, but who, in deed, namely, in a way distinguishable being before something higher and, on the other hand, precisely that which has
from its essence, acts. being has no Being and therefore can only be that which has being relatively,
Certainly this remark puts us in danger of grasping in advance that which that is, in such a way that an Other is a Being to it. Since although in itself it
should only be evident through a gradual unfolding. Only this is noted so far: neither has being nor does not have being, it can only stand against everything
how completely in recent times the thread of the spiritual and doctrinal tradi- else as having being. This is not to say that it is sublimated as something that in
tion has been torn off; what ignorance of concepts which had long been avail- itself neither is nor is not, but that it has being as that which neither has being
able had disseminated, illuminated by the fact that some people were nor does not have being."
persecuted because they asserted that, in accordance with the highest concept, But in that eternally commencing life there lies the wish to escape from
Being cannot be ascribed to the Godhead, even though this was taught since the involuntary movement and from the distress of pining. And through its

2(, 27
simple presence, without any movement (since it is still pure conation itself), The cause of this crisis is without the conation or doing of the most com-
that which is higher, magically, so to speak, rouses in that life the yearning for pletely pure being: since eternal nature first spots that against which it becomes
freedom. The obsession [Sucht] abates into yearning [Sehnsucht], wild desire Being, the merely expressible,' and can therefore simultaneously give up, in all
turns into a yearning to ally itself, as if it were its own true or highest self, with its forces, the expressing potency, being that which has being;' and because this
the will that wills nothing, with eternal freedom. awakens within it the yearning to escape the eternal annular drive and to reach
Yearning. nature has no relation to that pure spirit except that pure spirit continuance and rest; and furthermore because the highest is the standard by
is the freedom to be and in as much as it, in comparison with all else, [240] has which the lower principle knows its lowliness and the higher principle knows
being (TO 'ON). In contrast, yearning nature has in itself the possibility to come its dignity. But yearning turns the mere beginning and only the first inner ef-
to Being, to subject (understood in the authentic meaning of the word), to the fort (nisus) into the cision. Only when the relationship to the highest actually
stuff of actualization, so to speak, for that pure spirit. emerges into being on account of this inner beginning is the cision first con-
But only here one finds the following distinction. Nature is capable of the firmed; and it first becomes abiding only when eternal nature, placed into free-
immediate relationship to the incomprehensible spirit only by virtue of that dom by the confirmed cision itself, is able to decide. And now, by virtue of an
which is spirit within it, is free, and is elevated in the same way over that which eternal wanting or decision, it eternally and inseparably allies itself to the high-
does not have being (A = B) and that which has being (A 2 ). Since only what is est as its immediate subject and becomes its unwavering Being, its abiding sub-
itself free from all antithesis can draw nigh to that which is without contradic- stratum. Hence, in itself, nature does not become less lively or have less being.
tion. Now this relationship (the A 3 ) in its turn does not connect with the low- Rather, it is because it is first elevated to true, blessed, ordered life that it be-
est (A = B) immediately but rather through the mediate (A 2 ). Therefore, in comes Being with respect to the highest.
order to come into relationship with that which is beyond having being [das For each matter only flourishes when it is in its place. The lower, when it
Uberseyende], eternal nature must take on that state within itself in which what sets the higher free, also becomes free from it and so takes on its own due in-
is free in it elevates itself above its Other and becomes the immediate subject of dependence. In turn, the higher can now unfold freely because it elevates itself
an in itself unfathomable spirit. But each of the other two principles establishes above the lower and occupies the place befitting to it.
itself in its appropriate place in such a way that the first potency occupies the The cision is primarily based on the relationship of that steadfast but in-
lowest place, the second the middle place, and the third the highest place. expressible unity in which each potency, which should be that which has being,
This is the natural effect of all yearning, namely, that what is similar to that is, that which should be the same and therefore, so to speak, should be in
the higher elevates itself but that what is less similar to it, that on account of one place and one point, is transformed into the relationship of a totality.
which its elevation was inhibited, is cast down and lowered into the depths. Therefore, that blind, necessary [242] being which strove to be the one and
Only in view of the highest does each principle get to know the locus that be- which nonetheless could not be it, is debased to the All.
fits it; the standard is only in the highest. Nothing lower, even a being receptive Therefore, that dark, inscrutable, and inexpressible being becomes the All
to the highest, can partake in the highest without a cision in itself, without a si- in a subjugation and cision that does not happen once and for all, but in a mo-
multaneous debasement of the lower part and a heightening of the part that is ment that is eternally, always, and still happening.
determined by nature to be in an immediate relationship with the highest. The But in order to speak of particulars, the highest potency of eternal nature,
lower part, because it is incapable by itself of coming into a relationship with what within__ it is free and akin to spirit (A 3), is elevated to the immediate sub-
the highest, can come into a dominant conjunction with it only insofar as it sets ject of the pure Godhead. But the two other potencies, which equally were pri-
it free within itself. This cision, this inner divergence, the work of true yearn- mordial beginnings, become only a condition and, so to speak, the way to this
ing, is the first condition of every rapport with the divine. highest potency (to the A 3 ) and in as much were something distinct from the
This entrance of yearning into the eternal nature marks a new moment highest. Through their sinking and because the higher climbs up, they take root
to which we must hold fast in our reflection. [241] This is that moment that in their freedom and their independence as the foundation and, so to speak,
the intimating primal world marked as the splitting apart of the world-egg' prime matter of everything distinct from the divine subject, as the refuge and
by which they hinted at that closed wheel, that inscrutable movement that place to live (mayon, Psalm 90:1) 36 for creatures away from eternity, as what is
could never be held fast; that moment in which the earthly and the heavenly eternally in the middle between God and created beings. On the other hand,
first divided. they take root as the divine exterior, as what is first visible of God, as that glory
 and magnificence with which the divine subject (A 3 ), and mediately the invis- in the succession of ages. Nature is an abyss of the past. This is what is oldest in
ible Godhead itself, first covers itself from creatures. nature, the deepest of what remains if everything accidental and everything
That creatures could not live in the pure fire of the spirit and that they that has become is removed. This is precisely that constant tendency to restrict
have a passive base with respect to it which is nonetheless, from within, full of the being and to place it in darkness.
force and life, is the inheritance of creatures from eternity. It is necessary to The true primordial and fundamental force of all things corporeal is the
think such an originary prime matter that is independent, in a certain respect, attracting being that grants a thing form, that delimits it in a place, that incar-
from God. Otherwise all creatures would have emanated from or have been nates that which in itself is spiritual and incomprehensible. Indeed, the spiritual
created out of the being of the pure Godhead. This is an inadmissible view both and the incomprehensible constantly contradicts the thing and announces itself
in itself and because it sublimates all of the freedom of creatures in relation to as an evaporating spiritua zing being, hostile to all limits. Yet it appears every-
God. This prime matter must be conceived not as having been since eternity, where [244] only as something coming to the fore out of an originary negation
but rather only as having become so in the eternal movement through subjuga- in respect to which that attractive force comes to the fore as its mooring, as its
tion and debasement (as we have just shown). In this way, if the progression has actual ground.
been correctly comprehended, the difficulties that resist the representation of That tendency (to restrict the being) is even recognizable in customary
eternal matter in other systems in which the succession of ideas is lost disappear expressions such as: "Nature eludes the eye and conceals her secrets," or "Only
straight away. when pressed by a higher power does she discharge, from an originary conceal-
[243] But although, with respect to the highest (A 3 ), both potencies are ment, what will be."' In point of fact, everything in nature becomes only
only matter and substratum, both initial potencies still take on by themselves through development, that is, through the constant contradiction of a
the relationship befitting them. The first potency (the eternal force of nega1io_01 swathing, contracting force. Left to itself; nature would still lead everything
becomes the lowest. The opposite (in which the spirit is manifest and the back into that state of utter negation.
negating force is repressed), however, becomes the higher, respectively. Considered in itself, Nature is like Penia showing up at Zeus's feast.
From the outside, Penia was the picture of povertyand extreme need. On the
b) the organic relationship of the three principles inside, she shut away divine plenitude which she could not reveal until she had
(in what is necessary of God) wed Wealth, Excess himself, that effusively and inexhaustibly garrulous being
in its subordination under the purely divine or the free (A2 ). Even then, however, the child wrested from her womb appears under the
form and, so to speak, press, of that originary negation. It was the bastard child
(a) the first potency as possible substratum for (external) nature of Need and Excess.'
In accord with its ground, therefore, nature comes out of what is blind,
It is indeed befitting the matter at hand that precisely what seemed to be dark, and unspeakable in God. Nature is the first, the beginning in what is nec-
the negation of all revelation, that force of God by which God denied itself and essary of God. The attracting force, the mother and receptacle' of all visible
shut itself away—that precisely this is laid down as the ground of all revelation things, is eternal force and might itself; which, when set forth, is seen in the
and is now henceforward actually confirmed as the eternal beginning, as the works of God. _ For
creation. Naturenature
is not only _ belongs
_ nly
o to what is nec-
first echelon and substratum of immortal life. essaryin God and, strictly speaking, God is called God only in accordance with
The deepest, and therefore the lowest, that is posited out of the unspeak- its freedom. And, furthermore, nature is only a part, a potency, of this necessity.
able and becomes manifest, is that force of the beginning that draws the being But God can only be called the whole and not even this after it has become the
to or into itself and pushes it back into concealment. The original text of the All out of the One and, so to speak, come to pass from the Godhead.
Scripture names heaven and earth "the expansion of divine might." This meant The systems that want to explain the origin of things as descending from
that the entirety of the visible world once lay in that negation and was only above almost necessarily come to the thought that the emanations of the high-
lifted out of it through a later development. But precisely because of this, the est primordial force sometime or other reach their extremity [245] below which
world still always lays in that negation. That original negation is still the there is nothing. This extremity can itself be called only a shadow of the being,
mother and wet-nurse of the entire world that is visible to us. a minimum of reality, only to some extent still having being, but not really. This
Therefore, that force of the beginning posited in the expressible and ex- is the meaning of non-being according to the Neo-Platonists, who no longer
terior is the primordial seed of visible nature, out of which nature was unfolded understood Plato's real meaning of it. We, following the opposite direction, also

30 31
 recognize an extremity, below which there is nothing, but it is for us not some- Therefore, if this other principle is, then the first principle must also abide so
thing ultimate, but something primary, out of which all things begin, an eternal that there is something that it could unlock and liberate. And then that rela-
beginning, not a mere feebleness or lack in the being, but active negation. tionship of an initially excluding equivalence transforms itself into the rela-
Nature attains expressibility in that great decision not merely insofar as it tionship of a necessary concatenation. For if there is one, then, and precisely on
enters into its own potency, but also insofar as nature's inner contradiction, account of this, there is also the Other.
something that until now had not been noticed because we always had the Were there not a potency of negation, then there would be no reason that
whole in mind, is soothed within nature itself solely because of the relationship the affirming, unlocking potency would be. But, on the other hand, the former
into which it now enters. potency only comes to continuance because of the latter. Now, the negating
For that being, repressed by the negating force, is not silent and dead to force can quietly be active and repress the being all of the time. Antecedently
the degree that we seemed to assume until now. It is insensitive to itself, but (antecedenter), that which has being is still fettered. Only subsequently, through
confined and seized by the attracting force, it feels itself as a spiritual, affirming a higher potency, is it liberated. It is not a contradiction that what, in an an-
being and the more it has been brought into confinement, the more powerfully, tecedent moment, was confined may become, in a following moment, free.
in the measure of its nature, that it presses out of it. But the negating force does Moreover, it must have been confined in order to be able to be liberated. The
not let up. If it could let up, then everything would retreat, for it is the force of confining_force is not sublimated on account of this but is rather confirmed
the beginning. when another 12471 force following it places the confined force in freedom. A
Therefore, that first potency is not merely entangled in that general state Before and an After first emerge here, an actual articulation and thereby a
of contradiction in which we have glimpsed the whole, but the contradiction is soothing. The attracting or indrawing force first feels itself as the force of the
also within the first potency itself. When the first potency is considered in it- beginning when it is overwhelmed by its subsequent principle. And the now
self, the ground of a rotatory movement lies in it. It feels the conflicting being liberated principle first knows the attracting principle as its necessary precedent
within it but yet cannot give birth to it since the first potency is still equipotent (Prius), as its first ground and support. It loves it as the condition, as the vessel,
in relation to the conflicting being. The law of the first potency is to abide, to so to speak, out of which it arises.
moor the spiritual again and again and thus preserve the ground of the eternal Something similar that, in the final analysis, is actually the same as it,
progression. But the harder it pulls in order to bring the being into the depths, might serve as an elucidation of this relationship. Long ago it was attempted to
the more the being fights against it in the way that all expansive nature strives present matter as the product of two forces. These were the same forces that
ever more violently to expand the more it has been compressed. hitherto appeared to us as the primordial forces of all life: the attractive and the
[246] Hence, since that first potency unites within it conflicting forces, of expansive. But it was never conceivable how, given that the two forces are
which one always craves the outside and of which the other is inwardly re- equipotent (of the same potency), something graspable and something main-
strained, its life is_a life of loathing and anxiety' since it does know whether to taining continuance could come from their clash. For if one may now assume
turn inward or outward and in this fashion falls prey to an arbitrary, revolving that the two forces are equally strong or that one prevails over the other, then,
motion. according to the former supposition, they would have to sublimate each other
But everything longs for unwavering Being. Nothing wants to persist in reciprocally (like equal weights on a lever), or the stronger would have to sub-
contradiction. This is also true of that potency of the beginning. But it cannot limate the weaker. In the former case, there would be nothing perceptible re-
come out of the contradiction by itself since it is its nature to be in contradic- maining anywhere. In the latter case, the stronger force with its surplus would
tion. Only one thing could be a help to it, namely, if it would enter out of that alone be left, without something corporeal having come into being. There is no
alternating, mutually excluding relationship with the higher principle (the A 2 ) way to change this if one does not want to accept here a prior and posterior (a
and enter into an organic relationship\ with it This is impossible in that initial Prius and Posterius, a distinction of potency) between the forces. But if the state
equivalence since both potencies, so to speak, want to be in a single point be- of the swathing, of the being engulfed of the expansive force by the attracting
cause both make the same claim to be that which has being. But if the negating force is the prior, which is then, in a subsequent fashion, overwhelmed by an-
/ principle (A = B) only knows itself as a potency of the being and thereby makes other potency that is independent of the first potency: then, for the first time,
space for the other principle opposed to it (the A2 ), then the opposed principle because each force stays in its Being and essence, a product must come forth
can become helpful to it and become its liberator from contradiction since the that, like matter, stands between total restriction and complete expansion,
opposed principle is, in accordance with its nature, unlocking and liberating. stopped, so to speak, in the middle.

32 33
 Hence,( that potency of the beginning; which, with regard to itself; is wa- pernal influences are immediate or mediate discharges of the spiritual world
' vering and without continuance, is first brought to continuance through the or- whose being alone is the animating breath of all of nature. Without this breath,
ganic relationship to the higher potency. But this organic relationship itself is nature would soon get into a reverse motion and thereby break down. In the
[248] first posited through the cision, since the originary One becomes All, and end, it would again fall prey to that originary contradiction and initial incon-
each one of the principles enters into its own potency, into the relationship ap- stancy out of which it was posited only through the organic relationship to the
propriate to its particular nature. spiritual world.
Hence, that other principle, the savior and liberator of nature, so to It is a general belief that the spiritual world is nearer to the Godhead
speak, must, in any case, be outside and above this nature and thereby comport than is nature. As the dying Socrates says that he is going to God, the same ex-
to it as the spiritual comports to the corporeal; yet only as something spiritual pression is still used with regard to the piety of the pious. This may be founded
to which nature is the next echelon and that is again capable of an immediate on the following. That whole life that we described previously is only the road to
relationship to it. God, the eternal movement of which nature is the beginning. It is only, in ac-
Vulgar language looks upon the earth as the place where the essential is cord with the intention, a progressing actualization of the highest where each
suppressed and fettered and calls the region where it is free and lives in its own subsequent level is nearer to the pure Godhead than the earlier. To this extent
essentiality "heaven." Therefore, if that potency of the beginning, lowered down the transition of the person to the spiritual world can be called a "Going to
to Being and brought to continuance, is the primordial seed of future, visible God," presupposing that one has walked the road of life (which is hence, so
nature, then we will not err if we assert that the higher potency, in which, in- named) and not that, because of one's own guilt, one has inverted the direction
versely, the being is manifest and the negating force is concealed, if lowered and changed from the ascending to the descending.
down to Being, is nothing other than the primordial stuff of pure supernal es- It is customary to call the spiritual world, in contrast to nature, eternity.
sentiality and the basis and the, so to speak, prime matter of the future spirit Nature is eternal yet still commencing and it retains the nature of the initializ-
world. For even that higher potency, which, with respect to the lesser potency, ing. But that which has being in itself (A') is of the nature of the eternal. Be-
is like pure spirit and life, nay, like the divulger of all its wonders, can still, with ing begotten doesifia dict the nature of eternity because just as only the
-

respect to a higher potency, sink and become matter and take on passive quali- commencing can beget, the eternal is only begotten.
ties. As strange as the expression may sound that the spirit world has matter, a But how does this higher potency have continuance with regard to itself?
basis upon which it rests, nothing can truly exit outside of God that was not Is [250] there not an opposition within it and thereby a ground for contradic-
created out of a substratum distinct from God's highest self tion and for that ill-fated movement?
We have assumed the higher potency as a principle in which the spiri-
(13) the second potency as possible substratum of the spirit world ( tual turns toward the outside and in which the dark primordial force is
negated and _ inwardly posited. Just a in the potency of the beginning the ex-
The highest research, as well as daily, recurring observation, convinces pansivelteuag_s_trives to get away_ from, negation, so does the darkening pri-
that there are supernal influences on account of which all earthly life exists and mordial force in the higher potency. The second potency is an independent,
by which it is ruled and that without these influences there would soon emerge separate being for itself In it lies the material to be unfolded into its own
a stoppage, a reverse movement of all life. Air, water, and all of the elements are world. But its law is to repress the negating primordial power. Therefore, a
only uncomprehending tools whose collective order and attunement-as-one conflict of directions is necessary to it. Even it, in regard to itself, falls prey to
[Ins-Eins-Stimmung] must be supported solely by a cause or primordial _ matter that swirling movement that seems everywhere to be the commencement and
[Ur-Sache] 41 that is distinct from the elements and elevated above them. This is the first appearance of the creative forces.
what the Ancients called the fifth essentiality [249] The extent to which the Even this potency cannot help itself Even it can only be helped by a
subordinate forces, in reference to themselves, are disabled, is illuminated by higher potency. But in that first, excluding striving where each of the potencies
those years of a generally malformed harvest which emerge without particular wanted to be that which has being for itself, it did not know a relationship to
prior events in external nature and without unusual air, heat, rain, and weather. something else outside of itself. Hence, int he_great cis*, even it was not
But these supernal influences, which, so to speak, are the continual medicine of merely disentangled from the general contradiction, but was liberated from the
our earth and from which life and health originates, come in the end, albeit interior and brought to continuance. For in entering its appropriate locus, it
through many intermediaries, from that primordial source of all life. These su- knows itself only as a potency and knows a higher potency above it. It becomes

34 35
Being in relationship to this higher potency so that this higher potency can be (y) the third potency = the universal soul or the link
active in it as in its own matter or immediate element. While it always remains, between God and the world
with respect to itself; what it is, namely, an eternal Yes that holds the negating
force with it and conceals it, it is not a contradiction if that higher potency (A 3 ) [252] Hence, just as the first potency keeps its continuance only through
liberates the negating force in the second potency and unfolds it with level- its organic relationship with the second potency, the second potency does like-
headedness and intention into another world. For its _ nature is just _ to be the wise only through the same relationship to the third. But the third potency
originary affirmative principle that confines the dark primordial force. It is only cannot elevate itself by itself; it cannot attain actus as what it is (as the highest
demanded that it be the ground or beginning of the second potency: but what potency): hence, the whole sinks back into itself and into a lack of continuance
happens subsequently does not sublimate that first ground. Rather, it confirms unless the third is helped so that it can dwell freely outside the antithesis in its
it because it presupposes it. own purity as the quiet and peaceful unity.
As long as that spiritual being conflicted with the negating primordial But this help from the potency cannot come to the being that appeared
force, it was, against its nature, which is of the discharging, outpouring type, co- from below and out of necessity because the helping potency itself belonged to
erced to be inwardly active and hence, it could [251] also not help the nature that eternal nature. For the eternal nature attained its summit in that being, in
that was in need of its help. Now, because the affirmative being is placed in that child of eternity that the ceaselessly restless time wanted to bear right
freedom with respect to the negating force through a higher potency, the spir- from the beginning in order to elevate itself to eternity by means of itself.
itual world can discharge freely and be active downwardly or in nature. In such Hence, the boundary between nature and freedom, between the natural and
a way the most consummate harmony finally emerges, such that the third is to the supernatural, is here. If there were nothing outside that blind necessity,
the second precisely what the second is to the first. The whole is animated, as then life would remain in the dark, chaotic state of an eternal and hence never
with a single breath, first through the third. commencing movement, of an eternal and hence neverending movement. But
But this third, with regard to itself, is also incapable of continuance. For in view of eternal freedom, the summit of nature is also elevated to freedom
so long as blind necessity ruled, because there was no confrontation of forces, and with it all the other forces simultaneously come to continuance and being
that pure, nonantithetical being (A 3 ) could only be in conflict with whatever in that each force enters into its appropriate place. Hence, each partakes in the
else had being and had to turn back against them as a consuming fire. Just as higher influence of which it is in foremost need, although indirectly all partake
antithesis excluded unity, unity excluded antithesis. But precisely thereby the in the divine.
ground was given to that alternating movement, to that continuous revivifica- If the first ground of nature is known in that first potency, by virtue of
tion of the antithesis, to that continuous recommencement, since neither unity which the necessary being locked itself up within itself and denied itself exter-
nor antithesis should alone be, but rather unity as well as antithesis. nally, and if the spiritual world is known in the second potency which stands
If the unity (A 3 ) could elevate itself and be outside the antithesis, then opposed to the first potency, then we cannot be in doubt concerning the mean-
the antithesis could be outside the unity and there was no contradiction. But ing of the third potency. It is that universal soul by which the cosmos is en-
this was impossible in that initial equipollence and state of non-divorce' of souled, the soul which through the immediate relationship to the Godhead is
the principles. Hence, since that principle that, in accordance with its being, now levelheaded and in control of itself. It is the eternal link between nature
is free but was born from necessity, could not tear itself loose from the sub- and the spiritual world as well as between the world and God. It is the imme-
ordinate principle, and since the free, living progress from the lower to the diate tool through which alone God is active in nature and the spiritual world.
higher and from the higher to the highest was inhibited, each principle that [253] Hence, that first wild fire is here calmed for the first time into
could not proceed, had to react. Thereby a backward process emerges that, as peaceful material, which is nonetheless perhaps determined to be taken up
always, ended with the consumption (by fire) of the previous idols.' This is again in the succession and posited into a still higher circulation of life. The
like the spontaneous combustion that occurs in organic bodies if the subordi- One becomes the All with reference to a higher One and the inexpressible be-
nate becomes so intensified that its opposition to the higher and thereby the comes the expressible in relationship to what is for it the word. Out of the "be-
freedom of the latter is sublimated. But that life, because in itself it is im- fore" and "after," out of the excluding relationship, emerges an "at this same
mortal and because it can in no way be, always again revives itself anew out of point in time," a joint and intertwined continuing.' Indeed (what is not to be
the ashes, like a Phoenix, and hence, the eternal circle emerges that we have overlooked), what in the movement was the beginning or the first now becomes
previously described. the lowest; what was the middle becomes here the intermediary; what was the
 end and the third becomes the highest. Before this, there was no space and the cause the Godhead, having being from eternity, can never come to have being,
three principles were not apart from each other. Now, since they sacrifice being that primordial state is posited as an eternal past, as a past that did not first be-
one and the same (that which has being), space comes to be and there emerges come past, but which was the past from the primordial beginning and since all
a true "over" and a true "under." The reader, who must always keep their view eternity.
fixed on the progressing movement, will notice how here, for the first time, If we wanted to walk the road of historical, that is, scientific, presenta-
something figural comes to be out of the non-figural. In that wild movement tion,' then what God has within itself as its eternal past, must also be dealt
there was only one differentiation that we designated among corporeal things with as the first and actual precedent of God. The consideration that this prece-
as "right" and "left." There was only a single direction, that of the negating dent is God's eternal past ought not to prevent us from this. God itself knows
movement, which we name the direction among visible things from right to left this life as what has passed through God and therefore as what is the past in re-
since the movement was one that goes into itself or back to itself, that only rose lationship to God. That this life is what is eternally past is only the final deter-
in order to go back to itself anew, whereas the affirming movement only retreats mination that we add to the whole great concept whose knowledge is the prize
in order to rise again. This distinction becomes clear with regard to the latter of the whole investigation up to now
movement when the stretching (that is, positive) muscles are active in the ris- For we have not actually gained anything other than the complete con-
ing movement and the bending (that is, negative) muscles are active in the de- cept of the Godhead, which to or in itself neither has nor does not have being,
clining movement. But in the opposite movement, the inverse takes place. but which, on account of the eternal relationship to its nature, [255] eternally
While life so voluntarily accepted that organic relationship in itself and has being with respect to what is external to the Godhead. How should we have
became capable of the relationship to the highest, it sinks and actually becomes penetrated into this concept and grasped its plenitude if we had not gone to
Being for the pure Godhead. But this Godhead, which to or in itself neither work bit by bit, on the condition that in the end we show the whole, consum-
has being nor does not have being, comes to have being on account of the life mated concept in a single view?
that stands subordinate to it and in relationship with it. Now, the Godhead is It is well enough known how most, or all, who began this work before us,
supported by eternal nature and keeps over it not unlike the sun over the earth took a totally different point of departure. Everyone departs from the assump-
or the bird over its brood. Whoever should find this simile ignoble, need [254] tion that the Godhead is in itself an eternal stillness, totally engulfed in itself
only compare the expressive word at Genesis 1:2, in accordance with its funda- and wrapped up in itself and, at least so far, they are speaking intelligible words.
mental meaning.' Now, the Godhead recognizes in nature its own eternal na- But if they then venture forth further and say: that the Godhead, in itself with-
ture and is from now on, albeit free with respect to nature and neither bound to out nature, the eternal freedom, took on, through its revelation, nature, or that
it nor growing into it, nonetheless inseparable from it. a being emerged or that it posited something out of itself, and that with this
emergence or positing, life, movement, and revelation begins, then they are
This organism of potencies is posited "under the form of the past": speaking words incomprehensible to themselves or others. For how what is in
the requirement of an (eternally posited) past in God itself itself without nature and beyond all obsession and craving, took on nature, or
how what is first purely and fully wrapped up in itself can, in a subsequent mo-
Here it is to be expected that that the objection will break forth that has ment or act (for it cannot be thought otherwise), emerge out of itself without
long weighed heavily on the mind of the reader. Therefore, that state of contra- ground or occasioning cause, or how it could by itself sublimate or interrupt its
diction precedes the God that has being. God does not have being from all eternal unity and stillness: this simply cannot be rendered intelligible with any
eternity as God must and as general belief holds. Something, indeed, a chaotic kind of thought.
state, rife with contradiction, in the divine nature precedes the God that has be- It has already been proved in the foregoing that the highest and the
ing. It would certainly look bad for the entire ground of our doctrine if these purest concept of the Godhead, which is generally conceded and already has
consequences were permitted. Therefore, we answer: God can never come to been laid as the foundation of the ontological argument, namely, that that con-
have being. God has being from eternity. But what follows from this? Nothing cept, by virtue of which essence in it is also Being and Being also essence, nec-
but that the cision likewise happened from eternity; from eternity the necessary essarily leads to another concept, namely, that the Godhead in itself neither has
is subject to freedom. On account of the Godhead that has being, on account of being nor does not have being. But it is demanded, as with a single voice, that
that supernatural being of freedom, the primordial state of the contradiction, the Godhead be what has being. No God satisfies reason and feeling that is a
that wild fire, that life of obsession and craving, is posited as the past. But, be- pure It. They demand a God that is a He. 47

38 39
 How the pure Godhead, in itself neither having being nor not having I lence, it must be something that is not in itself what does not have being, but
being, can have being is the question of all the ages. The other question, how what comes not to have being in relationship to the highest.
the Godhead, not manifest in itself and engulfed in itself, can become mani- Therefore, from whence this mysterious Other? The attempts to shed
fest [256] and external, is fundamentally only another expression of the same light on this that were made from the earliest times are known. The oldest at-
question. tempt seems to be the doctrine that the prime matter of all things distinct from
Whatever answer human wit might devise, in no case ought it be one of God flowed out of the Godhead, although it is certain that much of what is now
the kind in which God, being that which has being [im seyend-Seyn], ceased to called the Doctrine of Emanation had a totally different sense. Although the
be that which in itself is beyond having being. There is no alternation and doctrine explains little and is itself not very explicable, it does have the advantage
change in God. God cannot become manifest from out of the concealed to the that it leaves the Godhead in its original stillness and freedom. It is simply an
extent that God ceased to be the concealed God. Nor can God have being from unfortunate crossover between this doctrine and the traditional doctrine that
being beyond having being to the extent that God ceased to be that which in it- God, before the beginning of things, set forth something from out of itself (ac-
self is beyond having being. Nor, like in the Galilean wedding when water was cording to some, even God itself) that contains the blueprint of future creation.
transformed into wine, can that highest spirituality and inscrutability of God Hence, that still Godhead, before it, so to speak, dislocated itself, was burdened
be transformed into comprehensibility and scrutability. in an equally originary way with the prime matter of the future world.
Therefore, all attempts that want to answer that question through some The representation still valid among the theologians is the closest to the
kind of movement in God itself, even if it were an eternal movement, are in truth: God is the dormant cause of the first foundation of what is distinct from
themselves inadmissible. For if there would be a necessary or a voluntary God not through an external action or movement, but through God's sheer
movement through which God merged into Being as distinct from essence, will. With this they have seen something of the truth, but the correct concept
then God, in the first case, would straight away in the primordial beginning is again distorted in this expression insofar as they differentiate the will from
not be free and not, as God is and must be, eternal freedom. In the other case, God. This will may be eternal (as some expressly teach) or it may not. In the
however, God would come into Being, because already active in the move- first case, it is not evident how this conation in pure eternity should be distin-
ment, that is, actual and having being, as what in itself neither has nor does guished from the Godhead itself, especially since those most full of spirit have
not have being. In both cases, therefore, God would not have being as pure always taught that everything that is in God is God itself and that the will of
conation, as eternal freedom, that is, not as what God is. But it is impossible God is not different than the conational God itself. In the other case, they as-
that anything could come to have being at the cost and by the, so to speak, loss sume an emergence into being within eternity, a transition from nonconation to
of that which it is. conation in the pure Godhead, [258] which is altogether unthinkable without
There is simply only one solution to this question. Since God in itself an intervening occasion.
neither has being nor does not have being, God cannot come to have being The truth is that God is itself and essentially a dormant will (which is
through a movement in itself, but must always remain something actually ex- pure freedom) and, if this is true, the Other must necessarily and immediately
isting, but which in itself is beyond having being. God cannot anywhere in it- also be. Following from this, the doctrine of the theologians could thus be con-
self be that which has being or becomes (in an eternal way). It can do so only veyed: God is the cause and primordial matter [Ur-Sache] of that Other—not
relationally with respect to an Other. And it can do this only insofar as this its efficient cause, but a still and essential cause. For the Other to be, nothing
Other is the Being to God or is as such that it can stand in a relationship of Be- but that Being engulfed in the Essence is needed. For since that Being as such
ing to God. is not, and since it can also not abide in this withdrawal, God posits, immedi-
This is in itself now clear enough that someone will not easily contest it. ately and without any movement, but precisely through God's purity, that Other
But whence that Other? This question [257] is also difficult because of the na- which is Being to God. For just as that pure electric fire which, in accordance
ture of the Other. For since it should be able to comport itself in relationship to with its nature, is radiating and communicative, cannot be this for a minute
the Godhead as Being, it therefore seems to accord with the nature of the without its antithesis, nay, is only itself insofar as it awakens its antithesis, so
Other not to have to be what has being. The Other does not have being in the too the fire causes its opposite not through a particular effect, but through its
way that the summit does not have being. The summit does not have being be- purity and withdrawal. Or just as a fire, which cannot be actual without some
cause it is above what has being. The Other does not have being because it is matter, provided that it were necessarily actual, would posit the matter, imme-
below what has being. And yet it cannot be what utterly does not have being. diately and without movement, through its mere essence, so too, in order that

40 41
 the Other be, it only needs the Godhead itself as a pure spirit, withdrawn from which, in relationship to everything else, as we have shown, is as nothing. From
all Being. this kind of talk, the concept of the present, as well as the past and the future,
But according to this representation, which would be similar to the an- is excluded. But as soon as they want to speak of an actual, living eternity, they
cient doctrine of the thesis from which the antithesis follows, that first concept know nothing but a constant Now, an eternal present. Just as there is no other
of the Godhead in which nothing but pure spirituality is thought is altered. For concept for time other than the counterplay of eternity, there is also no other
since God is not the cause of the Other through a special volition but through concept (for eternal time) than that it is the eternally nonpresent.
God's mere essence, the Other is certainly not the essence of God, but it be- But if one cannot imagine a present that is not founded on a past, then
longs to God's essence, indeed, in a natural and inseparable way. It therefore there can be no eternal present that is not based on an eternal past.
follows that if the pure Godhead = A, and that the Other = B, than the full con- The true eternity does not exclude all time but rather contains time (eter-
cept of the living Godhead which has being is not merely A, but is A + B. nal time) subjugated within itself Actual eternity is the overcoming of time, as
It therefore seems that in the other way (where one proceeds from pure the richly meaningful Hebrew language expresses "victory" (which it posits
spirituality) one would also come to the above concept of the Godhead. [259] among the first attributes of God) and "eternity" with a single word (naezach).
But this way or this connection could at best be a dialectical way or connection There is no life without simultaneous death. In the act itself by which be- it
and never a historical, that is, an authentically scientific, way or connection. 48 ing that which has being (existence) 5° is posited, one of the two must die so that
We could not go back to that Withdrawal with our thoughts. We know God in other may live. For that which has being can, as such, only elevate itself over
no other way than in relation to nature that is eternally subordinated to God. that which does not have being. In the moment when an organic body should
This synthesis is our first and our oldest thinking. We know no God but a liv- come to be, matter must lose its independence and come to be mere form for its
ing God. That interrelation of God's highest spiritual life with a natural life is actual essence.
the primordial mystery of God's individuality, the wonder of inextinguishable Every kind of life is a succession and concatenation of states in which
life, as one of the Apostles eloquently expressed it (Hebrews 7:16). 49 everything prior is the ground, the mother, the birthing potency, of everything
But if we want to generate the thought of that synthesis scientifically (as posterior. Hence, natural life is the echelon toward spiritual life. Sooner or later
it can be no other way), we must proceed from what God posits in this synthe- it comes to a point where it can neither abide nor go farther by itself. It is need-
sis itself as God's eternal past and from what in God can be posited in no other ful of something higher to be elevated beyond itself. Just as the natural life
form but the past. within a person, if it cannot find the higher spiritual potency, falls prey to inner
The pa4' is a serious concept which is known to everyone but understood unrest, to that to and fro movement without meaning and purpose that is the
by few. Most people know no past except for the one that in each moment, pre- characteristic of madness, so too, writ large, the earth seems first to have found
cisely because of the moment, expands itself, which is still becoming itself, but its structure, the harmony of all its creations and [261] thereby peace after the
which is not itself. There is no past without a determinate and decisive present. natural within it is elevated into_ contact with the spiritual through the person.
How many take pleasure in such a present? The person who doesnot overcome But such a succession of states is also found in natural life, where the preceding
himself or herself has no past, or rather never comes out of the past and lives always becomes the past in respect to the subsequent. The health and fullness of
constantly in the past. It is charitable and beneficial to a person to have, as one life only depends on the constancy of the progression, on the uninhibited suc-
says, gotten something over and done with, that is, to have posited it as the cession of potencies. Just as all sicknesses _are the _consequence_ of an inhibited
past. Only on account of the future is one cheerful and is it easy to get some- progression (developmental sicknesses), so too, all birth deformities are only the
thing done. Only the person who has the power to tear themselves loose from consequence of the interrupted, inhibited intensification. Since nature cannot
themselves (from what is subordinate in their essence) is capable of creating a find the potency that helps it and transfigures it into something higher, it must
past for themselves. This is also the only person who enjoys a true present and burgeon into a malformed life because the drive toward progression does not
who anticipates an actual future. Even these customary reflections would bring cease and because nature can neither abide nor go beyond itself.
to light that no present is possible that is not founded on a decisive past and Movement and progression are also in the divine life, as in all life. The
that no past is possible that is not based on the present as something overcome. question only pertains to how this divine life is differentiated in relationship to
Certainly the metaphysicians behave as if there were a [260] concept of all other life and specifically from human life.
eternity completely pure of any admixtures of temporal concepts. They may be First of all, that succession and concatenation is dissoluble in human life
right if they speak of that eternity that is externally utterly without effect and and indissoluble in divine life. God is in a continual elevation. As the Scripture

42 43
 expresses it, the ways of the Lord are just, that is, forthright—everything back- [263] Consciousness consists exclusively of the act of the dawning of
ward is against God's nature. Hence, God can only have that life that circulates consciousness and hence an eternal consciousness cannot be thought in God,
in a continuing circle as an eternal past within God. only an eternal dawning of consciousness. And hence that rapport into which
The dissolubility of life or the possibility that the constancy of the tran- eternal freedom enters with nature is nothing but the eternal coming-to-itself
sition from the lower to the higher potency may be sublimated, is the cause of of the highest. The pure Godhead, insofar as it allies itself with nature, does not
sickness and of natural as well as spiritual death. Hence, God alone is called the come to something alien. It comes to what is its own (dc 'rec. V.Siet) and knows
Imperishable, and only God has immortality. it as its own proper nature. Hence, that which in itself is eternally commencing
There is a second distinction: the succession in God is actual and hence does not know in that pure spirit a different God distinct from it. Rather, it
not one that has happened in time. In one and the same act (in the act of the only knows its own highest self
great decision), 1 (the first potency) becomes what has gone before 2 and 2 be- Most people begin from wanting to explain a revelation of the Godhead.
comes what has gone before 3 and hence, the whole (1, 2, 3) is again posited as But that which should give itself must already have itself; what wants to artic-
what has gone before 4, that is, it becomes a succession in eternity itself, an in- ulate itself must first come to itself; what is manifest to others must already be
cluded [262] time. It is not an empty (abstract) eternity, but that which con- manifest to itself But everything that should come to itself must seek itself
tains time subjugated within itself There must therefore be something in the Godhead that seeks and something
The All is before the One. Necessity is before freedom. Nature is before that is sought. But the former cannot be one with the latter and both, in accor-
what is external to and beyond all nature. And yet there is no time here because dance with the root, must remain independent of one another so that there
everything is in the process of this same, indivisible act. There is no life with- would be eternally something that is sought and eternally something that seeks
out the overcoming of death. Just as every existence as present is based on a and finds—an eternal joy of finding and an eternal joy of being found. Hence,
past, this is especially so for that existence that actually consists of self-presence, only thus can one think a consciousness that is eternally alive. This conscious-
existence that is conscious of itself ness, which depends on breaking through and overcoming something opposed,
An eternal being conscious [Bewufit seyn] 51 cannot be imagined or it would is not a dead consciousness at a standstill, but an eternally living one, always
be the same as unconsciousness. Certainly that highest Being, that is here the emerging anew.
same as the essence, must in itself also be the purest knowledge because what has The explanation as to how the eternal could be conscious of its eternity
being and Being [subject and object] are in it completely one (to this belongs the poses special difficulty for the deeper thinker, although most people pass over it
famous equation: the highest Being = the highest knowledge). But what is pure with a spring in their step. No consciousness whatsoever can be thought in an
knowledge is not yet that which knows of itself. Only in relation to something empty, abstract eternity. The consciousness of eternity can only be articulated in
else that is Being to it can the highest Being comport itself as what has being and the phrase: "I am the one who was, who is, who will be."' Or, more intimately,
can pure knowledge comport itself as what knows and hence, be raised to actus. with the untranslatable word that the highest God gave to Moses and which in
There is no dawning of consciousness (and precisely for this reason no the original language expresses with the same word the various meangs: "I am
consciousness) without positing something past. There is no consciousness the one who was, I was who I will [264] be, I will be who I am.' The con-
without something that is at the same time excluded and contracted. That sciousness of such an eternity is impossible without the distinction of times.
which is conscious excludes that of which it is conscious as not itself Yet it But how should the eternal, which does not find the times within itself, distin-
must again attract it precisely as that of which it is conscious as itself, only in a guish them except inanOther?db _the spirit of eternity this Other is nature
different form. That which in consciousness is simultaneously the excluded and with which it is relate cli)In nature, the spirit knows itself as the one who was be-
–

the attracted can only be the unconscious. Hence, all consciousness is grounded cause it posits nature as its eternal past. Hence, the spirit knows itself as what
,

on_ the unconscious and precisely in the dawning of consciousness the uncon- eternalist have being" since nature can be the past only in relationship to
scious is posited as the past of consciousness. Now it is certainly not thinkable It, what has being. Thereby the spirit again gives eternity as the ground of its
that God was unconscious for awhile and then became conscious. But it is cer- own eternity, or rather it gives eternity as something wholly without ground
tainly thinkable that in the same inseparable act of the dawningof conscious- which is again based on an eternity. The piritknows itself in nature as the one
ness the unconscious and the conscious of God were grasped at thesame time. who is, as the eternally present in contrast with something before it which is
The conscious was grasped as the eternally present but the unconscious was eternally past. The spirit knowsiiself In nature as the one who will be because
grasped with the ascertainment of what is eternally past. it sees itself as eternal freedom in relationship to nature and as such sees nature

44 45
as the possible project of a future conation. The spirit knows itself as the one to posit nature in freedom so that it can give way to the cision or so that it can
who was not, is not, and will not be alone. Rather, the spirit is also the same as refuse to comply with it and fall prey anew to the life of obsession and craving.
the one who was, who is, and who will be because it is only as the same Being Through the voluntary nature of this subjugation, however, nature proves its
engulfed within essence that it always was and also because, in the entire future, worth as divine nature, as what was already in itself divine, outside of that rela-
it can be only as what it is, namely, as that essential Being. tionship to the pure Godhead. Nature itself, first posited in freedom, overcomes
For the spirit is still as what in itself neither has being nor does not have itself through the force of the summit and posits its own life, insofar as it is its
being. It only has being in relationship to what is Being to it. It does not have own life and distinct from God, as the past.
being in itself. Still, spirit is eternal freedom in relationship to Being, the eter- Hence, nothing should rest on mere necessity and the highest volun-
nal power to actualize itself in and through Being. But it still has not an- tarism should already attest to the unlimited freedom of God in the first be-
nounced itself Spirit is still the will that rests, that does not actually will. ginnings of life.
Because that nature is what is first external and visible of God, it is a [266] Hence, nature subjugated itself right at its primordial beginnings,
quite natural thought to consider nature as the body of the Godhead and that but not by dint of its own or a natural will, but rather forced by its neediness
which is beyond having being as the spirit that rules this body. But, first of all, (this is the sense of the Oitx EKOZ)(7CX, Romans 8:20, although the talk here is of
eternal nature is a whole consisting of body, soul, and spirit. Then these three a later subjugation).' But this was for the sake of what subjugated nature and
are linked to one another and, in their unfree, undivided state, together consti- with the hope that nature should also thereby become free and should become
tute that wheel of nature that in the person is what is authentically interior. But elevated from the slavery (blind necessity) of that eternally transitory, self-con-
the spirit of eternity is not bound to nature, but abides in eternal freedom in re- suming essence to an everlasting lordship."
lationship to nature, although spirit cannot separate itself from nature. For But precisely thereby, because nature is only voluntarily subjugated, na-
[265] spirit can only become tangible in its relationship to nature as the eter- ture still always retains the possibility within itself to deviate again from that
nally healing, reconciling potency, as eternal beneficence itself order and go back to its own life averted from God. In its subjugation, nature
Hence, if one wanted (as is only right) to seek a human comparison for has not sacrificed Being altogether, only its own life independent of God. And
the relationship, it would be this. The eternal nature is the same in God as what it has not given this up at the root or as a possibility, but only as actuality.
in the person is their nature, provided that if by nature one thought that which Hence, in this subjugation nature maintains its own ground of self-movement,
consists of,body, soul, and spirit. If abandoned to itself; this nature of the per- a source of freedom that does not come to act (to actus) 57 but always remains in
son, like the eternal nature, is a life of loathing and anxiety, a fire that inces- mere possibility (potentiality).
sandy consumes and unremittingly produces itself anew. This nature also needs Were the Godhead not without envy, as Plato says, it still would not be
reconciliation, the means for which do not he within itselfbut outside and be- able to sublimate the forces of this life because it would thereby have to subli-
yond it. Only through the spirit of God, which is hence called the spirit from mate its own vitality, the ground of it being what has being [seyend-Seyn]. 58
on high, can the nature of the person be born again, that is, escape the old life If that connection by which God alone is a living God is not a dead con-
and posit it as something past and transition into a new life. That which is be- nection but an eternally mobile one, we must now even think life subjugated
yond having being [Uberseyende] does not comport itself to nature with which under the Godhead as a continual readiness to come to the fore on its own. It
it stands in relation as the spirit or soul to the body. Rather, it comports itself to is thereby not a blind subjugation, but an eternal bliss, a softening of seeking (of
the entirety of the nature of the person as that divine spirit which is not suited obsession), an eternal joy of finding and being found, of overcoming and being
to this nature. It comports itself as the Guide—as it was already called in the overcome.
ancient Mysteries—does to life. There is only a feeling of health in the healthy body when the unity that
presides over it continuously holds down the false life that is constantly ready
The possibility in the eternal nature of retreating to emerge and when it continuously holds down the movement that deviates
into its own life, independent of God from and conflicts with its harmony. Likewise in God, there would be no life
and no joy of life were the now subordinated forces not in [267] constant pos-
But just as the eternal spirit, free and bound to nothing, stays beyond na- sibility of fanning the flames of the contradiction against unity, albeit also un-
ture, nature, too, is not coerced but is rather voluntarily subjected to spirit. The remittingly calmed anew and reconciled by the feeling of the beneficent unity
sight and presence of that essential purity has no other effect on nature except that holds the forces down.

46 47
 The intensified concept of what does not have being If we take into consideration the many terrible things in nature and the
spiritual world and the great many other things that a benevolent hand seems
And here we come to the new or, rather, intensified concept, of what does to cover up from us, then we could not doubt that the Godhead sits enthroned
not have being. That initial life of blind necessity could not be said to have be- over a world of terrors. And God, in accordance with what is concealed in and
ing because it never actually attained continuance, Being, but rather just re- by God, could be called the awful and the terrible, not in a derivative fashion,
mained in striving and desire for Being. But now this desire is quieted insofar but in their original sense.
as it has now actually attained a dormant Being in that subjugation. But it is Hence, with regard to itself, that life was posited by God as past or in
only quieted to the extent that it is subjugated, that is, to the extent that it knew concealment, is always still what it was before. The forces of that consuming
itself as what has being of a lower order, as what does not have being, relatively fire still slumber in life, only pacified and, so to speak, exorcised by that word by
speaking. which the one became the all If one could remove that reconciling potency, life
Now, we maintain the possibility that what does not now have being would immediately again fall prey to that life of contradiction and consuming
could endeavor to emerge from out of the state of potentiality and elevate itself desire. But nature, so to speak, catches itself and overcomes its own necessity by
again to what has being. From this comes an intensified concept of what does way of the forces from above, abandoning itself voluntarily to the cision and
not have being which we are often enough forced to acknowledge in nature and thereby [269] to the eternal pleasure and joy of life of the Godhead that neither
life. This clearly persuades us that there would be something mediate between in itself has being nor is comprehensible.
what is and nothing, namely, what is not and also should not be, but which still
endeavors to be. It is not because it only endeavors to be. And it is not nothing Short episode on the importance of the Old Testament
because in a certain way it must be in order to covet. for tracing the concept of God
No one will maintain that sickness is an actual or truly living life (vita
vere vitalis). Yet sickness is a life, albeit only a false life, a life that does not have Until now, we have steadily followed the unremitting course of the inves-
being but that wants to elevate itself from not-Being to Being. Error is not a tigation which permitted no interruption because with the last additional de-
true, thus actual, knowledge but it is still not nothing. Or, indeed, it is nothing, termination, the One and the All, whose concept we wanted, was completed.
but a nothing that endeavors to be something. Evil is an inner lie and lacks all For everything up to now, to speak in the vernacular, was nothing other than
true Being. And yet evil is and it shows a terrible actuality, not as something complete construction of the idea of God which does not let itself be grasped
that truly has being but as that which by nature has being in endeavoring to be. in a short explanation nor circumscribed with limits like a geometrical figure.
If that initial blind life, whose nature is nothing but conflict, anxiety, and What we have described up until now (insofar as possible) is only the eternal
contradiction, were ever for itself or were it not [268] engulfed since eternity by life of the Godhead. The actual history that we intended to describe, the narra-
something higher and placed back into potentiality, it could neither be called a tion of that series of free actions through which God, since eternity, decided to
sick nor an evil life. For these concepts first become possible after life is subju- reveal itself, can only now begin.
gated by the mollifying unity but at the same time is still free to emerge, to Yet before we give ourselves over to the course of this history, it behooves
withdraw itself from the unity and enter into its own nature. us to linger for a while longer and consider what we have found up until now.
If an organic being becomes sick, forces appear that previously lay con- Everything depends on grasping that unity in God that is at the same time a
cealed in it.COr if the copula of the unity dissolves altogether and if the life duality or, vice versa, on grasping the duality that is at the same time a unity.
forces that were previously subjugated by something higher are deserted by the Were God one and the same with its eternal nature or bound to it, then there
ruling spirit and can freely follow their own inclinations and manners of actin would only be unity. Were both outside of and separated from one another,
then something terrible becomes manifest which we had no sense of during life then there would only be duality. But the concept of that unity, because it is a
and which was held down by the magic of life. And what was once an object of voluntary unity and precisely for this reason includes a duality, is completely
adoration or love becomes an object of fear and the most terrible abjection. For alien to our times. Our times only want unity and want to know nothing but
when the abysses of the human heart open up in evil and that terrible thought spirit and the purest simplicity in God.
comes to the fore that should have been buried eternally in night and darkness, Now, it has been shown as evident that the Godhead, in and for itself or
we first know what lies in the human in accordance with its possibility and how asthepurest spirit, is elevated beyond all Being. From this it follows that the
human nature, for itself or left to itself, is actually constituted. Godhead could not be without an eternal potency—not a siring potency, but

48 49
one_that gives birth and brings the Godhead into Being. Hence, the Godhead's adornment and appear much less strange than the reference to these Scriptures
living, actual existence is not dead and at a standstill. Rather, it is an eternal whose consummate explanation in view of its language, history, and teaching
birth into Being whose means and tool are in the real meaning of the words would have to combine all of the science and erudition of the world. For no one
called the eternal nature (the birthing potency) of God. will want to claim that the contemporary conceptual tools have exhausted the
But we know what little the grounds of science can do right now [270] riches of the Scriptures. And no one will want to deny that the system that
against a deep-seated way of thinking, especially when it is connected to con- would explain all of the sayings and bring them into consummate harmony has
ceits of a higher spirituality, such as the currently predominant so-called "pure not yet been found. A lot of the most difficult passages to understand must ei-
religion of reason" which believes that the more purely that it removes all liv- ther be left in darkness or neglected. Hence, one finds the most outstanding
ing forces of movement, all nature, from God, the more highly it places God. points of teaching in our systems, but they are described rigidly and dogmati-
How utterly modern this manner of representation is could be easily cally, without the inner link, the transitions, the mediating terms that alone
shown. For the entirety of our modern philosophy only dates as if it were from would have made them into a comprehensible whole that no longer demanded
yesterday. For its originator, Descartes, completely rent the living interrelation blind faith but would get the free assent of the spirit as well as the heart. In a
with earlier developments and wanted to construct philosophy all over from the word, the interior (esoteric) system, whose consecration the teachers should es-
beginning, exclusively in accordance with the concepts of his time, as if no one pecially have, is lacking.
before him had thought or philosophized. Since then, there is only a coherent But what particularly hinders teachers from reaching this whole is the al-
and logically consistent further development of one and the same fundamental most improper disregard and neglect of the Old Testament in which they (not
error that has spun itself forth into all of the various systems up to and includ- to speak of those who give it up altogether) only hold as essential what is re-
ing the most contemporary ones. It is in itself backward to apply this utterly peated in the New Testament. But the New Testament is built on the ground of
modern standard to what has broken itself from all interrelation to the past the Old Testament and obviously presupposes it. The beginnings, the first great
in order to reconnect oneself again with the truly ancient and the truly most points of that system that develops into the furthest parts of the New Testa-
ancient. ment, are only found in the Old Testament. But the beginnings are precisely
It is desirable in itself for one who speaks about the first beginnings as an what is essential. One who does not know them can never come to the whole.
initiate to connect to something or other venerable from time immemorial, to [272] There is a coherence in the divine revelations that cannot be conceived in
some kind of higher, attested tradition upon which human thought rests. Even its middle, but only from the beginning. The New Testament shows us every-
Plato himself, at the highest points and peaks of his remarks, likes to call on ei- thing in the light of later times and in relationships that presuppose those ear-
ther a word inherited from antiquity or a holy adage. The reader or listener is lier ones. But only the singular lightning flashes that strike from the clouds of
thereby retrieved from the detrimental opinion that the author had wanted to the Old Testament illuminate the darkness of primordial times, the first and
spin everything out of his or her own head and only communicate a self-ascer- the oldest relationships with the divine essence itself.
tained wisdom. The effort and tension this opinion always arouses turns into Hence, that unity in duality and duality in unity that we have recognized
the calm mood that a person always feels when they know that they are on solid as what is essential in divine individuality. The two names for God, often oc-
ground and which is so advantageous to research. curring separated and often occurring connected, have always attracted the at-
Such a connection is doubly desirable to the one who does not want to tention of all researchers. One explained in the good old times that the word
push a new opinion but who wants to assert again truth that existed long ago, "Elohim," which indicates the plural, is as a rule connected with the verb in the
even if it was concealed, and who wants to do this in times that really have lost singular because the three persons should be indicated in a single essence. This
all stable concepts. view was long ago abandoned. Indeed, all arguments of analogy fight against it.
[271] Where could I more likely find this tradition than in the imper- But what would there be to object to in the interpretation that, through
turbable documents that eternally rest in themselves and that alone contain a Elohim, the divine substance, that (and hence, the first) All of the primordial
world history and a human history that goes from the beginning to the end? forces, would be indicated? That it would indicate that which is for itself inex-
These may serve as an explanation if the sayings of those holy books are re- pressible but which is what is actually expressed through the pure, spiritual
membered hitherto from time to time and if this in turn will occur more often. Godhead? Jehovah was in an equally originary way posited as Elohim in this
For if the author had just as often referred to the Orphic fragments or the Books relationship of the expressing, of the name or the word. "What should I answer
of Zend or Indian scriptures, then this could perhaps have counted as scholarly the children of Israel," asks Moses, "when I say to them, 'The Elohim of your

50 51
 fathers sends me to you' and they ask me: 'What is his name?"' And Jehovah temporary interpreters are said or narrated of Elohim, without at the same time
answered, "hence, you should say, 'Jehovah, the Elohim of your fathers, sends applying to Jehovah.
me to you. That is my name for eternity.'" (Exodus 3:15) Here it is obvious that The most conspicuous appearance of the latter relationship is no doubt
Jehovah should be the name of Elohim. Yet Elohim is what is expressed and re- the angel of the countenance' or, as it is really called, the angel of Jehovah. The
ceives the name. Hence, Jehovah is simply called the name (the expressing), as angel of Jehovah, itself distinct from Jehovah, appears to Moses in the flaming
in Leviticus 24:11, "One of the names was blasphemed against," and Deuteron- bush. Yet Elohim calls to Moses from the bush (Exodus 3:2). Soon afterward
omy 28:58, "If you will not fear the glorious name," where added to this in an ex- the one who speaks to him is Jehovah from which it is obvious that, according
planatory fashion is, "and this terrible one, Jehovah, your Elohim." It was to the understanding of the narrator, the angel of the countenance is also Jeho-
always noticed how this name, whose true pronunciation is unknown, consists vah, yet both are still distinct. The meaning of the narration is perhaps just that
of pure breath. From this it was concluded that it indicated that the [273] God- Moses was deemed worthy of a vision of that highest vitality, of that inner con-
head was pure breath, pure spirit. This is, as the Jews express it, the name of the suming yet always again reviving (and in this respect not consuming) fire that
essence, while Elohim is the name of the divine effects. Others noticed that the is the nature of the Godhead.
name consists of pure, so-called silent, letters (literis quiescentibus). 59 This too These few hints may suffice to convince many of the more contemporary
accords with the essence that is the pure will without actual conation. The in- philosophers that would gladly offer their quite empty concepts as divine reve-
effability of the name, observed as holy, also shows that It is the expressing, pre- lation. Or persuade the theologians, who have long thought in accordance with
cisely so that this should not be designated as what is to be expressed of the the philosophy of the time, that wholly other mysteries lie in the most ancient
Godhead. That the name is also the tetragrammaton' (which, by the way, is documents of religion in divine individuality (for how would this be possible
how the name of God is in all languages) certainly is not allowed to remain un- without dividuality?) than they imagine in their so-called theism. The repre-
heeded in the most artful and highly purposeful Hebrew language. For this has sentation of a duality, lying beyond the trinity of persons, in a unity of the di-
always been noticed. If we wanted to go into the particulars, even the vestigial vine essence, the doctrine of an eternal presence and of an eternal (or eternally
trace of the progressive movement from 1 to 4 may be detected in the particu- becoming) past, is interwoven into the innermost fibers of the language of the
lar letters. It is no mere fabrication of blindly Christian researchers that the Old Testament Scriptures. The New Testament presupposes this and only ref-
meaning of the holiness of the fourfold in all of Antiquity comes from the tid- erences this in a few instances.
ings whose imprint is contained in the name mil' [YWHW]. Pythagoras must
have known that one simply must count to 4, that 1, 2, 3 are nothing for them-
selves, and nothing comes to continuance without entering into the four stages
of progression. Yes, four is the highest continuance of God and of eternal na-
ture. The Pythagorean oath: "By the one who delivers to our soul the tetractys,
the fount of eternally flowing nature" if it did not have the above meaning, it
—

had no meaning at all.'

This presupposed, the doctrine of the unity of the divine essence in dual-
ity shows itself as profoundly interwoven with what is innermost, even with the
language itself, of the Old Testament. First of all, insofar as the plural of Elo-
him is connected to the verb in the singular, where the meaning, for example,
of bara Elohim is, "the one who created is Elohim." This is also the case with the
frequent liaison of Jehovah-Elohim. The doctrine of the duality in the unity is
also just as clearly impressed in the language of the Old Testament. Hence, the
passages where the verb in the plural is connected with Elohim (in the mean-
ing of the unique, true God) are an indication that Elohim does not cease to be
for itself because of its unity with Jehovah. [274] Also in the passages where
Jehovah swears by its soul (A 3 ) as something that is distinct and separate from
Jehovah. For incontrovertibly many things that sound too natural to more con-
 B

THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL POTENCY

A) THE LIFE OF THE FIRST POTENCY (= "OF THE NATURE

POSITED AS THE BEGINNING" OR EXTERNAL NATURE)

(a) the soul, dwelling in eternal nature and creating within it

Yet the reader may not come to a standstill, even at this gain. One state of
affairs concatenates itself immediately to the others. Not even one time is there
a momentary standstill.' Pain, anxiety, loathing of the past life, come undone, as
has been shown, through [275] that crisis or setting into mutual opposition of
forces. But at no moment can an indifferent togetherness of Being occur. Some-
thing new immediately elevates itself out of perished life. That which should
have one time been One, yet could not, is now the All or the Whole. But this
Whole is just based on an internal belonging together. There is a silent, exclu-
sively passive Whole, not an actual Whole that could be articulated as such.
Hence, it is certainly always full of life with respect to the particular parts, but
considered from the outside or as a Whole, it is utterly without effect.
But in the setting into mutual opposition itself, all of the forces retain the
feeling of their unity. The necessity to be one is overcome but not annihilated.
Necessity remains, but as something mitigated through freedom. Love comes
to be out of compulsion. Love is neither freedom nor compulsion. Even though
it is separated and set into mutual opposition, it wants the inner all the more as
something in order to sense itself as One and to feel itself through a voluntary,
inner harmony as a living Whole. This unity is an image of what is veritably in-
terior and that toward which Love hopes to be elevated—by God.
So now the cision is based on what is higher being elevated over what is
lower than it and the lower, related to the higher, subsiding. Hence, the natural,

55
 decisive movement, appearing immediately after the appearance of the crisis, But allowing for this help, which only serves to posit nature in freedom, nature
nay, in the moment itself of its appearance, is the general attraction, the eleva- takes everything from out of itself and can be purely and completely explained
tion of the lower with respect to the higher and thereby a new movement, new simply from out of itself
life. Just as eternal nature as a Whole attracts the spirit of eternity, each subor- Precisely this most completely inward and soul-like essence is that by
dinated potency attracts the potency immediately higher than it. which nature is capable of the immediate relationship to its higher potency. In
Hence, at first the lowest potency seeks in a natural way to attract its general, every higher potency is the archetype of the lower potency, or, to say
higher to itself. For the beginning of the movement is necessarily in it as what the same in the vernacular, its "heaven." But in order to be blessed with this, the
is most deeply debased. lower potency must first unfold the seed enclosed within it. For, if it evinces this
But just as the appearance of yearning in the eternal nature was the first for its higher potency, namely, what is similar to the higher potency and heav-
beginning of the inner cision, so too the desire to be one with its higher po- enly, then it draws this higher potency to itself with irresistible magic and then
tency is now the impetus of a similar crisis for nature reduced to the first level. an immediate relationship, an inner fusion, comes into being.
So nature, full of yearning, expands itself [276] into all of its forces and what Hence, this heavenly, soul-like essence, which was concealed and asleep
previously slept, awakes to its own life. until now, first awakes with the appearance of the crisis in nature. We have be-
For nature that is now posited as the beginning, although right at the come aware of this same consequence each time a higher unity, under which
outset it was only a potency of the divine life, is in itself a whole essence and the various forces were subjugated, relaxes itself Curiously enough, and as if driven
same as the Whole (of eternal nature). This nature is not a part of the divine by divination, the first observers of magnetic sleep" designated its appearance
substance, but the whole Godhead dwells within it insofar as the Godhead as a crisis. But every sleep is a crisis in the sense that we have previously used
from the outset composes itself and shuts itself off from itself and outwardly the word. Hence, in the same way that spiritual life, which dwells in the subor-
denies itself. A divine unity lay right at the outset as the ground of the antithe- dinated organs (especially in the ganglion system), first, with the appearance of
sis (A and B) that is within it, albeit as concealed and taciturn. The negating sleep, comes out and awakens from the depths in which it was immersed by the
force in it is what is presupposed and hence, it comports itself as the first po- general and higher spiritual life, so too nature, posited in freedom and in its
tency. The essence (A) that is posited within it is what follows it and inasmuch own potency, now first unfolds that soul-like substance that had been concealed
is the second potency. But what is innermost in this nature, the actual essence, within it and by virtue of which nature is an essence that is wholly itself and
is neither the former potency nor the latter one but rather the secret link, the self-creating. Just as the stars of the night first appear when the great star of the
concealed force of its being one, that within it which is the A'. day is extinguished, the subordinated organs first emerge on the stage of life
If we may now consider the essence that wavers beyond nature and the when the general life to which they belonged and before which they had grown
spiritual world as the universal soul, as the artistic wisdom of that which dwells silent has waned.
in the Whole, then it follows from this that what is most concealed in nature, Hence, it is essential that its own source of self-movement, independent
because it is akin to that universal soul, is itself a soul-like essence. And then of the highest Godhead, remain with the eternal nature and its organs. [278]
something similar to that artistic wisdom (pars divinie mentis) originally and Just as liberation in the eternal nature is based on the soul having been elevated
characteristically also inhabits the lowest potency. Who could doubt this if they over everything (on its having been actually posited as the highest potency), the
have ever observed how completely nature is active from the inside outward like crisis of external nature exclusively consists in the soul, which dwells in nature
the most levelheaded artist? The only difference between nature and the artist and is related to everything, subordinating all other forces and actually being
is that with nature the material is not outside the artist but rather one with it brought to the highest place. But the soul feels itself only the soul of the sub-
and inwardly growing together with it. Who could doubt this if they notice ordinated potency, of the potency of the beginning that is determined to re-
how, even before nature unfolds the actual soul, that already in so-called dead main eternally. And awoken out of inactivity, the soul does not hate the
matter each shape and form is an impression of the inner intellect and knowl- contracting force but rather loves this confinement as the only way that it can
edge? Who does not know the independent soul if they have seen the art, in- come to feel itself and as that which hands over the material and the, so to
wardly bound yet simultaneously free, nay, arbitrarily playing, in the great speak, means, which are the only way that the soul can come out. Hence, the
ladder of the organic essence, even in the gradual cultivation of the particular soul does not want somehow to sublimate the negating force, neither in general
parts? Indeed, nature necessarily requires external assistance to the extent that nor as what precedes it. To the contrary, the soul demands and confirms the
nature only produces [277] its wonders as an organic part of a higher Whole. negating force and explicitly only wants to come out and be visible in it so that

56 57
 consequently the soul, unfolding from the highest, is always enveloped and re- highest potency is brought over everything and where it celebrates, so to speak,
tained by the negating force as if by a receptacle. the victory of its liberation.
Hence, the soul also does not want suddenly and, so to speak, in one fell Yet the soul, awakening from the depths of unconsciousness, does not ac-
swoop, to vanquish the soul. Rather, the soul's artistic desire [Lust] now com- complish its graduated course without higher guidance. For already in its first
mences because overcoming the contrarily striving forces gently and gradually awakening it is deeply stirred by the dark intimation that its actual model is in
pleases it. And, in the end, and with levelheadedness, and without insult to the the world of spirits. The more the soul arises, the more lucidly it sees into that
force that contains it and, so to speak, nourishes it, the soul is pleased by sub- which is above it (into the A 2 ) and knows all of the possibilities contained
ordinating all forces through a piecemeal progression and thereby displaying its within it, possibilities that the soul, as an artist at one with her material, seeks
own mother, in whom the soul was first conceived and fostered, as a universally to express immediately and to incarnate. For the prototype of all that actually
animated essence. comes to be in a subordinate order [280] is found in the higher order next to it.
The supremely interior, the soul can only become evident, however, in And, conversely, that which is found in a higher order only in a prototypical
the relationship in which the contrarily striving forces are brought to a recip- fashion is found in the subordinate order in an actual and ectypal fashion.
rocal freedom and independence or to a vital, mobile antithesis. In this respect, But in the relationship in which the soul actualizes within itself what in
the soul commences with the arousal of that internal bifurcation that spreads the higher order was merely a possibility, the soul pulls this higher order (A 2 ) to
throughout all of nature. The state of nondivorce of the forces covers up the itself as if by bewitchment. For this is the nature of everything prototypical,
essence but the state of divorce lets it appear. But naturally in the beginning namely, that through a natural and irresistible inclination, the prototype is
there is still the greatest amount of indecisiveness because the darkening pulled toward its ectype. Yet, furthermore, insofar as the higher order (A 2 ) is
essence, the negating force, still covers over its interior until levelheaded art has pulled toward nature, it is pulled away in the same proportion from its superior
first brought it into equilibrium with the spiritual. Art then finally begins to order (from the A 3 ). In this way the equivalence of the togetherness of being is
bring the negating force under the spiritual and thereby gradually to make it ut- sublimated.' For as the middle order is led away from the highest order and to-
terly beholden to it. This altogether elevates the spiritual [279] so that finally, ward the lowest order, the highest order first cognizes in the middle order what
victorious over all forces, the spiritual emerges as the true essence and heaven of is to the higher order its immediate subject (basis, substratum). Only now does
nature itself. that which has been pulled away from the higher order become the reproach or
But the cision of forces can never become a complete cision because the counterprojection [Igor- oder Gegenwurf] in which the higher order beholds it-
limit should be spared and the first negation and restriction should be retained. self and in which it can see.
But because a certain unity always remains, a view of the unity dawns in the ci- But those images that ascend out of subordinated matter proceed up into
sion, a view that can become manifest to what is higher (to the A 2 ) because of or render apparent the intermediate order (A 2 ) on account of their kinship. For
its kinship to it. This unity appears as a circumscribed, delimited, and, so to these images are the magic through which the intermediate order is attracted.
speak, spiritual, image of a creature. For at the same time in this attraction the intermediate order becomes the
Hence, nothing unbounded can appear in this progressively ascending counterprojection [Gegenwurf] b6 of the highest order (A 3 ). The latter is utterly
formation. The spirit, too, in its highest liberation, is like the creative soul in one with the Godhead (it is but the Godhead's subject turned toward the ex-
that it is still grasped and contained in a determinate unity or form which be- ternal world). This way manifests how the images ascending from below also
comes manifest through the spirit just as the spirit becomes manifest through become manifest through the intermediate order to the highest order (A 3 ) and
it. Hence, in this manner the entire course of nature, which liberates itself from thereby to the still concealed Godhead.
the inside out and which strives toward light and consciousness, is epitomized Hence, in this state, everything that someday should have been actual in
through determinate creations as the many children of its desire. Each creation nature went forth before the eyes of the eternal one and it beheld, as if in a
is just the exterior of an artist who grows together with her material and indi- glimpse or vision, the entire ladder of future formations, up to that creature that
cates what degree of liberation the supremely interior being has reached. And one day, alone among all other natural beings, should have been capable of an
in this way the creative art moves, always ascending, through the entire ladder immediate relationship to it.
of future creatures until it reaches that first of all creatures that one day should But all these forms and formations have no actuality by themselves. For nature
have been the mediator between it and the spiritual world—until it reaches the itself out of which they arise, has, in comparison with the Godhead, which alone truly
fair human form in which that heavenly embryo finally unfolds fully and the has being, [281] diminished into potentiality, into the relationship of that which, rela-

58 59
tively speaking, does not have being and which preserves this relationship voluntarily in itself incomprehensible. And for its part, the light of the incomprehensible,
(and without which the A' is only potentially separated). Yet this entire lift. is not which in itself is irresistible, is softened until it is bearable. This seems to be the
consequently absolutely and completely empty. But, in comparison with the Godhead, it meaning of that splendor of glory that, according to the expressions in the
is like nothingness, a mere sport that makes no claim of actuality. This sport remains Scriptures' and to the unanimous manner of representation of all peoples, is
in utter figurativeness and those formations, in comparison with the Godhead, the outermost aura of the invisible Godhead.
are just like dreams or visions that certainly could become actual if the eternal one That the constitution of contemporary corporeal matter is not an origi-
called that which does not have being to be that which has being. But that will is nal constitution is evidenced by the facts in the evolution of nature itself. The
still turned in upon itself and is still indifferent toward being and does not look phenomena of the inner formation of individual bodies are inexplicable under
after it. the now common assumption of the impenetrability of matter. This is further-
Consequently, after that life, which arises from below, has come to the more evidenced by the abiding capacity of matter to be transposed into a state
highest order, the final part, in which it completes itself, has neither been re- (as in the well-known but insufficiently regarded electrochemical experi-
tained nor elevated out of non-being and so it sinks back into itself, back into tnents) 68 in which matter, with respect to all of its corporeal qualities, disap-
its own nothingness. But it does so only to ascend again and again and, in in- pears. And anyone who is simply satisfied with the so-called "construction of
defatigable and inexhaustible desire, to indicate to the proximately higher or- matter out of forces" must realize that the inner being of all matter is spiritual
der, but mediately to the highest spirit, as in a mirror or a vision, what someday, in a broader sense because forces, insofar as they are something incorporeal, are
if the time or hour should come, and in accordance with the pleasure of the undeniably something spiritual. They must then realize the character of con-
highest One, actually should come to be in this external world. temporary matter is not explicable solely by recourse to those inner spiritual
forces. How it then happens that that contracting, obscuring essence, which
A the concept of the first (spiritual corporeal) matter = tfrux-ti
-
was already overcome in the beginning, again came to the fore, is a question
whose answer belongs to the course of this history. Suffice it to say that matter
discussion of the concept of prime matter (alchemy) is still now conquerable and that it also now indicates the capacity to draw
closer to that primordial state and perhaps someday again to become utterly
It is self-evident that the general state of nature during this process can- transposed with it, although this naturally must happen through a much slower
not be stable or static but is rather only a state of eternal becoming, a continu- and more entangled process.
ing unfolding. Yet this unfolding does have its goal and this is a goal for nature, [283] If we consider the wondrous transformations by which matter is
namely, that nature would become a consummate spiritual-corporeal being. But subjugated in the organic world with the human eye, out of which shine the
although nature can attain its highest expansion only in the final stage of the of spirit, the intellect, and the will in an uncomprehending yet sensuously sensi-
the unfolding, nonetheless, in each moment of that unfolding, nature is already, tive fashion, then one is allowed to consider all of matter as mere appearance,
within and in itself, not a corporeal, but a spiritual-corporeal being. This being, that is, simply as a deferred image of the essence that really lies at the basis. It
although when compared to the higher order (V), is always subsiding and ut- then sees all bodies only as the clothing or masks that hide that inner point of
terly beholden to it, becomes, in this comparison, matter. Yet this is a matter transfiguration from us. Without the presence of this inner point of transfigu-
that, when compared to current matter, is like pure spirit and life." In the pro- ration, the transition from inorganic nature to organic nature would be un-
gression [282] itself, since the negating (actually the sole incarnating) force be- thinkable, a transition that is often almost sensuously perceptible in the most
comes ever more subordinate to the spiritual force and since the inner heavenly corporeal things.
embryo is unfolded ever more visibly, nature expands itself more and more to Whoever has to some extent exercised their eye for the spiritual contem-
that not merely corporeal and not merely spiritual but rather to that intermedi- plation of natural things knows that a spiritual image, whose mere vessel
ary substance, to the mitigated being of light in which the severe, obscuring (medium of appearance) is the coarse and ponderable, is actually what is living
force is overcome by the softness of the other force and engulfed in light. As within the coarse and the ponderable. The purer this image is, the healthier the
such, it still only serves as the inner restraint and mooring of the being that is whole is. This incomprehensible but not imperceptible being, always ready to
overflow and yet always held again, and which alone grants to all things the full
v. Hence relatively spiritual in contrast to the ponderable, impenetrable, inert matter, but not spiritual
charm, gleam, and glint of life, is that which is at the same time most manifest
and hence not 7rveup,anK6v. (It) is not HVEIJila. This it first becomes in actuality; it is only 1//ox1j.) and most concealed. Because it only shows itself amidst a constant mutability,

60 61
 it draws all the more as the glimpse of the actual being that lies concealed eradicated. One must let the rabble have the conventional concept of alchemy.
within all things of this world and which simply awaits its liberation. Among But what happens with the digestion and appropriation of food, when from out
the most corporeal things, metals, whose characteristic gleam has always en- of the most diverse substances the same thing is always caused in the whole and
chanted people, were par excellence considered as the particular points of light when each part always draws precisely what is suitable to it? What happens
through which this being glimmered among dark matter. A universal instinct with the initial formation of the fetus? Everything that occurs around us is, if
had an inkling of its proximity in gold which, because of its more passive qual- you will, a constant alchemy. It is every inner process, when beauty, truth, or the
ities—its almost infinite malleability and its softness and flesh-like tenderness, good are liberated from the attached darkness or impurity and appear in their
all of which combine with the greatest indestructibility—seemed most akin to purity. (Though the alchemist begins again from below aprima materia that
—

that spiritual corporeal being. Even in one of those seemingly accidental word they would like to carry ad ultimam.) Those who understood that for which
plays of which we so often have the opportunity to notice, gold was used to they sought, sought not for gold, but rather, so to speak, for the gold of gold, for
designate the earliest age of the world in which the glory of nature still prevails. what makes gold into gold, that is, for something far more general. Perhaps if
[284] Yet this being draws nigh to its liberation especially in organic na- there is an external effect by which matter was brought to coagulation as milk
ture. It is the oil by which the green of plants is satiated. It is the balm of life in was brought to curdle by rennin, then there must also be an opposed potency by
which health has its origin. It is discernible in what shines through the flesh which, if it were in human hands, the effect of that coagulating force could ei-
and the eyes, in that undeniably physical outflow whereby the presence of the ther be sublimated or, to a certain degree, overcome. If all matter, in accord with
pure, the healthy, and the delightful are at work on us in a charitably liberating its inner essence, is now exclusively singular and if the difference between cor-
way. Nay, it is incontestably discernible in the unspeakable, which streams forth poreal things of the same echelon is perhaps more or less based on the conceal-
as grace into transfigured corporeality in which even the barbarian is instinc- ment of that original being, then it would surely be possible, through a gradual
tively moved. The joyful amazement that consummate beauty posits to the cul- overcoming of the obscuring potency, to transform the less precious into the
tivated perhaps has its main basis in the feeling that beauty brings matter more precious. This would nonetheless only be a quite subordinate application
before our eyes in its divine and, so to speak, primordial state. Nay, as if it were of a much more general faculty and, in any case, the claim of this thought is no
the object of an originary Love, this being still now, as in primordial time, approbation of the actual experiment. For the realm of the idea is unrestricted.
draws Love to itself, and it is, because always only indicating itself, but never as But what is in itself possible, and what is relatively feasible, and what is other-
something to grasp or to possess, the goal of the inclination which is always wise advisable or, from another consideration, reasonable—these are entirely
stirring, but never satiated. different questions.
The circulation between the corporeal and the spiritual, upon which hu- [286] Since the beginning, many have desired to penetrate this silent
man wit is so often exercised, is and remains explicable through no other as- realm of the past prior to the world in order to get, in actual comprehension,
sumption except that it is one and the same substance that it, on the one side, behind the great process of which they are in part cooperative members and in
namely from below, assumes corporeal qualities, but, from above, from the side part sympathetic members.' But most of them lacked the requisite humility
that is turned toward the spirit, goes out toward a spiritual being. All other sys- and self-denial because they wanted to tackle everything at once with supreme
tems, still so artificially devised, leave behind a thorn of doubt. The single sys- concepts. And if anything whatsoever checks the reader's entrance into this
tem in accord with natural thinking is that spurned one of the so-called influxus prehistoric time, it is precisely that rash being that wants rather to dazzle right
physicus which admittedly had to be abandoned as soon as matter and spirit from the beginning with spiritual concepts and expressions rather than descend
were brought into that unholy (incurable) 69 Cartesian conflict. to the natural beginnings of that life.
The whole life process is founded on this bipartite quality of that which What is it, by the way, about corporeality that so offends spiritual arro-
we call matter and of that inner side, averted from our senses, that we intimate gance that it regards corporeality as of such humble descent? In the end, it is
but do not discern. An image or inner spirit of life constantly emerges out of just corporeality's humility and external lowliness that so offends spiritual arro-
the corporeal and it always again becomes embodied through a reverse process. gance. But the lowly is precisely highly respected in the eyes of the one accord-
The belief in the general capacity of matter again [285] to be elevated ing to whose judgment alone the worth and worthlessness of things is
into spiritual qualities has been retained through every age with a constancy determined. And perhaps precisely that releasement [Gelassenheit] shows that
that alone would already allow us to infer its deep ground and which so coheres something of the qualities of that primordial stuff still dwells within them, of
with the dearest and ultimate hopes of humans that it could probably never be the stuff that is passive on the outside but on the inside is spirit and life.

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 B) THE BEING OF THE SECOND POTENCY OR OF THAT something active that is still within and obsequious to the gentle being of light.
WHICH IS THE SUBSTRATUM OF THE SPIRIT WORLD All creation moves toward the elevation of the Yes over the No. But just as the
negating principle is subjected to the affirming principle in nature, such that
(a) the distinction in the placement of the principles the negating principle is an external principle, in the spiritual world the negat-
between nature and the spirit world and vice versa ing principle remains an inner principle. Here the affirming principle is also in-
tensified, but because it is already free in itself, it is only indirectly or
It is not difficult to observe that the main weakness of all modern philos- intermediately intensified in that its antithesis is called forth.
ophy lies in the lack of an intermediate concept and hence, such that, for in- This difference is of the most important consequence for the entire his-
stance, everything that does not have being is nothing, and everything that is tory of nature and of the spiritual world. Many a thing that is enigmatic in its
not spiritual in the highest sense is material in the crudest sense, and everything relationship and its diversity only becomes clear by virtue of the fact that the
that is not morally free is mechanical, and everything that is not intelligent is former emerged into being through the elevation of light and the latter
uncomprehending. But the intermediate concepts are precisely the most im- emerged into being through the arousal of darkness. It is already manifest here
portant concepts, nay, the only concepts that actually explain anything, in all of that [288] a higher degree of freedom is demanded in the being of the last kind
science. Hence, whoever wants to think in accordance with the (misunder- than in the being of the first kind.
stood) principle of contradiction may well be adroit enough, like the Sophists,
to dispute for and against everything. Yet they are utterly maladroit in finding (/3) the similarity of the process in the emergence of the spirit world and the
the truth that does not lie in flagrant extremes. analogy between the forces prevailing in the inner life with the magnetic
But just as nature draws the being of the spiritual world to itself and state (excursus on magnetism, the gradations of magnetic sleep, etc.)
thereby withdraws it from its higher being, nature also awakens within the spir-
itual world a longing to become one with its higher being and to draw it to the But the unfolding of this darkening force out of the entirety of its depths
spiritual world. By virtue of this, that movement that emerges from nature fi- and concealment also could not happen suddenly, but only in a piecemeal fash-
nally propagates itself in the highest. ion. But also because here a certain unity always remained, there could likewise
[287] After the prior explanations, it hardly demands any proof that the be only certain forms or figures that ran through the creative force. These forms
same creative forces that lie in nature are in the being of the spiritual world. or figures, in accordance with their nature, were spirits. This would already be
There is also an inner duality in the being of the spiritual world in which, pre- clear from the old explanation, namely, that anything that has its delimitation
cisely on account of it, a concealed unity also lies at its base. This unity must be- (negating force) externally is corporeal or a body but anything that would have
come manifest by emerging to the measure as the measure in which the its delimitation (the force of its existence) internally or in itself is a spirit.
contrarily striving forces separate from each other and enter into an active an- But here the creative force can only ascend from the lower to the higher
tithesis. The yearning to draw the higher (A 3 ) to itself becomes, in the being of until it has gradually resurrected the utterly supreme interior and the most con-
the spiritual world, the ground of the unfolding and expansion of forces. Yet it cealed force of darkness out of the depths. These forces are then the purest,
is not the affirming principle that is contracted and concealed within it but sharpest, and most godlike spirits.
rather it is the negating force. Hence, here it is not the discharging and self- For so much as the spirit world is closer to the Godhead than nature, so
communicating being that is delivered from delimitation. Here it is the oppo- much then does what is highest (A 3 ) in the spirit world surpass in purity the
site. It is that concealed force of darkness that is called forth from the highest in nature, and so much then is the highest in the spirit world similar to
innermost depths and posited piecemeal into act. It is not that this force tran- that soul that wavers over the Whole (to the absolute A 3 ). That soul is to the
scends the affirming principle but rather that the most active force of selfhood spirit world as the spirit world is to nature.
and that of darkness are nonetheless enveloped by light and Love. For just as Hence, as the spirit world is the prototype of nature and all things of
the negating principle is always the external and encompassing principle in the this external world are depictions of what nature beheld in the inner world, so,
highest unfolding of external nature while the spiritual principle, even when in turn, that universal soul is the immediate prototype of that which is creat-
liberated for the highest, remains encompassed by the negating principle, so, ing in the spirit world. What is thereby produced in the spirit world is just the
too, the negating principle is roused from its inactivity in the unfolding of the ectype, or what is actual, of that which lay in the universal soul as prototypical
spiritual world (which is only a higher nature), but only in order to remain as or possible.

64 65
 But in that higher nature actualizes the thoughts of the universal soul, it thought of as physical substances or as empty genera, nonetheless neither are
irresistibly attracts the soul. And hence, this entire movement is nothing but a they to be thought of as finished and available forms, existing without move-
universal magic' that extends to the highest. ment and, so to speak, static. For they are precisely ideas in that they are some-
For as that universal soul is pulled toward the lower, it is pulled away in thing eternally becoming and in incessant movement and generation.
the same proportion from the most supremely high with which it was until The generation of such archetypes is a necessary moment. But these ar-
then utterly One (its immediate, external subject). [289] But it is precisely chetypes neither pass away after this moment nor do they abide. Rather, it is
through this drawing and withdrawing that the universal soul first becomes to the moment itself that abides eternally because each successive moment holds
the spirit of eternity the reproach or counterprojection (the object) in which the onto or encompasses the preceding moment. And so these archetypes flow
spirit can behold everything. Since those spiritual figures ascend in the univer- from the interior of creative nature, always still as fresh and vital as they were
sal soul as images or visions, the spirit of eternity must also behold them in the before time. Yet now nature shows herself as thoroughly visionary and it must
universal soul as in a mirror, where, so to speak, the most concealed thoughts of be so because nature already sees what is in the future in what precedes it.
the spirit's own subject become manifest to it. Without this quality, the undeniable suitability in the individual and the whole,
The visions of these innermost thoughts of God are hence, the visions of its universal and particular technicity, would be utterly incomprehensible.
the future spirits that are determined, along with the being of nature, for cre- Indeed, nature reserved for itself to renew constantly each moment in the
ation. And thus the eternal one first beheld in this free desire of the eternal na- present time. And it does so through the simplest measures, for nature in the
ture, which, so to speak, is at play with itself, everything that someday should woman draws the spirit of the man to herself and the man, in turn, draws the
become actual in nature and then everything that someday should become ac- world spirit to himself. And hence, here that guiding connection and concate-
tual in the spirit world. So eternal nature showed him the way in which he nation of members, each independent from the other, is produced, whereby the
could lead her, were it to be pleasing to her, out of darkness and back into the last becomes capable of being active in the first and the highest becomes capa-
light, out of baseness and into glory. But everything passed before the eye of the ble of being active in the lowest. For no being can begin the course of its exis-
eternal only as a glimpse or a vision. It passed as a glimpse because the eternal tence without immediate divine reinforcement. Each new life commences a
only looked for it in the, so to speak, gentle mean. It passed as a vision because new time existing for it that is immediately knotted to eternity. Hence, an eter-
the eternal has no actuality in comparison to it but rather passed again into be- nity immediately precedes each life. And in temporal generation, just as in the
coming and there was nothing abiding, nothing stable, but rather everything first generation, everything external is only a part or a member of a concatena-
was in incessant formation. For this life, which in itself is only a dream and a tion that goes up to the highest.
shadow, still lacked divine reinforcement. The recurrence of that moment in begetting would still render credible the
The word "idea," which came to us from the Greeks, actually denotes, in external appearances which are of a decisive [291] crisis (in the meaning of the
accordance with its original meaning, nothing other than our German word word assumed by us), wherein each principle is again posited in its freedom and
"Gesiche[vision, face], and, indeed, in both senses that the word designates: the with the severance of the external copula that coerces and dominates people, the
glimpse and what passes by in the glimpse. most fully voluptuous inner unfolding of all forces commences. Hence, the simi-
In terms of its origin, the doctrine of these divine ideas or visions before larity to death and to magnetic sleep.' We are daring to place one of the matters
the beginning of the world is lost in the deepest night of Antiquity. When it exposed to the greatest desecration in connection with a high and holy relation-
appears, the doctrine is only a fragment of a great doctrine belonging to the ship. But the horrible degeneracy of a great natural furnishing should not hinder
early, no longer extant, true history of the world. The Greeks already only knew the discernment of its primordial meaning. On the contrary, if ethical theory does
it as a tradition and even Plato is only to be considered an interpreter of this not also want to discern something holy in itself in the effects of natural drives
doctrine. Hence, after the original meaning was lost early on, it was understood that it subjects to a higher law, ethical theory will always miss its goal. For some-
in part too supernaturally and in part too vulgarly. If, instead of shoring it up on thing that is in itself something unholy, something utterly and completely bad
the universal grounds of the intellect, [290] the natural course (physical and contemptible, will also be something about which most people are indiffer-
process) of its generation were sought, then this doctrine would have long ago ent. But a matter known to be meshed with the wheel of the cosmos, nay, with its
been understood in a more vital way. innermost and highest relationships, also demands in itself holy awe.
The emergence into being of such archetypes or visions is a necessary Everything divine is human and everything human is divine. This prin-
moment in the great unfolding of life. And while these are certainly not to be ciple of the old Hypocrites, grasped from the deepest life, was and is still now
the key to the greatest discoveries in the realm of God and nature.' For this which one of them sinks (to A = B), the other of them is intensified to A'. Only
reason we sought to consider the last-mentioned phenomenon particularly in this could be the reason for that altogether peculiar [293] and pernicious weak-
the present relationship (in the incontestably highest relationship of which it is ening that the hypnotist' experiences through prolonged practice. The devel-
capable). opment of visionary talent in general and of the relationship to the spiritual
It has become self-evident that the whole state, inwardly most vital, is world that appeared in many who practiced this therapy accords with the same
based on the reciprocal freedom and independence of the parts, which explanation.
nonetheless at the same time form a continuous succession from the deepest to As soon as that relationship is developed, that cision (crisis) and libera-
the highest, similar to that ladder reaching from heaven to earth that one of the tion of all forces—that deformation (disorganization) as its first discoverers
patriarchs saw in a dream.' If the potency of the beginning was not free from with the correct instinct called it—comes into subordinated nature.
the higher potency, then it could not express an attracting effect to the higher If each organic and human being is subjected to pain, in the physical as
potency, holding up to the higher potency its inherent possibilities as if in a well as in the psychic sense, exclusively by virtue of the domination of those ex-
mirror. In turn, if the intermediary potency could not have been withdrawn ponents of external life, then it is certainly comprehensible how total painless-
from the highest potency, then it was impossible for the intermediary potency ness and that feeling of bliss that accompany that just-mentioned crisis emerge
to have become the reproach or counterprojection in which the highest potency with the sublimation of those exponents. It is likewise comprehensible how the
discerned its own innermost thoughts. If that pure spirit, the [292] the actual sudden and momentary sublimation of those exponents showers one with the
self and supreme I of the whole being, had grown together with the highest po- highest voluptuousness.
tency and was not free from eternal Being, then eternal Being could not have The external appearance of this crisis is sleep, about whose nature we
become the mirror in which the pure spirit beheld the wonders of the coming would never have received adequate tidings without those experiments [of
world. If the freedom of the parts with respect to each other were sublimated, magnetic sleep]. For many reasons it seems to me as if the so-called magnetic
then this contemplative life, this inner clarity, would be sublimated right away. sleep were distinguished far too much from usual sleep. Because we are con-
Two different and, in a certain respect, opposed states, share human life. scious of only a little or almost nothing of the inner processes of usual sleep, we
The waking person and the sleeping person are inwardly altogether the same can also not know if the inner processes of magnetic sleep are not altogether
person. None of the inner forces that are in effect in the waking state are lost similar or the same. Likewise, in magnetic sleep, no memory crosses over to the
in sleep. It is already evident from this that it is not a potency lying in the inte- waking state and we would have little or no science of magnetic sleep without
rior of the organism but rather a potency in an external relationship to the or- the special relationship of the hypnotized to the hypnotist.
ganism whose presence or absence determines the alternation of those states. It is well known that the inner processes of magnetic sleep are also not al-
All forces of the person during the waking state are apparently governed by a ways the same. There are degrees of that inner life of which we as a rule just
unity that holds them together, by something that, so to speak, communally ex- perceive the lowest degree, seldom perceive the intermediary degree, and prob-
presses them (or is their exponent). But if this link is dissolved (however this ably never perceive the third degree. Should we undertake to indicate the pos-
might happen), then each force retreats back into itself and each tool now sible rungs of this ladder, it would occur approximately as follows.
seems to be active for itself and in its own world. A voluntary sympathy enters The lowest rung would be where the crisis is posited or where the mate-
the place of the externally binding unity and while the whole is outwardly as if rial of human nature is liberated. Here the [294] soul, which dwells within mat-
dead and inactive, inwardly the freest play and circulation of forces seems to ter but which is otherwise bound to the higher life and which forms everything
unfold. and heals everything, can unfold itself freely. Here emerges the free circulation
If in the usual course of life the effect of that external potency waxes and between the soul and what is higher, that spiritual being, that universal medi-
wanes in regular alternation, then in unusual states an extraordinary sublima- cine of nature and of the cause of health, the tincture' by which harsh nature is
tion of it appears possible in which the power is bestowed upon one person in always mollified. Each subordinated nature, whose guiding connection with its
relationship to another such that the one has an unleashing and liberating ef- higher principle is interrupted, is sick. But it is precisely this guidance that is al-
fect on the other. Probably what liberates subordinated nature becomes nature's ways restored, at least for awhile, by magnetic sleep. Either what has been un-
higher principle (A') against which nature sinks. A relationship that in the be- naturally intensified by this magic, and has sunk into deeper sleep, is returned
ginning was only weak and indecisive develops more and more as the relation- to its potency (and hence, to its potentiality with respect to the higher princi-
ship is continued. For the effect here is also reciprocal. In the relationship in ple) or the life that has been excessively weakened and oppressed by the higher

68 69
principle becomes free for a moment and breathes again. In both cases, the will certainly find many ways to expand and amend our thoughts or to present
healing force of that sleep rests on the restoration of the interrupted guidance them in a higher light.
between the higher and the lower principles. Hence, only one question should be allowed such that the fundamental
The second degree would be where what is spiritual in the person would thought might gain clarity. Why do all higher doctrines call so unanimously to
become free in relationship to the soul and would draw the soul to it in order to the person to separate themselves from themselves and give them to under-
show it, as if in a mirror, the things hidden in the soul's interior and what lies still stand that they would thereby be capable of everything and active in all
wrapped up in the soul itself (pertaining to what is future and eternal in the per- things—why other than because one only thereby [296] produced that Jacob's
son). This degree would incontestably be the highest degree already known in ladder of heavenly forces in themselves? "Being posited in oneself" [das In sich-
-

magnetic sleep, namely, where what has been posited into crisis is utterly dead to gesetzt seyn] hinders the person. "Being posited outside of oneself" [das Aufter-
-

the outside world and is completely cut off from the material world and where, sich gesetzt werden] helps one, as our language magnificently indicates.' And
- -

precisely by virtue of this, the signs of a higher relationship present themselves. so then we see, to stick now only with spiritual production, how the inner free-
Finally, we would have to search for the third degree in the relationships dom and independence of the mental forces also conditions all spiritual cre-
that lie utterly outside customarily human relationships, and, in the current ation and how all diffident people, insofar as they are as such, become ever
context, it is better to be silent about them than to speak of them. more incompetent at spiritual production. And only one who knows how to
But if gradations of magnetic sleep take place, and if, in turn, degrees of maintain that divine duality in unity and unity in duality is blessed with that
depth and interiority are distinguished in usual sleep, then it is impossible to sportive desire and levelheaded freedom of creation that mutually require and
know to what degrees of magnetic sleep even usual sleep elevates itself. condition each other.
Already the ancients distinguished two kinds of dreams, of which only The Orient has discerned that sportive desire in the original life of
one of them was regarded as sent by God. But as diverse as the dreams may be, God.' They expressively call it wisdom, presenting this as a gleam of eternal
depending on the person and the circumstances, it [295] is certain that dreams light and as an immaculate mirror of divine force and (on account of the pas-
of higher degrees of interiority would be just like the visions of magnetic sleep, sive qualities) an image of its generosity. It is astonishing how they ascribe to
of which there remain no memory when the person has woken up. We more this being in general more of a passive than an active nature. For this reason,
surely assume that dreams are a continual (constant) phenomenon of sleep and they do not call this being spirit, or Word (or Logos), things with which wisdom
yet that we do not remember most of them because we are already aware that was later often and incorrectly confused. Rather, a feminine name was attrib-
only a general memory of their having been remains of many dreams and that uted to this being. This meant that, with respect to the higher being, it is sim-
other dreams are held onto only in the moment of waking (and sometimes re- ply something passive and receptive.
maining not even then). It is utterly probable that the more external dreams are In the book regarded as divine, and which truly is divine, which intro-
often reflections of more profound and more interior dreams and that these duces wisdom as speaking," wisdom is compared to a child. For a child is called
deeper dreams, even if clouded and confused by the intermediary through selfless when—in the earliest years certainly—all of the inner forces reciprocally
which they travel, nonetheless reach us. excite each other in natural effect and fair interplay. But no will, no character,
At the same time, if one wanted to have a look at a retroactive application and no unity that holds them together and governs them, present themselves.
to something earlier, then one could look at the possibility that the person In the same way, what is initially external to God is in itself a merely passive,
would have a similar power with respect to other things that they have with re- unexpressed unity and is without will. Hence, that creating or generating of im-
spect to other persons. Then, if one could again liberate the interior of corpo- ages is only sport or desire.
real things, one would best produce that true and actual crisis that our [2971Wisdom played not on the earth, for there was no earth yet—on
—

chemistry still futilely strives to bring about and one would introduce a series of God's earth, on what is ground and soil to God. But God's exquisite desire was
utterly different phenomena than the customary experiments. already in this early time that creature that, because it was the first link between
Yet we scarcely dared to touch upon these great mysteries so cursorily be- nature and the spirit world, actually mediated the propagation of the attracting
cause all of the identified phenomena are connected on all sides and branch out movement into the highest movement. The human is actually the combinatory
in such diverse ways. If someday we succeed in continuing this history up to the
time and manifold conditions in and under which human life consists, then we vi. Proverbs: 8.

70 71
 point of the entire cosmos, and, in as much, one can say that everything was ac- Until now, the Godhead without nature was regarded as will that does
tually beheld in the human. not will.' And it could always be seen as such since the Godhead in any case
comports itself as such with regard to Being. But precisely because the Godhead
is the highest purity, and without sublimation of this purity, it necessarily com-
C) THE UNIVERSAL SOUL IN ITS RELATIONSHIP TO GOD ports itself in an antipodal fashion with regard to others (with regard to Being).
AND THE COMPORTMENT OF GOD WITH RESPECT TO BEING Hence, the next requirement is now to make this clear.
There is no becoming in the pure Godhead. It remains what it is in it-
self. But precisely in this abiding the Godhead is necessarily of two different
It would be superfluous to recall that, in the above passage, wisdom was kinds with respect to external Being. For insofar as the Godhead in itself nei-
understood as that universal soul that dwells within nature and within the spirit ther has being nor does not have being, the Godhead negates all external Be-
world and, again, wavering above both worlds, as the guiding concatenation of ing through the Godhead's essence and nature. Admittedly, the Godhead does
universal sensitivity between the highest and the lowest. Hence, in such an early this at first only in a silent fashion. But if some such Being supervenes upon
age, the soul played, as if in a youthful dream of a golden age, what would some- the Godhead, and if it seemed discernible to the Godhead, then it necessarily
day be. Yet, just as the age of innocence does not remain, and just as the games does this in an explicit and active fashion. The Godhead is always the No to all
of childhood, in which future life envisages itself in a preparatory fashion, are external Being. It is only because the Godhead is now active in such a way that
transient, so, too, that blessed dream of the gods could not last. All merely em- it makes external Being. Just the relationship, in which the Godhead appears
bryonic life is in itself full of yearning and desires to be elevated out of the mute as what it is, is given. This relation is a becoming, but not a becoming with re-
and inactive unity and into the expressed and acting unity. In this way we see na- spect to the Godhead, but rather exclusively in relationship to Being. Any be-
ture yearning. In this way the earth so ardently sucks the force of heaven to it- coming whatsoever is to be assumed of [299] the pure Godhead only in
self. In this way the seed strives toward light and air in order to gather a spirit for relationship (crxerik(Tis," as the ancient theologians say), not absolutely or
itself In this way flowers sway in the rays of the sun in order to shine the rays with respect to the Godhead itself.
back as fiery spirit and as color. Hence, the higher that sportive life unfolds it- Hence, immediately with the relationship of external Being to the God-
self, the more inwardly it calls to the invisible so that the invisible may accept it, head, without change or alteration in the Godhead itself the Godhead in this
draw it to itself, and discern it as its own. And the wisdom that ascends and de- relationship is a consuming No, an eternally wrathful force that tolerates no
scends, as if on a scale, the concatenation of beings, laments forlornly the fate of Being outside of itself This consequently also admits of an inverse formulation.
its creatures and that the children of its desire do not abide, but rather that they This wrathful force is not merely a quality, principle, or part of the Godhead. It
are in perpetual struggle and that they again pass away in the struggle. is, rather, the entire Godhead, insofar as it consists of itself and is the most es-
Hence, this constantly repeated movement of eternal nature, always be- sential Being. For it is self-evident that this essential Being is something inac-
ginning again, can be regarded as an incessant theurgy.' The meaning and goal cessible to everything else, an irresistible ferocity, a fire in which nothing can
of all theurgy is nothing other than to draw the Godhead down to what is live. Because the Godhead, in itself neither having being nor not having being,
lower (coelo deducere numen), to [298] produce the guiding concatenation, so to is, with respect to external Being, necessarily a consuming No, it must therefore
speak, through which the Godhead would be able to act in nature. also, presupposing this, necessarily be an eternal Yes, reinforcing Love, the
We have already seen how the movement that ascends from below prop- essence of all essences. Indeed, it is so without the same originary necessity that
agated itself in the soul of the whole (A 3 ) in which the intermediate principle it is the No, but this presupposed, it is nonetheless necessary (for otherwise the
(A2 ) draws the movement to itself and thereby withdraws it from the highest. Godhead would be—not the will that does not will, but—the will wanting
Incontestably, only when what is immediate Being to the pure Godhead is nothing, the negating will, and hence, a determinate will). The Godhead is the
withdrawn from it does the Godhead feel Being as such. This resembles how Yes without change or alteration in itself, not because its purity is sublimated,
we have what seems inseparably one with us. We have it as if we did not have
it. But if it is taken away from us, then we feel it for the time as something that
is ours. But it does not follow from this that the Godhead becomes capable of vii. These words were on the margin as a comment for the purpose of further elaboration: "Here
or is at all coerced to manifest itself or to draw Being to itself. If this were the absolutely belongs an explanation concerning Being, present existence, existence [Seyn, Daseyn, Ex-
istenz]." Incidentally, several similar notations are found in the manuscript —ED. [K. F. A.
case, then the Godhead would not be eternal freedom .vu Schelling]

72 73
but rather precisely because the Godhead is this highest purity and freedom.
The Godhead is this without any movement, in the deepest silence, immedi-
ately by virtue of itself. In turn, this Love is consequently not a quality, a part,
or a mere principle of the Godhead. Rather, it is the Godhead itself, whole and
undivided. C
But precisely because the Godhead is whole and undivided, the eternal
Yes and the eternal No, the Godhead is again neither one nor the other, but the
unity of both. This is not an actual trinity of separately located principles, but
here the Godhead is as the One, and precisely because it is the One, it is both THE ACTUAL ASSUMPTION OF BEING
the No and the Yes and the unity of both. (= REVELATION = BIRTH) BY GOD
In this Yes and that No lies that repulsion and attraction that we earlier
required as necessary for consciousness. As the No, the Godhead is a fire that
attracts and draws into itself. But as the Yes, the Godhead is the cause of that
loving restraint by which the [300] duality is maintained in a unity. And in this
attracting and repelling, the Godhead intensifies itself into the unity of both,
that is, into the highest consciousness.
Precisely because the Godhead is eternal freedom, it can only comport it-
self with respect to Being as the No, as the Yes, and as the unity of both. For it A) ITS POSSIBILITY
must be explicitly recalled that these distinctions are not distinctions of the
essence, but only of the comportment, of the relationship of the one essence
with respect to Being. But also inversely, only because the Godhead comports But posited that the Godhead really assumed Being, then how and in
with Being in this way is it eternal freedom. Were the Godhead merely a Yes or what fashion could the Godhead have done so? Was the Godhead to draw Be-
a No, it would have to assume Being in one way or another, either affirming it ing into itself, negating it as something independent of and external to the
or negating it. The Godhead is the highest freedom precisely because it is both Godhead? Or was the Godhead to affirm Being as something independent of
of these, and both of these in an equally essential fashion. All of this had to be the Godhead? In neither case would the Godhead have revealed itself as what
so that thereby a necessary ground of the world would never be found and so it is, namely, as equally an eternal Yes and No. And yet if the Godhead freely
that it would become manifestly that all that is comes exclusively from the most decided to reveal itself, the goal of its revelation could be nothing other than to
utterly free divine will. reveal itself as that which was free to reveal itself and free not to reveal itself, as
Hence, the turning point between necessity and freedom is also here. eternal freedom itself.
Until this point, the progression of life was a necessary one. If it advances from Hence, it was impossible that the Godhead became active as the eternal
now on, this is only by virtue of a free and divine decision. The Godhead can No [301] if it did not become active as the eternal Yes, and vice versa. And yet
silently persevere in that balance between attraction and repulsion. Nothing ne- it is precisely as impossible that one and the same thing can have being as Yes
cessitates that the Godhead sublimate the balance or emerge out of itself in one and as No. It is absolutely necessary that the Godhead should decide either to
way or another. be one and then not to be the other or to be this and then not to be that.
Hence, if the Godhead assumed Being and actively revealed itself Hence, here is the highest conceivable contradiction. This is not going to
through Being (which we must discern as actually having happened), then the be reconciled, for instance, by claiming that God is already subordinate by na-
decision for that could only come from the highest freedom. ture as one or the other of the two (as the Yes or as the No) and hence, with re-
spect to the other, could assume the relationship of the non-active one. For
God is at the same time essentially both of them. Hence, God must also be ab-
solutely active as both of them.
How is one to reconcile this contradiction? Incontestably, only through
a closer determination of it. If God, active as the eternal No, has being (exists),

74 75
 then God cannot also be active as the eternal Yes. Or with more brevity and when they sank together to the expressible, to totality, with respect to some-
also in order to use here the already customary designation, albeit in a higher thing higher. In contrast, the talk is here of the highest self [303] of the God-
case: If B has being, then A cannot have being, namely, it cannot have the same head, which can never become Being with respect to something else. This self
being that B has; that is, according to this assumption, A cannot be what is pre- can only have being and be active in each of its forms (if one is to permit this
supposed or prior. But it does not prevent A from having being as what is pos- expression), as the Yes and as the No and as the unity of both. Given the deci-
terior. The converse also holds. If A has being (what has not been decided up sive contradiction between the Yes and the No, this self is thinkable only be-
until now, what is only assumed, and, hence, in case A has being), then B can- cause of the concept of different times. Hence, here it depends much more on
not have the same being, namely, as having being at first and now. It is not hin- the simultaneity among the different forms being sublimated and transformed
dered from having being as something posterior and future. into a succession.
Yet it is insufficient that if B or A has being, then A or B can have being. So much for what would have to occur should a decision ensue. But the
Rather, because God is both equally essentially, the relationship must be of the "How?" has not yet been explained.
kind in which God is posited as one of them and then is precisely and neces- Indeed, in general and without yet having developed the deeper grounds,
sarily thereby also posited as the other. Hence, expressed more generally, the the beginning or what was first, whether it be God as the eternal Yes or as the
contradictory relationship is resolved through the relationship of the ground by eternal No, is without doubt. For here the talk is of the birth of God in accord
which God has being as the No and the Yes, but one of them as prior, as with the highest self or insofar as God is eternal freedom. Indeed, it is precisely
ground, and the other as posterior, as grounded. as this freedom that God is the eternal No of all external Being, albeit that God
As such, it always remains that if one of them has being, then the [302] is as such not freely but rather necessarily. Again, this negation of external Being
other cannot have the same being. That is, it remains that both exclude each other is something necessary of or in freedom itself. But it is not what is necessary of
with respect to time, or that God as the Yes and God as the No cannot have be- God that should actually be born but rather the free aspect of God (i.e., of eter-
ing at the same time. We express it intentionally in this way for the relationship nal freedom). Hence, what is necessary can only comport itself as the ground of
cannot be of the kind such that if the posterior, say A, has being, then the poste- this birth and thereby as something preceding it. What is necessary proved itself
rior, hence, B, would be sublimated, or simply ceased to have being. Rather, it al- everywhere to be the first (Prins) and freedom to be what follows. Or, to say the
ways and necessarily abides as having the being of its time. If A is posited, then B same thing in other words, freedom appears everywhere victorious over neces-
must simply still persist as the prior, and hence, in such a way, that they are sity. Were God first of all the Yes of external Being and then the No, then, on
nonetheless, at the same time, in different times. For different times (a concept the contrary, what is necessary would be victorious over what is free. This would
that, like many others, has gotten lost in modern philosophy) can certainly be, as be an utterly retrograde process. But with the opposite sequence, there would be
different, at the same time, nay, to speak more accurately, they are necessarily at a progression from darkness into light and from death into life.
the same time. Past time is not sublimated time. What has past certainly cannot Hence, in the same act in which God decided on revelation, it was si-
be as something present, but it must be as something past at the same time with multaneously decided that God as the eternal No should be the ground of the
the present. What is future is certainly not something that has being now, but it existence of the eternal Yes. It was precisely at the same time thereby deter-
is a future being at the same time with the present. And it is equally inconsistent mined that God as the eternal negation of external Being should be surmount-
to think of past being, as well as future being, as utterly without being. able by Love.
Hence, the contradiction only breaks with eternity when it is in its high- [304] But it is inconceivable that there could be compulsion anywhere in
est intensity and, instead of a single eternity, posits a succession of eternities the Godhead. Everything must rest on the highest voluntarism. Hence, God,
(eons) or times. But this succession of eternities is precisely what we, by and to the extent that God is the eternal No, cannot be overwhelmed. God can only
large, call time. Hence, eternity opens up into time in this decision. be overcome by the Good such that God yields to Love and makes Himself
Such a decision was impossible in that earlier contradiction in what was into Love's ground. We must imagine the course in this way, although this can-
initially necessary in God. For then there was no essence that was free to be ut- not be conceived as actually having happened in this way. For God as the Yes,
terly one of the beings (e.g., B) and not to be the other being. There was blind as the No, and as the unity of both, is still one. There are not separate person-
necessity and all forces were already in effect. There, it depended on bringing alities. Hence, one can think that everything occurred just as if in a lightning
the forces, which were reciprocally repressing and excluding each other in an flash,' for it is epitomized as a happening without actually (explicite) being
incessant circulation, from succession to simultaneity. This was only possible something that happened. This resolution [Ent-Schfiefiung]," coming out of

76 77
 the innermost unity, is only comparable to that incomprehensible primordial was not posited as having being, but rather as that which neither has nor does not
act in which the freedom of a person is decided for the first time. We say that have being, as pure capacity to be [Seynkdnnen], as eternal freedom with respect
the person who doubts whether they should be utterly one thing or the other to Being, as that which, if ever actual, would have the ground and beginning of its
is without character. We say that a decisive person, in whom something defi- actuality exclusively within itself, and if ever commencing, would not be a neces-
nitely expressive of the entire being is revealed, has character. And yet it is rec- sary and eternal commencement, but rather one that begins freely.
ognized that no one has chosen the character following reasoning or reflection. There would be no real history of the world without a free beginning.
One did not consult oneself. Likewise, everyone assesses this character as a Those who could not understand the free beginning also could not find the ac-
work of freedom, as, so to speak, an eternal (incessant, constant) deed. Conse- cess to real history.
quently, the universal ethical judgment discerns a freedom in each person that To look at the entire history of the world as a progressive revelation of
is in itself ground, in itself destiny and necessity. But most people are frightened God is now a customary thought. But how did the Godhead come to that? Or
precisely by this abyssal freedom in the same way that they are frightened by how did it start to reveal itself?
the necessity to be utterly one thing or another. And where they see a flash of The answer that God is, in accordance with its nature, a consequently
freedom, they turn away from it as if from an utterly injurious flash of lightning necessarily self-revelatory being (ens manifestativum sm ) has brevity but is not
.

and they feel prostrated by freedom as an appearance that comes from the inef- succinct. It is hard to think of the world as something coerced when the com-
fable, from eternal freedom, from where there is no ground whatsoever. mon feeling has always been to look at it as the work of pleasure and of the
This is absolute freedom, which is not freedom for a particular deed, and highest voluntarism. But since we already only regard what is exuberantly free
which is the faculty to be utterly one or the other of contradictories. in the person as their real [306] self, we will not make an utterly necessary be-
It must have been discerned in one and the same inseparable act that, if ing out of God and we will also consider what is incomprehensibly free in God
God wanted to reveal Itself, it could reveal Itself only as the eternal No, [305] as God's real self. But the talk is precisely of the revelation of this highest self of
as the eternal Yes, and as the unity of both. In the same act it was discerned that the Godhead. Now, something that is free is free precisely in that it does not
this revelation could only occur in accordance with times or in a succession. have to reveal itself. To reveal is to be active, just as everything that is active is a
And precisely that which would have to be posited as the beginning is that revealing. But the free must be free to remain within mere capacity or to cross
which was overcome, namely, what is necessary of the freedom of God, the No over into deed. If it were to cross over necessarily, then it would not do so as
of all external Being, and all revelation so far (for there is no beginning with- what it really is, namely, as the free.
out overcoming). All of this was contained in one and the same resolution, the But others proceed from the starting point that God is spirit and the
freest and the most irresistible at the same time, by a miracle of eternal free- most supremely pure being. But as to how this spirit could have revealed itself,
dom, which is ground only of itself and hence, is its own necessity. they must admittedly confess to know nothing. Rather, they make a virtue out
This much may be said of the course of the great decision in which God of ignorance, just as they did for necessity. The reason for this not knowing is
as the eternal No, the eternal stringency and necessity, was posited as the be- clear. For if the Godhead is to be eternal freedom, to actualize itself, to mani-
ginning of its own revelation. fest, then actual Being or self-actualizing cannot already be posited with the
eternal capacity for Being or self-actualizing. There must be something be-
tween possibility and deed if it is to be a free deed. Even the most vulgar intel-
B) ITS ACTUALITY lect grasps this. But in pure eternity in which they think God, there is no
distance, no before and after, no earlier and no later. Hence, even the mere
thought that there must be something between actuality and possibility loses
meaning for those who want to discern nothing but the pure Godhead.
(a) precedence of the negating or enclosing will (= God active as nature, Were the Godhead eternally actual (in the adequately determined mean-
whereby God posits in the state of possibility) ing of "externally revealed"), then it would not be the power to actualize itself.
But since the Godhead can only actualize itself from out of its free eternity,
From now on begins the history of the actualization, or the real revelations, there must be something between free eternity and the deed of actualization
of God.' The eternal Being, where God for the first time comes to have being in that separates the deed from eternity so that eternity remains free and invio-
relationship to eternal nature, we called an eternal birth. But in this birth, God lable. This something can only be time, but not time within eternity itself, but

78 79
rather time coexisting with eternity. This time outside of eternity is that move- between free eternity and the deed, something that has a root that is indepen-
ment of eternal nature where eternal nature, ascending from the lowest, always dent from eternity and which is something commencing (finite), albeit eter-
attains the highest, and, from [307] the highest, always retreats anew in order nally so. Thereby, there may eternally be something through which God could
to ascend again. Only in this movement does eternal nature discern itself as draw nigh to creatures and communicate Himself to them. Thereby, pure eter-
eternity. The Godhead counts and gauges in this clockwork—not its own eter- nity may always remain free with respect to Being. And Being may never ap-
nity (for this is always whole, consummate, indivisible, beyond all time and no pear as an emanation from the eternal capacity-to-be and hence, there may be
more eternal in the succession of all times than in the moment), but rather just a distinction between God and his Being.
the moments of the constant repetition of its eternity, that is, of time itself, In science, as in life, people everywhere are governed more by words than
which, as Pindar already says, is only the simulacrum of eternity.' For eternity by clear concepts. Hence, on the one hand, they explain God in an indetermi-
must not be thought as those moments of time taken together, but rather as co- nate fashion as a necessary being and, on the other hand, they get worked up
existing with each single moment so that eternity again sees only its (whole, over a nature being ascribed to God. They would thereby like to give the ap-
immeasurable) self in each single one. pearance that they are saving God's freedom. How little they understand, or,
There is a question that is so natural that it is already raised in childhood: moreover, how they understand nothing of this whatsoever, is illuminated by
What kept God busy before God created the world? But examined more ex- the preceding. For without a nature, the freedom in God could not be separated
actly, all thoughts pass away, if creation is to be a free deed, with the necessary from the deed and hence, would not be actual freedom. Hence, they quash, as
concept of a duration of that unexpressed state. Since eternity, in itself or by it- is proper, the system of universal necessity and yet they appear just as eager to
self, has no duration and only has duration in relationship to time, that eternity quash any succession in God, although, if there is no succession, only a single
before the world immediately vanishes into nothing, or what likewise says as system remains, namely that everything is simultaneous with and necessary to
much, it vanishes into a mere moment. Teachers usually help themselves out by the divine being. In this way, as one notices that they also do in life, they reject,
avoiding this question. But it is precisely the leaving of such questions unan- like the blind, precisely that which they most eagerly seek (without under-
swered, questions that, as we mentioned, already strike the child, that is the standing it) and are drawn exactly to that which they really wanted to flee.
cause of universal skepticism. If they knew the Scriptures, they would certainly Whoever has followed the preceding attentively must [309] have per-
find the answer, since the Scriptures tell in what cozy proximity wisdom already ceived by themselves how, in the Highest's assumption of Being or life, the
was in and around God in those primordial times. As such, wisdom was God's same succession, in turn, took place that had taken place between the principles
favorite and found herself in the sweetest feeling of bliss, but was also the cause of eternal nature. For here, too, what is first emerging into Being (what is as-
of God's joy, since at that time He beheld, in advance and through Her, the en- suming Being) is a negating, stringently necessary will which makes itself into
tire future history, the great image of the world and all of the events in nature the ground of something higher. The latter, although not actually free (because
and in the realm of spirits.' it is the pure will of Love), is nonetheless a levelheaded will. Finally, something
That resolution of God, to reveal His highest Self according to times, conscious and free rises above both, something that, in the highest sense, is
came out of the purest freedom. Precisely for this reason God retains the power spirit, just as the soul was the third principle in eternal nature.
to determine the, so to speak, time and hour of this revelation and to begin, We could thus look at this succession of revelation as a succession of po-
solely in accord with His pleasure, what was entirely the work of His freest will. tencies that run through Being to its consummation. From now on it will be
The doctrine that God created the world in [308] time is a pillar of genuine necessary to make the following distinction. The forces in Being, insofar as they
faith. The labor of this present work would be adequately rewarded had it only have ceased to exclude each other and have become explicit, have also ceased to
made this thought comprehensible and intelligible. For since there is no time in be potencies, and hence, we will therefore in the future call them principles. As
God itself; how should God create the world in time if there is not a time out- potencies, opposites necessarily exclude each other. And just as it is impossible
side of God? Or how would a determination of this time be possible if there is for a number to have different powers at the same time, but is certainly possi-
not already, before creation, a movement outside of God, according to whose ble that the number is posited to the second power, then in a further succession
repetition time is measured? is elevated to the third power, so, too, that of Being that has being [das Seyende
God, in accordance with His highest self; is not manifest. God manifests des Seyns] can only be something singular at the same time, such as, negating
Himself. He is not actual. He becomes actual. It is precisely by this that God force, but this does not hinder that which has being in the same Being from be-
may appear as the most supremely free being. Hence, something else emerges ing something else in a successive time, nay, from being exactly the opposite of

80 81
 what it was formerly. Hence, from now on we shall now denote that which has I fence, just as this decision is a [311] work of the highest freedom, it is also a
being in each single time with the name of a potency. work of the highest Love. That which is preceding in revelation is in no way
Indeed, that correspondence between the objective and subjective life of that which is in itself subordinate, but it is posited as such. That which succeeds
a being cannot in general be striking. What a being [Wesen] is inwardly or in the subordinate is not itself something actual and divine but is voluntarily dis-
accordance with Being [Seyn], it must again be so manifestly, or in accordance cerned as the higher with respect to the subordinate. Priority is in inverse pro-
with that which has being [Seyende]. These same forces that in simultaneity portion to superiority. To mix up these concepts is only possible in the
constitute its inner present existence [Daseyn], these same forces (not in accord blindness of judgment that distinguishes our times.
with number but certainly in accord with their nature), emerging in a succes- Here one can again plug in the customary concepts. According to the
sion, are again the potencies of a being's life or becoming. They are what are de- general doctrine, creation is externalization through self-relinquishment' and
terminative of the periods or times of its development. descent. The eternal does not make into the beginning what is in itself supera-
The interior of each organic being rests in and consists of three [310] main ble and humble in the eternal. Rather, the eternal makes into the beginning
forces: the first (in order to give a brief example) through which it is in itself and what it voluntarily beholds, what it wants to behold. In this way, the eternal is
constantly brings itself forward; the second through which it strives toward the the most supremely powerful and innermost force. This force would be insu-
outside; the third through which it, so to speak, unites the nature of both. Each perable were it to remain inward, but it becomes superable when the eternal
of these is necessary for the inner Being of the whole. If any one of them were makes itself through force into that which of Being has being.
taken away, the whole would be sublimated. But this whole is not an abiding Be- The negating, contracting will must precede into revelation so that there
ing. The being [Wesen] posited as Being [Seyn] presents itself immediately as is something that shores up and carries upward the grace of the divine being,
something that has being [ein Seyendes]. But since the same forces are in that without which grace would not be capable of revealing itself. There must be
which has being that are in Being and since that which has being can only be Might before there is Leniency and Stringency before Gentleness. There is first
something singular in each time, these same forces that are in effect within (the Wrath, then Love. Only with Love does the wrathful actually become God.
same forces in accordance with their nature) emerge outwardly with decision. In the nocturnal vision where the Lord passed by the prophet, a mighty
Hence, in the succession they become the potencies of the being's life periods, just storm first came which rent the mountains and shattered the rocks. After this
as they were in simultaneity the principles of its steadfast Being. This is the came an earthquake, and then finally a fire. But the Lord himself was in none of
meaning when, for example, it is said that in the first time of life the vegetative these, but rather was in a soft murmur that followed." Likewise, Power, Vio-
soul rules, in the following time the mobile soul rules, and, finally, the sensate soul lence, and Stringency must come first in the revelation of the eternal so that the
rules. The same thing is meant when it is said that, for example, (for what reason eternal itself can first appear as the Eternal Itself in the soft wafting of Love.
we will not investigate) the primordial time in the life of the earth was the mag- All evolution presupposes involution. In attraction, the beginning and
netic. From this it converted to the electric time, although it is recognized that all the contracting force are the real original force and root force of all life. Each
of these forces were required for the inner continuance of the earth at all times. life begins from contraction. For why does everything proceed from the small
Hence, the succession of potencies (this word taken in the meaning al- to the large and from the narrow to the wide, since it could be the reverse if it
ready determined) also comports itself as a succession of times. Only this law were only a matter of mere progression?
is capable of elucidating the organism of times. [312] Darkness and closure are characteristic of primordial time. The far-
Only through this law is the proper sovereignty of the antithesis first pre- ther we go back into the past, the more powerful the contraction. This is the
sented and in such a way that it is as absolute as unity. Unity remains dominant way it is with the mountains of the primordial world and this is the way it also
in Being (albeit mitigated into interrelation), but in that which has being both is with the oldest formations of the human spirit. This same character of clo-
the insuperable freedom of the antithesis appears as well as the way in which sure approaches us in the mute seriousness of the Egyptians and in the gigan-
the antithesis again subordinates unity to itself. tic monuments of the Indians that seem to have been built for no particular
The eternal only exists through its will. Only through a free resolution time but rather for eternity. Nay, it even comes to us in the silent greatness of
does the eternal make itself into that which of Being has being. But granted the sublime peace of the most ancient Hellenic works which, albeit mitigated,
this, the eternal was bound with regard to the succession of its revelation, al- still carry in themselves the force of that distinguished age of the world.
though it just as much did not have to reveal itself. The decision to reveal itself Hence, from this point forward, we step onto the path of times. The con-
and to posit itself superably as the eternal No was one and the same decision. tradiction is decided by the exuberant deed similar to the one in which a person
decides to be utterly one thing or another. From this point forward, God is ex- as an obsession and craving that draws inwardly, that is, as nature (albeit as
clusively singular. God is only negation with respect to Being. As this negating more than the inner and blind force of nature). And hence, it again makes the
force, God is a fire that draws Being into itself and hence makes what is drawn beginning of a higher life for itself.
in completely one with this force. It was totality and unity, but now both are If we can only conceive of God as the most utterly supreme freedom and
fused into a single being. What is attracted or withdrawn is eternal nature, the considerateness, then this spirit, albeit the purest, yet only active as nature, cer-
totality. What attracts or draws is singular. Hence, the whole can be designated tainly cannot be called God. Were it (B) God, then the entire unity would com-
in the following illustration: port itself as the now consummately actualized God.
If this unity is not God, then what is it?
A3
(A' = = B) B We have indicated how the pure Godhead is indivisibly the eternal Yes
and the eternal No and the free unity of both. From this it automatically fol-
This is the One and the Many ( -1, K ai, irCtv)' in intimate connection. lowed that the Godhead can be the eternal No = B only insofar as the Godhead
With this, however, it should not be overlooked that the One, or the inwardly is, as such, at the same time the ground of Itself as the eternal Yes. Then from
drawing potency with respect to nature, is a supremely spiritual force, nay, that this the reverse also necessarily follows. As B or the eternal No, it is the God-
it is pure spirit, although it is not acting with freedom and considerateness. For head only insofar as it is at the same time A, that is, that it posits Itself as the
the negating force that is God by virtue of His purity and with respect to Being eternal Yes. This here is the same relationship that [314] is in God according to
is as such, as was already indicated, not in accordance with God's freedom, but the Christian doctrine. For the first personality is only God as the father, or in-
rather in accordance with the necessity of God's nature. In that original state of sofar as the personality is the father, that is, insofar as the son at the same time
nondivorce, where there was one and the same thing, which was the eternal Yes is. And hence, in turn, the second personality is only God insofar as the per-
and the eternal No as one and the same thing, and where above both of them sonality is the son, or, insofar as the father also is.
there was levelheaded spirit, there, too, that stringency and necessity of the di- But now, that is, in precisely the moment that we are emphasizing, the
vine being was elevated to considerateness and to consciousness. Now, because negating force = B is in no way that which is positing A. Certainly we know,
God had decided simply to be the No, God emerged into His blind, dark na- from the course of the earlier attained insights, that God is only negating force
ture, which was concealed within Him and which could only become manifest with respect to Being in order to make a ground for Itself as eternal Love. But
through the cision. So now had the [313] life, which in the preceding moment this negating force does not know itself and hence, also does not know its own
had been elevated to freedom and considerateness, therefore retreated back to relationship. It does not know the freedom of the decision, by virtue of which it
the level of blind necessity? But how does this sinking back hang together with alone is what is active. It had to be so. So that there would be a true beginning,
the asserted impossibility of any regressive movement? Certainly, whoever this higher life had to sink back down into unconsciousness of itself. There is a
solves this question will no doubt understand how to solve a good many other law in humanity: there is an incessant primordial deed that precedes each and
questions, including ones in the history of nature and in the history of human- every single action and through which one is actually Oneself. Yet this primor-
ity. As often as life enters into a new epoch, it is necessary that it again make a dial deed sinks down into unfathomable depths with respect to the conscious-
new beginning. As such, it is unavoidable that this beginning or this first level ness that elevates itself above it. Thereby, this primordial deed becomes a
of the new epoch, when compared with what was ultimate or supreme in the beginning that can never be sublimated, a root of reality that cannot be reached
preceding epoch, would appear as a retrograde step. When one potency is com- through anything. In the same way, in the decision, that primordial deed of di-
pared with another potency, the proceeding potency appears lower than the vine life also eradicates consciousness of itself, so that what was posited as
preceding potency, because the preceding potency necessarily appears as a ground in divine life can only be disclosed again in the succession through a
higher potency in its time than the proceeding potency does in its time. But higher revelation. Only in this way is there a true beginning, a beginning that
when one time is compared with another time and one epoch is compared with never ceases to be a beginning. The decision that would make any kind of act
another epoch, the proceeding one appears decisively higher. Hence, such into a true beginning may not be brought before consciousness. It may not be
seeming regressions are necessary in the history of life. recalled, which rightly means as much as taking it back. Whoever reserves it to
There is something in the contemporary unity that is connected with na- themselves again and again to bring a decision to light never makes a begin-
ture in a way that it was not connected with nature in the preceding unity, ning. Hence, character is the fundamental condition for all morality [Sitt-
namely, the being of that most supremely pure spirit. However, this spirit acts lichkeit].' Lack of character is in itself immorality.
 The following is also true: the beginning does not know itself as such. being, in the state of involution (implicate, in statu involutionis), which is a trans-
Which really means: it may not know itself as a beginning. In the very begin- port (intermediary) of real revelation. At least those who, following the words of
ning, nothing is or discerns itself as merely ground or beginning. Whatever is a Scripture, ascribed to God the power to withdraw even from the ordered course
beginning must also not behold itself as a beginning, but rather as an essence of things in order to conceal His countenance,' that is, His real self, ought not
(something that has being for its sake), in order to be a true beginning. consider this unworthy of the Godhead. Hence, the Godhead again retreats into
[315] Hence, that force of negation, as the force within which only God a state of involution for awhile in order to act, in certain cases, as mere nature
is active, also does not discern itself as ground, as the positing of the eternal Yes. rather than in accordance with His innermost self and heart.
Not only does the negating force not posit A, it must determinately negate A The talk here is not at all of the essential Being of God (of His Being
(and consequently also negate the higher unity, which is spirit). It must exclude outside of and beyond nature), but rather only of the existence, that is, the ex-
A and utterly displace A out of the present. Within the negating force there is ternal revelation in our use of the term, of the Godhead, which was already
that wrathful force that tolerates nothing. This is the force that the jealous Jew- posited as having being through its relationship to eternal nature. For us to re-
ish God expressed toward other gods. The negating force must remain in this peat this seems almost unnecessary for it is clearly enough and even explicitly
exclusion and forlornness until its time is fulfilled. It must maintain itself with explained through the course of the whole of history up until this point.
full power precisely so that life may thereby be elevated to the highest glory. Even for the most anxious person, nothing difficult or tricky whatsoever
We said that the negating force represses the will of Love and the will of can lie in this whole matter if one just keenly grasps these concepts, and each of
the spirit, but only by displacing them from the present. It posits these as not their supplementary determinations, and thinks them through for oneself. To
having being [nicht seyend], but hence in no way as non-being [nichtseyend]. this certainly belong pure intentions, serious conation, and honest effort. These
Rather, they are posited as future and certainly, as such, also as having (merely are certainly hardly to be expected in times where, on the one had, the conve-
concealed) being. nient doctrine that one would be able to know nothing has broken the habit of
Hence, this force of negation is that which posits the eternal Yes only in almost all more precise thinking, and, on the other hand, those who strive for
accordance with possibility but not yet in accordance with actuality, that is, this something higher, for a matter that consists, in part, of the most subtle and
force is God in accordance with possibility but not in accordance with actual- most delicate delimitations, believe they can content themselves with the mere
ity. Consequently, the whole unity is also not yet the actual or actualized God. materials of ideas that were amassed from all over the place, even though such
Then what is this unity? Answer: it is the eternal embryo of God that is a belief has certainly led, in part, to monstrosities.
not yet an actual god, but rather is only a god with respect to its forces. This The more important all of the above presented views are, the [317] more
unity is therefore the state of possibility (of potentiality) in which God has vol- we will still try to illuminate them from another angle.
untarily posited itself. This state must necessarily come before the actual (re- To wit, the question can emerge as to what then is really negated by that
vealed in actuality) God so that there may be a becoming, a succession, a negating force? Incontestably, only that which was posited by the preceding
gradualness, in this revelation or birth of God into actuality. moment, the independence of Being, the apartness and the withdrawal of the
Hence, perhaps some people will say that so long as this is the case, there forces. But surely that free movement of nature certainly cannot now be made
is no God whatsoever. Certainly not! For God is already the whole God with re- regressive by this negating force. Hence, the attracting force negates only what
spect to the possibility (of becoming manifest). The now active negating potency is already posited in another regard. Indifference, the state of nondivorce, is also
is the force (i.e., the possibility) of positing the affirming potency. This affirm- here, but it is active indifference. It is not an indifference free from all difference
ing potency, just like the higher unity, is certainly not posited as having being but but rather it is an indifference negating difference. But it is only the state of di-
as not having being (as future). Now, no one will want to maintain that what is vorce and reciprocal freedom that are negated and hence, that which has its
as something possible or with respect to mere possibility is therefore nothing state of divorce negated is affirmed as something nondivorced. And that force,
whatsoever. It certainly is, but just in the state of possibility. Here the [316] dis- which is the newness of all freedom, is what is affirming of the whole in non-
tinction presented earlier between the Being that has no being and non-Beine freedom. However, since that force can only negate what is there, it recognizes
must only be asserted in the higher instance. "Therefore, God is not," can mean the state of divorce through negation and it affirms it by negating it.
two things. "God is not existing [existirend]." This is being granted and main- First and foremost, it is thereby clear how the negating force assumes Be-
tained. "God is not at all, or God is absolutely not existing." This is being denied. ing for itself precisely through negation. The negating force posits that which
For God is precisely in that God does not have being. God is only as not having is its own precisely in negation.

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 But just as the state of divorce is again posited through the negation of sublimated. Each falls into its own life and a binding, coercive unity emerges in
the state of divorce, so, likewise, everything that would be posited in an actual lieu of the preceding voluntary affection.
or evolved fashion (explicite) without negation must only be posited in an in-
volved fashion (implicite) through negation. (13) consequence of this emergence of God as negating will
Incontestably, if the Godhead assumed Being and if, at the same time,
the state of divorce were to persist, this would be the most evolved and most aa) construction of the cosmos
fully expressed existence. For a spirit attains the plenitude of its existence
when it has a living soul (A 3 ) as its immediate subject. Again, this soul has its [319] These principles were mutually comforted in that subordination of
ectype in an external spiritual-corporeal being. This free relationship is not one under the other only because one became, so to speak, medicine for the other.
now affirmed but rather negated. Yet is precisely thereby posited in a negated Hence, each principle was also only calmed in itself through that organization
or involved fashion. We can therefore say that the unity indicated above is, at where one force comported itself to the other force as ground or as that which
least in an involved fashion, the first actual existence of God. But does not does not have being. Since the principles, as well as each force, are all elevated to
[318] every existence presuppose contraction, precisely because it is exis- an equal efficacy, a reciprocal impassivity and revulsion necessarily emerges be-
tence? Is there any kind of existence that was not an existence first in involu- tween all of them so that, barely brought together, they want to separate again.
tion? Is there any kind of free life that was not delivered from a negated state? We saw in the person where, after a mood takes hold of one, one assumes
Hence, we may then certainly maintain that that whole unity, because it is all of the colors of that mood. Sweetness is inverted into bitterness, gentleness
only a new and second beginning, is thus only a new and higher nature that into ire, and love into hate, because a root of bitterness lies even in sweetness
is nonetheless still utterly different in kind (toto genere) from the first one. and a root of hatred lies in love and, although concealed, it is necessary for its
Actually, there is now only a single being of which the attracting potency is support. In the same way, when Stringency is the governing principle, the
what is spiritual and what is attracted or drawn in is, respectively, what is cor- negating force also stressed itself in the mildly discharging principle (A 2 ). And
poreal. That spiritual potency penetrates, like an active obsession or craving, in the originary self-enclosing principle (A = B), the negating force elevated it-
the whole of eternal nature, and once naturata, 93 the spiritual potency by it- self out of its depths and concealment so that consequently only hostile forces
self is no longer separable from nature. The forces of eternal nature are its encounter each other in both. But since unity no longer has the antithesis out-
forces in which it senses Itself as in its tools. The whole is something verita- side of itself, but rather is united with it and it can no longer go out as the free,
bly indivisible (Individuum). Still, we should not forget the original distinc- silent unity, it, so to speak, feels as if it were dying.
tion concerning this unity. For that negating potency is in itself pure spirit Here is the first source of bitterness which is, nay, must be, the interior of
and it always comports itself before eternal nature as that which has being all life, and which immediately erupts whenever it is not soothed. For love is
does to Being. Indeed, this spirit acts as nature because it is unconscious. coerced into hatred and the silent and gentle spirit cannot act, but rather is op-
That is why it cannot be called intelligent in the real meaning of the word, al- pressed by the enmity in which all of the forces are transposed by the necessity
though it is not thus altogether unintelligent and absolutely without intellect. of life. From here comes the profound discontent that lies in all life and with-
It is a substantial spirit that has become substance. It does not have an intel- out which there is no actuality. This is the poison of life that needs to be over-
lect. Rather, it is itself essentially intellect, only it is not a conscious intellect come, yet without which life would pass away.
that steps back upon itself (reflected intellect), but rather a blind, uncon- For when the forces, now contracted into active Being, get a taste of their
scious, necessary, and, so to speak, instinctual intellect. bitterness, they desire, both as a whole and as individual principles, to go out
Hence, the negating will, because it is this kind of force and from this again from the stringent unity and each desires to be in their own nature. This is
kind of independence and omnipotence, draws together the being, mute until the [320] grim fate of all life. It first desires delimitation and to go from breadth
now, in all of its principles and forces. But through this it is immediately ele- to narrowness in order to become perceptible to itself. Thereafter, when it is in
vated out of the passive unity and into the active unity and, for the first time, all narrowness and has felt it, life desires to go back again into breadth and would
of the forces of Being are not only brought into one, but they are also equally like to turn right back into the silent nothingness in which it was before. And yet
active in one and the same being. For posited under one and the same potency, it cannot, because it would have to renounce again its self-incurred life. And just
the principles necessarily come to have a common denominator among them- as soon as it would have returned, from out of this state it would have yearned
selves (they become equipotent). That subordination of one under the other is again, and through this yearning it would incur anew something that has being.

88 89
 Hence, in the whole and in the particulars, the gathering together of Through the attracting potency, the whole, or the system of forces, which
forces by that spirit that draws into itself immediately effects the forces' cona- constitutes initial nature (A = B), becomes something gathered together. Yet it
tion to separate. And, indeed, the more active each of the forces has become, cannot be described as such, because in the gathering together it becomes an in-
that is, the more they are brought into narrowness, all the more do they sepa- herent contradiction and hence, does not persist at rest for a single moment. For
rate. Hence, the contraction gives rise to its exact opposite, and gives rise to even the two opposed forces in initial nature are brought to a common denom-
nothing less than to incessant excitement, the orgasm of all forces. But scarcely ination by the inspiriting potency. The force that should have been the resting
do they draw nigh again to the embryonic state and feel their communal life, ground out of which the being (A) would arise is one that is elevated from out
then does yearning' awaken anew. And yet they cannot leave the longing for of the depths and which intensified that which does not have being (B) into that
actuality and again they fall prey to the contracting potency. which does have being. Hence, scarcely has that which has been gathered to-
Hence, there is not a persisting life here but, moreover, a constant alter- gether felt the common denomination and the conflict of forces when it [322]
nating of expansion and contraction. And the above indicated unity (the whole wants to separate, for the forces in this relationship are reciprocally impassive.
of this moment) is nothing but the first pulsation, the, so to speak, beating But because it is held together by the might of the attracting potency and be-
heart of the Godhead, which, in incessant systole and diastole,' seeks rest, but cause this potency immediately elevates the negating force out of the depths,
does not find it. There is anew a spontaneous movement that happens again whereas the affirming being (A) seeks to subordinate the negating force to itself
and again automatically and which cannot cease by itself. For through each and to posit it back into potentiality, only the endeavor (nisus) of the conation to
contraction, the forces again become active and the contracting will gives way separate remains. A rotary movement must emerge into being from this en-
to their desire for expansion. But scarcely does the will feel the cision and the deavor. But the attracting force does not cease acting. Finally, it so happens that
commencing inefficacy when it is scared and fears that it would lose existence when the forces have become more and more spiritualized, in the highest degree
and hence, contracts anew. of revulsion, for they absolutely cannot either separate or abide, something of an
Hence, for the second time, life is posited into the moment of sponta- intermediary nature occurs. Matter, as if posited in a self-lacerating rage, shat-
neous movement by another movement that is completely different and higher ters into individual and independent centers that, because they are also still held
than the first one. and driven by averse forces, likewise move about their own axes.vm
With this we grasp that that which has being, together with its Being in It is futile to attempt to explain the diversity in nature by the peaceful
this [321] moment, is the supremely contradictory being [ Wesen]." We grasp eisemplasy98 of various forces. Everything that becomes can only become in dis-
that the first existence is the contradiction itself and, inversely, that the first ac- content. And just as anxiety is the fundamental sensation of every living crea-
tuality can only persist in contradiction. All life must pass through the fire of ture, so, too, everything that lives is only conceived and born in violent struggle.
contradiction. Contradiction is the power mechanism and what is innermost of Who could believe that nature could have created the many different wonderful
life. From this it follows that, as an old book says, all deeds under the sun are products in this terrifying external confusion and chaotic internal mixture, where
full of trouble and everything languishes in toil, yet does not become tired, and nothing is easily found all by itself, but rather penetrated by and ingrown with
all forces incessantly struggle against each other.' Were there only unity and other things, in peace and quiet? How could it have been created in any other
everything were in peace, then, forsooth, nothing would want to stir itself and way than in the most violent revulsion? Are not most of the products of inor-
everything would sink into listlessness. Now, however, everything ardently ganic nature manifestly the children of anxiety, of terror, nay, of despair?" And
strives to get out of unrest and to attain rest. so we also see in the individual cases in which we, to some extent, are permitted
The contradiction that we have here conceived is the fountain of eternal
life. The construction of this contradiction is the highest task of science. Hence,
the objection that the philosopher would start science with a contradiction viii. The whole, B, because it is one with being, lacerates itself, as one in discontent says, "I would
like to tear myself to pieces." rich mochte mich selbst zerreiflen."1 (Marginal note.)
means just as much to the philosopher as it would mean to remind the tragic ix. Compare this with the second section of The Philosophy of Mythology, 11/2, 582.—ED. [The
poet, after hearing the introduction of the work, that, after such a beginning, passage reads: All quality in nature only has meaning insofar as it is itself originally sensation. The
the work could only come to a horrible ending, and to cruel deeds and bloody qualities of things cannot be explained mechanically and externally. They can only be explained by
the original impressions that the being of nature itself obtains in creation. Who can imagine that
events. This was precisely the poet's intent when they set out. sulfur, that stinking scent of gasses and volatile metals, or the inexplicable bitterness of the ocean,
Hence, we, too, do not shun the contradiction. In fact, to the extent to are only consequences of simply accidental chemical mixtures? Are not those substances manifestly
which we are capable, we seek to grasp it well, even in its details. the children of terror, of anxiety, of discontent, of despair?"'

90 91
 to be witnesses of an original creation, that the first foundation of future humans the place or locus to which each potency is really entitled by virtue of its nature,
is only formed in deadly struggle, terrifying discontent, and anxiety that often although this entitlement had been as such only in a possible fashion. Extension
extends to despair. [323] If this happens in individuals and in the small, could it (extensio) already presupposes the space positing force and is best explained by
be any different in the large, in the creation of the first parts of the world system? that appearance that we call turgescence in the members of organic beings.'
It is conspicuous that, in the whole of nature, each single particular na- According to the representation of space that currently prevails, it is a void
ture commences with the rotation about its own axis and hence, manifestly that indifferently spilled out from all sides into the indefinite and into which in-
with a state of inner revulsion. In the greatest things as in the smallest things, dividual things are merely placed. But the true being of space, or expressed more
in the orbit of planets as in the partly rotary movements of that world, dis- exactly, the force that really posits space, is that universal, primordial force that
cernible only with the aided eye, that Linnaeus presciently calls "the chaos of contracts the whole. Were there no such force, or were it able to cease, then there
the animal world,' the annular drive shows itself as the first form of life sep- would be neither place nor space. Hence, space cannot be indifferent but rather is
arated into its own self. It is just as if everything that isolates itself in itself; and organically in the whole and in the particulars. Whoever could maintain an inter-
hence, away from the whole, would immediately thereby have to fall prey to the nal indifference of space, in which one point would be like the other and there
inner struggle. At least this remark would shed light on the forces of the annu- would not be a true above and below, nor right and left, nor back and front, must
lar drive as belonging to the oldest potencies, which were active in the first cre- not have considered the miracle of that ordering and placing force in the organic.
ation and which are not, as the prevailing opinion now has it, forces that later For the location of each essential member is a necessary location. Each member in
externally and accidentally supplemented what came to be. this whole can only be in this place. Likewise, this person must have considered
Now, insofar as the existence of such individual rotary wholes simply de- just as little how, for instance, in the graduated process of the organic being, each
pends on the elevating and inspiriting of the negating force, these wholes are part changes its locus with the meaning and dignity that it wins or loses in the
the works of a veritable elevating and creating force, which transposes the higher creature. Should such a force only dwell in a particular organic body, but
wholes from not having being into having being. Hence, these wholes are to be not dwell in the greater whole? Impossible! Space is not indifferent. There is a true
viewed as the first creatures. above and below. There is a heaven [325] that is veritably above the earth. There is
If that negative force's inspiriting could wane in the wholes, then they a spirit world that is, properly understood, beyond nature. As they were for our fa-
would immediately sink back into universal Being. Hence, that inspiriting is an thers, these are representations that again make the holism more valuable than an
elevation into selfhood for the wholes. From now on, that inspirited force is the indifferent expansion without a final goal of consummation and without a true
root of their ipseity in that they have their own ground (their own B or selfish conclusion and a meaningful end. For uncontainment is everywhere also imper-
principle) that is independent of the universal ground of nature. fection. Containment is the real consummation of every work. These representa-
But even now, intensified into selfhood (into Being-in-itself), these tions were not lost, as one might think, by the doctrine of the honorable
wholes are still retained by the attracting force. Yet, precisely because they are Copernicus, but only by the spiritless system of gravitation in later times.
now selfish and because they have their own point of foundation (center of That divine force that gathers together the whole does not merely in-
gravity) within themselves, they strive, precisely by dint of this selfhood, to clude nature. It also includes the spirit world and the soul that dwells beyond
evade the pressure of the attracting power. Hence, they strive to distance them- both nature and the spirit world. Hence, these receive a spatial relationship
selves on all sides from the center of force and to become themselves away from through this combination. Also, the belief in a place, in a dwelling place, of the
it. [324] Hence, the highest turgor of the whole emerges here, since each par- spirits, again receives meaning and truth.
ticular thing seeks to withdraw itself from the universal center and eccentrically That everything would, as much as is possible, become figural and be
seeks its own center of gravity or foundational point. brought into visible, corporeal, form, is the final intention. As the ancients ex-
With that first cision of primordial forces, where they sank to Being with pressed it, corporeality is the goal of the ways of God (finis viarum Dei), who
respect to what is higher, it was already remarked how everything emerges more wants to reveal Himself spatially, or in a place, as well as temporally.
and more out of the nonfigural and into the figural. 10° For the first time, there It already simply follows from the containment, the external finitude,"
was an above and a below. Yet that setting into opposition of the forces just re- not only of visible nature, but of the cosmos, that there is a force contracting the
sulted in a spiritual opposition (expansum),' albeit an impotent one that really
just expressed the absence of a gathering, actual (real), relationship endowing, x. But hence not finite in space. For space is precisely the expansion, happening from the inside out,
force. Space first emerges when that delimiting force supervenes, making actual of the contracting force. (Written in the margin.)

92 93
 cosmos from the outside toward the inside and by which the cosmos first what is in itself natural became natural for the first time, then, conversely, this
became spatial. Hence, this force, since it encompasses and includes the whole, moment is for eternal nature precisely the first echelon of a spiritual life to
is the force that really posits objectives and boundaries, as it is expressed in the which this nature should be raised. Hence, here still lies, so to speak, the heart
already cited passage' "When he circumscribed the depths with his circle." of nature, bare and open, just like the heart in animal life (which, in its highest
And the expression, "Heaven and earth are the expansion of divine might," cer- cultivation, only has that square = 0 as its fundamental form, and which also
tainly does not just refer to the attracting power lying in nature, but to the force expresses the primordial form of each celestial body). The animal heart first lies
of negation that gathers the whole. But the Eternal can only be finite to Itself. there, externally visible, and is brought back more and more toward the inside,
Only the Eternal Itself can [326] comprehend and circumscribe its own Being. until it is covered over in the following stages of formation. In all of the animal
Hence, the finitude of the world on the outside contains a consummate infin- order, the heart is moved forward more and more from the right side, toward
ity on the inside. the center, until it is ultimately brought all the way to the left side, that is, un-
The whole spatially extended cosmos is nothing but the swelling heart of til it is posited as past. In animal life, blood still retains that primeval move-
the Godhead that continues, retained by invisible forces, in a continuous pulsa- ment. Spirit, and the better will, all too often struggle with blood, this wild,
tion or in an alternation of expansion and contraction. unbridled matter, lacerated into globules (it already appeared probable to sev-
Particular things are at first created by the elevation of that which does eral natural scientists that, in the progression of each globule, they moved at the
not have being. By dint of the selfhood aroused in them, these things now nec- same time about their axes). Nature, yearning for rest, seems to seek nothing
essarily strive to get away from the attracting force, from the universal center. more ardently than to escape from that necessary and alternating movement
Hence, turgor follows from this. Turgor is the eccentric evasion from all sides, that emerges from the connected principles' reciprocal intolerance for each
which becomes more violent the more the principle of selfhood is inflamed other. This is a goal that nature first reaches through the ineffably great mira-
within things. But in the relationship in which things move away from the at- cle of articulation, through the keeping apart of averse forces in the system of
tracting force, they also feel the awoken principle of selfhood in them pass away expanding and bending muscles, which still retain a single side of the rotary
as well as their own life, which rested solely on the continuous solicitation (call- movement, but which, akin to a divining rod that is obedient to the will, only
ing forth) of that very same principle. Hence, they again fall prey to the negat- strike either inwardly or outwardly.
ing force and find themselves anew in the severity of the attracting potency. But In this constant alternation of going out and coming back, expansion and
with each new attraction, they are also inflamed to an ever higher selfhood. For contraction, matter is more and more prepared to become the external figure of
that dark force in them can, precisely because it is force (intensum), im be the indwelling spirit which, since it cannot produce utter unity (the negation of
brought to ever higher degrees of tension. all multiplicity), attempts to act architectonically in order to assert unity in this
This process must progress in this way up until the point where the forces multiplicity and hence, to produce a system. [328] At its first genesis, the struc-
of Being begin to keep the balance of that which has being. The equipollence ture of the universe clearly enough shows the presence of an inner, spiritual po-
of what is attracted with what attracts is finally produced through persistent in- tency. But the contribution and auxiliary influence of an unreasonable
tensification. This is the objective and end of the process. God itself must feel (irrational) principle that could only be delimited, but never overwhelmed, is
the utter depths and the terrifying forces of its own Being. It is even dialecti- just as unmistakable. Hence, the organic laws of the structure of the universe
cally evident that that in which the pure Godhead itself acts just as nature is are hardly fathomable with such simple relationships as have been hitherto at-
equivalent to eternal nature. Hence, here is the moment where, according to tempted. And in no case can these organic laws be developed just out of con-
Plato, God can be thought of as in a struggle with wild, unruly matter or na- cepts. Rather, they can only be developed out of actuality itself
ture.' But the God for which this can be said is only the possible God, or God But an abiding configuration is not possible in the present moment. For
insofar as God is just nature and hence, not actually God. in precise proportion to the extent that the whole is brought to the highest un-
Seen this way, the objective of this process is therefore only an alternat- folding, the orgasm of forces increases in all of its parts so that the attracting
ing [327] movement (motus alternus), an eternal inhalation and re-exhalation. force itself finally trembles for its existence and fears that chaos, which is al-
It is a systole and diastole that must be the beginning of spiritual life just as ready present in the particulars, is present in the whole.
much as it is the first moment of all natural life. For if, in the present moment, For along with the elevation of the principle of selfhood, which was des-
ignated for rest and potentiality, the passive qualities of matter are sublimated
xi. Proverbs 8:27. [Cited at 296] more and more. As indicated, these are qualities that depend precisely on the

94 95
 attenuation and suppression of that force which, when actuated (activated) or bingers of the recurrence of a past age, of universal destruction, of the dissolu-
spiritualized, is a consuming fire. When what was only supposed to be a dor- tion of things again into chaos. Evidently, the individual center of gravity (the
mant fire in an organic member is elevated into act, it becomes temporarily in- separate life) in a comet is [330] not reconciled with the universal center of
flamed. We still see fire break forth from any violently compressed matter. gravity. This is demonstrated by the directions and positions of their paths,
Electrical fire in lightning is incontestably something that is only released which deviate from those of the settled planets. Although the paths of planets
through violent pressure. Compressible materials (gasses), which together are do not, in any case, go back and forth in a straight line as Kepler surmised, they
capable of producing a flame, are ignited by mere pressure. Any pressure, even are only curved a little compared with the eccentricity of the comet's path.
the lightest one, calls forth electrical fire, so that it is hard to doubt that, with Comets are eccentric to such a degree that their movement can be regarded as
the right amount of compression, all matter would be capable of going up in a simple systole and diastole. But precisely in their approach to the sun and
flames. So, too, in the primordial state, matter, with the increasing orgasm, their retreat again from the sun, the comets show such metamorphoses and al-
must be transposed more and more into the state of a fiery dissolution. ternations that they simply can only be explained by alternating expansions and
All natural scientists have always believed that they had to base their ex- contractions. Until now, in all of the important comets, it has been perceived
planations of the gradual development of the earth, nay, of all of visible nature, how, with the approach to the sun, and hence, in the highest rut of all forces,
upon the presupposition of a state of dissolution. But in our time, [329] when the contours of the nucleus on the side turned toward the sun disappears more
all similes and metaphors are gotten from chemistry, one is content with a con- and more. The nucleus finally dissolves altogether, what one calls its nebula
ception of liquid dissolution, similar to the dissolution of metals in acids—as if swells out in like proportion, and the tail elongates itself. In one of the most re-
liquidity were overall something ultimate with which one could stop, as if it markable longhaired stars 106 of the year 1769, after its return from the sun (in
were an absolute state that does not require further explanation. But we believe November of that year), the nebula was more perspicuous so that the nucleus
that we can prove in yet another way that the oldest state of all matter and of all could be seen more clearly. But the appearance of the whole was so transformed
celestial bodies in particular, is a state of electrical dissolution. For that twofold that one of its observers ' brought those verses by Virgil about Hector to bear
"

fire actually appears in electricity. This twofold fire is what is really internal to upon it:
all matter. It is the radiating fire (+ E) as well as the negating fire (- E) that
draws into itself and serves as the ground for the radiating fire. For it was just
... quantum mutatus ab illo!
as erroneous to seek the ground of this electricity in a simple lack as it was to
Squalentem barbam et concretos sanguine crines,
assume, as does the contemporary view known as dualism, two equally positive, Vulneraque illa gerens, quae circum plurima—solem
albeit mutually opposed, electricities. One of the two electricities is actually of Accepit
a negating, inwardly drawing, nature. Yet because of this, it is certainly just as (Aen. II, 274 seq.) 107
little utterly nothing (simple privation) as the attracting fundamental force in
nature is a simple lack. The previously mentioned electrical conduction exper-
iments with the voltaic pile,' experiments that are too little heeded by the This dwindling and waning at the comet's return from the sun can only
great mass of natural scientists, provide a decisive proof that matter is capable be the effect of the recommencing diastole and the comet's approach to the
of an electrical spiritualization and dissolution in which matter is not just un- state of materiality. Since this was first written down (in the year 1811), the
receptive to natural chemical affinities, but in which it also discards all other more exact observations of the comet found in the skies at that time have be-
corporeal qualities. come well known. There were many things that were remarkable about this
We still now see those enigmatic members of the planetary whole, comet. It had a double tail. It had a greater brightness on the northern (inspir-
comets, in this state of fiery electrical dissolution. Comets are, as I expressed ited) side. But [331] the monstrous rapidity of its transformations was espe-
myself earlier but would now like to say, celestial bodies in becoming and are cially remarkable, so much so that one was nearly compelled to conclude that it
still unreconciled. They are, so to speak, living witnesses of that primordial already consisted of an alternation of expansion and contraction in its approach
time, since nothing prevents the earlier time from migrating through later time to the sun. In the short time of a second, the light in the field of vision of the
via particular phenomena. Or, conversely, nothing prevents a later time from
having emerged earlier in some parts of the universe than in others. In all ages, xii. Lambert's Beitrage, part III, pp. 234, 207. [Schelling is referring to Johann Heinrich Lambert's
human feeling has only regarded comets with a shudder as, so to speak, har- Beitrage zum Gebrauche der Mathematik and deren Anwendung, first published in Berlin in 1765.]

96 97
 comet finder could extend itself by two and a half degrees, which would have to proof that the holy Book wanted to isolate the very first creation, whose history
amount to almost a million geographical miles in true extension. This was a it concludes with these few words, and whose first outcome is intimated by the
phenomenon that the splendid observer (SchrOter) felt pressed to conclude was following words, from the subsequent creation. The first creation was isolated
similar to the electrical or galvanic primordial force. as something that persists for itself (as the creation of its own time).
In the foregoing presentation, we have attained what must always be our The trouble exerted by moderns to debase, where possible, the force of
main foreseeable goal in the endeavor to determine exactly the times in accor- that word (bara) to the meaning of a mere "forming" is incomprehensible. (One
dance with which and in which everything gradually came to be. In view of na- of them tries to explain it with the word "exasciare." 109 ) Even the etymology of
ture, we discern that the first time was really the time of the creation of the stars the word has been obscured by such shallow explanation. We do not want to
as such. But who, whenever they have viewed this incomprehensible whole with exclude any of the possible comparisons. The following can be made: bar, "son,"
the right senses, has not always felt that the great and terrifying forces, through the old German word " biiren (gebaren)," the Greek 13oti4.co, the Latin parare and
which the whole first came to be, and through which it is now still kept in exis- parere.' There are also possible comparisons with the meaning of "out of,"
tence, go far beyond all of the forces of the later time? A much softer force, the "away from home," "foreign," which befit the word bar in the words derived
will of a gentler time, has produced plants and animals. These may be called from it in the great many Eastern dialects. In the final relationship, the verb
works of nature insofar as the artistic wisdom dwelling in the universe itself is bara really meant to "act out of oneself" or to "act with Being itself (uncon-
understood by this. But the stars far surpass all of the forces of formative nature. sciously)." But, despite all of these various meanings, the common link is per-
They are works of God. Taken by themselves (without the succeeding time), they haps found when, following the [333] original identity and constant confusion
are works of wrath, of the paternal and most ancient force. of the verbs in a and ah, one seeks out the fundamental meaning of "bara" in
In the beginning God created heaven and earth. 108 In these simple words, "barah," from which berith derives. Just as in German "Bund' [bond, covenant]
the oldest book in the world expresses itself concerning this time when it de- and "Bfindnis" [alliance] derive from "Binden" [to bind], and in Latin "contrac-
termines it by separating and distinguishing it from the following time. Al- tus" [contraction] derives from "contrahere" [to draw together, to contract], so,
though they have often been misinterpreted, nay, intentionally misjudged, these too, does "berith" derive from "barah" and hence, in the same way means "con-
words are invaluable to someone who understands them. In this passage, "In traction," "attraction" (Hence, "to consume, to eat," II Samue112:17 111 ).' Every
the beginning" cannot be taken to mean anything other than "in the first time," external relationship of God with humans, nay, with the whole of nature (c.f.,
"in the most supremely ancient time." The next passage indicates that this time Genesis 9:12) 112 is a covenant (berith). The furnishing of nature with alternat-
was to be sharply distinguished from the following time: And the earth was— ing days and nights is a covenant of Jehovah with the day and the night (Jere-
certainly not before creation, and hence, taken more exactly, "the earth became miah 33:20). The relationship of the father to his son (bar) is a covenant. And
in creation" or [332] "the earth became after creation"—chaotic and void. It is the new covenant, 41 kaLvii 8La(Aicr, means the same thing as a new creation
clear that the narration wanted to designate this chaos and voidance as some- (Ketiv4), KTMIS)•
thing placed between that creation that happened in the beginning and the sub- But whoever wants to discern altogether the force of the word should
sequent creation. read the passage: "I, Jehovah, who forms light and creates darkness, makes the
This verse separates this time from the following time as above as well as good and creates evil (`hore' both times)."' There is no one who will maintain
with words. Why, if nothing more is intimated in these words than that the that God freely and consciously created darkness and evil. But, since the word
creation already described is one and the same as the subsequent creation, does that designates a conscious production stands in such an obvious antithesis
the verse say here, "Elohim (that which has being, that which was Elohim or with the word for creation (bara), the latter word can only mean unfree, uncon-
the universe of forces) created (bare? Why does it not straight away speak in scious creating with which, as with a production of substance, there is no intel-
the fashion that is always characteristic of the following verses and say, "In the lect and just power and might. (This demonstrates precisely that the creating
beginning Elohim said, 'Let there be heaven and earth.'"? Or why does it not at verse 1 was not an utterly completed creating.) To clarify this thought,
say, "God made," as is said (verse 16) of the two great lights, the sun and the one might remember the old distinction: God is the cause of the substantial
moon? God would not have even needed to make these lights if the creation at
verse 1 was already a making. Either all exegesis is deceitful, or this production
xiii. N.B., Numbers 16:30: "Jm beriah jifra Jehovah," i.e., "if the LORD moves the primordial
in the beginning that is called a "creating" is different than the later production, forces."
which is a "speaking." That this word is just used in the beginning is a decisive xiv. Isaiah 45:7.

98 99
(material) aspect of sin but not the formal aspect of it. That this word just cc) relationship of this activation to that which has being itself
means the lowest degree of creating (just the involuntary degree) is utterly ob- ( = to the pure Godhead)
vious from another passage in the same book (Isaiah 43:7) where a graduated
succession among creating, forming, and making is unmistakably designated Yet it is now time to turn our attention to that which actually has being,
with the same words."' whose interior, no less than its exterior, must suffer and be lacerated by contra-
Hence, if the concept of a first, unfree, and, at the same time, [334] diction just as the interior of an organic being also suffers the violent and un-
chaotic creating does not confirm the prevailing representations, then the con- ruly movements of that being.
cept finds its attestation in the word bara and in the words in the Scriptures We only provisionally remark that that which actually has being is pre-
that are immediately following, where the earth (to which the account retires cisely that spirit that draws in and to itself and which brings the whole being
right after the first words) "became chaotic and void [wust and leer ward]" after [Wesen] under its power. That is why what was the highest of what has being in
that creation. This is the way Luther translated it. Yet these words in the orig- eternal nature (A 3 ) is now for that spirit the copula of its interrelation with
inal language at the same time commonly connote, according to their roots, ex- what is subordinate. Hence, both are as one in the present process and that uni-
pressions of wonder and astonishment. Hence, I do not know if this might not versal soul is to be viewed just as the immediate subject (or, in the now familiar
hint at those opposed states that we still perceive in comets, since a monstrous language, just as the objective side of that spirit).
expansion is just as much an object of astonishment as is a sudden sinking or Pain is something universal and necessary in all life, the unavoidable
shrinking of that which has expanded. transition point to freedom. We remember growing pains in the physical as well
By the way, should everything in this presentation not be utterly intelli- as the moral sense. We will not shun presenting even that primordial being (the
gible, then one might want to consider that the state described here is a past first possibility of God externally manifesting) in the state of suffering that
state, utterly distinct from the present state that one has involuntary placed as comes from growth. Suffering is universal, not only with respect to humanity,
the basis of reflection. The past state is not comprehensible from the present but also with respect to the creator. It is the path to glory. God leads human na-
state. Rather, the past state lies at the basis of the present state. ture down no other path than that down which God Himself must pass. Par-
ticipating in everything blind, dark, and suffering of God's nature is necessary
bb) hint at the simultaneously happening activation of the spirit world in order to elevate God to the highest consciousness. Every single being must
get to know their own depths and this is impossible without suffering. All pain
Perhaps the events in the spirit world should now be described. But it comes only from Being. Because all living things must first involve themselves
seems more praiseworthy to acknowledge the limits of human powers. We are in Being and break out of the darkness to transfiguration, so, too, in its revela-
content to remark that, in general, the course can only be the same as the one tion, the divine being must first assume nature and, as such, suffer it, before it
in nature, but with a single difference. The negating force, which is external in can celebrate the triumph of its liberation.
nature, is internal in the spiritual being. That is why one can say that in nature, [336] But in order to represent everything as naturally as possible, the
the negating force is elevated and led inward, and that in the spirit world, the moments also have to be distinguished here. The acting potency does not ex-
negating force is drawn outward and lowered. Just as nature is spiritualized in press itself immediately with full power but rather as a faint attracting, like that
attraction, the principle of the spirit world is embodied. What is contraction in which precedes the arousal from a deep slumber. With increasing might, the
one is expansion in the other and vice versa. Here, too, the principle of selfhood forces in Being are aroused to dull and blind action. Powerful and, because the
in the spirits that tear themselves away from the conflict of fiery forces and be- gentle unity of the spirit is alien to Being, formless, births arise. No longer in
come, so to speak, individual vortices, is so intensified by the ongoing effect of that state of interiority or clairvoyance nor enraptured by blessed visions that
attraction that in the end it keeps the attracting potency in balance. Here the portend the future, what exists in this conflict struggles as if in grave dreams
process also stays in an alternating movement of systole and diastole, since the which arise out of the past because they arise out of Being. Anxiety is the gov-
integrating force can no longer manage the awoken forces of Being and [335] erning affect that corresponds to the conflict of directions in Being, since it
is alternating vanquishing and being vanquished. In view of the spirit world, does not know whether to go in or out. Meanwhile, the orgasm of forces in-
this time is the time of the first creation—albeit chaotic and arrested in mere creases more and more and lets the contracting force fear utter cision and com-
commencement—of those primordial spirits, which are to the spirit world just plete dissolution. But while the contracting force releases its life and, so to
what stars are to nature. speak, discerns itself as already past, the higher form of its being and the silent
 purity of spirit rise before it like lightning. But this purity, in contrast to the tigers do not pull the carriage of Dionysus in vain. For this wild frenzy of in-
blindly contracting will, is the essential unity in which freedom, the intellect, spiration in which nature found itself when it was in view of the being was cel-
and differentiation dwell. Hence, the will, while contracting, would like to ebrated in the nature worship of prescient ancient peoples by the drunken
grasp the lightning flash of freedom and make it its own in order to thereby be- festivals of Bacchic orgies. 115 Furthermore, that inner self-laceration of nature,
come a freely creating and conscious will. It would then get out of loathing and, that wheel of initial birth spinning about itself as if mad, and the terrible
overcoming the conflict of forces, communicate to its creations the essential forces of the annular drive operating within this wheel, are depicted in other
unity that is intellect, spirit, and beauty But the blind will cannot grasp gentle frightful splendors of the primeval customs of polytheistic worship by acts of
freedom. Rather, freedom is for the will an overwhelming and incomprehensi- self-flaying rage. One such act was auto-castration (which was done in order
ble spirit and that is why the will is frightened by the appearances of spirit. The to [338] express either the unbearable quality of the oppressive force or its ces-
will no doubt feels that the spirit is the will's true being and, despite the spirit's sation as a procreative potency). 116 There was also the carrying about of the
gentleness, that it is stronger than the will in its severity. At the sight of that dismembered parts of a lacerated God, or the insensate, raving dances, or the
spirit, the will becomes as if insensate and seeks blindly to grasp spirit and to shocking procession of the mother of all gods on the carriage with iron wheels,
copy it inwardly in what the will produces, as if it [337] could somehow keep a accompanied by the din of a coarse music that is partly deafening and partly
firm hold on spirit. But the will only acts as if with an alien intellect over which lacerating. For nothing is more similar to that inner madness than music,
it has no command. This intellect is an intermediary between the utter night of which, through the incessant eccentric relinquishing and re-attracting of
consciousness and levelheaded spirit. tones, most clearly imitates that primordial movement. Music itself is a turn-
Everything stems from these enlightenments that, for instance, is some- ing wheel that, going out from a single point, always, through all excesses,
thing intelligible and ordered in the structure of the universe, by virtue of which spins back again to the beginning.
the universe actually appears to be the external figure of an indwelling spirit. That the self-lacerating madness is still now what is innermost in all
The fundamental force of all initial and original creating must be an uncon- things is the greatest attestation of this description. Only when it is governed
scious and necessary force since no personality actually leaves its mark. As in and, so to speak, verified [zugutgesprochen], through the light of a higher intel-
human works, the higher the force of actuality was discerned, the more imper- lect, is it the real force of nature and of all its products. Since Aristotle it is
sonally did they appear. When inspiration appears in poetic and other kinds of even customary to say of people that nothing great can be accomplished with-
works, a blind force must also appear in them. For only a blind force is capable out a touch of madness. In place of this, we would like to say: nothing great
of inspiration. All conscious creation presupposes an unconscious creating. can be accomplished without a constant solicitation of madness, which should
Conscious creating is just the unfolding and setting into opposition of uncon- always be overcome, but should never be utterly lacking. One might do well to
scious creating. assess people as follows. One could say that there is a kind of person in which
The ancients did not speak in vain of a divine and holy madness.' We there is no madness whatsoever. These would be the uncreative people inca-
even see nature, in the process of its free unfolding, becoming, in proportion to pable of procreation, the ones that call themselves sober spirits. These are the
its approach to spirit, ever more, so to speak, frenzied. No doubt, all things of so-called intellectuals [Verstandesmenschen] whose works and deeds are noth-
nature are found in an insensate state. But we see those creatures that belong ing but cold intellectual works and intellectual deeds. Some people in philos-
to the time of the last struggle between cision and unification, consciousness ophy have misunderstood this expression in utterly strange ways. For because
and unconsciousness, and that immediately precede humanity among the cre- they heard it said of intellectuals that they are, so to speak, low and inferior,
ations of nature, walking about in a state similar to drunkenness.'" Panthers or and because they themselves did not want to be like this, they good-naturedly
opposed reason [Vernunft] to intellect instead of opposing reason to madness.
But where there is no madness, there is also certainly no proper, active, living
xv. Cf , The Philosophy of Mythology, 11/2, 427.—ED. [The passage reads: "But from the beginning intellect (and consequently there is just the dead intellect, dead intellectuals).
there is something at the basis of nature that really should not be and it is necessary that this prin-
ciple would most violently ignite when its overcoming is most proximate. In general, whenever all
For in what does the intellect prove itself than in the coping with and gover-
things find themselves in an insensate state, we see that highest class of animals walking about as if nance and regulation of madness? Hence, the utter lack of [339] madness
in a state of constant madness, in which, at first sight, unspiritual nature gets spiritual nature. The leads to another extreme, to imbecility (idiocy), which is an absolute lack of all
indignation and the wrath with which the rapacious animal lacerates even a weak and utterly inof-
fensive creature, is the wrath at its own death, the principle which feels its ruin, the final flaring up
madness. But there are two other kinds of persons in which there really is
of its fury."] madness. There is one kind of person that governs madness and precisely in
 this overwhelming shows the highest force of the intellect. The other kind of lost in favor of the unity. Consequently, his substance, or the common being of
person is governed by madness and is someone who really is mad. One cannot both essences, persists in an eternal, immobile, inactive parity. Again, the unity
say, strictly speaking, that madness originates in them. It only comes forth as is itself a pure Being that never transfigures itself into that which has being and
something that is always there (for without continuous solicitation of it, there never actively (in actu) comes forth. Because of the assumed antithesis, he can
would be no consciousness) and that is not now suppressed and governed by a only be regarded as a realist, although he is this in a higher sense than Leibniz
higher force. is an idealist. Instead of the living conflict between the unity and duality of
both the so-called attributes and substance being the main object, Spinoza only
occupies himself with them as both opposed, indeed, with each for itself, with-
GENERAL DISCUSSION OF THE DOCTRINE out their unity coming to language as the active, living copula of both substance
OF PANTHEISM DEVELOPED HERE and attribute. Hence the lack of life and progression in his system.
Have those who thought that they could really compare the unity main-
The necessity of a higher realism tained by us with the Spinozistic unity never even noticed the concept of po-
Spinoza; Fichte and the Philosophy of Nature tencies, which already includes the concept of progression and movement
within it?'
In the description of that primordial state, we just focused on the univer- Yet if one considers the camps into which philosophy has severed itself
sal fate of a nature that evolves itself out of its own powers and utterly for itself. before and after Spinoza, and how all concepts have fallen apart, one cannot
For a person helps another person and even God helps a person. But nothing avoid discerning in Spinoza the only heir to true science in all of modernity. For
can help the first nature in its terrible loneliness. It must struggle through this this reason, it was no wonder that each new powerful movement first had to go
state alone and for itself. back to Spinoza and again had to proceed from him.
Hence, this would be the description, albeit a weak one, of that primor- Descartes, the founder of modern philosophy, lacerated the world into
dial state of the totality and unity. Now, those who have recently talked so body and spirit and hence, the unity was lost in favor of duality. [341] Spinoza
much about pantheism may now see what it really is.' For most people who had unified them into a single, albeit dead, substance and had lost duality in fa-
speak of the One and the Many only see the Many therein. They have not vor of unity. After this, if unity and duality themselves were not brought into a
even once noticed that there is a One, a subject, therein. But by the Many they living antithesis and thereby again brought to unity, philosophy, with each step,
understand that selfless totality that the initial nature is. This group also in- had to find itself more and more in one-sidedness. It would do so until in our
cludes those who eternally reiterate the assurance of the harmony and won- time it arrived at two diverging and ultimate directions that admitted of no fur-
derfully blessed unity of the cosmos, something that already long ago became ther analysis.
a burden to any sensible person. Both groups would no doubt find real pan- Leibniz was anti-dualist in a completely different sense than Spinoza. He
theism to be horrifying. But were they capable of penetrating the exterior sur- was the first to undertake the utter demolition of Being and to transform
face of things, they would see that the true prime matter of all life and everything into representation, so that even God was just the highest power of
existence is precisely what is horrifying. representation [Vorstellkraft] of the cosmos. Leibniz had a unity, but it was not
But others find the true archetype of pantheism in the doctrine of Spin- a two-sided unity. Rather it was just a one-sided unity. While at the same time,
oza. Spinoza deserves serious consideration. Far be it from us to deny in Spin- he still retained the entire content of the earlier systems in what alone remained
oza that for which he was our teacher and predecessor. Perhaps, of all the of the Ideal, insofar as he denied the actual existence of bodies as such, yet still
modern philosophers, there was in Spinoza a [340] dark feeling of that pri- let them remain as a power of representation that is independent of our know-
mordial time of which we have attempted to conceptualize so precisely. ing and thinking.
Spinoza knows that powerful balance of the primordial forces that he op- In the history of science, hylozoism, especially that of Giordano Bruno,
poses to one another as the extended primordial force (hence, no doubt origi- which was resurrected at just about this same time, may be viewed as identical
nally contracting?) and the thinking primordial force (no doubt, on account of to the first appearance of Idealism, Leibnizian Intellectualism. Like Leibniz, it,
the antithesis, extending, expanding?). But he only knows the balance, but not too, just retained a single aspect of Spinoza's duality, albeit the opposite aspect.
the conflict that emerges out of the equipollence. Both forces are juxtaposed in However, to the extent that hylozoism viewed matter as in itself living, some-
inactivity, without reciprocal excitation or intensification. Hence, the duality is thing spiritual was at least conceived under or in this Being.

104 105
 But spirit could not remain in the direction that the spirit of this mod- How charitable it is to know a principle amid the motility and slackness
em age had taken at one time. For the analysis was to be driven still further. of thinking that is neither to be dissolved by the menstruum 119 of the sharpest
There was still something spiritual, an inner life, that hylozoism left alone in concept nor to go up in smoke in the fire of spiritual thinking! Without this
Being, in matter. It still remained to transform matter into something ab- principle which resists thinking, the world would actually already be dissolved
into nothing. Only this insuperable center preserves the world against the
solutely dead, into mere exteriority without any interiority, into a mere con- IL
glomeration of parts that again were distinguished by nothing interior but storms of the never-resting spirit. In fact, this principle is the eternal force of
rather by mere figure. And living nature, thinking, and all of the mechanics of God. In the first existence, there must be a principle that resists revelation, for
human concepts, feelings, and actions, were to be derived from this kind of only such a principle can become the ground of revelation. If there is a force that
matter. This was a doctrine in which [342] the people who hatched it laid down effects a revelation, must there not also be a force that counteracts it? How else
the truest and most telling expression of themselves. would there be freedom? An irrational principle is at work in the first existence
Another direction remained: to withdraw from the Ideal, which intellec- which resists confrontation and which is hence, contrary to the creature. This
tualism had left alone, the Real that had once been conceived under the Ideal. principle is the real might in God, just as in the supreme gravity of tragedy it is
According to Leibniz, matter, bodies, were indeed confused, but they were still Might and Violence, servants of Zeus, that chain the philanthropic Prometheus
living and independent powers of representation. Why this excess if everything to the crag around the roaring sea.' It is necessary to acknowledge this as the
is first of all just a power of representation? Why not satisfy oneself with the personality of God, as the Being in itself and for itself of God. Already in the
power of representation with which we are immediately certain, that is, with language of ancient philosophy, personality is explained as the ultimate act or the
the human power of representation? No doubt, when German idealism ultimate potency by which an intelligent being exists in an incommunicable
emerged in its highest intensification with Fichte, the fundamental thought of fashion. This is the principle that, instead of confusing God with the creature, as
the I, that is, of a living unity of that which has being and Being, aroused the was believed, eternally divides God from the creature. Everything can be com-
hope of an elevated Spinozism that led to what is vital. But that the spirit of the municated to the creature except for one thing. The creature cannot have the
age would have it differently was expressed all too quickly in a manifest way au- immortal ground of life in itself. The creature cannot be of and through itself
dible to the people. Only the person or the human race [Geschlecht] is there, It cannot be said that such a principle would be unworthy of the divine
namely as the power of representation. nature in itself This is the principle by dint of which God is He Himself as He
However, this idealism that has appeared among us is just the expressed Himself, the unique one, the one cut off from everything else. That this prin-
mystery of the entire direction that has been for a long time more and more ciple as an active principle would be unworthy of the divine nature contains a
prevailing in other sciences, in the arts, and in public life. What was the en- false presupposition. For as an active principle, it precedes the principle of the
deavor of all modern theology other than a gradual idealization and emptying existing God. In existing, this active principle is overcome. But were it ever to
of Christianity? Character, competence, and force are getting less and less in emerge [344] into act, then it would first have to be settled whether this was
both life and public opinion, but so-called "humanity," for which the above through the divine will.
qualities would have to serve as ground, counted for everything. Likewise, this If one paid attention to its greater age, then Realism undoubtedly has the
age could only avail itself of a God from whose concept all power and force had advantage over Idealism. Whoever does not acknowledge the priority of Real-
been removed. This is a God whose highest force or expression of life consists ism wants evolution without the involution that preceded it. They want the
in thinking or knowing and which, besides this, is nothing but an empty bloom and the fruit that comes from it without the hard covering that enclosed
schematizing of itself This is a world that is still just an image, nay, an image of it. Just as Being is the force and the might of the eternal itself, Realism is the
an image, a nothing of nothing, a shadow of a shadow. These are people who force and might of every philosophical system. And it is likewise valid in this
are nothing but images, just dreams of shadows. This is a people that, in the connection that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom.'
good-natured endeavor toward so-called Enlightenment, really arrived at the Every single system acknowledges that the force of contraction is the real
dissolution of everything in itself into thoughts. But, along with the darkness, and actual beginning of every thing. The greatest glory of development is not
they lost all might and that (let the right word stand here) [343] barbaric prin- expected from what easily unfolds. It is expected from what has been excluded
ciple that, when overcome but not annihilated, is the foundation of all greatness and which only decides to unfold with opposition. Yet many do not want to ac-
and beauty. In the way that we saw them all together, these are all no doubt the knowledge that ancient and holy force of Being and they would like to banish it
necessarily simultaneous phenomena. straightaway from the beginning, before it, overcome in itself, gives way to Love.

106 107
 What is valid for Realism is also valid for Pantheism. Just as Realism had
the advantage of seniority over all other views up until now, the incontestable
priority befits pantheism before it befits its antithesis, idealism and dualism.
We could say that pantheism is the earlier and older system in divine revelation
itself. But this pantheistic system of primeval times, this primordial state of
universal unity and universal closure, is precisely what is ever more to be re-
pressed and posited as past by the following time. GERMAN—ENGLISH LEXICON

Abbildung, die depiction

Abdruck, der imprint
Abgezogenheit, die withdrawal
Abgrund,der abyss
Abscheu, der abjection
abschlie!,en, sich to isolate itself
Absonderung, die dislocation
Abstogung, die repulsion [as opposed to attraction or Anziehung]
aktivieren to activate [betiiti gen, to actuate]
Alleinheitslehre, die the doctrine of pantheism
Allheit, die totality [the Tr(;tv of ev Kai TrOcv]
Andere, das the Other
Angst, die anxiety
Anlage, die structure
Antrieb, der impetus
Anziehung, die attraction, drawing toward [as opposed to repulsion or Abstoflung]
Aquipollenz, die equipollence [equivalence]
Aquipotent equipotent [equivalent]
aufdrangen, sich to impose itself
aufheben to sublimate [to bring under a limit, sublate]
Auflosung, die dissolution
aufschliegen to unlock, to disclose
Ausbildung, die cultivation, development
Ausbreitung, die outstretching, expansion

108 109
Ausdehnung, die extension [extensio], expansion Bliidsinn, der imbecility
auseinanderlegen to set apart contrahiren to contract [zusammenziehen] [from the Latin for "drawing together" and
Auseinandersetzung, die confrontation, setting into opposition "diminishing"]

Auseinanderwollen, das the conation to separate darstellen to present

Ausflu1,, der emanation Darstellung, die presentation
ausschliefien to exclude, to lock out Dasein, das (present) existence [to be there]

Aufier-sich-gesetzt-werden, das being posited outside of oneself [Ekstase, ecstasy] Dauer, die duration

Aussprechende, das the pronouncing, the expressive Doppelheit, die doubling

Aussprechliche, das the pronounceable, the expressible, the effable Drang, der urge

Band, das the link, the copula Drangsal, die the distress of pining

begeisten to inspirit Dunstkreis, der nebula [of a comet; the gases (the coma), which surround the nucleus]

Begierde, die craving, desire [Sehnsucht] Egoidt, die egoity [neologism for the force of selfhood, das In-sich-gesetzt-seyn]

Begriff, der concept Eigenheit, die being its own, ipseity

Bekraftigung, die reinforcement eigentlich actual, real, proper, authentic

bemachtigen to bring something under one's power eigentiimlich specific to itself, characteristic

Bemuhung, die effort [nisus, die Bestrebung] einerlei one and the same, of the same kind

Beraubung, die privation [privatio, steresis] Einerleiheit, die identity, being one and the same
Einheit, die unity [the `1) of Koci, TrOa]
Beruhigung, die soothing
Beschrankung, die delimitation einschliefien to contract, to include

Beschlossenheit, die containment [outward finitude] Einschliefiung, die contraction [involution, die Einwicklung]

beseelen to animate, to ensoul Einwicklung, die involution [die Involution, die Einschliefiung, becoming implicit, the
opposite of Entwicklung], einziehen, to contract, to draw in
Besonnenheit, die levelheadedness, considerateness
empfinden to sense, to feel [to intuit sensuously]
Bestand, der continuance
empfindlich sensate
Bestehen, das existence
Empfindung, die sensation, feeling, affect
Bestreben, das endeavor [in the sense of effort, nisus, die Bemiihung]
Endlichkeit, die finitude
betatigen to actuate [aktivieren, activate]
Engel des Angesichts, der the angel of the countenance
Bewatlosigkeit, die unconsciousness
Entartung, die degeneracy
Bevvufitseyn, das consciousness, being conscious
Entaufkrung, die externalization through self-relinquishment [and thereby self-actu-
Bewatwerden, das the dawning of consciousness alization]
Bezauberung, die bewitchment Entformung, die deformation [disorganization]
Bezug, der relationship [das Verhaltnis] Entgegensetzung, die opposition, the setting or positing in opposition with one another
Bild, das image sich entscheiden to decide [decidere: to cut off, to cut away, to cut short, to terminate]
Bildlichkeit, die figurativeness Entscheidung, die decision [the cutting off, the sundering]
Bildung, die formation Entschliessung, die resolution [dis-closing or opening up decisively]
Blick, der glimpse Entschlu1,, der decision

110 111
entstehen to emerge (into being), to originate Gesetz, das law [that which has been posited]
Entstehung, die genesis, emergence into being Gesicht, das vision [in the sense of "having a vision"]
entstellen to distort Gestalt, die form, figure Frinros, Ei:Sos]
entstreben to strive to get away Gestaltung, die configuration [creation]
entwerden to become away, to move away from Gewalt, die power, violence
Entwicldung, die development, evolution, growth [becoming explicit] [as opposed to das Gleichg-iiltige indifference, equivalence [of equal validity and potency] [Indifferenz]
Einwicklung] Gleichheit, die parity
Entziickung, die ecstasy, rapture Gleichnamigkeit, die common denomination
Entzweiung, die bifurcation [a doubling into mutually oppositional forces] Gleichnis, das allegory
Erinnerung, die recollection Gleichwichtigkeit, die equivalence [having equal potency or valence, equipollence]
erkennen to discern, to know Glied, das part, member
Erkenntnis, die knowledge Gliederung, die organization
Erleuchtung, die enlightenment [inspiration] Gottheit, die the Godhead
erscheinen to appear Grund, der ground, reason
Erzeugung, die generation [giving birth] Grundlage, die foundation [Unterlage, Subjekt]
sich festsetzen to take root, to place themselves fast Grundsatz, der principle
Folge, die succession Grundstoff, der prime matter
Fortgang, der course, progression Heilkraft, die the healing force
Fortschreitung, die progression hemmen to inhibit
Freiwilligkeit, die voluntarism Hemmung, die inhibition
fremd alien Herrlichkeit, die glory, lordship
Fiille, die plenitude Hervorbringung, die production [a bringing forth]
Ganze, das the whole [the Wesen as both Einheit and Allheit,v Kai TrOtv,, the system Hoheit, die sovereignty
of forces]
Huld, die grace
Gebilde, das creation, form, construction, organization, idol
Ineinsbildung, die eisemplasy [Coleridge's coinage; the esemplastic, the ELS `1) Trk&TTELV,
Gegenbild, das ectype [eicrinros- out of a prior type, hence in relationship to the Vor- die Einbildungskraft]
bild or prototype]
Inexistenz, die inexistence
gegenbildlich ectypal
Innigkeit, die interiority
Gegensatz, der the antithesis, the antipodal positioning [that which has been set forth
oppositionally, the counterproposition] In-sich-gesetzt-seyn, das being posited in oneself [Seinheit, Selbstheit, ipseity, Egoität]
Gegenwurf, der counterprojection Involution, die involution [die Einwicklung, die Einschliefiung]
Geist, der spirit Keim, der embryo
Geistigkeit, die spirituality Kette, die concatenation
Gelassenheit, die releasement [composure] Karmen, das capacity [Kraft, Macht]
Gemiitkrifte, die the powers of the mind Kraft, die force, power [potentia,
Geschiedenheit, die state of divorce Krisis, die crisis [KpLcrLs, cision, Scheidung]

112 113
Kunde, die tidings schweben to waver
Leiblichkeit, die corporeality Seele, die soul
leiden to be passive, to undergo, to suffer [in contrast to active or effective] seelenartig soul-like
Lichtwesen, das the being of light Sehnsucht, die yearning [Verlangen]
Liebe, die Love Seinheit, die ipseity [Selbstheit, das In-sich-Seyn]
Lust, die desire Selbstheit, die selfhood [das In-sick-Seyn, ipseity, egoity]
Macht, die power [Kraft, Potenz] setzen to posit, to place, to put forth
Magie, die magic [der Zauber] seyend having being
Mannigfaltigkeit, die the manifold, diversity Seyende als das Seyende that which has being as that which has being, that which has
Mafi, das the standard, measure being as such, [having being qua having being]
Mensch, der person seyend zu seyn to be that which has being

Milde, die leniency Seyn (das) Being

Nachahmung, die imitation [imitatio, SeynkOnnen, das the capacity to be

Nachbild, das copy Sinn, der sense, meaning

Natur, die nature sittlich ethical, moral [in the strict sense of mores, customs]

Neigung, die inclination Sittlichkeit, die morality [in the strict sense of mores, customs]

nicht Seyende, das what does not have being Spannung, die tension, excitement

nicht seyend not having being Spur, die trace

nichtseyend non-being Staffel, die echelon

Nichtwollen, das no conation Starke, die might [in the sense of power, force]

Offenbarung, die revelation Stelle, die locus

Ort, der place Stimmung, die mood

PersOnlichkeit, die personality Stockung, die a stoppage [a clotting or congestion of the circulation]
Potenz, die potency [that which has being in each single time] [Kraft, Macht, Starke] Streit, der struggle

Prinzip, das principle [an explicit potency] [Grundsatz, principium, Otpx-6] Strenge, die stringency

Sache, die the matter Stufenfolge, die graduated process

Sanftmut, die gentleness stufenweise piecemeal, graduated

Satz, der proposition, principle Subjekt, das subject [die Unterlage, that which is cast or placed—in the sense of the
Latin jacere—underneath; hence in the sense of subjectum, that which has been
Scharfe, die severity subjugated, captured]
Schauen, das vision Suchen, das striving
Scheidung, die cision [the cut, Krisis] Sucht, die obsession
Schein, der semblance Sympathie, die sympathy
Scheinbild, das simulacrum [apparent image] Technicismus, der technicity
Scheu, die awe That, die act, deed [actus]
Schranke, die limit Tinktur, die tincture

114 115
Trieb, der drive Urthat, die primordial act
Turgor, der turgor [turgidity, Turgescenz, swelling] Urwesen, das primordial being
Typus, der figure [Latin for "figure, image"] verborgen hidden, concealed
Ubergang, der transition verdrangen to repress, to displace
uberschwenglich exuberantly Verdrossenheit, die listlessness
Uberseyende, das that which is beyond having being [TO inrepOv] Vergangenheit, die the past
Uhrwerk, das clockwork vergeisten to spiritualize
umgekehrt inverted [turned the other way around] Verhaltnis, das relationship, proportion [der Bezug]
Umlauf, der circulation Verhangnis, das grim fate
Umtrieb, der annular drive Verkehr, der circulation
Unaussprechlichkeit, die inexpressibility, ineffability verkehrt inverted, topsy-turvy
Unbedingte, das the unconditioned, the absolute Verklarung, die transfiguration
Unbeschlossenheit, die uncontainment [lack of external finitude] verkiirpern to incarnate, to embody
unbeschrankt absolute, unlimited Verlangen, das longing, pining, desire [Sehnsucht]
Unbeweglichkeit, die immovability verleiblichen to embody [the assumption of form]
Unentschiedenheit, die indecisiveness Vermogen, das faculty
Ungeschiedenheit, die state of nondivorce Verneinung, die negation
Unleidlichkeit, die impassivity, intolerance Vernunft, die reason
Unmut, der discontent verschieben to defer
Unterlage, die substratum [Subjekt, basis, inroK€4.4vcov] Verschliefiung, die restriction, closing off
Unterscheidung, die differentiation Verschlossenheit, die closure
Unterschied, der differentiation, distinction versetzen transpose
unvermogend disabled Versohnung, die reconciliation
Unverstandliche, das the incomprehensible Verstand, der intellect, comprehension
unvordenklich unprethinkable verwandeln transform
Unwirksamkeit, die inactivity (ineffectiveness) Verwirklichung, die actualization
Uranfang, der primordial beginning Vierzahl, die the fourfold, the tetractys [of Pythagoras]
Urbild, das archetype Vorbild, das prototype [in relationship to what follows from it, namely, the Gegenbild
Urdrang, der primordial urge or ectype]
Urkunde die document vorhanden available, existing
Urlebendige, das what is primordially living Vorstellkraft, die power of representation
Urquelle, die primordial source Vorstellung, die representation
Urstoff, der prime matter [prima material Vorwurf, der project
Urteil, das judgment Vorzeit, die prehistoric time
Weltall, das the cosmos [the universe] Zusammenziehung, die contraction, pulling together [Contrahiren, Einwicklung, Ein-
schliefiung]
Weltbau, der the structure of the universe
Weltganze, das holism, the universe Zwang, der compulsion [necessary force]
zweckmassig suitable
Welt-Geist, der the world spirit
zweierlei of two different kinds
WeltkOrper, der celestial body
Zweiheit, die duality
Wesen, das the being, essence [ens]
Wesenheit, die essentiality
Wesenlichkeit, die essentiality
Widerspiel, das the counterplay
Widerstreit, der conflict
widerwartig averse
Widerwartigkeit, die loathing, aversion
Widerwille, der revulsion
WiederbewuAtwerden, das anamnesis [becoming conscious again]
Wiederholung, die repetition [Nachahmung, imitatio,
wirken to be active, to effect
Wirklichkeit, die reality
Wirkung, die effect, act [something done]
Wirkungslosigkeit, die inefficacy, inactivity
Wissenschaft, die science, knowledge [scientia]
Wollen, das conation [wanting]
Wollust, die voluptuousness [voluptas]
Wonne, die bliss
Wunder, der miracle
Wiirde, die dignity
Zauber, der magic [die Magie]
zerreigen to lacerate, to tear to pieces
zersetzen to decompose
zum Seyenden des Seyns to that which of Being has being
zumal at the same time [gleichzeitig, auf einmal]
Zuneigung, die affection [inclination toward x]
Zusammengehorigkeit, die belonging together [of two oppositional forces in a third]
Zusammenhang, der connection, interrelation
zusammennehmen to gather together
Zusammenseyn, das the togetherness of being

118 119
 ENGLISH—GERMAN LEXICON

abjection Abscheu, der

absolute, unbedingt, unbeschriinkt,
abyss Abgrund, der
act Wirkung, die; actus; That, die
activate, to aktivieren
act, to wirken
actual wirklich
actuality Wirklichkeit, die
actualization Prwirkfichung, die
actuate, to betatigen
alien fremd
allegory Gleichnis, das
anamnesis Wiederbewufitwerden, das
angel of the countenance, the Engel des Angesichts, der
animate beseelen
annular drive Umtrieb, der
antithesis Gegensatz, der
anxiety Angst, die
appear, to erscheinen
archetype Urbild, das
at the same time zumal, gleichzeitig
attraction Anziehung, die
available vorhanden
averse widerwartig

121
aversion Widerwartigkeit, die corporeality Leiblichkeit, die

awe Scheu, die cosmos, the Weltall, das

Being Seyn, das counter-projection Gegenwurf, der

being, a Wesen, das counterplay, the Widerspiel, das

being, the Wesen, das course Fortgang, der

bewitchment Bezauberung, die craving Begierde, die

bifurcation Entzweiung, die creation Gebilde, das; Erschaffung, die

bliss Wonne, die crisis Krisis, die

bring something under one's own power, to bemachtigen cultivation Ausbildung, die

capacity Konnen, das decide, to sich entscheiden

capacity to be, the Seynkonnen, das decision Entscheidung, die; Entschlufi, der

celestial body WeltkOrper, der decompose zersetzen

circulation Verkehr, der; Umlaut; der deed That, die

cision Scheidung, die deformation Enybrmung, die

clockwork Uhrwerk, das degeneracy Entartung, die

closure Verschlossenheit, die delimitation Beschrankung, die

common denomination Gleichnamigkeit, die depiction Abbildung, die

compulsion Zwang, der desire Verlangen, das; Begierde, die

conation Wollen, das development Entwicklung, die

conation to separate, the Auseinanderwollen, das differentiation Untershied, der; Unterscheidung, die

concatenation Kette, die dignity Wiirde, die

concealed verborgen disabled unvermogend

concept Begr der discern erkennen

configuration Gestaltung, die discontent Unmut, der

conflict Widerstreit, der dislocation Absonderung, die

confrontation Auseinandersetzung, die dissolution Auflosung, die

connection Zusammenhang, der distinction Untershied, der

consciousness Bewufitseyn, das distort, to entstellen

consciousness, the dawning of Bewufitwerden, das distress of pining, the Drangsal, die

containment Beschlossenheit, die diversity Mannigfaltigkeit, die

continuance Bestand, der divorce, state of Geschiedenheit, die

contract, to contrahiren, einziehen, einschliefien, zusammenziehen document Urkunde, die

contraction Zusammenziehung, die; Einschliefiung, die doubling Doppelheit, die

copula Band, das draw in einziehen

copy Nachbild, das drive Trieb, der

122 123
duality Zweiheit, die force Kraft, die
duration Dauer, die form Gestalt, die; Form, die; Gebilde, das
echelon Staffel, die formation Bildung, die

ecstasy Entzuckung, die foundation Grundlage, die

ectypal gegenbildlich fourfold, the Vierzahl, die

ectype Gegenbild, das gather together, to zusammennehmen

effable, the Aussprechliche, das generation (procreation) Erzeugung, die

effect Wirkung, die genesis Entstehung, die

effective, to be wirken gentleness Sanftmunt, die

effort Bemiihung, die glimpse Nick, der

egoity Egoitat, die glory Herrlichkeit, die

eisemplasy Ineinsbildung, die Godhead, the Gottheit, die

emanation Ausflufl, der grace Huld, die

embody, to verleiblichen, verkorpern graduated process Stufenfolge, die

embryo Keim, der grim fate Verhangnis, das

emerge (into being), to entstehen ground Grund, der

endeavor Bestreben, das healing force, the Heilkraft, die

ensoul, to beseelen hidden verborgen

equipollence Aquipollenz, die holism Weltganze, das

equipotent aquipotent image Bild, das

equivalence Gleichwichtigkeit, die; Indifferenz, die imitation Nachahmung, die

essentiality Wesenlichkeit, die; Wesenheit, die impassivity Unleidlichkeit, die

ethical sittlich impetus Antrieb, der

evolution Entwicklung, die impose itself, to aufdrangen, sich

exclude ausschlieflen imprint Abdruck, der

existence (present) Dasein, das; Existenz, die; Bestehen, das inactivity Unwirksamkeit, die; Wirkungslosigkeit, die

expansion Ausdehung, die incarnate, to verkorpern

expressible Aussprechliche, das inclination Nei sung, die

expressive, the Aussprechende, das indecisiveness Unentschiedenheit, die

extension Ausdehung, die indifference das Gleichgultige; Indifferenz, die

exuberantly uberschwenglich ineffability Unaussprechlichkeit, die

faculty Vermogen, das inefficacy Wirkungslosigkeit, die

figurativeness Bildlichkeit, die inexistence Inexistenz, die

figure Typus, der; Gestalt, die inexpressibility Unaussprechlichkeit, die

finitude Endlichkeit, die inhibit, to hemmen

124 125
inhibition Hemmung, die pining Verlangen, das
inspirit, to begeisten place Ort, der
intellect Verstand, der posit, to setzen
interiority Innigkeit, die potency Potenz, die
interrelation Zusamenhang, der power Macht, die
involution Involution, die; Einwicklung, die present, to darstellen
ipseity Seinheit, die; Eigenheit, die presentation Darstellung, die
judgment Urteil, das prime matter Urstoff, der
knowledge Erkenntnis, die primordial being, the Urwesen, das
law Gesetz, das primordially living, what is Urlebendige, das
lacerate zerreOen principle Grundsatz, der; Prinzip, das
leniency Milde, die privation Beraubung, die (o-4pricris)
levelheadedness Besonnenheit, die production Hervorbringung, die; Produktion, die
limit Schranke, die progression Fortschreitung, die; Fortgang, der
link Band, das project Vorwurf der
loathing Widerwartigkeit, die proposition Satz, der
locus Stelle, die prototype Vorbild, das
longing; pining; desire Verlangen, das rapture Entzuckung, die
Love Liebe, die reason Vernunft, die
magic Magie, die; Zauber, der reason, the Grund, der
manifold, the Mannigfaltigkeit, die recollection Erinnerung, die
might Starke, die reconciliation Versohnung, die
mood Stimmung, die reinforcement Bekrafti gung, die
morality Sittlichkeit, die relationship Bezug, der; Verhaltnis, das
nature Natur, die releasement Gelassenheit, die
negation Verneinung, die repetition Wiederholung, die
no conation Nichtwollen, das representation Vorstellung, die
obsession Sucht, die repress verdrangen
one and the same einerlei repulsion Abstoflung, die
Other, the Andere, das resolution Entschliefflung, die
pantheism, the doctrine of Alleinheitslehre, die restriction Verschlieflung, die
parity Gleichheit, die revelation Offenbarung, die

person Mensch, der revulsion Widerwille, der

personality Personlichkeit, die science Wissenschaft, die

piecemeal stufenweise selfhood Selbstheit, die

126 127
semblance Schein, der unprethinkable unvordenklich
sensate empfindlich urge Drang, der
sensation Empfindung, die violence Gewalt, die
sense, to empfinden vision Gesicht, das; das Schauen
severity Scharfe, die voluntarism Freiwilligkeit, die
soothing Beruhigung, die voluptuousness Wollust, die
soul Seele, die waver, to schweben
sovereignty Hoheit, die what does not have being nicht Seyend, das
spirit Geist, der whole, the Ganze, das
spirituality Geist: gkeit, die
. withdrawal Abgezogenheit, die
spiritualize vergeisten world spirit, the Welt Geist, der
-

standard MaI3, das yearning Sehnsucht, die

state of nondivorce Ungeschiedenheit, die
stoppage Stockung, die
stringency Strenge, die
structure Anlage, die
structure of the universe, the Weltbau, der
struggle Streit, der
subject Subjekt, das
sublimate, to aufheben
substratum Unterlage, die
succession Folge, die
suitable zweckmassig
technicity Technicismus, der
tension Spannung, die
togetherness of being, the Zusammenseyn, das
totality Allheit, die
trace Spur, die
transfiguration Verkliirung, die
transpose versetzen
turgor Turgor, der
two different kinds, of zweierlei
unconditioned, the Unbedingte, das
unconsciousness Bewyklosigkeit, die

uncontainment Unbeschlossenheit, die

128 129
 APPENDIX: SCHELLING EDITIONS

I. STANDARD SCHELLING EDITIONS

Ausgewählte Schriften, six volumes. Edited by Manfred Frank. Frankfurt am Main:

Suhrlcamp, 1985.
Schellings Seimtliche Werke. Edited by Schelling's son Karl Friedrich August Schelling.
Stuttgart-Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856-1861. (Reprinted by the Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft in Darmstadt.)
Schellings Werke: Nach der Originalausgabe in neuer Anordnung. Edited by Manfred
Schroter. Munich: C. H. Beck. Printed twice: 1927-1959 and 1962-1971.
Werke: Historisch Kritische Ausgabe. Edited by Hans Michael Baumgartner, Wilhelm G.
-

Jacobs, Hermann Krings, Hermann Zeltner. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-

Holzboog, 1976—present.

II. INDIVIDUAL EDITIONS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION

The following is a list, by no means exhaustive, of the works of Schelling available in

English translation.

Ages of the World (1813 draft). Translated by Judith Norman. In The Abyss of
Freedom/Ages of the World. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997.
The Ages of the World (1815 draft). Translated by Frederick de Wolfe Bolman Jr. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1942. (Reprinted: New York AMS Press, 1967.)
Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things (1802). Translated by Michael
Vater. Albany: The State University of New York Press, 1984.
The Endgame of Idealism. Translated by Thomas Pfau. Albany: The State University of
New York Press, 1996. Includes Die Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen (1810).

131
Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature: An Introduction to the Study of this Science (1797). Trans-
lated by Errol E. Harris and Peter Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988.
On Dante in Relation to Philosophy (1803). Translated by Elizabeth Rubenstein and
David Simpson. In The Origins of Modern Critical Thought: German Aesthetic and Liter-
ary Criticism from Lessing to Hegel. Edited by David Simpson. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988, 239-247. NOTES
Of Human Freedom (1809). There are two English translations. The first is by James
Gutmann. La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1936. The second is by Priscilla Hayden-Roy.
In Philosophy of German Idealism. Edited by Ernst Behler. New York: Continuum, 1987,
217-284.
On the History of Modern Philosophy (1827). Translated by Andrew Bowie. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996.
On the Nature of Philosophy as Science (1821). Translated by Marcus Weigelt. In German
Idealist Philosophy. Edited with an Introduction by Rudiger Bubner. London and New TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION
York: Penguin Books, 1997, 210-243.
On University Studies (1803). Translated by E. S. Morgan. Athens, Ohio: The Univer- 1. Schelling, Die Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen (1810), unedited version, anno-
sity of Ohio Press, 1966. tated by Miklos Veto (Turin: Bottega d'Ersasmo, 1973), 216. Veto included the note-
The Philosophy ofArt (1802-04). Edited and translated by Douglas Stott. The Theory and worthy entries from Schelling's 1810 Tagebuch as an appendix. Henceforth SP.
History of Literature, volume 58. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1989. 2. Cf. Manfred Schroter, "Die Urfassungen von Schellings Weltaltern," Krit-
ische Studien: Ober Schelling und zur Kulturphilosophie (Munich: R. Oldenbourg,
The Philosophy of Art: An Oration on the Relation between the Plastic Arts and Nature
1971), 89 102, as well as his foreword to Die Weltalter Fragmente in den Urfassungen
-
(1807). Translated by A. Johnson. London: John Chapman, 1845.
von 1811 und 1813 (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung), 1946, vii-xii.
Schelling's Treatise on "The Deities of Samothrace" (1815). Translated and Introduced by Henceforth WA.
R. F. Brown. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1977. 3. The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World (Ann Arbor: The University of Michi-
The System of Transcendental Idealism (1800). Translated by Peter Heath. Charlottesville: gan Press, 1997). Cf. also Zizek's The Indivisible Remainder: An Essay on Schelling and
The University of Virginia Press, 1978. Related Matters (London and New York: Verso, 1996).
The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794 1796). Translated by
-
4. The Ages of the World (1815) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942).
Fritz Marti. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Reprinted: New York AMS Press, 1967.
5. The standard pagination follows the original edition edited by Schelling's son
(Stuttgart-Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856-1861). It is preserved in the Schroter edition
(Schellings Werke: Nach der Original Ausgabe in neuer Anordnung [Munich: C. H. Beck.
Printed twice: 1927-1959 and 1962-1971]), the Manfred Frank selection (Ausgewahlte
Schriften, six volumes [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985]), as well as in the reprints
by the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft in Darmstadt.
6. For an introduction to Schelling's relevance to contemporary philosophy, cf.
Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction (London and
New York Routledge, 1993).
7. Four years prior to the appearance of the Phenomenology, one finds the follow-
ing line in a work by Schelling: "Most people see in the being of the absolute nothing
but a pure night and are unable to know anything in it; it dwindles away for them into a
mere negation of multiplicity" (I/4, 401). Karl Jaspers was among the first to point this
out. Cf. Schelling: Gm* und Verhangnis (1955) (Munich: Piper, 1986), 302. After hear-
.

ing from Hegel that he was criticizing a misreading of the intellectual intuition and not

132 133
Schelling himself, Schelling asked Hegel to state this in the next edit ion of the Phenom- and exclusively by space that is filled and the filling of space is determined solely and ex-
enology. The emendation never appeared. clusively through the magnitude of time [ZeitgrOfie], which itself is not in space, but
8. "Brief fiber den Tod Carolines vom 2. Oktober, 1809," ed. Johann Ludwig which is extensione prior." System des transzendentalen Idealismus, ed. Horst D. Brandt
Doderlein, Kleine kommentierte Texte I (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holz- and Peter Muller (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992), 137-138.
boog, 1975). 20. Wolfram Hogrebe made the link between Die Weltalter and Dante's Divina
9. On University Studies, translated by E. S. Morgan (Athens, Ohio: The Ohio Commedia. "My thesis is now, said briefly, that in the end this trichotomy of the Divina
University Press, 1966), 26. Commedia, and also the quality of the three realms, remained structurally prototypical
10. Ibid. for the three conceived parts of Die Weltalter. The past corresponds to the Inferno, the
present to the Purgatorio, and the future to the Paradisio. One could therefore in a cer-
11. Cf. the Freiheitsschrift, 1/7, 363, in which the Word expresses light and dark-
tain sense designate Die Weltalter as the Divine Comedy of Time . . ." Preidikation und
ness, vowel and consonant. The latter is in need of the former in order to be heard in the Genesis: Metaphysik als Fundamentalheuristik im Ausgang von Schellings Die Weltalter
same way that darkness needs light to see itself and silence needs language to hear itself (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 31-32.
12. Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy, translated by Hugh Tomlinson (New
21. 1/8, 345-424. There is an English translation: Schelling's Treatise on "The Deities
York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 105. of Samothrace," translated and introduced by R. F. Brown (Missoula, Montana: Scholars
13. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung 1841/42, second, expanded edition, Press, 1977).
edited and introduced by Manfred Frank (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), 115. 22. Cf note no. 64, following.
Henceforth PO. The italics belong to Schelling.
23. Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung Ober das Wesen der menschlichen Frei-
14. Initia Philosophic Universx (1820-21), edited with commentary by Horst
heit (1809) (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1971), 15. Schelling's Treatise on the Essence
Fuhrmans (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1969), 24. Henceforth IPU. of Human Freedom, translated by Joan Stambaugh (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University
15. This comment was made regarding a criticism of Hegel in Schelling's 1832-33 Press, 1985), 13.
lecture course at the University of Munich, The Grounding of the Positive Philosophy 24. The Accursed Share, translated by Robert Hurley (New York: Zone Books,
[Grundlegung der postiven Philosophie: Miinchener Vorlesung WS 1832/33 und SS 1833, 1991). La part maudite (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1967). Henceforth PM.
edited by Horst Furmans (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1962), 222]. The full quote reads: "What
25. Zizek, op. cit., 15.
this [Hegel's] argument concerns, it could be conceded, is that everything is in the log-
ical idea and therefore the meaningless [das Sinnlose] can exist nowhere. But 1) is a nec- 26. Leibniz's phrase in the Monadology was "tout est plein."
essary question: Why is there meaning at all, why is there not meaninglessness instead 27. Verstellen is not only to disguise, as in one's voice, but it also suggests obstruc-
of meaning? 2) The logical represents itself as the negative, as that without which noth- tion or blocking (freedom restrictively disguised as necessity or silence restrictively dis-
ing could exist-but as in the sensuous world, for example, where everything can be guised as word) as well as displacement. Divine irony is divine Verstellung.
comprehended in measure and number, yet certainly still not for this reason is this the 28. Friedrich Schlegel, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, translated by Ernst
explanation of the world. The entire world, so to speak, lies caught in reason, but the Behler and Roman Struc (University Park The Pennsylvania State Press, 1968), 82.
question is: How did it come into this net? (Therefore there is still in the world some-
29. "Versuch einer Selbstkritik," Geburt der Tragodie, in the Kritische Studienaus-
thing Other and something more than mere reason-even something that strives be-
gabe, edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Munich: Deutscher Taschen-
yond these boundaries.)"
buch Verlag and Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 12-13.
16. Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety: A Simple Psychologically Orienting
30. "The Lilies of the Field and the Birds of the Air: Three Godly Discourses,"
Deliberation on the Dogmatic Issue of Hereditary Sin (1844), edited and translated with In-
Christian Discourses, Etc., translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Walter Lowrie
troduction and Notes by Reidar Thomte in collaboration with Albert B. Anderson (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), 350.
(Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980), 88.
31. I am, following Schelling, linking Scheidung (literally the cut, the separation, the
17. Ibid., 89.
sundering) with the Greek K p Lcns (a "separating," or a "power discerning or distinguish-
18. Cf. note no. 83. ing" or even "the result of a trial") because the latter derives from krii.veiv (what Schelling
19. This was already announced in the 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism. elsewhere calls the Entscheidung), meaning a "cutting," a "putting asunder," a "separating,"
Force [Kraft] is the dynamic relationship between space (extensity) and time (intensity). and hence, derivatively, a "decision," a "picking out," a "selecting," and a "judgment in the
It is "extensity determined through intensity [Extensitat bestimmt durch Intensitat]. For case of a contest or a dispute." This connection is evident, for example, in the relationship
the intensity of a force can only be measured by the space in which it can expand with- between Scheidungskunst (the art of discrimination, the art of selecting from competing
out it becoming = 0." Hence, "time only becomes finite through space and space only be- possibilities) and critical activity (Kritik). On a larger scale, the crisis is the cut within the
comes finite through time." "Intensity and Extensity are reciprocally determined by each Wesen whose equipollent disequilibrium keeps it in motion. In an attempt to suggest
other. The object is nothing but fixated, simply present, time, but time is fixated solely some of the above connotations, I am translating Scheidung as cision and using it as a syn-

134 135
onym for crisis. The latter term also relates to the work of Franz Anton Mesmer, who 12. "Seyn ist Seinheit, Eigenheit. ." I have chosen ipseity, literally, being of itself,
spoke of the crisis or "critical sleep." Cf. note no. 64, following. to attempt to render Seinheit (literally, "its own-ness"). Ipseity in this sense, then, is par-
ticularity (Eigenheit), that is, the particular qualities (or "properties") belonging to Being.
It is Being solely with respect to what it has, to its qualities, sundered or dislocated from
that in which it stands in relationship, but does not have.
THE AGES OF THE WORLD 13. A truth of fact, as opposed to a truth of reason, is a contingent truth whose op-
posite could be true. (Cf. inter alia, Monadology, aphorism no. 33.)
1. The German reads: Das Vergangene wird gewufit, das Gegenwartige wird 14. Schelling is playing off the literal meaning of Urteil (judgment). The copula in
erkannt, das Zukiinftige wird geahndet. Das Gewufite wird erziihlt, das Erkannte wird the Urteil (primordial part) is what holds together all of the Teilen (parts).
dargestellt, das Geahndete wird geweissagt. 15. Gleichwichtigkeit literally means "of equal importance," but Schelling takes it
2. Wesen presents one of the most difficult translation challenges in most any further to denote the equal force or potency (valence) inhering as the Wesen. Hence, the
work by Schelling. Das Wesen is not a present essence, a being present in its integrity. Latinate "equipollence" (literally, "equal power"), which Schelling parenthetically offers as
Rather, it holds together Seyn [Being] and whatever has being or das Seyende. To pre- a synonym, should not be taken logically, i.e., that two propositions are deducible one
serve this delicate but critical distinction, I translate Seyn as Being, das Seyende as "that from the other and vice versa. Schelling has just argued with reference to the antithesis
which has being," and, in order not to confuse das Seyende with das Wesen, whenever [Gegensatz] or contradiction that A and B, as opposed, are not derivable from each other.
Schelling uses the latter, I translate it as "being" with either "the" or "a" as the preceding Rather, unrelatable or nonsublimatable, (i.e., neither can utterly subsume the other and
article. For more on this, see my brief remarks concerning this in section V of my Trans- neither can be derived from the other) are held together in a third. Hence, Schelling's
lator's Introduction. equipollence is the holding together (without a cohering that would favor one of the
3. Cf. Explication no. 7 to the first set of definitions in Spinoza's Ethics (1677): other) of unrelatables such that both equally retain their mutually contradictory force.
"That thing is said to be free [liber] which exists solely from the necessity of its own na- 16. The Zoroastrian potencies were dualistic and hence a prototype for later
ture, and is determined to action by itself alone." [Samuel Shirley translation (Indi- Judeo-Christian (et al.) dualities. Schelling is referring here to the myth in the Persian
anapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1982)1 (Iranian) Vendidad that deals with the creation and reign of two opposing forces, that of
4. One might notice in the words "lawless" [gesetzlos] and "in accordance with Ahura Mazda (the force of pure goodness) and Angra Mainyu, later called Ahriman (the
law" [gesetzmafli g] the critical root Setzen which will recur often throughout Schelling's force of evil, suffering, destruction). Hence, all of Being is rent by the ongoing struggle
between the forces of life and death. Schelling, however, moves to think the belonging
text as freedom's "positing" in forms such as Gesetz [law, literally, "having been posited"),
together and hence the "indifference" or nonduality of such oppositional forces.
Satz and Grundsatz [foundational posit, originary posit in the sense of an arche or aprin-
cipium], Gegensatz, Entgegensetzung, Auseinandersetzung, etc. The movement of Setzen is 17. Schelling is referring to the discussion in the Sophist (esp. 256d-264d) in
what Schelling called the "theitic" in his early writings. which the Eleatic Stranger and Theaetetus disobey Parmenides and claim that what is
5. Mitwissenschaft is Schelling's literal translation of the Latin conscientia: know- not somehow is.
ing or knowledge (scientia) in an ancillary and joint fashion (con). In this way thinking can 18. Schelling uses die Feste, a nineteenth-century variant of die Festung, meaning a
be the same (gleich but not of the same kind or einerlei) as the autopoietic movement of fortress or a castle while poetically naming the firmament, to translate the Greek hestia. The
time. By "consciousness," then, I mean to evoke at least three of the senses of the Latin Greek, named for the eponymous goddess, denoted the fireside or hearth (what Schelling
conscientia: joint knowledge, consciousness, as well as the ethical sense of the conscience. calls der Heerd) of the house as well as the sanctuary (hence die Feste) where she was wor-
6. Cf. note no. 31, following. shipped and where a fire constantly burned. The daughter of Kronos and Rhea, she was the
goddess of the home and guardian of the hearth. For the Romans she was called Vesta and
7. WiederbewuRwerden, the regaining of consciousness, is Schelling's translation
was a goddess of great importance. The Vestal Virgins attended to the flame in her sanctu-
of Plato's anamnesis, the regaining of an awareness of that which was lost as a necessary
ary, charged with keeping it perpetually burning. Were the flame to be extinguished, a cat-
condition for the possibility of birth. By consciousness [Bewufltseyn], I take Schelling to
astrophe would ensue. When one of the Vestal virgins allowed the sanctuary's flame to
mean conscientice or Mitwissenschaft.
wane, the sun reignited it. The hearth is the floor upon which fire, for Schelling, following
8. Scheidungskunst oder Kritik. Heraclitus, a representation of time, is preserved. The hearth, like the wheel, is a represen-
9. Schelling seems to have in mind, inter alia, Hegel. tation of fiery time's continuing self-incineration and auto-reproduction.
10. I am translating Schauen as "vision" of the supramundane, as in, for example, 19. Schelling is referring to Heraclitus's "untiring fire" in Diels, fragment 30:
"beatific vision" [Gottschauen] or even the "intellectual intuition" [intellektuelle Anschau- "This ordered universe (KOutios), which is the same for all, was not created by any one
ung]. of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living Fire, kindled in
11. "Fursichtig hullt wie der kommenden Zeit Ausgang der vergangenen Anfang Gott measure and quenched in measure" [Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to The Pre-Socratic
in dunkele Nacht." Philosophers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970)].
 20. Following Bolman, I am assuming that Schelling is referring to Ezekial. I pre- being, i.e., of a being or entity (6). Note, too, that,das Erhabene_ (the sublime) also de-
sume it is Ezekial's call to be a prophet, when he sees "a storm wind coming from the notes the elevation or loftiness of this excess.
north, a vast cloud with flashes of fire and brilliant light about it; and within was a radi- 32. ". . .als das weder Seyende noch nicht Seyende seyend ist ."
ance like brass, glowing in the heart of the flames" (I: 4). Within the fire, Ezekial saw 33. Although this is a rich myth whose variations are found variously in the an-
four winged creatures, appearing "as if fire from burning coals or torches were darting to cient world, perhaps most appropriate to Schelling's study, the bursting of the world-egg
and fro among them" (I: 13), circulating about. Beside the creatures were "wheels" that (the egg of the cosmos) is one of the Orphic accounts for the birth of the "phanic"
"sparkled like topaz" and "were all alike: in form and working they were like a wheel in- Dionysus, the bisexual god whose cixicvli or torchlight (his celebration included a pro-
side a wheel, and when they moved in any of the four directions they never swerved in cession of torches) self-impregnated and gave birth to Nyx, the night. Chronos (Time),
their course" (I: 15-17). "When the living creatures moved, the wheels moved beside most primordial for the Orphics, created the cosmic egg, and, when this split open,
them; when the creatures rose from the ground, the wheels rose; they moved in whatever Phanes-Dionysus, "two-fold, egg-born" emerged. See "The Orphic Creation Myth,"
direction the spirit [or wind] would go" (I: 19-20). Crimal Creation Myths, edited by Barbara C. Sproul (San Francisco: Harper, 1991), 169.
21. The Magi were the Zoroastrian priests. They claimed that fire was the only ac- As the Weltalter continues, Dionysus emerges as,a symbol of the_ ongoing poem of cos-
.

ceptable representation of the Supreme Being. mic time. If one follows Aristophanes (who is perhaps following Epimenicles the Cre-
22. The Jewish lawgiver is, of course, Moses. "For the LORD your god is a de- tan) in The Birds (693 ff.), Night gave birth to a "wind-sown egg" (a result of nocturnal
vouring fire, a jealous god" (Deuteronomy 4:24). self-impregnation which breathed life into the cosmic egg). Out of the egg emerged
Eros another symbol for Schelling of time. See W. C. K. Guthrie, Orpheus and Greek
23. Schelling seems to be playing on the homonymous relationship between
Religion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 92-102. Time as the origin of
Suchen, to strive, to seek, and Sucht, obsession, addiction. Sucht is the constant and insa-
tiable striving for what one cannot have, an obsession with what is perpetually elusive. the cosmos is already found in early Zoroastrian myths.
Sehnsucht is the intermingling of Suchen and Sucht, an obsessive seeking for that which 34. ". .zum Seyn, zum blof3Aussprechlichen werden. ."
cannot be found (Seyn). 35. ". .dasAussprechende, Seyende zu Seyn...."
24. This word was inserted by Schelling's son, Karl Friedrich August, when he 36. "die Bleib - und Wohnstii tte" The Psalm reads, "Lord, thou hast been our refuge
edited this manuscript for the Samtliche Werke (1856-1861). [mayon] from generation to generation."
25. ". . . wenn eines das Seyende ist, dann nothwendig die andern nicht seyend seyn 37. The two expressions read in German: "Die Natur entziehe sich dem Anblick und
miissen." verberge ihre Geheimnisse." "Nur durch eine &here Macht gedrungen entlasse sie alles, was
26. Inserted by Schelling's son. wird, aus der ursprunglichen Verborgenheit."
27. Johann Scheffler (1624-77), known by his pen name Johannes Angelus Sile- 38. Schelling is referring to one of the stories that Diotima once told Socrates and
sius (Der cherubinische Wandersmann, I: 3). that Socrates recalls in the Symposium (203b-204b). At the birth of Aphrodite, the gods
28. I am trying to bring out with the phrase "no conation" the breakdown and held a feast (a Gastmahl-which was the original German translation of the Symposium).
reclamation of the conatus insofar as it endeavors not to endeavor or that it wills to be it- Present among the guests was Poros [TrOpost(literally,"way,"passage,""resource," which
self precisely by willing not to be itself. The conatus becomes obsessed with its alterity. Sciaelling_glosses as_Reiebthum and Oberflufl, wealth and excess). Poros got drunk on nec-
tar and sleepily headed to Zeus's garden where he fell asleep. Penial TrEvLed ("poverty" or
-

29. In the Philosophische Briefe fiber Dogmatismus und Kriticismus, Schelling linked "need") had shown up, as was her wont, at the feast to beg and when she saw Poros asleep,
these two movements, inverted movements toward the same end, to Stoicism and Epi- she devised a way to free herself from her poverty: she would sleep with Poros and have
cureanism. The former, in attempting to abstract themselves from all sensuality, "became his child. After this "wedding" of sorts, she became pregnant and gave birth to Eros, who
a physicist because their abstraction from all sensuality could only happen in time" (I/ was "neither mortal nor immortal," "neither ignorant nor wise," neither destitute nor rich
1:329). The epicure, inversely, does not strive for independence from the world. Rather, for "anything he finds his way to always slips away" (203e). [Nehamas and Woodruff
they throw themselves into the arms of the world. The epicure attempts to satisfy the translation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1989)]. Penia (negation) is the PV,Poros
demand of freedom by satisfying all sensuous needs. But the radical physicality of the (affirmation, excess) is the A2 , and their illegitimate offspring is Eros (A 3). In a remark,
Epicures led them to become "metaphysicians because their task, the successive satisfac- itself excerpted from another manuscript, in the third lecture of the 1842 Philosophie der
tion of all needs to achieve beatitude, was infinite" (I/1:329). Mythologie, Schelling appended a discussion of the "effusive Being in the second po-
30. Geist can be traced back to roots indicating the opening wide of the mouth and tency," which "therefore brings the proper Being of the other [the first] to silence so that
hence its relationship to the Latin spiritus and anima [breath (of a God)] and the Greek it remains as potentia Pura, as a pure Can (reines Konnen), not demanding to go over into
tirux4i, breath, and Trveupta, a blowing, and an even older tradition that includes the the Being of its own," with the following footnote: "In the unity 1 and 2 are the eternal
Sanskrit atman. sufficiency [Genuge]: together they both represent, so to speak, Poverty and Excess out of
31. "Gott sey das Uberwirkliche, Uberseyende (TO iyrreptiv), also fiber Seyn und Nicht- whose liaison that famous Platonic poem [Dichtung] let Eros come forth" (11/2, 50).
seyn Erhabene."TheinrEpOv is that which is in excess of (inrEp = super) of that which has Again, Eros's poverty is the source of his wealth. In the Philosophische Einleitung in die

138 139
Philosophie der Mythologie (between 1847-52), for example, Schelling claimed that "All footnote in section 49 of the Kritik der Urteilskraft ("Von den Vermogen des Gemuts"):
commencement lays in lack [Mange!], the deepest potency, everything is hinged upon "Perhaps there has never been something more sublime said or a thought expressed
that which does not have being, and this is the hunger for Being" (II/1, 294). more sublimely than that inscription over the Temple of Isis (of Mother Nature): 'I am
39. The receptacle [Behdltntfi] also alludes to Plato's description of the xc;)pct in everything that there is, that there was, and that there will be, and no mortal has lifted
the Timaeus. my veil' " (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 171). Schelling returned to this inscription at
40. Widerwartigkeit and Angst: the former suggests an incapacity or unwillingness the Temple of Sais in the eighteenth lecture of the 1842 Philosophie der Mythologie:" . . .
(the wider) to abide (zu warten) by something and hence loathing, disgust, abhorrence. [H]ence this is now posited in consciousness: 1) the God that was, 2) the God that is, 3)
What then does it desire to abide by? It does not know, and hence its anxiety. These the God that will be, i.e., that will not only be one time, but that will eternally be, i.e.,
were terms used by Jakob Bähme. that which should eternally that which is eternally to be born." Schelling works this out
particularly in the triadic unity of Osiris, Typhon, and Horos (11/2, 383). The inscrip-
41. I am translating Ur-Sache with the inclusive conjunction "cause and primordial
tion at Sais was Schelling's originally projected opening lines to Die Weltalter." 'I am that
matter" because by hyphenating the normal word for "cause" (die Ursache), Schelling is
which was, which is, and which will be and no mortal has lifted [aufgehoben] my veil'—
able to emphasize its temporal sense of Arius, of an a priori support of the elements.
thusly, according to some narratives, the intimated primordial being [geahndete Urwe-
42. The rather awkward "state of nondivorce" translates Ungeschiedenheit, the noun sen] once addressed wayfarers from under the veil of the image of Isis in the Temple at
form of "not separated" or "not divorced." Sais." Die Weltalter: Fragmente In den Urfassungen von 1811 and 1813, edited by Manfred
43. I am somewhat freely translating das Gebildete as "idol" not only to catch some Schroter (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1946), 187.
of the Mosaic sense of the fire that annihilates all idols before it, but also to play on the 53. Exodus 3:14.
relationship between the literal sense of das Gebildete as the "having been shaped or
54. "der ewig seyend seyn muflte"
formed" and the roots of "idol" in the Greek eidolon and eidos, the (seeming) outer shape
or form of something. 55. "It [the created universe] was made the victim of frustration because God sub-
jected it." The ovx eKOVaa is the lack or negation or frustration of voluntary acts.
44. "wird ein Zumal, ein mit- and durcheinander-Bestehen"
56. Herrlichkeit is a now obsolete term for lordship and sovereignty, although its
45. At Genesis 1:2, God completed creation of heaven and earth on the sixth day
primary connotation is still that of glory or splendor (as in die Herrlichkeit Gottes). I have
and declared the seventh to be holy "because on that day he ceased from all the work he
opted for the more obscure lordship to emphasize the contrast between the slavery
had set himself to do." After this rest, God began to fill the earth with life.
(Knechtschaft) of subjugation and the freedom of lordship. The glory of such lordship can
46. Schelling already linked the wissenschaftlich to the geschichtlich in the Introduc- also be heard.
tion (the first full paragraph at 205): "Can the recollection of the primordial beginning
of things ever again become so vital that knowledge, which, according to its matter and 57. Actus, what Schelling translates as Wirkung, is the past participle of the Latin
the meaning of the word, is history, could also be history according to its external form?" agere (to drive, to do). Actus in this sense suggests something done or something driven
The Kluge traces Wissen back to roots suggesting: "I found" or "I found out" or "I dis- in a particular way. When freedom does not come to act (actus), it does not come to pass,
covered. it does not happen, it does not actualize itself. It remains a force or 8 uviictus (potentia,
-

Potententialitä t) or possibility (Moglichkeit) irreducible to actuality. It is always still to

47. The "Er" (the "He") is derived from the fact that one says "der Gott," and not
happen, ein unendlicher Mangel an Seyn.
from the fact that God must be said to have a gender. Schelling claims that reason and
feeling demand a personal god and not an abstract God. 58. Timaeus 29d-30a: "Let us, then, state for what reason [ect-ri,ot] becoming and
this universe were framed by him who framed them. He was good [o•y&Otic]; and in the
48. Cf. 205 and 254 (standard pagination) where Schelling links the Wis-
good no jealousy in any matter can ever arise. So, being without jealousy, he desired that
senschaftliche with the Geschichtliche and the Historische.
all things should come as near as possible to being like himself. That this is the
49. The passage in the Letter to the Hebrews reads: "The argument becomes still t.
supremely valid principle of becoming and of the order of the world, we shall most
clearer, if the new priest who arises is one like Melchizedek, owing his priesthood not to surely be right to accept from men of understanding. Desiring, then, that all things
a system of earth-bound rules but to the power of a life that cannot be destroyed." should be good and, so far as might be, nothing imperfect, the god took over all that is
50. "ein seyend-Seyn (Existenz)" visible—not at rest, but in discordant and unordered motion—and brought it from dis-
51. Schelling is emphasizing the literal connotation of das Bewufitseyn, i.e., to be order into order, since he judged that order was in every way the better." [I have used the
(Seyn) aware or conscious, to be known (clearly). The past tense of the archaic and no Francis M. Cornford translation, Plato's Cosmology (New York: The Liberal Arts Press,
longer current bewissen (to know clearly) takes on added significance in light of both 1957).]
Schelling's insistence on the historicality of Wissen and the current discussion of the 59. Cf. the Freedom essay: "For the eternal spirit articulates the unity or the Word
past. in nature. But the articulated (real) word is only in the unity of light and darkness (vowel
52. An allusion to the Egyptian theogonic circularity, which Schelling finds again and consonant)" (Suhrkamp edition, 58). This also invokes a discussion that takes place
in Moses's vision of Yahweh as the burning bush, is already mentioned by Kant in a in several Platonic dialogues, including the Theatetus 202a-203e, the Cratylus 424c, and
the Sophist 253 a-d. In these passages, Socrates argues that consonants (literally, "with Magnet, induced me to term it ANIMAL MAGNETISM" (Bloch, 67-68). Schelling,
sound") need a vowel ("its own sound") to be heard. In this sense it might also be worth for his part, returned to a discussion of sleep in his discussion of the "absolute contem-
noting that Jakob Bohme, whose influence on Schelling was substantial, characterized plation and interiority [Verinnigung]" of Yoga in his discussion of Indian mythology in
the Fall as the loss of the capacity to hear the Natursprache, the language of nature. the Philosophic der Mythologie. Schelling denied that Yoga produced an annihilation
60. The tetragrammaton, from the Greek meaning "four letters," are the four con- [Vernichtung] of the self, and claimed that it could be compared, in some respects to
sonants (in the Roman alphabet YHWH) to designate Elohim. Note that these are sleep. "For sleep is also not an anihilation, and who can really know what pleasures the
"silent letters" and hence cannot be pronounced without a vowel. The four Hebrew con- soul is capable of in sleep and out of which sources that balm flows with which a healthy
sonants appear in the next few lines. sleep refreshes the spirit? That we do not remember these pleasures cannot prove the ab-
sence of them. Rather it only proves that these pleasures, like the events of magnetic
61. The oath is handed down by Sextus Empiricus as one of the acusmata ("things
heard"). The text reads: "And by way of indicating this the Pythagoreans are accustomed sleep, are not capable of transmission into a waking state by memory" (11/2, 574).
sometimes to say All things are like number,' and sometimes to swear this most potent 65. ". . . die Gleichgultigkeit des Zusammenseyns aufgehoben. ."
oath: 'Nay, by him that gave to us the tetractys, which contains the fount and root of 66. Gegenwurf is an obscure and extremely difficult word to render. The general
ever-flowing nature.' " Cf. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, sec- sense is that each order knows itself in contradistinction to what it is not. It is sees itself
ond edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 233-234. only through having lost or betrayed itself such that the other half mirrors the other
62. This is a term from Luther's translation of the Bible. These are the messengers back to itself. One discerns one's ownmost through the foreign.
that bring one to a mediating face to face [Angesicht zu Angesicht] with the all-consum- 67. E.g., "The glory of the lord looked to the Israelites like a devouring fire on the
ing fire of the Godhead. mountain-top" (Exodus 24:17).
63. Schelling is connecting various uses of the cognate Stehen. Literally, one may 68. This is a reference to the English physicist and chemist Sir Humphry Davy
not remain standing (stehen bleiben) by what has already come to a stand (ein Zustand or (1778-1829) whose electrochemical researches (Clberfiihrungsversuchen) at the Royal In-
state of affairs) because what has come to a stand does not even for one moment stand stitute in London isolated sodium and potassium in 1807 and magnesium, barium,
still (no Stillstand). boron, and calcium the following year. See 1/9, 440.
64. Magnetischer Schlaf [magnetic sleep] or what we now call "hypnosis" most dra- 69. Schelling is playing on the relationship between heilen, to heal, and heilig, holy.
matically came to the attention of the German world through the writings and experi- The Cartesian duality (actually, Schelling uses a much stronger word, Zwiespalt, or con-
ments of Franz Anton Mesmer (1733-1815). It was Mesmer who called hypnotic sleep, flict) is both heillos, literally, unholy, but hinting at an absence of heilen, and unheilbar,
what he called "animal magnetism," a crisis. In his 1799 Memoire de E A. Mesmer, docteur not admitting of healing, incurable, terminable. The unholy is a terminal illness. Holi-
en medicine, sur ses decouvertes, there is the following discussion of the relationship be- ness is the font of health.
tween sleep and crisis: "One can say that in the state of 'sleep,' man experiences his con-
nections with all of Nature. Just as we would be incapable of having any idea of the 70. Humans are both mithandelnde, or co-active, co-operative (acting in an ancil-
knowledge of the most learned man if he did not speak or could not be understood, I lary fashion) and mitleidende, or co -passive, undergoing or experiencing, conjoined with
admit that it would be difficult to prove the existence of this phenomenon, were it not the "great process." They are simultaneously subject and object of the movement, form-
for those individuals who, during their sleep and through the effect of an illness or a `cri- ing something akin to the middle voice.
sis,' retain the faculty to convey to us, as much as by their actions as by their expressions, 71. Magie, or magic, is a word with long roots in German, old English (ma-
what takes place in them ....The state of crisis to which I refer, being intermediate be- gan), Greek (iOrya KOs), fit for a magician, magus, from 1Wyos, magus, magician,
-

tween wakefulness and and perfect sleep, is capable of being drawn more or less to one witch), and finally from the Persian (Zoroastrian) word magus, or priest and interpreter
or the other." [Mesmerism: A Translation of the Original Scientific and Medical Writings of of dreams. (Schelling mentions the Zoroastrian magi at 230.) More literally the root de-
E A. Mesmer, translated and compled by George Bloch (Los Altos, California: William notes a "being able" or a "having power." Schelling was quite aware of this and mentions
Kaufmann, Inc., 1980), 123-124.] In his 1779 Memoire sur la Decouverte du Magnetisme the (etymological) connection between Magie and Moglichkeit, even tracing the former
animal, Mesmer listed twenty-seven theses concerning his discovery of magnetic (or beyond the Persian to the Sanskrit maya, the veil of illusion. See, for example, Schelling's
"critical") sleep, claiming at thesis 24 that the work of the physician is to bring about reading of Hindu mythology at 11/2, 482 (the 1842 Philosophic. der Mythologie): "This
"beneficial crises" (Bloch, 69). This crisis re-attunes the animal body with heavenly bod- possibility is precisely Maya = Magie = Moglichkeit . . . . The world comes into being
ies. Proposition 1: "There exists a mutual influence between the Heavenly bodies, the through a momentary self-forgetting, through a kind of sheer distraction of the creator."
Earth, and Animate Bodies." Proposition 2: "A universally distributed and continuous Maya spins webs but is not subject to what she spins. "From the German Mogen comes
fluid, which is quite without vacuum and of an incomparably rarefied nature, and which our German Moglichkeit [possibility], Macht [power], just as in many dialects: ich mag
by its nature is capable of receiving, propagating and communicating all the impressions nicht means "I cannot" [ich kann nicht]. Magic, and also the Indian maya, therefore
of movement, is the means of this influence." Proposition 10: "The property of the ani- means nothing other than Macht, Moglichkeit. And, indeed, the entire being [ Wesen] of
mal body which brings it under the influence of the heavenly bodies, and the reciprocal this can [Konnen] which still rests in conation is—magic" (11/2, 150). Schelling noted
action occurring among those who are surrounded by it, shown by its analogy with the that August Schlegel, in his translation of the Bhagavadgita into Latin, "had added the

142 143
word magia in parentheses to the word 'map.' " Humboldt had done the same in his aration from something, and schliefien, to close] is literally a dis-closing, a de-cisive
Latin translation (11/2, 149). And finally, Jakob Bohme had used the word magia quite opening up, the lightning flash of divine self-differentiation.
dramatically and in a fashion that resembles Schelling's deployment of the word: "Magic 84. This is the project of the positive philosophy that proceeds decensively, unlike
is the mother of eternity, of the essence of all essence, for it makes itself and is under- the negative philosophy, which ascends toward the A'. Positive philosophy is the history
stood in desire. It is in itself nothing but a will. . . . Real magic is not an essence but of the A' (the eternal No, the eternal Yes, and the unity of both) as it manifests with great-
rather the desiring spirit of essence. It is an insubstantial matrix, but it reveals itself in est intensity as the fourth moment (the A4 ), proliferating differentially in space and time
essence. Magic is spirit and essence is its body and yet both of them are only one, just (culture and history). This is the project of the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation.
like body and soul are only one person." Sex puncta mystica in Mysterium Pansophicum, 85. Cf. for example, Pindar's Eighth Pythian Ode, lines 135-136, in the translation
edited and elucidated by Gerhard Wehr (Freiburg: Aurum Verlag, 1980), 157-158. by Friedrich HOlderlin: "Tagwesen. Was aber ist einer? Was aber ist einer nicht? / Der Schat-
72. Hypnosis or Mesmeric sleep. Cf. note no. 64. ten Traum, sind Menschen. . ." ['The essence of day. But what is one? But what is one
73. Schelling admired a similar formulation of this insight in the work of not? The shadow dream, are people ...."] Schelling uses the phrase Scheinbild, appar-
Hamann: "And in a similarly consoling fashion, one of the greatest German writers, ent image, simulacrum.
Hamann, says, 'The analogy of the divine is the great key to the human understanding' " 86. E.g., Proverbs 3:19, "In wisdom God founded the earth."
(IPU, 5). 87. The word is Entaufierung, which connotes self-realization through self-relin-
74. "He [Jacob] dreamt that he saw a ladder, which rested on the ground with its quishment. It also suggests the interior becoming exterior and hence becoming itself by
top reaching to heaven, and angels of God were going up and down upon it" (Genesis letting go of itself (its interiority).
28:12). 88. This is the nocturnal vision of Elijah at 1 Kings 19:11-12. "For the LORD was
75. "der den Schlaf Wirkende" or literally the one who effects the [Mesmeric] sleep. passing by: a great and strong wind came rending mountains and shattering rocks before
Cf. note no. 64. him, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind there was an earthquake,
76. This is a term that the philosophus teutonicus, the Gorlitz shoemaker Jakob but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but the LORD
BOhme, used. was not in the fire; and after the fire a low murmuring sound."
77. The contrast is between "egoity" or "ipseity" (see the earlier discussion at 210 89. This is a much used phrase in Greek philosophy (e.g., Heraclitus, fragment 10
as well as the 1809 Freedom essay) and "ecstasy." The German more or less replicates the [from Aristotle's de mundo):" . . . out of all things [TrCevra] there comes a unity [v], and
literal meaning of ecstasy, literally, a standing outside of oneself. Cf. for example, the out of a unity all things," and fragment 50: "Listening not to me but to the Logos it is
1821 Erlangen lecture course Uber die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft that Horst wise to agree that all things are one Tr& VTOL Ei.vaL].") [Kirk and Raven, op. cit,. 190
Fuhrmans edited as Initia Philosophic Universes', 39: "Earlier one could have used the and 187 respectively] Hälderlin, Schelling, and Hegel, among others, often used it. The
term ecstasy [Ekstase] for that relationship. Namely, our I is posited outside of itself, that phrase received great notoriety in the so-called Pantheismusstreit when Jacobi claimed
is, outside of its place." This Schelling called Selbstaufgebenheit, the renunciation of the that Lessing once told him that he was a Spinozist and hence pantheist: "Hen kai Pan!
alleged superior position of the ego. See also Jean-Francois Courtine, "La subjectivite: Anderes wusste er nichts." (F. H. Jacobi, Uber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an den
Fondation et extase de la raison," Extase de la raison: Essais sur Schelling (Paris: Editions Herrn Moses Mendelssohn [Breslau: Gottl., Lowe, 1785]) (For a good discussion of the
Galilee, 1990), 151-167. relationship between Jacobi and Schelling on this issue, see Sandkaulen-Bock, Birgit,
Ausgang von Unbedingten: Uber den Anfang in der Philosophie Schellings (Gottingen: Van-
78. Schelling seems to be alluding to the Upanishads and to the Advaita Vedanta
tradition of Vedic commentary. Here, creation is not the unfolding of a master plan, but denhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990), esp. 13-18.) The manner in which all things TraVTa, die
the movement of lila or play. Allheit) are of a whole (eine Ganzheit) and hence singular ( -1) or eine Einheit) drew
Schelling to Spinoza (and to the volatile Pantheism controversy) and hence to the strug-
79. Theurgy (the work or `.p-yov of God or Oecis) was the Neoplatonic set of gle to think the whole without, as Jacobi feared, sacrificing freedom to the necessities in-
practices, rejected by the Medieval church and temporarily practiced again during the herent in the system. How does one have both freedom and system, that fiery
Renaissance, for invoking and directing the intervention of beneficent spirits. Although
contradiction of a "system of freedom," without sacrificing freedom to the necessities
rejected by Plotinus and eventually Porphyry (under the sway of Plotinus), its adherents imposed by the system (the `1) or Einheit)? For Schelling, the third term (the Kai.)
included Iamblicus and Proclus. which holds together freedom and necessity (system), the many and the one, difference
80. "als Wile, der nicht will" and hence also a will that does not want (that does not and identity, eternity and succession, is time, which expresses itself mimetically (through
want even nothing or not to will) , a will without conation. Wiederholung) and hence as the third moment (das Ganze), which continues to express
81. The relationship in which the Godhead "holds itself back" from Being. The itself differentially as the fourth moment (e.g., as ages of the world).
Godhead relates to Being by virtue of its withdrawal from it. 90. Schelling, like Hegel, distinguishes Sittlichkeit from (Kantian) Moralita t in
82. Cf. Heraclitus, fragment 64: "Lightning steers all things." that the latter assumes superhistorical, extratemporal commands. Sittlichkeit is histori-
83. Schelling is taking the word for resolution, or decisive action [die Ent- cal, ensconced in an age of the world. It is an epoch's Sitten, its character, its mores, and
schliefiung], and playing with its more literal meanings. The Ent- Schlieflung[ent, the sep- its customs.

144 145
 91. This was the distinction that Schelling attributed to Plutarch at 221. It is the 101. More literally, the Auseinandersetzung (the setting into opposition, the con-
distinction between non-Being [nicht Seyn, p.4 Ei.vott.] and the Being that has no being frontation) resulted in a spiritual Auseinander (separation, apartness, opposition). This
[nicht seyend Seyn, p..41 Ov Ei.vcal, between what is not at all and what is not yet. separation was an expansum, an unfolding or spreading out, of the forces. There is not
92. Following Bolman, this seems to be a reference to the Psalms, e.g., 13:1, "How yet the delimiting force that makes possible extension or Ausdebnung.
long wilt thou hide thy face from me?" and 27:8-9," 'Come,' my heart has said, 'seek his 102. If it is not already obvious, Schelling is alluding to the swelling of sexual or-
face.' I will seek thy face, 0 LORD; do not hide it from me . ..." gans. Das Glied (literally, "member") denotes in German, as it does in English, the penis.
93. I am using the Latin naturata to translate vernaturt because I am taking this to 103. Intensum, intensity, marks a stretching or an extending as in a bow. Hence,
be an allusion to Spinoza's distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, or the tension (die Spannung) becomes ever ore intense, taut.
"nature naturing" and "nature natured." The spiritual potency, or nature naturing, pene- 104. Schelling is referring to the Timaeus where at 30a Timaeus contends: "Desir-
trates the whole of eternal nature so that it becomes natured (naturata or vernaturt). ing, then, that all things should be good and, as much as possible [Kam 81;votpAv],
94. Again, the word for "yearning" here is Sehnsucht, a word made famous not only nothing imperfect, the Demiurge took over all that is visible-not at rest, but in discor-
by Schelling, but by almost all of the Romantics. It is non-object oriented desire, desire dant and unruly [rrX-riREXCIA Kai, et-rOticrws] motion-and brought it from the unruly
that moves beyond itself, but not because it is oriented toward any object in particular. to the ruly, since he judged that the ruly was in every way the better." [I have used, with
It is an obsession, eine Sucht, with the movement of Sehnen (longing or pining) itself. my own emendations, the Cornford translation, Plato's Cosmology (New York: The Lib-
95. This is the (rhythmic) contraction (systole) and expansion (diastole) of the eral Arts Press, 1957).] This matter, this "wilde unbotmeyk ge Materie" as Schelling
heart and hence both movements together make life possible. phrased it, is the viva. While still a student at the Tubingen Stift, Schelling had al-
96. Hence, the highest or supremely contradictory being (the Wesen) is both das ready written an important essay on the Timaeus (1794) [Edited by Harmut Buchner
Seyende (that which has being) its Seyn or Being in this moment. (It is both what has be- with a contribution by Hermann Krings (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1994).]
ing and what paradoxically has being by not having being in the alternation of contrac- 105. These are the electrochemical experiments by Sir Humphry Davy mentioned
tion and expansion, systole and diastole.) at 282. A voltaic pile (elektrische S iiule) is also called a "galvanic pile."
97. Following Bolman, the "old book" seems to be The Book of Ecclesiastes, where 106. Schelling here used the etymological variant of comet (Haarstern), reflecting
there is a lengthy discussion of labor: "What does man gain from all his labor here un- its origin in the Greek otcrriip koi.dirris, "long-haired flame."
der the sun? Generations come and generations go, while the earth endures forever" 107. The Aeneid of Virgil, book II, 274. The full passage in the Allen Mandelbaum
(1:3-4). "So I came to hate life, since everything that was done here under the sun was verse translation reads:"... how different he was from Hector back from battle, putting
a trouble to me; for all is emptiness and chasing the wind" (2:17), etc. on Achilles' spoils, or Hector when he flung his Phrygian firebrands at Dardan prows!
98. This was a neologism coined by Samuel Taylor Coleridge to handle Schelling's His beard unkempt, his hair was thick with blood, he bore the many wounds he had re-
term Ineinsbildung, a term that both Coleridge and Schelling understood as synonymous ceived around his homeland's walls." (New York Bantam Books, 1961.) One might no-
with the movement of the (transcendental or productive) imagination or Einbil- tice that a comet is etymologically a "long-haired star" and hence the change in Hector's
dungskraft. Coleridge located this term in, inter alia, Schelling's Darlegung des wahren Ver- hair is a metaphor for the dramatic change in the comet itself.
hältnisses der Naturphilosophie zu der verbesserten Fichteschen Lehre (1806): "1st das Band 108. This, of course, is the opening line of the Book of Genesis.
die lebendi ge In-Eins-Bildung des Einen mit dem Vielen" [The copula is the living forma- 109. Exasciare denotes that which has been properly planned and properly executed.
tion into one eisemplasy of the one with the many]. As Coleridge puts it: "I con-
- -
110. The Hebrew bar, son, derives from bara. The verbs beiren and gebiiren (the lat-
structed it [the word 'esemplasticl myself from the Greek words, ELS EV ITXUTTELV, i.e., ter is the high German variant of the former) mean "to give birth to," as does the related
to shape into one; because, having to convey a new sense, I thought that a new term Germanic root in English ("to bear" a child). The Greek PeepEco means "to weigh down"
would both aid the recollection of my meaning, and prevent its being confounded with and the Latin parare is "to prepare," or "to provide," or "to gather" and parere is "to ap-
the usual import of the word, imagination." Coleridge also experimented with a Latin- pear" or "to obey" or "to yield to."
ate version with the word "coadunate" [co ad unare to make one with]. Cf. Coleridge,
- - -

Biographia Literaria (1817 edition), edited by James Engell and W. Jackson Bate
111. "The older men of his household tried to get him to rise from the ground, but
he refused and would eat no food with them" [italics mine].
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), esp. 168-170. The editors have also pro-
vided a very informative footnote beginning at p. 168 that traces the origins of Cole- 112. "God said, 'This is the sign of the covenant which I establish between myself
ridge's coinage of these terms. and you ....'"

99. Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), or Carl von Linne, was a Swedish taxonomist 113. "Bring everyone who is called by my name, all whom I have created, whom I
and botanist. His most influential work was The System of Nature, which was first pub- have formed, all whom I have made for my glory."
lished in 1735. 114. This, for example, is discussed in Plato's Phaedrus, in which four kinds of
100. Schelling discussed this at 253. madness are discerned, the final being "divine madness." "The best things we have come
from madness, when it is given as a gift of the god" (244a). { Nchanias and Woodruff
translation (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1995).]
115. Schelling discussed the relationship of turgidity to the orgy in the sixteenth
lecture of the Philosophy of Mythology: "The entrance of this moment [the resistance to
the liberating God is becoming weaker and weaker] is designated through the repeated
appearance of a feminine Godhead and announced itself emotionally through the ap-
pearances of the wild, non-composed enthusiasm of the orgy" [II/2, 351]. INDEX
116. Cf. the 1809 Freedom essay: "But where the ideal principle really acts force-
fully to a high degree, but cannot find the reconciling and mediating basis, it begets a
bleak and wild enthusiasm that breaks out in self-laceration or, in the case of the priests
of the Phrygian goddess, in auto-castration, which in Philosophy is brought about by
the renunciation of reason and science" (1/7, 356-357.). The Phrygian goddess to whom
Schelling is here alluding and to whom he alludes in "the shocking procession of the
mother of all gods" is the earth goddess Cybele. She required that her priests, presum-
ably in atonement for the infidelity of her lover Atys, castrate themselves. They cele-
brated her with wild dissonant music, insane behavior, and crazed shrieking. The cult of Abjection, 48 Anxiety (Angst), xxviii, 32, 46, 48, 55,
Cybele later evolved, upon its absorption into the Greek world, into the cult of Deme- Absolute, 65, 82, 96 91-92, 101
ter celebrated as the Eleusinian mysteries Absolute freedom, 78 Aristotle, xiii, xxx, 103
Abyss, 4 Art, xi-xiii, xxxix, 56, 58
117. This is the KUL irCiv of the so-called Pantheismusstreit or Pantheism Con-
troversy. Nature as an abyss of the past, 31 Complete work of art, xii
Abysses of the human heart, 48 Augustine, xvi
118. Schelling is referring, inter alia, to F. H. Jacobi. Although early on Schelling Abyssal freedom, 78
had looked to Jacobi as a strong voice, critical of the dogmatism of the closed, rational, Act (actus),xyii, xxiii, 8-10, 12, 13-19, Bataille, Georges, xxi-xxii
fatalistic system (in which everything follows of necessity from a rationally discernible 37, 43, 44, 47, 64, 77, 78, 85, 105, Beauty, xi, xxi, xxx, 62, 63, 102, 106
first principle, excluding the possibility of freedom), Jacobi had applied the same critique 107, 141n; See also Actuality Bolman, Jr., Frederick de Wolfe, viii
to Schelling's system of freedom, most particularly to the 1809 Freedom essay. For Jacobi, In acto continuo, 23 Biihme, Jakob, 140n, 142n 144n
the very idea of systematic thought committed one to fatalism. In Jacobi's 1811 Von den God as pure actus, 26 Bruno, Giordano (1548-1600), 105
gottlichen Dingen and ihrer Offenbarung, Schelling was reduced to the one-sided realism Actuality ( Wirklichkeit, die) xxi, xxiii, xl,
of Spinozistic pantheism, and hence as unable to articulate a freedom that is not usurped 24, 26, 47, 48, 59-60, 66, 78-79, 86, Capacity to be, the (Seynkonnen, das), 79
by the movement of the system. Schelling's last published work, the 1812 Denkmal der 89, 90, 95, 102; See also Act Cato, xxix
Schrift von den gottlichen Dingen (I/8 19-136) argued strongly against Jacobi's misread- Aequilibrium arbitrii, xxix xxx
- Character, xi, xxx, 8-9, 71, 78, 85, 106,
ing. That Jacobi's critique was unfounded should already have been evident from the Aesthetic Intuition, the, xi; See also 145n
discussion of Spinoza in the Freedom essay. Spiritual eye Cision, the (Scheidung, die), xxvi, xxviii,
119. In alchemy, the menstruum was the solvent by which one transfigured some- Alchemy, 60-63, 148n xxxi-xxxii, xxxvi, xxxvii, 23, 28 29,
-

thing into gold. It was the so-called "philosopher's stone" of which gold was a degrada- Anamnesis (WiederbewzOtwerden, das), 34, 35, 38, 47, 49, 55-56, 58, 69, 84,
tion and lead was an even further degradation. It was pure prime matter, Schellling's 'Davi, 136n 90, 92, 101, 102, 135-136n; See also
so-called "gold of gold." Angel of the countenance, the, 53 Crisis
120. In Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, Might and Violence were the daimons Anima, xii Comets, 96-98, 147n
who chained Prometheus to the crag at Caucasus. Violence was a muta persona. Animal Magnetism, xix, 142-143n; See Conation, xxxv, 25, 27-28, 29, 40, 41, 46,
121. Cf. Proverbs 1:7: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but also Magnetic sleep 52, 87, 90, 91, 138n, 144n
fools scorn wisdom and discipline," and Proverbs 9:10: "The first step to wisdom is the Annular drive (Umtrieb, der), 20-23, 29, Contraction, xviii, xxiv, xxx, 21, 83, 88,
fear of the LORD, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Kant also alluded 103 90, 94, 95, 97, 99, 100, 107, 146n;
to this in the Critique ofJudgment when he claimed that "the virtuous person fears God As the chaos of the animal world, See also Systole and Diastole
without being afraid of God." Kant, op. cit., section 28 r Sofiirchtet der Tugendhafte Gott, 92 Contradiction, the, xxi, 7-12, 14, 22, 23,
ohne sich vor ihm zufiirchtenl. Antithesis, the (Gegensatz, der), 6-7, 10, 27, 28, 31-33, 35, 36, 38, 47-49, 64,
11, 14, 18-20, 28, 36, 37, 41, 42, 56, 75-77, 83, 90-91, 101, 137n, 145n;
58, 64-65, 82, 89, 104, 137n; See also See also Antithesis
Contradiction The authentic, essential contradiction, 8

148 149
 The law of contradiction, 11 Equipollence, 9, 22, 36, 94, 104, 137n; History of science, 105 Nature, xxxv-108
The highest conceivable contradiction, See also Equivalence Hälderlin, Friedrich, ix, xiv The hidden trace of, xi
75 Equivalence, xxii, 6, 9, 10, 19, 22, 32-33, Hypnosis; See Magnetic Sleep As an abyss of the past, 31
The supremely contradictory being, 90 59, 94; See also Equipollence Hypocrites, 67 As Penia, 31
All life must pass through the fire of Pure equivalence (indifference), 25 Nietzsche, Friedrich, xiv, xxviii
contradiction, 90 Erlanger Lectures (1820-21), xv, xxiv Imagination, xii, xxiv, 146n
Contradiction as the fountain of eter- Eros, 139-140n; See also Desire Imbecility, xiii, 103 Obsession (Sucht, die), xxix, 21, 22,
nal life, 90 The bastard child of need and excess, Indifference, xxv, 25, 87, 93, 137n 23-25, 28, 38, 39, 47, 85, 88
Contradiction as the highest task of 31 Involution, 83, 87, 88, 107 Blind obsession, 22-23
science, 90 Ethismos, xxx Ipseity, 6, 92, 137n, 144n; See also Selfhood The constant obsession with eternity,
Copula, the (Band, das), 8, 48, 67,105, Eternity, xvii-xviii, 17, 20, 24, 26, 29, 30, Irreducible remainder, the, xxiii 24
137n, 146n 35, 37-39, 41, 42-46, 48, 49, 52, 56, On the Deities of Samothrace (1815), xix
Corporeality, 62-63, 93 66, 67, 76, 79-80, 83 Jacobi, F. H., viii, 145n, 148n On the Relationship of the Fine Arts to
Cosmic egg; See World-egg Evil, ix, xxviii-xxx, 9, 15, 18-19, 48, 99 Jena Circle, ix Nature (1807), xi xii
-

Creatio ex nihilo, xvi, 14 Evil as analogue for sickness, ix, 48 On the University Studies, x
Crisis, the, xix, xxvi, xxxii, 29, 55, 57, 67, Evolution, 61, 83, 107 Kant, Immanuel, xvii-xviii, 140-141n, Ontological Proof, the, 26
69-70, 135-136n, 142-143n; See 148n Orgasm of forces, the, 95, 101
also Cision Fable, xxxv Kierkegaard, Soren, xxix Orgy, 148n
Faith, xxix-xxx, 80
Death, xi, xx, xxiv, xxvi, xxvii, 21, 43, 44, Fichte, J. G., 106 Lack, xxii-xxiv, 139-140 Pain, ix-x, 3, 55, 69,101
67, 77,102n Formula for the Whole, the, 84 The infinite lack in Being, xxii The pain of form, xi
Decision (Entscheidung, die; Entschluft, Fourfold, the, 52 Leibniz, xxii, 7, 104-106, 135n, 137n As necessary and universal in all life,
der), x)oci, 13, 17, 29, 32, 44, 74, Freedom, ix, xiii, xxxv, xxxvi, 5, Linnaeus, Carolus (1707-1778), 92, 146n 101
76-78, 82-83, 85, 135n 13, 22-30, 31, 33, 36-41, 44-47, 55, Love, xii, xiii, xv, xxviii, xxx, 5-6, 8, 33, Pantheism, 104-108
Deleuze, Gilles, xiv 57-58, 65, 67, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 55, 57, 62, 64, 73-74, 77, 81, 83, 85, Pantheism Controversy, the, 145n
Descartes, Rene, 50, 62, 105, 143n 77-78, 80-84, 101, 102 86, 89, 107 Past, the; See Time
Desire, 16, 17, 21-25, 28, 48-49, 56, 58, Fuhrmans, Horst, vii, xxiv The intellectual love of God (Spinoza), The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), viii
66, 71, 72, 89-90, 144n, 146n; See Future, the; See Time xxix Philosophical Investigations of the Being of
also Eros Love is the neither freedom nor com- Human Freedom (1809) (The Free-
Selfish desire, 22 General Economy, xxi-xxiii; See also pulsion, 55 dom essay), viii, ix, xiii, xv, xvi, xxiv,
Desire that desires no object, 24 System, Restricted Economy Lyotard, Jean-Francois, xii xxviii, xxix, 134n, 144n, 148n
Artistic desire, 58 God, x-x;cc, xxxv-108 Philosophy and Religion (1804), ix
Inexhaustible desire, 60 Godhead, the, xxxv-108 Madness, xi, xiii-xiv, xxx, 43, 102-104 Philosophy of Art (1802 03), ix
-

Sportive desire, 71 The Super-Godhead, 25 Touch of madness, xiii, 103 The Philosophy of Mythology (Monothe-
Diastole; See Systole and Diastole Good, the, xii, xxviii, ma, 15, 18-19, 25, Divine and holy madness, 102 ism), xxi
Dionysus, xii, xxviii, 102-103, 139n 26, 63, 77, 99, 141n Music and madness, 103 The Philosophy of Mythology and Revela-
Distress of pining, the (Drangsal, die), The Good is Being per se, 25-26 Magic, 28, 57, 59, 69, 143-144n tion, vii, ix
27 Grim fate ( Verheingnis, das), 23, 89 The magic of life, 48 Pindar, 80, 145n
Divine Comedy of Dante, the, xix Universal magic, 66 Plato, ix, xvi, xxii, xxxix, 14, 31, 47, 50,
Hegel, G. W. F., viii, ix, xx, 136n, 145n Magnetic Sleep, xix, 57, 65-72; 142-143n; 66, 94, 136n, 139n, 140n, 141n,
Ecstasy, xvi, 144n; See also Rapture Heidegger, Martin, xvii, xx, xxix, xxxi See also Animal magnetism 142n, 147n
Not only poets, but also philosophers, Heraclitus, 20-21, 137n, 144n, 145n Meister Eckhart, xxix Present, the; See Time
have their ecstasies, xxxviii Highest voluntarism, the, 5, 47, 77, 79 Melancholy, ix, xxvii Prime matter, xv, 29, 30, 34, 41, 104,
Egoity, 6, 16, 144n History, ix, xix, xxxvii-xxxix, 3, 4, 49-51, Mesmer, Franz Anton, xix, 142-143n 148n
Eisemplasy (Ineinsbildung, die), 91, 146n 61, 66, 70, 78-81, 84, 87, 99,140n, Mesmerism; See Magnetic sleep Prime matter is alchemy, 60-63
Electricity, 96 145n Moment, the (Augenblick, das), xvii-xviii; Privation, 14, 96
Elohim, 51-53, 98-99, 142n History of nature, 65, 84 See also Time Pythagoras, 52
Rapture, 101; See also Ecstasy Tetragrammaton, the, 52, 142n
Releasement (Gelassenheit, die), xxix, 63 Thales of Miletus, xxii, 5
Religiosity, xxix-xxx Time, xvii-xx, 3, 20, 37-38, 42-46, 67,
Restricted Economy, xxi-xxiii; See also 76-78, 80-84, 86, 98, 134-135n
General economy, system As eternally commencing, eternally
becoming, 20
Schelling, Caroline, ix, xxiv, xxvii Eternal time, 24
Schelling, Karl, vii-viii, xxxii Having the being of its time, 76
Schlegel, Friedrich, ix, xxiv The path of times, 83
Schroter, Manfred, vii Turgescence; See Turgor
Selfhood, xii, 6, 9, 64, 92, 94-95, 100; See Turgor, 92-94
also Ipseity
Sextus Empiricus, 142n Wheel of birth, 21
Socrates, xvii-xviii; 35, 139n, 141-142n Wheel of genesis, 21n
Space, xvii-xviii, 22, 38, 92-94, Wittgenstein, Ludwig, xii
134-135n World-egg, 28, 139n
Primordial force that contracts the World formula; See the Formula for the
Whole posits space, 93 Whole
Spinoza, B., xxix, 104-105, 136n, 145n,
146n, 148n Yearning (Sehnsucht, die), 22, 28-29, 56,
Spiritual eye, the, xi; See also aesthetic 64, 72, 90, 95,146n
intuition Obsession (Sucht) abates into Yearning
Stuttgart Private Lectures (1810), (Sehnsucht), 28
xxiv-xxvi
System, the, xx-xxx Zemickis, Robert, xxii
Systole and Diastole, 21, 90, 94, 97,100, Zizek, Slavoj, viii, xxii
146n Zoroasterianism, 21, 137n, 143n
System der Weltalter, Das (1827), viii

152