Schelling as a Thinker of Immanence: contra Heidegger and Jaspers
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Schelling as a Thinker of Immanence: contra Heidegger and Jaspers Daniele Fulvi 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Among the different interpretations of the philosophy of Schelling, there is no doubt that the ones developed by Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers played a prominent role within the most recent Schelling scholarship. Both Heidegger and Jaspers focused on Schelling’s discourse on freedom, pointing out the fundamental incompatibility of its key elements, i.e. ‘ground’ and ‘existence’, as well as the fallacious conception of Seynsfuge that emerges from it. Moreover, Heidegger argues that Schelling’s ontology ultimately falls back into traditional metaphysical subjectivism, ignoring the question of Being as such and in fact paving the way to nihilism. Similarly, Jaspers criticizes Schelling’s arbitrary account of the relation between freedom and existential being and his misleading conception of transcendence. However, I argue against Jaspers that Schelling’s discourse on freedom must be read as a philosophy of immanence, which aims at maintaining the concreteness of the concepts and at avoiding any form of transcendence. Consequently, I also argue against Heidegger that not only does Schelling’s discourse successfully show the compatibility of ground and existence, but that Schelling’s understanding of the ‘subject’ does not comply with Heidegger’s notion of ‘metaphysical subjectivism’ and is immune to Heidegger’s criticism. Keywords Schelling . Heidegger . Jaspers . Immanence . Transcendence
Introduction Since the first half of the last century, there is no doubt that Heidegger and Jaspers’s respective interpretations of Schelling’s thought stimulated a revival of interest in that topic and had a very large influence within Schelling scholarship. Suffice it to say, great thinkers such as Habermas and Tilliette developed their own interpretation of Schelling
* Daniele Fulvi [email protected]
1
School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, NSW 2751, Australia
D. Fulvi
building on Heidegger’s and Jaspers’s analyses (see Tilliette 1959 and Habermas 1954). More specifically, they both contend that Schelling is ultimately unable to develop a valid and coherent philosophical system to give his philosophy a stable and solid ground. Additionally, Heidegger argues that Schelling’s distinction between ‘ground’ and ‘existence’ ends up in a fundamental incompatibility of these two elements—and in a volatile account of Being—while Jaspers claims that Schelling’s notion of freedom is purely arbitrary and fails to grasp Being in its transcendence. In this paper, I make the case that Schelling’s discourse on evil and freedom must be understood as an ontology of immanence, thus rejecting both Heidegger and Jaspers’s criticisms. Firstly, I will focus on Heidegger’s interpretation, showing how he engaged Schelling as a part of his own philosophical project and therefore how his criticism is related to this aspect. Secondly, I will analyse Jaspers’s r
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