Abstract
This chapter focuses on Schelling’s philosophy of nature and shows that it contains an original theory of freedom. I argue that human freedom is a potentiated form of a kind of freedom that can already be found in organic life: my claim is that human freedom and other forms of productivity within nature are instances of the same process. I argue that we should see the relationship between different forms of natural productivity and human freedom in the same way that the Schelling of the Naturphilosophie argues that we should see the relationship between mechanical, chemical, and organic phenomena. To say that there is no difference between these phenomena would be absurd; the claim is rather that they are all different manifestations of the same process (the process which drives nature as a whole), and therefore that their difference is one of degree rather than kind. I further demonstrate that Schelling’s Freedom essay builds upon this notion of freedom introduced in the philosophy of nature and offers a solution to the problem of the human ownership of freedom.
Thanks to Lydia Azadpour, Joe Saunders, an anonymous reviewer at the BJHP, Daniele Fulvi, and Phoebe Page for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and to Sean McGrath for a heated and productive discussion of my position at the 2018 NASS conference.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Here I am using a narrow conception of what constitutes the Naturphilosophie, only using the Ideas, On The World-Soul, the Outline and the Introduction. I do not want to make any claims about what should or should not be considered as ‘the’ Naturphilosophie (this is a complex interpretive question), and I use this set of texts simply because they provide a good sense of Schelling’s thinking about Naturphilosophie at a particular time prior to the Freiheitsschrift, and are therefore a useful set of works to highlight the trajectory of ideas that I argue takes place.
- 3.
The claim that nature is an infinite activity which necessarily tends towards manifestation is at the heart of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie. See, for example, Outline 5–7 and 13–19. This emphasis on the centrality of activity is another element of Schelling’s ontology which is retained in the Freiheitsschrift. See, for example, Freedom 24 and 60.
- 4.
Schelling makes a similar claim in the Freiheitsschrift when he argues that God can only reveal itself in beings which resemble God, and are therefore ‘self-activating’ (Freedom 11–12). That Schelling considers this claim to apply to nature as a whole rather than just to humans is also clear in the Freiheitsschrift – see, for example, 61 and 81.
- 5.
‘Der Natur ist das Individuelle zuwider, sie verlangt nach dem Absoluten, und ist continuirlich bestrebt, es darzustellen’ (AA I,7, 102).
- 6.
See Outline 13–14 for Schelling’s most succinct summary of productive nature’s paradoxical relationship to its products.
- 7.
“Ein Strom fließt in gerader Linie vorwärts, solange er keinem Widerstand begegnet. Wo Widerstand – Wirbel. Ein solcher Wirbel ist jedes ursprüngliche Naturprodukt, jede Organisation z.B. Der Wirbel ist nicht etwas Feststehendes, sondern beständig Wandelbares – aber in jedem Augenblick neu Reproducirtes. Kein Produkt der Natur ist also fixirt, sondern in jedem Augenblick durch die Kraft der ganzen Natur reproducirt” (AA I,7, 276).
- 8.
“so kann auch das einzelne Seyn nur als bestimmte Form oder Einschränkung der ursprünglichen Thätigkeit angesehen werden” (AA I,7, 78).
- 9.
‘alle diese verschiednen Producte = Einem auf verschiedenen Stuffen gehemmten Product’ (AA I,7, 69).
- 10.
‘Das Leben, wo es zu Stande kommt, kommt gleichsam wider den Willen der äußern Natur …, durch ein Losreißen von ihr, zu Stande’ (AA I,7, 126).
- 11.
See Ideas 172, where Schelling suggests that consciousness in fact leads to an illusory sense of freedom in humans.
- 12.
Though ‘first’ should not necessarily be understood in a temporal sense here – although the Naturphilosophie can sometimes read like an account of the temporal evolution of nature, Schelling’s claims that the different stages (for example in the construction of matter – see, for example, Outline 189–192) presuppose and enable one another throws doubt on whether what is being described here is a temporal progression.
- 13.
See Ideas 153–181 and Outline 19–28 for Schelling’s critiques of the mechanistic account of matter, and his positive account of the construction of matter from the fundamental forces of nature.
- 14.
‘…daß das ganze Seyn hier Thätigkeit, die Thätigkeit zugleich Seyn ist’ (AA I,13, 210).
- 15.
‘mit dem vollkommnen realen Bild des Absoluten in der realen Welt, dem vollkommensten Organismus, unmittelbar auch das vollkommne ideale Bild, obgleich auch dieses wieder nur für die reale Welt, in der Vernunft eintritt, und hier, in der realen Welt, die zwei Seiten des absoluten Erkenntnißakts sich eben so, wie im Absoluten, als Vorbild und Gegenbild von einander zeigen, die Vernunft eben so, wie der absolute Erkenntnißakt in der ewigen Natur, im Organismus sich symbolisierend, der Organismus eben so, wie die Natur in der ewigen Zurücknahme des Endlichen in das Unendliche, in der Vernunft, in die absolute Idealität verklärt’ (AA I,13, 107).
- 16.
Although Schelling includes no explicit discussion of human freedom in the Naturphilosophie, some good interpretive work has been done reconstructing the compatibilism implied by the Naturphilosophie (see, for example Kosch 2006, 2014; Fischer 2020; Alderwick 2021) which tends to be accepted in the literature, and which I follow in this paper.
- 17.
It could be argued that this concern with ownership is external to Schelling: this might be an issue for the contemporary libertarian, but not for the Schelling of the Naturphilosophie. While there is some truth to the claim that Schelling is not concerned with this problem within the Naturphilosophie, I claim that it is one of a set of concerns that lead him to develop his conception of freedom (and his ontology as a whole) in the way that I am outlining. The Schelling of the Freiheitsschrift is developing an account of freedom which allows for genuine evil, which he thinks is only possible if an agent can act against the whole in a meaningful way: i.e. has genuine ownership of her actions. I develop my account of Schelling’s philosophical progression in relation to this problem in detail in Alderwick 2021.
- 18.
It is important to note that I (with Schelling) am not denying the reality of individuals: of course, nature consists in trees, humans, books, and many other individuals. The claim is rather that none of these are agents; they are rather particular manifestations of nature’s agency.
- 19.
I will clarify the nature of this irrational element below. For now, we can broadly understand this as the claim that there are some elements to reality that cannot be rationally derived or specified.
- 20.
See also Freedom 14–16 where Schelling argues that conceiving of the relationship between activity, nature, and freedom in the right way is central to his project here.
- 21.
“… den Grundsäzen einer wahren Naturphilosophie” (AA I,17, 128).
- 22.
In the Freiheitsschrift Schelling moves away from the term absolute in favour of the term unground. However, there are reasons to think that these terms refer to the same thing (or rather, non-thing) for Schelling, and therefore for reasons of consistency with my account of the Naturphilosophie above I am continuing to use the term absolute in what follows.
- 23.
In the Freiheitsschrift Schelling uses the language of the whole longing to give birth to itself, whereas in the Outline the same claim is parsed in the language of the necessity for manifestation of infinite productivity. The claim in both cases is the same: the nature of the absolute is that it tends towards actuality. This is a further example of the same ontological structure of the Naturphilosophie being replicated in the Freiheitsschrift.
- 24.
Schelling criticizes accounts of evil as privation of lack at a number of points in the Freiheitsschrift. See, for example, in his discussion of the different possible relationships of dependence between God and evil (19–21); his critique of Leibniz’s conceptions of evil and finitude (34–35); and his critique of Kant’s account of moral evil (36).
- 25.
It is a little strong to say that in the Naturphilosophie natural products are completely determined by their essences: as outlined above, Schelling holds that individuals are partially constituted by their interactions with their environment. The point rather is that in the Freiheitsschrift these essences themselves contain a level of indeterminacy, and there is therefore an extra element to the freedom of natural products in addition to their capacities for creative engagements with their environments.
- 26.
It could be argued that using the term ‘freedom’ to refer to other natural products is problematic, because freedom in Schelling’s sense is only possible for beings that are able to make a genuine choice between good and evil, i.e. humans. I have some sympathy with this way of thinking, and although I have been arguing that there is a strong continuity between human freedom and the freedom possible for other natural products, I do not mean to suggest that there is not an important distinction to be made between the two, which I agree hinges on the possibility for evil. However, while I think it is the case that, for Schelling, a particular kind of freedom (the freedom necessary for genuine moral agency) requires the possibility for evil, I think that there are reasons to believe that he does think that other kinds of freedom exist. That the title of the Freiheitsschrift specifies that its subject is specifically human freedom is just one indication that Schelling believes that it is not the only kind of freedom.
- 27.
‘so ist doch diese Voraussetzung, welche eine völlige Unwissenheit über das Wesen der Copula anzeigt, in Bezug auf die höhere Anwendung des Identitätsgesetzes zu unserer Zeit beständig gemacht worden’ (AA I,17, 115).
- 28.
‘… indem z.B. der Satz: dieser Körper ist blau, nicht den Sinn hat, der Körper sey in dem und durch das, worin und wodurch er Körper ist, auch blau, sondern nur den: dasselbe, was dieser Körper ist, sey, obgleich nicht in dem nämlichen Betracht, auch blau’ (AA I,17, 115).
- 29.
For reasons of space this discussion of the reciprocal relationship of determination that is expressed by the law of identity has been far too brief to do the complexity of Schelling’s ideas justice. I provide a much more detailed account in Alderwick 2015.
- 30.
C.f. Freedom 11 on the claim that all things are immanent in God – I am paraphrasing this proposition above as the language of beings and the whole is more consistent with the rest of my discussions here.
- 31.
This is a further central element of Schelling’s conception of human freedom which I have not had the space to focus on here: the full (i.e. self-conscious) separation of the principles of ground and existence in agents which allows them to be able to make the conscious choice of which of these principles to take as a guiding ideal for action. This separation is a fundamental part of the human ability for evil. However, again this does not indicate a difference in kind between human freedom and other natural products – in all natural products these principles exist in varying degrees of relation and separation – again what we have here is a gradient, not a break: “It can readily be seen in the tension of longing necessary to bring things to completely to birth the innermost nexus of forces can only be released in a graded evolution, and at every stage in the division of forces there must be developed out of nature a new being whose soul must be all the more perfect the more differentiatedly it contains what was left undifferentiated in the others. It is the task of the complete philosophy of nature to show how each successive process more closely approaches the essence of nature, until in the highest division of forces the innermost center is disclosed. For our present purposes only the following is essential. Every being which has arisen in nature in the manner indicated contains a double principle which, however, is at bottom one and the same regarded from two separate aspects” (Freedom 28; cf. AA I,17, 133).
- 32.
“[S]o wir im Menschen in die dunkle Sehnsucht, etwas zu schaffen, dadurch Licht tritt, daß in dem chaotischen Gemenge der Gedanken, die alle zusammenhängen, jeder aber den anderen hindert hervorzutreten, die Gedanken sich scheiden und nun die im Grunde verborgen liegende, alle unter sich befassende, Einheit sich erhebt; oder wie in der Pflanze nur im Verhältniß der Entfaltung und Ausbreitung der Kräfte das dunkle Band der Schwere sich löst und die im geschiedenen Stoff verborgne Einheit entwickelt wird” (AA I,17, 132).
- 33.
‘Alles, was in der Natur wird, wird nicht durch einen Sprung, alles Werden geschieht in einer stetigen Folge. Aber daß deswegen alles, was ist, kein Sprung seyn sollte, folgt daraus noch lange nicht. Vor allem dem also, was ist, ist nichts geworden ohne stetiges Fortschreiten, stetigen Uebergang von einem Zustand zum anderen. Aber jetzt, da es ist, steht es zwischen seinen eignen Gränzen, als ein Ding besonderer Art, das sich von andern durch scharfe Bestimmungen unterscheidet’ (AA I,13, 205).
References
Alderwick, C. 2015. Atemporal Essence and Existential Freedom in Schelling. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23 (1): 115–137.
———. 2021. Schelling’s Ontology of Powers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Fischer, N. 2020. Freedom as Productivity in Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature. In Schelling’s Philosophy: Freedom, Nature and Systematicity, ed. G.A. Bruno, 53–70. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kosch, M. 2006. Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling, and Kierkegaard. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 2014. Idealism and Freedom in Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift. In Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, ed. L. Ostaric, 145–159. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Schelling, F.W.J. [AA] 1976–. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog.
———. [Ideas] 1995. Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature.. Trans. E. E. Harris, and P. Heath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. [Freedom] 2002. Philosophical Investigations into the Nature of Human Freedom.. Trans. J. Gutman. Shrewsbury: Living Time Press.
———. [Outline] 2004a. First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature.. Trans. K. R. Peterson. New York: SUNY Press.
———. 2004b. Introduction to the Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, or, On the Concept of a Speculative Physics and the Internal Organization of this Science. In First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature. Trans. K. R. Peterson. New York: SUNY Press.
White, A. 1983. Schelling. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Alderwick, C. (2023). Schelling on the Nature of Freedom and the Freedom of Nature: The Role of the Naturphilosophie in the Freiheitsschrift. In: Corti, L., Schülein, JG. (eds) Life, Organisms, and Human Nature. Studies in German Idealism, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41558-6_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41558-6_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-41557-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-41558-6
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)