Monism and Mistakes

Johnston, Adrian

doi:10.1007/978-3-031-27345-2_22

Adrian Johnston⁴

Part of the book series: Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism ((PHGI))

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Abstract

This chapter shows that, when it comes to topics such as realism, naturalism, and philosophy of nature, Hegel’s advances over Schelling are achieved partly in and through his immanent-critical appropriation of and reckoning with (the early) Schelling’s legacy. Hence, likewise, any twenty-first-century reactivation of “The Earliest System-Program of German Idealism” must reckon with the relevance of Schelling, as well as the ambivalences both uniting and dividing him from Hegel. The chapter makes this case by charting a tension in Schelling’s philosophy between its monistic and nature-philosophical tendencies in relation to the problem of error.

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Notes

1.
Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, Volume Three, ed. and trans. Joseph A. Buttigieg (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 174.
2.
Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Readings (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), 502–504.
3.
F. W. J. Schelling, Statement on the True Relationship of the Philosophy of Nature to the Revised Fichtean Doctrine, trans. Dale E. Snow (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2018), 62.
4.
Ibid.
5.
Ibid., 87.
6.
F. W. J. Schelling, Presentation of My System of Philosophy, in J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. Schelling, The Philosophical Rupture between Fichte and Schelling, trans. and ed. Michael G. Vater and David W. Wood (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2012), 141–225. See Steffen Dietzsch, “Geschichtsphilosophische Dimensionen der Naturphilosophie Schellings,” in Natur und geschichtlicher Prozeß: Studien zur Naturphilosophie F. W. J. Schellings, ed. Hans Jörg Sandkühler (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984), 242; Robert J. Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 181.
7.
Dieter Henrich, Selbstverhältnisse: Gedanken und Auslegungen zu den Grundlagen der klassischen deutschen Philosophie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1982), 152.
8.
See Adrian Johnston, “Whither the Transcendental?: Hegel, Analytic Philosophy, and the Prospects of a Realist Transcendentalism Today,” Crisis and Critique, vol. 5, no. 1 (2018), 162–208; Adrian Johnston, “Meta-Transcendentalism and Error-First Ontology: The Cases of Gilbert Simondon and Catherine Malabou,” in New Realism and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. Gregor Kroupa and Jure Simoniti (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 145–178.
9.
S. J. McGrath, The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious (New York: Routledge, 2012), 94.
10.
Judith E. Schlanger, Schelling et la réalité finie: Essai sur la philosophie de la Nature et de l’Identité (Paris: PUF, 1966), 113.
11.
Frederick C. Beiser, German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, 1781–1801 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 466–467.
12.
Ibid., 511.
13.
Wolfram Hogrebe, Prädikation und Genesis: Metaphysik als Fundamentalheuristik im Ausgang von Schellings “Die Weltalter” (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 127–128.
14.
Michael Vater, “Schelling’s philosophy of identity and Spinoza’s Ethica more geometrico,” Spinoza and German Idealism, ed. Eckart Förster and Yitzhak Y. Melamed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 165.
15.
Walter Schulz, Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der spätphilosophie Schellings (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1955), 65.
16.
F. W. J. Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophie, ed. Walter E. Ehrhardt (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1989), 114.
17.
F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophy of Revelation: The 1841–42 Berlin Lectures, Philosophy of Revelation (1841–42) and Related Texts, trans. Klaus Ottmann (New York: Spring, 2020), 242.
18.
F. W. J. Schelling, The Ages of the World (1811), trans. Joseph P. Lawrence (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2019), 158.
19.
F. W. J. Schelling, “System of Philosophy in General and of the Philosophy of Nature in Particular,” in Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F. W. J. Schelling, trans. Thomas Pfau (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), 179.
20.
Ibid., 180–181.
21.
F. W. J. Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 3, ed. Manfred Frank (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 685.
22.
Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life, 490.
23.
F. W. J. Schelling, Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Jeff Love and Johannes Schmidt (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2006), 23, 36–40.
24.
Ibid., 55.
25.
Ibid., 62)
26.
F. W. J. Schelling, Clara, or, On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World, trans. Fiona Steinkamp (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 26–27.
27.
F. W. J. Schelling, “Stuttgart Seminars,” in Idealism and the Endgame of Theory, 232.
28.
Ibid., 240.
29.
Schelling, Philosophical Investigations, 18, 34–35.
30.
Schelling, Philosophical Investigations, 35.
31.
Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, 403.
32.
Schelling, Philosophy of Revelation, 60.
33.
See Johnston, “Whither the Transcendental?,” 162–208; Johnston, “Meta-Transcendentalism and Error-First Ontology,” 145–178.
34.
Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, 403.
35.
McGrath, The Dark Ground of Spirit, 10, 106.
36.
Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, 404–405.
37.
See Johnston, “Whither the Transcendental?,” 162–208; Johnston, “Meta-Transcendentalism and Error-First Ontology,” 145–178.
38.
Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 4, 403.
39.
Ibid., 402–403.
40.
F. W. J. Schelling, The Ages of the World (1815), trans. Jason Wirth (Albany, NY: SUNY, 2000), 12, 60, 90.
41.
McGrath, The Dark Ground of Spirit, 105.
42.
Ibid., 143.
43.
Xavier Tilliette, Schelling, une philosophie en devenir, vol. 1 (Paris: Vrin, 1992), 578.
44.
Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life, 515.
45.
See Beiser, German Idealism, 578.
46.
Ibid., 506.
47.
Ibid., 508–509.
48.
Andrew Bowie, “Nature and Freedom in Schelling and Adorno,” in Interpreting Schelling: Critical Essays, ed. Lara Ostaric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 191.
49.
See Adrian Johnston, A New German Idealism: Hegel, Žižek, and Dialectical Materialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 11–73, 129–186; Adrian Johnston, Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume Two: A Weak Nature Alone, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2019), 15–69;Adrian Johnston, “The Difference Between Fichte’s and Hegel’s Systems of Philosophy: A Response to Robert Pippin,” Pli, no. 31 (2019), 1–68.
50.
John H. Zammito, The Gestation of German Biology: Philosophy and Physiology from Stahl to Schelling (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018), 328–329.
51.
Schulz, Die Vollendung, 299–300; Bernd-Olaf Küppers, Natur als Organismus: Schellings frühe Naturphilosophie und ihre Bedeutung für die moderne Biologie (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1992), 48; Zammito, The Gestation of German Biology, 303; Patrick Cerutti, La philosophie de Schelling: Repères (Paris: Vrin, 2019), 102.
52.
Schlanger, Schelling et la réalité finie, 31.
53.
G. W. F. Hegel, “The Earliest System-Program of German Idealism,” trans. H. S. Harris, in Miscellaneous Writings of G. W. F. Hegel, ed. Jon Stewart (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2002), 110–112.
54.
Adrian Johnston, Adventures in Transcendental Materialism: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 23, 309–312; Johnston, A New German Idealism, 13–14, 29, 61, 178; Johnston, Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume Two, 23–29, 68.
55.
Rudolf Brandner, Natur und Subjektivität: Zum Verständnis des Menschseins im Anschluß an Schellings Grundlegung der Naturphilosophie (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002), 29.
56.
Bowie, “Nature and Freedom,” 182.
57.
Adrian Johnston, “Cake or Doughnut?: Žižek and German Idealist Emergentisms,” in Žižek Responds!: Writing Back to my Critics, ed. Dominik Finkelde and Todd McGowan (London: Bloomsbury, 2023), 27–51.
58.
Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, in Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 239, 235, 264, 272–5.
59.
Ibid., 224–7, 232, 234, 238, 250.
60.
Ibid., 217, 224, 227–9, 238–9.
61.
Johnston, “Cake or Doughnut?,” 27–51.
62.
Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 53.
63.
Ibid.
64.
Ibid.
65.
Ibid.
66.
Johnston, Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism, Volume Two, 39–42.
67.
F. W. J. Schelling, Ages of the World (second draft, 1813), trans. Judith Norman, in Slavoj Žižek and F. W. J. Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 113, 167.
68.
Schelling, Ausgewählte Schriften, vol. 3, 275.
69.
Richards, The Romantic Conception of Life, 518.
70.
Johnston, “Cake or Doughnut?,” 27–51.
71.
Ibid.
72.
F. W. J. Schelling, Der Monotheismus, in Sämmtliche Werke, Div. 2, ed. K. F. A. Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta, 1857), 5.
73.
Schlanger, Schelling et la réalité finie, 94.
74.
Schelling, Der Monotheismus, 5.

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University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Adrian Johnston

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Centre for Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada
Tilottama Rajan
Department of Philosophy, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
Daniel Whistler

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Johnston, A. (2023). Monism and Mistakes. In: Rajan, T., Whistler, D. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Poststructuralism. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27345-2_22

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27345-2_22
Published: 02 June 2023
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
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