The Critique of Subjectivism in Schelling's Identity Philosophy

The Critique of Subjectivism in Schelling’s Identity Philosophy Dustin McWherter UNESCO World Philosophy Day Colloquium, November 21, 2013 The talk I am going to give for you today focuses on a specific critical argument from the work of F.W.J. Schelling. This comes from the period of Schelling’s work that is often referred to as ‘the identity philosophy’, from the first several years of the 19th century. In the argument I am going to talk about today, Schelling tries to show how his principle of absolute identity cannot be relativized to an individual epistemological subject. The main purpose of this talk will be to develop this argument, to expand upon it, and thus to make it into a more extensive and, hopefully, more compelling critical argument. So, this will require me to go beyond ‘the letter’ of Schelling’s writings to some extent, because my interest in this part of Schelling’s work is not exclusively historical. I am also interested in this argument as the basis for a philosophical critique whose legitimacy may not be restricted to Schelling’s historical circumstance (if it is legitimate at all), and so I do not really care about staying ‘true to Schelling’ in the long run. However, I should also note that this is very much a work in progress, and one which I have only very recently begun, and so it is quite provisional, and my confidence in it is cautious. How this relates to other arguments Schelling makes for absolute idealism, and to Hegel’s treatment of the relation between reflection and speculation, and Hegel’s critiques of Schelling, are issues I still need to consider, among others, and there is more research I need to do in the relevant primary and secondary literature. With that said, I will begin with a preliminary exposition of the terms that will be used in the argument I want to consider. I. Absolute Identity as the Unifying Context of Thinking The argument from Schelling I am going to consider is a defence of his principle of absolute identity against subjectivism. Here, ‘subjectivism’ is just a broad term intended to capture any epistemological position that tries to reduce knowledge and its principles to something subjective, such as a mere ‘idea in the mind’, or even consciousness itself. So, subjectivism is basically a foil for Schelling’s own position, though he probably has Kant and Fichte in mind here to some extent. But what does Schelling mean by ‘absolute identity’? In Schelling’s texts from this period, absolute identity is often presented as the most fundamental principle of knowledge insofar as it is the unity within which subject and object, the knower and the known, come together. Thus Schelling often speaks of absolute identity as the identity of subject and object, or the identity of thought and being, and thus as something that overcomes all such oppositions as the higher unity within which they become identical. However, I want to step back from that characterization for a moment to propose a different, and perhaps more modest, way of thinking about the epistemological function of absolute identity, which does not have to be cast in terms of the subject-object relation. To do this, I think it is helpful to briefly trace the philosophical genealogy of absolute identity as a principle, because the notion that identity has an essential role to play in thinking or in knowledge is not something that Schelling introduces, it is just something that he radicalizes. For example, it is well known that the emphasis on a fundamental unity or identity that you often find in German idealism ultimately comes from Kant’s principle of the unity of apperception, which basically says that any kind of cognition is impossible for us unless it is unified by an identical consciousness—‘The I think must be able to accompany all my representations’ (B131) The passage continues: ‘for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me’ (Kant 1998: 246)., as Kant says. And that basic insight is not exclusive to German philosophy: even the Scottish common sense philosopher Thomas Reid argues that any process of reasoning is impossible without the overarching identity of the person that reasons Cf. Reid 2002: 262.. Nevertheless, regardless of whether this identity is construed as that of a person (as Reid says) or that of an impersonal consciousness (as Kant says), you can discern the general point here: for any thought or thought process to be possible, all of its components must be unified by and referred to a self-identical thinking subject. For example, for a syllogism to be thought the premises and conclusion must all be thought by the same subject—otherwise, the syllogism has not been thought. The same goes for simpler examples like counting through numbers in sequence, or thinking of one thing opposed to another—there must be something that unifies these thoughts for them to be thinkable. Now, I think it is possible to distinguish an even more general point here that does not have to refer to a subject but still preserves what is essential. In other words, I think it is possible to at least conceptually distinguish this epistemological function of identity from its reference to a thinking subject. If this is so, then the epistemological function of identity could be summarized by saying that any thought requires some unifying context within which all the components of that thought must be situated. Or, put differently: for any thought to be possible, all of its components must be positioned within some unifying framework that allows them to be related to each other. Now, even if it is possible to define this epistemological function of identity without construing it in subjective terms—by just speaking of a unifying context for thinking—that definition by itself does not rule out the possibility that such a unifying context is something subjective. However, my contention in what follows will be that Schelling has the resources to rule this possibility out in arguing that absolute identity cannot be construed as something subjective. This would entail that his principle of absolute identity, or at least one facet of it, can be seen as a non-subjective version of this unifying context for thinking. I must stress that this is far from being a complete account of absolute identity as Schelling conceives it. This is only a consideration of Schelling’s principle insofar as it performs a basic epistemological function, which does not even exhaust its full epistemological purpose, not to mention its metaphysical status. Therefore, Schelling’s further arguments concerning what absolute identity is as an epistemological and metaphysical principle will not be given consideration here, though I will indicate them, along with some other outstanding issues, at the end. II. Why Absolute Identity Cannot Be Subjective The critical argument that interests me occurs in Schelling’s ‘System of Philosophy in General and the Philosophy of Nature in Particular’, which is a lecture course from 1804, and which is sometimes called the ‘1804 system’, even though it was not published in Schelling’s lifetime. A shorter version of this argument occurs in the 1803 ‘Supplement to the Introduction’ of Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature Cf. Schelling 1988: 46-7., though I will keep to the text of the 1804 system. Proceeding to this argument after presenting his principle of absolute identity, Schelling considers and then answers possible objections from a subjectivist in the following way: ‘Subjective philosophy cannot oppose this (…) except by asking: “Who, then, is to know this eternal identity of subject and object? If you reflect on yourself in the [act of] knowledge, you will realize (a) that it is only you who knows that identity, (b) that this knowledge does not enable you to transcend yourself either, moreover (c) that you do not know anything in itself, and, (d) finally, that this identity, too, is once again a product of your knowledge and consequently only a mere object of thought for you. (…) “You claim”, I might respond, “that the knowledge of the eternal unity is once again only my knowledge, and you ask me to reflect on myself in order to discover that this is so. However, (…) I will simply ask you to consider that this reflection, whereby you render that knowledge your knowledge and thus render it subjective, is only your reflection, and that thus one subjectivity cancels out the other. Hence you will have to admit that the knowledge of the absolute identity, irrespective of the reflection by which you effect it, is neither your knowledge nor that of any other person, but that it is precisely absolute knowledge, a knowledge free from any further determination.”’ (Schelling 1994: 144-5) So here you have a critique of subjectivism that relies on a familiar kind of internal critique through self-reference: either the subjectivist stays consistent with his own standards and is forced to relativize his own thought that absolute identity is relative to some individual, which deprives that thought of any critical force, or he must abandon his subjective standards and admit the non-subjective status of absolute identity. In other words, Schelling is arguing that, in its attempt to relativize absolute identity, subjectivism must either simply cancel itself out or become a different position. Now, I think this can be extended into a more robust critique of the subjectivist attempt to relativize absolute identity by showing exactly why the subjectivist must admit the non-subjective status of absolute identity. Beyond this simple double bind that Schelling puts subjectivism into, I think it is possible to argue that subjectivism must actually presuppose absolute identity as something non-subjective, or at least as something non-relative, in its attempt to conceive it as something relative. This is because, for the subjectivist to relativize absolute identity by saying that this is only your knowledge, he must implicitly oppose this to something beyond ‘your knowledge’, for it only makes sense to relativize something if there is something more or something other than that thing. That is, the subjectivist is saying absolute identity is only something in you, thereby insinuating that there is or could be much more to reality or knowledge beyond your grasp of absolute identity. So, in effect, the subjectivist objection consists in trying to position absolute identity against something else within a broader domain, so that absolute identity is simply something in you, and beyond you there is or could be something else. However, it could be argued that this subjectivist objection must itself conform to the epistemological function of identity if it is to be thinkable. In other words, for this subjectivist objection to be thinkable, its components—absolute identity as something in you and whatever is beyond you—must themselves be situated within an overarching identity so that they can be related in a unified thought or series of thoughts. Crucially, though, it is precisely that overarching identity that Schelling calls ‘absolute identity’, not something that can be relativized in opposition to something else that transcends it. Thus the subjectivist cannot oppose absolute identity to something beyond it in order to relativize it, because that opposition itself must be situated within some unifying context in order to be thought, and absolute identity is that unifying context, not the relative idea that the subjectivist is opposing to something else. That is why absolute identity cannot be relativized, and why the subjectivist must presuppose its non-relative status in the attempt to relativize it: because absolute identity is a non-relative condition for any thinkable relativization. Put differently, the issue here is that the subjectivist thinks of absolute identity as positioned in some way, whereas absolute identity is actually the non-positioned context of thinkable positionality. Nevertheless, even if this fairly basic subjectivism can be handled this way, one might still object that rather than absolute identity being something in the subject as a thought or a piece of knowledge, it could instead actually be the subject or part of the structure of the subject, as is the case in Kant’s conception of transcendental subjectivity. However, I think it might be possible to extend the previous argument to counter this objection as well, to show why it does not make sense to construe absolute identity in terms of subjectivity. This extension of the previous argument resembles an argument Schelling makes in another text from the same period, Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things Cf. Schelling 1984: 157.. The point here is that if absolute identity is the unifying context for thinking, and as such is a non-relative condition for any thinkable relativization, then it does not make sense to conceive it as something that is bounded, or limited, or constituted by its relations to other things. In other words, there is no good reason to think of absolute identity as something that can be conceptually relativized. But that is precisely how we usually think of an epistemological subject: as something that is opposed to or mediated by an object. Even Kant’s transcendental subject, despite being impersonal and supposedly non-metaphysical, is still characterized in terms of finitude, and the unity of apperception is dependent upon the representations it synthesizes since consciousness is mediated by its objects ‘it is only because I can combine a manifold of given representations in one consciousness that it is possible for me to represent the identity of the consciousness in these representations itself, i.e., the analytical unity of apperception is only possible under the presupposition of some synthetic one’ (Kant 1998: 247). Cf. Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’ at ibid 326-9.. If that is the case, then such a subject can only be a relative identity instead of an absolute one. This is why Schelling’s principle is called absolute identity: it is absolute in the sense that it is absolved of any relation that would position it within a broader context. Only a relative identity can be positioned that way. Absolute identity has no constitutive opposite or relative position, because it is the unifying context within which any opposition or relation is thinkable. As Schelling says in Bruno, ‘every pair of opposites is really and truly an opposition only insofar as its members must be posited in one and the same thing’ (Schelling 1984: 136). Absolute identity is that ‘one and the same thing’, so why should it be conceived as something that only occupies one part of a conceptual opposition or relation? This is not to say that absolute identity cannot be defined or cannot be thought, but only to say that it cannot be defined or thought of as something to which one could oppose something else beyond it, since you would need absolute identity to think that opposition. Thus, to conceive of absolute identity as something relative or subjective is not only to misunderstand it but also to obscure one of its epistemological functions. III. Some Outstanding Issues Nevertheless, even if at this point it is clear that and how the subjectivist misconceives absolute identity, the nature of the thought in which absolute identity is correctly conceived remains to be elucidated. Schelling’s answer to this question is fairly straightforward but quite controversial: the adequate grasp of absolute identity is non-discursive insofar as it takes place through intellectual intuition, an immediate yet non-sensible apprehension Cf. Schelling 2001b: 376-84.. However, while giving intellectual intuition its due consideration, I would also like to explore the possibility that absolute identity can be sufficiently captured discursively. This could perhaps involve something like an interpretation of the conceptual content of true propositions about absolute identity, in which that content describes absolute identity in a way that is consistent with the latter’s absoluteness. Furthermore, it is this very absoluteness that motivates Schelling’s ascription of metaphysical status to absolute identity: since the latter cannot be thought of as a relative identity beyond which there could be something else, Schelling argues that it must be an absolute totality and thus the universe itself Cf. Schelling 2001a: 352, 357, and 359-60.. While this is an intriguing line of reasoning worthy of attention, I would also like to consider an alternative line wherein absolute identity need not be accorded metaphysical status so quickly and perhaps remains a purely epistemological principle instead. Since a purely epistemological principle might be taken as a relative identity insofar as it is something that merely pertains to thought as opposed to being, this alternative would require a critical analysis of Schelling’s conception of the nature of the opposition between thought and being. I plan to pursue these questions, among others, in future work. Bibliography: Kant, Immanuel (1998). Critique of Pure Reason. New York: Cambridge University Press. Reid, Thomas (2002). Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man: A Critical Edition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Schelling, F.W.J. (1984). Bruno, or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things. Albany: State University of New York Press. —(1988). Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1994). Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays by F.W.J. Schelling. Albany: State University of New York Press. —(2001a). ‘Presentation of My System of Philosophy’. The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, Winter 2001, pp. 339-71. —(2001b). ‘Further Presentations from the System of Philosophy’. The Philosophical Forum, Vol. XXXII, No. 4, Winter 2001, pp. 373-97. 5