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Novalis, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche: Tacit axiology (Part II)

Living finally:

We have seen through Hegel a problem. A problem which is to be pinpointed by Schelling, wrestled with by Novalis, and eventually to be disposed of bit by bit through the work of post-Hegelians of the future who seek to explore a tacit axiology.

To what end? It is a problem which seems to lead us to a sort of theoretical abyss. What is “pure difference” after all?

This is surely an ill-informed question, because clearly pure difference is not. But it is this difficult question which we are called approach, to concern ourselves with matters of “living finally” as it were beyond existence, beyond the being-there of Dasein, etc. To break down the distinction between the Biological and the Symbolic, moving towards a conception of the One life.

The spectres of Derrida and Heidegger are brought forward through the Introduction of Novalis’ Philosophical Writings.

Margaret Stoljar writes on page two:

NietzscheNovalisDerrida

It is clear that these remarks are to be understood with a Nietzschean back-drop for reasons which I hope to make evident. What is at stake here is a concept of “form of life” which is undifferentiated in the One.

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Novalis, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche: Transcendental Realism (Part I)

Forgetting transcendental realism:

I must clarify what is meant here by “forgetting” and by “transcendental realism”.

Though the term itself is quite broad, it seems to accurately describe what Novalis is doing when he writes: “The more poetic, the more real. This is the core of my philosophy.”

At the risk of sounding very old-hat, Michael Austin has an old post at the Complete Lies blog from 2009 (see here) in which he pinpoints the origins of the kind of project I’m undertaking:

I have also proposed a lineage of “Transcendental Realism” in both my Claremont talk as well as another essay, where I maintain that there is a lineage after Kant that takes Kantianism (and critical philosophy generally) seriously, while also maintaining that there is more to things than our ideas of things. I locate this tradition with the rejection of Fichte by his star students, Schelling and Novalis, and see it as the ground of Romantic philosophy broadly understood to include Schopenhauer, Fechner, Nietzsche, von Hartmann, etc. It’s also a tradition which takes Spinoza very seriously, as well as aesthetics and mysticism. This is because they represent a group that knew that the logical consequence of Enlightenment thought was the reduction of the real to the rational and that this isn’t the case. They accept that there are things-in-themselves and that we have some vague knowledge of them through non-cognitive means, like sensation, imagination, intuition, etc. This is precisely the critique of Kant that Schopenhauer makes, that we actually know something of the in-itself because we are able to grasp the in-itself in us intuitively. [...]

I say origins, because obviously there seems to be some problems in ending where we began, since transcendental realism would be considered a philosophy instead of a non-philosophy. Nonetheless, I feel Austin’s rendering of the “transcendental realist” tradition is very accurate on the whole, and I anticipate much harmony between us on this subject in particular.

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Kant, Fichte, Schelling: The Absolute (Part III)

Rule-following:

For Schelling, then, we find that “Philosophy” is not to be teachable in the same way as mathematics. It does not follow a Hegelian “scientific” logic of identity which leads us, in turn, to the Absolute Idea. I would like to make clear what is underpinning this philosophical pursuit of knowledge by first inquiring into the way in which we learn mathematics. How does one come to learn mathematics in the first place?

Luckily, we don’t have much work to do here, as I believe Ludwig Wittgenstein is able to elucidate this for us perfectly, in Philosophical Investigations:

When we give an order, it can look as if the ultimate thing sought by the order has to remain unexpressed, as there is always a gulf between an order and its execution. Say I want someone to make a particular movement, say to raise his arm. To make it quite clear, I do the movement. This picture seems unambiguous until we ask: how does he know he is to make this movement? – How does he know at all what use he is to make of the signs I give him, whatever they are? – Perhaps I shall now try to supplement the order by means of further signs, by pointing from myself to him, making encouraging gestures, etc.. Here it looks as if the order were beginning to stammer. As if the signs were precariously trying to produce understanding in us. – But if we now understand them, by what token do we understand? (§433)

Yes, rule-following. I don’t read W. as a behaviorist, nor do I read W. as supporting the notion that there is no such thing as private language, etc.  and I am much sympathetic to Stanley Cavell‘s New Wittgenstein interpretation. My point is that it would be precisely a matter of repeating these Fichtean movements over and over again until one reaches an aporia. Late Schellingian understandings of “Philosophy” – i.e. much like Laruelle’s non-Philosophy -  moves past this by way of an absolute insistence against rule-following.

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Kant, Fichte, Schelling: Naturphilosophie (Part II)

Naturphilosophie:

So why, then, ought we return to Fichte if we already know how it’s going to come to pass in Kierkegaard onwards?

Because it is through Schelling’s epistemological break with Fichte on the subject of Wissen that we find the first formulations of a philosophy of “nature” which seems to overcome the flaws of Kantian philosophy. Moreover, it is in Schelling’s conception of Naturphilosophie that we begin to see the sort of motion which allows us to re-define what is Philosophy in the wake of Hegel’s problematic “scientific” definition.

Though, to parse things in these terms is to disrespect in many ways Schelling’s respect for Fichte and Kant. The better way of thinking of this development may be found in Ryan Foster’s The Creativity of Nature (188):

SchellingNaturphilosophie

Thus, what I want to pay attention to in the work of Fichte is this very movement which is found in the free subjectivity of the transcendental ego.

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Kant, Fichte, Schelling: Transcendental Ego (Part I)

Transcendental ego:

We’ve now seen that our conception of Philosophy must change from that of Hegel. In this change, I would like to back up for a moment to pay close attention to Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and begin to look at his interactions with Fichtean philosophy through our new Schellingian lens.

Immediately, it becomes clear that Hegel’s summary that “Fichte created a great sensation in his time; his philosophy is the Kantian philosophy in its completion, and, as we must specially notice, it is set forth in a more logical way…” is indeed quite accurate. To recall, according to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, we cannot know the thing-in-itself. Then, in Fichtean philosophy, the thing-in-itself becomes comparable to the non-ego, called an “unconscious product of the ego”.

Hence, to say that Fichte bring Kantian philosophy to its completion means that Fichte eliminates or otherwise discards any consideration of the non-ego/the thing-in-itself in favor of a loud affirmation of an absolutely free and autonomous subjectivity. Such is the Kantian subject.

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Hegel, Schelling, and Kierkegaard: Aufhebung (Part III)

Thy will be already done:

I’d like to open Part III by taking a quick look at Engels’ piece entitled Schelling on Hegel (see here).

In this text, Engels (having attended Schelling’s Berlin lectures) comes out in full defence of Hegel. In the opening paragraph, he drops the names of three anti- or otherwise non-Hegelians of the time, namely: Titus Stahl, Ernst Hengstenberg, and August Neander. Of them he writes that they have been “obscured, blurred and pushed into the background” by the overwhelming opposition of Schelling. I’d like to take a moment to show explicitly how, “the attackers who stand outside philosophy” all fall prey to the same Hegelian defence mechanism as does Kierkegaard/Schelling.

With Stahl, we find an argument in favor of monarchy and private property based predominately on religion. He inverts Hegel’s categories of “concrete” and “abstract”, criticizing Hegel for disregarding “real, distinct personality” in lieu of “personality in abstracto“. In Hengstenberg, we find another “conservative” theologian who wanted to maintain a doctrine of a “Future Eschatology”. Hegel, obviously in opposition, held to a doctrine of what is called “Fulfilled Eschatology” (the belief that the Kingdom of God had always already come).

Next, under the influence of Friedrich Schliermacher, Neander was a bit ambivalent, described as “characteristically meditative”, and as a result naturally suspicious of Hegel. Another prominent mention is Heinrich Leo, if for nothing else then denouncing Hegel under the name of a “Christian heretic”. This same inversion of Hegel that is preformed by Kierkegaard is at work in the thought of many of these theologians.

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Hegel, Schelling, and Kierkegaard: Positive Philosophy (Part II)

Schelling’s positive philosophy:

For Hegel, the eventual reconciliation of “thought” and “being” requires a complete and determinate system, e.g. the Absolute Idea. As such, he writes in the Science of Logic:

But in the idea of absolute cognition the concept has become the idea’s own content. The idea is itself the pure concept that has itself for subject matter and which, in running itself as subject matter through the totality of its determinations, develops itself into the whole of its reality, into the system of the science, and concludes by apprehending this process of comprehending itself, thereby superseding (aufzuheben) its standing as content and subject matter and cognizing the concept of the science. (§843)

In this way, the Absolute Idea is “the sole subject matter and content of philosophy” and, furthermore, “[t]he Absolute Idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth and is all truth” (ibid. §824). According to Hegel, the Absolute Idea is the proper domain of philosophy, and nothing more. If this is the case, and “Philosophy” is understood as that which is concerned with Knowledge of the Absolute Idea, then all that which falls under the category of “Philosophy” is most certainly complete post-Hegel.

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