Daß/Was Distinction

Schelling's 1850 Quelle lecture distinguishes two "aspects" of what Kant had called the Ideal of Pure Reason: (A) the Ideal qua Reason — the "completely determinate concept [Inbegriff] of all possibilities," the Was ("whatness," totality of essences) — and (B) the Ideal qua God — the actually existent absolute individual, the pure Daß ("thatness," actus purus, das selbst-Seyende). Per Gardner, the Daß/Was distinction is the structural core of Schelling's positive philosophy. Its defining feature is an asymmetric bi-directional dependence: (B) causes (A) to have being, but (B) depends alethically on (A) — without a "what," it would not be a truth that God is. The "why" of this asymmetry is "the final limit, that beyond which one cannot pass" — God's freedom.

Key Points

  • Daß ("thatness"): God as actus purus, pure Self-Being (das selbst-Seyende), absolute individual (das absolute Einzelwesen). "In himself… there is no whatness [kein Was]" (SW XI: 586).
  • Was ("whatness"): totality of essences, "the stuff, the material of all possibilities [Materie zu allen Möglichkeiten]" (SW XI: 584); the Inbegriff of possibility.
  • Asymmetric bi-directionality: (B) → (A) in the order of being (God has priority as the cause of the totality's being); (A) → (B) in the order of truth (the totality is the alethic condition of the truth that God is). These are "not collapsible into one another" — the structure is non-linear.
  • God's freedom: the "why" by which Daß acquires its Was "is the final limit, that beyond which one cannot pass" (SW XI: 587). Freedom here is not choice between options (fn. 57 distances from Leibnizian "best possible world") but the ungroundable passage from thatness to whatness.
  • The structure complexifies the unitary concept of being — it is not a doctrine of multiple modes of being (contrary to what the late vocabulary Sein / das Seyende / das Überseyende / Seinkönnen might suggest).
  • Demands "an interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies"; Gabriel 2013 aptly calls this "a theory of logical time" (Gardner fn. 58).

Details

The three equivalent representations

Schelling represents the same structure in three equivalent forms. The Quelle uses only identity because that form addresses its specific problem (the "oneness" of thought and being), but the other forms name the same structure:

  1. Identity (copula): God is the Self-Being of the Inbegriff of possibility; he is the subject of which "universal being" and "all essences" are predicates. But it is an identity with an asymmetric internal shape — Schelling "no longer glosses it as an Identität," since it has been found to turn on the asymmetry.

  2. Becoming: "(A) becomes (B), and, by means of a different and subordinate mode of becoming, (B) becomes (A). The two modes of becoming are asymmetrically dependent on one another, like (A) and (B) themselves."

  3. Mereology: "(A) and (B) produce a whole, and this whole can also be regarded as having produced (A) and (B) as its parts or as having produced itself out of them, again by means of a different and subordinate mode of production."

All three representations are "equally legitimate." The fact that the same structure admits three equivalent forms is itself evidence for Gardner's reading that Schelling's late innovation is complexification of one concept of being, not a proliferation of modes.

Why not "multiple modes of being"

The natural reading of Schelling's late vocabulary (Sein, das Seyende, das Überseyende, Seinkönnen) is as naming distinct modes. Gardner rejects this. Two constraints on Schelling's account:

  1. The modes can be understood only "through and alongside one another" — none is independently intelligible.
  2. They are "exemplified in one primordial case" — the case of God's self-structure.

Hence: "the central thrust of Schelling's new conceptual figures is instead to complexify the (unitary) concept of being, in a revisionary way that shows it to have a shape which can be grasped only in terms of Schelling's model of differentiated moments, articulated on an axis which can be brought under no determinate concept, but which demands an interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies."

The result is not pluralism about being but a single being understood as having an internal articulation that logical vocabulary alone cannot capture.

Resolving Kant's "absolute position" ambiguity

Gardner fn. 16 identifies an unresolved ambiguity in the Beweisgrund's concept of "absolute position/positing" (absolute Setzung):

  • (a) Strong metaphysical reading: existence consists in occupation of absolute position. This ties existence logically to thought: "position" denotes a role within the content of thought, "positing" implies an act of thinking.
  • (b) Weak reading: absolute position is merely the marker or criterion of satisfaction of the concept of existence.

Kant does not recognize this ambiguity. On Gardner's reading, Schelling's Quelle is the resolution of it, in favour of (b). The Daß of God — pure thatness, actus purus — cannot be reduced to occupation of a role in the content of thought; it is existence as what is not positing. This is why the Daß/Was distinction is not merely a theological curiosity but the resolution of a tension internal to Kant's own concept of existence.

The inversion of judgement

The form of judgement articulates subject and predicate. Kant's intuitive intellect (from the Third Critique) is reached by subtracting finitude-defining constraints from our cognition, but retains judgement-form.

Schelling's further step: invert judgement itself. We attempt to express a mode of cognition from which even subject-predicate articulation has been removed. What we encounter, having taken this step, is "not cognition as distinct from being, but the being to which it is indebted."

The Daß/Was structure is what is encountered. God-qua-Daß is subject-less thatness; God-qua-Was is predicate-totality. Their relation is not subject-and-predicate (the form of judgement) but a non-judgement-shaped mutual constitution. This is what makes the structure resist representation in ordinary logical vocabulary and require the "interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies."

Against Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel

The Daß/Was distinction is positioned against four alternatives Schelling's historical dialectic considers and rejects:

  • Spinoza: Schelling holds Spinoza's substance-monism "does not allow for the distinction of (A) and (B)" (SW XI: 275–6, 280 per Gardner fn. 43). There is no room for Daß distinct from Was in Spinoza's necessitarian system — everything is determination.
  • Descartes: eternal truths dependent on God's will yields absurdity — whatever results from a will is only actual, which would make mathematics a posteriori; and eternal truths defining God's own essence cannot derive from his will.
  • Leibniz: eternal truths located in divine understanding encounters a regress — how does divine understanding relate to them? Schelling: Leibniz, as "a unitary source of existence and essence," ought to have concluded that necessary truths have their source in an indistinction of divine will and divine understanding, in an "Indifference of all possibilities" (SW XI: 582, 585, 589).
  • Hegel: "the system in which Reason is all" — the final endpoint of the historical dialectic. On Hegel, the totality (A) has absorbed the individuality of (B); "God himself is nothing other than this eternal Reason." This, for Schelling, is the nihilistic upshot Daß/Was is constructed to avoid.

Relation to Unvordenklich

Daß/Was and unvordenklich are two names for the same structural discovery. Unvordenklich names it from the side of the thinker's approach (what thought cannot think away). Daß/Was names it from the side of God's self-structure (thatness as what cannot be reduced to whatness). The "final limit" at which the why of Daß's acquisition of Was cannot be crossed is God's freedom as seen from inside, and unvordenklichkeit as seen from outside (from the side of thought approaching).

Positions

  • Gardner (2020): the Daß/Was distinction is the structural core of Schelling's late positive philosophy; it resolves Kant's unresolved ambiguity at fn. 16 (absolute position/positing) in favour of the weak reading; it is not a doctrine of multiple modes but a complexification of the unitary concept of being.
  • Hegelian reading: (A) has absorbed (B); there is no separate Daß distinct from the totality. Schelling's insistence on (B)'s priority-in-being is, on this view, a retreat from Wissenschaft into theological dogmatics.
  • Spinozistic reading (per Boehm on the parallel in the Beweisgrund): the distinction is either unintelligible (no room for slack in necessitarian monism) or collapses to a distinction-of-reason within the single substance.

Connections

  • is the self-structure side of unvordenklich — the two are names for the same structural discovery from different angles
  • is organized into positive-philosophy — Daß/Was is the formal spine of Schelling's late project as philosophische Religion
  • structurally parallels chiasm — both are asymmetric bi-directional structures. Gardner 2016 argues MP's chiasm is structurally parallel to Schelling's Real-Idealismus (1800); the 2018 paper adds a second Schelling-period source of the same structural profile (the late Quelle). Two Schelling periods + MP's late ontology converge on this non-linear mutual-constitution form
  • structurally parallels Real-Idealismus (see gardner-2016-kant-third-critique-schelling) — both are formal profiles of Schellingian mutual-constitution; the 1800 system features subject/nature; the 1850 lecture features Daß/Was. The continuity across five decades is itself evidence that asymmetric bi-directionality is Schelling's signature form
  • resolves an ambiguity in Kant's Beweisgrund — per Gardner fn. 16, Kant's "absolute position/positing" is poised between strong metaphysical and weak readings; Daß/Was is the weak-reading resolution
  • contrasts with circulus-vitiosus-deus (Chouraqui, Nietzsche-MP) — both are non-linear structures of the absolute, but Chouraqui's circle is symmetric (self-positing as closed loop); Daß/Was is asymmetric (priority distributed across two different orders, being and truth). Worth comparing for the broader question of how the absolute is structured
  • contrasts with Spinozistic monism — Spinoza's single-substance ontology "does not allow for the distinction of (A) and (B)" (Gardner fn. 43, SW XI: 275–6)
  • is the 1850 token in a three-token asymmetric bi-directional structure across Schelling's Real-Idealismus (1800) → Daß/Was (1850) → MP's chiasm (1960s) — see claims#schelling-mp-asymmetric-bi-directionality (live claim) for the structural-parallel articulation

Open Questions

  • How does the Daß/Was distinction relate to the barbarian principle (Schelling's middle period, Freiheitsschrift 1809 / Weltalter 1811–15)? Both are "ground" structures involving a moment of freedom. Are they the same ground seen at different points of Schelling's career, or distinct structures (Daß/Was concerns God's self-structure; the barbarian principle concerns the dark ground of manifestation)?
  • The "final limit" (freedom at which why cannot pass) — is this an explanation or a refusal to explain? Is Schelling's positive philosophy philosophically ambitious (naming a structure that genuinely accommodates what rationalism could not) or philosophically resigned (declaring a stopping point that looks like explanation but is not)?
  • Does the "interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies" (Gabriel's "logical time") cohere? The Hegelian objection would be that temporal vocabulary cannot apply to the absolute without already placing the absolute within a temporal order that presupposes finitude.
  • How close is the Daß/Was asymmetric bi-directionality to MP's chiasm? Are the resonances formal-structural (same abstract profile) or genetic (MP inherits from Schelling via Real-Idealismus)? Gardner 2016 and 2018 together make a case for genetic continuity.

Sources

  • gardner-2018-thoughts-indebtedness-to-being — principal source. §2 develops the Daß/Was distinction from Schelling's historical dialectic of Descartes-Leibniz-Hegel and presents the three equivalent representations (identity/becoming/mereology). Key passage: "That which comprehends all possibility, as itself merely possible [i.e., (A)], will be incapable of self-being [selbst-Seyns] and only be able to be in the mode of relating itself as mere material to another [i.e., (B)]" (SW XI: 585); "in himself, as the absolute individual (das absolute Einzelwesen), there is no 'whatness [kein Was]', for he is the pure 'thatness [das reine Daß] — actus purus'" (SW XI: 586).