Unvordenklich / Unvordenklichkeit

Schelling's late term for being that "pre-dates thought, possibility, and the PSR" — being which cannot be thought away because thought itself arrives in possibility, and possibility presupposes this being. In Gardner's reconstruction, unvordenklich names a very specific new dimension of grounding: neither formal-logical (PSR, Principle of Non-Contradiction — relations between thoughts) nor causal, but the compatibility with and grounding of the possibility of anything being thought at all. It is this dimension that Kant embryonically found in the 1763 Beweisgrund and that Schelling's 1850 Quelle makes explicit as the Fact of the World at the root of thought. The literal force of unvordenklich — "un-pre-thinkable" — captures the negative form of the discovery: being emerges at the point where the test of thinking away fails.

Key Points

  • The word is Schelling's, translated variably as "unprethinkable" or "unpredelineable." Its grammar is negative: un-vor-denklich — what cannot be thought ahead of itself.
  • Gardner reconstructs its precise meaning: "an ontological necessity within thought more primitive than the PSR." Not generic "prior to thought" but prior to thought, possibility, and the PSR simultaneously.
  • At the unvordenklich passing-over point, "the necessity of thinking X to be the case" and "the necessity of X being so" cease to be distinguishable — modality attaches to neither pole separately (Gardner §2).
  • The PSR is thereby shown to be "in a newly disclosed sense non-necessary, though it is also, on the condition of being so understood, absolutely valid" (Gardner §2).
  • The proto-form of the insight, per Gardner, is in Kant's Beweisgrund (1763); the mature form is in Schelling's Quelle (1850). Schelling's late verdict on Kant: Kant "did arrive at (and even mastered) the standpoint which Schelling has set forth; on the other hand, he did so 'just barely', and 'did not progress beyond it'" (SW XI: 585).

Details

The "thinking away" (Wegdenken) test

The operative method by which unvordenklich being is located is negative: the test of thinking away. Something is unvordenklich if thought cannot think it away without negating its own possibility.

Three instances in Gardner's exposition:

  1. The B5→B6 step of Kant's Beweisgrund (§1, point iii): "Possibility-grounding actual being cannot be thought to exist non-necessarily, for if it existed contingently, then it would be possible to remove it in thought, to think it away, which would be for thought to negate its own possibility. If the being which subvenes possibility is irremovable — if its non-existence is unthinkable — then it must be thought to exist necessarily."

  2. The obliqueness of the necessity Kant is tapping (§1, main thesis): "Kant's idea is not that we cannot think away our own existence or that of our thoughts — there is no necessity in the existence of either of those objects — but that we cannot think away the situation of thinking's being possible."

  3. Parallel with the Transcendental Aesthetic (§1): "there is a parallel to be drawn between the impossibility of thinking away the material conditions for thought asserted in the Beweisgrund, and the irremovability and consequent necessity of space and time asserted in their metaphysical expositions in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the first Critique."

Fn. 15 of Gardner's paper carries the most compressed statement. Kant (quoted): "through the cancellation [Aufhebung] of the law of contradiction, the ultimate logical ground of all that can be thought, all possibility vanishes, and there is nothing left to think [nichts dabei mehr zu denken sei]" (Beweisgrund 2:82). Gardner glosses: "Kant sets formal and material possibility in parallel and identifies the requirement that there be something zu Denken as the crux of both." The thinking-away test is thus the negative form of a single requirement that something be there for thought to think.

The new dimension distinct from PSR and PNC

The PSR and the Principle of Non-Contradiction both operate along the same dimension: relations between thoughts or elements within them. The PSR requires that truths have sufficient reason; the PNC requires that predicates not contradict. Both regulate the internal consistency of thought.

The Beweisgrund's new principle operates differently. In Gardner's reconstruction it operates along "the dimension… of (compatibility with and grounding of) the possibility of (its being true that) anything (is) being thought, or that thinking can take place, at all." This is neither a relation between thoughts (too narrow) nor a causal relation (not applicable — causality is a relation between existents, whereas unvordenklich being makes thought possible, an antecedent condition rather than a cause).

Gardner calls this dimension "the linchpin of what the Critical Kant calls transcendental proof." The Critical philosophy transposes it: transcendental proof operates on the basis of sheer possibility (now that of Erfahrung) and issues in synthetic a priori propositions. But, per Gardner, the proto-form is already in 1763, and it carries an ontological commitment the Critical form will deflate.

The collapse of the thinking/content modality distinction

The crux of the unvordenklich insight is where it takes us: to a point where the ordinary machinery for distinguishing modal species breaks down.

In ordinary modal reflection, we distinguish:

  • Thinking-modality: the necessity of thinking X to be the case — modality attaching to the thinking of the content.
  • Content-modality: the necessity of X being the case — modality attaching to what is exhibited in the content.

Gardner flags a weakness at §1 iii: moving from "necessity pertaining to thought" to "necessity pertaining to what thought identifies as its ground" is "neither obviously valid nor obviously invalid" and must remain undecided "for as long as our general understanding of the relation between these two species of necessity, which can be neither collapsed into one another nor absolutely dissociated, remains incomplete. We will return to this later."

The "later" return is the unvordenklich passage in §2: "The necessary priority of being over thought which manifests itself at this point is absolute in the sense that it does not allow for a distinction to be drawn between the necessity of thinking it to be the case — where modality attaches to the thinking of the content — and the necessity of its being the case — where modality belongs to what is exhibited in the content of thought."

The unvordenklich point is where the distinction collapses. This is the positive content of Schelling's insight (not merely "being precedes thought" in a generic sense, but "at this point the modal machinery that separates thinking-modality from content-modality ceases to apply"). It is also why the PSR is "non-necessary" in a new sense — the PSR presumes a stable distinction between the reason (a move of thought) and its object (what's in the content); at the unvordenklich passing-over point, that distinction is suspended.

The Fact of the World

Gardner's name for what the Beweisgrund exposes "at the root of thought." In Schelling 1972 (fn. 64), the Fact of the World is treated two-sidedly: (i) the fact that there is Something rather than Nothing, and (ii) the Fact of Experience (in general). The unvordenklich passing-over point is where thought encounters this Fact — not as a Grund in the sense of the PSR (neither ratio cognoscendi nor ratio essendi) but as the Quelle (source) from which thought, possibility, and the PSR derive.

Unvordenklich being is thus the being to which thought is indebted. Thought is indebted to it not by borrowing or dependency in the ordinary sense, but constitutively: thought cannot be thought at all without being-preceded by it.

Relation to the Daß/Was structure

Unvordenklich being and the Daß/Was distinction are two names for the same structural discovery. Unvordenklich names the structure 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 "why" of the asymmetric bi-directional dependence of Daß and Was is "the final limit, that beyond which one cannot pass" — which is God's freedom, and which is what makes God unvordenklich for us.

Positions

  • Gardner (2020) argues unvordenklich is the conceptual bridge between Kant's 1763 Beweisgrund and Schelling's 1850 Quelle — hence the arc "from the first seed of transcendental philosophy to the last word, chronologically speaking, of German Idealism." On Gardner's reading, the insight is systematic (not merely historical): the Quelle contains no explicit appeal to the 1763 text, but the structural continuity is exact.
  • Jacobi (fn. 64) recognizes the priority of being over thought but not the "original undecidability" from the Situation of Thinking — "on this point Schelling crucially departs from Jacobi."
  • Boehm (2014) reads the Beweisgrund through Spinoza — as driven by the PSR toward necessitarian monism. On this reading, the unvordenklich dimension is not visible at all; Kant is absorbed into Spinoza rather than anticipating Schelling. Gardner rebuts: "the profoundly original element does not come to light when the text is read through Spinoza's eyes."
  • The Critical Kant himself deflates the Gedankengang of 1763, retaining its cogency in the Transcendental Ideal but stripping its ontological significance. On Gardner's reading, this deflation is in error — Kant gives up too much in order to escape Spinoza.

Connections

  • is the positive name for dass-was-distinction — the two concepts name the same structural discovery from different angles (approach of thought vs. self-structure of the absolute)
  • is the late-Schelling cash-out of the Beweisgrund's proto-transcendental dimension in immanuel-kant — Kant's "what cannot be thought away" in 1763 becomes unvordenklich in 1850
  • organizes positive-philosophy — unvordenklich being is what positive philosophy affirms and what rational philosophy (Hegel) attempts to extract everything from
  • structurally parallels precession (Chouraqui) — two independent routes (Kant-Schelling; Nietzsche-MP) to being pre-dates thought. Chouraqui reaches precession via Nietzsche's Einverleibung; Schelling reaches unvordenklich via Kant's Beweisgrund
  • structurally parallels incorporation-of-truth (Chouraqui) — Einverleibung as truth-as-bodily-incorporation because thought is not thought-first. Same formal thesis, different route. See claims#wegdenken-incorporation-being-precedes-thinking (live claim) for the structural-parallel articulation: Wegdenken/unvordenklich (modal-reflection route) and Einverleibung/incorporation (bodily-incorporation route) both produce the same "being precedes thinking" thesis
  • is diagnosed by Gardner's "Situation of Thinking" — the constitutive two-sidedness (possibility / being) whose priority is undecidable from within the Situation. Unvordenklich is the name Schelling gives to the priority of being (the option rational philosophy suppresses)
  • contrasts with the PSR (Principle of Sufficient Reason) as basic principle — unvordenklich being is prior to the PSR, which is "in a newly disclosed sense non-necessary" yet absolutely valid on the condition of being so understood

Open Questions

  • The move from necessity-in-thought (we cannot think away the situation of thinking's being possible) to necessity-in-being (the ground of possibility exists necessarily) is, Gardner concedes, "neither obviously valid nor obviously invalid." The unvordenklich passage declares the thinking/content distinction inapplicable at the passing-over point. Is this declaration itself an argument, or a cashing-in of Schelling's positive philosophy for the right to declare?
  • How does unvordenklich relate to the barbarian principle (Schelling, Freedom essay / Weltalter)? Both are "ground" structures, but the barbarian principle is the dark ground of manifestation whereas unvordenklich being is the priority of being over thought. Are they the same ground seen from different angles, or genuinely distinct structures in Schelling's career?
  • Does Merleau-Ponty's "perceptual faith" / "fact of the world" as the undeniable given of perception inherit anything from unvordenklich via the Schelling tradition? The paper does not discuss MP, but the structural resonance with perceptual-faith is striking.

Sources

  • gardner-2018-thoughts-indebtedness-to-being — principal source. §§1–2 and conclusion develop unvordenklich as the conceptual bridge from Kant 1763 to Schelling 1850. Key passages: "if I am to think — and I do think! — then there must be possibility, and in order for there to be possibility, there must be being which pre-dates thought, possibility, and the PSR" (§2); "the being to which thought must move is unvordenklich, insofar as Kant there recognized an ontological necessity within thought more primitive than the PSR" (§2).