Thought's Indebtedness to Being

Author(s): Sebastian Gardner (University College London) Year: 2020 (in G. Anthony Bruno, ed., Schelling's Philosophy: Freedom, Nature, and Systematicity, OUP; DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198812814.003.0012). Dated "2018" in the wiki slug because earlier references. Type: Paper / book chapter

Gardner argues that Schelling's late positive philosophy — paradigmatically the 1850 Quelle ("On the Source of the Eternal Truths") — is best understood as an extended meditation on a proto-transcendental insight embryonically contained in Kant's pre-Critical Beweisgrund (1763): that thought is indebted to being for its own possibility, in a sense operating along a new dimension that is neither formal-logical (PSR, PNC) nor causal, but that grounds the possibility of anything being thought at all. Reading the Beweisgrund through Spinoza's eyes (Boehm) occludes this original element; reading Kant's Critical deflation as definitive occludes what Schelling's late philosophy rehabilitates. The arc from the "first seed of transcendental philosophy" to the "last word of German Idealism" passes through the Kant→Schelling insight Gardner names with Schelling's own term: unvordenklich being.

Note: This paper does not directly discuss Merleau-Ponty. It supplies the deep background for the Kant→Schelling development that Gardner traces to Merleau-Ponty in his companion paper on the Third Critique and Real-Idealismus.

Core Arguments

Claim: Kant's pre-Critical Beweisgrund (1763) contains a proto-transcendental insight — what Gardner reconstructs as a "new principle" operating along a dimension distinct from the PSR and PNC: the dimension of compatibility with and grounding of the possibility of anything being thought at all. Because: (i) Against Boehm 2014, none of the PSR-dependent reconstructions (steps B3, B4, B5→B6) is required — the PSR "in its raw unelaborated form" is ontologically neutral (Chignell 2009); the supervenience of possibility on actual being is logically presupposed by any ontologically significant use of the PSR, not derived from it. (ii) Kant's own B4 presents the reality of possibility as manifest immediately in thinking, as Descartes' cogito manifests the thinker — without inference between existents. (iii) The B5→B6 step works by the "thinking-away" test: possibility-grounding being cannot be thought away, because that would be thought negating its own possibility — the Transcendental Aesthetic's irremovability of space and time parallels this. (iv) At fn. 15, even formal possibility (non-contradiction) is resolved by Kant into the same root: "if the law of contradiction is cancelled, all possibility vanishes, and there is nothing left to think [nichts dabei mehr zu denken]." Formal and material possibility alike turn on there being something zu Denken. Against: Boehm's Spinozistic reading; any reading assimilating the Beweisgrund to Leibniz-Wolff rationalism.
Claim: Schelling's 1850 Quelle exposes an ambiguity in Kant's Ideal of Pure Reason between two "aspects" — (A) the Ideal qua Reason, the totality-cum-ground of necessary truth, and (B) the Ideal qua actually existent God — and resolves it through the Daß/Was distinction. Because: Schelling's historical dialectic forces us through Descartes (voluntarism — absurd), Leibniz (intellectualism — regress), the identification of the prior with "eternal Reason," and the unitary-principle demand, inexorably to "the system in which Reason is all" — Hegel's. This reduction preserves (A) at the cost of (B): the totality becomes "universality through and through," losing individuality. Schelling's resolution: (A) "which comprehends all possibility, as itself merely possible, 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" (B); God is the Self-Being (das selbst-Seyende) of the Inbegriff of possibility, pure Daß / actus purus with no Was in himself. The structure is asymmetrically bi-directional: (B) causes (A) to have being; (B) depends alethically on (A) for the truth that God is. The "why" of this asymmetry is "the final limit, that beyond which one cannot pass" — God's freedom. Against: Hegel's reduction of All to Reason (and thence to Nothing); Spinoza (whose monism "does not allow for the distinction of (A) and (B)," SW XI: 275–6); Descartes's voluntarism; Leibniz's intellectualism.
Claim: Thought is indebted to being for its own possibility — this is the shared insight of both texts. The being to which thought must move is unvordenklich: it pre-dates thought, possibility, and the PSR. Because: "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." At this passing-over point "the necessary priority of being over thought… 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… and the necessity of its being the case." 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." In Schelling's idiom: the Beweisgrund exposes the Fact of the World at the root of thought. Schelling's verdict on Kant: "Kant did arrive at (and even mastered) the standpoint which Schelling has set forth… he did so 'just barely', and 'did not progress beyond it'" (SW XI: 585). Against: Pure rationalism's attempt to extract all reality from pure reason; the Critical deflation (which reduces the insight to "a mere idea"); Kant's reliance on the transcendental ideality of time as escape from Spinoza (untenable on post-Kantian grounds).
Claim: Schelling's late ontological innovation complexifies the unitary concept of being rather than postulating multiple modes, and takes the further step of inverting judgement itself beyond Kant's intuitive intellect. Because: The novel conceptual figures (Sein, das Seyende, das Überseyende, Seinkönnen) can be understood only "(i) through and alongside one another, and (ii) as exemplified in one primordial case." The Daß/Was structure can be represented equivalently in terms of identity, becoming (asymmetrically bi-directional), or mereology — demanding "an interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies" (Gabriel 2013 aptly speaks of "a theory of logical time"). Kant's intuitive intellect was reached by subtracting finitude-defining constraints but retained the form of judgement; Schelling's step abstracts from judgement itself. What is encountered, having taken this step, is "not cognition as distinct from being, but the being to which it is indebted." Against: Reading Schelling's late vocabulary as a doctrine of multiple independent modes of being; any position keeping ontology within judgement-form.
Claim: The Schelling-Hegel opposition is not empty but all-decisive. Its framework is a constitutive two-sidedness in the Situation of Thinking: "which presents us immediately both with possibility, supplying the aether of thought, and with being, without which thought would be nothing for itself. From the Situation itself it cannot be determined directly, however, which of the two has priority." Because: From inside the Situation, each philosopher asserts one side as primary, and each can represent the other as one-sided. Unlike Fichte's idealist/dogmatist antithesis (resolvable doctrinally, "allows itself to be fixed doctrinally"), the Schelling-Hegel dispute "has no similar determinate ramifications." Adjudication therefore depends on the history of philosophy — the emptiness that results from attempting to extract all reality from pure reason (the negative demonstration of Schelling's side). Positive philosophy as philosophische Religion is not an argument within the Situation but a reversal of the ordo inversus: "philosophical reflection lies at the end of a real process which begins with God and in the course of which God's structure has been inverted." Against: The reading that the dispute is "merely a local dispute among absolute idealists reducible to a question of preference of vocabulary"; Fichte's style of resolution; Jacobi (who asserts being's priority without recognizing the original undecidability — fn. 64).

Key Findings

The Beweisgrund's "profoundly original element does not come to light when the text is read through Spinoza's eyes" (§1). The standard PSR-based reading misses the new principle Kant is deploying.
Fn. 15 contains a compressed unification of formal and material possibility: both turn on "something zu Denken." Cancelling the law of contradiction evacuates what can be thought in the same way that cancelling material possibility does.
Fn. 16 identifies a crucial ambiguity in Kant's Beweisgrund between (a) existence consisting in absolute positing (strong metaphysical, ties existence logically to thought) and (b) absolute positing as marker/criterion (weak). Kant does not recognize this ambiguity; Schelling's Quelle, per Gardner, resolves it in favour of (b).
The Critical philosophy does not avoid Spinozism either — it relies on the transcendental ideality of time to block necessitarianism (CPrR 5:100–2, fn. 61), and this strategy is untenable on post-Kantian-idealist grounds.
Gabriel 2013 characterization: Schelling offers "a theory of logical time" (fn. 58). Apt for the interfoliation of logical and temporal vocabularies in Daß/Was.
Jacobi recognizes being's priority but not the original undecidability from the Situation of Thinking — "on this point Schelling crucially departs from Jacobi" (fn. 64).
Positive philosophy is philosophische Religion — "a title that Hegel's system could never merit" (conclusion).

Methodology

Systematic reconstruction. The strategy: go back to Kant and work out how German Idealists mean to go beyond him, including his own Critical predecessor in the Beweisgrund. The Quelle is chosen for its "compendiary character" — Schelling's "last public statement of his position" — which allows the basic shape of late Schelling to emerge "with particular distinctness, in terms moreover that make especially clear Schelling's respect for the explananda of philosophical rationalism and his remoteness from irrationalist ineffabilism." The Beweisgrund provides an independent point of entry "via terms that [Schelling] himself does not employ, and which are constantly shifting" — the 1850 lecture contains no explicit appeal to the 1763 text, so the relation is "systematic rather than historical."

Concepts Developed

Unvordenklich / Unvordenklichkeit — the central thesis: being pre-dates thought, possibility, and the PSR. Gardner gives the term a precise gloss: it names "an ontological necessity within thought more primitive than the PSR," at a passing-over point where the distinction between "necessity of thinking X" and "necessity of X being so" no longer applies. The Beweisgrund contains this embryonically; the Quelle develops it (§§1–2, conclusion).
Daß/Was distinction — pure thatness (actus purus, God as the absolute individual, das selbst-Seyende) vs. whatness (totality of essences/possibilities, the Inbegriff). Their asymmetric bi-directional relation: (B) causes (A) to have being; (A) is the alethic condition for the truth that God is. The "why" of this asymmetry is God's freedom, "the final limit" (§2; SW XI: 585–7).
Positive philosophy — Schelling's late project of going beyond Vernunftwissenschaft (merely rational science) by recognizing thought's indebtedness to being. Distinguished from "negative" or "rational" philosophy (Hegel's "system in which Reason is all") which reduces All to Reason. Described as philosophische Religion. Gardner stresses: its figures "are not self-justified, or available to philosophical reflection ab initio, rather we have been forced to construct and employ them, by the need to conceive God and the source of necessary truth in a way that avoids the otherwise inevitable reduction of All to Reason, and thence to Nothing" (§2, conclusion).
Situation of Thinking — Gardner's diagnostic name for the site of the Schelling-Hegel dispute: the constitutive two-sidedness that presents possibility and being immediately, with priority undecidable from within. Anchors the paper's answer to whether the dispute is empty: it is not, but cannot be adjudicated from inside — which is why positive philosophy must be philosophische Religion rather than a higher-order argument (conclusion; fn. 64).
Fact of the World (Faktum der Welt) — Gardner's term for what the Beweisgrund exposes "at the root of thought." Per fn. 64, in Schelling 1972 the Fact is two-sided: (i) that there is Something rather than Nothing AND (ii) the Fact of Experience. Gardner takes this as the place where unvordenklich being gives itself to thought.

Concepts Referenced

Ideal of Pure Reason (Kant) — the ens realissimum, "completely determinate concept [Inbegriff] of all possibilities," doubling as the intuitive intellect of the Third Critique (SW XI: 576). Direct descendant of the Beweisgrund's Necessary Being; Gardner shows it harbours the (A)/(B) ambiguity.
Transcendental Ideal of the first Critique — where the Gedankengang of the Beweisgrund reappears with cogency maintained but ontological significance stripped. Thought reaches only the idea of an ens realissimum.
PSR (ontologically neutral vs. significant) — per Chignell 2009 (fn. 6); the raw unelaborated PSR vs. its ontologically significant version. Gardner's case against Boehm hinges on this distinction.
Absolute position / positing (absolute Setzung) — Kant's proto-technical term for existence (fn. 16). Kant is poised between (a) strong metaphysical reading — existence consists in absolute position, ties existence logically to thought — and (b) weak reading — position as marker/criterion. The Quelle must resolve in favour of (b).
Bestimmungen vs. Folgen — Kant's distinction between direct inherence (determinations) and indirect supervenience (consequences) in the Beweisgrund. Provides the "slack" allowing Realitäten to be grounded in the Necessary Being without making all possibility its determinations (2:85; fns. 24–29).
Realitäten — Wolff-Baumgarten layer of essences interposed between God and contingents (extension is one example, Beweisgrund 2:80–1).
Transcendental proof (proto-form) — the Beweisgrund's method reconstructed as operating along "a new dimension" distinct from PSR and PNC: the linchpin of what the Critical Kant calls transcendental proof (§1).
Transcendental ideality of time — Kant's doctrine (CPrR 5:100–2, fn. 61). Gardner and post-Kantian idealism: untenable as escape from Spinoza.
Inversion of judgement — Schelling's further step beyond Kant's intuitive intellect: abstracting the form of judgement to express cognition from which even subject-predicate articulation has been removed (§2).

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, conclusion).

"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).

"In Schelling's new idiom, the Beweisgrund exposes the Fact of the World at the root of thought" (§2).

On the Daß/Was: "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; §2).

"That which comprehends all possibility, as itself merely possible, 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, which is its being and over against which it appears as that which is not through itself" (SW XI: 585).

On Kant: "with his concept of the Ideal of Pure Reason, 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; §2).

"What is most striking in the Beweisgrund is the relative obliqueness of the necessity in thought that Kant wants to put to work: 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" (§1).

Fn. 15 (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: "Kant sets formal and material possibility in parallel and identifies the requirement that there be something zu Denken as the crux of both."

Fn. 16: "Kant leaves himself poised between two alternatives: (a) the strong metaphysical view that existence consists in nothing but occupation of absolute position; and (b) the weaker view that occupation of absolute position is merely the marker or criterion of satisfaction of the concept of existence… The issue will arise again in Schelling's Quelle, the implication of which is that Kant in the Beweisgrund does not recognize this ambiguity, which must however, according to Schelling, be resolved in favour of (b)."

"there is a constitutive two-sidedness in the Situation of Thinking, which presents us immediately both with possibility, supplying the aether of thought, and with being, without which thought would be nothing for itself. From the Situation itself it cannot be determined directly, however, which of the two has priority" (conclusion).

"philosophical reflection lies at the end of a real process which begins with God and in the course of which God's structure has been inverted: God came to think his own being, while we, as God's derivatives, exist from the beginning through God's thinking. The job of philosophical Wissenschaft is to reverse this inversion" (conclusion).

"in arriving where we started we come to know the place for the first time" (intro, T.S. Eliot unattributed).

What's Not Obvious

Three observations that would not appear in a conventional summary of this paper:

Fn. 15 unifies formal and material possibility around "etwas zu Denken" — and this is the hidden logical pivot of the Kant→Schelling arc. Kant's claim that cancelling the law of contradiction leaves "nothing left to think [nichts dabei mehr zu denken sei]" (Beweisgrund 2:82) sets formal and material possibility in parallel. Both turn on there being something for thought to think. This is the same structure that the Quelle will identify as unvordenklich: being which pre-dates thought because thought needs something to think. The footnote rather than the body text carries the most precise formulation of the thesis. Connects to unvordenklich (new concept page) and immanuel-kant's Beweisgrund subsection.
Fn. 16 identifies an ambiguity in Kant's own "absolute position/positing" (absolute Setzung) that sets up the entire Schelling project. Kant's proto-technical term for existence leaves him "poised between" (a) the strong metaphysical reading — existence consists in absolute positing, which ties existence logically to thought — and (b) the weak reading — absolute positing as mere marker or criterion of the concept of existence's satisfaction. Kant does not see this ambiguity. Schelling's Quelle, per Gardner, is the resolution of it, in favour of (b) — existence as not-reducible-to-positing. This means the Daß of God (pure thatness, actus purus) occupies the conceptual space that Kant left underdetermined: it is existence that is not occupation of a role within the content of thought. The relation of the Beweisgrund to the Quelle thus runs not only through the proof's method but through this specific unresolved ambiguity Kant did not know he had bequeathed to his successor. Connects to dass-was-distinction (new concept page).
The Schelling-Hegel opposition is structurally unresolvable from inside the Situation of Thinking — which is why positive philosophy must be philosophische Religion, not a higher-order argument. The standard assumption is that the dispute between two rival idealists can be adjudicated by a philosophical argument that one side is right and the other wrong. Gardner's diagnosis is sharper and stranger: the dispute turns on priority between two sides of a two-sidedness the Situation itself does not adjudicate. Unlike Fichte's idealist/dogmatist antithesis (resolvable doctrinally — each party has determinate views of mind, freedom, etc.), the Schelling-Hegel dispute "has no similar determinate ramifications" (fn. 63). This is the paper's most subtle claim: it explains why Schelling resorts to Wissenschaft as "reversing the inversion" of the ordo inversus — philosophy cannot win the dispute from within, so it must stage itself as reflection on the historical process by which God's structure has been inverted. Philosophische Religion is not a genre label but the only form the argument can take, given the Situation's undecidability.

Critique / Limitations

The paper is avowedly about Kant and Schelling — it does not discuss Merleau-Ponty. Its relevance to the wiki depends on the Kant→Schelling→Merleau-Ponty arc established in Gardner's companion paper.
Publication date: 2020 (appeared in Bruno, ed., Schelling's Philosophy, OUP). Dated "2018" in the wiki slug based on earlier slug creation.
The Schelling-Hegel opposition is left "deliberately inconclusive" at the level of the Situation of Thinking — Gardner argues for Schelling's side via the history of philosophy but acknowledges that within the Situation, priority is undecidable.
Schelling's Quelle is a single late text; integrating it into the bigger picture of positive philosophy "would demand much more than can be supplied here" (§2). The 1847 Philosophische Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie (Vorlesungen 11–12, SW XI: 255–94, esp. 273–6, 282–7; fn. 62) is the immediate textual middle-term, named but not fully developed.
The weakest argumentative step is the move from necessity-in-thought to necessity-in-being (the "thinking away" argument at §1 iii). Gardner flags and defers it. The resolution at the unvordenklich passing-over point is more a declaration that the thinking/content-modality distinction doesn't apply than an argument that it doesn't.
The reading of the Beweisgrund as proto-Schellingian is "systematic rather than historical" — Gardner does not claim direct influence. Schelling knew and esteemed the Beweisgrund (SW I: 460, fn. 30) but does not cite it in the Quelle.

Connections

complements gardner-2016-kant-third-critique-schelling — the companion paper reads MP through Kant's Third Critique and Schelling's Real-Idealismus (1800–01); this paper treats the late Quelle (1850). Together they frame Schelling's career around two asymmetric bi-directional formal structures (Real-Idealismus and Daß/Was) that both resonate with MP's chiasm
extends the reading of friedrich-schelling — adds the late Quelle (via the new concept pages unvordenklich, dass-was-distinction, positive-philosophy) to the wiki's earlier coverage (Naturphilosophie, barbarian principle, Freedom essay, Philosophy of Mythology)
extends the reading of immanuel-kant — adds the pre-Critical Beweisgrund as the proto-transcendental moment the Critical deflation incompletely overcame
grounds unvordenklich — the central concept developed by Gardner as the conceptual bridge between 1763 and 1850
grounds dass-was-distinction — the structural core of Schelling's positive philosophy, asymmetrically bi-directional in the same formal profile as chiasm
grounds positive-philosophy — the organizing name for Schelling's late project as philosophische Religion
parallels structurally precession — Chouraqui's "principle of precession" (being always already precedes cogito) is the Nietzsche-MP-route to the same formal insight Gardner traces through Kant-Schelling. Two independent paths converge on being pre-dates thought
parallels structurally incorporation-of-truth — Chouraqui's Einverleibung is the Nietzschean version of thought's indebtedness to being (truth incorporated bodily because thought is not thought-first)
contrasts with Hegel — the Schelling-Hegel opposition is "all-decisive" but undecidable from inside the Situation of Thinking. The resolution depends on the history of philosophy (the emptiness of extracting reality from pure reason) and on Wissenschaft as reversal of the ordo inversus