Heidegger And Schelling
Martin Heidegger (1889 -- 1976) is best-known as the author of a seminal work of 20th Century philosophy, "Being and Time." (1927) Heidegger saw himself as rejecting metaphysical philosophy and as redirecting its questions. In his classroom courses, he frequently engaged in philosophical hermeneutics by lecturing in detail on a specific text and trying to understand it from the inside. By all accounts, Heidegger was a charismatic lecturer. His ability to bring seemingly abstract philosophical questions to life, for all their difficulty, inspired many students such as Hannah Arendt.
In 1936, Heidegger lectured on a treatise by the German idealistic philosopher Frederick Schelling (1775 -- 1854) called "The Essence of Human Freedom" (1809), itself a highly difficult work of some 90 pages. Schelling had been a college friend of both Hegel and the poet Holderlin. Hegel published his most famous work "The Phenomenology of Mind" in 1807, two years before Schelling's Treatise. In the "Phenomenology" Hegel attacked his friend's version of philosophical idealism for its alleged mystical, intuitive character. Schelling took the criticism hard, and the friendship ended. At the time Heidegger wrote, Schelling had been neglected for many years, even in Germany. Schelling's Treatise remains little read, due to its romanticism and its anthropomorphism, qualities of which Heidegger was fully aware, in addition to its obscurity. This translation of Heidegger's lectures on Schelling's Treatise dates from 1985 and is by the American philosopher Joan Stambaugh. It is as readable and accessible as this text is likely to be.
Philosophers tend not to be the best interpreters of one another's work because their own thought gets in the way. Heidegger is notorious for his idiosyncratic readings of other thinkers to bend them to his own lights. Heidegger's s book on Schelling, while by no stretch a "neutral" evaluation of his predecessor is a sympathetic and plausible account of the Treatise. It aims for and achieves more. Reading Heidegger's lectures, I got the sense of struggling with both Schelling and Heidegger. The text convinced me that something important was being said, however obscurely. As with other Heidegger, much of this book is seeming gibberish. Impenetrable discussions are often followed by passages of great insight and respective clarity. Some of the difficulty may be due to the difficulty of transferring spoken lectures to the printed page. Frequently, after long obscure passages in this book, Heidegger will proclaim in his own voice that the discussion makes little sense. I felt frustrated, but I remembered that while speaking Heidegger probably delivered these really obscure analyses with a tone of irony in his voice that would not communicate to the page. Heidegger in fact appears to be a good as well as a charismatic lecturer. He organizes his material and repeats and summarizes what he has said when he moves from one section to another. He appears to try to make himself understood. The lectures are filled with asides, readily understood examples, and even touches of humor.
Heidegger's lectures, which exceed considerably Schelling's text in length, consist of opening remarks, and extended discussion of Schelling's own introduction to his text and a shorter and much more difficult discussion of the "Main Part" of Schelling's Treatise. Why lecture on Schelling's Treatise rather than on a different text? Here is Heidegger's response (p. 11)
"We stated that no further explanation was necessary why we have chosen this treatise -- unless in terms of the treatise itself. For it raises a question in which something is expressed which underlies all of man's individual intentions and aspirations, the question of philosophy as such. Whoever grasps this question knows immediately that it is meaningless to ask why and to what purpose we philosophize. For philosophy is grounded only in terms of itself- or else not at all, just as art reveals its truth only through itself."
Schelling was a philosopher of absolute idealism. Heidegger rejected absolute idealism although its impact on him was profound. His discussion of the nature of philosophical system building and of the aims of German idealism after Kant are deeply insightful. Schelling's Treatise was intended as both a tribute to and a refutation of the philosophical system of Spinoza. Heidegger thus engages in this work with Spinoza, something he was faulted for not doing in "Being and Time".
Heidegger saw himself as a philosopher of questioning and as a philosopher of Being. He engages with Schelling, more than with Hegel, because of the limitedlessness, poetical character of Schelling's thought. Heidegger wants to understand what philosophical Absolutism is, and how, if at all, it comports with freedom. Schelling had thought that the claimed absolutism of Spinoza resulted in fatalism. Heidegger then explores Schelling's treatment of the nature of evil. Philosophical idealism is frequently rejected on these two broad issues among others: 1. it leads to determinism and fatalism and 2. it cannot account for the existence of evil.
Heidegger offers a long and in places torturous account of Schelling's idealism, understanding of human freedom, and understanding of evil. As an absolute idealist, Schelling tried to combine in a difficult way the Absolute and infinite with the individual. Heidegger rejects the absolute, but his own concept of Being appears to me to owe much to it. Heidegger is a philosopher of becoming, human finitude, and approaches to Being.
This book is a difficult commentary on a text which, if anything, is more difficult. Early in his study, (p 9), Heidegger quotes his subject as saying "It is a poor objection to a philosopher to say that he is incomprehensible." Readers without a strong background in Heidegger's "Being and Time" and in Kant and his successors will be unduly frustrated by this book. Readers with a passion for philosophical issues will be engaged by this work.
Robin Friedman
