The Riddle of Man
German Idealism's Picture of the World
GA 20
Idealism as a View About Nature and the Spirit: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
[ 1 ] At the beginning of his search for a world view, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling is close to Fichte insofar as the same picture of the soul—whose grasping of itself in the activity of self-awakening assures it of existence—becomes for him the sure support of knowledge. But from this basic feeling in Schelling's spirit different thoughts stream forth than from Fichte's spirit. For Fichte, the all-encompassing world-will shines into the awakening soul as a spiritual realm of light; and he wants to know the rays of this light in their essential being. For Schelling, the world riddle consists in the fact that he sees himself, with his soul awakened to egohood, confronted by a seemingly mute and lifeless nature. Out of this nature the soul awakens. This fact reveals itself to human observation. And the knowing, feeling human spirit delves down into this nature and through this nature fills itself with an inner world that then becomes spiritual life within it. Could this be so if there did not exist between the soul and nature a deeply inward relatedness at first hidden from human cognition? But nature remains mute if the soul does not make itself into the instrument of nature's speech; nature seems dead if the spirit of man does not free life from the spell of semblance (Schein). The secrets of nature must sound forth from the depths of the human soul. But in order for this not to be a deception, it must be the essential being of nature itself that speaks out of the human soul. And it must be true that the soul only seemingly goes down into its own depths when it knows nature; in actuality, when it wants to find nature, the soul must travel through subconscious passages in order to delve down with its own life into the cycle of nature's weaving.
[ 2 ] Schelling sees in nature—as it is present to ordinary human consciousness—only a physiognomical expression of true nature, so to speak, just as one sees in a human countenance the expression of the supersensible soul. And just as one lives into the soul of a person through this physiognomical expression—if one is able to take up the other person's experiences into one's own—so, for Schelling, there is a possibility of so awakening human cognitive abilities that they experience within themselves what works and weaves behind the outer countenance of nature as soul and spirit. Therefore, one cannot consider our science of this outer countenance to be a revelation of what lives in the depths of nature; nor is the cognitive power of man that is limited to such science capable of unraveling the true secrets of nature. Schelling therefore wants to bring to awakening in the human soul an intellectual beholding (intellektuelle Anschauung) that lies behind the ordinary cognitive power of man. This kind of beholding reveals itself—in Schelling's sense—as a creative power in man; but in such a way that it does not create concepts from the soul about nature, but rather, through inward co-existence with the soul element of nature, brings to manifestation the powers of ideas creating and ruling in nature. Fearful souls quake at the thought of a view of nature that is supposed to stem from this kind of an “intellectual beholding.” And the scorn and ridicule heaped upon it in the period after Schelling was great. For someone who knows how to avoid one-sidedness in these matters, there need not be the two conflicting alternatives: either to surrender to “the daydreams of nature fantasies like those of a Schelling” and bring a charge of “gross materialism” against proper, serious natural science; or maturely to take the stand-point of this science and “dismiss all Schellingian playing with concepts as childishness.” One can belong unreservedly to those who want to promote natural science to the full as demanded by our modern “natural-scientific age”; and one can nevertheless understand the justification for Schelling's attempt to create, above and beyond this natural science, a view of nature that enters an area that this natural science will not want to touch at all if it rightly understands itself. But the belief is unjustified which asserts that, besides the natural science created by our ordinary cognitive powers, there can exist no view of nature that is attained by means different from those particular to this natural science as such. Why must the natural scientist believe that his field is safe only if everyone else striving from a different point of view is silenced? For someone who will not let himself be blinded in these matters by “natural-scientific fanaticism,” the often so bitter rejection of a view of nature more in accordance with the spirit—such as that for which Schelling strove—seems no different, after all, than if a lover of photography were to say: “I make exact pictures of people that reproduce everything about them: just don't try to compare the portrait a painter makes with my kind of faithfulness to nature.”
[ 3 ] With awakened spiritual beholding Schelling wanted to find the “spirit of nature,” for which not only sense perception but also what one calls laws of nature are merely the physiognomical expression. It is important that we place before our souls the enormous impression he made in such strivings upon those of his contemporaries who had an open heart for the way this striving burst forth from his powerful, spirit-illuminated personality. There is a description, given by an amiable and gifted thinker, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, of the impressions he received of Schelling's effect in Jena. “What was it,” he writes, “that so powerfully drew both young and old from far and near to attend his lectures? Was it only the personality of the man or the particular charm of his speaking style that had such power to attract people? ... It wasn't that alone. ... In his lively words there lay, to be sure, an inspiring power irresistible to young souls with any receptivity at all. It might be difficult to make comprehensible to a reader in our day,” (Schubert is now writing down in 1854 what he had experienced about Schelling in the 1790's) “who did not participate in and hear this as a young person like I did, how it often affected me when Schelling spoke to us: I felt as though I were reading or hearing Dante, the seer in another world open only to the initiated eye. The mighty content that lay in his words—which themselves were measured, mathematically precise, and of an elegance suitable for inscription in stone—seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, presenting the understanding spirit with the task of loosing his bonds and receiving from his hand the unquenchable fire. ... But neither his personality nor the enlivening power of his speaking style could account for the interest and excitement—for or against his direction in thought—aroused by Schelling's world view immediately after it was made public in his writings; no other literary publication of this kind, long before or after, aroused such interest and excitement. When a teacher or writer speaks about sense-perceptible things or natural phenomena, one can tell right away whether he is doing so out of his own observation and experience or merely repeating what he has heard others say—or even what he has thought up out of pictures of his own. ... And it is the same with inner experience. There is a reality of a higher kind, whose existence can be experienced by the knowing spirit in us with the same sureness and certainty as our body, through its senses, experiences the existence of outer visible nature. This nature—the reality of bodily things—presents itself to our perceiving senses as a deed of that same creative power through which our bodily nature has also come about. The existence of the visible world is an actual fact in the same way as the existence of the perceiving senses. Reality of a higher kind, as a spiritually embodied fact, has also approached the knowing spirit in us; our knowing spirit will become aware of this reality when its own knowing activity lifts itself to a recognition of that by which our spirit is known and from which, according to a common, regular order, there emerges the reality of both bodily and spiritual evolution. And this becoming aware of a spiritual, divine reality in which we ourselves live, weave, and exist is the highest gain of earthly life and of the search for wisdom. ... Already in my day, among the young people who heard Schelling, there were some who had an inkling of what he meant by the ‘intellectual beholding’ through which our spirit must grasp the infinite primal ground of all being and becoming.”
[ 4 ] It was the spirit in nature that Schelling sought through intellectual beholding, the spiritual that, from the power of its creativity, brought forth nature. Nature was once the living body of this spiritual, just as the human body is so for the soul. Now it is spreading out, this body of the world spirit, revealing in its traits what once the spiritual incorporated into it, and showing, in its weaving and becoming, gestures that represent the workings of the spiritual. This spiritual working within the world body had to precede the present state of the world, so that this world body could grow hard and produce in the mineral realm a bony system, in the plant realm a nervous system, in the animal realm a soul forerunner of man. In this way the world body was led out of its youth into its old age; the present-day mineral, plant, and animal realms are, so to speak, the hardened products of what once was accomplished, in a spiritually embodied way, by an evolution that is now extinguished. Out of the womb of the aged body of the world, however, the creative spirituality could allow the soul and spirit-endowed human being to arise; within his inner life there shine forth to his knowledge the ideas with which the creative spirituality first brought about the world body. As though enchanted, there lies within present-day nature the spirit that once lived and worked in it; within the human soul this spirit becomes disenchanted. (This presentation of Schelling's relationship to nature is certainly not to be found in any actual words or even in any thoughts used by Schelling himself. Nevertheless, I believe that one can truly reproduce a person's view with such conciseness only if one fixes one's eye upon the spirit of his view, and, in order to express this spirit, uses mental pictures arising in a free way to say in a few words what the original personality expressed in a series of extensive works. Used to this end, the actual words of the personality can only misrepresent the spirit of these words.)
[ 5 ] Taking this stance toward the “spirit of nature” and its relationship to the human spirit, Schelling felt himself faced by the necessity of learning how to understand that element in the world which intrudes upon and disrupts the course of world events. Insofar as the soul gives itself over to the world of ideas holding sway in everything, the soul will knowingly experience the progressive creativity of this world of ideas. But, as though from a different direction of world existence, a disruptive, evil, malevolent element forces its way in. With the world of ideas the knowing soul does not at first enter this different field; this field borders on the world of ideas as the shadow borders on the light. Just as the light cannot be present in a shadowed space, so also the activities undertaken by the soul in its first attempts in knowledge cannot be present in the realm of disruption, evil, and malevolence. In seeking a possibility of penetrating into this region, Schelling received a stimulus from that personality who, out of the simplest feeling life of the German people, sought the solution for lofty riddles of the world: Jakob Böhme. To be sure, Jakob Böhme did read a lot about questions concerning world views and also did take up a great deal in other ways through the educational channels available to a simple man of the people in the German culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the best thing that pulses through Jakob Böhme's writings in such an unlearned way is a popular path of knowledge; what is best there comes from the deeper heart (Gemüt) of the people itself. And Schelling lifted up into the mode of thinking contemplation what was seen by this deeper heart of the people in Jakob Böhme's unlearned but enlightened soul. It belongs to the most magnificent observations one can make in world literature to see Jakob Böhme's elemental heart's view shining through the philosophical language of Schelling's Treatise on the Essential Being of Man's Freedom.1Freiheit literally means “freehood.” Freiheit does not focus so much on “freedom” from something. It means activating the spiritual forces of one's own “I.” For Rudolf Steiner, freedom is “action, thinking, and feeling from out of the spiritual individuality of man”; it is “spiritual activity.” – Ed.! Within this elemental heart's view, the profound insight holds sway that no one can arrive at a satisfying world view whose only means on the path of knowledge are those of thinking comprehension. Out of the depths of the world, something bursts into the circumference of what thinking comprehension is; this something is more far-reaching and powerful than thinking comprehension, but not more powerful actually than what the soul can experience within itself when thinking comprehension appears to the soul only as a part of the soul's own essential being. If one wants to comprehend something, one must understand how this something is necessarily connected with something else. The things of the world are indeed connected to each other necessarily on the surface, but not in the deepest foundation of the world's essential being. Freedom holds sway in the world. And only he comprehends the world who beholds free, supersensible spirituality holding sway within the necessitated course taken by the laws of nature. Freedom as a fact can always be refuted by logical reasons. Whoever realizes this is not impressed by any refutation of the idea of freedom.
Jakob Böhme's thoroughly healthy way of knowledge—his original deeper heart's knowledge, so in accordance with the feeling of the people—beheld freedom as weaving and working through everything necessitated, working even through natural necessity. And Schelling, ascending from a view of nature in accordance with the spirit to a beholding of the spirit, felt himself in harmony with Jakob Böhme.
[ 6 ] And with this the path was given him for beholding the historical evolution of the spirituallife of mankind in his own way. The deed of Christ fitted into this evolution as the greatest event on earth. Through his Philosophy of Mythology Schelling sought to understand what had occurred before this deed. Whoever believes that in history only ideas that follow necessarily from each other are revealed, does not understand the course of the world. For with freedom supersensible being reaches into this course from stage to stage; and what freedom accomplishes at each new stage can only be beheld as a fact revealed to the deeper heart (Germüt); it cannot be thought up beforehand, by logical deduction from the evolution of ideas until then, as a necessitated next stage. And what supersensible worlds, in the evolution of the earth, have let stream in through Christ must be taken as a completely free fact; not as a revelation needing illumination by ideas, but as a revelation shining out over any world of ideas. Schelling wants to speak about this world view of his in his Philosophy of Revelation.
Certainly, the “contradiction” in which this way of picturing things gets entangled is easy to point out. And this “contradiction” was held up to Schelling in every possible form, both well-meaning and malicious. Nevertheless, whoever raises this “contradiction” only shows that he does not want to recognize the reigning of free spirituality in the course of a world process that seems necessitated. Schelling did not want to deny the working of natural necessity; but he wanted to show how even this necessity is a deed of the spirituality that works through the world with freedom. And he did not want, as it were, to renounce comprehension just because the first attempts of this comprehension shatter upon the boundary of world freedom; he wanted to ascend to a comprehension of what the world of ideas holding sway in everything does not have within itself but can take up into itself. The ideas that want to know the world do not need to bow out just because mere thinking comprehension is inadequate for knowledge of life. One need not say: Because ideas, with what at first lies within their own being, do not penetrate into the depths of the world, therefore the depths of the world cannot be known. No, when ideas give themselves over to these depths and become permeated by what ideas do not have in themselves, then these ideas rise up from the ground of the world, newborn and wafted through by the essential being of the “spirit of the world.”
From the seventeenth century, the deeper heart of the German people in the Görlitz shoemaker Jakob Böhme, working on in Schelling's philosophical spirit, arrived at a world view like this in the nineteenth century.
Der Idealismus als Natur- und Geistesanschauung: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
[ 1 ] Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling steht im Beginne seines Suchens nach einer Weltanschauung Fichte insofern nahe, als auch ihm die Vorstellung von der Seele, die sich in der Tätigkeit des Selbsterwechens als in der Gewißheit ihres Daseins ergreift, zur sicheren Stütze seiner Erkenntnis wird. Doch strahlen von dieser Grundempfindung in Schellings Geist andere Gedanken aus als in dem Fichtes. Für diesen leuchtet in die erwachende Seele der umfassende Weltenwille als ein geistiges Lichtreich hinein; und er will die Strahlen dieses Lichtes in ihrem Wesen erkennen. Für Schelling formt sich das Welträtsel dadurch, daß er sich mit der zum «Ich» erwachten Seele der scheinbar stummen, toten Natur gegenübergestellt sieht. Aus dieser Natur heraus erwacht die Seele. Dies offenbart sich der menschlichen Beobachtung. Und in diese Natur versenkt sich der erkennende, der fühlende Menschengeist und erfüllt sich durch sie mit einer inneren Welt, die dann in ihm geistiges Leben wird. Könnte dies so sein, wenn nicht eine dem Menschenerkennen zunächst verborgene tiefinnere Verwandtschaft bestände zwischen der Seele und der Natur? Aber die Natur bleibt stumm, wenn die Seele sich nicht zu ihrem Sprachwerkzeug macht; sie scheint tot, wenn der Geist des Menschen nicht aus dem Schein das Leben entzaubert. Aus den Tiefen der Menschenseele müssen die Geheimnisse der Natur herauftönen. Soll dies aber nicht eine Täuschung sein, so muß es das Wesen der Natur selbst sein, das aus der Seele spricht. Und wahr muß sein, daß die Seele nur scheinbar in ihre eigenen Untergründe hinabsteigt, wenn sie die Natur erkennt; in Wirklichkeit muß sie durch unterbewußte Gänge wandeln, um in den Kreislauf des Naturwebens mit dem eigenen Leben unterzutauchen, wenn sie die Natur finden will.
[ 2 ] Schelling sieht in der Natur, wie diese dem gewöhnlichen menschlichen Bewußtsein vorliegt, gewissermaßen nur einen physiognomischen Ausdruck der wahren Natur, wie man in einem menschlichen Antlitz den Ausdruck der übersinnlichen Seele sieht. Und wie man durch diesen physiognomischen Ausdruck hindurch sich in die Seele des Menschen einlebt, wenn man imstande ist, in das eigene Erleben das fremde aufzunehmen, so gibt es für Schelling eine Möglichkeit, die Erkenntnisfähigkeiten des Menschen so zu erwecken, daß diese in sich miterleben, was seelenhaft und geistig hinter dem äußeren Antlitz der Natur webt und wirkt. Weder also kann die Wissenschaft dieses äußeren Antlitzes für eine Offenbarung dessen gehalten werden, was in den Tiefen der Natur lebt; noch ist die in solcher Wissenschaft sich erschöpfende Erkenntniskraft des Menschen in der Lage, der Natur ihre wahren Geheimnisse zu entbinden. Schelling will daher eine hinter der gewöhnlichen menschlichen Erkenntniskraft liegende intellektuelle Anschauung in der Menschenseele zur Erweckung bringen. Diese Anschauungsart offenbart sich - in Schellings Sinne - als schöpferische Kraft im Menschen; aber so, daß sie nicht aus der Seele heraus Begriffe über die Natur schafft, sondern durch inniges Zusammenleben mit dem Seelenhaften der Natur die Ideenkräfte zur Erscheinung bringt, die in der Natur schaffend walten. Ängstliche Gemüter erbeben bei dem Gedanken einer Naturanschauung, die aus einer solchen «intellektuellen Anschauung» stammen soll. Und der Spott und Hohn, der über sie ergossen worden ist in der Zeit, die auf die Schellingsche folgte, waren groß. Für einen Menschen, der Einseitigkeit in diesen Dingen zu meiden versteht, gibt es gar nicht die zwiespältige Notwendigkeit: entweder sich den «Träumereien der Naturphantastik von der Art eines Schelling» hinzugeben und die sachgemäße, ernste Naturforschung des «groben Materialismus» anzuklagen; oder sich besonnen auf den Standpunkt dieser Forschung zu stellen und alle «Schellingsche Begriffsspielerei als Kinderei abzutun». Man kann in rückhaltloser Art mit unter denen sein, welche der Naturforschung, wie sie das neueste «naturwissenschaftliche Zeitalter» fordert, die volle Geltung verschaffen wollen; und kann dennoch das Berechtigte des Schellingschen Versuches verstehen, über diese Naturforschung hinaus eine Naturanschauung zu schaffen, die auf dasjenige Feld sich begibt, welches diese Naturforschung gar nicht wird berühren wollen, wenn sie sich selbst richtig versteht. Unberechtigt ist nur der Glaube, daß es neben der mit den gewöhnlichen menschlichen Erkenntniskräften zu schaffenden Naturwissenschaft nicht eine Naturanschauung geben dürfe, die mit anderen Mitteln erlangt wird, als dieser Naturwissenschaft als solcher eigen sind. Warum sollte der Naturforscher glauben müssen, daß sein Feld nur ungefährdet ist, wenn neben ihm jeder von anderen Gesichtspunkten aus Strebende zum Schweigen gebracht wird? Wer sich in diesen Dingen nicht durch «naturwissenschaftlichen Fanatismus» den Sinn blenden läßt, dem erscheint die oft so bitter werdende Ablehnung einer geistgemäßen Naturanschauung, wie sie Schelling erstrebte, doch nicht anders, als wenn ein Liebhaber des Photographierens sagte: ich mache von dem Menschen genaue Bilder, die alles wiedergeben, was an ihm ist: man komme mir doch dieser Naturtreue gegenüber nicht mit dem Porträt eines Malers.
[ 3 ] Mit der erweckten geistigen Anschauung wollte Schelling den «Geist der Natur» finden, der nicht nur in der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung, sondern auch in dem, was man Naturgesetze nennt, bloß seinen physiognomischen Ausdruck hat. Es ist bedeutungsvoll, sich vor die Seele zu stellen, welch gewaltigen Eindruck er mit einem solchen Streben auf diejenigen Menschen unter seinen Zeitgenossen machte, die ein offenes Gemüt für die Art hatten, wie dieses Streben aus seiner geistdurchleuchteten, machtvollen Persönlichkeit hervorbrach. Es gibt eine Schilderung, die ein liebenswürdig-geistvoller Denker, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, gegeben hat von den Eindrücken, die er von Schellings Wirksamkeit in Jena empfangen hat. «Was war es» - so schreibt Schubert -, «das Jünglinge wie gereifte Männer von fern und nahe so mächtig zu Schellings Vorlesungen hinzog? War es nur die Persönlichkeit des Mannes oder der eigentümliche Reiz seines mündlichen Vortrags, darinnen diese anziehende Kraft lag? ... Das war es nicht allein... In seinem lebendigen Worte lag allerdings eine hinnehmende Kraft, welcher, wo sie nur einige Empfänglichkeit traf, keine der jungen Seelen sich erwehren konnte. Es möchte schwer sein, einem Leser unserer Zeit» (Schubert schreibt 1854 nieder, was er in den neunziger Jahren des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts mit Schelling erlebt hatte), «der nicht wie ich jugendlich teilnehmender Hörer war, es begreiflich zu machen, wie es mir, wenn Schelling zu uns sprach, öfter so zumute wurde, als ob ich Dante, den Seher einer nur dem geweihten Auge geöffneten Jenseitswelt, lese oder hörte. Der mächtige Inhalt, der in seiner wie mit mathematischer Schärfe im Lapidarstile abgemessenen Rede lag, erschien mir wie ein gebundener Prometheus, dessen Bande zu lösen und aus dessen Hand das unverlöschende Feuer zu empfangen die Aufgabe des verstehenden Geistes ist... Aber weder die Persönlichkeit noch die belebende Kraft der mündlichen Mitteilung konnten es allein sein, welche für die Schellingsche Weltanschauung alsbald nach ihrem öffentlichen Kundwerden durch Schriften eine Teilnahme und eine Aufregung für oder wider ihre Richtung hervorrief, wie dies vor- und nachher in langer Zeit keine andere literarische Erscheinung ähnlicher Art vermocht hat. Man wird es da, wo es sich um sinnlich-wahrnehmbare Dinge oder natürliche Erscheinungen handelt, einem Lehrer oder Schriftsteller sogleich anmerken, ob er aus eigener Anschauung und Erfahrung spricht, oder bloß von dem redet, was er von andern gehört, ja, nach seiner eigenen selbstgemachten Vorstellung sich ausgedacht hat... Auf die gleiche Weise wie mit der äußeren Erfahrung verhält es sich mit der inneren. Es gibt eine Wirklichkeit von höherer Art, deren Sein der erkennende Geist in uns mit derselben Sicherheit und Gewißheit erfahren kann, als unser Leib durch seine Sinne das Sein der äußeren sichtbaren Natur erfährt. Diese, die Wirklichkeit der leiblichen Dinge, stellt sich unseren wahrnehmenden Sinnen als eine Tat eben derselben schaffenden Kraft dar, durch welche auch unsere leibliche Natur zum Werden gekommen. Das Sein der Sichtbarkeit ist in gleicher Weise eine wirkliche Tatsache als das Sein des wahrnehmenden Sinnes. Auch dem erkennenden Geiste in uns hat sich die Wirklichkeit der höheren Art als geistig-leibliche Tatsache genaht; er wird ihrer innewerden, wenn sich sein eigenes Erkennen zu einem Anerkennen dessen erhebt, von welchem er erkannt und aus welchem nach gleichmäßiger Ordnung die Wirklichkeit des leiblichen wie des geistigen Werdens hervorgeht. Und jenes Innewerden einer geistigen, göttlichen Wirklichkeit, in der wir selber leben, weben und sind, ist der höchste Gewinn des Erdenlebens und des Forschens nach Weisheit... Schon zu meiner Zeit gab es unter den Jünglingen, die ihn hörten, solche, welche es ahnten, was er unter der intellektuellen Anschauung meinte, durch welche unser Geist den unendlichen Urgrund alles Seins und Werdens erfassen muß.»
[ 4 ] Geist in der Natur suchte Schelling durch die intellektuelle Anschauung. Das Geistige, das aus der Kraft seines Schaffens die Natur heraussprießen ließ. Lebendiger Leib dieses Geistigen war einst diese Natur, wie des Menschen Leib der der Seele ist. Nun breitet er sich aus, dieser Leib des Weltengeistes, in seinen Zügen das offenbarend, was ihm einst das Geistige einverleibt hat, in seinem Werden und Weben die Gebärden zeigend, die Wirkungen des Geistigen darstellen. Vorangehen mußte dieses Geistwirken im Weltenleibe dem gegenwärtigen Zustande der Welt, damit er sich verhärte und im Mineralreiche ein Knochensystem, im Pflanzenreiche ein Nervensystem, im Tierreiche einen seelischen Vorläufer des Menschen zeuge. So ward der Weltenleib aus seiner Jugend in sein Alter eingeführt; das gegenwärtige Mineral-, Pflanzen- und Tierreich sind die gewissermaßen verhärteten Erzeugnisse dessen, was dereinst geist-leiblich in einem Werden vollbracht wurde, das gegenwärtig erloschen ist. Aus dem Schoße des Altersleibes der Welt aber konnte die schaffende Geistigkeit erstehen lassen den seelen-geistbegabten Menschen, in dessen Innerem der Erkenntnis die Ideen aufleuchten, mit denen zuerst die schaffende Geistigkeit den Weltleib wirkte. Wie verzaubert ruht in der gegenwärtigen Natur der einst in ihr lebendig-wirksame Geist; in der Menschenseele wird er entzaubert. (Diese Darstellung des Verhältnisses Schellings zur Natur ist gewiß nicht nur keine wörtliche, sondern nicht einmal eine solche in Vorstellungen, die Schelling selbst gebraucht hat. Doch bin ich der Ansicht, daß man in solcher Kürze treu nur dann wiedergeben kann, wenn man den Geist einer Anschauung ins Auge faßt, und, um ihn auszudrücken, Vorstellungen gebraucht, die in freier Art sich ergeben, um in wenigen Worten zu sagen, was die Persönlichkeit, von der man spricht, in einer Reihe ausführlicher Werke ausgesprochen hat. Die eigenen Worte dieser Persönlichkeit können, zu diesem Ziel gebraucht, deren Geist nur entstellen.)
[ 5 ] Mit einer solchen Art, sich zu dem «Geiste der Natur»und zu dessen Verhältnis zum Menschengeiste zu stellen, empfand sich Schelling vor der Notwendigkeit, eine Anschauung auch nun darüber zu gewinnen, wie dasjenige in der Welt aufzufassen ist, das störend in den Gang der Weltereignisse eingreift. Indem die Seele sich an die allwaltende Ideenwelt hingibt, wird sie deren fortschreitendes Schaffen erkennend erleben. Doch drängt sich, wie von einer anderen Seite des Weltdaseins, die Störung, das Übel, das Böse an die Seele heran. In dieses Feld kommt die erkennende Seele mit der Ideenwelt zunächst nicht hinein; es grenzt an sie wie der Schatten an das Licht. Wie das Licht nicht im Schattenraume anwesend sein kann, so auch nicht die im ersten Erkenntnisanlauf von der Seele unternommenen Tätigkeiten im Reiche der Störungen, des Übels, des Bösen. Im Suchen nach einer Möglichkeit, in dieses Gebiet einzudringen, fand Schelling Anregung durch diejenige Persönlichkeit, die aus dem einfachsten deutschen Volksempfinden heraus die Lösung hoher Welträtsel versucht hat: durch Jakob Böhme. Gewiß, Jakob Böhme hat über Weltanschauungsfragen viel gelesen und auch auf andere Art durch die Bildungswege viel aufgenommen, die sich dem einfachen Volksmanne in der deutschen Entwickelung des sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhunderts boten; das Beste aber, das in Jakob Böhmes Schriften auf so ungelehrte Art pulsiert, ist volkstümlicher Erkenntnisweg, ist ein Ergebnis des Volksgemütes selber. Und Schelling hat heraufgehoben in die Art der denkerischen Betrachtung, was dieses Volksgemüt in Jakob Böhmes ungelehrter, aber erleuchteter Seele erschaut hat. Es gehört zu den herrlichsten Beobachtungen, die man in der Weltliteratur machen kann, Jakob Böhmes elementarische Gemütsanschauung durch die philosophische Sprache in Schellings Abhandlung «Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit» leuchten zu sehen. In dieser elementarischen Gemütsanschauung waltet die tiefsinnige Einsicht, daß niemand zu einer befriedigenden Weltanschauung kommen kann, der auf seinem Erkenntniswege nur die Mittel des denkenden Begreifens mitnimmt. In den Umkreis dessen, was denkendes Begreifen ist, schlägt aus den Weltentiefen etwas herein, das umfassender, mächtiger ist als dieses denkende Begreifen. Doch nicht mächtiger, als was die Seele in sich erleben kann, wenn ihr das denkende Begreifen nur als Glied ihres eigenen Wesens erscheint. Will man etwas begreifen, so muß man verstehen, wie es notwendig mit einem andern zusammenhängt. Die Dinge der Welt hängen aber wohl an ihrer Oberfläche, doch nicht im tiefsten Grunde ihres Wesens notwendig zusammen. In der Welt waltet Freiheit. Und nur der begreift die Welt, der in dem notwendigen Gange der Naturgesetze das Walten freier übersinnlicher Geistigkeit schaut. Die Freiheit als Tatsache kann immer mit logischen Gründen widerlegt werden. Wer das durchschaut, auf den macht keine Widerlegung der Freiheitsidee einen Eindruck. - Die urgesunde Erkenntnisart Jakob Böhmes, seine ursprüngliche volkssinngemäße Gemütserkenntnis schaute die Freiheit als durchwebend und durchwirkend alle Notwendigkeit, auch die naturgemäße. Und Schelling, von einer geistgemäßen Naturanschauung aufsteigend zur Geistesanschauung, fühlte sich im Einklang mit Jakob Böhme.
[ 6 ] Und damit war ihm der Weg gegeben, die geschichtliche Entwickelung des Geisteslebens der Menschheit in seiner Art zu erschauen. Als das größte Erdenereignis stellte sich ihm die Tat des Christus in diese Entwickelung hinein. Was vor dieser Tat liegt, suchte er durch seine «Philosophie der Mythologie» zu verstehen. Wer da meint, in der Geschichte offenbaren sich nur Ideen, deren eine aus der anderen folgt, der versteht den Weltengang nicht. Denn mit Freiheit greift übersinnliche Wesenheit von Stufe zu Stufe in diesen Gang ein; und was die Freiheit auf einer Folgestufe vollbringt, das kann nur als eine dem Gemüt sich enthüllende Tatsache angeschaut, nicht durch logische Ideenentwickelung als notwendige Folge erdacht werden. Und als ganz freie Tatsache, als von Ideen nicht zu beleuchtende, sondern alle Ideenwelt überleuchtende Offenbarung muß das hingenommen werden, was übersinnliche Welten in der Erdenentwickelung durch Christus haben einfließen lassen. Von dieser seiner Weltauffassung will Schelling in seiner «Philosophie der Offenbarung» sprechen. - Es ist gewiß, daß gegen solche Vorstellungsart leicht der «Widerspruch» aufgewiesen werden kann, in den sie sich verstrickt. Und dieser «Widerspruch» ist Schelling auch in allen möglichen gut- und bösgemeinten Formen entgegengehalten worden. Allein, wer diesen «Widerspruch» aufbringt, der zeigt nur, daß er das Walten der freien Geistigkeit im Laufe des notwendig erscheinenden Weltenlaufes nicht anerkennen will. Schelling wollte das Wirken der Naturnotwendigkeit nicht leugnen; aber er wollte zeigen, wie auch diese Notwendigkeit eine Tat der Geistigkeit ist, die mit Freiheit die Welt durchwirkt. Und er wollte nicht etwa auf das Begreifen verzichten, weil der erste Anlauf dieses Begreifens an der Grenze der Weltenfreiheit zerschellt; er wollte zu einem Begreifen dessen aufsteigen, was die allwaltende Ideenwelt nicht in sich selber hat, aber aufnehmen kann. Die Ideen, welche die Welt erkennen wollen, brauchen nicht abzudanken, weil bloß denkendes Begreifen nicht zur Erkenntnis des Lebens ausreicht. Man braucht nicht zu sagen: weil die Ideen nicht in die Weltentiefen mit dem dringen, was zunächst in ihrem eigenen Wesen liegt, deshalb kann die Tiefe der Welt nicht erkannt werden. Nein, wenn die Ideen sich diesen Tiefen ergeben und durchdrungen werden von dem, was sie nicht in sich haben, dann tauchen sie aus Weltengründen auf, neugeboren, vom Wesen des «Geistes der Welt» durchweht. Zu solcher Weltanschauung hat es im neunzehnten Jahrhundert das in Schellings Philosophengeist fortwirkende deutsche Volksgemüt des Görlitzer Schusters Jakob Böhme aus dem siebzehnten Jahrhundert gebracht.
Idealism as a view of nature and spirit: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
[ 1 ] Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was close to Fichte at the beginning of his search for a world view insofar as the idea of the soul, which grasps itself in the activity of self-awareness as in the certainty of its existence, also became the secure support of his knowledge. However, different thoughts radiate from this basic feeling in Schelling's mind than in Fichte's. For the latter, the comprehensive will of the world shines into the awakening soul as a spiritual kingdom of light; and he wants to recognize the rays of this light in their essence. For Schelling, the enigma of the world is formed by the fact that he sees himself, with the soul awakened to the "I", confronted with seemingly mute, dead nature. The soul awakens out of this nature. This reveals itself to human observation. And the cognizing, feeling human spirit immerses itself in this nature and through it fills itself with an inner world, which then becomes spiritual life in it. Could this be so if there were not a deep inner relationship between the soul and nature that is initially hidden from human cognition? But nature remains mute if the soul does not make itself its instrument of speech; it seems dead if the spirit of man does not disenchant life from appearance. The secrets of nature must emerge from the depths of the human soul. But if this is not to be a deception, it must be the essence of nature itself that speaks from the soul. And it must be true that the soul only appears to descend into its own depths when it recognizes nature; in reality, it must walk through subconscious corridors in order to immerse itself in the cycle of nature's weaving with its own life if it wants to find nature.
[ 2 ] Schelling sees in nature, as it presents itself to ordinary human consciousness, to a certain extent only a physiognomic expression of true nature, just as one sees in a human face the expression of the supersensible soul. And just as through this physiognomic expression one lives into the soul of man, if one is able to absorb into one's own experience the experience of the other, so for Schelling there is a possibility of awakening the cognitive faculties of man in such a way that they experience in themselves what weaves and works soulfully and spiritually behind the outer face of nature. Neither can the science of this outer face be taken for a revelation of what lives in the depths of nature; nor is man's cognitive power, which exhausts itself in such science, capable of unlocking nature's true secrets. Schelling therefore wants to awaken in the human soul an intellectual view that lies behind the ordinary human power of cognition. This way of seeing reveals itself - in Schelling's sense - as a creative power in man; but in such a way that it does not create concepts about nature out of the soul, but rather, through intimate coexistence with the soulfulness of nature, brings to manifestation the powers of ideas that are creative in nature. Fearful minds tremble at the thought of a view of nature that is supposed to stem from such an "intellectual view". And the ridicule and scorn poured on it in the period following Schelling's was great. For a person who knows how to avoid one-sidedness in these matters, there is no need to be ambivalent: either to indulge in the "reveries of natural fantasy of the kind of Schelling" and accuse proper, serious natural research of "coarse materialism"; or to take a level-headed stand on the point of view of this research and "dismiss all Schellingian conceptual playfulness as childishness". One can be unreservedly among those who want to give full validity to natural research as demanded by the latest "scientific age"; and yet one can understand the justification of Schelling's attempt to create a view of nature beyond this natural research, which enters the field that this natural research will not want to touch at all if it understands itself correctly. The only unjustified belief is that in addition to the natural science to be created with the ordinary human powers of cognition, there should not be a view of nature obtained by other means than are proper to this natural science as such. Why should the natural scientist have to believe that his field is only unthreatened if everyone striving from other points of view is silenced alongside him? Anyone who does not allow his mind to be blinded by "scientific fanaticism" in these matters will find the often so bitter rejection of a spiritual view of nature, as Schelling strove for, no different from a lover of photography saying: I take exact pictures of people that reproduce everything about them: don't compare this fidelity to nature with the portrait of a painter.
[ 3 ] With the awakened spiritual view, Schelling wanted to find the "spirit of nature", which has its mere physiognomic expression not only in sensory perception, but also in what is called the laws of nature. It is significant to imagine what a powerful impression he made with such a quest on those of his contemporaries who had an open mind for the way in which this quest burst forth from his spiritually illuminated, powerful personality. There is a description given by an amiable and spiritual thinker, Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert, of the impressions he received from Schelling's work in Jena. "What was it," Schubert wrote, "that drew both young and mature men from far and near so powerfully to Schelling's lectures? Was it only the man's personality or the peculiar charm of his oral presentation that had this attractive power? ... It was not that alone... There was, however, an engaging power in his lively words, which no young soul was able to resist where it only touched a few receptive ears. It would be difficult to explain to a reader of our time" (Schubert wrote in 1854 what he had experienced with Schelling in the nineties of the eighteenth century), "who, like me, was not a youthful, participatory listener, how, when Schelling spoke to us, I often felt as if I were reading or listening to Dante, the seer of an otherworldly world open only to the consecrated eye. The powerful content of his speech, measured out in lapidary style with mathematical acuity, seemed to me like a bound Prometheus, whose bonds it is the task of the understanding spirit to loosen and from whose hand to receive the inextinguishable fire... But neither the personality nor the invigorating power of the oral communication alone could be the reason why Schelling's world view, as soon as it became publicly known through his writings, aroused such interest and excitement for or against its direction as no other literary phenomenon of a similar kind has been able to do before or since. Where it is a question of things perceptible to the senses or natural phenomena, one will immediately notice whether a teacher or writer is speaking from his own observation and experience, or merely from what he has heard from others, or even from his own self-made imagination... It is the same with inner experience as with outer experience. There is a reality of a higher kind, the being of which the cognizing spirit in us can experience with the same certainty and assurance as our body experiences the being of external visible nature through its senses. This, the reality of bodily things, presents itself to our perceiving senses as an act of the same creating power through which our bodily nature also came into being. The existence of visibility is a real fact in the same way as the existence of the perceiving sense. The reality of the higher species has also approached the cognizing spirit in us as a spiritual-bodily fact; it will become aware of it when its own cognition rises to a recognition of that from which it is cognized and from which the reality of bodily as well as spiritual becoming emerges according to the same order. And this realization of a spiritual, divine reality, in which we ourselves live, weave and are, is the highest gain of life on earth and the search for wisdom... Even in my time, among the young men who heard him, there were those who suspected what he meant by the intellectual contemplation through which our spirit must grasp the infinite source of all being and becoming."
[ 4 ] Schelling sought spirit in nature through intellectual contemplation. The spiritual that made nature sprout from the power of his creativity. This nature was once the living body of this spiritual being, just as the human body is that of the soul. Now it spreads out, this body of the world spirit, revealing in its features that which the spiritual once incorporated into it, showing in its becoming and weaving the gestures that represent the effects of the spiritual. This working of the spirit in the world body had to precede the present state of the world, so that it hardened and gave birth to a bone system in the mineral kingdom, a nervous system in the plant kingdom, and a soul precursor of man in the animal kingdom. Thus the world body was introduced from its youth into its old age; the present mineral, plant and animal kingdoms are the hardened products, so to speak, of what was once accomplished spiritually and physically in a becoming that has now expired. From the womb of the old body of the world, however, the creating spirituality was able to give rise to the soul-spirit endowed human being, in whose inner being of cognition the ideas light up with which the creating spirituality first worked the world body. As if enchanted, the spirit that was once alive and active in nature rests in the present nature; in the human soul it is disenchanted. (This description of Schelling's relationship to nature is certainly not only not a literal one, but not even one based on ideas that Schelling himself used. But I am of the opinion that one can only render it faithfully in such brevity if one grasps the spirit of a view and, in order to express it, uses ideas that arise freely in order to say in a few words what the personality of whom one speaks has expressed in a series of detailed works. The personality's own words, used for this purpose, can only distort their spirit.)
[ 5 ] With such a way of approaching the "spirit of nature" and its relationship to the human spirit, Schelling felt himself faced with the necessity of gaining an understanding of how that in the world which interferes with the course of world events is to be understood. By surrendering itself to the omnipotent world of ideas, the soul will experience its progressive creation in a recognizing way. But the disturbance, the evil, the evil pushes towards the soul, as if from another side of world existence. At first, the cognizing soul cannot enter this field with the world of ideas; it borders on it like the shadow on the light. Just as the light cannot be present in the shadow space, neither can the activities undertaken by the soul in the realm of disturbances, evil, and evil in the first attempt at cognition. In his search for a way to penetrate this realm, Schelling found inspiration in the personality who, from the simplest German folk sensibility, attempted to solve high world riddles: Jakob Böhme. Certainly, Jakob Böhme read a great deal about worldview issues and also absorbed much in other ways through the educational paths that were offered to the simple man of the people in the German development of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but the best that pulsates in Jakob Böhme's writings in such an unlearned way is a popular path of knowledge, is a result of the popular mind itself. And Schelling has lifted up into the realm of intellectual contemplation what this popular mind has seen in Jakob Böhme's unlearned but enlightened soul. It is one of the most marvelous observations one can make in world literature to see Jakob Böhme's elementary view of the mind illuminated by the philosophical language of Schelling's treatise "On the Essence of Human Freedom". In this elementary view of the mind there is the profound insight that no one can arrive at a satisfactory view of the world who only takes the means of thinking comprehension with him on his path of knowledge. Something beats in from the depths of the world into the sphere of what is thinking comprehension that is more comprehensive, more powerful than this thinking comprehension. But not more powerful than what the soul can experience within itself when thinking comprehension appears to it only as a member of its own being. If one wants to comprehend something, one must understand how it is necessarily connected with another. The things of the world, however, are necessarily connected on their surface, but not at the deepest level of their essence. Freedom reigns in the world. And only he understands the world who sees in the necessary course of the laws of nature the rule of free supersensible spirituality. Freedom as a fact can always be refuted on logical grounds. No refutation of the idea of freedom makes any impression on anyone who understands this. - Jakob Böhme's original, healthy way of cognition, his original, folk-sensual knowledge of the mind, saw freedom as permeating and working through all necessity, including natural necessity. And Schelling, ascending from a spiritual view of nature to a spiritual view, felt in harmony with Jakob Böhme.
[ 6 ] And this paved the way for him to see the historical development of humanity's spiritual life in its own way. The deed of Christ presented itself to him as the greatest earthly event in this development. He sought to understand what lay before this act through his "Philosophy of Mythology". Anyone who thinks that history only reveals ideas, one of which follows from the other, does not understand the course of the world. For with freedom supersensible essence intervenes from stage to stage in this course; and what freedom accomplishes at a subsequent stage can only be seen as a fact revealing itself to the mind, not conceived as a necessary sequence through the logical development of ideas. And as a completely free fact, as a revelation not to be illuminated by ideas, but which illuminates all the world of ideas, we must accept what supersensible worlds have allowed to flow into the development of the earth through Christ. Schelling wants to speak of this conception of the world in his "Philosophy of Revelation". - It is certain that the "contradiction" in which it becomes entangled can easily be pointed out against such a conception. And this "contradiction" has also been held against Schelling in all kinds of well-meaning and ill-meaning forms. But whoever brings up this "contradiction" only shows that he does not want to recognize the reign of free spirituality in the course of the seemingly necessary course of the world. Schelling did not want to deny the working of natural necessity; but he wanted to show how this necessity is also an act of spirituality that works through the world with freedom. And he did not want to renounce comprehension because the first attempt at this comprehension shatters at the limit of the freedom of the world; he wanted to ascend to a comprehension of what the omnipotent world of ideas does not have in itself, but can take in. The ideas that want to recognize the world need not abdicate, because mere thinking comprehension is not sufficient for the knowledge of life. There is no need to say: because ideas do not penetrate into the depths of the world with that which initially lies in their own being, therefore the depths of the world cannot be recognized. No, when the ideas surrender to these depths and are permeated by that which they do not have within themselves, then they emerge from the depths of the world, reborn, permeated by the essence of the "spirit of the world". In the nineteenth century, the German folk spirit of the seventeenth-century shoemaker Jakob Böhme from Görlitz, who continued to work in Schelling's philosophical spirit, achieved such a world view.