Identity-Monism or the Dark Night of the Absolute?

Schelling’s System of Identity in the 1801 Presentation

Abstract

The year 1801 marked an important year for Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling’s (1775-1854) philosophical thought. It saw the publication of Schelling’s Presentation of My System of Philosophy which would stand as the marker of a new era of idealism, that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) would coin as objective idealism. The 1801 Presentation represents a clear shift away from Schelling’s seminal System of Transcendental Idealism; and the official beginning of Schelling’s own Identity Philosophy which occurred through several major works from 1801 to 1806. The Presentation also characterizes a decisive genesis in Schelling’s mature metaphysics of identity. The metaphysics of identity’s central aim was to capture the concept of absolute identity realized as the totality of the cosmos. Using Spinoza’s (1632-1677) Ethics as his guide and model, Schelling revealed a meticulous systematic philosophy that offered distinct propositions and definitions, each following one another to develop an elaborate organic whole.

However, the works that makeup Schelling’s identity philosophy would receive a series of philosophical backlashes from several of his interlocuters, which included: Karl August von Eschenmayer (1768-1852), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This criticism would reach forward into the contemporary scholarship. The accusations made against Schelling were directed at his monistic system and surrounded his conception of the absolute. According to Schelling’s critics, his systematic concept of the absolute swallowed reality into a homogenous whole leaving no room for philosophical difference. These erroneous accusations would have several implications which would cast a long shadow on Schelling’s identity philosophy with the infamous remarks describing Schelling’s project eclipsed in the dark night of the absolute.

The following paper is divided in two main parts. The first, will evaluate the historical context and philosophical importance behind the structure of Schelling’s 1801 Presentation. The second, will addresses Schelling’s numerous critics and attempt to explicate the essence behind Schelling’s metaphysics of identity. This paper will thus conclude by showing how difference plays an integral part for Schelling, as the realm of finitude, and the ground of all phenomena. These important parts of the whole system are connected in a subterranean like fashion in primordial identity. Thus, grounding Schelling’s own novel, philosophical creation, an identity-monism.