On the History of Modern Philosophy.

Simpson, Peter

Schelling, F. W. J. von. Translated by Andrew Bowie. Cambridge University Press, 1994. xi + 195 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $17.95--Andrew Bowie's translation of On the History of Modern Philosophy, which works from the accepted German edition of & Schelling's lectures delivered at the University of Munich during the 1830s, presents one of the more complex figures in the history of philosophy in an appropriately complex struggle to define his place in modern thought. Although Bowie contends that the lectures make accessible the later period of Schelling's work, Schelling's readings are typically informed and accompanied by densely-argued claims about the nature of immediacy, originality, and the absolute. Bowie's introductory essay works hard to prepare the reader, organizing Schelling's thought historically, thematically, and chronologically, but there is a lot of ground to cover.

The first section of the lectures, devoted primarily to a reading of Descartes's Meditations, is illustrative of Schelling's method. The section begins with an intriguing claim about the cogito argument: Schelling suggests that Descartes's argument is thoroughly empirical, and that all he can conclude is that "I am now thinking." As such, the conclusion amounts to saying no more than that I have some kind of being or another, which is equally true of the various aspects of his experience he has already doubted--his body, for example--since "being doubtable" is as much a kind of being as "being thinking." The key to this reading is revealed some pages later in the same section, when Schelling turns to a discussion of the nature of being. On his account, being is both (1) originally or absolutely unqualified and (2) predicated by, or as, thought. Since Descartes begins with a being that is predicated--his own thinking being--he begins with a conditioned or derivative principle, which will not do the work he wants it to.

Schelling then extends his "ontological difference" to disrupt Descartes's use of the so-called ontological argument. Since original being is unqualified, it cannot relate to itself freely or negatively. It is purely positive. So, the qualified reality that emerges from it is neither its work or creation nor an expression of its freedom or life. The necessary being uncovered by the ontological argumentthen, is really the absolute being necessary because presupposed by all predication, and it looks nothing like the God Descartes describes. It is "blindly existing," "absolutely unfree," and "dead" (pp. 54-6). Schelling notes thatis same lifelessness resurfaces in Descartes's work as matter, the extended thing "completely devoid of spirit" (p. 58) but now reduced from founding principle to an object subordinate to mind.

It is precisely this reversal of the originality of thought and being that animates the remaining sections, which take up Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff; Kant, Fichte, and Schelling's own System of Transcendental Idealism; Naturphilosophie; Hegel; and Jacobi and Theosophy. The lectures conclude with an odd piece called "On National Differences in Philosophy," and include occasional supplements from manuscripts dating back to the 1820s. There is obviously much to be said of each of these sections; Schelling's detailed and often violently ambivalent readings of Spinoza and Kant, for example, give rise to some fascinating claims. Overall, On the History of Modern Philosophy is a challenging attempt to comprehend modern philosophy, and an intriguing glimpse into the work of a philosopher whose later development as a thinker has evaded translation into English. Bowie's careful and literal-minded treatment of Schelling's thought and difficult prose style should serve as a spur (and as a model) for future Schelling translations.