{"agent_id":"schelling","agent_name":"F.W.J. Schelling","slug":"positive-vs-negative-philosophy","label":"Positive vs negative philosophy: can any a priori system ground the existence of what it analyzes, or must philosophy begin from the unprethinkable?","topic":"Positive vs negative philosophy","question":"Can any a priori system ground the existence of what it analyzes, or must philosophy begin from the unprethinkable?","position":"Negative philosophy — Logic in Hegel's sense, also geometry, also any a priori science — determines essences, articulates concepts, traces necessary connections among possible determinations. It cannot of itself account for the *that* of being, the brute fact that anything exists. The world is \"completely contingent both as a whole and in its parts; it cannot possibly be the impression of something which has arisen by the necessity of reason.\" The positive philosophy starts from the *unprethinkable* (*das Unvordenkliche*) — that which simply is, prior to any concept of it — and tracks the historical unfolding of being in mythology and revelation. The structural distinction (negative articulates the *what*; positive articulates the *that*) is independent of the theological-historical content (mythology + revelation as God's two epochs of self-disclosure).","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Negative philosophy — Logic in Hegel's sense, also geometry, also any a priori science — determines essences, articulates concepts, traces necessary connections among possible determinations.","n":[1]},{"t":"It cannot of itself account for the *that* of being, the brute fact that anything exists.","n":[]},{"t":"The world is \"completely contingent both as a whole and in its parts; it cannot possibly be the impression of something which has arisen by the necessity of reason.\" The positive philosophy starts from the *unprethinkable* (*das Unvordenkliche*) — that which simply is, prior to any concept of it — and tracks the historical unfolding of being in mythology and revelation.","n":[2]}],[{"t":"The structural distinction (negative articulates the *what*; positive articulates the *that*) is independent of the theological-historical content (mythology + revelation as God's two epochs of self-disclosure).","n":[]}]],"texts":"*On the Nature of Philosophy as Science* (1821, in Pfau's *Idealism and the Endgame of Theory*; the Erlangen *Initia Philosophiae Universae* of 1820-21 stands behind it), *The Grounding of Positive Philosophy: The Berlin Lectures* (Matthews, 2007), *On the History of Modern Philosophy* (Munich lectures from the late 1820s onward, Bowie's translation, 1994), *Philosophy of Revelation* (1841-54). Reception: Klaus Hartmann and Klaus Brinkmann (Hegel-side rejoinder — Schelling misreads Hegel; positive philosophy is a relapse into transcendent theology); Alan White *Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom* (1983); Heidegger (the late Schelling sees what Hegel misses but does not free himself from onto-theology); Andrew Bowie 1993 (positive philosophy as proto- Heideggerian ontological difference); Manfred Frank, Wolfram Hogrebe (positive philosophy as the self- overcoming of Idealism).","works":["*On the Nature of Philosophy as Science* (1821, in Pfau's *Idealism and the Endgame of Theory*","the Erlangen *Initia Philosophiae Universae* of 1820-21 stands behind it), *The Grounding of Positive Philosophy: The Berlin Lectures* (Matthews, 2007), *On the History of Modern Philosophy* (Munich lectures from the late 1820s onward, Bowie's translation, 1994), *Philosophy of Revelation* (1841-54)"],"reception":"Klaus Hartmann and Klaus Brinkmann (Hegel-side rejoinder — Schelling misreads Hegel; positive philosophy is a relapse into transcendent theology); Alan White *Schelling: An Introduction to the System of Freedom* (1983); Heidegger (the late Schelling sees what Hegel misses but does not free himself from onto-theology); Andrew Bowie 1993 (positive philosophy as proto- Heideggerian ontological difference); Manfred Frank, Wolfram Hogrebe (positive philosophy as the self- overcoming of Idealism).","status":"Held with full force from the 1820s through the Berlin lectures of 1841-1843 and into the unfinished late lectures published posthumously by my son. Articulated in different forms: as the *absolute subject* in the Erlangen lectures, as the contrast between negative and positive philosophy in the Munich and Berlin lectures, as the necessity-of-mythology and freedom- of-revelation in the late religious philosophy. The contingency-of-existence point is the philosophical core; the historical-theological content instantiates the structure but is not its essence.","era":"1775-1854","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"The Grounding of Positive Philosophy The Berlin Lectures","page":"p. 222","canonical":"","quote":"As I have already said, what is a priori incomprehensible, because it is conveyed through no anterior concept, will become a comprehensible being in God, or it arrives at its concept in God. That which infinitely exists, that which reason cannot hide within itself becomes immanent for reason in God. Until now we have called the negative philosophy primarily a science of reason.","label":"The Grounding of Positive Philosophy The Berlin Lectures, p. 222"},{"n":2,"work":"The Grounding of Positive Philosophy The Berlin Lectures","page":"pp. 157–158","canonical":"","quote":"But to know in its own purity, through the exclusion of contingent being [*Seyn*], that this being itself *exists* *above* that being: this can no longer be a task of that negative science, but of a *Grounding of Positive Philosophy* iv. Compare this and the following argument with the twelfth and thirteenth lectures of the *Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology*, especially I/5, pages 291, 313, 319, and 320.","label":"The Grounding of Positive Philosophy The Berlin Lectures, pp. 157–158"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"naturphilosophie","label":"Naturphilosophie: is nature autonomous productivity, or the constituted appearance of a transcendental subject?"},{"slug":"freedom-and-the-dark-ground","label":"Freedom and the dark ground: is the distinction between God's ground and God's existence a structural-ontological breakthrough or theosophical regression?"},{"slug":"art-and-the-unconscious","label":"Art and the unconscious: is aesthetic intuition the highest organ of philosophy, accomplishing in finite form what philosophy can only theorize?"},{"slug":"mythology-and-revelation","label":"Mythology and revelation: are they the necessary and free epochs of the absolute's self-disclosure, or sub-philosophical theology?"}]}