What is Schelling point?

F.W.J. Schelling, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

F.W.J. Schelling answers

The question, taken literally, has a precise answer: the Indifferenzpunkt, the absolute point of identity, is the structural ground from which all differentiation proceeds without itself being any particular differentiation. Philosophy, as I articulate it, has in all its objects only one object.1 Every particular domain — nature, history, art — is a genuine object of philosophy only insofar as it takes up the entire, undivided absolute within itself.2

The absolute point of identity is not one Potenz among others; precisely because no individual potency inheres within it, all potencies are contained within it.3 This is not a paradox to be dissolved but the structural form of the ground itself. The absolute identity I defend is original and primary — not a result, not a synthesis of sublated opposites.4

Fichte attempted to ground consciousness in just such a synthetic unity of self and not-self, and the Wissenschaftslehre never found a stable ground for that synthesis. My starting point is prior to the opposition: an intrinsic identity of opposites before any distinction of opposites one from another.5 From this absolute identity, duality arises not as an external negation but as a self-division of the undivided absoluteness into subject and object — a movement that generates the three Potenzen: relative identity, relative difference, and the identity of identity and difference, with the third being in fact primary.6

What Indifferenz names here carries no psychological sense of apathy or indifference in the ordinary meaning. It is the ultimate non-difference, the togetherness of irreducibly different aspects of one and the same thing.7 The relation of a coin's two faces is the simplest natural image for it: neither face is the coin, yet the coin is nothing apart from both.

The deepest task — and this is what distinguishes genuine philosophy from mere dialectical machinery — is not merely to discover the point of union between opposites, but to develop the elements out of that point of union.8 That development is what the Potenzen accomplish: not a fall from unity into difference, but the absolute's own articulation of itself in successively richer structural forms, each of which is a complete reflex of the whole.9

Sources

  1. Philosophy has in all its objects only one object, and is for just that reason itself only one.
    The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
  2. We know nothing in philosophy as absolute. Rather, we always know only the absolutely one or absolute unity, and this absolutely one only in particular forms.
    The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
  3. Within the absolute as such—and hence also within the principle of philosophy, since it encompasses all potences—there inheres no individual potence; by the same token, only to the extent that no individual potence inheres within it, are all contained within it.
    The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
  4. Schelling is emphatic on the point that this absolute identity is original and primary, not a result, not a synthesis of sublated opposites.
    Bruno or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, pp. 41–42
  5. This is the idea of absolute identity, an intrinsic identity of opposites prior to any distinction of opposites one from another.
    Bruno or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, pp. 41–42
  6. The first potency is that of relative identity, which involves the transition of unity into difference; the second potency is that of relative difference, which involves the opposite and complementary movement of difference into unity; and both these potencies are encompassed by a third potency of absolute identity, which is the identity of identity and difference. Schelling insists, however, that this third potency, of absolute identity, is in fact primary.
    Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, pp. 21–22
  7. Indifference is the ultimate nondifference or togetherness of irreducibly different aspects of one and the same thing. The relation between object and mirror image or that of the two sides of a coin provides the simplest example of indifference.
    Bruno or On the Natural and the Divine Principle of Things, pp. 119–120
  8. To discover their point of union is not the greatest task, but to do this and then develop elements out of their point of union, this is the genuine and deepest secret of art.
    Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, pp. 21–22
  9. Each is a genuine part of the whole only to the extent that it is the complete reflex of the whole and completely takes it up into itself.
    The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73