What is the point of indifference?

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

F.W.J. Schelling answers

The Indifferenzpunkt — the point of indifference — is not an absence of determination but the structural ground from which all determination proceeds. Let me be precise about what this means, because the misreading is so common and so consequential. Indifference is not a featureless undifferentiated unity, not the erasure of all opposition into a blank sameness.

It is, just as the word itself sounds, a point between opposites where they stand in balance, where they are, as it were, indifferent the one to the other.¹ Hegel's famous jibe — the night in which all cows are black — mistakes this for a collapse into pure undifferentiated identity.² That is a caricature. The point of indifference is not the overcoming of opposition but the structural site from which opposition first becomes possible.

The deeper formulation runs like this: indifference is its own being, separate from all opposition, against which all opposites ruin themselves.³ It has no predicate except as the very lacking of a predicate — not because it is a nothingness, but because it precedes the differentiation that predicates require. This is why I locate it in the Ungrund, the non-ground that precedes any ground: posit the non-ground, and you have neither good nor evil, neither real nor ideal as opposites; posit either principle, and you have already left indifference behind and entered duality.⁴

But here is what the critics always miss: duality itself — the actual two-ness of principles — breaks forth from the Neither-Nor, from indifference itself, so that without a non-ground there would be no two-ness of principles at all.⁵ Indifference does not abolish the distinction; it posits and confirms it. In the Philosophy of Art I put the same point in terms of potencies.

Within the absolute as such no individual Potenz inheres, yet precisely for that reason all are contained within it.⁶ The absolute point of identity is not equal to any particular potence, and yet it encompasses them all — which is why I call it the Indifferenzpunkt of philosophy.⁷ Each particular unity, each potence, necessarily contains within itself all potences, because the indifference-point inheres within every particular unity in its own turn.⁸

The whole is present in each part, not as an external addition but as the structural condition of the part's being what it is — the same logic one finds in every organic being and every genuine poetic work, where each element is both subservient to the whole and absolute in itself.⁹ The simplest image I have offered is the relation of object to mirror image, or the two sides of a coin: irreducibly different aspects of one and the same thing, held in a togetherness that is neither their fusion nor their mere juxtaposition.¹⁰

That is indifference — the ultimate non-difference of what remains genuinely distinct. And the divine case is the limit: in God, what stands in this relation are not things that need to be connected but things each of which could exist for itself and yet does not exist without the other.¹¹ That is the structure of eternal love, and it is also the structure of the absolute — which is why the Indifferenzpunkt is not a logical abstraction but the living ground of being itself.

Sources

it is a point of indifference between oppositions where they are in balance, where they are indifferent the one to the other
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 205–206
Schelling's conception of indifference is not to be confused with the Hegelian caricature. Indifference is not in fact an absence of difference, a complete surrender to a pure and, thus, unknowable (at least for a finite mind) plenitude, it is not an overcoming of opposition in pure identity
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 205–206
indifference is its own being separate from all opposition, a being against which all opposites ruin themselves, that is nothing else than their very not-Being
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 105–106
they posit indifference actually in the non-ground that precedes any ground; thus they have neither good nor evil
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 105–106
Duality breaks forth therefore immediately from the Neither-Nor, or indifference, and without indifference, that is, without a non-ground, there would be no two-ness of principles. Therefore, instead of abolishing this distinction once again, as was thought, the non-ground rather posits and confirms it.
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 105–106
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
Precisely for this reason, precisely because it is not equal to any particular or individual potence and yet encompasses them all, I call this principle the absolute point of identity of philosophy.
The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
This point of indifference, precisely because it is such a point and because it is absolutely one, inseparable and indivisible, inheres necessarily in its own turn within every particular unity (also called potence).
The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
This is precisely that peculiar union of the particular and the universal that we find in every organic being as well as in every poetic work. In the latter, for example, each of various elements or forms is a part subservient to the whole and yet from the perspective of the overall construction of the work is absolute in itself.
The Philosophy of Art, pp. 72–73
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
The difference between a divine identity and a merely finite one is that, in the former, it is not things which are opposed but need to be connected that are connected but such of which each could exist for itself but yet does not exist without another.
Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, pp. 205–206