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BULLETIN OF THE HEGEL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN

Hegel or Schelling?
Alan White

With his translation of Schelling's lectures On the History of Modern Philosophy, Andrew
Bowie makes accessible to the English-speaking public the mature Schelling's informed and
detailed critique of Hegel, a critique assimilated, developed, and broadcast by Feuerbach,
Kierkegaard, and Engels. With his arguments in Schelling and Modern European Philosophy
(hereafter SMEP), Bowie attempts to establish both that Schelling's critique demolishes
Hegel's system, and that Schelling's thought, because of the ways in which it is decisively post-
Hegelian, opens pathways to post-modern thinking that have not been adequately explored by
his chronological successors.
Whether Bowie will, or should, convince contemporary theorists who would like to be
'post-Hegelian' that time spent studying Schelling will be time well repaid is a central question
arising from his book, but not a question that I pursue here. I respond instead, as one whose
defense of Hegel against Schelling Bowie rejects, to the question posed in the last of SMEPs
six chapters: Schelling or Hegel?
As Bowie notes, any compelling evaluation of the debate between Hegel and Schelling
requires an adequate articulation of the positions taken by the two thinkers. With respect to
Schelling, there are two potentially relevant aspects of his position: first, the objections he
raises against Hegel, and second, his own alternative to Hegel. As far as the debate is
concerned, both aspects are superficially straightforward: the critique of Hegel is clearly
organized and expressed, and Schelling's alternative to Hegel is a metaphysical theology.
Looking beneath this surface, however, Bowie seeks to establish (1) that the truly "fatal
problem" revealed by Schelling's critique has not been recognized even by those Hegelians
(Klaus Brinkmann and myself) who have developed "detailed defenses of Hegel against
Schelling" (SMEP, p 128), and (2) that the success of the critique is not dependent upon the
credibility of Schelling's projected theology.1
Hegel, of course, is not straightforward even superficially As Bowie acknowledges,
"versions of Hegelianism flourish in the German- and English-speaking worlds, as well as
elsewhere" (SMEP, p 127). The variety of these versions complicates the evaluation of
Schelling's critique: how many different Hegels would Schelling have to defeat before his
victory should be acknowledged as final? Daunting though this question might appear, it is
not one that deters Bowie because, he asserts, the "fatal problem" exposed by Schelling cannot
be avoided by any version of Hegelianism: "What Hegel means can be interpreted in a
multitude of ways, but all of them, from the theological to the 'categorial' are open to
Schelling's fundamental objection because the notion of reflection, at whatever level, is
inherently problematic" (p 160).

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Despite his insistence that no version of Hegelianism can solve the problem of
reflection, Bowie opts to focus on relatively few forms of one such version, ie, the "non-
metaphysical" or "categorial" option introduced by Klaus Hartmann: "I shall try to show that
Klaus Hartmann, and White and Brinkmann, who rely on Hartmann's position, simply assume
determinations of thought are the reflexive determinations of being, by uncritically relying on
Hegel's conception of the negation of the negation" (p 141).
I confess to having been initially flattered at having been singled out by Bowie, from
among the hordes of Hegelians, as having developed a position that deserves a response; I was
soon disappointed, however, by my failure to find that response. Following his announcement
of what he will "try to show" concerning my defense of Hegel, Bowie mentions that defense
only once (pp 159-60), providing neither quotation nor reference, before reporting, in
conclusion, that the "philosophical tension" leading to the "intellectual bankruptcy" of
"Kojeve's interpretation of Hegel" (this Bowie's sole reference to Kojeve) is a tension that "is
apparent in the defences of Hegel against Schelling, which we saw in Hartmann, White and
Brinkmann" (p 176).
Bowie, then, rejects my defense of Hegel without directly examining it; annoying
though this may be to me personally, however, it may nonetheless be warranted, if indeed my
position is so closely aligned to that of Klaus Hartmann - despite my difference from him on
some basic points of interpretation (see AK pp 167, 177) - as to fall to the same criticisms.
But this, too, Bowie fails to demonstrate, for he cites Hartmann, in the relevant chapter, only
twice.
If these remarks concerning Bowie's citations suggest a disturbing pattern, they do not
mislead in so doing. In the 50-page chapter "Schelling or Hegel?", Schelling is allowed to
speak for himself - he is directly quoted - some 93 times, in addition to having Bowie,
Heidegger (four direct references), and Manfred Frank (ten) speak for him. In shocking
contrast, Hegel speaks for himself only 11 times - for a total of under 300 words - and is
represented and/or defended by a motley assortment of commentators including, in addition to
Hartmann and myself, Brinkmann (who speaks for or about him four times), Rodolphe Gasche
(five), Dieter Henrich (four), and McTaggart and Rolf-Peter Horstmann (once apiece). The
"Hegel" refuted by Bowie's Schelling is thus constituted, for the most part, from Bowie's own
free-floating paraphrases.
What then of Bowie's central charge, ie, that Hegel's defenders are guilty of
"uncritically relying on Hegel's conception of the negation of the negation"? What is this
conception, and what access have we to it? Our access is neither through Hegel nor through
those who have defended him against Schelling; it is, instead, through Dieter Henrich, whom
Bowie thanks for "showing the problem" with the Hegelian negation of negation, as it relates
to immediacy and mediation, "in a seminal essay on 'Hegel's Logic of Reflection'" (p 168).2
That Henrich's interpretation of "autonomous negation" in Hegel has been rejected by a
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number of Hegel's defenders - including myself, in my defense of Hegel from Schelling (AK,
p 166-67) - escapes Bowie's notice, or in any case his acknowledgment.3
Bowie's Schelling-inspired critique of Hegel appears to hinge on his acceptance of
Henrich's interpretation of "negation of negation," and thus to be ineffective against
Hegelianisms that reject Henrich's reading. But this appearance, too, may be misleading
because, Bowie asserts, Manfred Frank radicalizes Henrich's position by establishing (1) that
Henrich is mistaken in believing that there can be a Hegelian solution to the problem of
immediacy and reflection (p 168), and (2) that the problem itself is one that every version of
Hegelianism must confront (p 177).4
What then is this problem that no responsible Hegelian can either avoid or resolve?
Bowie expresses it in a variety of ways (see pp 128, 132, 142, 144, and 149). Lacking the
space to comment on these variants, I instead hazard a paraphrase (aware that Bowie will be
given the opportunity to respond, and relying on him to correct me if I misstate his position).
The central question, as I understand it, concerns the relation of being to thinking Hegel's
position (on my interpretation), and that of what Schelling comes to call "negative
philosophy", is that thinking has and can discover certain of its own characteristics that must
unavoidably come into play if it is to think of anything at all. Kant articulates these
characteristics as forms of intuition on the one hand, and categories of understanding on the
other; Hegel articulates them as "determinations of thought". Henceforth, I refer to these
characteristics, following Bowie (eg. p 136), as "cognitive grounds"
Schelling's position, when he insists that "negative philosophy" must give way to
"positive philosophy", is that being must precede thinking: there can be thinking only if (a)
there is a thinker, and (b) the thinker has something to think about. Because it necessarily
precedes thinking, being - the "real ground" - must be wholly independent of and other to any
thinking or reflection. Given its inaccessibility to thinking or knowing, however, problems
arise for any knowing that, like Hegel's, professes to be "absolute": how can knowing be
absolute if it does not know being? How can it be presuppositionless, if it unavoidably
presupposes a being to which it has, in principle, no access?
The solution to this problem Bowie (following Frank and Henrich) attributes to Hegel
depends upon an equivocation: the "immediacy" of the "being" that is the real ground is
equated with the immediacy of the reflective "essence" that is mediated, but only by itself.
Immediacy is revealed to be self-mediation, affirmation is revealed to be negation of negation,5
so the appearance of an extralogical residue of being disappears without a trace. But this does
not solve the problem, Bowie insists, because the identification of the two immediacies (non-
mediated being and self-mediated thinking) begs the crucial question: we can conclude that
the two immediacies are the same only if we have presupposed, from the beginning, that they
must be the same. And that presupposition cannot be warranted. Hence, Frank's conclusion:
'"Hegel's logic of reflection can only cash in its programme if the internal relationship present
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in reflection can completely take over the role of and replace being's characteristic of absolute
independence from any relationship'" (quoted SMEP p 170).
The question thus becomes whether the only "programme" attributable to Hegel's
"logic of reflection" would require it to take over being's role, ie, the role of functioning as real
rather than cognitive ground. It would have to take over this role if Hegel's were - like
several of Schelling's - a metaphysically constructive system, beginning from an absolute or
infinite being and tracing its emanation into the world with which we are familiar. But what if
Hegel's system is interpreted not as metaphysically constructive, but instead as
transcendentally reconstructive?6 Even then, according to Bowie, it must posit its "absolute
idea" as the real ground; it must do so because of problems of possibility, actuality, and
necessity.
According to Schelling, and with him Bowie, "philosophical reflection can work
independently of experience by presenting what necessarily ensues, given the necessities to
which reflection is led in any articulation of what there is"; reason can, then, articulate the
cognitive ground. But this is not enough; "reason can legislate what must be the case if
something exists, but not whether something really does exist" (p 163). Hence, reason is led
beyond itself to Schelling's "last, despairing question," a question it can neither avoid nor
answer: "if I want to go to the limits of all thought, then I must also recognise that it is possible
that there might be nothing at all. The last question is always: why is there anything at all,
why is there not nothing?" (quoted SMEP pp 163-64)
This is a peculiar passage. The "last question" is not "is there anything at all", but
instead, "why is there anything at all". The latter formulation presupposes recognition that
there is, after all, something or other, but such recognition suggests that the first sentence in
the peculiar passage should read not "there might be nothing," but "there might have been, and
might yet be, nothing". At the moment, however - now as I write and now as you read - at
the moment, it is not possible that there might be nothing at all. At the moment, there is
something or other within my awareness and/or within yours; the question for a transcendental
inquiry is, what are the conditions of the possibility of that awareness?
Bowie, perhaps, will object to the move I attempt to make in the preceding paragraph.
He insists, after all, that "the fact that there is knowledge, reflection, cannot be deduced from
knowledge itself (p 136); to think otherwise is to accept either the Cartesian "I think
therefore I am", or the ontological proof, which warrants the deduction of God's existence
from the idea I have of him. But to make my version of the move from thinking to being is
not, I believe, to posit the existence either of a transcendent God or of the Cartesian I as a
"thing that thinks". In undertaking a transcendental inquiry, I begin not with a necessity, but
with an actuality; I seek the conditions of its possibility not in order to determine whether it is
actual - 1 already know that - but instead in order to discover conditions necessary for its very
possibility, although not necessarily sufficient for its actuality (the metaphysical constructivist
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seeks conditions sufficient for its actuality). Kant asks not whether it is absolutely necessary
that there be experience, human or otherwise; he asks instead about the conditions of
possibility of experience, given the experience that leads him to raise his question. Similarly, a
transcendentally interpreted Hegel asks about the conditions of the possibility of determinate
thinking, given the determinate thinking that leads him to raise his question. That there is such
thinking is neither an unfounded assumption nor a dogmatic presupposition; on the contrary, it
is established by the asking of the question, as a determinate intellectual event: only within a
determinate thinking that is actual can the question of the conditions of possibility of
determinate thinking arise.
Schelling grants consistently and Bowie occasionally that such transcendental inquiry is
possible, and that it is potentially successful; what the two insist most strongly is that it is
inadequate, because it leads to the "despairing question" that it cannot answer. In Bowie's
words, "Given the manifest fact of the world, the attempt to answer the question of why there
is being rather than nothing at all ... becomes inescapable" (SMEP p 112).7 Here, Kant - and
my Hegel - can agree with the assertion, but not with the implications Bowie draws from it.
The "Transcendental Dialectic" of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is devoted precisely
to questions that are presented as "inescapable" because, Kant argues, no exhaustive rational
inquiry can simply ignore them. But this is not to say that any such inquiry, to be adequate,
must either answer them or continue to be plagued by them. The alternative is, so to speak, to
see through them. Consider, for example, the question of the immortality of the soul. "What
will happen to me after I die" is a question no thoughtful human being can avoid raising; it has
also often been taken to be a philosophical question. But it need not be so taken: one
philosophical response to the question is to conclude - as Kant does, in his theoretical
philosophy - that it is not a question of the sort that could be answered or illuminated by
philosophical thinking. It might be, instead, an empirical one: I'll have to wait until I die, and
then, if I'm not simply obliterated, perhaps I'll discover the answer to the question.
This response strikes me as superior to any others of which I am aware. Nevertheless,
confronted with the claim, "You're wrong; my argument will show you exactly what follows
death", I would acknowledge that if the claim could be adequately defended, its answering of
the question would be philosophically superior to my dismissal of it. Similarly, confronted
with Schelling's claim, in his positive philosophy, to have answered the question, "Why is there
anything at all, rather than nothing", I acknowledge that his answer, if defensible, would be
superior to my Hegelian dismissal of the question as meaningless (see AK p 148). But his
failure adequately to answer the question does not prove that the question is one that I should
continue to ask.
"One cannot positively say what being is", Bowie asserts, "but this does not mean that
it disappears from philosophy" (p 136). "One cannot positively say what being is"; one can
say, however, that it - it as pure, unmediated, indeterminate being - is by definition and in
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principle inaccessible to further determination through thought. There is then, perhaps,


nothing more to be said, and the question becomes, what is to be done? The transcendental
Hegelian takes the option described by Ernst Bloch: "if there remain bones that resist the
tooth of the concept, the proudly rational Hegel discards them as worthless rather than
worshiping them as impenetrable". Schelling opts for worship, and although Bowie diverges
from him there, he joins him, it seems to me, in underestimating the persistent power of the
Hegelian tooth.

1 Bowie argues that although Schelling was committed to this theological project, "the
arguments of the later philosophy that need not be couched in theological terms are ...
most in need of re-assessment"; it is these that he sees as "post-modern". The issue of
Schelling's theology is relevant to him only, he asserts, because "the most important
defences of Hegel against Schelling insist on it". He then twice quotes me (Absolute
Knowledge [Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1983] - hereafter AK - p 74, p 99),
but in neither of the passages cited do I assert - as does Klaus Brinkmann, in a passage
said to be "in a similar vein" - that "Schelling's objections [to Hegel] would only be
acceptable if one could opt for the position of the late philosophy', by which he means
the late philosophy in all its theological splendour" (SMEP p 141). I never take the
position Bowie here ascribes to me. AK is structured as follows: I argue first, in Part
One, that Hegel's system survives Schelling's critique only if the system is interpreted
as a transcendental ontology; I do not even suggest that the success of the critique, on
this level, depends on the success of Schelling's theology. I then however raise the
question, in Part Two, whether Hegel's system, so interpreted, fulfills the requirements
of "first philosophy." Schelling argues that it does not, because it leaves unaddressed
certain meaningful questions that can be answered within his "positive philosophy", ie,
his metaphysical theology. At this stage of the argument, the viability of Schelling's
theology does become relevant. If he could answer his fundamental questions (most
famous among them, "Why is there anything at all? Why is there not nothing?"), he
would indeed have advanced beyond Hegel (as I read him). But given his failure to
answer them, my "Hegelian" alternative of dismissing them as meaningless (see below)
remains preferable.
2 Henrich's article is included in Hegel im Kontext (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971).
3 For objections to Henrich other than my own, see Werner Flach, "Zum 'Vorbegriff der
kleinen Logik Hegels," in U Guzzoni, B Rang, and L Siep, eds, Der Idealismus und
seine Gegenwart (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976), p 140 and note 54; David
Lachterman, "Response to Professor Henrich", in Dieter Henrich, ed. Die Wissenschqft
der Logik und die Logik der Reflexion, Hegel-Studien, Beiheft 18 (Bonn: Bouvier,
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1978), pp 325-328; Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Dialectic (Philadelphia: Temple University


Press, 1988), pp 184-85 (notes 25, 34).
Bowie here attributes to Frank's critique a scope broader than that claimed by its
author; Frank acknowledges the dependence of his argument on Henrich's "minute
and - for the investigation of the fundamental operation [Grundoperation] of Hegel's
Logic - trailblazing [bahnbrechenden] analyses" in the article, "Hegel's Logic of
Reflection" (Der unendliche Mangel an Sein [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975], p 41 n5).
I do not have the space to pursue the problem of negation and affirmation in detail, but
I do want to point toward an additional problem with Bowie's account. Having cited
me as one of his predecessors in recognizing the importance, for Schelling, of Kant's
"ideal of pure reason" (SMEP p 102; see AK pp 118-22), Bowie then fails to note my
Hegelian argument that both Kant and Schelling, in discussing the ideal, misconstrue
the relation between negation and affirmation (AK 143-44).
For Kant, the ideal arises as, in Bowie's terms, "a necessary theoretical condition of
predication", or a cognitive ground. Kant recognizes the temptation to transform the
ideal into a real ground - a perfect, highest being or, again in Bowie's terms, "a real
condition of a world of which things can be predicated" - but whereas Kant argues
that this temptation should be avoided, Schelling projects a "metaphysical empiricism"
within which it can be warranted.
One key premise in Kant's construction of the ideal - one accepted by Schelling but
rejected by my Hegel - is that, in Bowie's terms, "any concept ... must, as a
determinate concept, be able to be characterized by one or other of two contradictorily
opposed predicates. This much is obvious from the law of excluded middle and the
law of contradiction" (p 102). Consider then the two predicates "bald" and "hairy":
which applies to the determinate concept "animal"? Which applies to the determinate
concept "triangle"? Hegel's answer, in both cases, is "neither"; hence his rejection of
the traditional law of excluded middle.
A further Kantian premise - likewise accepted by Schelling but rejected by Hegel - is
that affirmation is prior to negation: '"nobody can think a negation determinately
without having the opposed affirmation as its ground' (A575/B603)" (quoted SMEP
p 102). Which then is the affirmation, "hairy" or "bald"? Is "hairy" an affirmation one
must have as a ground before one can understand the negation "bald"? Why not the
reverse? And could one be said to know the meaning of "hairy" without knowing it to
be the opposite of "bald"?
One line of Kantian-Schellingian response would be to say that the predicate
contradictorily opposed to "hairy" is "non-hairy"; one could then say, comfortably,
"triangles are non-hairy", although "animals are non-hairy" might continue to pose
problems. But even if this move is allowed, it causes problems of a different sort at the
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next step of Kant's argument. If we assume that negative concepts can be derived
from affirmative ones, then we may safely exclude all negatives from "the aggregate of
all predicates of things in general" (Critique of Pure Reason, A572/B600). We then
have "the idea of an entirety of reality" that can be thought as a single, perfect being
(A576/B604). The problem is that although we have avoided thinking this being as
either non-hairy or non-bald, we have thought it as both hairy and bald, as well as, it
seems, both animalian and triangular.
In introducing the distinction between "metaphysical construction" and "transcendental
reconstruction," I do not mean to suggest that these are the only options available for
philosophy.
The claim that even a categorial or transcendental reading of Hegel fails the test posed
by such "inescapable questions" is, it seems to me, the central claim made by Bowie.
But one of the observations with which he introduces that claim points in the direction
of a different objection, and one that can, I believe, be made separately. The
observation is that the condition of possibility of a transcendental ontology is "the
demonstration that determintions of thought are really determinations of being"
(p 141). For Bowie, the requisite demonstration must show that the determinations
discovered or recognized by thought are "really" the determinations being gives to
itself; this demonstration would have to be metaphysically constructive in that it would
have to be an account of being's own development or articulation, independent of its
being thought. But the demand for demonstration could point in a different direction,
as it does, for example, for Robert Pippin, who objects, "I do not see how, on
Hartmann's view, Hegel's theory of categories can defend the claim that such
categories represent 'determinations of the real' (...) (rather than 'of the real as thought'
and so not necessarily real)" (Hegel's Idealism [Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1989], 295). The most promising line of defense against Pippin's objection, it
seems to me - a line I here do no more than suggest - is to question the disjunction
upon which it is based; it raises questions of modality that are in some ways similar to
those that arise from Bowie's critique. What is Pippin's distinction between "the real as
thought" and the "necessarily real"? What is the force of Pippin's "necessarily"? If I
believe I see a puddle in the distance, I may "think" that the puddle is "real"; I will not
likely consider it as "necessarily real", although if, when I then approach it, it feels wet,
splashes when I throw stones in it, etc, I likely will conclude that it is "actually real". If
on the other hand it disappears as I approach, I will probably conclude that although I
had thought it to be real, it had "really" been a mirage. Here, I can identify, so to
speak, criteria for falsifiability; because I can, I recognize as meaningful the distinction
between "what I think" and "what is real". But if Hegel's categories are indeed those
under which I can think anything at all as real - those under which alone I can have any
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awareness at all - then it would seem to be impossible for me to think or encounter


anything beyond them, or outside their scope, as "really real". That the glass I believe
to contain water might "really" contain hydrochloric acid is a possibility I
acknowledge, and one that would, if I took it seriously, persuade me not to imbibe the
liquid before me; that what I "think to be really a glass of water" might be described by
Tralfamadorians in ways unintelligible to me and incommensurate with my own
description is a possibility I likewise acknowledge, but not one that prevents my
slaking my thirst.

Alan White
Williams College

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