Speaker 1: Welcome listeners. We have another episode for you today, a
Speaker 1: special episode in our Freedom series, a bit of a
Speaker 1: skeleton crew. Today, I'm here with my co host Victor
Speaker 1: and we have a guest today, Christopher Setur, our resident
Speaker 1: Schellingian and German idealism expert. So we have brought him
Speaker 1: on today to have a discussion about Shelling's Freedom essay. Right,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna delve into that. We're gonna get to
Speaker 1: the bottom of it, or as close as we can
Speaker 1: to the to the heart of darkness. Yeah, if there
Speaker 1: is a bottom, it's it's a bit of an abyss,
Speaker 1: but we'll well, we'll work our way into it, nevertheless,
Speaker 1: and we'll try to sort out exactly what shealling be
Speaker 1: means by freedom and then why he pivots into a
Speaker 1: discussion of good and evil for the seeming rest of
Speaker 1: the essay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's.
Speaker 1: Relevant, you know, the problem of good and evil. But anyway,
Speaker 1: let's check in with our guest here. Hi, Chris, how
Speaker 1: are you doing.
Speaker 3: I'm doing well, and I'm excited to be here. Actually,
Speaker 3: I'm a big fan of the podcast and I listen
Speaker 3: all the time, so it's pretty awesome to be here.
Speaker 1: Happy to have you, Yes, thanks for coming. Okay, So
Speaker 1: where to begin? Well, I guess we've discussed freedom mostly
Speaker 1: in existentialist terms with sorry or political and yeah, we
Speaker 1: did sort of swerve into the political conception of freedom
Speaker 1: as positive negative liberty with Isaiah Berlin, but we have
Speaker 1: not touched the German idealist kind of conception of freedom.
Speaker 1: So there's a bit of background there that's that's a
Speaker 1: be a bit lacking. We're not going to be looking
Speaker 1: too much at, say Kant and is practical reason, but
Speaker 1: that's an important element in the background. We're just gonna
Speaker 1: have to deal with that. That's there. And Shelling is
Speaker 1: sort of engaging with Kant but also doing his own
Speaker 1: thing from the perspective of nature philosophy. Not to put
Speaker 1: you on the spot there, Chris, but I guess it
Speaker 1: would be helpful if you could say a little bit
Speaker 1: by way of introduction about Shelling and freedom, getting to
Speaker 1: that idea of freedom and Shelling sort of as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible. I guess is that a big ask or
Speaker 1: can you do something with that?
Speaker 2: Maybe I want to make the ask even bigger because,
Speaker 2: like I'm also curious if you could say something about
Speaker 2: German idealism, because I also think, I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe we don't need to get that deep into it,
Speaker 2: but I think that could be useful and important to
Speaker 2: just like get on the table. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: a lot of listeners will know, like Kant is sort
Speaker 2: of the beginning, and then Hegel is sort of considered
Speaker 2: like at least common sense, sort of like the end. Well,
Speaker 2: in so far as there's an end, it's still going on,
Speaker 2: I guess, but you know what I mean, it's kind
Speaker 2: of like the major figures. So maybe you could just
Speaker 2: tell us a little bit about the movement and chat
Speaker 2: and where Shelling fits into it, if that's not too
Speaker 2: big of an ask.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's too big of an ast at all.
Speaker 3: Right now, Actually, there's huge debate that Kant isn't actually
Speaker 3: not really part of German idealism. He's still a part
Speaker 3: of what's called classical German philosophy. The true father of
Speaker 3: German idealism is Ficta. Actually, right, Dikta sort of separates
Speaker 3: himself from Kant, but it does, You're right, It does
Speaker 3: start with this, This entire movement starts with Kant's critique
Speaker 3: of pure reason. Now, when the critique of pure reason
Speaker 3: comes out, it's not read and it's not well liked,
Speaker 3: and it takes someone like someone named Carl Reinhold to
Speaker 3: write a kind of a letter series like it was.
Speaker 3: It was in a journal where he was writing for
Speaker 3: a popular audience. So he was writing, you know, little
Speaker 3: bits and pieces about reason, about God, about freedom, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, and then all of a sudden, this entire
Speaker 3: movement happened with cons critique. Now what is this? What
Speaker 3: is this movement of German idealism and everything? It's kind
Speaker 3: of it was. Philosophy was almost in a sense at
Speaker 3: a at a stalemate between rationalism and empiricism. There were
Speaker 3: the empiricist dogmas that were believing that, you know, all
Speaker 3: knowledge is grounded, you know, through experience. And then there's,
Speaker 3: of course, the great rationalist schools that believe that all
Speaker 3: knowledge is kind of innate and we need to kind
Speaker 3: of harness reason like a flashlight, even you know, the
Speaker 3: light of reason shine on concepts and takes a look
Speaker 3: at the you know, the very essence of metaphysics. Now,
Speaker 3: his terminology for metaphysics is not the Aristotelian not you know,
Speaker 3: next to metaphor next to the physics, but for him,
Speaker 3: it's beyond nature, beyond the sensible. So he really wants
Speaker 3: to take a look at reason and and take a
Speaker 3: magnifying glass to go through the elements of how we
Speaker 3: know the world, how we know knowledge. And for Kant,
Speaker 3: he does something that a lot of people, especially twenty
Speaker 3: first century thinkers, are kind of don't really know why yeah,
Speaker 3: and he kind of he kind of states that you
Speaker 3: know the world how we see it and how we
Speaker 3: how we apprehend it, and how it appears to us
Speaker 3: kind of conforms to our senses. I'm sorry, it conforms
Speaker 3: to our categories of the understanding. And so he breaks
Speaker 3: down all of these so called categories of the understanding.
Speaker 3: And then after that we get all of this abundant
Speaker 3: debates from people like Schultze and of course Rhyinhold and
Speaker 3: Ficta and many other people writing about what is Kant doing?
Speaker 3: Solomon Maimon as well, And so we get these die
Speaker 3: we get these very interesting arguments about what philosophy can do.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's the maybe that's the best way to
Speaker 3: start it off, that really this this period starts off
Speaker 3: with three questions, what can I know? What ought I
Speaker 3: to do? And what may I hope? And of course
Speaker 3: what can I know relates to cons epistemology, So what
Speaker 3: we can know from from philosophy what ought I to
Speaker 3: do is of course the ethical imperative that's in CONT's philosophy,
Speaker 3: and the what may I hope is the you know,
Speaker 3: the next generations, you know, blending the torch after that,
Speaker 3: you know who comes next after Kant, right, And of
Speaker 3: course the next person that comes is Ficta. And it's
Speaker 3: really funny because when Ficta comes, he kind of goes
Speaker 3: all the way to Kernigsberg, where Kant is born, and
Speaker 3: he asked, he asked Kant for a loan. Con says no,
Speaker 3: because he's very frugal with his money, and he, you know,
Speaker 3: Con says, I'll put you in touch with my publisher,
Speaker 3: and you know, we'll get you a piece published. And
Speaker 3: so Ficta's first publication that comes out, everyone thinks it's
Speaker 3: the fourth Critique, and then Icta kind of gets really
Speaker 3: really huge overnight, and so Ficta kind of takes German
Speaker 3: idealism to the four. He moved to Yana, which is
Speaker 3: the kind of biggest area in Europe right now, for philosophy.
Speaker 3: Ryan Hold, who I brought up previously in our discussion,
Speaker 3: was the chair of philosophy, and after Reinhold left, Ficta
Speaker 3: picked that up, and then Shelling would take it, and
Speaker 3: then of course later on Hegel would come there as well.
Speaker 3: So you can see already that this this one little
Speaker 3: city where all these people are merging around, are are
Speaker 3: just enveloped in trying to understand epistemology, ethics and everything.
Speaker 3: I should just say on one other thing before that,
Speaker 3: every single major university after Kant had a chair that
Speaker 3: was a Kantian chair, so someone in Kantian philosophy. So
Speaker 3: of course Reinhold, who wrote these letters on the Kantian philosophy,
Speaker 3: would take Jena, and there were other thinkers as well
Speaker 3: and Halla that were taking a you know, going through
Speaker 3: kant scholarship and teaching it. So that's how massive this
Speaker 3: movement was sweeping through the continent. And of course they
Speaker 3: all had their own their own versions of Kant, right,
Speaker 3: So Reinhold's reading of Kant, you know, is a little
Speaker 3: different than Kant himself, and of course Ficta, you know,
Speaker 3: is a little more is he focuses more on the
Speaker 3: subjective element of consciousness.
Speaker 2: So did Ficta. I'm curious, did Ficcta sort of start
Speaker 2: off self identifying as a Kantient? And then is he
Speaker 2: because you said that, really and I've heard this too,
Speaker 2: Idealism starts with Ficta in a way where you know,
Speaker 2: hegel you know, he obviously kind of sets the groundwork
Speaker 2: or like clears the ground in a way maybe you
Speaker 2: could say for idealism to be possible, but really it's
Speaker 2: like fictus, is Ficta kind of start off as a Kantian?
Speaker 2: Then does he go like is he the first to
Speaker 2: kind of be like, you know, I'm a different thing.
Speaker 2: I'm like this idealist that's like kind of separate and
Speaker 2: apart from Kantianism.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a really great question. Actually, yes, So Ficta
Speaker 3: is in a lot of dialogue and discussion with Kant
Speaker 3: until seventeen ninety nine, believe it, and then Kant actually
Speaker 3: end the discussion because he was just so appalled with
Speaker 3: how Fikta was taking with his philosophy generally speaking Ficto
Speaker 3: when he got to when he was in Yana and
Speaker 3: meeting the Romantics at the time, the Schlegel Brothers and
Speaker 3: the poets like Tika Tik and Novllles. He was kind
Speaker 3: of in charge of like culminating this group of philosophers
Speaker 3: and kind of like what Mersenne and Gsendi were doing
Speaker 3: for Descartes at the time. But yeah, no, he saw
Speaker 3: himself as a cantyon, as someone that would take transcendental
Speaker 3: philosophy right, this new logic, that comp right, this new
Speaker 3: critique of pure reason, this forward. And so however, what
Speaker 3: Ficta ended up doing was there was a debate going
Speaker 3: around about that conc just you know, takes Aristotle's categories
Speaker 3: and just kind of moves forward with it and kind
Speaker 3: of defends his own system. But the great question in
Speaker 3: philosophy now was how can we ground philosophy on transcendental logic.
Speaker 3: So what Ficta and Ryan will do is talk about
Speaker 3: a ground for philosophy. That term ground will be huge
Speaker 3: in German philosophy. D grunt is used in Shelling and
Speaker 3: in Hegel and of course Heidegger. So this terminology, so
Speaker 3: this debate about does philosophy have a ground, does it
Speaker 3: have a formation? Oh? Sorry, a foundation is where the
Speaker 3: new kind of movement of German idealism starts. So it
Speaker 3: starts with Reindwolden Ficta. And there's a letter between Shelling
Speaker 3: and Hegel when they're really young, saying, you know, CONT's
Speaker 3: got at all, but the premises are missing. They mean
Speaker 3: the premises for a foundation of transcendental philosophy. So you
Speaker 3: know they need more. We need to start from the
Speaker 3: foundation and build up. So to your question, yeah, so
Speaker 3: Victo starts off as a as a canteen, but then
Speaker 3: realizes that what's needed is a kind of rigorous foundation
Speaker 3: that he calls his Vissenschaffle or his science of knowledge.
Speaker 3: So it's a science of science basically.
Speaker 1: Well that that's awesome. That gives you the sort of
Speaker 1: broad melia in which now we're gonna see Shelling kind
Speaker 1: of comes up. Okay, but we can't do everything about
Speaker 1: Shelling's you know, different systems and where that all comes from,
Speaker 1: and what this this this essay itself though, this this
Speaker 1: philosophy of freedom essay has been identified as as a
Speaker 1: very key document in the in the Shelling overra and
Speaker 1: this question of freedom that he's investigating, well, Shelling has well,
Speaker 1: he is something called a nature philosopher, like natural philosophy,
Speaker 1: nature philosophy of nature, and this this is one of
Speaker 1: the angles he's coming at this question from is the
Speaker 1: philosophy of nature kind of angle, right, because he sees
Speaker 1: the idealist conception of freedom as I mean this almost
Speaker 1: connects to positive and negative freedom in a very distant way.
Speaker 1: Is that he almost sees the idealist concept of freedom
Speaker 1: as lacking substance, as negative, as almost just formal as
Speaker 1: negative freedom in a way, not in Isaiah Berlin's sense, maybe,
Speaker 1: but it does seem a little bit similar. And what
Speaker 1: he wants to do is describe the sort of positive
Speaker 1: content of freedom, I guess you could call it, or
Speaker 1: something more real and substantial that freedom is, rather than
Speaker 1: defining freedom as something you know in a negative way
Speaker 1: or as opposed to determinacy. Right, you have that old
Speaker 1: debate of determination versus freedom or necessity freedom necessity kind
Speaker 1: of debate. So he's picking up here in this this question,
Speaker 1: in this atmosphere, with this nature philosophy kind of approach
Speaker 1: as a part of it. Does that Does that capture it?
Speaker 1: Do you think, Chris? Or did I make a mess
Speaker 1: of that?
Speaker 3: No? No, The freedom essay is kind of what we
Speaker 3: call the middle term of Shelling's thought. He kind of
Speaker 3: is moving away from many of his previous maybe earlier thinking.
Speaker 3: He starts, he starts rereading the Latin tradition, so people
Speaker 3: like meister Eckhart, you know, in the Catholic tradition, I
Speaker 3: mean at least but Catholic Germans. He's kind of led
Speaker 3: by this Catholic philosopher area named fran von Batter who's
Speaker 3: steering him more in a kind of neo Platonic theosophy,
Speaker 3: theosophicals side of pilosophy. You are right. Nature does play
Speaker 3: a huge part in the in the actual treatise one
Speaker 3: hundred percent, and he's got a little bit of his
Speaker 3: law of identity that he gets from Victa in it
Speaker 3: as well. It's a really really compact, seventy page treatise
Speaker 3: with so much going on. So it's his last work
Speaker 3: number one, and in the Freedom Essay it deals with
Speaker 3: many things. So he right off the bat says, everyone's
Speaker 3: got a notion of freedom. Everyone has, you know, a
Speaker 3: kind of first idea of what freedom is. And he says,
Speaker 3: what we're looking for is the concealed essence of freedom,
Speaker 3: you know, not the surface level of freedom, but the
Speaker 3: most deepest root of freedom, which we find out is
Speaker 3: actually onto logical. So this is the key point. This
Speaker 3: is why people like Paul Tillic, Martin Heidegger, Luigi Parrison,
Speaker 3: even Habermats, you know, after his kind of Marxist period,
Speaker 3: are looking at Shelling because he's one of these idealists
Speaker 3: that even to get back to your question, Eric is
Speaker 3: not really an idealist anymore. He's an idealist realist. He'll
Speaker 3: even say in the treatise that idealism is the soul
Speaker 3: of philosophy, but realism is its body. Only the two
Speaker 3: together can form a whole. So he has this kind
Speaker 3: of idealist realist project. And now he's moving away from
Speaker 3: let's say the maybe the subjective understanding of consciousness from
Speaker 3: ficta or you know, the categories with Kant, and now
Speaker 3: he's really kind of looking for all, right, what grounds
Speaker 3: the human being in personality? And what is how can
Speaker 3: we understand freedom and being free within the con text
Speaker 3: of the world that we live in. And this is
Speaker 3: the first thing he does. He says that philosophy can
Speaker 3: never be separated from its world. That's the first part
Speaker 3: of the first page. You know, philosophical investigations into the
Speaker 3: essence of freedom right can lead you, in part to
Speaker 3: the right conception of freedom, but what is that? It
Speaker 3: can't be separated from world, and it can't be separated
Speaker 3: from system. Now, his idea of system is not is
Speaker 3: not supposed to be understood as how we understand system.
Speaker 3: He's kind of, as you said, from nature is nature philosophy.
Speaker 3: He's got an organic understanding of system. That means he's
Speaker 3: bringing in everything you know, nature and mind, right, you know,
Speaker 3: human being and nature. He's bringing in all of these
Speaker 3: things together to form what he calls a system in
Speaker 3: order to find this concealed essence of freedom. Sorry, am
Speaker 3: I going too much over?
Speaker 2: Let's just let me actually just kind of ask now,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that was good, but let's let's
Speaker 2: try to get maybe concrete about like what Shelling is
Speaker 2: saying about freedom, and maybe like one way of doing
Speaker 2: that would be to distinguish it from CONTs, which I
Speaker 2: see more of our listeners will be familiar with, right,
Speaker 2: like CONT's account of freedom, because I think, you know,
Speaker 2: if kN has this account of autonomy right, and I
Speaker 2: know he spends a lot of time and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm more familiar with his ethical work being a political theorist,
Speaker 2: but you know, you know, the idea that you can
Speaker 2: have like pure practical reason, that you can have kind
Speaker 2: of reason that is, like, you know, somehow separated from
Speaker 2: like conditions, somehow which you know I don't find plausible.
Speaker 2: But whatever. Setting that aside, you know what's Shelling doing
Speaker 2: that's different?
Speaker 3: Well, first off, you know, Kan doesn't have a theoretical
Speaker 3: concept of freedom. Right. He has a practical concept of freedom,
Speaker 3: freedom that demands activity. Praxis right, you have a duty
Speaker 3: and obligation steontological right. You your demand in a sense
Speaker 3: to recognize the other, or to grasp the other without
Speaker 3: being in heteronomy or without you know, without making yourself,
Speaker 3: without subordinating the other to yourself. Shelling takes that and
Speaker 3: really and that becomes part of his freedom. He actually
Speaker 3: states that freedom is the capacity to choose the good
Speaker 3: or the evil. Now what does that mean for Shelling?
Speaker 3: He's very particular about the words. So the word he
Speaker 3: uses for decision is end chidong in German. Now, if
Speaker 3: you remove the end. I was telling this to Eric yesterday,
Speaker 3: Hidong means decision, a cut between two two particular things.
Speaker 3: And so for him, goodness is and it's going to
Speaker 3: sound a little bit mystical, but goodness is when we
Speaker 3: put the others. We put others themselves before our before us,
Speaker 3: so we we think of, you know, the other in
Speaker 3: this sense, we're not subordinating them to our own demands
Speaker 3: and desires. So originally, what Shelling does is he gives
Speaker 3: us a cosmological uh a kind of really fantastic cosmological
Speaker 3: reading of it sounds like the time as it's kind
Speaker 3: of Christian time Timeeus where he talks about this dark
Speaker 3: ground in God, which is him trying to kind of
Speaker 3: spiritualize Spinoza's ethics. Now I'm getting back to your question,
Speaker 3: but I just need.
Speaker 2: To No, No, that's it's all good.
Speaker 3: So this dark ground is in God. So if we
Speaker 3: if we, if we think about this for a second,
Speaker 3: this ground that I'm talking about is an empty receptacle.
Speaker 3: So it's this empty space that is yearning and desiring
Speaker 3: to get back to God in this sense. Now, that
Speaker 3: is nature, that is the that's the implicit brute facticity
Speaker 3: of nature. It's this darkness at first. Now the reason
Speaker 3: why it's dark. Now we have to remember that Shelling
Speaker 3: is writing, I guess in a kind of Christian context.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have the locals. It doesn't have reason, so
Speaker 3: it's nature without reason, nature without freedom. And so we
Speaker 3: get this blind drive yearning. The word is zain zouped
Speaker 3: in German, which means yearning, So it's yearning to get
Speaker 3: back to the one. This is the root of evil.
Speaker 3: So essentially God's not the cause of evil. The root
Speaker 3: of evil is this excess in nature, this excess in
Speaker 3: all of us. It becomes this dark kind of I
Speaker 3: was about to say taint, and it was this. It's
Speaker 3: this dark kind of spot in all of us that
Speaker 3: is this urging desiring. So when we put our own
Speaker 3: desires are craving, and we put that for other people,
Speaker 3: that is evil for him. It is in a sense
Speaker 3: it's just we get so consumed with ourselves, we actually
Speaker 3: remove individuality, personality, We become so put into this blind
Speaker 3: viral of drives. Now you can see why a Jijak
Speaker 3: likes this and b where Schopenhauer gets this cycle of
Speaker 3: drives and will zone theory.
Speaker 2: I also saw some sort of a compatibility with some existentialism, which,
Speaker 2: of course I mean you can see the line the
Speaker 2: figures that you just mentioned there too.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: At least Schopenhauer right is clearly like a line that
Speaker 2: leads towards existentialism by a Nietzsche and all these other people,
Speaker 2: you know, to kind of return to the question of
Speaker 2: cont a little bit, like because I think that in
Speaker 2: a way, like some people could read, con is just freedom,
Speaker 2: is just deciding between two arbitrary decisions and you just
Speaker 2: like decide one, Whereas it seems like what Shelling is doing,
Speaker 2: which again is sort of compatible with existentialism, It's like no, no,
Speaker 2: it's actually like about aligning yourself with something that is
Speaker 2: like deeper, right, It's like you rather than just making
Speaker 2: a choice, it's like you align with something truer. I mean,
Speaker 2: for the existentialists, it's going to be like, you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of authenticity or something like, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: the owner of my choices. I'm aligned with myself. It's like,
Speaker 2: but with Shelling, you know, there's obviously a theological aspect,
Speaker 2: which maybe we can talk more about, but it does
Speaker 2: seem like at the root of it, it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: the way analytic philosophers talk about like our higher order
Speaker 2: interests in like being a fulfilled person versus our base interests,
Speaker 2: which is like you know, desire, pleasure, And it's like
Speaker 2: if you're just following your desire, your base desires all
Speaker 2: the time, then you're somehow going to be a slave
Speaker 2: or like an existentialist. It's like, if you're just following
Speaker 2: the they self, you know, to use Hidegerian language, you're
Speaker 2: just like, you know, going with the flow. Well, you're
Speaker 2: not really an owner of yourself. So somehow it seems
Speaker 2: like there's something in showing that. It's like, no, no, freedom
Speaker 2: is about aligning yourself with this like more truer, deeper yearning,
Speaker 2: which I guess he uses, you know, theological language to
Speaker 2: talk about. But it does seem like, you know, being
Speaker 2: a better version of yourself. I don't know, does that
Speaker 2: sound right?
Speaker 3: The kind of outline Now here's the thing. You're right
Speaker 3: on the money. But Shelling takes this this image that
Speaker 3: Kant brings up about having our character or creating ourselves
Speaker 3: kind of in eternity in this moment, which sounds very abstract,
Speaker 3: but essentially what Shelling says is that we already know
Speaker 3: ahead of time, like in a kind of presupposed moment,
Speaker 3: we know how we're going to choose things. We know
Speaker 3: what we essentially want at the very root of our being.
Speaker 3: And he takes this you know, this essence from content
Speaker 3: he's and he makes this great example. He says that
Speaker 3: Judas is not a sinner or doesn't create evil because
Speaker 3: of giving thirty pieces of silver or thirty pieces of yeah,
Speaker 3: thirty shekels to the Sanhedrin to you know, have Christ,
Speaker 3: to give away Christ. He is a sinner and he
Speaker 3: creates he chooses evil because he puts his own desire
Speaker 3: right above the other. In this sense, Jesus, so you
Speaker 3: can see the you know, it's not just a choice
Speaker 3: for showing. It's also kind of onto logical. It's a
Speaker 3: kind of ground in a sense, you know, like that
Speaker 3: this inner depth of your personality, like you become the
Speaker 3: choices that you that you in sense in a sense act.
Speaker 1: That's helpful actually, you know, And just to go back
Speaker 1: again then, so showings conception of freedom isn't you know
Speaker 1: there is this choice element right, Like he'll say freedom
Speaker 1: is capacity or possibility of good and evil. Maybe Sart
Speaker 1: puts more emphasis on radical freedom being a choice. You
Speaker 1: can't choose not to choose, but you have to choose
Speaker 1: between these kind of undecidable situations like the you know,
Speaker 1: staying home to help your mother versus going away to war,
Speaker 1: you know, your family obligation or your obligation to your country.
Speaker 1: And he really puts the emphasis on choice there. And
Speaker 1: Shelling does a bit too with good and evil. But
Speaker 1: I think freedom is a bit deeper with Shelling because
Speaker 1: it also is like this chaotic force under the surface
Speaker 1: that all creation shares. What's interesting here is that Shelling
Speaker 1: sort of gives us a bit of a framework for
Speaker 1: how he's thinking about this question. He gives us this
Speaker 1: sort of logical framework. He's kind of saying, Okay, he
Speaker 1: brings up the copula, right, and the copula is like
Speaker 1: the is part of like a predicate, like like God
Speaker 1: is good, a is b The copula is is part
Speaker 1: that connects the subject. It's part of the predicate. But
Speaker 1: for him, ground proceedes existence, right, but it doesn't have
Speaker 1: priority over existence, just as the same way he thinks,
Speaker 1: God has this kind of difference within himself. So God exists,
Speaker 1: but he exists through this internal separation.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So God has a ground and he has existence. So
Speaker 1: maybe you could just say a few things about ground
Speaker 1: and existence and what I said before, I think about
Speaker 1: facing this like sort of we have this chaotic element
Speaker 1: of ground in us in all created beings have it,
Speaker 1: and it's even more developed in the human being. But
Speaker 1: ground is a little bit like the ID if you're
Speaker 1: in psychological terms, Ground is like the ID, and existence
Speaker 1: is like the ego. Ground is this sort of undercurrent
Speaker 1: of chaotic forces of desire and need or wanting and
Speaker 1: yearning things, and existence is like this ego that's sort
Speaker 1: of connected to all that, but also trying to sort
Speaker 1: of make sense of it and put it into rational,
Speaker 1: actual actionable terms that can actually guide our decisions rather
Speaker 1: than just being sort of, I don't know, a bundle
Speaker 1: of instincts, kind of like an animal you might think of. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: ground and existence. Sorry, that was a lot, But can
Speaker 1: you say anything about that, Chris.
Speaker 3: I really like that example. But I would just say
Speaker 3: that the super ego has to be the logos. It
Speaker 3: has to be the word, right, like he brings up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the spirit is kind of above both positive and negative. Right,
Speaker 1: So you do have three terms?
Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, no, no, no, it's all good. I just
Speaker 3: want to say one thing just before we get into this.
Speaker 3: It's really really important. You're really really right about this.
Speaker 3: Evil is not privation. It's not a lack it's not
Speaker 3: a negation. And this gets to the copula as well,
Speaker 3: that is logical identity. Good and evil have their own being,
Speaker 3: like darkness and light. This is why he uses the
Speaker 3: day and the night, because one couldn't say that, you know,
Speaker 3: to differentiape the night in the day. Right, they're different,
Speaker 3: but their difference allows for this this space of their
Speaker 3: own being. Right, he calls it in difference in a sense.
Speaker 3: So in a sense, just like you have two hands
Speaker 3: left and right, day and night are like that in
Speaker 3: a sense. There they're opposites, but they're in a sense
Speaker 3: identical and mirror one another. So good and evil have
Speaker 3: their own sense onto logical being. They have their own essence,
Speaker 3: and it's determ by how we act, right, how we choose,
Speaker 3: how we decide. So you're right one hundred percent. This
Speaker 3: ground that's in God, as you said, as the id
Speaker 3: is this kind of dark spiral of desire. It's this,
Speaker 3: you know, yearning, yearning for something right, So we can
Speaker 3: think of in biblical terms this is well, this would be,
Speaker 3: I guess, the garden of evil, even before you know
Speaker 3: getting the Book of Knowledge or you know, eating the apple.
Speaker 3: And when the logos is at it or when the
Speaker 3: so called word is Shelling's kind of christian or Christology,
Speaker 3: we get a conception of what he calls light. We
Speaker 3: get this, we get now we can understand difference. Now.
Speaker 3: The reason why he does this is because he's been
Speaker 3: told by Hegel that his philosophy collapses into homogenization. So
Speaker 3: he does have this whole holism, this whole philosophy, but
Speaker 3: he wants to really stress difference as well. So ground
Speaker 3: and existence make up his logical predicates. So in the
Speaker 3: sense we can say that the ground, which which is
Speaker 3: nature in God right, so it's in Spinoza's terms, it's
Speaker 3: natural naturans and existence is natural naturata. So we need
Speaker 3: both of these the elements. But there's always something, a
Speaker 3: third that keeps them together. And we don't get the
Speaker 3: third until the end of the dialogue, which is of
Speaker 3: course the ungroomed. So you're right. So this ground, which
Speaker 3: is basically nature, has everything, has the capacity for everything.
Speaker 3: Now we can think of the ground without reason as unreason.
Speaker 3: It's chaotic. He literally states that what is you know,
Speaker 3: reason isn't just formed, you know, we're not just giving
Speaker 3: it innate right. There to be something that precedes reason,
Speaker 3: that's the unreason, and he gives this this kind of
Speaker 3: chaotic maybe cosmological cosm or theogonic understanding of it. And
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, when reason is implemented, or
Speaker 3: when reason kind of is, as he says, transfixed in
Speaker 3: the light, sorry to use the cryptic language, there is
Speaker 3: now an understanding of the capacity to choose. Right, So,
Speaker 3: you know, if we if we kind of do a
Speaker 3: meta move here, ground and existence break down to what
Speaker 3: Chellen calls real and ideal. So the ideal existence is
Speaker 3: the essence of the human it's the personality, it's the character,
Speaker 3: it's you know, it's it's the purest element of our being.
Speaker 3: And ground is that raw animality, a part of us.
Speaker 3: So there's these two essences, there's two sides. So we are,
Speaker 3: in a sense, are pulled between these two predicates, right,
Speaker 3: these these you know, ground and existence. You know, the
Speaker 3: way that this predication works, the way that ground and
Speaker 3: existence work is the ground is kind of endfolded and
Speaker 3: existence is unfolded. And when existence enfolds, the other unfolds.
Speaker 3: So there there's this kind of motion back and forth
Speaker 3: between the two of them. And you could see that,
Speaker 3: you know, every day every day you recreate yourself right
Speaker 3: with your with your just your decisions, your choices. So
Speaker 3: every day you become a new person in a sentence,
Speaker 3: just like you know, at twilight it's it's nighttime, and
Speaker 3: then at dawn it's morning. Right, there's a whole new
Speaker 3: beginning with this movement. Isn't that same that same motion?
Speaker 3: And he'll say, he'll say later on a couple pay
Speaker 3: just before existence and ground, they'll say that, you know,
Speaker 3: rozine is to volin, so pure primordial being is will.
Speaker 3: So will is this deepest element of our beings. So
Speaker 3: you can see how this all of this is kind
Speaker 3: of unfolding. So this is where this is where the
Speaker 3: excess of evil comes from.
Speaker 2: Okay, one thing that stood out to me that was
Speaker 2: interesting was isn't there a part in the in the
Speaker 2: text where he kind of says that that like evil,
Speaker 2: real evil only emerges with reason or am I misread
Speaker 2: like so that because in a way, like animals who
Speaker 2: are just like subject to their instincts, well, how could
Speaker 2: they be evil because they can't really do anything else.
Speaker 2: But it's like, but it's like human beings because they
Speaker 2: have reason and then they like decide to do something
Speaker 2: they decide to fall victim to their base or instincts
Speaker 2: to let's say, like steal something from someone that's evil
Speaker 2: because they have reason right versus is that? Yeah, so
Speaker 2: do I have that right? That's that seemed pretty interesting
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 3: And in animals, the two principles of darkness and light
Speaker 3: or ground in existence, they haven't separated. They're just one.
Speaker 3: So they don't have they don't have that outer reflective
Speaker 3: they don't have that. Yeah, they don't have that element
Speaker 3: to Okay, what you just said very nicely, So you're right,
Speaker 3: so does God?
Speaker 2: So is so on this picture of the world is
Speaker 2: God like kind of the others where it's like it's
Speaker 2: not separated or like so like because you know, I
Speaker 2: was kind of trying to figure this out when I
Speaker 2: was reading it. It's like it because it does come
Speaker 2: off as very theological in many parts of the text,
Speaker 2: but like, I don't know, I guess, you know, coming
Speaker 2: from a political science department too, you know, I sort
Speaker 2: of started thinking, like a STROUSI in a little bit
Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, is he is he just saying
Speaker 2: this to like appease all the all the like Christians
Speaker 2: around him? Or is he really like a robust Christian here,
Speaker 2: is this like a real account? Is he kind of
Speaker 2: saying it to be? Like, well, I can't sound too
Speaker 2: secular because then I'll get like, you know, I'll get
Speaker 2: as many people are suspicious of like Hobbes, you know,
Speaker 2: as Hobbes really as theological as he was, or like
Speaker 2: even cont So I don't know, maybe that's like more
Speaker 2: of a meta question about like his intent, but I
Speaker 2: guess I was just trying to figure out, like how
Speaker 2: you know, like how important you know, how relatable is
Speaker 2: it to like, you know, can you give it a
Speaker 2: secular reading? Right? Like can you give it a secular reading?
Speaker 2: Or do you have to be theological?
Speaker 1: I was going to take a stab at that one, actually, okay,
Speaker 1: just because that question of separability of darkness and light
Speaker 1: the two principles becomes you know, the foundation later on, right,
Speaker 1: So we haven't quite got there yet in the logic
Speaker 1: of the essay, but it will be the idea that
Speaker 1: light and dark and spirit the sort of third term
Speaker 1: you'd say, which is like above both in God, this
Speaker 1: is inseparable, right, There's no possibility of separating these two.
Speaker 1: And it is the emergence of man and then the
Speaker 1: separability of these two principles that is the source of evil,
Speaker 1: and a little confusingly, not only their separability but their reversibility.
Speaker 1: So going back to the ground existence thing, right, ground
Speaker 1: precedes existence, but it doesn't have priority over existence. Right,
Speaker 1: how can he maintain these two different things? Precedents and
Speaker 1: priority they mean the fucking same thing. Fuck you shellick No, no,
Speaker 1: for him, they don't mean the same thing, right like priority,
Speaker 1: I don't know, doesn't mean logical priority? Does it mean
Speaker 1: more importance? In a way nature is first, it proceeds,
Speaker 1: But in a way God is first, He supersedes, right,
Speaker 1: he subordinates, supersedes. This is the proper way to look
Speaker 1: at it. In the end, is that the light principle,
Speaker 1: like like supersedes, subordinates the darkness principle, and man, because
Speaker 1: of their separability, they can become reversed. Right, So you're
Speaker 1: no longer operating according to the universal will. You're just
Speaker 1: the self will, your particular existence, your particular survival. You're
Speaker 1: concerned with yourself over the universal.
Speaker 3: And by the way he uses this term when we
Speaker 3: get to reason, when we get to talk about personality,
Speaker 3: just one quick point.
Speaker 1: In so far as kings and queens are humans. They
Speaker 1: can be evil. Sorry on, Victor, go on, Victor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, like this point of clarification I'm wondering about
Speaker 2: is like, to what extent, how do can we define
Speaker 2: dark in light? Because we've been using that term and
Speaker 2: I think it would be good to get on the table, like,
Speaker 2: because it seems like we've been talking about it. As
Speaker 2: you know, dark is like falling victim to like bease
Speaker 2: or instincts, right like sort of, I mean maybe it's
Speaker 2: not identical to that, but that seems to be an
Speaker 2: aspect to it of it, right that, like you kind
Speaker 2: of you follow your desires? Right, So is light then
Speaker 2: just reason? Or is it not identical to reason? Is
Speaker 2: it additional to that? Like how do we think about
Speaker 2: those two things? Because I think it's important for the
Speaker 2: audience to be clear.
Speaker 3: There's three things at the level of nature. It's gravity
Speaker 3: and light. So gravity is the dark principle, It's what
Speaker 3: it's what in a sense holds down on. You can
Speaker 3: think of a plant, right, so the plant needs to
Speaker 3: in a sense push forward, It needs to be determined,
Speaker 3: it needs to strive. Right. Well, light is this, you know,
Speaker 3: light is in a sense it fills the space, It
Speaker 3: fills everything. It also gives energy, it gives life in
Speaker 3: a sense. But going back to what Eric said, darkness
Speaker 3: is in a sense the self will of the ground.
Speaker 3: It is the urge, it's yearning, whereas the universal is
Speaker 3: understand the universal will is un or light is understanding
Speaker 3: that there's a world of other people. You know, there's
Speaker 3: a world of that's not just you that you're you're
Speaker 3: there within a communal environment. So that's what he means
Speaker 3: by that. So there's a universal will, which is in
Speaker 3: a sense, you could say, let's use the Kantian terms,
Speaker 3: it's the categorical imperative. And then the self will of
Speaker 3: the ground is in a sense a more onto logical
Speaker 3: understanding of heteronomy in a sense.
Speaker 2: Right, So how close is that then to because obviously
Speaker 2: for cont it's like reason, right, you use your reason
Speaker 2: to figure out the categorical imperative, right, like you're convinced
Speaker 2: by that, and like you use dare to use your
Speaker 2: reason whatever to to you know, calculate things and be
Speaker 2: like and that's why like for Kant, like even if
Speaker 2: you do something that would be like in accordance with
Speaker 2: the categorical imperative, if you're not doing it for the
Speaker 2: right reasons, you're not being moral. Like if you just
Speaker 2: happen to be like heteronymously pulled towards doing something that
Speaker 2: is actually categorical according to the categorical imperative good, you're
Speaker 2: actually still not being ethical because you haven't used your
Speaker 2: reason right to figure it out. So how is how
Speaker 2: different is that in Shelling?
Speaker 3: Well, Shelling actually complicates the matters because he thinks that
Speaker 3: in and he again uses mythical terminology here, reason represents
Speaker 3: what he calls consciousness. Unreason represents the unconscious. So you
Speaker 3: can think of anything that isn't using reason as in
Speaker 3: a sense unconscious. They're this unconscious dark self will of
Speaker 3: the ground. And so reason in a sense propels us
Speaker 3: into being conscious beings. And he uses the term unconscious.
Speaker 3: But I just wanted to just give you one example
Speaker 3: for a second, just to go back on one thing.
Speaker 3: When I read this text, I in a sense need
Speaker 3: to almost always bring up the kabala for and I'm
Speaker 3: sorry to do this to your viewers. Oh sorry, viewers.
Speaker 3: So Shelling is in a sense even more radical than
Speaker 3: Sart because what he'll say is, look, we can't be
Speaker 3: live in it here and say that God needed to
Speaker 3: create world A and B to do that, and to
Speaker 3: say that means that we're adding necessity to him. So
Speaker 3: God freely chose to create the world, and in that
Speaker 3: free creation he chose so he makes this distinction, which
Speaker 3: gets back to your question, Victor, in terms of Kabbalah,
Speaker 3: that God in a sense contracts into himself the zimzum
Speaker 3: and pulls out this ground, which is nature. So he
Speaker 3: pulls this element oue. This is why when you read
Speaker 3: the text, he says that God and this ground are
Speaker 3: coeternal but separate. So you have the infinite and the finite,
Speaker 3: but the finite is separate from the infinite. It's like
Speaker 3: the fall. He actually calls it that. So we had
Speaker 3: this separation into the ground, but we're still in God.
Speaker 3: Sort of say so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was the next That was actually the next
Speaker 1: point I was going to bring up too, is that, Okay,
Speaker 1: how do I put this? Because of that that internal
Speaker 1: division within God I was talking about, like the ground.
Speaker 1: He's saying things like the ground is in God but
Speaker 1: is different from God, just as any created being, whether
Speaker 1: it's a thing or a human, also finds their ground
Speaker 1: in God and precisely that in which like that in God,
Speaker 1: which is not God.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: That's why I say internally divided, that God is divided
Speaker 1: between his existence and the ground of his existence, which
Speaker 1: are both in him. But the ground of his existence
Speaker 1: is nature, that pree eating part, and his existence itself
Speaker 1: is that prior, that prior part, that part that has priority.
Speaker 1: And so creation, created things, creatures have their ground in God. Right,
Speaker 1: but in that different part, that nature ground of his
Speaker 1: existence part.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Now, if this sounds like Spinoza, it is Spinosa,
Speaker 3: but it's Spinosa with more differentation. Right. You know all
Speaker 3: human being beings are just modes. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: Infinite substance?
Speaker 3: Right, So Shelling wants to give more difference and kind
Speaker 3: of spiritualize Spinoza's monism in a sense, give it more animation,
Speaker 3: animate it more so that there is this separation from God.
Speaker 3: But we're in God, and it's they're both co eternal.
Speaker 3: So ground and God are similar. We're in the God
Speaker 3: of We're in the ground of God, which is nature
Speaker 3: in God. And this gets really confusing when he keeps
Speaker 3: saying it over and over again. But they're different. And
Speaker 3: now when I teach this text, I give this example
Speaker 3: to all my students. Think of a lake, a body
Speaker 3: of water, right, So in this sense, God would be
Speaker 3: h two oh, he'd be the entire lake, he'd be
Speaker 3: the entire everything, But human beings on the ground would
Speaker 3: only be like the ripples on the surface of the water.
Speaker 3: So like, we're on the surface, right, But just because
Speaker 3: we're on the surface doesn't mean that we're We're not
Speaker 3: a part of the ocean or the the body of water, right,
Speaker 3: We're not at the very bottom, right, So bubbles can
Speaker 3: appear and everything. So it's in that but they each Remember,
Speaker 3: each ripple has its own individuation, has own differ, its
Speaker 3: own difference, right, So ripples bump into other ripples, et
Speaker 3: cetera on the surface of the water. So in a sense,
Speaker 3: that's what he's trying to get at. So there is
Speaker 3: this kind of whole, dynamic entity that's God, but there's
Speaker 3: also the space that's the ground that allows for beings
Speaker 3: like us to be different and to be beings and
Speaker 3: to be free in a sense, to choose our own
Speaker 3: kind of lifestyle, create ourselves.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think as we go along, like what
Speaker 1: is the upshot of his concept of freedom?
Speaker 3: Do I like it.
Speaker 1: Is it useful in politics or in daily life? It's
Speaker 1: difficult to say for sure. There's this process of element
Speaker 1: to his explanation, right, like you have, you know, the
Speaker 1: dark ground which proceeds, and you have the light coming
Speaker 1: out of the ground. He says this in so many
Speaker 1: different ways. One of the ways he seems to say
Speaker 1: it is like, let's say the dark ground is like will,
Speaker 1: but will that is really just a kind of blind
Speaker 1: desiring yearning will, and it doesn't become it doesn't come
Speaker 1: fully into itself until understanding is added to it. And
Speaker 1: then again understanding is like the existence part the light
Speaker 1: of understanding, for instance, or the word of revelation to
Speaker 1: a dark and benighted world.
Speaker 2: Who got it?
Speaker 1: What is it twenty twenty five? So twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago? Something like that, right, So there's a developmentalist
Speaker 1: aspect to it. Hegelian kinds of terms. But Shellings is
Speaker 1: different again because he wants this concept of freedom also
Speaker 1: to deal with the question of good and evil. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the indivisible remainder comes out of this. I was
Speaker 1: bringing this up because as much as the light, you know,
Speaker 1: chases away the darkness, as much as the understanding comes
Speaker 1: to dominate over the will or not, maybe subordinate the
Speaker 1: will to the ends of understanding. As much as whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as light chases away the dark, the darkness the grounds
Speaker 1: can never be fully extinguished or taken over because there
Speaker 1: always remains this remainder, this indivisible remainder. And this is
Speaker 1: a very strange, you know. Jijik's book is called the
Speaker 1: Indivisible Remainder, isn't it. So Heidegger writes this whole book
Speaker 1: on Shelling's philosophy freedom without mentioning the indivisible remainder, and
Speaker 1: then Jijik writes a book called The Indivisible Remainder and
Speaker 1: makes a big deal out of it. But I think
Speaker 1: it fits in with my developmental story that as much
Speaker 1: as the light, you know, is superordinate and subordinates, the
Speaker 1: darkness chases it away. As I there's always this dark,
Speaker 1: this indivisible remainder in the dark ground that the light
Speaker 1: cannot chase away. Which is people take to say another way, Oh,
Speaker 1: Shelling is an irrationalist because he believes that the core
Speaker 1: of rationality and understanding there's always this irrational, chaotic kernel
Speaker 1: or something like that. Right, is that I don't know
Speaker 1: Chris if I, that's a scattershot at indivisible remainder.
Speaker 3: However, towards the end of the essay, to confuse even
Speaker 3: more people, the ground dissolves. It becomes what he calls
Speaker 3: a caput mortem. It dies, The ground is dissolved. What
Speaker 3: does that mean, Well, as you stated very nicely, as
Speaker 3: it dissolves in a sense, it dissolves into all beings.
Speaker 3: So as you're right, that indivisible remainder or I don't
Speaker 3: like that term that you know, ear a reducible remnant
Speaker 3: of the darkness of the ground. The urge, the what
Speaker 3: you called gravity very nicely, is in all people, and
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a part of us. They become part
Speaker 3: of the principles of human being. This is why like
Speaker 3: Hidigger won't bring that up, because for Hidigger, what's more
Speaker 3: essential is what he calls the jointure of being between
Speaker 3: ground and existence. He's more concerned about the ontological.
Speaker 1: Stratological difference kind of thing, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and difference, yeah, ontological difference. Yeah. But essentially, yes,
Speaker 3: Shelling is kind of saying, you know, this is in
Speaker 3: all people. You can't get away from it. You know,
Speaker 3: it's it's the deepest remnant, the oldest remnant, that's there.
Speaker 3: It's part of our origins in a sense, you know,
Speaker 3: and you're right, people like lukash has called Shelling an irrationalist.
Speaker 3: But for showing that irrational principle, you can't get away
Speaker 3: from it. Like good and evil, you can't get away
Speaker 3: from either of them. You can't just say I'm going
Speaker 3: to be good today. You become a different person every
Speaker 3: second or every moment. And that's the whole point of
Speaker 3: the freedom essay. It's this process, as you said, it's
Speaker 3: this struggle of being yourself, of being a human being,
Speaker 3: as being a personality. In a sense, is that we
Speaker 3: all have this dark remnant, this you know, indivisible remainder
Speaker 3: in all of us, right that that every day you know,
Speaker 3: it's there in a sense. He even he gives this
Speaker 3: great example of it's like a what he gets from
Speaker 3: Franzo and Botder. He imagines a circle with a dot
Speaker 3: in the middle. He says, you know, we wake up
Speaker 3: with this kind of center of being, right we have,
Speaker 3: you know, wake up in the morning, your victor, you
Speaker 3: have your coffee, your victor. But then something happens and
Speaker 3: that dot, you know, you become so enraged by something,
Speaker 3: and right, the world happens. Stuff happens, and that in
Speaker 3: itself takes over and in a sense consumes you. S
Speaker 3: Shelling states, and when that happens, your decisions are in
Speaker 3: a sense kind of level down. You kind of just
Speaker 3: act right and don't care about the other or whatever. No,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that about you, Victor. I'm just saying
Speaker 3: you know, no, no, no, I hear it. So, yes, it's
Speaker 3: always there. It's this principle, just like like universal will,
Speaker 3: the self will of the ground is in all of
Speaker 3: us onto logically speaking, and.
Speaker 1: Just kind of like the real in Lacan, right, like
Speaker 1: the reel can never be symbolized. Symbols destroy the real.
Speaker 1: They're like a wound or a crack. They're like something,
Speaker 1: you know, the reel can't be symbolized. It's irreducible to representation.
Speaker 1: Although representation is the way that humans are cursed to
Speaker 1: approach these questions through words and things like that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: symbols can't extinguish the real. Yeah, the light can extinguish
Speaker 1: the ground.
Speaker 3: Like the fallen angel Satan what he calls the reverse God,
Speaker 3: we can all become the reverse God by subordinating that
Speaker 3: universal will right in like Kantian terms, by just constantly
Speaker 3: acting in heteronomy, constantly putting our own drives and urges
Speaker 3: and will above everybody else, you become what he calls
Speaker 3: this reverse god, this complete reverse being. In a sense
Speaker 3: right at the end of the essay he would actually
Speaker 3: even call evil non being. If you continue to act
Speaker 3: in a certain way, you're no longer an individual with ipseity,
Speaker 3: You're just pure egoity.
Speaker 1: He'll say, Okay, that's that's good. And then so part
Speaker 1: of this developmental story. But then part of this development
Speaker 1: At one point he says, all the all these forces
Speaker 1: are bound up in the ground. There's like, that's the
Speaker 1: kind of unity in incoate units. And what the light does,
Speaker 1: is it it? Or what the word does is that
Speaker 1: it goes into the ground and it creates divisions of forces,
Speaker 1: It divides things, It brings the possibility of understanding. That's
Speaker 1: that's analysis, right. Analysis is taking something and then dividing
Speaker 1: it into its parts. Right to see how the whole functions,
Speaker 1: we have to cut it up into parts and see
Speaker 1: the relationships between the parts of it. Right, But that's
Speaker 1: one side of the story. That's a kind of if
Speaker 1: you just stick with that side, you're a kind of
Speaker 1: one sided realist or a mechanist or something like that.
Speaker 3: That.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, it is an important factor. As the light,
Speaker 1: you know, lightens the dark, as understanding becomes the guide
Speaker 1: of the will, we get these divisions of forces, and
Speaker 1: you know, humans being tempted to be becoming self satisfied
Speaker 1: and ego. We might forget that the unity is, the
Speaker 1: center of unity is in the ground still, and we've
Speaker 1: then choose to locate it on the periphery. Instead, we
Speaker 1: turn away from the love of God and instead we
Speaker 1: try to locate the center in the periphery right right,
Speaker 1: much like Darida does instructure sign and play cut that reference.
Speaker 1: We locate the center in the periphery, and we turn
Speaker 1: away from the love of God. And that's another way
Speaker 1: of saying kind of there's the origin of evil in
Speaker 1: these special beings called humans, in which these two principles
Speaker 1: are united, but they're separable. In humans, what.
Speaker 3: You're describing in platonic terms, you're describing the demiurge stretching
Speaker 3: soul and in souling things like in the time is
Speaker 3: which he's getting a lot of this from and so
Speaker 3: you're talking about Yes, the division of forces is in
Speaker 3: a sense the creation of spirit.
Speaker 1: Or in the Genesis story, like dividing the word, dividing
Speaker 1: the waters from the waters and the land from the water.
Speaker 3: But then he adds one other force, which is the
Speaker 3: attractive force. And this is how he ends the essay. Obscurely,
Speaker 3: he says, there's something higher than spirit, something higher than
Speaker 3: these division of forces, and that's love. It's the attractive
Speaker 3: the attractive will. It's the attractive forces that bring us together.
Speaker 3: When you love someone, you don't love them because you
Speaker 3: need them, because if you need the other, then in
Speaker 3: a sense, you're using that other. So love as this
Speaker 3: attractive force is in a sense, it's you both decide,
Speaker 3: you both to choose to be, you know, come together.
Speaker 3: And a sense, but you can't live without the other,
Speaker 3: right as they can't live without you in a no
Speaker 3: on selfish manner in a sense. But yeah, you're right,
Speaker 3: you're you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, this is good. I was wondering, you know,
Speaker 2: I feel like, you know, channeling pills a little bit here.
Speaker 2: I feel like if he was here, you know, he
Speaker 2: would want to, you know, he would want to challenge
Speaker 2: this or something you know, he'd want to be like,
Speaker 2: what's you know? Is this you know, metaphysical nonsense? I
Speaker 2: don't know, like because because you know, I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 2: be wouldn't wouldn't be that strong. I mean, pills kind
Speaker 2: of has an anti philosophy sort of orientation towards things
Speaker 2: that like philosophy. But I think like and at least
Speaker 2: like one way this obviously my first time, you know,
Speaker 2: really sitting down and reading Shelling, But it seems like
Speaker 2: there's a certain way in which you know, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of metaphysical and even mystical claims. At least
Speaker 2: it seems to be right. I might just be misreading it,
Speaker 2: but that seemed to be made that Like I guess
Speaker 2: I just feel like, you know, I maybe don't want
Speaker 2: to accept or or I'm like, you know, do I
Speaker 2: need to accept them even though it seems compatible with
Speaker 2: some other things that I do accept. So I guess,
Speaker 2: just like, how do you know, how do you see
Speaker 2: the sort of mystical claims? Do like, can you be
Speaker 2: Shellingian and kind of reject the sort of the more
Speaker 2: mystical theological claims or do you think they're they're they're
Speaker 2: deeply entrenched. Why are they important? Like, can can we
Speaker 2: accept a version? I mean, I think we've been talking
Speaker 2: and developing a version of this account of freedom that
Speaker 2: I guess like relies on some kind of speculative metaphysical content.
Speaker 2: But maybe it maybe it doesn't. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: just I just wonder how you respond to those kinds
Speaker 2: of concerns.
Speaker 3: Okay, So I'm I'm pretty much a Schalinian, but I'm
Speaker 3: not very Christian oriented oriented. When I look around the
Speaker 3: world and I see the carpet bombing in Gaza or
Speaker 3: things that are going on in the States right now,
Speaker 3: like the I think they're gonna I think there's gonna
Speaker 3: be some removal of same sex marriage in some states,
Speaker 3: you know. And I see them saying, I'm doing this
Speaker 3: because I want to be common sense. I'm doing this.
Speaker 3: This is where I think Shelling's a hundred percent right,
Speaker 3: like one hundred percent right in a sense that evil.
Speaker 2: So you're saying Shelling comes out as woke pro LGBT.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I'm just saying that that in a
Speaker 3: sense that evil isn't just a gesture. It literally consumes
Speaker 3: the individual, like in the sense of their ontological being. Like,
Speaker 3: that's how radical he is saying. He literally is saying,
Speaker 3: you know, not to use the biblical terminology here, like
Speaker 3: the reverse god element, the fallen moment, Like some of
Speaker 3: these people are really not thinking of other people. They're
Speaker 3: doing absolutely horrible gestures and actions against people, murdering, killing,
Speaker 3: et cetera. And they're doing that and they're saying they're
Speaker 3: doing this for the good, when really they have no
Speaker 3: idea what good is in this sense, so they're only
Speaker 3: following their kind of blind self, their blind drive. They're blind,
Speaker 3: you know. So in this sense, I see him thinking
Speaker 3: about this conception of radical freedom and an ontological sense
Speaker 3: that I think is very important. Now, can you separate
Speaker 3: the kind of mytho poetic side. I think it's essentially
Speaker 3: at bottom, we can say it's how, well, where's the
Speaker 3: origin of reason? Where did reason come from? When did
Speaker 3: human beings start reasoning? This gets to the later shelling
Speaker 3: where he'll say things like, well, we can't really think
Speaker 3: of that moment. It's kind of unprethinkable, it's uncognizable. So
Speaker 3: what we can do in the moment is understand that
Speaker 3: there was a beginning, but it's a beginning that's uncognizable,
Speaker 3: so we need to think of we need to think
Speaker 3: through this. So the Shellingian like myself would say, like,
Speaker 3: this element of the unreason that is attached to reason
Speaker 3: in its origin is the you know, that element, that
Speaker 3: empty space, that uncognizable element that we at philosophers like
Speaker 3: ourselves need to discuss and need to work work through.
Speaker 3: So I think the Shillingian would would pivot in that sense,
Speaker 3: talk about it in that sense, and the later Shelling
Speaker 3: actually moves away from idealism, moves away from trying to
Speaker 3: figure out the essence, and gets more closer to what
Speaker 3: he calls a philosophy of the existence. Positive philosophy is
Speaker 3: looking for what he calls facticity, the fact not the
Speaker 3: not the whattoness or essence of things. So to strip
Speaker 3: this completely of its let's say religious I don't want
Speaker 3: to say baggage religious mythopoetic element. Sure it is evil
Speaker 3: in the world, there are evil people. How do they
Speaker 3: contract these elements? How do the how do how do we?
Speaker 3: How is there someone like Andrew Tate? Is that how
Speaker 3: you say his name?
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, Like he.
Speaker 3: Was moved into Florida this morning? Like, how is there
Speaker 3: someone that traffics women and then all of a sudden
Speaker 3: wakes up and says, no, I'm not doing an thing evil.
Speaker 3: How do how do people wake up in the morning
Speaker 3: and look at them?
Speaker 2: So for you, it sounds like it gives you like
Speaker 2: it does obviously have some strong metaphysical claims about like
Speaker 2: kind of like how we function as human beings in
Speaker 2: a way, like how we're pulled in different directions. And
Speaker 2: maybe that's controversial for an anti philosopher like pills. But
Speaker 2: on the other hand, like you're kind of saying, well, look,
Speaker 2: it actually gives us like a pretty important and helpful
Speaker 2: tool belt to kind of make sense of like why
Speaker 2: people go wrong, Like we can look at which actually
Speaker 2: goes to like maybe another question that I was gonna ask,
Speaker 2: which you basically answered, is like, you know, how is
Speaker 2: this useful for? And I think you just like outlined that,
Speaker 2: like it gives you a framework for thinking about, uh,
Speaker 2: for thinking about like why and how people end up
Speaker 2: going wrong, and like what it is in them that
Speaker 2: pulls them in directions and how you know, we can
Speaker 2: kind of identify, yeah, identify like like the reasons and
Speaker 2: and and like I guess it gives us a sort
Speaker 2: of platform for judgment in a way. And I guess,
Speaker 2: like just a quick thought as I was speaking, is
Speaker 2: it's it's interesting, how you know, kantient ethics that becomes
Speaker 2: so influential in like place like bioethics, right, And it'd
Speaker 2: be interesting. I don't know if there's anyone doing work
Speaker 2: on like Schellanian ethics to see, And I don't know
Speaker 2: if it would lead you to different conclusions. Maybe it wouldn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe there'd be some consistency there, but it
Speaker 2: might like Heidegger's.
Speaker 3: So Heidegger thinks that Shelling is the greatest of the
Speaker 3: German idealist school of thinkers, and his work in nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty six.
Speaker 1: Is especially in this essay too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, in this essay he says, this is where German
Speaker 3: idealism leaps off the page and becomes ontology. But to
Speaker 3: kind of to deal with your criticism here he has
Speaker 3: the same criticism. He says, look, Shelling has given us
Speaker 3: this existential ontology. It's wonderful. But then what does he
Speaker 3: do at the end of the essay He jumps back
Speaker 3: into Anto theology, so it collapses into Ato theology. So
Speaker 3: I don't think that, but I'm just giving the you know,
Speaker 3: the devil.
Speaker 2: No, that's good, that's right.
Speaker 3: So he even Heidiger says, this is fantastic. He's got
Speaker 3: this joint sure of being this. You know, he's got
Speaker 3: it all there. We've got these ontological registers you can
Speaker 3: see design, et cetera. But then then this this problem
Speaker 3: of God comes up out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very interesting, I just add.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, I also find the theological connections a little
Speaker 1: bit difficult as someone who's not super close to the
Speaker 1: religious ethos. But I will say one one thing that
Speaker 1: I like about Shelling's take on freedom goes back actually
Speaker 1: to the ground existence distinction, because when he's arguing for that,
Speaker 1: you know, like, okay, let's say, in the theological sense,
Speaker 1: God creates everything, God is the cause of everything. But
Speaker 1: he kind of says, just because something is causally determined
Speaker 1: doesn't mean it's not independent, right, Like the you can
Speaker 1: be dependent on somebody else, say your parents, but you
Speaker 1: can also be independent.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The fact that their copulation caused your existence doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that you're now you're you're eternally dependent on them for
Speaker 1: this silly logical reason, right Like Like in other words,
Speaker 1: he leaves room for self determination in his system, even
Speaker 1: though everything is determined causally, there's also room for self determination.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what I would say gaps in
Speaker 1: the causal network, and these gaps turn out to be
Speaker 1: kind of necessary gaps in a way. But yeah, there's
Speaker 1: room for self determination in his system. And I always
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, freedom seems to be in the
Speaker 1: maybe in the liberal discussion, freedom is always just a
Speaker 1: sense of the individual and their self determination and their
Speaker 1: protection from other individuals. There's no questioning of I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: the relationship between dependence and independence, right, like, you are
Speaker 1: always dependent. You depend on the earth to provide what
Speaker 1: you need to eat and live. You depend, in the
Speaker 1: Marxist sense, even on other people because you make clothes,
Speaker 1: but someone else makes toothbrushes, right, you need those things
Speaker 1: right in this day and age, or someone else makes this.
Speaker 1: We're all dependent on one another. But that doesn't erase
Speaker 1: the fact that we have independence and we can engage
Speaker 1: in self determination. And I think Shelling leaves room for
Speaker 1: that in a very interesting way. And also his prose
Speaker 1: is very beautiful at times too. I just read, like
Speaker 1: a sample, all birth is birth from darkness into light.
Speaker 1: The seed kernel must be sunk into the earth and
Speaker 1: die in darkness, so that the more beautiful shape of
Speaker 1: light may lift and unfold itself in the radiance of
Speaker 1: the sun. And then he goes on. Thus we must
Speaker 1: imagine the original yearning as it directs itself to the understanding.
Speaker 1: You get the idea anyway, and quote, you get the idea.
Speaker 1: He's got some very beautiful lines in there too.
Speaker 3: What you said reminded me of this example that he
Speaker 3: uses much later. You can see the radicalness of freedom,
Speaker 3: but also kind of its ontological root. You know, when
Speaker 3: a tree, we can think of the tree as God
Speaker 3: or the tree as a parent or whatever, and it
Speaker 3: produces a seed like an acorn. When the acorn still
Speaker 3: has that genetic ontological makeup, right, it's still part of
Speaker 3: the tree in sense, but the minute it hits the
Speaker 3: ground it's separated but still in a sense closely connected.
Speaker 3: So there is that element there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's the other thing too, Yeah, Yeah, there's there's
Speaker 1: a connection there, even with that seed being dispersed. That
Speaker 1: that's kind of what I was getting at. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: very beautiful prose and room for self determination. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think of like more practical and
Speaker 1: less religious ways of describing certain things.
Speaker 3: He's saying, I want to say one thing about one thing.
Speaker 3: So this is the first time we're selling actually brings
Speaker 3: in history. So for him as someone to think through
Speaker 3: events in the world, we have to think through the
Speaker 3: literature and the literature of the world that gives us
Speaker 3: the reasoning behind these right, So for him, mythos or
Speaker 3: myth is important. It's kind of like it's in a
Speaker 3: sense it's a genetic map to nature in a sense,
Speaker 3: you know, Chronos eating his children, et cetera. But here
Speaker 3: he gives us, of course, the fall story right through
Speaker 3: a kind of Platonic Timaeus, you know. So he he's
Speaker 3: giving us this story, but at the same time trying
Speaker 3: to trying to touch base on ontological matters. You know,
Speaker 3: how can we talk about the chicken, right what comes first?
Speaker 3: The chicken or the egg? How can we even get
Speaker 3: into the debate about that. We would need to look
Speaker 3: at all the I don't know, we would have to
Speaker 3: look at all the facts. We have to look at
Speaker 3: all the information, maybe look at where that's that analogy
Speaker 3: came from in order to understand the relation. But for him,
Speaker 3: he wants to look at things not only just there
Speaker 3: and their relation, but also in a kind of organic
Speaker 3: matter manner.
Speaker 1: Sorry, Okay, we got to close down soon, but I'm
Speaker 1: so stimulated I want to keep going. And I'm very
Speaker 1: famous for my quick and snappy out outros.
Speaker 2: My I wouldn't call them outros. I would say, like
Speaker 2: to keep the thing going as much as for for longer.
Speaker 2: When we're kind of at a natural endpoint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm I'm terrible for just bringing up the biggest
Speaker 1: concept ever right at the very end. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make the simple point. Okay, let's just think about Okay,
Speaker 1: what do we think of Shelling's take on freedom, and
Speaker 1: my way into it is to say, okay, what Chris
Speaker 1: said there is very interesting about freedom having an ontological
Speaker 1: rout In Shelling, freedom has an ontological root. It is real.
Speaker 1: It is not just something added on, right, he says,
Speaker 1: Like when he's complaining about Ficta, he says, yes, Ficta
Speaker 1: says activity, life, and freedom, all things which Shelling thinks
Speaker 1: should be part of the ground. Ficta says these are real, right, Okay, great,
Speaker 1: Shelling says. Ficta says, activity, life, and freedom is real.
Speaker 1: He says, our problem is to also show that everything
Speaker 1: that is real has activity, life, and freedom. It's not
Speaker 1: just that these are real, but they're in everything that
Speaker 1: is real. Everything real has these things. You have to
Speaker 1: show both sides, right, and then the specific difference of
Speaker 1: human freedom within that matrix.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So that's what I thought is one of the crucial
Speaker 1: interesting upshots here is that freedom has an ontological root.
Speaker 1: It's not just a say, epistemological decision making problem. Right,
Speaker 1: that we are confronted with two alternatives and we have
Speaker 1: to decide which one is the right one, the good one,
Speaker 1: the positive one, and the positively valued one, and which
Speaker 1: one would would be negative or produce negative consequences, because
Speaker 1: as we know, evil is not known in itself, but
Speaker 1: only through its consequences. And I think that's very interesting
Speaker 1: and deep. And I don't know what Victor would think
Speaker 1: of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that's a good thought. I mean, I I agree.
Speaker 2: I mean I think the account is you know, appealing,
Speaker 2: I would say for for for that reason, it's like
Speaker 2: it's like a reasonable account of freedom. What I like
Speaker 2: about it is that it's it kind of contains the
Speaker 2: potential to not be free like that, it's not just
Speaker 2: like something that is that is given, but it's like
Speaker 2: you know, but it's effortful. It's it's something that, like
Speaker 2: you you continue to work on that that's not like, uh,
Speaker 2: that's not just like a given thing the way that
Speaker 2: like kind of more simplistic accounts of freedom have that
Speaker 2: there's like, you know, the way we're affected by you know, well,
Speaker 2: to use console language, I guess heteronomy, and I guess
Speaker 2: that's consistent with you know, me, who tends to be
Speaker 2: like Mary la Ponti, And I would say it's like
Speaker 2: my my go to kind of like account for human subjectivity.
Speaker 2: And I think you know this, So at least there's
Speaker 2: a way of reading it from my initial reaction to
Speaker 2: it that would not be inconsistent with maryla Pontin. I
Speaker 2: know that you know maryla Ponti somewhat, Chris, So maybe
Speaker 2: you could tell me if I'm wrong about that or
Speaker 2: if I'm right about that.
Speaker 3: Actually, there's a fantastic text that puts Shelling and the
Speaker 3: Ponti together, actually, because there's this line in the Ages
Speaker 3: of the World's another text where Shelling says, you know,
Speaker 3: beneath the individual, there's this kind of brute animality of
Speaker 3: our of our being, of our flesh, and it's and
Speaker 3: you can read it into mirror the Ponti maybe, but yeah,
Speaker 3: so there is there's a lot of linkage to it.
Speaker 3: But Milu Ponti also sees mind and body really, you know,
Speaker 3: he sees them as like an ontological whole, right, like
Speaker 3: the body, the flesh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3: So he sees things in that kind of organic understanding.
Speaker 3: So very cool.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true. So maybe maybe I am maybe
Speaker 2: I do find it appealing for those reasons, for those consistencies.
Speaker 2: So yeah, maybe that's a good place to end at. Eric,
Speaker 2: or were you going to try to bring up something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, a whole other topic now let's go No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm kidding, No, I'm kidding. I would just end by saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess if you're a posthumanist, you might not you
Speaker 1: might have some problems with shellings seeming anthropercentrism, But I
Speaker 1: don't think it's that bad. Because he says this dark
Speaker 1: principle is active in animals as well as in other
Speaker 1: natural beings. He had it is still not born into
Speaker 1: the light in them as it is in man. It
Speaker 1: is not spirit and understanding, but blind, craving and desire.
Speaker 1: In short, there's no fall. No separation of principles is
Speaker 1: possible here where there is still no absolute or personal unity.
Speaker 1: So there is a sense in which it is specific
Speaker 1: to human beings. The possibility of evil is specific to
Speaker 1: human beings in the developmental picture that Shelling gives us.
Speaker 1: And in that sense, human beings can probably also create unjust, unfair,
Speaker 1: quote unquote evil systems. Right, So things like structural racism, exclusion, prejudices,
Speaker 1: insofar as those are structural problems, are created by humans,
Speaker 1: and it's up to humans to solve them and not
Speaker 1: wait for a god. Has been said by certain philosophers
Speaker 1: like Maya Sue or even Heidegger himself, I think only
Speaker 1: a god can save us. Now, I don't think Shelling
Speaker 1: would agree with that. I'm probably I could be wrong
Speaker 1: about that, but that's what I think. And that's where
Speaker 1: I'll just bring it to a close. If you guys
Speaker 1: don't have any closing comments, I'm gonna.
Speaker 2: Know, well, I mean, if Chris has something final to say.
Speaker 2: But thanks for coming on, Chris. It was a fun conversation.
Speaker 1: We should thank our guests. Yeah, thank you, Chris. For
Speaker 1: coming on and having this conversation.
Speaker 3: Well, I have to say thank you for having me on,
Speaker 3: and thanks for you know, taking the time to reach
Speaker 3: Shelling and work through the text. This is a beautiful text,
Speaker 3: and I'm just happy that I got to you know,
Speaker 3: have two other of my friends read Shelling, so I'm happy.
Speaker 1: Always a pleasure, and I encourage our viewers and listeners
Speaker 1: to pick up some Shelling, especially the Freedom Essay. And
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's a difficult road, but it's a
Speaker 1: very rewarding one. So uh so, get into it and
Speaker 1: we'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: Then yep, agreed, all right, and there it is.