Schelling's Ontology of Powers

217 Pages·2021·1.811 MB·English

by  Charlotte Alderwick

‘This important book represents a sea-change in our understanding of T O N
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Schelling. Das shows how Schelling’s positive philosophy is already part of N E
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Schelling’s thought from early on, and his interpretation develops Schelling’s T W
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“actuality without potentiality” in the context of modern and contemporary o O
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political theology. A major achievement!’ l L
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Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas t Ontology of O E
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A study of Schelling in the light of issues about l Powers Y P

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contemporary political theology
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Saitya Brata Das rigorously examines the theologico-political works of l I
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F.W. J. von Schelling and sets his thought against his contemporary, V
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G.W. F. Hegel. He argues that Schelling inaugurates a new thinking y E
outside of Occidental metaphysics, by a paradoxical manner of exit, which S
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prepares for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, f
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Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida. S N
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This groundbreaking work contests the universal, homogenising world e
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politics of modernity through its rereading of Schelling’s later works and its l
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rethinking of religious eschatology. Intervening in contemporary debates n
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concerning the post-secular, the return of religion and political theology,
Das shows that religion, in an essential sense, can open up infinitude from
the heart of finitude to an irreducible outside of the profane order of worldly
hegemonies. Religion here assumes a negative political theology of exception S
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without sovereign power. Schelling’s late political theology − far from being a I
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conservative relic of the nineteenth century, as critics have sometimes Y
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suggested − opens up avenues for thinking our common being-together and
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for forming a political theology worthy of the new millennium. R
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Saitya Brata Dasis Associate Professor of English Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru

University, New Delhi, India. D
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Cover image: Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling © ullstein bild/Getty Images
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Schelling’s Ontology
of Powers
New Perspectives in Ontology
Series Editors: Peter Gratton, Southeastern Louisiana University, and
Sean J. McGrath, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Publishes the best new work on the question of being and the history of metaphysics
After the linguistic and structuralist turn of the twentieth century, a renaissance
in metaphysics and ontology is occurring. Following in the wake of speculative
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Editorial Advisory Board
Thomas J. J. Altizer, Maurizio Farraris, Paul Franks, Iain Hamilton Grant, Garth
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Jeffrey Reid, Susan Ruddick, Michael Schulz, Hasana Sharp, Alison Stone, Peter
Trawny, Uwe Voigt, Jason Wirth, Günter Zöller
Books available
The Political Theology of Schelling, Saitya Brata Das
Continental Realism and Its Discontents, edited by Marie-Eve Morin
The Contingency of Necessity: Reason and God as Matters of Fact, Tyler Tritten
The Problem of Nature in Hegel’s Final System, Wes Furlotte
Schelling’s Naturalism: Motion, Space and the Volition of Thought, Ben Woodard
Thinking Nature: An Essay in Negative Ecology, Sean J. McGrath
Heidegger’s Ontology of Events, James Bahoh
The Political Theology of Kierkegaard, Saitya Brata Das
The Schelling–Eschenmayer Controversy, 1801: Nature and Identity, Benjamin
Berger and Daniel Whistler
Hölderlin’s Philosophy of Nature, edited by Rochelle Tobias
Affect and Attention After Deleuze and Whitehead: Ecological Attunement, Russell J.
Duvernoy
The Philosophical Foundations of the Late Schelling: The Turn to the Positive, Sean J.
McGrath
Schelling’s Ontology of Powers, Charlotte Alderwick
Books forthcoming
Collected Essays in Speculative Philosophy, written by James Bradley and edited by
Sean J. McGrath
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Schelling’s Ontology
of Powers
CHARLOTTE ALDERWICK
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
Abbreviations and Notes on Referencing ix
Introduction 1
1. Powers: Contemporary Accounts 7
2. Freedom: The Post-Kantian Perspective 37
3. Powers: Schelling’s Naturphilosophie 72
4. Absolute Identity: Between the Naturphilosophie and the
Freedom Essay 112
5. Freedom and Powers: Schelling’s Freedom Essay 137
6. Freedom and Powers: The Trouble with Powers 166
Conclusions 187
Bibliography 190
Index 198

Acknowledgements
First, a huge amount of thanks is due to Iain Hamilton Grant for intro-
ducing me to Schelling. As an undergraduate he recommended that I read
the Freedom essay, and from then I was hooked – I was so convinced that
there was something brilliant and beautiful going on there that I’ve been
trying to work out how to make sense of what that is ever since. Thanks also
to Iain for his unwavering support and enthusiasm, for many productive
conversations, and for access to his recent translations.
Second, an equally huge amount of thanks is due to Bob Stern, who was
a fantastic and supportive supervisor for my PhD project which eventually
became this book, and which would therefore have been impossible without
him. Thanks also to Eric Olsen, Jessica Leech and Sebastian Gardner for
their comments and contributions to that project.
Schelling scholarship is a fast-growing and exciting area to be working
in: I have been lucky enough to be involved in a number of fantastic events
and to have met a community of brilliant researchers. The supportive and
collegiate attitude of the Schelling research community in the UK and
globally is a special thing, and I have benefitted hugely from conversations
with many of its members over the course of this project. Particular thanks
to Daniel Whistler, Benjamin Berger, G. Anthony Bruno, Lydia Azadpour
and Phoebe Page for their comments on various drafts, talks and papers
which contributed to this book. Two events in particular were incredibly
productive for my thinking on these issues: the Pittsburgh Summer Sym-
posium in Contemporary Philosophy on Schelling and Naturphilosophie
at Duquesne University in 2013, and the Powers, Perception and Agency
summer school and conference (part of the Power Structuralism in Ancient
Ontologies project) at the British School in Rome in 2014. Thanks to Iain
Grant and Jason Wirth, and Anna Marmodoro and Erasmus Mayr, for all of
viii | schelling’s ontology of powers
their work on those events. Thanks are also due to the research communities
working on the metaphysics of free will and the metaphysics of powers,
who were hugely welcoming to me turning up at their conferences and
very tolerant of my attempts to persuade them that Schelling is the key to
practically everything – thanks in particular to Stephen Mumford for some
very productive discussions; others have been credited in what follows for
their contributions to my thinking.
Others deserving of thanks for general support, reading of drafts and
productive philosophical conversations are Joe Saunders, Neil Williams,
Niels Van Miltenberg, Dawa Omerta, Oriane Petteni, and my infinitely
supportive and completely fantastic colleagues at UWE Philosophy. Another
set of completely fantastic human beings and sources of infinite support are
my family and friends, of whom there are too many to list but it would be
a travesty not to mention.
I gratefully thank Taylor & Francis Ltd for permission to reproduce
parts of ‘Atemporal Essence and Existential Freedom in Schelling’, from
the British Journal for the History of Philosophy, vol. 23, no. 1 (2015), pp.
115–37 in Chapter 5; and parts of ‘Nature’s Capacities: Schelling and
Contemporary Power-based Ontologies’, from Angelaki, vol. 21, no. 4
(2016), pp. 59–76 in Chapters 1, 3 and 6.
Finally, thanks to the AHRC for funding the PhD which eventually led
to this book. It was an absolute dream and a privilege to have the time and
the resources to dedicate to thinking about Schelling and these issues. I
hope that what I’ve produced will be helpful to people lucky enough to do
the same in the future.
Abbreviations and Notes on
Referencing
General note. All references which cite English translations of Schelling’s
work cite the page number of the English translation first followed by the
page reference from the relevant volume of his Sämtliche Werke.
Difference Essay – Hegel, G. W. F. (1977) (Harris, H. S. and Cerf, W.
trans.) The Difference Between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy.
Albany: SUNY Press
Ethics – Spinoza, B. (1994) (Curley, E. trans. and ed.) Ethics. London: Penguin.
References to Spinoza’s Ethics follow the conventional format: Roman
numerals refer to the parts of the Ethics, and Arabic numbers are used for
the definitions, propositions, etc.
The following abbreviations are used:
App – appendix
D – definition
D (following P and an Arabic numeral) – demonstration
C – corollary
S – scholium
Freedom Essay – Schelling, F. W. J. (2002) (Gutman, J. trans.) Philo sophi­
cal Investigations into the Nature of Human Freedom. Shrewsbury: Living
Time Press.
Further Presentations – Schelling, F. W. J. (2001b) (Vater, M. G. trans.)
‘Further Presentations from the System of Philosophy (1802)’, in Philosophi­
cal Forum, 32 (4).