Day: June 23, 2008

The Tragically Sublime: Schelling’s Metaphysics of Fate and Freedom in his Philosophy of Art

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The discovery that man’s actions fail to produce their intended results, that the world does not bend itself to his will — this is the first instance of his spiritual alienation.[1] For herein lies the recognition that the world is not of man’s making, the understanding that nature obeys laws utterly removed from his desires. Such laws, insofar as they are intelligible, do not yet threaten mankind’s claim to freedom as such. Their necessity is only empirical. That is to say, the limitations they impose are of a merely physical character. In this respect, these laws do not jeopardize man’s moral autonomy. Rather, they are seen to possess a sort of brute factuality, an objective regularity. So long as man exempts himself from their mechanism, his freedom is preserved. His actions would thus simply be subject to material constraint.[2]

Another necessity presents itself to experience, however, of a far more sinister aspect. This necessity, by contrast, appears irreconcilable with man’s sense of free will. Its source is likewise external (heteronymous), but its precise origin remains shrouded in obscurity. As such, its machinery is wholly incomprehensible.[3] Where the one necessity persists in universality, the other exhibits itself as entirely particular.[4] In other words, the determinations of the first sort are understood to follow a consistent, uniform pattern; conversely, those which issue from the second variety seem hopelessly arbitrary, catastrophic. The apparent indeterminacy of the latter’s foundation does not alter its necessity, however. Its dictates must not, for this reason, be thought any less binding. On the contrary, the decrees of this invisible necessity govern the outcome of men’s actions with irresistible effect, deciding their fortunes without their consent.

This latter necessity is commonly referred to as fate. Qua absolute necessity, it is the essential annihilation of human freedom. Our activities are thus revealed in their impotence: we are not the masters of our destiny. It is on this account that the intuition of fate is always accompanied by a distinct feeling of horror. The moral freedom we so fervently assert as essential to our subjectivity is contradicted outright by the objective necessity of fate. Each side (subjective and objective alike) claims total sovereignty, and can scarcely tolerate its opposite. Yet both seem to contain an equal degree of reality. How can this be? To admit the one would surely be to negate the other. Are these two sides not incommensurable?

For the idealist F.W.J. Schelling, this paradox was definitive of the human condition. Indeed, it was viewed as the central problematic at work in transcendental philosophy, since the very possibility of this philosophy rests on the presumption that free will exists. In his 1800 System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling explains the connection between freedom and fatal necessity as “a relationship whereby men through their own free action, and yet against their will, must become cause of something which they never wanted, or by which, conversely, something must go astray or come to naught which they have sought for freely and with the exertion of all their powers.”[5] Schelling here confirms much of what has been hitherto described: namely, that one’s free actions engender unimaginable consequences, regardless of intention; moreover, that the real results of his endeavors appear totally divorced from their ideal basis.

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Note Concerning the Metaphysical Structure of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason

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In reading Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason today (I’m attempting my first reading of it in toto, from cover to cover), I had a revelation as to the structure of the “Transcendental Logic” section of the book’s greater “Doctrine of Elements.” It came to me that the subdivision of the “Transcendental Logic” into “Transcendental Analytic” and “Transcendental Dialectic” corresponds respectively to the classic philosophical distinction between general metaphysics (metaphysica generalis) and special metaphysics (metaphysica specialis). There is no doubt in my mind that others have reached this insight before me. Nevertheless, its truth struck me with such force that I feel compelled to publicly elaborate on it, to speak out loud. In all honesty, it dawned upon me in a manner akin to what Kant would have derided as an “intellectual intuition” (though his Idealist successors would not discourage me from this claim).

The pure categories of the understanding, which Kant deduces in the “Transcendental Analytic,” fall under what is traditionally described as general metaphysics. There are twelve categories, which fall under the broader classifications of Quantity (Unity, Multiplicity, Totality), Quality (Reality, Negation, Limit), Relation (Substance/Accidence, Causality, Community), and Modality (Possibility/Impossibility, Existence/Non-existence, Necessity/Contingency). If my memory is correct, these are the categories. Some of the wording might be slightly off. In any case, however, Kant argues that these pure concepts, transcendentally deduced, may be validly applied to objects given to us by the manifold of intuition (via the Transcendental Æsthetic). Determinations which rely upon their proper conceptual application are held to be mathematically (in terms of Quantity and Quality) constitutive and dynamically (in terms of Relation and Modality) regulative, though in the latter case these dynamics are nonetheless empirically constitutive. These, Kant argues, metaphysically ground the legal (i.e., lawful) possibility of any future science.

Conversely, the ideas of reason, which are the subject of the “Transcendental Dialectic,” relate to the three venerable sciences of special metaphysics: 1) psychology/pneumatology, 2) cosmology, and 3) theology. In the second book of the Dialectic, entitled “Dialectical Inferences,” each of the three chapters respectively matches up with these disciplines. The “paralogisms” deal with transcendental psychology, the celebrated “antinomies” deal with transcendental cosmology, and the “ideal” deals with transcendental theology. Since Kant believes that these “sophistic” sciences of speculation transgress the bounds of possible experience (taking them beyond the limits of space and time), he declares that their so-called insights amount to nothing more than illusion. Nevertheless, he reminds us that human reason naturally elicits speculation on these matters, almost ineluctably, and that a rigorously critical attitude must be adopted in order to guard against its seductions.