While such an interpretation is not entirely wrong, it is one-sided. Although Schlegel is clearly concerned with the question of knowledge, and is rightly considered a post-Kantian critical philosopher, his concerns extend beyond epistemology in the narrow sense. Already in the early 1790s, Schlegel evidenced a strong interest in history and life or living phenomena, and his goal was, as he put it, to develop a philosophy ‘for life and from out of life’ (KFSA 8, 60). In the following, I will argue that Schlegel’s contributions to philosophy—including his critique of first principles and systematic knowledge in general—must be understood in relation to his emphasis on history and historical knowledge, and his claim that philosophy must emerge from and in relation to life. Thus, in contrast to Hegel’s view of Schlegel’s philosophy as a poetic exaggeration of the Fichtean subject that results in the elimination of morals, I argue that Schlegel sought to develop a historically-informed philosophy and maintained that it is only through concrete knowledge of political and social realities that we can understand the nature of morality and achieve moral progress. In contrast to the postmodern interpretations, I argue that Schlegel did not entirely forgo the possibility of systematic knowledge, but developed a new conception of systematicity based on his understanding of living or organic beings.
4.2 SCHLEGEL’S PHILOSOPHICAL ‘DEBUT’
Although it was not until the late 1790s that Schlegel began to publish philosophical writings—primarily in the form of reviews—his interest in philosophy began during his student years in Göttingen and Leipzig, as is evident in letters to his brother. Schlegel was thus quite honest when, in 1797, he wrote to the publisher Cotta, ‘eight years ago, I studied Kantian philosophy, and since then have not lost sight of it’ (KFSA 23, 356, no. 192). His philosophical studies, however, were by no means limited to Kant. By 1797 he had undertaken serious study of Plato, Fichte, Herder, Hemsterhuys, and Spinoza. It was not until 1796, however, when Schlegel moved from Dresden to Jena, that his philosophical interests and activities peaked. On the way to Jena, Schlegel stopped in Weißenfels to visit Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), who had been occupied with the Wissenschaftslehre. By August 1796, however, Novalis had become sceptical of Fichte’s premises.14 A year later, Schlegel warmly recalls this short visit, writing to Novalis that he wished they could have another chance to ‘fichticize’ (KFSA 23, 371, no. 205). Whatever the topics of their conversations may have been, clearly Fichte and the Wissenschaftslehre were at their centre.15
In the same letter to Cotta quoted previously, Schlegel directs the publisher to his recent review of Niethammer’s Philosophisches Journal (1797) in order to demonstrate his knowledge of recent philosophy and convince Cotta of the distinctiveness of his ideas and style.16 This review, he remarks, is the only work which he has published that ‘could reasonably demonstrate what I am capable of undertaking in this discipline’ (KFSA 23, 356, no. 192).17 Schlegel’s review was well received. In his Zeitschrift für Spekulative Physik, Schelling describes it as offering ‘the first strong and apt word on the Wissenschaftslehre’,18 and in the ‘Second Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre’, Fichte speaks of its author as ‘ingenious’ [geistreich].19 Schlegel himself was clearly satisfied with the review—not because of the praise that it had received, but, as he explains to Novalis, because in it ‘I have completely achieved my innermost intention’ (KFSA 23, 363 no. 197). It is in this review, Schlegel elaborates, that he has finally made his ‘debut on the philosophical stage’ (KFSA 23, 363 no. 197).
Although the review largely consists of synopses and analyses of essays that appeared in the first two volumes of the Journal, the question that motivates the review, as well as its conclusion, offer significant insights into Schlegel’s own philosophical programme.20 Schlegel commences the review by agreeing with Niethammer’s emphasis on praxis in theories of morality, and contrasting it with Kant and Fichte’s conceptions of morality. Both Kant and Fichte, he argues, secure morality through the notion of an absolute subject. However, by granting the absolute subject absolute freedom, they infinitely distinguish it from the empirical subject (KFSA 8, 16). This has the paradoxical implication that all ‘practical self-determination can only be thoroughly mediated [durchaus mittelbar]’ (KFSA 8, 16). In other words, the empirical subject’s self-determination is dependent on (mediated through) something other than itself (KFSA 8, 16). The problem with this situation is that it leaves the empirical subject incapable of self-determination: ‘a thoroughly mediated self-determination already contains an internal contradiction; there would be no self-determination and no self’ (KFSA 8, 16). While Kant and Fichte were able to provide a pure conception of morality, they were unable, Schlegel argues, to offer a concrete conception of morality and moral development (sittliche Bildung) (KFSA 8, 18).
Schlegel had been occupied with the question of moral development since at least 1795, when he composed a review-essay of Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’ (1795). In his Essay on the Concept of Republicanism [Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus], Schlegel argues that Kant’s notion of perpetual peace is problematic because it does not offer a political answer to a political question. According to Schlegel, Kant’s notion of perpetual peace is to be attained through ‘the great artist, nature’ (KFSA 7, 23). This answer, Schlegel contests, is entirely unsatisfactory, for while it provides ‘the external occasions of destiny [for the] realization of eternal peace’, it does not explain ‘whether the inner development of humanity leads to it’. In other words, by relying on a vague notion of ‘nature’, Kant does not offer a concrete political theory that would adequately explain human development and the eventual achievement of peace. Kant remains on the transcendental level, and thus does not take account of the historical, political, and moral circumstances which directly concern the development of political persons and laws. ‘The purposiveness of nature’, Schlegel writes,
is here entirely indifferent; only the (actual) necessary laws of experience could accomplish a future success. The laws of political history and the principles of political education are the only data, from which it can be proven, ‘that perpetual peace is not an empty idea, but a task, which will be achieved over time’. (KFSA 7, 23)
Ultimately, Kant’s political philosophy remains too abstract, based on transcendental principles as opposed to concrete knowledge, and is therefore incapable of explicating political persons, institutions, and futures.21
Schlegel reiterates this critique in his review of Niethammer’s Journal, albeit in slightly different terms. Any philosophy that seeks to understand and explain moral and political reason, he argues, must be concerned with understanding the laws and conditions of culture and history. Moreover, any philosophy that seeks to understand human beings must, above all, be concerned with human development and its actualization in and through political institutions. Schlegel remarks:
should the law of freedom not become a law of nature of [a person], then his nature must have already been free. For the human being to mature…he must have already gone through an earlier stage of moral education [sittliche Bildung], which could not have been the first [stage], since experience teaches that the culture of morality [Kultur zur Sittlichkeit] must begin with the taming of animality. (KFSA 8, 18)
In other words, morality can only be achieved through moral education. The problem with both Kant and Fichte’s accounts of morality concerns their lack of a rigorous notion of education and development, and their corresponding disinterest in the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which human beings dwell and through which they can develop. Kant and Fichte thus overlooked the central question of education or development within their practical philosophies. Moral philosophy, Schlegel emphasizes, must seek to explain what ‘the essential steps of moral development’ are and how moral limitations ‘can be overcome step by step’ (KFSA 8, 18).
Schlegel concludes the review with a discussion of the goals of a philosophical review. First he remarks that a review of a philosophical te
xt must itself be philosophical. Thus the ‘reviewing and producing capacity appear to be inseparably connected’. This implies that the reviewer must not only be concerned with describing the content of the work under review, but also with ‘characterizing’ and determining the ‘worth’ of the work (KFSA 8, 30). But how is a reviewer to determine philosophical worth? The difficulty is two-fold. On the one hand, a philosophical reviewer necessarily holds his or her own position on a particular topic, and thus approaches a work from his or her own perspective (KFSA 8, 32). On the other hand, philosophical worth cannot be entirely determined on the basis of a principle or goal that is external to a philosophical system.
The question then is: how can a philosopher attribute worth to a system that is not his or her own? At this time, Schlegel notes, there is no science that provides the necessary tools for making sound judgments on other philosophical systems. Rather, contemporary reviewers either postulate a principle according to which they judge a philosophical work (a principle that is external to the work), or they consider the work merely polemically and thus offer no insight into its worth (KFSA 8, 31).
This situation can only be remedied, Schlegel argues, if philosophers learn a lesson from natural historians.22 Natural historians, he explains, seek to classify the products of nature independently of any particular system. In so doing, they do not attempt to grasp the ‘inner ground’ or organization of a natural object by deducing the parts and their relations, but rather by observing the relations between the parts and thus understanding their development in context. They seek ‘to determine [the object’s] crises, grasp the tendency in its path, and designate the indications of its striving’ (KFSA 8, 31). Such ‘historical suggestions’, he writes, illuminate the ‘spirit of the age’ and are the least one can expect from a philosophical review (KFSA 8, 32). The philosophical reviewer must therefore be more than a philosopher; he or she must also be a historian of philosophy. Thus, the science that is still lacking is none other than the science of the history of philosophy.
Transcendental philosophers were wrong, Schlegel concludes, because they did not incorporate history, development, and transformation into their conceptions of philosophy, the human being, and reality.23 Yet, both philosophy and its object—being, reality—are a process ‘which proceeds in infinitely many directions towards the infinite’ (KFSA 8, 31). This means that the very character of philosophy can only be grasped through understanding the history of philosophy. It also means that reality cannot be grasped through pure thought alone but requires empirical knowledge. Only in this way, Schlegel argues, can the ‘gap’ between transcendental and empirical, thought and experience be overcome, and an understanding of the human being achieved (KFSA 1, 627).
4.3 PHILOSOPHY AS THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
In the winter semester of 1800–1, Schlegel offered lectures on transcendental philosophy at the University in Jena (known as the ‘Jena Lectures’ or the ‘Lectures on Transcendental Philosophy’). This was an important opportunity, not only because it provided Schlegel with his first chance to lecture to students, but also because it allowed him to formulate his own conception of transcendental philosophy and thus distinguish himself from both Fichte and Schelling’s versions. In these lectures, Schlegel accomplishes a two-fold feat. On the one hand, he argues for the significance of history in philosophy, particularly with regard to overcoming the gap between theory and practice, transcendental and empirical. On the other hand, he establishes the historical character of philosophy, and shows how philosophical methodology must itself become historical.24
At first sight, the Jena Lectures evidence a remarkable proximity to transcendental philosophy as practiced by Fichte and Schelling. However, this is not entirely surprising in light of the fact that one of the goals of the Lectures was to offer students an understanding of transcendental philosophy. There is, however, a second, more significant reason for Schlegel’s adoption of Fichte’s premise. As previously discussed, Schlegel argued that it is impossible to determine the worth of a system of philosophy by external principles. Thus, in order for Schlegel to assess transcendental philosophy, he must proceed along transcendental-philosophical lines.
Like Fichte and Schelling, Schlegel commences the Lectures with an original postulation, or abstraction from everything relative or unessential. The result of this abstraction, he explains, is the ‘infinite’, that is, reality or being. However, Schlegel continues, the very positing of the infinite implies an act of positing, in other words, it implies consciousness. The infinite, then, is always accompanied by a positing consciousness such that the two are equally original. Philosophy, therefore, must be based on two poles: the pole of absolute reality, and the pole of consciousness (KFSA 12, 4).
However, in spite of an affinity between Schlegel’s method and Fichte and Schelling’s, there are important differences. For one, Schlegel does not maintain that the original abstraction leads to an absolute I or self; rather, he argues that consciousness is one aspect or pole in philosophy, that stands alongside another, equally necessary, pole. Furthermore, he does not go on to locate the two poles in a higher third, an absolute or unconditioned first principle. While Fichte and Schelling both argued that only a system which is based on an unconditioned first principle can achieve necessity, Schlegel’s claim is that necessity emerges out of reciprocal determination. In other words, it is the fact that the two principles determine and are determined by one another—that they emerge only in relation to one another—that makes them absolutely necessary. Thus, rather than placing the infinite and consciousness within a higher third, and elaborating their relation in terms of an original unity, Schlegel maintains that they are absolutely necessary precisely because they arise only in relation to one another (KFSA 12, 25).25
In addition, Schlegel’s agenda is not purely transcendental. After explicating the necessity of the two poles, he adds that the two positions can be traced back to particular figures in the history of philosophy, namely Spinoza and Fichte. Spinoza represents the view of absolute realism, while Fichte represents subjective idealism. Subjective idealism, Schlegel explains, was the necessary result of (and opposing pole to) Spinoza’s absolute realism; it was the only possible philosophical system that could follow Spinoza’s absolute substance. Thus, instead of remaining on the plane of transcendental deductions, Schlegel transitions to the plane of history, that is, the history of philosophy, and seeks to show parallels between actual historical development in philosophy and transcendental philosophy.
This move, while slight, is extremely significant. Its claim is that the transitional necessity between moments or epochs in the history of consciousness or the self, which Fichte and Schelling had reserved for transcendental derivations, can in fact be found in history. There is, in other words, necessity in history.
In the Jena Lectures, Schlegel provides a rough elaboration of the history of philosophy, and of the necessary transitions between different philosophical perspectives. Although he does not provide the detail of the Phenomenology of Spirit, the Lectures share quite a bit with Hegel’s work. In the same way that Schlegel points to Spinoza and Fichte as representatives of two necessary stages of philosophical development, he also identifies different epochs of consciousness with specific schools of thought. Dogmatism, for example, is the ‘epoch of principles’ which concerns itself with determination (KFSA 12, 12). Idealism, by contrast, is the ‘epoch of ideas’ and is concerned with knowing the infinite (KFSA 12, 13). In addition, Schlegel explains the transitions from one epoch to the next in terms of error and the recognition of error (KFSA 12, 14). The conclusion of one epoch is necessitated by a recognition of error, which is worked out in the following epoch. The transformations within the history of philosophy are therefore self-transformations incited by the development or evolution of consciousness, such that every transition leads to a higher level of understanding and greater complexity.26
In the years that follow, Schlegel continued to explicate the h
istory of philosophy in relation to the history of consciousness. The lectures that he delivered in Cologne between 1804 and 1806, titled ‘The Development of Philosophy in Twelve Books’ [Die Entwicklung der Philosophie in zwölf Büchern], are the fruit of this research. The goal of these lectures, Schlegel explains, is to show ‘how a system links to another, how it arose from out of the other, and the whole unfolding of this successive development should be traced back, where possible, to its first source’ (KFSA 12, 163). To do this, he offers a detailed analysis of the development of philosophy, and explicates the transitions from one perspective to the other as arising out of a necessity that is internal to the perspective. Thus his method is not purely transcendental; rather, it is largely based on careful study of the history of philosophy, which seeks, above all, to understand each philosophical perspective from within, and thereby grasp its internal coherence and meaningfulness. It is from within each philosophical system that Schlegel seeks to explain how transitions between epochs or perspectives occur: an internal incoherence or error is recognized, so that it becomes necessary to develop a different position. His goal, therefore, is to locate necessity in the transitions, rather than impose it upon them. Furthermore, Schlegel emphasizes that the aim is not to negate or cancel previous perspectives, and thereby prove one’s own as the only correct or possible perspective. Rather, the aim is to understand the unfolding of philosophy, and thus grasp philosophy through its history.27 Only by doing philosophy in this way, he contends, can we truly appreciate previous philosophical views (recognize their worth) and, most importantly, understand the meaning (and task) of philosophy.
The Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century Page 15
