Angelaki

Journal of the Theoretical Humanities

ISSN: 0969-725X (Print) 1469-2899 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cang20

SCHELLINGS SHADOW
Alexander Bilda
To cite this article: Alexander Bilda (2016) SCHELLINGS SHADOW, Angelaki, 21:4, 111-120, DOI:
10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229441
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229441

Published online: 27 Sep 2016.

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Date: 29 September 2016, At: 03:40

ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 21 number 4 december 2016

n his paper on Husserl, The Philosopher

and His Shadow (published as Part II,
chapter 6 in Signs), Merleau-Ponty explicitly,
even if only parenthetically, refers to Schelling
when he describes the last and most urgent
task of phenomenology as follows: What
resists phenomenology within us the natural
being, the barbaric principle Schelling spoke
of cannot remain outside phenomenology
and should have its place within it (Signs
178).1
Apart from Jason Wirth and Patrick Burkes
volume The Barbarian Principle: MerleauPonty, Schelling, and the Question of Nature,
it is difcult to nd any works on the relation
between Merleau-Ponty and Schelling. Accordingly, in this essay I will endeavour to provide
some historical and systematic reections on
both thinkers with the aim of presenting yet
another reading of Schellings philosophy,
namely a reading built on Merleau-Pontys
unique interpretation of Schelling, presenting
him as a speculative thinker and as a realist.
First, I will give an account of MerleauPontys notion of nature in his lectures at the
College de France in 195657. Second, I will
return to Schellings Spa tphilosophie to show
that Merleau-Ponty and Schelling both struggle
with their own philosophies central difculty,
the integration of that which withdraws from
philosophy. Merleau-Pontys approach to a solution draws on Schellings early and late philosophy alike, thereby rejecting the well-known
and still inuential paradigm of Walter Schulz,
who announces Schellings Spa tphilosophie to
be the culmination of idealistic philosophy.
Even though both philosophers struggle with
the same problem, their approaches diverge

alexander bilda
SCHELLINGS SHADOW
merleau-pontys late
concept of nature
immensely. In a last step, I will examine
exactly how Merleau-Ponty overcomes these
vague differences by returning to what Schelling
seems to have vanquished in his Spa tphilosophie art.
The term barbaric principle, which is what
most evidently links Schelling and MerleauPonty, comes from Schellings drafts of The
Ages of the World. Similar to MerleauPontys employment of it cited above, this
term sought to denote what philosophy, as
science, has not yet incorporated or, even
more, what philosophy suppresses. While
Kantian idealism did as Schelling thinks
indeed accomplish its highest scientic form

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/16/040111-10 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2016.1229441

111

schellings shadow
in Fichte, Schelling laments that Fichtes idealism also foregrounds the other side of the
picture, namely the annihilation of nature
(Stuttgarter 445).2 The results of Fichtes philosophy, according to Schelling, are fatal for
the understanding of God, the world, the
human being and society in its entirety. In
speaking of the dening features of this
modern worldview, Schelling remarks that the
[] world that is still just an image, indeed,
an image of an image, a nothing of nothing, a
shadow of a shadow. These are people who
are nothing but images, just dreams of
shadows. This is a people that, in the goodnatured endeavor toward so-called Enlightenment, really arrived at the dissolution of
everything in itself into thoughts. But,
along with the darkness, they lost all might
and that (let the right word stand here) barbaric principle that, when overcome but not
annihilated, is the foundation of all greatness
and beauty. (Ages, third version 106)3

Indeed, Schellings Naturphilosophie undermined the transcendental account of philosophy

very early on. In this respect, The Ages of the
World drafts form the peak of Schellings Naturphilosophie, and it is this Naturphilosophie
with which Merleau-Ponty is particularly concerned when he in turn develops an understanding of nature. It is in this vein that he confounds
Schelling with Bergson and Husserl in one
chapter of Nature titled The Romantic Conception of Nature. And yet despite this hasty
blending of all three authors, Merleau-Pontys
reections on the notion of nature still prove
to be illuminating for the thought of both thinkers, both Merleau-Pontys and Schellings.

merleau-pontys notion of nature in

his lectures on nature (195657)
Merleau-Pontys diagnosis of Schellings
concept of nature follows a clearly historical
path. Schellings point of departure is Kant,
who recties Descartes. Descartes, to whom
Merleau-Ponty attributes a devastating account
of nature, is the ever-present opponent in his
work. But Kants correction of Descartess
concept of nature remains incomplete. Nature

remains merely nite and is not constructed

by God but by human rationality. While Kant
refuses to look for the last substantiation of
reason, the true abyss for human reason
(Kant A613/B641), Schelling seeks to recognize
what is beyond reason. The innite is not
excluded anymore; rather, it is understood as
something to which the nite is more than just
immanent. Finitude contradicts innity. The
separation does not make nitude or nature a
mere product of innity, but it provides
nature with productivity itself. This vitality,
this productivity, is an important category for
Merleau-Ponty and Schelling.
The classical hierarchical deduction of nature
directly from the innite thereby subordinating nature to it is meant to cease through
the above argumentative strategy. Straightforwardly, Merleau-Ponty positions nature
beyond the World and on this side of God
as a rotary movement that produces nothing
denitive (Nature 38). This description of
nature is intended to draw upon the early philosophy of Schelling, which is to a great extent
based on Fichte and Spinoza. However, this
picture of a relative innity fails to do justice
to Schellings early notion of nature: it is fairly
obvious that Schellings Naturphilosophie
acknowledges clear evolutionary steps and also
a rm direction from object to subject. Also,
Merleau-Ponty abbreviates Schellings early
philosophy as Naturphilosophie, while, in fact,
it must be complemented with a transcendental
philosophy that proceeds from subject to object.
Instead, the notion of a primordial erste
Natur (ibid.) that Merleau-Ponty offers as
Schellings concept of nature is found not in
Schellings Naturphilosophie proper but in the
later philosophy of The Ages of the World.
Only then does Schelling correlate nature to
the whole of being and as Merleau-Ponty correctly points out as an abyss. Schellings philosophy in this period is not, as Merleau-Ponty
suggests, a direct means of coping with problems of the sort with which Fichte dealt, even
if Fichte is, of course, one of the main sources
for the kind of philosophy that Schelling
rejects. By referring to the root in the preobjective Being (40), Merleau-Ponty proves,

112

bilda
however, that Schelling has long since overcome
Fichtes approach. Fichtes I is no longer relevant. This root goes deeper than the relation
between I and not-I. Transcendental idealism
is an epiphenomenon of idealism generally,
i.e., idealism in all of its possible forms,
which, regardless of its form, per Schelling,
always annihilates reality. Rather, Schelling is
confronted with the difculty of describing the
transition from a pre-objective being to a construction of being through consciousness a
task to which his Spatphilosophie attends.
It is not hard to imagine that these difculties
in Merleau-Pontys interpretation of Schelling
are based on the way he initially encountered
Schelling. The philological perspective helps
here. Throughout his lectures, Merleau-Ponty
relies on Karl Jasperss book on Schelling
from 1955, Schelling: Groe und Verha ngnis,
as well as Karl Lowiths famous book on
Nietzsche, Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen
Wiederkehr des Gleichen, which was published
in a second edition one year later and that contains an enormously extended passage on Schelling. By looking closer at the key notion of the
barbaric principle, one is surprised to nd
that Lowith and Jaspers work with exactly the
same passage of the Sa mmtliche Werke cited
above. It is not just this passage rather than
the one from Manfred Schroters edition of
Schellings collected works or a similar passage
from Schellings dialogue, Clara4 that
Merleau-Ponty cites, but Merleau-Ponty also
makes use of Lowiths very paraphrases.5
Further discussion of this point would take us
too far aeld, although it would be intriguing
to work out how Jaspers and Lowith if not
Merleau-Ponty himself are connected to Heideggers thoughts on Schelling; Heidegger
offered a number of courses on Schelling and
exerted a huge inuence on French philosophy
in these years, although at this point none of
his work on Schelling had yet been published.6
What is, at any rate, of the greatest signicance
is Merleau-Pontys refusal to grant recognition
to Walter Schulzs book that was published at
this time (1955). Schulz, unlike Jaspers or
Lowith, argues strongly in favour of Schellings
Spatphilosophie. A by-product of that

113

interpretation is the stricter separation of an

early and a late philosophy. Because of his
lack of awareness of this work, Merleau-Ponty,
consequently, did not have to argue against
Schulzs thesis7 and therefore focused on Schellings philosophy as a whole, thus viewing the
landscape of Schellings philosophy in a very
different way than we are accustomed to today.
Despite Merleau-Pontys non-periodized
reading of Schelling, he is still able, with astonishing precision, to arrive at the problem of
intellectual intuition, as he proclaims it to be
the method of Schellings philosophy as a
whole. In a further step, and without hesitation,
he then identies intellectual intuition as ekstasis (Nature 4547), as Heidegger had also
done before him. Merleau-Ponty is acutely
aware that intellectual intuition is itself a reection. As such, every reection or level of reection remains dependent on what it abstracts and
does not achieve an independent access to
knowledge. However, Merleau-Ponty seems to
remain unaware of the fact that Schelling
himself deploys the concept of ekstasis precisely
to avoid this problem. In the Erlangen lectures
of 1821 he explicitly proposes the notion of
ekstasis as a new form of intellectual intuition,
and, in so doing, aims to fundamentally alter
his conception of nature and man.8 While the
transcendental philosopher attempted to reconstruct the whole process of self-consciousness
qua intellectual intuition, ekstasis is conceived
of as a radical change of that position, a
motion that sets aside the standpoint of knowledge for an absolutely free position outside of
this domain, leading to serenity (Gelassenheit)
and non-knowing (Nichtwissen). Of course
this leads Schelling to a new difculty, as this
powerful and destructive force leads nowhere.
Only the accompanying concept of a con-scientia (Mit-Wissenschaft) builds a ground
capable of any knowledge. The transcendental
philosopher has no place in this philosophy,
since transcendental philosophy is timeless
and complete; instead, Schellings later philosophy, already in the Erlangen lectures but
most poignantly in the later philosophy of
mythology and revelation, reconstructs a real
genesis, one which does not know its ending.

schellings shadow
Merleau-Ponty does not differentiate between
Schellings notion of nature in 1800 and the later
concept in The Ages of the World developed
between 1811 and 1815 and beyond; rather, he
always makes use of Schelling to solve the problems of a transcendental philosophy that is
reducible to subjectivism. But, in fact, the
problem of what happens to Naturphilosophie
in Schellings development is thereby not
solved. Merleau-Pontys (probably unintentional) attempt to carve out the productive
nature of Schellings early philosophy from
transcendental consciousness is promising,
because it allows one to establish continuity at
a point in Schellings philosophical development where one usually identies the biggest
rupture, the one between the earlier Identitatsphilosophie or Naturphilosophie and the later
Ontotheologie.9 At the same time, this
interpretation disguises a strategy of MerleauPontys. It should be the task of a completed
phenomenology to reveal those types of being
beneath our idealizations and objectications
that remain when the exuberant effort, to subjugate everything to the rules of consciousness,
is limited (Merleau-Ponty, Signs 180; translation altered). But this task reveals a
problem: how should barbarian and wild
being (Visible 102, 121) be integrated into a
phenomenology that cannot leave its viewpoint
in order to describe things as depicted by consciousness? Schelling and Merleau-Ponty are
trying to deal with the same problem: while it
is a challenge for Schelling to connect metaphysics to the human being, Merleau-Ponty,
arguing from the other direction, has to
explain the transition from human consciousness to a realm that is not accessible for it.

schellings turn towards

unprethinkable reality
Before presenting one possible solution to the
similar, albeit inverse, problem that confronts
both Schelling and Merleau-Ponty, it seems
necessary to develop Schellings conception
from his own point of view, as it is Schellings
Spatphilosophie that provides the main

impulse for this aspect of Merleau-Pontys

own philosophy. The moments of a withdrawn
nature that appear in Schellings early writings
are elaborated according to a theory of
unprethinkability (Unvordenklichkeit) in the
later works. It will become apparent that Schelling understands his philosophy as a new metaphysics overcoming mere transcendentalism
and acquiring a new form of existentiality.
Schelling had divided his philosophy into a
negative and a positive philosophy by at least
the latter half of the 1820s. He claries this allocation by assigning the negative philosophy to
the question quid sit, while the positive philosophy is concerned with the quod sit. The rst is
a Vernunftwissenschaft (science of reason) that
frames the horizon of all possible beings but
cannot grasp reality itself. It is identied with
Hegels philosophy one that can only show
how something can be comprehended if it
exists. The actual existence remains an ungraspable exteriority, but it can be apophatically conceived as a negative concept, which treats
things as not nonbeing (Grounding 137).
Positive philosophy may presuppose negative
philosophy, because it allows one to conceptualize reality: the reality with which positive philosophy is actually concerned is treated as existent,
while the reality with which negative philosophy
deals is not necessarily to be posited. In so far as
the positive philosophy aims at unprethinkable
being, and in so far as the being deduced from
concepts is subsidiary, the absolute prius of
the positive philosophy is opposed to the relative a priori of reason. Primordial being is eternally past, a coming-into-existence even
though also always immediately present
always at once revoked and therefore a hypereternal eternity.10
Schelling does not root the positive philosophy in Kant and his predecessors, but in
what he calls old metaphysics. That is why
he borrows the scholastic terms quid and
quod. But old metaphysics is not correct in conceiving of the absolute prius as an absolute
necessity that excludes any form of living
history. Against this, Schelling proclaims the
prius to be movable, able to transform. Schelling seeks to formulate a new metaphysics to

114

bilda
pave the way for a new consciousness (95;
translation altered), thereby continuing the
project of his youth, namely the project of a
new mythology (with the difference that
what was postulated in his earlier philosophy
as an external change is now drawn into an
inner development inscribed by the action of
man himself).
To illustrate this Schelling turns to a biblical
passage, Daniel 2.3135, which he reinterprets
in his lectures, held in 184243, Grounding of
Positive Philosophy:
The entire edice of human affairs is comparable to that image the king of Babylon saw in
his dream: his head was of ne gold, his
breast and arms were of silver, his belly and
loin of bronze, his thigh of iron, but his
feet were part iron and part clay, which
were then crushed and mixed together with
iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold, and
became like chaff on the summer threshing
oors, which the wind scattered so that one
could no longer nd them anywhere. If one
could ever extract all that is metaphysical
from the state and public life, then they too
would fall apart in the same way. True metaphysics is honor, it is virtue; true metaphysics is not only religion, but also respect for
the law and love of ones land [] Human
affairs do not allow themselves to be governed by mathematics, physics, natural
history (I revere these sciences highly), or
even poetry and art. The true understanding
of the world is provided by precisely the right
metaphysics, which for this very reason has
from time immemorial been called the royal
science. (107)

It is quite obvious that Schelling places metaphysics at the centre of philosophy, the sciences
and the world. Also, questions concerning the
role of ethics in Schellings work might nd
some kind of answer here. Nevertheless, it is
the appearance of art and society which most
illuminates our discussion of the relation
between Schelling and Merleau-Ponty, since
Merleau-Ponty took the notion of the barbarian
principle from a passage where this principle
was depicted explicitly as the fundament of
society, without which society becomes a

115

hideous, hollow and incoherent place. But

Merleau-Ponty does not take up the possible
social critique Schelling offers with this principle. Rather, Merleau-Ponty crafts an ontology
guided by art. Schelling, as we know, neglects
the power of art for the whole system in his
late philosophy, as evidenced by the foregoing
quote in which art seems to have only a subsidiary role for philosophy. The passages on art that
Schelling does pen in his later years show a philosopher who is barely interested in its philosophical meaning.11

art and the barbaric principle in the

ontology of wild being
Art played a key role in Schellings early philosophy. So-called aesthetic intuition (System
21933) guaranteed the completion of the
system of 1800. Against the backdrop of
Merleau-Pontys own development of philosophy, it is not surprising that, as early as his
courses on nature, he devoted a separate paragraph to this topic. In a close reading of Schellings texts, Merleau-Ponty describes how art
attains the Absolute because at that moment
consciousness attains the unconscious
(Nature 46). Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty
again gives this interpretation a twist that
draws on Schellings Spa tphilosophie: What
there is of the Absolute in art is this experience
that I have of a superior Nature (ibid.; translation altered). On the contrary, aesthetic intuition, as conceived by the early Schelling, does
not allow nature to be a predominant remainder
in so far as this intuition encompasses everything subjective and everything objective or, at
the very least, it brings withdrawn and unconscious nature to consciousness. Nature is completely enclosed in art, or more precisely, by
aesthetic intuition.
Only when Schelling modies his notion of
nature, identifying it with the exteriority of
reason, can nature be that superiority
Merleau-Ponty describes, since this is the
moment when, in an inversion of Schellings
early, idealistic principles, nature comes to
dominate reason. If this is the case, however,
then the objectication of nature and

schellings shadow
unprethinkable being is not possible anymore.
Moreover, the option of acquiring an objectication of nature through art has disappeared.
After 1800, art never again receives such a
high status in Schellings philosophy.
Merleau-Ponty, in a prolic manner, combines two concepts of Schellings philosophy.
Closer to his phenomenological account is the
transcendental philosophy of the early Schelling
that tries to sublate everything within transcendental consciousness. But the very late works of
Merleau-Ponty especially elaborate an ontology
of wild being that as the article on Husserl
has already shown is guided by Schellings
Spa tphilosophie. One could say that, on the
one hand, Merleau-Ponty follows the transcendental philosophy of Schelling by leading his
phenomenology into the realm of art, while,
on the other hand, he trusts art, especially the
art of Cezanne, to mediate between the absent
and the present, the invisible and the visible,
to explain presence from its negativity.
This reference to Schellings late philosophy,
then, which is rooted in metaphysics rather than
art, is not as surprising as one might think,
given that as early as 1947, in his paper The
Metaphysical in Man, Merleau-Ponty rmly
pledges to reactivate metaphysics invoking it
in opposition to the ubiquitous scientism of
the twentieth century in order to restore the
original transcendence and strangeness (Metaphysical 97) of the ostensible neutral objects of
our sciences. In Schelling, Merleau-Ponty nds
an ally, one who advocates for metaphysics as
a necessary science that legitimizes the empirical sciences.
Ironically, Eye and Mind, of all works, does
not contain any direct indication of Schellings
presence and neither do the drafts of The
Visible and the Invisible. However, in the
loose working notes to this work, which was
his last, we nd yet another reference to the barbaric principle. The space Merleau-Ponty allots
to the barbaric principle is tantamount to the
space it has in his philosophy. The barbaric
principle hides in the back and thence unfolds
its power through the subsequent arrangements
that surpass it. Note the working note of
November 1960, which reads as follows:

The sensible, Nature, transcends the past/

present distinction, realizing from within a
passage from one into the other.
Existential eternity. The indestructible, the
barbaric Principle.
Do a psychoanalysis of Nature: it is the
esh, the mother.
A philosophy of the esh is the condition
without which psychoanalysis remains
anthropology. (Visible 267)

As fragmented as this note is, it not only shows

Merleau-Ponty once more referring to a concept
of Schelling, linking the barbaric principle with
nature; even more, it employs it in relation to
the notion of esh (chair; perhaps the most signicant notion in his late work, closely connected to the chiasm). Furthermore, nature
is dened as eternal indestructibility. MerleauPontys notion of time implies the rejection of
abstract constructions and binds time to an existential performance, a life that generates itself
spontaneously as an existential eternity. In
this eternity, presence and past come together,
which means they are not divided in the rst
place. The process of abstraction that divides
present from past is a posterior construction
of thought. In the presence of nature, its past
is engraved seamlessly and, in turn, the past
bears a permanent presence. This is reminiscent
of Schellings understanding of a hyper-eternal
eternity that is altogether present and irremediably foregone.
The issue of how to grasp this nature is meant
to be solved by a psychoanalysis of nature. On
the one hand, Merleau-Ponty is obviously afrming Freudian psychoanalysis; on the other, this
psychoanalysis of nature is opposed to Freuds
psychoanalysis of man. It is consistent with
Merleau-Pontys reections on an ontology
located beneath human consciousness. The
traumas of nature are not events leading to
precise pathological results. In the constellations
that are to be analysed ontologically, the phenomenon and its foundation intertwine without damaging themselves. This psychoanalysis is at its
core a philosophy deducing the esh, i.e., wild
and natural being, from which emerge the
orderly structures of human consciousness.
Whether this is the way subjective

116

bilda
interpretations of the world and classical dichotomies may be overcome cannot be answered denitively in this essay. Psychology, perhaps more
than other methods, threatens to objectify
subjective patterns of interpretation. While
Schelling was able to argue on a theological
basis for the retrieval of the liveliness of primordial structures in a scientic way, MerleauPonty employed a new psychology that sought
to ascertain the ontological fundament of
phenomenology.
Merleau-Ponty sticks to a form of phenomenological argumentation originating from consciousness. But the transition to nature,
corporeity and esh that is implied here can
essentially not outrun the radically pre-conscious. Even if the pre-conscious and consciousness pervade one another, their mutual
disclosure is limited to a sphere that never
discloses the other in its entirety. Similarly,
Schelling has the problem of scientically conducting what he proposed through speculation
while not being caught in anthropomorphisms,
a reproach with which he was often confronted.
The placelessness, which is the result of a philosophy that leaves the sphere of knowledge, is
only substantialized through the factuality of
historical reality. This quod of history cannot
be removed; man always has to position
himself back into a place. Merleau-Ponty opts
for the same factuality. Corporeity itself is an
il y a, an original given, which irrefutably
exists, but it is also the case that this ubiquitous
corporeity is placeless. Unfortunately, space
does not permit further elaboration on this
aspect. However, it should be clear that this
placelessness of corporeity is shown through
art: art for Merleau-Ponty is similar to what
ekstasis is for Schelling and it is rescued
through a texture of being. Merleau-Ponty
adds: The eye lives in this texture as a man
in his house (Eye 127). Ontology and
phenomenology form a close union. But it is
hard for Merleau-Ponty to shake off the theological inheritance of that ontology or ontophenomenology (especially when it strives to
remain of principal importance to philosophy).
Schelling, for his part, seems to have shaken
off art.

117

In a work published the year that Schelling

died, but long since forgotten, the poet Christian Friedrich Hebbel recalls the memories of
his youth. At some point in the transition
from childhood to adolescence, he realizes,
The things themselves cannot make for the
scale it is the shadows they cast one has to
ask for (Hebbel 66).12 This childhood epiphany
is important in at least two ways for my
argument.
First, it alludes to a thought that Schelling
and Merleau-Ponty have in common: there is a
forgotten, withdrawn background that determines reality. Second, it enables us to see that
Merleau-Pontys thinking, while itself in a way
the shadow of what Schellings philosophy
offers, may also provide the scale to re-evaluate
Schellings philosophy. This view enables us to
ask where we may nd art (and in a way also
Naturphilosophie) in Schellings later philosophy. In fact, there is a sense that art is still
present in his later works. Not only does he
write about art, but he incorporates it into his
philosophy of mythology. Art is
dynamized in the development
of a mythological process, put
forward but also in hiding
as the potency, the shadow of
reality.

disclosure statement
No potential conict of interest was reported by
the author.

notes
1 I have slightly altered the translation. More accurately the French principe barbare translates literally into barbaric principle (instead of
barbarous source). This term implies the
meaning of source, which is employed in the
English translation, as well as the more abstract
philosophical meaning that refers to a beginning
that determines and rules what follows. Cf. Signes
20128, 225.
2 Todschlag der Natur. The German term
Todschlag refers to the juridical context of homicide, although in this case man is slaughtering

schellings shadow
nature. In comparison to murder, Todschlag
does not refer to the conscious plan of killing
somebody but rather the result of hostile action.
Cf. Tittmann 2: 2933.
3 Cf. Schelling, Die Weltalter. Bruchstck. (Aus dem
handschriftlichen Nachla) 195344, 342f. Cf. also
Schelling, Die Weltalter. Fragmente. In den Urfassungen von 1811 und 1813 51. Another translation is
given by Merleau-Ponty in Nature 290f. Cf., for
further elaborations on Merleau-Pontys reference,
note 5 in this article.
4 One finds there a beautiful and illuminating
passage on the barbaric principle that even Jason
Wirth and Patrick Burkes book fails to take into
account:
It seems, Clara said, that man is in this way
like a work of art. Here, too, what is delicate
or spiritual receives its highest worth only by
asserting its nature through mixing with a
conflicting, even barbaric, element. The
greatest beauty comes about only when gentleness masters strength. (Clara 77)
The huge debate on the year Schelling could have
written this dialogue should consider just this
quote, as the original hypothesis of Schellings son
Friedrich August Schelling is still today very likely.
He places the dialogue in the years 1816 to 1817,
which is very close to the drafts of The Ages of
the World that also contain the passages that name
the barbaric principle. Cf. K.F.A. Schelling,
Vorwort des Herausgebers, Smmtliche Werke
I/9, V.
5 Merleau-Pontys citation of the barbaric principle on page 38 of Nature does not come from
the early versions of The Ages of the World, which
Manfred Schrter published in 1946, but he takes
the quote from Schellings Smmtliche Werke
(cf. n. 4). Probably the concept became familiar
to Merleau-Ponty via Jaspers as well as Lwith,
who themselves quote the barbaric principle as
found in the Reclam edition that was much more
accessible to them than the edition of the same
text that Schellings son provides. Cf. Schelling,
Die Weltalter [1912] 222f. Cf. Jaspers 231; Lwith
(2nd ed.) 154. In the first edition, Lwith deals
with Schelling in one paragraph. This was then
extended to a couple of pages in the second
edition. Cf. Lwith (1st ed.) 129. It seems that
Robert Valliers opinion, that there was a fault in
Lwith that the French editor reproduced, needs

to be corrected at this stage. Cf. Merleau-Ponty,

Nature 290. These remarks show that it is unlikely
that Merleau-Ponty acquired his knowledge of
Schelling through French literature. A German
reception is more probable since Merleau-Ponty
does not cite the dissertation of Janklvitch,
who also quotes the barbaric principle. Cf. Janklvitch esp. 59, 309; and Valliers remarks in MerleauPonty, Nature 290f.
6 For Heideggers reading of Schelling, see Hhn
344. For the French reception of Heidegger,
especially Merleau-Pontys, see Kleinberg 99110.
7 As did, for example, Ehrhardt 11121.
8 Cf. Schelling, Initia philosophiae universae (unpublished) 23ac. I quote the Erlangen lectures of 1821
with the pagination of the archive (Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften;
Schelling NL 103) and lower case letters which
indicate the tripartite page.
9 Lectures like the Darstellung des Naturprocesses
(Smmtliche Werke I/10, 30190) of 184344
show, already in its title, that Naturphilosophie is
still around in the later philosophy. But the
concept of nature has not remained in any way consistent. One may describe it roughly as a shift from a
transcendental nature to an ontological nature.
10 Schelling, Initia philosophiae universae (unpublished) 166a; my translation. These lectures are
available only in the archives of the Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
11 Cf. the little-known article Glasmalerei in
Mnchen und Paris.
12 Die Dinge selbst knnen hier also nicht den
Mastab abgeben, sondern man mu nach dem
Schatten fragen, den sie werfen. Hebbel became
acquainted with Schelling during Schellings
second stay in Munich. Cf. for further details that
still have to be elaborated, the very good article
by Liepe (12188).

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Alexander Bilda
Philosophisches Seminar
Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg
Platz der Universitat 3
79085 Freiburg
Germany
E-mail:
alexander.bilda@philosophie.unifreiburg.de