Schelling vs. Hegel: Negativity in inversion

Paper explores the controversial relationship between Schelling and Hegel with respect to the role of negativity. By rejecting the common framework, according to which, one of the authors is usually presented as either advancing or preceding the other, it argues for an alternative synchronic reading which approaches this relationship not in terms of surpassing, subordination or perversion but rather presents it as an inversion. By discussing (a) the negativity of reflection, (b) the ontological interpretation of the transcendental object and (c) the application of dialectics, it proposes an amphibolic elaboration of commonly shared presuppositions—a movement following a similar path yet in converse directions, which in its own turn challenges our common understanding of German idealism.

Filosofi a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(2):156-160, may/aug 2018 self-consciousness, this model ap ears to be insufficient. If one takes into account their emphasis on the necessity to bring the Kantian project of critical philosophy to its extremes in order to "save Kant from himself, " it becomes equa ly possi le to justify Hegel' s and Sche ling' s criticism towards each other. What Hegel sees as major misinterpretations of the absolute, negation or the concept in Sche ling' s thought, the latter shows the same in Hegel' s. The difficulty lies in the fact that even if they both ap roach the identity of thought and being from different angles, they both assume it, both ground reflection in eculation and both present the absolute as mediation itself. As soon as we accept that one surpasses the other, the former always ap ears in the shadow of the latter. Thus, in order to avoid ap lying such one-sided reductive schemes that would "resolve" their incompatibility, I suggest an alternative, that is, a synthetic view which ap roaches the Sche ling-Hegel controversy (at least with re ect to the negativity of self-consciousness) not in terms of surpas ing, subo dination or perversion but rather presents it as an inversion. That is, if we reject the diac ronic framework, we may see a possibility of an alternative explication of the aforementioned commonly shared presup ositions inherent in both Sche ling and Hegel, which create an inverse movement, fo lowing a similar path yet in converse directions. The nar ower per ective from which I wi l ap roach this issue further in order to justify my ar ument is the role of negativity in the act of reflection.
However, it should be noted that even if such an alternative view eventua ly indeed ap ears to be justified, it is not so much expected to provide some positive solution to this controversy. It rather aims at giving us an op ortunity to ap roach the Sche ling-Hegel relationship from a different per ective and to modify the whole focus of the nature and the role of negativity in question. A similar path which presents Sche ling and Hegel as further developing the Kantian project in different directions has also been su ge ed by insightful authors such as Christopher Lauer (2010) and Miklos Vetö (1998), yet the very ambi uity of their relationship, that is, the ap arent impossibility to accept one position without simultaneously assuming or at least legitimating the other is not widely discussed.
Thus, leaving aside the controversial transition from negative to positive philosophy or to the philosophy of revelation in the late Sche ling (cf. Garcia, 2011;Wirth, 2003), I am going to rely only on his concept of negative or rational philosophy (and its limits) as such which he presents in his Munich or Berlin lectures. I wi l also focus on the mature Hegel who prou ly presents his philosophy as negative pa excellence. Accordingly, first going through (a) the negati ity of reflection, then discussing (b) the ontological interpretation of the transcendental object and fina ly (c) the a plication of dialectics, I intend to justify my proposal of an alternative.

I
Firstly, considering the negativity of reflection, which presents itself as the always mediated act of cognition dividing itself into subject and object, both Sche ling and Hegel tend to radicalize Kant's position. The only way to overcome the crisis of reason left behind by the dualism of Kant and Fichte was to push their discoveries to the extremes and to question not only the forms of cognition but the very substance or what they ca l die Sac e-the "absolute form" of thinking. Kant himself had already noticed that there is no possibility to grasp the transcendental subject as the source of reflection and determination. If in the act of reflection that which is the object is always presup osed by the subject and vice versa, we must also assume that the subject as subject always ap ears as something negated because in every reflection it is always transformed into an object. Consequently, the transcendental subject, understood as that which is unconditional and which grounds and provides the object its determinacy, is turned into its own phenomenon as soon as it attempts to grasp itself as it is in itself. That is, it can always be given only as something determinate or phenomenal and not as something that is unconditional. Every attempt to grasp a reflective act ap ears to be the product or result of reflection dou ling its own structure. Thus, in order to avoid admitting that the act of reflection separates itself from itself and always remains outside itself, Kant su gests, we must presup ose the subject only as a function of thinking in the unity of ap erception (Kant, 1998, p. A116-A120). Yet Sche ling and Hegel were not satisfied with the merely re ulative or formal description of reflection since it remained confined to the dualistic logic of subject-object, form-content etc. They realized the necessity to open its ontological and eculative horizons, which could account for the initial unity and separation of subject and object. Accordingly, the passage from the question of the transcendental subject to the question of the absolute subject concerned precisely the passage from reflection to eculation. In this way the pro lem of the relationship between the finite and the infinite, freedom and necessity, subjectivity and objectivity turned into the question of how these distinctions were possi le at a l.
It seems that Sche ling, in particular, takes advantage of this impossibility to grasp the reflective act itself. Looking from his per ective, this impos ibility can also be conceived as its only pos ibility or confirmation. For if true self-reflection would somehow be possi le, that is, if it could indeed be determined as such, it would inevita ly only become its own projection or result. And if it is not possi le, then this indeterminacy or negativity which lies within reason's permanent effort to ground itself eventua ly posits thinking in a never-ending and open process of self-overcoming. It is a permanent striving to destroy mediation which simultaneously creates or produces it. According to Sche ling, we could use the term ecstasy for this relation. Our ego, namely, is placed outside itself, i.e. outside its role. Its role is to be subject. Confronted with the absolute subject, it cannot remain a subject, for the absolute subject cannot behave like an object. It must, then, give up its place, it must be Filosofi a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(2):156-160, may/aug 2018 placed outside itself, as something that no longer exists (Schelling, 1997, p. 228).
Therefore, fo lowing this view, the reflective act itself can be conceived as a kind of ecstatic nothingness which is not just simply nothingness but is ontologica ly rooted nothingness, as a no-thing, a potential void or Plato's χώρα in which something can ap ear at a l. It seems that this paradoxical openness of thought to the world arising from its inability to ground itself becomes the core axis of Sche ling's philosophy of freedom and ontology (or rather topology) of nothingness, which he first elaborates through the concept of Ungrund in his Freiheit essay in 1809 and which in particular distin uishes him from Hegel.
Hegel, on the other hand, elaborates this insight by reversing the crucial tensions: if, strictly eaking, the source of reflection cannot be given directly and without any mediation, then this, according to him, does not necessarily signify that no ultimate self-reflection and absolute knowledge is impossi le. That would eventua ly lead us to the dead ends of skepticism. Rather, it can reveal the fact that mediation is exactly the way through which consciousness is given its eculative content. And if so, then the capacity to conceive and grasp this fact leads us to the recognition that this "inequality lies within consciousness itself " (die Ungleic heit im Bewußtsein). In the Science of Logic Hegel claims: Reflection is at first the movement of the nothing to the nothing, and thus negation coinciding with itself (die Bewegung des Nichts zu Nichts) and therefore back to itself (mit sich selbst zusammengehende). [...] it is the negative of itself: its being is to be what it is not (das Negative ihrer selbst ist, dies zu sein, was sie nicht ist) (Hegel, 2010, p. 346).
This complicated but very important remark presents mediation as that which is itself immediate and which has to be so in order to be gra ed. Yet at the moment of its reflection, this immediacy is negated again and with this dou le move the immediacy of negation becomes necessarily presupposed ( orausgesetzt). In other words, it means that reflection can only determine itself as negation but being determined is already being negated and that is how thought, according to Hegel, actualizes or performs that which is negative in negation itself.
Thus, if we agree that both Hegel and Sche ling ap roach the negativity of self-consciousness within the eculative, we can also admit that the former does it by recognizing the a l-encompassing mediation lying within reflection, the "movement from nothing to nothing" , while the latter presents this void as a permanent state of being outside or being the other, always determining that which is indeterminate. It can be interpreted as the inversion of thought's teleology: even if both Sche ling and Hegel admit the immanence of rea-son and the impossibility to reach "beyond" thinking, Sche ling presents it as a major structural lack and finitude of rational thought. Hegel, on the contrary, moves in the op osite direction: if the negativity of self-consciousness presents itself as a permanent self-negation and always seeks to overcome itself, then this is exactly the way how it affirms and returns to itself that which was negated. Therefore, either there is no outer that would not simultaneously be the inner as it is for Hegel, or there is no inner which is immediately not the outer, which ap ears to be the case in Sche ling.

II
Similarly, the ontological interpretation of Kant's idea of the transcendental object which is present in the works of both thinkers leads to ambi uous interpretations. The inevita le necessity to reject the merely formal or descriptive (instead of constituting) a ect of knowledge a lowed them to ree a lish the lost identity of thought and being. Hegel justified it by emphasizing the perfor ati ity and dyna ics of the concept as such. By bringing it back to its origin in the German verb greifen as it ap ears in the word "concept" as Be-g iff, he aimed to show that the structure of reason or, to be more precise, the negative movement of determinations constitutes the very structure of being, whereas for Sche ling, conversely, the proposed identity of thought and being relies on the emphasis on concept's potentiality. That is, by relying on the insight into thought's amphibolism (a luding to Kant), Sche ling ar ues for the asymmetrical relationship between being and the concept of being and thus limits rationality only to the sphere of permanent potentiality (or what he ca ls das unen lic e Seynkönnen [Sche ling, 2007, p. 133]). In other words, the concept of being coincides with but never exhausts being as such.
This tension implies their different understanding of the genesis of the concept. Hegel conceives it as a particular move (and not only a kind of subject's capacity to attach words to things), whereas for Sche ling this "move" is something that has alrea y become concept in the act of reflection. According to him, philosophy always starts from not-knowing, from the experience of lack and insufficiency. It seeks that which from the primal state of not-knowing ap ears to be transcendent, it seeks to know reality and being as suc and not only its deduced concepts. In his Munich lectures on the history of modern philosophy Sche ling claims: "What is first of a l in question is: What is. How, therefore, could that from which one begins already be in existence itself (selbst sc on seyend seyn) is sup osed first to be found?" (Sche ling, 1994, p. 154). Thus, according to Sche ling, reason primordia ly finds in itself that which is not and cannot be identical with the concept and which due to its ir educibility reveals itself as its moving force. In other words, negative or rational philosophy can only produce the conce t of being as its final telos. Yet if Sche ling understands concept only as a potency of being which reveals its inequality to actual being, Hegel, on the Filosofi a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(2):156-160, may/aug 2018 contrary, locates this inequality within the concept itself and defines it as its auto-poietic nature. It fo lows then that, taken in this sense, negative philosophy is no longer only the negative here (as in the case of Sche ling) because exactly by being negative, philosophy, according to Hegel, can absorb everything: possibility, becoming and reality are only the different moments of the same thought's development. In his Science of Logic Hegel writes: "As science, truth is pure self-consciousness as it develops itself and has the shape of the self, so that that which exists in and for itself is the conscious concept and the concept as such is that which exists in and for itself " (Hegel, 2010, p. 29). Thus, even if both Sche ling and Hegel agree that the concept is born from the negative relation e a lished in the reflective act, for Sche ling, the concept understood as essence (the "what" or " as" of the thing) ex definitio cannot be identical or coincide with the relation itself. That relation is only the pos ibility of its actuality and not of its ecific essence given a p io i.
The basis for this mutual confusion may also lie in the fact that Sche ling and Hegel use one and the same German term, "übergehen, " in different senses. For both of them the process of the concept "going over" into the actual is of crucial importance. Yet what separates them is the very direction and quality of this "übergehen. " Existence for Hegel is only the development of the concept's self-referential identity and mediated immediacy which is reached in the self-negation of the reflective act or in the already mentioned split (Teilung) and twofoldness of reflection. It fo lows then that this ap roach towards existence considers not existence as suc but only the way how it reveals or becomes possi le in the concept and as its development. Taken in this sense, any question about the existence that could be somehow external to the concept simply becomes meaningless because existence here is only the derivative of the concept. Thus, unlike the case of Sche ling, where existence ap ears to be prior to the concept and is what he ca ls an inverted idea (umgekehrte Idee), where the concept itself is conceived only as the passive result of cognition, in Hegel's case existence is presented as the dynamic nature of the conceptual itself. Concept (as Beg iff) for him appears to be the retaining, "seizing" or "grasping" power which is also the primal separation-Teilung, if we remember how accurately the concept of Urteil was explained by Friedrich Hölderlin already in 1794 (Hölderlin, 1991). Therefore, Hegel justifies his idea by emphasizing the perfor ati e, whereas Sche ling stresses only the potential a ect of the concept. One sees the concept as the very dynamics of mediation, while the other always sees it as its delayed result, only as the passive possibility to be.

III
The situation is similar in the case of dialectics: by formulating and accepting the principle of identity within difference, both authors reintroduce Kant's transcendental dialectics in terms of eculative logic, which plays an essential role in the whole movement of their thought. However, the dialectical su ension of pure identity or pure difference in both authors also eventua ly ap ear to direct them in converse directions.
According to Sche ling, real dialectics takes place not only in thinking but rather between thinking and that which, as the very process of thought's actualization, always escapes its immanent determinations and is left beyond. Again, it is the negative power which ena les and sustains thought's continuity. Already in The Ages of the World Sche ling admits that the very existence and necessity of dialectics only signifies the fact that dialectics itself is far from "actual knowledge" (wirklic e Wis ensc aft) (Sche ling, 2000, p. xxxvii). Since the dialectical process posits and at the same time dissolves any positive knowledge, it eventua ly signifies the insufficiency of logic and one-sided rationality. Thus, Sche ling sees the necessity for the dialectics of dialectics, which means that reason must presup ose the negativity of itself in toto.
Hegel, as we saw, on the contrary, ar ues that any difference already anticipates a common identity and directs everything towards absolute knowledge and immanence. Sche ling, although fo lowing the same structure of this thesis, ap lies the inverse logic. Difference rather than identity here comes as the generating force which grounds the possibility of identity. Of course, Hegel does not ar ue for the contrary but what separates them is the direction of the elaboration of this principle and the pro lem which is at stake. One questions the differential nature of difference and fina ly claims for absolute identity as reason's ter inus a que , while the other sees the necessity to admit the primordiality of difference and rejects the possibility of any final synthesis. Thus, either we have a closed circle and absolute knowledge, or an open and never-ending process of separation. It depends on the focus: looking from Hegel's per ective, Sche ling's alternative only confirms the totality of discursive thinking. That is, even if we accept the idea of radical reason's otherness to what is actual and thus remains always more or less but never equal to what is conceptual, the very possibility of grasping this idea can be interpreted in the Hegelian manner as the capacity of dialectical reason to embrace within itself the whole totality (Ganze). Yet equa ly looking from Sche ling's per ective, we can assume that the sup osed totality of Hegel's eculative logic, its magic power to internalize everything external, actua ly does not internalize anything at a l. On the contrary, it may be seen as only negatively revealing or presup osing that which necessarily remains indetermina le and ir educi le to conceptual thought. In the words of Sche ling himself, this sup osed Hegelian a l-encompassing totality is only the "agony of the concept. " Yet for Hegel this agony reveals itself as a sacrifice, as what he famously ca ls the "Bacchanalian revel. " It is the process of initiation which eventua ly resur ects a l reality and returns it to the concept as the absolute itself. This inner dialectical movement of the concept for Hegel explains its relationship with what can be defined as a pre-conceptual or objective reality. But Sche ling conceives this agony almost Filosofi a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(2):156-160, may/aug 2018 litera ly, as the fa l (Abfall) of the concept, when he claims that "in nature the concept is sup osed to be strip ed of its splendor, powerless, to have become untrue to itself, and incapa le of sustaining itself any more" (Sche ling, 1994, p. 154).
For Hegel, who relies on the idea of the concept' s exteriorization (Entäußerung), i.e. being the other while always remaining itself, thought ap ears as always inevita ly directed towards identity and final synthesis. It presents identity as something to be returned to as an eternal past or permanent beginning. Sche ling, conversely, always emphasizes the primal difference (Urzwist), the moving force which always leaves thinking open and directed towards the future of the absolute Unprethinkability (Unvo denklic keit). Therefore, we have the reverse movement of the same circle again: it either is the heteronomous identity or the identical heteronomy.

Conclusion
I attempted to show how the su ge ed mir or play between Sche ling and Hegel could help us modify the whole focus of their controversy. The central issue here would no longer be the question of overcoming or subordination but rather the question of how the coexistence of these two different but equa ly legitimate ap roaches towards negativity can be possi le at a l. If, as it was ar ued, Sche ling can indeed be read as an inverted Hegel, or Hegel as an inverted Sche ling, we may ask further: is it possi le to think about another form of mirro ing effect which is implicit in their very relationship and yet tota ly different from the understanding of dialectics provided by each of them separately? Or should we rather admit that by fulfi ling itself in these two extremes German idealism had already reached its limits and requires a movement beyond itself ? In any case, there is no doubt that its "pendulum of the negative" sti l haunts and cha lenges our thinking with its own, to bor ow Sche ling's metaphor, "eternal Magic. "