Over Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling's kritiek op #Spinoza

Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775 - 1854), ca. 1800 geschilderd door Christian Friedrich Tieck

cf. tekst op academia.edu

Abstract: Spinoza’s necessitarianism — the doctrine that everything that is actual is necessary — is an important matter of debate in German Idealism. I examine Schelling’s discussion of Spinozist necessitarianism in his 1809 Freedom Essay, and focus in particular on an objection that Schelling raises against this view: namely, that it has “blind necessity” govern the world. While Schelling draws in this context on Leibniz’s critique of Spinoza’s necessitarianism, he rejects the assumption of divine choice that stands behind Leibniz’s version of the charge of blind necessity. I develop an interpretation that shows both how Schelling consistently avoids necessitarianism despite denying divine choice, and how his own version of the charge of “blind necessity” offers objections against Spinozist necessitarianism that focus on the issues of divine personhood and love.

Conclusion: In his discussion of Spinoza’s necessitarianism in the Freedom Essay, Schelling does not offer what Hegel would call an ‘immanent’ critique of Spinoza. Schelling does not identify inconsistencies in Spinoza’s view, or gaps in his arguments. His objections to Spinoza’s necessitarianism are based on premises or theoretical desiderata that Spinoza need not accept. Nevertheless, Schelling does succeed in providing an original perspective on Spinozism by disentangling the issues of divine choice, divine personhood, and necessitarianism, and by developing an original counter-proposal to blind necessity: a robust and innovative account of divine personhood, love and perfection that is still compatible with the view that there is only one way in which God can act, and which can thereby avoid the problems that confront Leibniz’s theory (or, for that matter, any other theory that assumes divine choice and treats God as an ideal rational agent). Schelling’s discussion of Spinoza in the Freedom Essay thus certainly adds a distinctive and nuanced page to the reception of Spinoza in German Idealism.