The Logic of Primal Willing in Schelling’s Freedom Essay

Schelling’s famous Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom is regularly presented as an enigmatic work that transcends reason and thereby eschews any systematic comprehension. However, Schelling’s Freedom Essay neither endorses irrationalism, nor does it call us to abandon systematic thinking. While it is true that the Absolute exceeds the powers of the understanding, Schelling boldly endorses the view that the Absolute is inherently rational and can be successfully known by means of reason. Because Schelling identifies reason as that power in virtue of which we know the absolute, he infers that “Reason is not activity but rather indifference” and “the general place of truth.” Since the Absolute is indifference, and indifference is what constitutes reason, the Absolute is reason itself. Far from denying that the Absolute is rational, the truths that Schelling uncovers in the Freedom Essay only appear within the domain of reason. Schelling himself insists upon this, for the “renunciation of reason and science” is “self-castration” that is constituted by a “bleak and wild enthusiasm.” I begin by reconstructing the metaphysics of Schelling’s logic of “primal willing” from which I demonstrate that the logic of freedom transcends the understanding but cannot transcend reason. Without acknowledging the fundamental difference between the understanding and reason in Schelling’s Freedom Essay, we overlook its significance for systematic thinking, and maim his commitment to absolute knowledge.