Hardly could any spiritual enthusiast have found pleasure in the thought of being consumed in the abyss of divinity, would he not continually replace the divine with his own ego. […] Here, my friend, we encounter the principle of all enthusiasm. As a system, it arises through nothing but objectified intellectual perception: one takes perception of the self as perception of an external object, and perception of the inner intellectual world as perception of a transcendent world outside oneself. (Schelling 1809, 167 f.)
Context: Rudolf Steiner and German Idealism
I.
An exciting and still insufficiently explored topic within Steiner research is the relationship between the anthroposophical worldview and the philosophical systems of German Idealism. Typically, Steiner’s epistemology is understood through his engagement with Goethe and Fichte. His ethical individualism, on the other hand, is commonly associated with Nietzsche and Stirner, while anthroposophy itself is largely seen as an offshoot of anglo-indian Theosophy. Recently, however, scholars have begun to explore whether ideas from German Idealism – ideas that Steiner encountered prior to his engagement with Goethe, Nietzsche, and Theosophy – might be at least as significant (and perhaps even more significant) for understanding the development and historical context of his thinking.
The focus of the existing discourse on Steiner’s relationship with German Idealism has always been Johann Gottlieb Fichte – and with good reason. Steiner had already engaged intensively with Fichte in his 1891 dissertation and frequently referred to the creator of the Wissenschaftslehre. Nevertheless, it is indicative of the Goethe fixation in previous Steiner research that it took about 65 years after Steiner’s death for Marcelo da Veiga to present the first significant study on the relationship between the two thinkers.1 Although this study convincingly demonstrated Fichte’s central importance for Rudolf Steiner’s philosophical thinking, it took another 21 years before Hartmut Traub picked up and expanded on this research approach.2
According to Traub, many unanswered questions remain regarding Steiner’s philosophical reception of Fichte, and it is questionable at numerous points whether Steiner correctly understood Fichte’s ideas as intended by their creator and accurately represented them in his texts, or whether he instrumentalized them for his own goals, thereby shortening and distorting them. Traub’s work on this issue, which has faced significant opposition in the anthroposophical scene,3 has opened fascinating new interpretative ground, for instance, by demonstrating that Steiner was influenced not only by Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) but also by his son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte (1796–1879). Traub also convincingly shows that both father and son Fichte left their marks not only on Steiner’s philosophical works but also on his later theosophical and anthroposophical ideas. Although the details of Traub’s interpretation will likely continue to be a source of controversy among historians of philosophy and anthroposophists for some time, future research will certainly not be able to disregard Traub’s core insight: that the philosophical foundation of Rudolf Steiner’s worldview must be understood against the background of his reception of classical German philosophy.
In the following, we will add to this debate by focusing on the extent to which other thinkers, besides Goethe, Nietzsche, Stirner, and the Fichtes, were involved in the philosophical “foundation” of anthroposophy. Particular attention will be given to Steiner’s relationship with Wilhelm Friedrich Joseph Schelling.
The style of our presentation is preliminary and sketchy, resulting from the fact that we enter a previously unexamined field and that the argument was originally presented as an oral lecture for a colloquium at the Alanus Hochschule in Alfter on May 24, 2014. The title of this lecture was: “Rudolf Steiner and His Romantic ‘Doppelgänger’: On Schelling’s Influence on the Two Theoretical Foundations of Anthroposophy.” For the present publication, the text has been revised, expanded with some references and footnotes, and retitled, but it has naturally retained its introductory and sketchy character. Only a preliminary and somewhat superficial approach will be taken to Steiner’s relationship with Schelling here. A thorough and critical treatment of the topic would require more space and more considerations.
When considering the question of Steiner’s relationship with Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), issues arise that need clarification. Steiner famously asserted in many places, and with strong words, that his thinking was strongly aligned with Goethe and thus stood in strict opposition to Kant. His invectives against the “unhealthy faith in Kant” (WW, VII) among his contemporaries and his often critical, sometimes derogatory, views on Kantianism are well known to readers of his standard works. (It should be noted, however, that this criticism often refers not to Kant himself but to his epigones and their influence on the general Zeitgeist.)4 Within anthroposophical literature, the thesis of a fundamental opposition between “Goetheanism” and “Kantianism” has become an established topos and was recently represented in an eloquent manner by Dietrich Rapp.5 Yet, a shift in Steiner research is also emerging here. Traub, in his study, has pointed out a number of profound internal connections and dependencies between Steiner and Kant.6 Additionally, the introductions to the Critical Edition have repeatedly noted that Steiner argued in agreement with the transcendental approach in several places.7 It can be assumed that further research in this direction will increasingly reveal that, despite his often emphatic criticism of the thinker from Königsberg, Steiner was closer to and more indebted to Kant in some respects than is apparent from his own statements about this relationship.8
Historically, the relationship between Steiner’s thought and Hegel’s is of particular interest and has therefore attracted some research attention. Jaap Sijmons, in his study on Struktur und Methode der Philosophie Rudolf Steiners, interprets Hegel and Goethe as the two central intellectual reference points of the early Steiner, viewing Steiner’s philosophical thinking overall as an attempt at a “synthesis of Hegel and Goethe”.9
As appealing as it would be to include Kant, Fichte, and Hegel in this investigation, such inclusion must be omitted in the present context. Only the fourth central figure within German Idealism, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), will be examined here, and even this can only be done, as mentioned, in a preliminary manner. Steiner’s relationship to this thinker has not received significant attention so far,10 although numerous references to him and deep intellectual connections and affinities are noticeable throughout Steiner’s work. This applies both to Steiner’s philosophical thought – particularly his monistic conception of reality, his concept of knowledge, and his understanding of freedom as an expression not of a property but of the essence of man – and to Steiner’s theosophical and anthroposophical ideas.11 Schelling’s late philosophy, especially his lecture series on Philosophy of Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation, contains many aspects that also appear in Steiner’s work, particularly during his turn to Theosophy.12
Steiner’s relationship to Schelling is also particularly intriguing because both thinkers experienced a visible and thus commented-on shift from an idealistic philosophy which is oriented toward the ideal of science towards a mystical and esoteric worldview. Both thinkers aimed to lead human thought beyond the paradigm of philosophical and critical-scientific thinking into new and unexplored realms of experience and knowledge. And in both cases, an encounter with theosophical ideas was the external trigger: in Steiner’s case, these were the ideas of Anglo-Indian Theosophy (represented by Alfred Sinnett, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Annie Besant, and Charles Leadbeater),13 while in Schelling’s case, he was influenced by the texts of Jakob Böhme, particularly by Franz Baader’s interpretation of these texts.
According to the findings of the introduction to Volume 5 of the Critical Edition, Rudolf Steiner presented not just one, as previously assumed, but actually two philosophical foundations for his later anthroposophical thought. Up to the publication of Die Philosophie der Freiheit, he favored an epistemologically oriented foundation, while in the writings after the turn of the century we find a foundation based on ideas about the nature of consciousness inspired by Schelling. The following will build on this finding and show that Steiner’s ideas in both contexts exhibit a remarkable proximity to ideas also found in Schelling’s work. It will be shown that not only the early philosophical writings of Steiner but also his book on Christianity of 1902 and his subsequent theosophical and anthroposophical works (i. e., Theosophie of 1904 and Geheimwissenschaft of 1910) show clear traces of this affinity and kinship.14
Steiner’s Early Reception of Schelling (1881–1904)
II.
To establish a starting point for examining the relationship between Steiner and Schelling, an overview of some central statements by Steiner about the philosopher from Leonberg will be provided. For brevity, I will first limit this to his texts up to 1904.15
Schelling’s Influence on Young Steiner
The earliest surviving reference to Schelling in Steiners œvre is a frequently cited youthful letter from 1881, in which he expresses fascination with the concept of intellectual perception (intellektuelle Anschauung), which he evidently encountered in Schelling’s Philosophische Briefe über Kriticismus und Dogmatismus (1795/96). He emphatically quotes Schelling’s statements about that “secret, wonderful ability […] to withdraw into our innermost self […] and to behold the eternal in us under the form of immutability,” and informs his friend Köck that he believes he has “clearly” discovered this ability in himself.16
I cite this passage here not so much to address the concept of intellectual perception, but because it shows that by around 1880, Steiner had already read Schelling’s Philosophical Letters.17 This is significant as these texts already contain the basic elements of Schelling’s philosophy of identity, which, as will be demonstrated later, is closely related to Steiner’s early philosophical writings.
Schelling in the Context of Steiner’s Goethe Reception
Let us now consider the phase in Steiner’s biography where, beginning in 1884, he worked as the editor of Goethe’s scientific writings.18 In the texts from this period, Steiner praises the “early” Schelling as a successor and radical thinker of Fichte’s philosophy of the self, as well as a profound philosopher whose ideas about nature deeply impressed and influenced Goethe.19 The “later” Schelling, on the other hand, is critically viewed as a thinker who, in his old age, had regressed into certain dogmatic positions he had previously already overcome with the help of Fichtean thought forms.20 Furthermore, Steiner criticizes the “later” Schelling for positing that “we can have a positive world content without the conviction that it exists, and that we can obtain this conviction only through higher experience” (EG, 135). The young Steiner finds this appeal to the need for a “higher experience” so “incomprehensible” that he can only explain this to himself by assuming that Schelling “in his later years no longer understood the standpoint of his youth” (ibid.).21
Whether this criticism accurately applies to Schelling’s late philosophy cannot be discussed here. What is important for our overall picture is that Steiner later partially retracted this criticism and even adopted some of the positions he had criticized earlier, such as the appeal to a “higher experience” beyond mere reflection. Thus, his critique of the late Schelling in the 1880s might be seen as a biographically interesting expression of discomfort with an idealism that was turning mystical and esoteric – something that would later present in his own thinking, even though it was not yet fully conscious or expressed at that time.
The Early Steiner on Schelling’s Aesthetics
Another interesting aspect of Steiner’s early reception of Schelling is the essay Goethe als Vater eine neuen Ästhetik from 1889.22 In this essay, Steiner places Schelling’s views on art and beauty in close proximity to Hegel’s, and then sharply critiques what he called the “aesthetics of Hegel and Schelling”. He argues that Friedrich Schiller’s Briefe über die ästhetische Erziehung had brought idealistic aesthetics to a peak with the concept of ‘beautiful semblance,’ and that in comparison Schelling and Hegel had regressed from there to a ‘Platonic’ standpoint that must be overcome with the help of Goethe.23
Whether and to what extent this categorization and criticism of Schelling’s aesthetics as a regression is accurate is not the focus here. It should only be noted that, once again, something Steiner initially criticizes in Schelling – namely, a Platonic tendency – later appears in his own thinking.24
Schelling in Steiner’s Philosophical Writings
Let us now turn to Steiner’s actual philosophical writings, namely his 1891 dissertation, later expanded into Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, and to his Philosophie der Freiheit of 1894. Based on the brief reception report outlined above, one might expect to find in these texts a detailed and decisive engagement with Schelling. However, this is not the case. Although Steiner mentions Schelling in both works, he scarcely engages with his ideas. Instead, he presents only very broad generalities, such as referring to Schelling as “der kühne Naturphilosoph,” primarily to highlight his own position against this background.25
On the surface, it might seem paradoxical that Steiner’s actual philosophical writings are the least useful when it comes to examining his reception of Schelling. However, if one looks beyond the explicit references and examines the intellectual substance of the texts, numerous and profound connections to Schelling’s philosophy of identity become apparent. Schelling is present precisely in those passages of Philosophie der Freiheit where he is not explicitly mentioned. As we attempt to demonstrate in the following sections, much can only be hinted at in this context due to the required brevity, and a certain familiarity with Steiner’s arguments in his philosophical writings is assumed for a full understanding of the references we will provide.
The first passage from Schelling that I would like to quote in this context is from the Philosophische Briefe:
If there exists within us a pure consciousness that, independent of external things, is not overwhelmed by any external power, but supports and sustains itself, then this is actually what Archimedes needed but did not find, a fixed point on which reason can place its lever […]. (Schelling 1809, 270).26
Those familiar with Steiner’s Philosophie der Freiheit will immediately notice that this statement about the self-sustaining nature of thought appears there in almost identical form. Steiner writes:
I consider it sufficiently justified to start from thinking in my view of the world. When Archimedes invented the lever, he believed he could lift the entire cosmos with it if he could only find a point to support his instrument. He needed something that is supported by itself, not by something else. In thinking, we have a principle that exists by itself. From here, let us try to comprehend the world. (PF, 51)
Another example is Steiner’s argument about the observation of thinking. In Die Philosophie der Freiheit, the self-perception of thought is the central methodological key to overcoming the subject-object dualism in ordinary consciousness. “When thought directs its gaze to its own activity,” Steiner writes, “then it turns its very own essence, that is, the subject, into its object” (PF, 60). He further states, “The activity a human being exercises as a thinking being is therefore not merely subjective, but one that is neither subjective nor objective, one that transcends these two concepts” (ibid., 61). Compare this with the following statement by Schelling:
Only in the self-perception of a mind (Geist) there is identity of representation and object. Therefore, to reveal that absolute agreement of representation and object, on which the reality of all our knowledge is based, it must be shown that the mind, in looking at objects, is only looking at itself […] [This] requires that one take the standpoint on which subject and object in us, seeing and being seen, are one and the same. This can only happen through an act of freedom. (Schelling 1809, 223)
Or consider Steiner’s view that the nature of a thought, the content of a concept, is always completely transparent to a human being. In Die Philosophie der Freiheit, we read:
Precisely because we generate our own thinking, we know the characteristic of its course, the way in which the process in question unfolds. […] I do not know immediately why, for my observation, does thunder follow lightning; but the reason why my thought connects the concept of thunder with that of lightning, I understand directly from the content of those two concepts. It does not matter, naturally, whether I have the right concepts of lightning and thunder. The connection between the concepts I have is clear to me through them alone. (PF, 43 f.)
Compare this with the following passage from Schelling, noting that here the concept of the “absolute” takes on the very function that pure thinking has for Steiner:
[…] about the absolute itself, as such, no dispute is possible. For in the realm of the absolute itself, no other than purely analytical statements apply, no other law but that of identity is followed here, and we have to do not with proofs but only with analyses, not with mediated understanding but only with immediate knowledge – in short, everything here is comprehensible” (Schelling 1809, 151).
Finally, consider the following passage where Schelling describes the process of cognition as a cooperation between perception and thought, concluding that reality in human consciousness is divided into these two components and then reunited in recognition. This passage, in a certain sense, completely anticipates the conceptual core of Steiner’s epistemology:
[…] in intuition, two originally and in their nature opposing activities must be united – they meet, mutually determine, and restrict each other. One of these will be of a positive nature, the other of a negative nature. And concerning the latter, what could it be other than what Kant describes as the activity coming from outside? [in Steiner’s terms: ‘perception’] The former, however, is evidently that which he assumes in the synthesis of intuition as active, i. e., the original mental activity [for Steiner: ‘thinking’]. And so it is clearly proven: the object is not something given to us from outside, but only a product of the original mental self-activity, which creates and brings forth a third common element from opposing activities […]. (Schelling 1809, 211)
In a meeting of intuition and concept […] human consciousness has always resided. Hence the firm, insurmountable conviction of a real world. Idealism […] had separated the perception from intuition, the object from representation. The idealist in this sense is alone and abandoned in the world, surrounded by ghosts everywhere. […]. (ibid., 217)
But if our mental representations are simultaneously representations and things (which common sense has never assumed otherwise and does not assume to this day), then humanity returns from the infinite delusions of misguided speculation to the straight path of a healthy, self-consistent nature. […] In shorter terms: because we become aware of the concept only in contrast to perception, and perception only in contrast to the concept, the concept appears dependent on perception, and perception as dependent on the concept, despite both being originally (before becoming conscious of them) one and the same. (ibid., 218 f.)
Even in the ethical part of Die Philosophie der Freiheit, many of Steiner’s statements are prefigured in Schelling’s Philosophische Briefe, such as the idea that the laws of moral life are not, as Kant formulated, merely discovered by reason and then followed by humans, but that instead human beings must themselves creatively bring them forth. Schelling states:
The moral law is by no means a dead statement that rests a priori within us, nor a statement that can arise theoretically … It is manifest only through action and deed, and only insofar as we know it. (Schelling 1809, 313)
Or consider the notion that in the act of bringing forth these moral laws or moral intuitions, necessity and freedom are united. Steiner argues that moral intuitions, although individually derived in the manner of their emergence, are universal in their origin and content, as they are rooted in a unity that transcends individuality.27 Compare this to Schelling’s statement:
Whoever has thought about freedom and necessity has found by himself that these principles must be united in the absolute – freedom, because the absolute acts from unconditional self-power; necessity, because it therefore acts only according to the laws of its being, the inner necessity of its essence. In it, there is no will that could deviate from a law, nor is there any law that it would not give itself through its actions. (Schelling 1809, 184)
Steiner’s proximity to Schelling is evident not only in specific ideas but also in the overall conception of his work. For instance, in the well-known passage from the preface to the 1918 edition of his book on freedom, Steiner refers to the questions of freedom and knowledge as the two “root questions of human soul life,” which are inextricably linked.28 This theme of an internal connection between the principles of epistemology and ethics, and thus the systematic framework of The Philosophy of Freedom, is also prefigured in Schelling:
Theoretical philosophy demands that the origin of the concept be explained. But why does it need to be explained, and is not this explanation itself already an action that presupposes that we have made ourselves independent of our concepts, i. e., that we have already become practical. […] Thus, a one-sided solution to the two questions, how theoretical and practical philosophy could be, is not to be found, and it must (if the problem can be solved at all) have a common resolution. (Schelling 1809, 267 f.)
Steiner’s Reception of Schelling around the Turn of the Century
Steiner’s philosophical phase ended with three works published around the turn of the century: the intellectual bibliography Goethes Weltanschauung (1897), the essay Der Egoismus in der Philosophie (1899), and the extensive two-volume work Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im 19. Jahrhundert, which was later significantly expanded and reissued under the title Die Rätsel der Philosophie.
As with the philosophical texts from 1891 to 1894, the large Goethe monograph of 1897 surprisingly yields very little for our consideration, as Steiner only superficially addresses Goethe’s relationship to Schelling.29 However, the essay on Egoism (1899) contains an extensive passage on Schelling. Despite some fundamental changes in Steiner’s thinking at this time, his interpretation of Schelling remains essentially unchanged. Although Steiner adopts a harsher and more emphatic language influenced by Nietzsche and Stirner, he continues to hold the earlier view of a genius-like “early” Schelling, against whom the “late” Schelling is seen as having fallen back into a dogmatic position.30
But then things get interesting. Just a year later, in 1900, in Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Steiner abandons his earlier portrayal of Schelling, which we had described as overly simplified and somewhat instrumentalizing. Instead, he offers an in-depth examination that, while still distinguishing between Schelling’s early and late philosophies, predominantly highlights their positive and forward-looking aspects from Steiner’s perspective. In fact, the “late” Schelling is even characterized as the “deeper” and “more significant” thinker. Steiner discusses Schelling’s reception of Böhme and describes his shift from being merely a “negative” philosopher to a proponent of “positive” divine wisdom or theosophy. Unlike his earlier assessments, Steiner no longer regards this step as a “fall back into previously overcome positions.” On the contrary, the reference to the necessity of a “higher experience,” which Steiner had found “incomprehensible” in 1884, is now seen as something that marks Schelling as a particularly profound thinker.31
Thus, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen marks a clear turning point in how Steiner talks about Schelling and positions himself in relation to him. Rather than playing off the later Schelling against the early Schelling to bolster his own Goethe-influenced philosophical stance, Steiner now describes with appreciative respect how Schelling’s position transitions from a philosophical to a theosophical one. He acknowledges how Schelling attempts to convey these theosophical (and thus transcendent) ideas through philosophically grounded reflection or, more precisely, to elevate philosophical thought itself in his Positive Philosophy.
One example is Steiner’s citation of Schelling’s statement: “It is very true that a body acts only where it is, but it is equally true that it is only where it acts” (RP[I], 141). With this statement, Schelling illustrated his idea that the remote effect of heavenly bodies can only be explained if one assumes they have not only a physical but also a non-corporeal mode of existence. Schelling here uses the theosophical terminology of Böhme and speaks of the “Astrality” of celestial bodies. Steiner follows Schelling’s lead and uses this passage to illustrate a central idea of his own understanding of the mind: namely that the human mind is present not only in the brain, but also outside of it, where it is at work, namely within the inner being of the object of cognition.32
This method of presenting philosophical positions through images and theorems from the theosophical tradition, as exemplified by Schelling, features prominently in Steiner’s own work after the turn of the century. It also becomes a significant feature of his theosophical writings between 1901 and 1910. This approach develops to become, particularly in Steiner’s 1901 book on mysticism, the central formative principle in his presentations.33 The book just mentioned can, without exaggeration, be read as a commentary on Philosophie der Freiheit, shaped by the teachings of European mystics from Eckhart to Angelus Silesius. The framework of mysticism that had made Steiner uncomfortable in the 1880s is now not only accepted and seen in its positive aspects but also employed as a medium for presenting and affirming his own evolving thought, which increasingly assimilates and integrates theosophical forms of thought.
Steiner’s Relationship to Schelling During His Transition to Theosophy
A significant shift is evident in Steiners work around 1900. With the same emphasis with which he had previously praised the “early” Schelling and condemned the “later” one, he now describes Schelling’s mature philosophy in appreciative, even enthusiastic terms. And this trend continues in his subsequent works. In the lectures on Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache, Steiner refers to Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology as “the most significant work we can read today.”34
To summarize: at the very moment Steiner turns to Theosophy and, through the integration of theosophical imagery and thought with his philosophical idealism, develops the foundations of his later Anthroposophy, he characterizes Schellings lectures – and not Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine or Annie Besant’s Esoteric Christianity – as a “most significant work” for him: the very lectures in which the philosopher used the history of European religious development to develop his conception of Positive Philosophy.
Steiner’s enthusiasm for Schelling’s late work around the turn of the century was no mere passing interest. Four years later, he wrote in an article in the journal Lucifer Gnosis that Schelling “belongs to the deepest minds of the German people,” from whom “everyone can learn immeasurably much.” Especially for “the theosophist,” Steiner continued, there is “an infinite amount of real wisdom” to be found in Schelling’s late texts.35
Connections Between Schelling’s Late Philosophy and Rudolf Steiner’s Esotericism Around the Turn of the Century
III.
In light of the above outline of Steiner’s reception of Schelling up to 1904, which naturally requires further elaboration in detail, I now turn to the close relationship between Steiner’s Theosophy and Anthroposophy on the one hand, and Schelling’s thought on the other. In doing so, I will refer to some statements I made in my introductions to the Critical Edition of Steiner’s Writings (SKA).
In the introduction to Volume 5 of the SKA, I have formulated the thesis that, in his writings from 1901 and 1902 and after a phase of identifying with Goethe and developing a Goethean theory of knowledge and science, Steiner developed a second philosophical foundation for his worldview, this time not based on epistemology but rather on his views on the nature of consciousness. I characterized this philosophical approach by coining the expression of a “fundamental law of ideogenesis” at the basis of Steiner’s thought. Just as, according to Haeckel’s so-called biogenetic laws, the ontogeny of an organism recapitulates its phylogeny, Steiner posits in these texts the idea that all manifestations of human consciousness are expressions and repetitions of one and the same fundamental fact of consciousness: in all forms of mental representation, where a person thinks of the reality outside themselves, his thoughts can be understood as projections of the thinkers own being – whether he conceives of that reality in the form of mythical gods, as a Platonic world of ideas, or as a natural world constituted from matter. In this context, is has often been overlooked by anthroposophical critics of said introduction that, according to Steiner, the thinker’s “own being” that he project is not to be understood as the empirical self or Ego of the individual thinker, but rather, in line with the philosophers of German Idealism, as a transpersonal and absolute reality. This transpersonal reality is to distinguished from the one in which it manifests as the ‘empirical self’ (as in Fichte’s philosophy) or, as Hegel put it, in the form of ‘mind-for-itself’ (der für-sich-seiende Geist). The “projection” referred to here has, therefore, been misunderstood when interpreted as a relativistic or even solipsistic position.
In this context, I have also suggested the possibility that Steiner’s view might have been inspired by Schelling’s writings on religious philosophy (SKA 1, 296; note to Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache, 23). Both thinkers pursued a very similar approach, and Steiner referred to Schelling’s later lectures on multiple occasions. To make this thesis more plausible than was possible in the context of the aforementioned introduction, I would now like to briefly characterize some basic features of Schelling’s late philosophy, thereby clarifying his connection to Steiner.
A fundamental idea in Schelling’s later lectures is that the mythologies of different ages and cultures should not be understood as expressions of arbitrary or culturally determined beliefs or as mere proto-scientific views. Instead, Schelling argues that the emergence of myth must be understood as based on laws rooted in the nature of consciousness itself. According to Schelling, mythology reflects the nature of the developing human mind. Since, for Schelling, the forces operating in human consciousness are also the forces at work in the innermost nature of God, mythology is not only a representation of human nature in its development but also an image of the divine nature itself as it develops in nature and history. (It is worth noting that these ideas also resonate with much of Hegelian thought, though these intersections and overlaps cannot be detailed here.)
Schelling articulated these ideas in his theory of Potencies (Potenzenlehre), which, though somewhat reminiscent of Jakob Böhme’s theory of principles (Prinzipienlehre), is a highly original synthesis of Aristotelian metaphysics, Christian Trinitarian doctrine, and idealist dialectics. By potencies, Schelling refers to three fundamental principles or aspects that unfold within the nature of God and thus underlie all being and all development.
Schelling characterizes the first potency as pure ability for being, pure potentiality. He argues that it is a necessity of thought to assume this as the origin, since nothing can truly come to being unless it was first present as a possibility. However, the world in which we live is not merely a ‘possible’ world but a real one. Therefore, the second potency is needed, namely the principle of pure being, the realization or actualization of what lies only as potential in the first potency. But as this second potency contains by definition no more potentiality, it has to be completely static and incapable of further development. To explain the real world as a developing and changing one, there must necessarily be a mixture of potentiality and actuality. Thus the third potency comes into play, a form of being that is still capable of becoming.
These three potencies, or developmental moments, emerge in Schelling’s thinking as necessary conditions for the possibility of a developing world. However, insofar as they are thought to exist within the nature of God, before creation, they are all only potential with respect to the real world – and thus all, again, a first potency. To truly become a world, the three divine potencies must collectively transition from the state of mere potentiality to actual being, turning their inner nature outward. In consequence, the ‘world’ arises as a higher potency compared to God, in which all three original potencies remain effective.
Readers familiar with Anthroposophy will notice that Schelling here describes a process similar to the one Steiner refers to as the concept of “inversion” (Umstülpung; c. f. SKA 8.2, LXIX)). While Schelling himself does not use the term “inversion” himself, he argues for precisely the same process that Steiner describes as well. In fact, Schelling interprets the word “universe” etymologically as the One (unum) that has been turned around or upside down (versus). Thus, the “universe” is conceived as a process, a uni-versio, meaning the inversion of unity (the divine essence) into the multiplicity of things.36
For Schelling, “nature” is the spatial and temporal unfolding of the divine essence, and the process of world creation is simultaneously the process of the successive realization of God – essentially, a theogony. God unfolds in and as the universe until humanity appears and consciousness emerges in human beings. Consciousness then constitutes yet another universe, or inversion. God, having turned outward as nature, in a sense turns inward again in the mind of human beings and becomes consciousness – becomes individualized spirit. Consciousness is, on one hand, a higher third potency compared to God and nature, and thus, in some sense, their opposite. Yet, within it, all three of the original potencies continue to operate.
Based on these views, Schelling sees not only natural history but also the development of the human mind as a theogonic process. In everything that human consciousness produces, it is always the original three divine potencies that bring forth new forms and metamorphoses of their own being at ever higher levels.
This process is reflected particularly in mythology, according to Schelling, which is why he chooses this subject to illustrate and practically apply his theory of potencies. To him, mythology is not a depiction of gods as external entities arbitrarily invented by humans, but a lawfully created pictorial representation of the objective development of divine potencies in nature and in consciousness. Schelling argues that, when the Greek imagination pictured the succession of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus, or when Christian theology contemplates the Trinity, it is, in reality, the three divine potencies that generate representations of themselves in the medium of human consciousness. They are thus images of the god’s own being and becoming, and it is the divine itself that achieves self-awareness through the creations of the human mind.
However, Schelling sees a qualitative leap between the polytheistic ideas of mythology and the monotheistic thinking of revealed religions. For he understands “mythology” as a consciousness of the essence of God that has not yet become self-consciousness. In it, God sees himself, through human consciousness, in the image of a multiplicity, a fragmentation of his essence. It is, therefore, necessarily polytheism. (Schelling points out the fates of Osiris and Dionysus as expressions of this fragmentation.) Only at the moment when human consciousness no longer merely produces diverse images of divine activity but understands all images as expressions of the developmental aspects of a unified essence can one speak of a true self-consciousness of God in humans and thus of “revelation.” Monotheistic consciousness is thus for Schelling the organ through which God recognizes himself as unity, which until then had been expressed in the diversity of mythical gods.
As this self-recognition of God in human consciousness takes place, the phase of mythological consciousness ends, and the phase of monotheism or revealed religion begins. But even though humanity as a whole has already entered this phase, Schelling argues that many individual people, in fact, most, still lack the actual realization of this goal. While they experience the collective shift in their culture from polytheism to monotheism, they continue to conceive of this new singular God in the mode of the old mythological consciousness, understanding him as a separate being, a power distinct from the world and their own Self, and not as the innermost core of all being (including their own). According to Schelling, the function of the ancient mysteries, and now the task of Christianity, is to realize this collectively achieved threshold transition of humanity also in individual consciousness.
Against the backdrop of these Schellingian ideas, readers of Rudolf Steiner’s work Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache cannot overlook the kinship in which the conceptual basis of this book stands in almost all central aspects to the outlined Schellingian model. For example, when Steiner writes that the ancient initiate exchanged the traditional belief in gods as external entities for the understanding that these divine images are the lawful products of the theogonic process occurring in his own consciousness, this is entirely in the spirit of the Philosophy of Mythology. Other central ideas of the book on Christianity can also be clearly traced back to Schelling, such as Steiner’s views on the inner connection between mythology and mystery wisdom.37 Or his idea that the content of imaginative consciousness should not be understood as symbols or allegories only, but as manifestations of spiritual realities.38 Steiners interpretation of the Osiris and Dionysus myths39 or his notion that Christianity should be understood as the revelation of previously secret mystery wisdom,40 too, are very much in line with Schelling’s thinking. The list of examples could be extended.
But Steiner is indebted to Schelling not only in his ideas on Christianity. This influence can also be traced in the subsequent theosophical standard works (such as Theosophie and Geheimwissenschaft). It would be worthwhile, therefore, to examine the various forms of triadic thinking in Steiner in light of the Schellingian doctrine of “Potenzen” outlined above and also in light of its model in Jacob Böhme. However, as this would go beyond the scope of the current context, I will limit myself to showing the close relationship between Steiner and Schelling using another example, namely the concept of initiation in Steiner’s work.
In the introduction to Volume 5 of the SKA, I suggested how Steiner’s concept of initiation places self-knowledge of the individual and the general evolution of the cosmos in a close reciprocal relationship. In terms of the comparison drawn above with Haeckel’s biogenetic law, one could say: Steiner believed that in the experience of a human being who recognizes the true nature of the Self, the entire developmental history of humanity and the cosmos unfolds or repeats itself. When an individual experiences initiation, and thereby realizes what or who they truly are at their core, this self-knowledge simultaneously unfolds, according to Steiner, a vision or memory of the entire development of humanity and nature. Based on this idea, he can justify how he was able to obtain the observations given in Geheimwissenschaft, in which he describes the development of the cosmos, up to the formation of the Earth, and even into pre-Earth times.
Conversely, Steiner assumed that creating a mental representation of cosmic becoming – as one does when studying the chapter on world development in Geheimwissenschaft – can serve as a catalyst for this higher experience of knowledge. Therefore, the chapter on the origin of the world in Geheimwissenschaft precedes the one with the description of the path of knowledge. This chapter on the origin of the world, Steiner explains, serves in a way as a substitute for the traditional initiation ritual in which the initiate had to enact the creation of the cosmos symbolically and performatively. Its mental realization that occurs in the process of reading it is seen as a preparation and a part of the initiation process described later in the chapter on the path of knowledge.41
In summary: the study of the origin of the world is for Steiner part of the initiate’s preparation for attaining higher knowledge; and conversely, attaining higher knowledge leads to a direct experience of the origin of the world.42 In Die Mystik im Aufgange, Steiner points to Jakob Böhme as a precursor to this understanding of initiation and quotes him as follows:
I know that the sophist will here criticize me and declare it to be impossible knowledge [namely: to know something about the beginning of creation, C. C.], because I was not present and did not see it myself. It is said to him that I was present in my soul and bodily essence, when I was not yet the I but was the essence of Adam. 43
At this point, Steiner could just as well have quoted Schelling instead of Böhme, for the same fundamental idea is present in Schelling’s later philosophy. Since the powers that bring forth the universe on a macrocosmic level are the same ones that bring forth consciousness in human beings, the individual in Schelling’s later philosophy can also claim to have been “present” at creation. As stated in the Philosophy of Revelation: “We strive in this highest science only to reach a stare where man […] once was […] (not a man – but man as he lives on in all of us).”44 Thus, the following quote from Schelling’s introduction to the Weltalter fragment of 1911 was used in the introduction to Volume 8 of the SKA as a motto for and characterization of anthroposophical cosmogony:
Drawn from the source of things and like it, the human soul has a co-knowledge of creation. […] This archetype of things sleeps in the soul as a darkened and forgotten, although not completely erased image. […] In this rests the memory of all things, their original conditions, their becoming, their significance.45
Anthroposophy as a Topic in Idealism Research
IV.
With these indications, which, by their very nature, must remain somewhat sketchy, I have sought to demonstrate the close intellectual and spiritual relationship between Rudolf Steiner and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. This connection spans both Steiner’s early philosophical writings and his later theosophical and anthroposophical ideas, particularly after the turn of the century.
This insight reveals an urgent need for Steiner scholarship to further investigate and examine this relationship in more depth than previously in the existing literature. Moreover, it calls upon the field of philosophy to make Steiner a central figure in Schelling studies and research on German Idealism more broadly. Even the limited connections presented here, which could be expanded significantly, should make it evident that Steiner deserves a place in academic discussions about the reception and importance of German Idealism. Another compelling reason for such an inclusion can be seen in the fact that both Steiner and Schelling themselves seem to have pointed to their mutual relationship and intended for it to be explored.
At first glance, such a statement may appear paradoxical. It is easy to demonstrate, on Steiner’s side, that he repeatedly situated his philosophical and spiritual-scientific work within the context of German Idealism, especially Schelling’s philosophy, and explicitly sought recognition of this connection. But what do we mean by claiming that Schelling, who passed away nearly a century before Steiner’s anthroposophical work emerged, may have discussed and anticipated Anthroposophy?
It is a little known fact that Schelling, along with contemporaries like Immanuel Hermann Fichte and others, actually did use the term “Anthroposophy” to describe certain aspects of their own philosophical ideas concerning human nature.46 Hence the concept was not used for the first time when Steiner popularized it a century ago, but had already been in use hundred years earlier, as indicated by the title of this essay.47 One could argue, therefore, that Steiner was not the founder of Anthroposophy, as is commonly assumed, but that the paradigm as such had already been articulated as a form of philosophical anthropology within the framework of German Idealism, and that Steiner’s work represents, in fact, a continuation of this very tradition. This perspective, which Helmut Traub debates in his book,48 is a fascinating one that might change the way in which we often see Steiner today as a marginal and isolated phenomenon.
Furthermore, there is another way in which the notion can be understood that Schelling, in some way, anticipated Anthroposophy. By temporarily shifting from a strictly factual approach to a more hypothetical one, we might ask: Could Steiner and Anthroposophy be interpreted as an expression of a development of thought that Schelling – perhaps not in its exact form but in its general direction – had anticipated, addressed, and desired?
To explore this line of thought, we can turn to a statement by Schelling in the ninth lecture of his series on The Philosophy of Revelation.
It is only in accordance with my firm conviction when I express the notion that no philosophy until now has gotten to the matter itself, i. e., has become real science, but has always remained stuck in its preliminaries. Particularly, recent German philosophy resembles an endless preface, to which the book has been waited for in vain. – A recent Frenchman very aptly says: philosophy has so far been merely a tangent to human life; it touched it but merely ran alongside it. It is now up to the Germans to show that true philosophy can do more than just touch life. It must penetrate deeply into it; it must become the center around which all forces move.49
Schelling thus formulated the thesis that German Idealism had not fulfilled its central claim to elevate philosophy to the status of a science and a factor that is relevant for practical life. Although Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and even the young Schelling himself had embarked on this claim, the later Schelling characterizes this task as one yet to be accomplished.
Schelling states that German Idealism as a whole had not yet experienced its complete development. One should consider the many meters on the bookshelf today occupied by the works of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling (not to mention the pertinent secondary literature) to gauge the significance of the statement that these thousands of pages do not represent the actual ‘book’ of what these thinkers aimed for, but at best a ‘preface’ to it.
Schelling also makes clear what German Idealism was still lacking, in addition to the mentioned scientific character, to be considered a true, fully developed and relevant philosophy: namely, the lack of influence of mere theory on practical life. Let us recall that, at the time when these words were written, the golden age of German philosophy had already ended, i. e. they came forth in an era in which the latest publication of a Kant or a lecture by Fichte and Schelling in Jena were exciting societal events that were followed by large audiences and could be described without exaggeration as ‘blockbusters’ by today’s standards. However, by 1841, when Schelling presented his Philosophy of Revelation in Berlin, philosophy no longer had such broad impact. Instead, modern natural science was on its way to taking on the very role demanded by Schelling for philosophy. It was not his Positive Philosophy but rather the breathtaking discoveries and achievements of modern natural science and technology that began to “penetrate deeply into practical life” and become the “center” around which all other intellectual forces revolved.
Nevertheless, Schelling believed that the true flowering of German Idealism was still to come, that a “true” philosophy could intervene in the center of practical life and penetrate all areas of life just as the natural sciences had, and even more deeply and comprehensively. According to him, the speculative path of German Idealism, the method of knowing reality through exploring the inner laws of thought and consciousness, was not, as judged by many contemporaries then and now, a failure; rather, it had simply not been completed and had not yet borne its inherent fruits. (Similar expectations can be found in the late Fichte as well, such as in the Reden an die Deutsche Nation.) It is evident from several places in his work that Schelling assumed, or at least hoped, that eventually a thinker – and decidedly a German thinker, in his view – would take up and continue this task. In the already quoted introduction to the fragment of Weltalter, for instance, we read:
Perhaps there will come one who sings the highest heroic poem, comprehensively in spirit, as is praised by the seers of old, what was, what is, and what will be.50
When considering Rudolf Steiner’s life work and his statements about Schelling and German Idealism in light of these statements, an unbiased observer must ask how Steiner’s work, or Anthroposophy, both in its theoretical formulations and its cultural applications, relates to that “true German philosophy” which was the hope of Schelling. Given the extent to which Steiner was indebted to German Idealism, and also the relatively significant influence his ideas have had in various practical applications, it seems not only justified but also required to ask whether and to what extent theoretical and applied Anthroposophy, in fact, breathes the life and the spirit of what Fichte or Schelling aspired to achieve with their ideal of a ‘true’ philosophy that intervenes in practical life.
Fichte, for instance, did present an educational model based on idealistic-speculative grounds in his Reden an die Deutsche Nation that has certain similarities with Steiner’s pedagogy. Yet, one will search in vain for schools where students are taught today according to Fichtean principles, while the Waldorf education movement has spread worldwide and offers a genuine alternative to traditional schooling. Similarly, practical applications of Schelling’s philosophy of nature in the modern world are rare, whereas principles developed by Steiner are used today in agricultural businesses, food production, and anthroposophical medicine around the globe. And while, outside of specialized academic circles, works like Wissenschaftslehre, Weltalter, or Phänomenologie des Geistes are hardly ever read, in anthroposophical circles today not only future teachers but also eurythmists, doctors, farmers, gardeners, and people from all walks of life and educational backgrounds study and reflect on the nature of thinking, freedom, or the unfolding of spirit in nature. In reading Steiner, they intellectually follow in the footsteps of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, albeit perhaps in a popularized and academically not quite rigorous form.
The hypothetical questions and examples provided above were not meant to endorse the old anthroposophical claim that Anthroposophy has ‘completed’ or even ‘overcome’ German Idealism. That is not the point here. Rather, it is to indicate that, given the situation described above, the exploration of the relationship between Steiner and Schelling (or between Anthroposophy and German Idealism as a whole) outlined in this essay is a legitimate and appropriate topic for those who research Anthroposophy today, and also for contemporary philosophical and historical discourses. The reasons why the philosophical community has shied away from engaging with Steiner over the past hundred years, and still avoids it today, are obvious and need not be discussed here. However, soberly considered, it is simply a fact that today, on the 100th anniversary of Steiner’s death, neither his image as a problematic ‘guru’ nor the difficult societal position and reputation of anthroposophists should remain legitimate reasons for avoiding such a discussion in academia, provided that such discourse takes place on equal terms and does not constitute a court held by one over the other. Since recent research has unequivocally demonstrated that Anthroposophy is indeed, at least in some respects, an intellectual offspring of German Idealism, the consequence should be accepted that Anthroposophy and its practical applications are a part of the history of German Idealism, whether one likes it or not. And who knows: perhaps in the context of such a new, unbiased, and matter-of-fact approach to Steiner, another question might also appear in a new light: namely, whether and to what extent, beyond their purely academic-scientific reception, the impulses of German Idealism are still relevant and alive today.
Notes
[1] Da Veiga (1990).
[2] Traub (2011).
[3] Traub criticizes the view of anthroposophically oriented interpreters that Steiner ‘completed’ and ‘overcame’ Fichte’s philosophy. In Traub’s analysis, Steiner appears more as an epigone of Fichte rather than a true successor. The claim that Steiner ‘overcame’ Fichte is disputed by Traub, as Steiner often misunderstood his philosophical model and did not reach Fichte’s level of reflective depth and philosophical problem awareness.
[4] Already the famous quote cited above makes it clear that Steiner is not attacking Kant himself but rather what he perceived as a ‘belief in Kant’ among his contemporaries.
[5] Cf. Rapp (2012). The lecture underlying this text was, as mentioned, given in 2014.
[6] Cf. Traub (2011), 42–103.
[8] With regard to the Anthroposophical model of consciousness development, it must also be pointed out that, according to Steiner, a transition of humanity through a period of closure of ordinary consciousness from reality, as described in Kantian philosophy, is a necessary aspect of the age of the Consciousness Souls through which humanity, according to Steiner, must pass in modern times. Furthermore, in his book Von Seelenrätseln and other places, Steiner describes the ‘experience at the limits of knowledge’ as an important aspect of the training of ordinary consciousness in its transition to supersensible or Anthroposophical consciousness (cf. VS, 207–212). For the anthroposophist Steiner, Kant and Kantianism are symptoms of a necessary but to-be-overcome stage of human consciousness development.
[9] Sijmons (2008), 55. This approach, however, appears questionable in light of Traub’s work on Fichte’s significance for Anthroposophy.
[10] Helmut Zander completely ignores Schelling’s significance for Steiner, and Traub also provides only scattered references to this thinker. Some hints can be found in Sijmons (2008), but even here everything remains vague.
[11] For instance, Sijmons assumes quite naturally that Steiner regularly read the Freiheitsschrift (cf. ibid. 342 f.): “In Schelling’s Freiheitsschrift, we already find developed this ‘dual nature’ of subjectivity as an eccentric, ecstatic special and central being, which Steiner also attributes to human freedom.” A truly thorough study of the relationship between Schelling’s seminal book Über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit of 1809 and Steiner’s Philosophie der Freiheit of 1894 is still lacking. [Note: This and all further quotations from the original German sources have been translated by the author; the page numbers hence refer to the original texts as quoted in the German version of this article.]
[14] It should be clear from the nature of the matter that talk about an ‘affinity’ and ‘relationship’ between Steiner’s and Schelling’s thinking is not meant here in the one-dimensional sense of mere ‘reception’ of one by the other. We nonetheless note this here, with an eye to the often polemical nature of discussions in Anthroposophy.
[15] It should at least be mentioned, however, that Steiner made significant statements about Schelling even afterwards, especially in 1918 in his book Vom Menschenrätsel (cf. VM, 42–55).
[16] The passage reads: “My effort last year was to explore whether it was true what Schelling says: ‘We all have a secret, wonderful power to withdraw from the change of time into our innermost self, stripped of everything that came from outside, and there under the form of immutability to behold the eternal within us.’ I believed and still believe that I have clearly discovered that innermost power in myself – I had long sensed it; now the entire idealistic philosophy appears to me in a significantly modified form; what is a sleepless night compared to such a discovery!” (GA 38/1, 10 f.).
[17] Apart from this letter, there are hardly any clear sources that indicate an early reading of Schelling on Steiners side. The autobiography Mein Lebensgang only mentions extensive “philosophical studies” in the summer months of 1879 (ML, 33), during which Steiner, after his previous readings of Kant and Fichte, had “come to terms” with Hegel and Schelling (ibid.). Steiner does not reveal which texts he read and which ideas particularly stimulated him.
[18] Immediate textual evidence from this phase includes the introductions Steiner wrote for the five volumes of the historical-critical Goethe edition edited by Kürschner between 1882 and 1897, as well as his first work of 1884, Grundlegung einer Erkenntnistheorie der goetheschen Weltanschauung.
[19] For instance, the introductions to Goethe’s scientific writings do state: “Goethe had much more in common with the young Schelling. He was a student of Fichte. But he not only continued the analysis of the activity of the ‘I,’ but also pursued that activity within consciousness through which the latter apprehends nature. What takes place in the I in the recognition of nature seemed to Schelling at the same time to be objective nature itself, the real principle in it. […] These ideas, which Goethe learned partly from Schelling’s writings, partly from personal interaction with the philosopher, raised the poet to a higher level. Now he developed the view that his tendency was to move from that which was completed, from the product, to the act of becoming, to production itself. And with a decisive allusion to Schelling, he writes in the essay Anschauende Urteilskraft that his striving was to make himself worthy of spiritual participation in its productions by observing a constantly creative nature” (EG, 170 f.).
[20] Steiner’s criticism in detail is that the later Schelling sought “the essence of the world in a transsubjective” and believed “that the subjective world, which is thus only a world of representation, means nothing for reality itself, but solely something for human consciousness.” (EG, 112). He further claimed that Schelling “sought the world ground in something foreign to consciousness, in the transcendent” and started from “the essential difference between thought and being.” In contrast to this (admittedly very questionable) depiction of Schelling’s mature philosophy, Steiner portrays his own position as one that “unprejudicedly tackles the only certain, thinking, and knows that it can find no being other than thinking” (EG, 117).
[21] It can be shown that this criticism is quite a distortion of what Schelling intended to express in his mature lectures and that Steiner’s critique of the core of Schelling’s so-called Positive Philosophie misses the mark. It can be understood as an expression of a certain philosophical friend-foe scheme on which Steiner was operating at the time and which is also found in Wahrheit und Wissenschaft and Die Philosophie der Freiheit. At that time, Steiner defended the position that the “supersensible foundations” of all things should not be “sought outside the sensory and spiritual world given to us” (WW, VIII), but within it; and that, therefore, no special higher experience is needed to know this foundation. Rather, it can be found in an unbiased observation of one’s own consciousness itself, namely in “thinking” (ibid.). In his early texts, Steiner was evidently not yet fully aware of the fact that would later become central to Anthroposophy: namely that his own inner experience of reality did not merely represent a “correct” theoretical standpoint versus an “erroneous” one, but a higher stage of consciousness that is not achieved by replacing false ideas with correct ones, but through a laborious and all-encompassing transformation of ordinary consciousness.
[22] The crucial passage reads: “In terms of the concept of ‘semblance’ (Schein) in this context, Schiller stands alone as an aesthetician, unmatched and unapproached. Here, further development should have taken place, continuing the initially one-sided solution to the problem of beauty by aligning it with Goethe’s views on art. Instead, Schelling presents a completely misguided view and inaugurates an error from which German aesthetics has since not emerged. Like all modern philosophy, Schelling finds the task of the highest human striving in grasping the eternal archetypes of things. The mind moves beyond the actual world and rises to the heights where the divine resides. There, all truth and beauty are revealed. According to Schelling, true beauty can only be perceived by one who ascends to the highest truth, since they are one and the same. All sensual beauty is merely a weak reflection of that infinite beauty which we can never perceive with the senses. We see where this leads: the work of art is not beautiful for its own sake and by what it is, but because it represents the idea of beauty. It follows from this view that the content of art is the same as that of science, as both are based on the eternal truth, which is also beauty. For Schelling, art is merely objectified science. What is important here is the question: where does the pleasure come from, which we derive from the artwork. It is only from the expressed idea. The sensual image is merely a means of expression, a form in which a supersensible content is articulated. And in this, all idealistic aestheticians follow Schelling” (GA 30, 37 f.).
[23] This same criticism is also found in Steiner’s book on Friedrich Nietzsche of 1895: “To Schelling, for example, all sensual beauty is merely a reflection of that infinite beauty which we can never perceive with the senses. The artwork is not beautiful for its own sake and by what it is, but because it represents the idea of beauty. The sensual image is only a means of expression, only the form for a supersensible content. And Hegel calls beauty ‘the sensible appearance of the idea.’ One can find similar views among other German aestheticians” (FN, 79).
[24] In a later addition, Steiner remarks regarding this apparent critique of Platonism: “With the ‘misguided fundamental view’ of Schelling, we do not mean the elevation of the mind ‘to the heights where the divine resides,’ but rather Schelling’s application of this to the contemplation of art. This should be particularly emphasized here, so that what we say against Schelling is not confused with the criticisms that are currently circulating against this philosopher and philosophical idealism in general. One can hold Schelling in high regard, as the author of this essay does, and still have many objections to the details of his achievements” (GA 30, 46). For Steiner’s ambiguous or changing stance towards Platonism, see also the relevant notes and commentary on the book Goethes Weltanschauung in Volume 3 of the SKA.
[25] In Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Schelling only appears in general terms as a representative of idealistic philosophy, alongside with Fichte and Hegel, to whom Steiner delivers a blanket philosophical eulogy. Idealism in general is praised here as a “bold” way of thinking that sought “the primal principles of things within the confines of human reason.” However, the “proud edifices of thought” of the idealists lacked an epistemological foundation and, despite some good elements, were built on “error upon error, one-sidedness upon one-sidedness,” and thus the entire movement was “mercilessly swept away by the storms of a philosophy-hostile era” (WW, VIII f.). Steiner’s statements in Die Philosophie der Freiheit are similarly broad and generalizing and he barely engages with Schelling and his specific traits as a thinker. Instead, he uses the term “bold philosopher of nature” (PF, 48) as a polemical foil to profile his own theory of thinking.
[26] The statement paraphrased by Steiner about Archimedes is likely borrowed from Kant’s essay On a Recently Raised High Tone in Philosophy.
[27] Steiner writes, on one hand: “A free action presupposes the ability of moral intuitions. One who lacks the ability to create their own particular moral maxim for a given case will never achieve truly individual will” (PF, 163). On the other hand, it is said: “The difference between me and my fellow human being does not lie in the fact that we live in two completely different mental worlds, but that he receives different intuitions from the shared world of ideas than I do” (PF, 171).
[28] Steiner states that there is, on one hand, “a perception of human nature which can support the rest of knowledge,” namely intuitive thinking, and that it is only from the perspective of this intuitive thinking that “the idea of the freedom of the will gains full justification” (PF, 6).
[29] With regard to the first of these writings, it can again be said that Schelling is surprisingly absent from Steiner’s final work on Goethe. While Steiner devotes an entire chapter to Goethe’s relationship with Hegel, Schelling is only mentioned once in passing, as a positive contrast to Goethe, to whom Steiner is increasingly seeking distance due to his aversion to “thinking about thinking” (GW, 67).
[30] See GA 30, 144.
[31] The passage reads: “With such views, Schelling has proven himself to be the boldest and most courageous of those philosophers who have been inspired by Kant to adopt an idealistic worldview. Philosophizing about things beyond what human senses can observe and what thinking says about observations was abandoned under the influence of this inspiration. People sought to be content with what lies within observation and thought. However, while Kant concluded from the necessity of such contentment that one could know nothing about transcendent things, the post-Kantian philosophers declared: since observation and thought point to no transcendent divine, they themselves are divine. And among those who declared this, Schelling was the most energetic. […] Schelling had the courage to present a most consequential anthropomorphism. Ultimately, he declared the human being with its entire life content as being divine. And since this life includes not only the rational but also the irrational, he had a way to explain the irrational within the world. To this end, however, he had to supplement the rational view with another one, which does not have its source in thinking. He branded this higher view as ‘positive philosophy.’ It ‘is the true free philosophy; if someone does not want it, they may leave it; I leave it to everyone, I only say that if one wants, for example, the real course of events, a free creation of the world, etc., they can only obtain all this through such a philosophy. If rational philosophy is enough for them and they desire nothing beyond it, they may stay with what they have, but they must give up the desire for a truly rational philosophy and what can absolutely not be had with such a philosophy, namely the real God and the real course of events and a free relationship of God to the world.’ Negative philosophy will ‘preferably remain the philosophy for the school, while positive philosophy will be for life. Together, they will first provide the complete consecration that one should demand from philosophy. As is well known, the Eleusinian mysteries distinguished between the lesser and the greater mysteries; the lesser were considered a preliminary stage to the greater. […] Positive Philosophy is the necessary consequence of the correctly understood negative one, and thus one can say: in Negative Philosophy, the lesser mysteries are celebrated, and in Positive Philosophy, the greater mysteries of philosophy” (RP[I], 151–153). (For a reference to the various passages cited from Schelling here, see the commentaries in Volume 4 of the SKA.)
[32] The corresponding passage reads: “Those who live in coarse sensual ideas see a difficulty in such a thought. How can a body act where it is not? Schelling turns the entire thought process around by saying: ‘It is very true that a body only acts where it is, but it is equally true that it is only where it acts.’ When we see the sun acting on our earth through gravitational force, it follows that it extends its being to our earth and that we have no right to place its existence only at the point where it acts through its visibility. The sun extends beyond the limits of the visible; we only see part of its being; the other part is recognized through its gravitational force. In a similar way, we must think of the relationship of the mind (Geist) to nature. The mind is not present only where it is perceived but also where it perceives. […] When we think about the law of an external process, this process does not remain outside, and the mind does not merely receive a reflection but pours its being into the process; it permeates the process, and when it then finds the law of the process, it does not pronounce it in an isolated corner of the brain. Rather, the law speaks for itself. The mind has gone to where the law acts” (RP[I], 141).
[33] In the lectures from which his book on Christianity emerged, Steiner quotes the same passage from Schelling that he had already referred to in Welt- und Lebensanschauungen (see the preceding note): “Schelling also expressed this, and it clarifies the matter in the simplest way. He referred to the force of attraction that physicists have always known. Before him, it had been imagined that objects exert an attractive force on each other. The Earth attracts the Moon, the Sun attracts the Earth. When the Sun attracts the Earth, it acts upon the Earth. It is difficult, however, to ascribe an effect to a body where this body is not present. But it is so: when a body acts upon the Earth, it is in a certain sense present on the Earth. A body is where it exerts its effect. The boundary of light is not the boundary of the visible Sun. The Sun is present throughout the entire space wherever it exerts its attraction. The space that the Earth occupies belongs to the Sun’s space. – Imagine this Schellingian concept as already underlying the Pythagorean doctrine. The human mind (Geist) fills the entire cosmos. It is not confined to a single organism. Mind is where it perceives” (GA 87, 63 f.).
[35] The passage reads: “Schelling is among the deepest minds of the German people. From what constitutes his significance, one can learn immeasurably much. Such things cannot be refuted by any ‘research.’ That he is ‘not being understood’ is a fact he shares with all minds of his stature. But one must learn to understand him. Those who have done this the least are those who have moved past his worldview, on to the ‘latest thing of the day’. The theosophist can learn much, very much, particularly from the last – posthumous – of Schelling’s writings, Philosophy of Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation. In these lectures, infinitely more real wisdom is to be found than among those who believe they have ‘moved beyond’ Schelling. He will only be understood when he is no longer criticized, but when one selflessly immerses oneself in his ideas. The shadow that has fallen upon him did so only because of his ‘hatred’ towards the equally misunderstood philosophical theosophist Hegel. But even there, understanding, not criticizing, is what is required of us.” (GA 34, 497 f.)
[36] Cf. the first paragraph of the thirteenth lecture: “The philosophy of mythology is, not in intention but in essence, a philosophy of nature – in a higher sphere –. This process, in which the once inaccessible, exclusively One becomes the material, the substrate, can also therefore be regarded as an unfolding of this One, as a universio.” (Schelling [1857], 258)
[37] Cf. the eighth lecture of the Philosophy of Mythology: “It is well known that by ‘mysteries’ we mean a secret doctrine, one that runs alongside the public doctrine of the gods (mythology) and exists alongside it, i. e., a doctrine of the gods shared only with the initiated. Since the mysteries are nothing other than the inner, esoteric side of mythology itself, and as noted several times, mythology only explains itself at the end of the process to consciousness, the mysteries indeed do not belong to the beginning of the mythological age, but rather to its final development, as will be shown more precisely in the course of these lectures.” (Schelling [1857], 161 f.)
[38] Ibid.: “[…] we will not be tempted to imagine the abstract concepts of an ordinary philosophy to be actual persons. But the philosophy, on whose ground we stand here, does not deal with mere concepts but with true realities, real entities […] When we say: the potency of being-the-other, set in the primal consciousness and underlying it, is Persephone, we do not mean that the reality in question is just signified by Persephone; to the mythological conception, it is Persephone, and conversely, Persephone does not merely signify that potency of primal consciousness, she is that potency herself.” (Schelling [1857], 156).
[40] “‘The truth of mythology in this sense,’ so it is said in the fourteenth lecture of the Philosophy of Mythology, ‘has been fully revealed through Christianity.” (Schelling [1857], 316). Cf. the core statement of Steiner’s Christianity writing: “Christianity as a mystical fact is a stage of development in the course of humanity; and the events in the mysteries and the effects conditioned by them are the preparation for this mystical fact” (CM, 153).
[41] C. f. the initiation ritual created by Steiner himself, in which the candidate must undergo a symbolic regression through time back to the Atlantean period (documented in GA 265; in central passages also in SKA 7, 409–441).
[42] In the introduction to volume 5 of SKA, it is stated: “In the mental reenactment of the creation process, the initiate [according to Steiner] is supposed to ‘experience the process of creation as his own soul’s destiny’ (CM, 149) and thus come to the realization or experience of the unity of his individual spirit with the universal spiritual being active in the creation process. The contemplation of cosmic becoming is supposed to transition into the contemplation of one’s own becoming: ‘The history of creation and the history of the soul’s deification thus merge into one’” (SKA 5, L).
[43] Böhme, Mysterium magnum, chapter 9, 1–2 (quoted in MA, 101).
[44] Cf. the twentieth lecture of Schelling’s original version of the Philosophy of Revelation: “[…] the entire creation is only a successive coming to itself, a successive becoming conscious of itself, which finally emerges in man, as the highest creature. This last self-aware being should be aware of the entire path, all moments as it were, all phenomena, all sufferings, and joys of this path; for only in this way is the intention of the creator achieved […] Plato already taught as a tradition from earlier times that all knowledge is memory and that philosophy in particular is only a striving for remembrance. We strive in this highest science only towards where man (not a man – the man, who lives on in us all) has already been.” (Schelling [1992], 126 f.).
[45] Quoted in SKA 8.2, IX.
[46] Schelling writes in his System der gesamten Philosophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere, in the section: “Special Natural Philosophy or Construction of the Individual Potencies of Nature,” as follows: “That special organism which is required here can therefore only be one which is neither merely a plant nor merely an animal organism, and thus stands in opposition to both, and is not so much their synthesis as rather their absolute identity. That such an organism can only be the human one, would have to be proved through all possible moments. However, this, as well as the entire construction of the human organism (not as an organism in general, as is done in physiology, but as a human organism, as a potency-less image of potency-less identity) would be the task of a new science that does not yet exist and should actually be called Anthroposophie, something entirely different from what has been previously called anthropology” (Schelling [1860], 487 f.). The contrast between ‘Anthroposophy’ and ‘Anthropology’ drawn by Schelling here was later taken up by Steiner, for example in his fragment Anthroposophy (AN) of 1910 and in his work Riddles of the Soul (VS) of 1917.
[47] The title refers to an essay by Steiner, Theosophy in Germany a Hundred Years Ago, a self-report of a lecture he gave on June 4, 1906, at the Theosophical Congress in Paris (cf. GA 35, 43–65).
[48] Cf. Traub (2011), 983–994.
[49] Schelling (1858), 178.
[50] Schelling [1861], 206. It will be difficult to avoid the conclusion that what Rudolf Steiner undertook in his Occult Science establishes an attempt of precisely what Schelling hinted at here. Whether one considers this attempt successful in the sense of the goals of German Idealism, or whether Schelling would have viewed it as such, is initially irrelevant. In any case, it is beyond question that Steiner considered himself to be the very man who is capable of providing a thought creation just like the one described by Schelling in the Weltalter.