Negativity and Unity - an Ontological preoccupation in Schelling's Weltalter,III (original) (raw)

It is the purpose of this essay to identify an Ontological turn from Schelling's Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom into the third draft of the Ages of the World. In order to do so, our initial analysis will focus on Heidegger's take on the Treatise , arguing that indeed the onto-theological critique advanced by Heidegger is not only a defensible, but necessary conclusion of the strategy undertaken by Schelling in that text. This strategy consists in the resort to a jointure of Being in order to deal with the tension between essence and existence, by appealing to such jointure Schelling creates a theological abyss that he is not able to surpass in the Treatise. However, in the Weltalter III, Schelling changes his strategy of description of the World, and organizes the creation in three different potencies of contraction, expansion and unity that follow and eventually overlap each other. Moreover, these potencies modalize a different perception of time, one that allows for a double-immanence of Creation and Revelation. These reconsiderations of the phenomena of time and freedom allow for the identification of an ontological turn in Schelling, one that is marked by the constant reference to negativity and despair as grounding, and affirmation and love as grounded. These forces of grounding and grounded forces which are later on unified in an ontological unity of potencies.