LITMIR.BIZ

Part I Preliminary Reflection on the Distinction Between Ground and Existence

       § 6 The Core Section of the Treatise: The Distinction between Essence Insofar as it Exists and Essence Insofar as it is Merely Ground of Existence

      We shall initially skip over the introduction and consider the section with which the primary investigation begins (357–364). This section, as we have divided it, contains, at its core, the entire treatise, and it does so in two respects (see also below, p. 75): first, as regards content – insofar as the entire realm of questioning is unfolded, and insofar as what is asked about (the freedom of the human) is outlined. Then, however, also as regards the mode of thinking: for how thinking happens in these investigations comes most acutely to the fore here. Thus, we first practice here that thinking which is also already required in order to think through the introduction appropriately. (“Dialectics” – in unconditional thinking, and especially “identity”-thinking.)

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      Nevertheless, the interpretation of this section will not resolve all of the difficulties, given that we are able to follow it out in thought {nachdenken} only in a first attempt; thus, once again, the last for comprehension.

      This core section is itself organized in turn.

      It begins with a paragraph that indicates, as a preliminary remark: (A) what is being treated: the distinction between “ground” and “existence”;¹

(B) two things are said about this distinction, if we disregard the “polemical” side remark which belongs in the context of the introduction.

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      Regarding A: What is being treated? A distinction, namely the distinction “between essence … and essence….” Between two “essences”?

      Two sorts of essence?

      What does essence mean here? Beings; entities {Wesen} belonging to nature, to the household, to the state, to the realm of banditry; that which respectively is, with the stress placed on its being.

      It is not two essences that are distinguished, but rather one essence – that is, any essence in a twofold “view”; “view” – but not only that of a viewing observer. What is distinguished cannot, however, be separated; yet what can be separated is, in turn, the entire twofold essence each time.

      The fact that every essence is distinguished nevertheless has peculiar consequences, so that even disparate and manifold “essences” are each time disparate and manifold in accordance with the distinction that determines these respective essences. What does this distinction mean?

      Let us first, however, consider what is said about the distinction in a preliminary manner.

      Regarding B: What is said about this distinction?

      1. That the “philosophy of nature of our time has first advanced” it “in science.”

      2. The Freedom Treatise “is grounded” on this distinction. Regarding 1, (a) The “philosophy of nature of our time” = Schelling’s “philosophy of nature”; the latter is not a philosophical reflection on the region of “nature” – for instance in Kant’s sense (doctrine of categories) – but rather, contra Fichte: nature itself is, in itself, the absolute; “the visible spirit” (subject–object). “Nature” is “the odyssey of spirit.” Cognition of “nature” is here knowledge of the absolute. Nature is “identical” with spirit; identity = unity of identity (of identity and nature and identity and spirit) and unity of opposition.