The Baader-Schelling controversy in Schelling’s Das System der Weltalter: Elohim as divine proxies

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the controversy between Franz von Baader and Schelling as it takes place in Schelling’s lecture course Das System der Weltalter. This particular instance of their disagreement involves Schelling criticising Baader for his notion of the biblical Elohim as divine proxies. The paper first provides a background to Baader-Schelling philosophical feud before examining Schelling’s remarks against Baader in the System der Weltalter. Then, Baader’s writings on Elohim are looked into in the light of their connection to Baader’s conception of creation as falling-away and Baader’s source for interpreting Elohim as proxies, including Saint Martin and Kabbalah. Thereafter, Schelling’s criticism of Baader is analysed and interpreted in the context of the System der Weltalter. The paper aims to achieve several things: to show the presence of distorted kabbalistic influence in Baader and its discussion in Schelling; to revise Koslowski’s view on Baader’s creation narrative by pointing out how Baader’s Elohim/divine proxies function to form a rather dualistic relation between God and creation; and to interpret Schelling’s convoluted and difficult reply to Baader displaying that at stake between the two thinkers were questions of God’s ineffability and freedom as well as God’s involvement into creation.

KEYWORDS:

• German Idealism
• Christian Kabbalah
• Schelling
• Baader
• creation
• falling-away

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. ‘Creative misreading’ or ‘misprision’ is a term drawn from literary studies, especially from Harold Bloom’s theory of influence. It means that the author does not create new works or ideas ex nihilo, but rather keeps repeating the works of precursors, only this repetition is not verbatim, not identical to the original work of a precursor. This difference to a precursor – however small or seemingly significant – constitutes the originality of the author and is called ‘misreading’. See Bloom, Anxiety of Influence, 5–49.

2. Schelling’s possible connection to Gnosticism had been thematised since the nineteenth century. F.C. Baur’s monumental The Christian Gnosis (Baur, 2020) is perhaps the first instance of this argument: there Baur reads recent German thought – Schelling, Hegel, Schleiermacher, and Böhme – through their connection to ideas originating in ancient Gnosticism. In German scholarship, Jaspers revived this reading in his 1955 book on Schelling (Jaspers, 1955), while Koslowski’s book remains the most fundamental recent example of this argument, whereas in the Anglophone world Cyril O’Regan’s work on Hegel (O’Regan, 1994) and Böhme (O’Regan, 2002) is ultimately connected to Baur’s thesis. A recent French contribution to this topic comes from Patrick Cerutti (Cerutti, 2013), translator of Schelling’s Ages of the World into French. Some currents of recent Schelling scholarship – including Geldhof and Sean McGrath (McGrath, 2012) – have disregarded or called into question Schelling’s connection to Gnosticism, whereas Lee May’s latest article (Lee May, 2023) is an attempt to revise this tendency to abandon gnostic readings of Schelling.

3. Zovko, Natur und Gott, 61.

4. Koslowski, Philosophien der Offenbarung, 188.

5. Ibid., 193–94.

6. In what follows, if not stated otherwise, I summarise succinctly two chapters on Schelling’s and Baader’s personal relations from Zovko’s Natur und Gott. Zovko, Natur und Gott, 86–107, 108–139.

7. Zovko, Natur und Gott, 31.

8. Ibid., 29.

9. Ibid., 243–44.

10. All translations from German and French in this paper are mine, except where specified otherwise. This quote is from Schelling, System der Weltalter, 183f. The same passage in Baader’s writings could be found in Baader, ‘Vorlesungen über religiose Philosophie im Gegensatze der irreligiösen älterer und neurer Zeit’. Sämmtliche Werke, Band 1, 309–310.

11. I refer here to Schelling’s own introduction to his System of Transcendental Idealism. Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus, 9–22.

12. Here I rely on Schelling’s presentation of his earlier thought in his lectures on modern philosophy. Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, 114–115.

13. Norman, Welchman, ‘Introduction: The New Schelling’, 2–4.

14. Schelling, System der Weltalter, 182.

15. Ibid., 183–84.

16. Ibid., 184f. This Baader quote suggested by Peetz can also be found in Baader, ‘Bemerkungen über einige antireligiöse Philosopheme unserer Zeit’. Sämmtliche Werke, Band 2, 490.

17. Schelling, Religion and Philosophy, 26.

18. Leinkauf, ‘Schelling and Plotinus’, 186–89.

19. Lee May, ‘Schelling’s Philosophy as an Expression of Valentinian Theology’, 355.

20. Baur, The Christian Gnosis, 352

21. Koslowski, Philosophien der Offenbarung, 1–5.

22. Ibid., 177–180.

23. Baader, ‘Bemerkungen über einige antireligiöse Philosopheme unserer Zeit’. Sämmtliche Werke, Band 2, 489.

24. Baader, ‘Revision der Philosopheme der Hegel’schen Schule, bezüglich auf das Christenthum. Nebst zehn Thesen aus einer religiösen Philosophie’. Sämmtliche Werke, Band 9, 386.

25. Saint-Martin, Tableau Naturel, 256.

26. While there are now many works that discuss and examine the ten sefirot, I would still reference Scholem’s short paragraph on them in his Major Trends as a starting point, Scholem, Major Trends, 211–217; as well as Idel’s longer discussion of the various concepts of the sephirot in his Kabbalah: New Perspectives. Idel, Kabbalah: New Perspectives, 136–153.

27. Daniel Matt writes in his commentary on the text of Parashat Be-Reshit, a tractate within Zohar: ‘The flow of emanation manifests as a point of light. This is the second sefira: Hokhma (“Wisdom”), which is called Beginning because it is the first ray of divine light to appear outside of Keter, the first aspect of God that can be known.’ Matt, Zohar, 109f.

28. Saint-Martin, Tableau Naturel, 257.

29. Ibid., 256.

30. Ibid., 258.

31. Saint-Martin, L’Homme de Desir, 52–53.

32. What Geldhof translates as ‘the day after a fight’ is indeed given in Baader’s original quote as ‘le lendemain d’une bataile’. In St Martin’s quote from L’Homme de Desir given above in my translation also as ‘the day after the fight’ the French original is ‘le lendemain du combat’. This slight difference might be explained either by suggesting that Baader misquoted St Martin; or by presuming this phrase appears in various works of St Martin in slightly different variations.

33. Geldhof, Revelation, Reason and Reality, 136. The original could be found in Baader’s “Vorlesungen über Speculative Dogmatik”. Baader, Sämmtliche Werke, Band 8, 152.

34. Zovko, Natur und Gott, 29f.

35. Koslowski connects Jacob Böhme, the Cambridge Platonists, Saint Martin, and Baader as one long line influenced by the Christian Kabbalah of the Renaissance era on the one hand and theosophical speculations on the other. Koslowski, Philosophien der Offenbarung, 182, 188.

36. Hoffmann, ‘Der Entwicklungsgang und das System der Baader’schen Philosophie’. Baader, Sämmtliche Werke, Band 16, 20. Zovko references Baumgardt as pointing out that Baader studies of Kabbalah involved the sources of Christian Kabbalah such as Wachter, Rosenroth and others. Zovko, Natur und Gott, 61-62f. Yet, Wachter’s Elucidarius cabbalisticus was already suggested by Baader’s student and biographer Hoffman.

37. Baader in a letter to Z. from 26^th of April 1818. Baader, Sämmtliche Werke, Band 15, 341.

38. Baader, ‘Bemerkungen über einige antireligiöse Philosopheme unserer Zeit’. Sämmtliche Werke, Band 2, 485-87f.

39. Baader in a letter to Dr.S from 30^th of April 1830. Baader, Sämmtliche Werke, Band 15, 461.

40. Zohar, 110. Parashat Bereshit 1:15a.

41. Ibid., 110-11f.

42. One can mention such works as: Schulte, Zimzum, 296–323; Bielik-Robson, ‘The God of Luria’, 32–50; Ozar, ‘Schelling and Lurianic Kabbalah’, 119–139; Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 99–105. Elliot Wolfson also provides an extensive bibliography on the question of Schelling’s and speaking more widely German Idealism’s and Romanticism’s connection to Kabbalah: Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 392–93.

43. Schelling, System der Weltalter, 179.

44. Ibid., 71.

45. Schelling, System der Weltalter, 138. Peetz also discusses Schelling’s voluntarism in his introduction to System der Weltalter. Schelling, System der Weltalter, XVII-XX.

46. See again Peetz’s explanation of the three potencies in his introduction to the System der Weltalter. Schelling, System der Weltalter, XVIII-XIX.

47. As Elliot Wolfson has pointed out, this notion of God as positive nothingness, potential being, where everything exists in indifference, might itself come from Kabbalistic sources either directly or more likely via Böhme, Oetinger, and other thinkers associated with the Christian Kabbalah. Wolfson, Language, Eros, Being, 99–105.

48. Schelling, System der Weltalter, 144–45.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aleksandr Gaisin

Aleksandr Gaisin is a PhD student in the Divinity Faculty at the University of Cambridge, where he works on his thesis on Schelling’s philosophy. He previously studied Religious Studies, Philosophy and Theology in Saint Petersburg, Nottingham and Warsaw. He is interested in theological background of modern, especially German and Russian, thought and has published articles on Vladimir Solovyov’s connection to Jewish mysticism and to Jacob Böhme.