The Ages of the World (1811) by F. W. J. Schelling;

Author:F. W. J. Schelling;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2019-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

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GENEALOGY OF TIME

As we have permitted ourselves to repeat any number of times, the fatherly or contracting force is posited more and more as something past and latent. We have thereby made our opinion clear that this does not happen all at once, as if the force of contraction were overcome with one stroke. Although the two acting principles are mutually independent of one another, the contracting force of the Father operates in a manner that is completely blind. It is overcome, that is to say, posited as inactive, to the degree that the Father has been elevated into the realm of spirit or consciousness by the action of the Son—and to this degree only. But for that reason we have to admit that what determines the resistance to this development (what holds back the movement) can lie neither in the fatherly force itself nor more generally in the Father as such. At the same time, however, it can just as little reside in the Son, for the Son has no other will or aspiration than to complete the scission of forces within the Father by finally overcoming within him the force that leads to indifference. Given that the determination to resist the scission of forces can lie neither in the Father nor in the Son, we have no alternative but to conclude that it must lie outside both of them—in the Spirit.

The Spirit is free over against the Father and the Son in the same way that both of them are free and independent over against one another. But spirit is at the same time the essentially free and conscious unity of both. Indeed, we can go even further and say: in the Spirit resides the common consciousness of the Father and of the Son. For, as the essence of primordial lucid purity (der uranfänglichen Lauterkeit) made real and actual through Father and Son, the Spirit is in itself the purest (reinste) sobriety and the highest freedom. It is a will so completely pristine (der lauterste Wille) that, without moving itself, it moves everything and passes through everything. It is thus simultaneously the will of both, or the will in which both are one. For this reason, it is impossible for the Father to act in relation to the Son (74) or for the Son to act in relation to the Father without corresponding to the free will of the Spirit.

If there were no resistance in the power of the Father, if all being (alles, was Seyn ist) had been immediately and simultaneously posited as past while all being that really is (alles Seyende) had been posited as present, and if that supreme unity of the two that dwells in the future had been already posited as actively real, then the three divine persons would find themselves one in the other within such perfect clarity that time would not exist, but only absolute eternity.

Either that or, on our own supposition, being is not overcome in a flash or without meeting with resistance.

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