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S A I T YA B R A TA D A S
The Political Theology of
Schelling
New Perspectives in Ontology
Series Editors: Peter Gratton and Sean J. McGrath, Memorial
University of Newfoundland, Canada
Publishes the best new work on the nature of being
After the fundamental modesty of much post-H eideggerian Continental phi-
losophy, the time is now for a renaissance in ontology after the rise of the new
realisms and new materialisms. This new series aims to be an interdisciplinary
forum for this work, challenging old divisions while borrowing from the onto-
logical frameworks of post-h umanism, ecological studies, critical animal studies,
and other post- constructivist areas of endeavour. While often working within the
Continental tradition, the books in this series will move beyond the stale her-
meneutics and phenomenologies of the past, with authors boldly reopening the
oldest questions of existence through a contemporary lens.
Editorial Advisory Board
Thomas J. J. Altizer, State University of New York at Stony Brook
Maurizio Farraris, University of Turin
Paul Franks, Yale University
Iain Hamilton Grant, University of the West of England
Garth Green, McGill University
Adrian Johnston, University of New Mexico
Catherine Malabou, Kingston University
Jeff Malpas, University of Tasmania
Marie- Eve Morin, University of Alberta
Jeffrey Reid, University of Ottawa
Susan Ruddick, University of Toronto
Michael Schulz, University of Bonn
Hasana Sharp, McGill University
Alison Stone, Lancaster University
Peter Trawny, University of Wuppertal
Uwe Voigt, University of Augsburg
Jason Wirth, Seattle University
Günter Zöller, University of Munich
Books available
The Political Theology of Schelling by Saitya Brata Das
Forthcoming books
Without Hope: An Ontology of Nihilism by Paul J. Ennis
The Ecstasy of Reason: The Political Theology of the Later Schelling by Sean J.
McGrath
The Political
Theology of Schelling
SAITYA BRATA DAS
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Preface: The Exit and the Event by Gérard Bensussan vii
Introduction 1
1 Actuality Without Potentiality 41
2 The Rhythm of History 90
3 The Beatific Life 132
4 The Irreducible Remainder 158
5 The Non- Sovereign Exception 182
6 The Tragic Dissonance 211
Bibliography 245
Names Index 250
Subject Index 252
Acknowledgements
I must seize this occasion to express my gratitude to Gérard Bensussan
who first introduced me to Schelling. This work is a humble attempt
to fulfil the promise made to him some ten years back. The manuscript
greatly benefited from conversations with Sean McGrath, Jason Wirth,
Clayton Crockett and Emmanuel Cattin. I specially thank Sean for
taking an interest in the publication of this work. Kyla Bruff and Sharad
Bhaviskar each independently translated the French text of the Preface
into English. A grant from my University, under the UPE-I I scheme,
helped me in collecting research materials for the book. The editorial team
at the Edinburgh University Press – C arol Macdonald, Ersev Ersoy, Tim
Clark, Rebecca Mackenzie and James Dale – m ade the publication of the
book an unforgettable experience for me.
I don’t know how best to thank Sarita and Mrinmay, who have to put
up with my countless sleepless nights and who have taught me, no less
than Schelling, the mystery of love.
Versions of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 have been published earlier. I would like
to thank the journals for permitting me to reproduce the articles here:
1. ‘The Irreducible Remainder’, published as ‘The Irreducible Remainder:
Towards the Idea of a Finite Politics’ in Journal for Cultural Research
16:4 (2012), pp. 418–42.
2. ‘The Non- Sovereign Exception’, published as ‘Schelling: Religion and
Politics’ in Politics and Religion (Delhi: Aakar Books, 2014), pp. 54–96.
3. ‘The Tragic Dissonance’, published as ‘The Tragic Dissonance’ in
Analecta Hermeneutica 5 (International Institute for Hermeneutics,
2013).
Preface:
The Exit and the Event
The work of Satya Das inscribes itself in a profound trend in contem-
porary Schelling studies. It effectively demonstrates, in its own way, a
necessary and sustained attention dedicated to that which, in the history
of ‘metaphysics’ (understood in a broad sense, and not simply according
to the Heideggerian tradition), Schelling has created, opened, underlined
and inaugurated in an inchoate manner, and to that which, unevenly
and differentially, entire currents of contemporary philosophy – including
even its most prestigious names – have received, continued, and taken up
anew, more or less faithfully, after him. The considerations and content of
this ‘Protean Schelling’, as denoted by the author, and his ‘posterity’ were
examined during the 2013 Strasbourg colloquium.
Inscribed in that which I just called a singular ‘attention’ devoted to a
certain Schellingian heritage, Das’ book particularly concentrates on bring-
ing into focus a particular line of heirs, from Kierkegaard to Heidegger,
passing notably through Bloch, Rosenzweig and even Benjamin.
As such, this work focuses in a pronounced manner on what is identi-
fied in Schelling’s work as a fundamental, living eschatological tension. It
analyses instantiations and figures of this tension in the structural open-
ing of the world to an irrevocable exteriority without sublation, to an
irreducible and immemorial transcendence through which history and
politics can be grasped in their very finitude – and where Schelling sees,
not without paradox, a more arduous, and in any case, a more enigmatic
problem other than that of the Absolute. This political eschatology, which
entails the movement of Schellingian positive philosophy itself, leads, and
this is the central thesis of this book, to a work of defection, destruction
or deconstruction, according to the author’s word, of any political theol-
ogy founded on sovereignty. It is precisely the question of history and of
viii | preface
the structures of historicity that is taken up by Schelling’s late philosophy,
and perhaps even by the entirety of his thought, indeed since its begin-
nings, after the secularised theodicy proposed by the Hegelian ontology
of history.
The deconstructive eschatology that this work outlines and analyses in
Schellingian philosophy, and its opening in the domain of the ‘political
theology’ of history (which would be that of the author of the Investigations
into the Essence of Human Freedom), is developed, it seems to me, around
the two central themes put forth here: the event and the exit.
The event in Schelling is said to be ‘actuality without potentiality’,
which is the title of the second chapter of this book. The proposed read-
ing here consists in observing within it the double, or the other side, of an
‘exception without sovereignty’, by which it is very well understood how
eschatology – which must be distinguished from messianism – arises from
the exteriority where ‘political theology’ (outlined by Das) happens, and
which is also the promise of a ‘beatified life’ for which the Clara dialogue
opens the horizon.
The exit of philosophy, outside of itself and by itself in a certain way,
on which I myself have written – by effectively embarking on a departure
from Marx towards a continent other than that of speculative German
Idealism – is descriptively taken up by Das in its impetus and dynamic to
show that it corresponds, all things being equal, as we say, to Schellingian
‘eschatology’ in so far as it takes place in a destructive or deconstructive
gesture: that of the ecstasy in the late philosophy: ecstasy as exodus. If one
were to maintain the comparison with the Marxist gesture, it would be
necessary – as should be done and which Das indeed does well at the
end of his book ‒ to show the tragic overcharge of the exit as the event in
Schelling. There is no hesitation here in taking recourse to the notion of
the caesura of the Speculative of the late Lacoue- Labarthe, once my col-
league here in Strasbourg. Das’ demonstration transforms it into a sin-
gular usage that allows him – and this is a fruitful hypothesis – to make
the caesura itself the hallmark of Schellingian thought, notably, but not
exclusively, the complex and difficult caesura proposed in Schelling’s late
philosophy between negative philosophy and positive philosophy.
By impressively weaving these interdependent and inter- implicated fig-
ures of the exit and the event in such a manner, by deploying the most
undulating and subtle harmonies, Das’ analysis demonstrates very oppor-
tunely, if indeed there is still a need to do so, that reading Schelling today
can provide a decisive key to the intelligibility of many of the major cur-
rents of twentieth- century philosophy – and furthermore that it is abso-
lutely impossible to ignore, regardless of the different envisaged modalities
preface | ix
of reading put forth, the key proposed here, along with others. Schelling is
indeed, as the author says, ‘our real contemporary’.
Gérard Bensussan, Strasbourg, July 2015
Translated by Kyla Bruff
