“Will is Primal Being”: Schelling’s Critical Voluntarism

Schelling on freedom, evil and imputation: A puzzle

“…FS, pp. 51–2: “This sort of free act, which becomes necessary, admittedly cannot appear in consciousness to the degree the latter is merely self‐awareness and only ideal, since it precedes consciousness just as it precedes essence, indeed, first produces it…” Noller suggests that Schelling has a more optimistic view, claiming that “In contrast to Kant, who considered the reason of immoral actions as ‘inscrutable’, Schelling attempts to explore ‘how in each individual the decision for good or evil might now proceed’ [FS, p. 48]” (Noller (2020, p. 197)). But Noller does not really offer an explanation himself, and Schelling may simply be referring to the way in which he shows how this choice is a kind of radical choice that occurs outside time, rather than giving it some further grounding.…”

“…7 7 This is the option taken by Jörg Noller, for example, who argues that Schelling defends a kind of “critical voluntarism” which Noller compares with Frankfurt's volitional necessity: “Volitional necessity is fully compatible with freedom, since it is the result of a deliberate process, a process of reflecting and balancing reasons for an action, and of integrating different volitional tendencies into a unified will” (Noller (2020, p. 199)). Thomas Buccheim is also opposed to the indifferentist approach, but whether he adopts intellectualism as the alternative is less clear, as he has the concern that it would leave only one option open to the free being: see Buchheim (2012), pp.…”