I HAVE been thinking about Friedrich Schelling’s (1775-1854) philosophy in relation to its potential complementarity with certain aspects of political decentralisation. By complementarity, of course, I am alluding to the manner in which they may accentuate one another’s existing qualities, but as we shall see at the conclusion of this essay there are also moments of profound disagreement.

One example of the way in which symbiosis does actually take place can be found in Schelling’s discussions concerning the origins of evil, whereby he deals with the relationship between Man and the Absolute. Humans – as so often in philosophy and theology – are divided between the spiritual and material domains, something that results in our physical existence hosting a torrid struggle between two distinct wills. On the one hand, trapped in an eternal past, there lies the primordially unfacilitated act of Creation, whilst on the other Man himself – projected into the temporal realm of the present – is the fulfilment of the creative process itself.

From a Hermetic perspective, this means that we are able to reflect the fundamental workings of the Universe through our ability to combine both spirit (Ground) and matter (Existence). In short, whilst these two principles appear to be diametrically opposed to one another, the fact that Creation sprang from a contracted vortex in which the Absolute was originally unable to reconcile the principles of Ground and Existence led, after the Light had entered the natural world, to an eventual ‘unity’ between them.

With Man being the only creature that is capable of attaining self-consciousness and yet retaining his link with the Absolute, Schelling adopts a more anthropocentric stance in that he believes that we humans are more ‘perfect’ than God. When Man became the fulfilment of the non-manifested Absolute, this resulted in the freedom to commit either Good or Evil and the latter takes place when Man’s longing for the Absolute ends in his self-illumination, or egotism of the spirit. Indeed, the natural domain can appear as spirit when it acts as a medium for the manifestation of the Divine, whilst spirit itself can appear in the form of human self-consciousness. Or, as Schelling puts it: “Nature is visible Spirit; Spirit is invisible Nature.”

Our self-awareness, Schelling argues, is ‘bad’ in the sense that it can actively will Evil and the fact that Man is still ‘grounded’ in the Absolute nonetheless gives him the freedom to operate within this two-fold sphere of activity. The ‘unity’ between them is therefore posited and contrived, purely because temporal freedom can be assured.

Looking at this from a politically decentralist perspective, this forced ‘unity’ resembles the relationship between the state and the individual. The former is coercive and mechanical, not to mention impersonal and external in its dealings with those who are kept within its power, so the fact that the state is an imposition from above seems to echo the remaining semblance of control that is enjoyed by the Absolute over Man. Freedom beneath the auspices of the state, or at least that which most people assume to be freedom, is conditional.

Now we come to the point of departure. We decentralists, representing the particular against the universal, would thus be considered ‘Evil’ by Schellingian standards but those who raise aloft the banners of universality at our expense, actually pervert the particularist-universalist dichotomy itself. In reality, they are merely serving their own narrow interests and use ‘globalist’ concepts as a means of vilifying their opponents. After all, how many times have we heard expressions such as ‘It’s in the interests of world peace,’ or ‘You are either with us or against us’? These populist references to a greater authority are thus akin to the fashion in which we are ‘grounded’ to the Absolute, but they are based on a constructed morality which essentially renders those who seek to deal with their own concerns ‘egotistical’ and ‘immoral’.

Goodness and virtuosity, for Schelling, is thought to be achieved through the limitation of the self, but of course this inevitably leads to the dissolution of the individual and that is clearly inconsistent with the decentralist ethos.