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Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz, Editorial Introduction PHILOSOPHICAL JOURNAL VOLUME II / 2013 / ISSN: 1899–9484 Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz, Editorial Introduction . 2 Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz, The Philosopher of Chaos . A Portrait of Schelling . 3 Paweł Dybel, The Question of Ethics in the Thought of Hei degger and Gadamer . 26 Piotr Augustyniak, “Theologia Germanica” as a Critique of the Modern Lifestyle . 51 Piotr Graczyk, Materialist History of Ideas . Warsaw – Frankfurt – Paris . 59 Mateusz Werner, The Polish Dialectic of Enlightenment . Legends of Modernity . 67 Andrzej Wawrzynowicz, August Cieszkowski’s Historiosophical Holism . 73 Piotr Nowak, Apocalypse and Politics . Some Remarks on the Political Theology of Jacob Taubes . 83 Rafał Kuczyński, Demonic Censorship . .. 97 Grzegorz Czemiel, Remembering Being . A philosophical reading of Ciaran Carson’s On The Night Watch . 101 Marta Olesik, What is there to be found on the heap of history? – the experience of time, particularity and negativity in Benjamin and Doctorow . 117 Irena Księżopolska, Visible Worlds and the Art of Narration: Cultivation of Unreliability Through Visualization by Vladimir Nabokov and Italo Calvino . 136 Marcin Rychter, How Music Turned into Philosophy and What Implications Does This Have? . 158 Notes on Authors . 165 Contributors: Piotr Augustyniak, Grzegorz Czemiel, Paweł Dybel, Piotr Graczyk, Bernhard Klein, Irena Księżpolska, Rafał Kuczyński, Piotr Nowak, Marta Olesik, Krzysztof Rosiński, Marcin Rychter, Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz (editor-in- chief), Renata Senktas, Andrzej Wawrzynowicz, Mateusz Werner, Mikołaj Wiśniewski. Published by Fundacja Augusta hr . Cieszkowskiego ul. Mianowskiego 15/65, 02-044 Warszawa, Poland ISSN: 1899–9484 This project was financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education as part of the "National Programme for the Development of Humanities" 2012-2014. All material remains © copyright of the respective authors . Please address all queries to the editor at the following address . redakcja@kronos .org .pl Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION “Kronos” quarterly was established in 2007 as a project of a particular generation of philos- ophers all of whom started their studies around the transitional year 1989. “Kronos” soon became the largest philosophical journal in Poland. It is a new voice in Polish philosophy. Poland at the turn of the 21st century was and is an inspiring place for thinkers; it is an interesting vantage point for observing and studying human nature. It is a place which saw genocide and two murderous experiments – the Nazi and the Soviet – the aim of which was to create a new type of human being. A philosopher brought up in Warsaw is living in a city destroyed by Hitler and rebuilt by Stalin. The place and the time when we started studying philosophy influenced our choices and interests. Perhaps a philosopher is nothing but an emanation of the place and time which shaped him. These factors no doubt explain our interest in Hegel and Marx whom we have read through the lenses provided by religious messianists (Fyodorov) or 20th century prophets of the apocalypse (Kojève and Witkacy). The spirit of time and place prompted us also to study the Classics, to return in thought to Greece where – influenced by Hei degger and Nietzsche – we saw the eternally recurring point, where all history ends and every history begins. 2 2013 Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz THE PHILOSOPHER OF CHAOS. A PORTRAIT OF SCHELLING And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. King James Bible, Genesis 1:2 Great philosophy exists in fragments. The Presocratics are in fragments. Pascal’s Thoughts and Nietzsche’s Will to Power are in fragments, too. This fragmentariness, this dispersion, this textual chaos, however, does not diminish philosophy. Nor does it obstruct the understanding of it. This has been observed by the most influential minds of the 20th century, Hei degger and Wittgenstein, who also abandoned the idea of a philosophical masterwork at some point and chose their last books, Contributions to Philosophy and Philosophical Investigations, to be published as collections of loose thoughts, notes and outlines. In this universe of fragments, in this tangle of fractions (its other name being “the European tradition”), Schelling’s late philosophy appears to be a unique galaxy. His treatise Of Human Freedom which appeared in 1809 marks the date after which Schelling did not publish any major philosophical work. Schelling falls silent, and he does so at the age of 34, almost Christ’s age. For the rest of his life he kept working on a piece which he could not finish, the more coherent form of which will be known in the 1840s as the Berlin lectures. Those lectures on the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation were published posthumously by Schelling’s son, Karl, who is considered to have imposed on them his own order and made them a whole which they had not been originally. Schelling’s reader faces an unusual textual universe – a universe devoid of a mas- terwork (and thus devoid of a Center), where everything is a lecture (and is thus an oc- casional text intended for a particular audience), a universe full of compilations (Karl Schelling completed the Berlin lectures with the help of earlier manuscripts), and existing in many copies and transcripts (today’s editions of Schelling’s lectures of the 1820s and 30s are based on his students’ notes). In this universe one can encounter some strange objects, for example, the so-called Paulus-Nachschrift, which is a transcription of Schell- ing’s winter term 1841/42 lectures, published against his will by one of his students, Hei nrich Paulus, under the title Die endlich offenbar gewordene positive Philosophie der Offenbarung (The Finally Revealed Positive Philosophy of Revelation). Schelling sued Paulus but he lost the case. Still, the researchers today consider this work – the work of 2013 3 Wawrzyniec Rymkiewicz Schelling-Paulus or Paulus-Schelling – to be an important source of knowledge about the development of Schelling’s thought1. The dark center of this universe constitutes a group of texts written between 1810 and 1820, published as Die Weltalter (The Ages of the World). This was the last time when Schelling tried to write a philosophical work, and the first time he did not succeed. All that happened later was a result of this catastrophe. THE CATASTROPHE OF THE WELTALTER The first version of The Ages of the World was ready in the late summer of 1810. Schell- ing’s diary contains the following entry on September 15: “3 of the Ages of the World drafted.” But serious work on the book began only three months later: “The Ages of the World – Schelling noted on December 27 – started at last.”2 The previous night a violent storm hit Munich. The scene is very symbolic: the storm has passed, it is morning now, Schelling begins to write a book about God who rises from chaos.3 The book is supposed to consist of three parts, each of which is to describe one of the Aeons, or metaphysical dimensions of Time: past, present and future. Schelling’s initial belief was that the completion of the book would not take him more than half a year: “For two months – Schelling writes in a letter to his publisher on January 30, 1811 – I have been constantly immersed in work. The book that I have been pondering over for many years should finally emerge before Easter.”4 ‘Book One’ of The Ages of the World, entitled “The Past”, was indeed composed before Easter of that year and printed for proofread- ing. However, there soon occurred some difficulty, a discord of some kind, which caused Schelling to postpone the completion of the book. At first, until July. Then, until late summer. Finally, until Easter 1812. In November, however, Schelling had to stop work- ing in order to write a response to Jacobi’s polemic against him, titled Von den göttlichen Dingen und ihrer Offenbarung (Of Divine Things and Their Revelation). He published the response without delay and returned to his work on the Weltalter in February 1812. Still, rather than finish the book, he began writing it anew. That is how Schelling created the second (known to us) version of The Ages of the World, which he then published at his own expense at the turn of 1813. This second version also consisted of only the first book, “The Past.”5 Also in this case its printing would soon be suspended. Thus, in the autumn of 1813, Schelling began writing The Ages of the World for the third time. This is the most comprehensive version of all that are available to us today. While working on it, Schelling felt that he would thus give the sum of his life: “I regard 1 Its latest edition is due to Manfred Frank’s effort, see: F.W.J. Schelling, Philosophie der Offenbarung: 1841/1842. Frankfurt/M, 1992. 2 F.W.J.Schelling, Philosophische Entwürfe und Tagebücher 1809 – 1813, hrsg. von L.Knatz, H.J. Sandkühler, M.Schraven. Hamburg 1994, pp. 52, 58. Unless otherwise stated, the quoted fragments are given in a working translation prepared for the purpose of this publication. 3 See: X. Tilliette, Schelling, Biographie. Paris 1999, p. 219. For a detailed reconstruction of the process of writing The Ages of the World, see also: A. Lanfranconi, Krisis. Eine Lektüre der „Weltalter“-Texte F.W.J. Schellings. Stuttgard, Bad-Canstatt 1992, pp. 59-79. 4 Schelling und Cotta. Briefwechsel 1803-1849, hrsg. von H. Fuhrmans and L.Loher. Stuttgart 1965, p. 50. 5 The two first versions were published a hundred and thirty five years later by Martin Schröter, see: F.W.J von Schelling, Die Weltalter. Fragmente. In den Urfassungen von 1811 und 1813. München 1946. 4 2013 THE PHILOSOPHER OF CHAOS . A PORTRAIT OF SCHELLING this work – we read in his letter of August 19, 1814 – to be the fruit of all my labors over the past twenty years.
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