On the Source of the Eternal Truths

A single 1850 address to the Berlin Academy on an old question: where do the eternal truths come from — and can anything be even possible without God?

by Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling28 passages held

German, the original language

Original title: Abhandlung über die Quelle der ewigen Wahrheiten
First published: 1856(published posthumously)
Original language: German

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Overview

Augustine had lodged the eternal truths in the mind of God, and Leibniz after him: the necessary truths, the ones that would hold whether or not any world existed, have to rest on something, and the tradition rested them there. Schelling returned to that old question near the very end, in a paper read to a plenary session of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in January 1850, when he was seventy-four. It survives as the Abhandlung über die Quelle der ewigen Wahrheiten — "Treatise on the Source of the Eternal Truths." Schelling presses the point past where his predecessors left it. The usual worry is whether anything actual could exist without God. His claim is stronger: without God there would be nothing actual and nothing even possible — no field of what-might-be for a world to be drawn from. This is a late fragment of his positive philosophy, where the being of God is not the conclusion of an argument but the ground that any argument already stands on, and where a science that traces its objects back far enough arrives, whether it means to or not, at their source in God. It was printed after his death in the collected works his son assembled, and it reads less as a system than as a very old philosopher returning, once more and briefly, to the oldest question he knew.

Key concepts

What are the eternal truths?

The necessary truths that would hold whether or not any world existed, such as those of mathematics and logic. Because they do not depend on the actual world, philosophers asked what they do depend on. The tradition from Augustine to Leibniz answered that they rest in the mind of God. This old question is exactly what Schelling returns to in his final years.

What does it mean that God grounds the possible?

Schelling's central and strongest claim. Others asked whether anything actual could exist without God; he argues that without God there would be nothing even possible, no range of what-might-be from which a world could be drawn. Possibility itself needs a ground. So God underwrites not merely what exists but the whole field of what could exist, which is prior to any particular thing.

What is the 'field of the possible'?

The realm of everything that might be, out of which whatever becomes actual is drawn. A world has to be selected from a space of possibilities, and Schelling asks what makes that space itself available. His answer is that it, too, rests on God. Without such a ground there would be no possibilities to choose among, and so nothing could be actual either.

Why is God not the conclusion of an argument here?

In a proof, God would be reached at the end, as something inferred. Schelling reverses this: God is the ground any argument already stands on, presupposed before the reasoning begins. This is the mark of his positive philosophy, which starts from being rather than deducing it. A science that traces its objects back far enough does not prove God so much as arrive at what was underneath all along.

How does this fit Schelling's late philosophy?

It is a small, final application of his positive philosophy. Where the Berlin lectures argued that existence cannot be deduced and must be met as given, this address takes the classical problem of the eternal truths and shows the same God-as-ground doctrine at work in it. Read at seventy-four and printed after his death, it is an old philosopher returning once more to the oldest question he knew.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

The source of what could be at all

Where do the eternal truths come from, the ones that would hold whether or not any world existed? Schelling goes past his predecessors: without God there is not only nothing actual, but nothing even possible.

Augustine and Leibniz had lodged the necessary truths in the mind of God; they had to rest on something, and the tradition rested them there. In this late address to the Berlin Academy, Schelling presses the point harder. The usual worry is whether anything actual could exist without God; his stronger claim is that without God there would be no field of the possible at all, no what-might-be for a world to be drawn from. God is not the conclusion of an argument but the ground any argument already stands on, so a science that traces its objects back far enough arrives at their source in God.

ontology
metaphysics
possibility
divine will
philosophy of mathematics
eternal truths
god
divine intellect

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Within this work

passages held: 28
distinct concepts: 80
by passages held, corpus-wide: #738

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “divine will” and “philosophy of mathematics”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 6 concepts, joined by 9 pairings. 18 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
divine will	philosophy of mathematics	3
divine will	eternal truths	2
god	metaphysics	2
god	possibility	2
metaphysics	possibility	2
divine will	possibility	1
eternal truths	god	1
eternal truths	metaphysics	1
philosophy of mathematics	possibility	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1795 Of the I as Principle of Philosophy (Vom Ich als Prinzip der Philosophie)
An early work, written while Schelling was still a theology student and read at first as pure Fichteanism; it opens the identity-philosophy that his Naturphilosophie would soon complicate.
DE
1798 On the World Soul (Von der Weltseele)
Second of Schelling's nature-philosophy books, following the Ideen of 1797; its organic conception of force is what carried him from Fichtean idealism toward a philosophy of nature in its own right.
DE
1803 On University Studies (Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums)
A Jena lecture course from Schelling's identity-philosophy years, addressed to students rather than to fellow philosophers; its idea of the university as an organic unity of the sciences anticipates Humboldt's Berlin model.
DE
1856 On the Source of the Eternal Truths (Abhandlung über die Quelle der ewigen Wahrheiten) you are here DE
1858 Philosophy of Revelation (1841-42) (Philosophie der Offenbarung)
The capstone of Schelling's positive philosophy, delivered in Berlin from 1841; an unauthorised transcript appeared in 1843, the authorised text only posthumously in the collected works of 1858. Its critique of purely rational system is the historical seed of later existential thought.
DE
1859 The Philosophy of Art (Philosophie der Kunst)
The aesthetics of Schelling's identity-philosophy, spoken at Jena and Würzburg between 1802 and 1805 and unpublished until the collected works of 1859; it treats art as the supreme presentation of the absolute.
DE
1861 On the Nature of Philosophy as Science (Über die Natur der Philosophie als Wissenschaft)
The hinge between Schelling's early identity-philosophy and the "positive philosophy" of his final decades, delivered at Erlangen in the winter of 1820–21 and unpublished in his lifetime.
DE

— or open another of their works