創造の原因、第四のもの(完)

Abstract

It is impossible to approach such a volitional realism as Christian theism from the standpoint of Greek ontology without leaving a number of unclarified problems. From among these, however, one can pick up interpretations and suggestions interesting enough. Indeed, Saint Augustine was a Proteus in the European philosophy, but as Protean Schelling was in his later life. You will find, in Schelling's Weltalter, Darslellang der philosophischen Empirismus, etc., the idea of 'Nature in God, ' which is an important conception in his realism. It is a development of the 'original Nature, ' a negative principle, into the 'necessary Nature' as a whole. This thought of Schelling is patterned after Plato's three principles of the cosmos : ούσία άμερίστη, σώματα, μερίστη, ούσία σκεόαστή (Timaeus). However, what is the cause of the creation of the cosmos? There must be another principle to account for it. Such a principle Schelling found in God's freedom which might be called the Fourth One (cf. Philebus). It is the cause par excellence (κατ'έξοχήν), sharply distinguished from a cause in causality and from any principle related to substances. Then, what is this cause? And what is its relationship to the cosmos? First, God's freedom is in itself at once nothing and a whole. Secondly, for others, it possesses in its own nature (‘Besitzen von Natur’) the genetic principles of the cosmos, that is, contradictions among different principles. It is such a freedom alone that can give those contradictions free play (‘Befreiung’). Man, the highest being in Nature, is most self-contradictory by being caused by God's freedom. That is, his critical decision is that he must either be subjected to God as his subjection (‘a thing thrown under’), or go back to the original Nature. Man's freedom is nothing but the freedom of a creature who is possessed and at the same time liberated by God's freedom. Thus, God's freedom is not only opposite to God's necessity but also to man's freedom. Man's freedom, as a dynamic unity of necessity and freedom, is the apex of God's creation, and decides what form of unity is to be achieved. In other words, by this decision, phases of the relationship between God's freedom and the world are determined.