1

Contingency in Hegel and Schelling: Thinking Otherwise about Nature

XXXX, 2015
XXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX

2
It's common today to talk about Hegel as a philosopher that, far from the anodyne totalizing
monolith Hegel with his Absolute System that has completed philosophy, always holds open the
possibility for radical change. In turn, it has become fashionable to speak of Hegel as a philosopher of
contingency par excellence1, with the idea that things could be otherwise at the heart of his thought.
This strong left interpretation of Hegel is not without merit, and I will argue follows from an internal
tension between Hegel's Logic and Nature. To avoid turning Hegel into just a good Kantian2, this
tension must not be collapsed back into a non-metaphysical reading but used to further radicalize
Hegel. We will show that Hegel's proclamation that Contingency is Absolute Necessity in the Logic
leaves the role of contingency seemingly unresolved in his thought, and serves as the starting point for
middle-late Schelling's Identity Philosophy. Contemporary responses to the problem of contingency
in Hegel utilize Schelling heavily, especially the Transcendental Ontology of Markus Gabriel, and
the Transcendental Materialist position of Slavoj iek, and by the same token we must question if
they can be called properly Hegelian.
Contingency is Absolute Necessity3
Hegel addresses contingency most directly in the Logic, where he says that contingency
[zuflligkeit, alternatively translated as 'accidentality'] is the unity of possibility and actuality.4 He
argues that isolated actuality, as immediate, unreflected actuality, displays its own existence, but its
essence is to reflect upon itself and thus always contains possibility. Hegel thus concludes What is
actual is possible.5 When I say A is A, attempting to do nothing more than affirm the actuality of A,
1 Adrian Johnston iek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity (Northwestern University Press
2008), 127
2 Adrian Johnston levels this charge against a broad range of contemporary Hegelians, including but not limited to Pippin,
Pinkard, Brandom, Redding, and Taylor. Opposed to these readings that emphasize the Kantian 'transcendental unity of
apperception' as the most important moment in Hegel's (ultimately, for them, epiphenomenal) philosophy, Johnston
categorizes metaphysicalist readings of Hegel including his own, Gabriel, Beiser, Westphal, and iek.
3 GWF Hegel, Science of Logic, II.392
4 Ibid., II.384
5 Ibid,, II.382

3
for Hegel I am at the same time opening the space for pure indeterminacy. iek writes, When do we
say, 'The law is the law'? Precisely when the law is encountered as unjust, arbitrary, etc., and we then
add, 'But, nonetheless, the law is the law.'6 When something is merely self-identical its basis is
empty, without reason for being the way it is, and indeterminate, but only after being resolved into its
determinations, does difference emerge within it.7 The statement 'the law is law' is opposed to a
statement in which 'the law' is determined in some way, by saying the law is the way it is because X
[for public safety, for health, for moral reasons, etc.]. Without this because we are left with
possibility, and since no determinate reason can be given for why this law exists other than that its very
existence, anything goes. In the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel writes, Jurisprudence...require(s)
definitive, exact decisions which lie outside the determinateness in-and-for-itself of the concept.8 For
Hegel this is the positive moment of possibility that is the relationless, indeterminate receptacle of
everything in general.9
The positive moment of possibility is supplemented by a negative moment wherein it is the
second determination of being [both] only a possible and the ought-to-be of the totality of form.10
Possibility for Hegel is thus two opposing forces, one that drives it toward the expanse of the universal,
and a other force that negates this drives ability to be anything at all. Thus when Hegel says that
possibility is what serves as the ground that lets us relate A is A to -A is -A, he is at the same time
showing us how possibility always has to ground itself in an other. That is, possibility exists as
reflectively self-sublating, it is also therefore an immediate and it consequently becomes actuality.11
Pure possibility sublates itself back into actuality because it is impossible for it to have any existence
whatsoever without relating to something else, thus having a determination, and thus coming back to
6
7
8
9
10
11

Slavoj iek Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (Verso 2012), 370
GWF Hegel, Science of Logic, II.382
GWF Hegel Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences Part 1: Logic (Oxford University Press 1975), 44
GWF Hegel, Science of Logic, II.382
Ibid., II.382
Ibid., II.383

4
actuality. This resurrection of actuality as the impossibility of possibility is what Hegel calls
contingency (Actuality, Possibility, Actuality-as-Contingency). Hegel writes, It is accordingly said:
everything is possible, but not everything that is possible is therefore also actual. But, actuality is
thought, it contains possibility as an abstract moment within itself.12 How great this moment is
determined by how little knowledge the mind has about the content of this actuality. If, for instance, all
we know about the moon is that it is a body hovering some distance above the earth like a ball about to
be dropped to the floor, from this limited determination we would deduce that this evening the Moon
will fall to the Earth.13 If, on the other hand, we avoid the laziness of hiding behind possibility in our
explanations of things, appealing to a greater scientific necessity derived from the totality of the Moon's
determinations, we can infer that, barring an unforeseen cosmic occurrence, the Moon will probably
not crash into the earth obliterating all life. It is thus the content of the actuality (the totality of the
moments of actuality) that gives ground to both possibility and impossibility, and it is this content that
proves itself to be the necessity.14
We thus arrive at contingency as the unity of possibility and actuality, moving beyond formal
actuality, wherein possibility is mere abstract possibility, to a stance that incorporates real possibility.
This is the possibility that has some sort of ground, in the sense that we might say Yes, it is possible
the Moon will crash into the Earth, but it is not a real possibility. This real possibility, finds itself
grounded in immediate facts, or it is immediately the external, and in that sense is the necessary. This
necessity is only a relative necessity, grounded in those conditions that happen to be local to it, and is
thus not grounded in the absolute but only in other contingencies. So we have two different kinds of
contingency at work; one kind of contingency is its indeterminate side, in formal possibility, the other

12 GWF Hegel Encyclopedia Logic, 214

13 Ibid., 214
14 Ibid., 215

5
the contingent-upon side that owes its determinateness to something else, in real possibility. 15
Both sides taken together, both the facts and the facts about facts, give us what Hegel calls
Absolute Actuality.16 This actuality is Absolute because it is the conceptual necessity that includes
moving back and forth from possibility to actuality within itself. Since this concept of Absolute
Actuality is the only Absolute Necessity, that is, the occurrence of things becoming actual through a
process of actuality and possibility is the only thing that is totally necessary, and since this movement
from actuality to possibility is grounded in contingency (both formal and real), contingency shows up
again. The story, of course, does not stop there for Hegel, for it is this very contingency that serves as
the essence of Absolute Necessity. Absolute Necessity resolves the conflict between real and
formal possibility, and real and formal actuality, but only by bringing into itself a mediated kind of
contingency.
So, finally we have arrived at what Hegel means by Contingency is Absolute Necessity.
Contingency, in its raw immanence as the positing of any actuality, ultimately gives way to Absolute
Necessity, as the very logical form of contingency is a necessary logical achievement.17 In the
speculative unity of Absolute Necessity we have a pure self relation, as Hegel writes As reflection, it
has a ground and a condition but has only itself for this ground and condition.18 By positing its selfnegation in reflection, the concept here takes the very fact that it is to be the ground for both its own
existence and its essence, the ground of both all things existing and their coming into existence, to be
absolutely necessary. From our earlier tautology of A is A, we move to Hegel's reformulation It is,
therefore, because it is.19 Rather than the immediate necessities of real and formal actuality/possibility,

15 Raoni Padui, The Necessity of Contingency and the Powerlessness of Nature: Hegel's Two Sense of Contingency in
Idealistic Studies (40:3,2010), 247
16 Markus Gabriel Transcendental Ontology (Bloomsbury 2012), 102
17 Ibid., 103
18 GWF Hegel Science of Logic II.391
19 Ibid., II.391

6
Absolute Necessity mediates its essence and being through itself, and sublates contingency by being a
negative unity with itself. We still find contingency, but merely as the presupposing of that first
absolute actuality.20 As Beiser writes Self-determination [freedom] in Hegel means that (1) I have a
specific essence or Nature, and that (2) it is natural and necessary for it to be realized.21 The question
remains, however, is this overcoming of contingency a true overcoming, or is defined by
nachtrglichkeit, does it come onto the scene too late? Has contingency been fully sublated, or is there
an indivisible remainder of contingency in every reflection of the subject or realization of Nature? If
Nature is in itself the unresolved contradiction that exhibits no freedom in its existence, but only
necessity and contingency by always being external to itself, and the Notion only arises posterior to
this in conscious life, how do we resolve this natural unresolved contingency with the Logic's Absolute
Necessity?22
Section Two: Nature and Contingency, Schelling
Hegel's indebtedness to Schelling's elevation of Nature to the level of subject is present in his
thought that space considered by itself is already on the way to becoming matter, and raw matter on its
way to becoming life. This is why in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature even the stones cry out and raise
themselves to Spirit, as there is no such thing as the inert non-acting thing, the purely abstract
mechanism in isolation from everything else ready to be used by people is already on its way to
becoming more concrete.23 Hegel thus views the study of the Organic (Biology) as the highest
progression of the sciences as it most encompasses, has subjectivized, what physics, chemistry, and
material sciences could not. In the Organic, Nature is not simply mechanistic and determinate, but
20
21
22
23

Ibid., II.392
Frederick Beiser Hegel (Routledge 2005), 75
GWF Hegel Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences Part Two: Philosophy of Nature, 17, 446
Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, : A rational consideration of Nature must consider how Nature is in its own self this
process of becoming Spirit, of sublating its otherness- and how the idea is present in each grade or level of Nature itself;
estranged from the idea, Nature is only the corpse of the Understanding. Nature is, however, only implicitly the Idea,
and Schelling therefore called her a petrified intelligence, others even a frozen intelligence; but God does not remain
petrified and dead; the very stones cry out and raise themselves to Spirit. , 14-15

7
subject to illness, corruption and decay, as well as possessing a real telos. Hegel applauds the organic
because it has in its telos an Idea of itself, hence his declaration that Animals are the first idealists,
and this Idea happens to contain both the contingency of unformed particular matters and the necessity
of how these matters interact. The animal by being aware of his environment and having a center that is
not merely inside or outside of its skin, is the first subject for Hegel. What separates this animal
awareness, which for Hegel is its own form of subjectivity, from human consciousness, is our ability
to reflect back on this awareness.24 As Hegel writes in the Logic, for while cognition is the concept,
insofar as the latter exists for itself but as a subjectivity referring to an objectivity, then the concept
refers to the idea as presupposed or as immediate. But the immediate idea is life.25 The organic is thus
the closest we find in the natural world to consciousness, and within the consciousness' understanding
the study of biology the closest to self-consciousness.
This reflection on our awareness, the reflexivity of self-consciousness, is precisely where Hegel
splits from Schelling. In his Berlin lectures Hegel says that Schelling should be applauded for the way
he leads Nature up to the subject but that he fails to lead the I back to the object. For Schelling's
middle-late Identity Philosophy the meeting point of Nature and humanity, the origin of freedom, is
no longer brought to us in immediate intuition but rather is a point that is contingent insofar as it is
indifferent to the world, as a will that wills nothing, non-ground, or unprethinkable being.26 In
the Weltalter Schelling writes, It is thus not the case, as is often said, that a deed, an unconditioned
activity or action is the First. For the Absolutely First can only be that which the absolutely Last can be
as well. Only an immovable, divine- indeed, we could do better to say supradivine- indifference is
absolutely First; it is the beginning that is also at the same time the end.27 The influence Schelling has

24
25
26
27

Terry Pinkard Hegel's Naturalism (Oxford University Press, 2011), 46

GWF Hegel Science of Logic, 676
FWJ Schelling Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom (SUNY Press 2007), 68
FWJ Schelling and Slavoj iek The Abyss of Freedom/The Ages of the World (University of Michigan Press 2007), 132

8
on Hegel here is due to his insistence that Nature itself is in some way subjective, and that this
subjective Nature has an actual internal division of rotary forces that only become potential in an
immediate and free act. For Schelling this immediate act, absolute spontaneity, or as that which, in
contradistinction to the Kantian identification of freedom and autonomy, cannot be brought under any
rule, in the context of his theogony, is the intermingling of contraction and expansion in the word
of God.28 It is in this word, as Spirit, that Schelling finds:
because the opposites are not bound to each other or to unity by a necessary link, but rather
only by the inexhaustible pleasure of having and feeling presence of each other, this is the freest
life, the life that plays with itself, as it were, filled with the ceaseless excitement and bursting
with its own renewed vitality.29
For Schelling it is the radical contingency of this elevation of substance to subject ever
happening that is so amazing, and that he believes he deduced this contingency of necessity from the
arising of freedom. Freedom for Schelling is the very process of unprethinkable Being asserting and
recognizing itself. Crucially, while subjectivizing this Being at the center of Nature, he still views this
freedom as arising with material, within natural things, the germ and material of primordial material
existence, something that is passive on the outside but is in itself the purest Spirituality.30 For
Schelling, Nature takes the role of the reflexive self-conscious, and we find our own freedom to be
grounded in the vanishing act, the word, that binds the two, which is itself grounded in an
unprethinkable X that always remains unreconciled. Does Hegel not say something similar when he
talks about the impotence of Nature, saying it sets limits to philosophy and it is quite improper to
expect the Notion to comprehend...these contingent products of Nature?31 In the final section of my
paper I will argue that this late-Schellingian indivisible remainder of contingency, a remnant in the
28 Markus Gabriel defines this Schelling's God: For Schelling it is crucial to note that God refers to nothing more or less
than the incessant and polymorphous becoming of intelligibility. God is sense, the almost trivial fact that the ways we
access the world...belong to the world itself and cannot be empty projections onto a meaningless domain of geomtricophsyical extension. Transcendental Ontology, 70, 82
29 Schelling Ages of the World, 150
30 Ibid., 150
31 GWF Hegel Philosophy of Nature 23

9
belated necessity of necessity, is subverting the Hegelian elements in contemporary Hegelian
thought.
Section Three: Contingency of Necessity: Markus Gabriel, Slavoj iek
Confusion over what is meant by contingency in the German Idealist tradition, especially in the
mature philosophies of Hegel and Schelling, has led to a furious debate within Hegel scholarship.
Compounded by the publication of Quentin Meillassoux's After Finitude: An Essay on The Necessity
of Contingency, the role of contingency in Hegel (and I argue, under the influence of Schelling) has
taken on new significance for many, those selected here Markus Gabriel, and Slavoj iek.32 While it
would be presumptuous to resolve this debate here, I will give a brief synopsis of each position and
weigh in on, irrespective of their overall philosophical merit, their merit as sufficiently Hegelian. As
we will see, Markus Gabriel attempts to show that contingency is both a condition of domains as well
as an operation that could or could not be at work within specific domains, and iek tries to achieve a
unitary working of contingency throughout Hegel's philosophy and ends up oscillating between
positions. Beiser elucidates the problem in Hegel that these philosophers are fighting over:
The realm of contingency must be inside or outside the system. If it is inside the system, then
contingency has only a subjective status, so that there is no explanation of real contingency. If,
however, it is outside the system, it has an objective status; but it then limits the absolute and
introduces a dualism between form and content.33
It is my belief that the resurgence of interest in Schelling's middle and late period works goes
hand-in-hand with the position of contingency within (or without) Hegel's system coming to the fore.
Gabriel believes that Hegel makes a mistake when he does not question in which theorylanguage has the world as world been thematized?34 That is, if the starting point of Hegel's philosophy
32 The relation between, and general refutation of, Meillassoux to Hegel, has been expounded at length in the chapter of
iek's Less than Nothing entitled Correlationism and its Discontents, Johnston's Hume's Revenge: A Dieu,
Meillassoux in The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism, and Gabriel's The Mythological Being
of Reflection in Madness, Mythology, and Laughter.
33 Frederick Beiser Hegel, 79
34 Markus Gabriel Transcendental Ontology 133

10
is his Absolute Idealism wherein the spontaneous emergence of the subject is taken as a presupposition,
but this very emergence is a belated necessity, why can Hegel conclude that his Logic is all
encompassing? Gabriel asks, wouldn't it make more sense to say that the Logic merely describes one
field of sense among many others that could or could not emerge from the unprethinkable
contingency that becomes necessity after-the-fact? Gabriel writes the unknown x is neither God nor
the absolute in some twenty-four karat pure sense, but is merely the name for a constitutive withdrawal,
without which we could make no judgments.35 Gabriel thinks there is no overarching 'world' or
domain of domains, as the passing of anything from possibility/actuality into necessity will always
leave something behind that is not fully represented. This thing that is never fully represented is the
inexhaustible source and remainder in the passing to necessity, and Philosophy owes its existence to
the spielraum of contingency in and with which it plays.36 While a striking system, Gabriel defiantly
parts from Hegel's notion that all presence can be revealed as posited and believes that Hegel has
only described one kind of presence.
Unlike Gabriel who wears his Schelling on his sleeve, the influence of Schelling (and Lacan) on
iek at this juncture takes him astray from an otherwise lucid reading of Hegel, when he writes:
The Real is thus an effect of the symbolic, not in the sense of performativity, of the 'symbolic
construction of reality': but in the totally different sense of a kind of ontological 'collateral
damage' of symbolic operations: the process of symbolization is inherently thwarted, doomed
to fail, and the Real is this immanent failure of the symbolic.37
The Hegelian retort would be to double down on necessity against iek's warning that the
process of symbolization is doomed to fail. If the Real were truly the immanent and contingent
fallout of opposing forces in the unconscious, then there would be the possibility that Symbolization
succeeds. Or as Robert Pippin says in his review of Less Than Nothing, What there is, in the sense of

35 Ibid., 135
36 Ibid., 136
37 Slavoj iek Less Than Nothing, 959

11
this inquiry, is a possible space of reasons, into which persons may be socialized, and within which
constant self-correction, self-'negation,' is possible.38 This is a recurring theme in iek's
interpretation of Hegel, and owes its roots to his indulgence not only in Lacan, but also Schelling.
When Schelling writes There is always an overflow, as it were, playing and streaming around them, an
essence that though indeed intangible, is not for that matter unremarkable,39 he is explaining the very
basis of iek's metaphysics, supplemented by Hegelian logic. What iek sees as this 'irrational kernel
that resists subjectivity' is anything but, as for Hegel the Absolute is already regarding itself. iek
infects Hegel's grundlogik of aufhebung with the Schellingian logic of contraction or withdrawal,
abhebung.40 On top of this, he seems to oscillate from one position, where contingency arises from the
breakdown of necessity, and another position that begins in contingency as something that overflows
from within to without. As Johnston writes, iek, immediately after claiming in Less Than Nothing
that Hegels System initially gets underway quite early in the Logic with the Being-there of
Determinate Being, claims that there is a properly Hegelian materialist ontology. Hegel would say
iek, and Gabriel too, should be careful of being guilty like the Romantic Spinoza and Schelling of
dissolving the kaleidoscopic tapestry of innumerable differences presented by dappled reality into the
indifferent abyss of a flat, monochromatic monism.41 For iek, Schelling, and Gabriel this is
achieved by grounding all difference in a self-sundering substance fracturing itself from within42, or
by, in a non-Hegelian fashion, supplementing Absolute Necessity with Absolute Contingency. What is
Hegelian here is identifying this substance as a dual negativity, but that this negativity is able to resist
(or be a product of) subjectivization is not Hegelian.
Conclusion
38 Robert Pippin Back to Hegel? (Mediations Volume 26), www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/back-to-hegel , 2012
39 Schelling Ages of the World, 151
40 Joseph Carew The Grundlogik of German Idealism: The Ambiguity of the Hegel-Schelling Relationship in iek
International Journal of iek Studies (5:2010) , 15
41 Ibid., 228
42 Ibid., 117

12
In opening up a criticism of the Pittsburgh Hegelians Gabriel writes Yet, as long as people
continue to philosophize, there will be people who remember the original motivation for doing
philosophy, namely the strange feeling that things might be otherwise.43 This is the challenge that the
problem of contingency in Hegel's thought presents us, that Nature throws counter-determinations at
us, it blurs the essential limits of species and genera by intermediate and defective forms, which
continually furnish counter examples to every fixed distinction.44 The comedian Mitch Hedberg once
said I think Bigfoot is blurry, it's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary
to me. There's a large out of focus monster roaming the countryside.45 This is the metaphysical
structure of Schelling's unprethinkable being and of iek's Real, a horrifyingly sublime and
indescribable contingency that resists all representation. But is it not also true that for Hegel, in his
phenomenological capacity, that we must agree with Hedberg, that Nature's blurriness is not merely the
photographer's fault? A possible way out is to find the non-Romantic Spinoza within Hegel, to say that
philosophy begins in wonder, yes, but the wonder that things could not be otherwise.

43 Markus Gabriel Transcendental Ontology, 34

44 GWF Hegel Philosophy of Nature, 24
45 Mitch Hedberg, You Were Good Strategic Grill Locations (Audio CD: Comedy Central 2003)

13
Bibliography
Beiser, Frederick C. Hegel. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Carew, Joseph. The Grundlogik of German Idealism: The Ambiguity of the Hegel-Schelling
Relationship in iek. International Journal of iek Studies (5:2010)
Gabriel, Markus. Transcendental Ontology Essays in German Idealism. London: Continuum, 2011.
Gabriel, Markus, and Slavoj iek. Mythology, Madness, and Laughter: Subjectivity in German
Idealism. London: Continuum, 2009.
Hegel, GWF. Hegel's Philosophy of Nature: Being Part Two of the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical
Sciences (1830), Translated by A.V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
------ Hegel's Logic: Being Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (1830)
Translated by A.V. Miller Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975.
------ Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1977.
------ Science of Logic translated by A. V. Miller; Foreword by J. N. Findlay. London: G. Allen &
Unwin, 1969
Hedberg, Mitch. You Were Good, Strange Grill Locations. Comedy Central, 2003.
Johnston, Adrian. Adventures in Transcendental Materialism: Dialogues with Contemporary Thinkers.
Edinburgh University Press, 2014.
----- Zizek's Ontology: A Transcendental Materialist Theory of Subjectivity. Evanston, Ill.:
Northwestern University Press, 2008.
------ Where to Start? Robert Pippin, Slavoj iek, and the True Beginning(s) of Hegel's System. Crisis
& Critique #3, 2013

14
------- Hume's Revenge, Dieu, Meillassoux? In Levi R. Bryant, Nick Srnicek & Graham Harman
(eds.), The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. re.press. 2011
Kay, Sarah. Zizek: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity ;, 2003.
Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude an Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. London: Continuum,
2009.
Padui, Raoni. The Necesity of Contingency and the Powerlessness of Nature: Hegel's Two Sense of
Contingency, Idealistic Studies, Vol.40 issue 3, 2010 p 243-255
Pinkard, Terry. "How to Move from Romanticism to PostRomanticism: Schelling, Hegel, and Heine."
European Romantic Review: 391-407.
Pinkard, Terry P. Hegel's Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends of Life. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2012.
Pippin, Robert. Back to Hegel? (Mediations Volume 26, 2012), Accessed at:
www.mediationsjournal.org/articles/back-to-hegel on June 1, 2015.
Schelling, FWJ. Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2006.
iek, Slavoj, and FWJ Schelling. The Abyss of Freedom/The Ages of the World. Ann Arbor, Mich.:
University of Michigan Press, 1997.
iek, Slavoj. Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. London: Verso,
2012.