selection one - Sound and Signifier

2 / History and Phenomenology
1. THE SPIRIT Is HISTORY
BEFORE STUDYING the structure of the Phenomenology,
it is impossible to avoid asking whether the Phenomenology is a
history of humanity, or whether, at least, it claims to be 'a
philosophy of that history. In ldealismus, Schelling had posed
the general problem that a 'philOsophy of history must resolve'.
It will be useful to recall here the clues, and they are only clues,
which Schelling's system contains in order better to note the
similarities and differences between such a philosophy of history
and the Phenomenology.
Schelling posed the question of a "transcendental possibility
of history," :J. a question that would lead him to a philosophy of
history which woUld be for practical philosophy what nature is
for theoretical philosophy. The categories of intelligence are
made real, or realized, in nature; those of ·the will are e.xpressed
in history. The practical ideal, the ideal of an order of cosmopolitan
law, is only a far-off ideal for a particular individual,
an ideal whose realization depends not only on his free will but
on the free will of other rational beings as well. History thus
bears on the species and not on the individual: "All my actions,
indeed, finally lead to a result the realization of which cannot
be attained by the individual alone but only by the whole
species." 2 Thus, the only history is a history of humanity. Now
this history of humanity is possible only on the condition . . that
1. Schelling, SW, ill, 590.
2. Ibid., p. 596.