THE “JUNCTURE” OF BEING: A NEW ASSESSMENT OF THE SCHELLINGIAN DISTINCTION BETWEEN GROUND AND EXISTENCE

Schelling presents the existence of God’s internal duality between ground and existence as the only real starting point for the true explanation of the phenomena of evil and human freedom. We will explicate here the essential relation between the reality of evil and the constitution of a system of freedom. Since the meta-physical monism that Schelling attributes to Spinoza, and later also to Hegel, cannot explain the subsistence of evil, subsumed in a whole or reality equivalent to the good or perfection, neither can account for freedom considered as the capacity of individual human beings. The broad link connecting the duality of ground and existence, and human freedom, as well as the way in which this new duality negatively impacts the concept of rationality is finally elucidated.