Volume 16, 2008
Modern Philosophy
Ana Carrasco Conde
Pages 293-299
Las Heridas del Espíritu
El Sentido del Mal en el Curso de la Historia en Hegel (1807) y Schelling (1809)
It is untrue that, as Hegel said in 1807 in the Phänomenologie, «the wounds of the spirit heal and leave no scar behind; what is done is not indelible, but is reassumed by the spirit» (GW 9, 360) since the ground of reality, that reality which, as indicated by Kant, seems to be submerged in evil (Ak. VI), refuses to be tamed by concepts. Disappearance without remnant, that dissolution (Verschwindung) mentioned by Hegel would suppose that there is no remnant of evil, that
its effects in history-such as the Jacobin terror with its macabre liturgy of severed heads referred to in the above passage of the Phänomenologieare nothing more than moments to be sublate (aufgehoben), part of a necessary process. There is no remnant to be explained. All is revealed: Offenbarung der Tiefe. The relationship between Hegel and Schelling has in this topic, the problem of evil and its meaning in history (Geschichte), one of its key points: in Schelling one can see a hollow which constitutes a pathway to the problem of finitude and evil, studied in depth in the Freiheitsschrift of 1809, partly as a response to the critics expressed by Hegel in the Phänomenologie. While Hegel reduced evil to an abstract negation, to be overcome through a determinated negation as a sign of
the reason in history, in Schelling evil would remain a permanent possibility that can never be dissolved (verschwinden) or overcome (aufgehoben) any way.