In his Berlin Lectures, Schelling lays out the foundations for a program which he calls "positive philosophy." Schelling's program is powerfully motivated by the thought that the critical philosophy of Kant and its extension in Hegel has systematically shunned all dogmatic content out of the domain of thought. While thought acknowledges that there is dogmatic content, thought also had to ban such excesses outside itself in order to launch a systematic critique. In the name of criticizing the various faculties, forms-of-consciousness, and Ideas, this philosophy, which Schelling calls "the negative philosophy," really stripped our original encounter with being of all its excesses.
It is to these excesses that Schelling directs his thoughts. The key question for him is: how to develop a philosophy of such excesses without 1) relapsing into negative philosophy, or 2) presupposing a standpoint or an assumption. Schelling's (often times unfair) criticism of Hegel's Science of Logic in this context is a warning against the first possibility, while his sharp criticisms of "absolute empiricism" as well as various philosophies based on revelation try to address 2).
How does Schelling envision the positive philosophy which is not limited by either of these two dangers? The answer lies in his interpretation of the word "being." For Schelling, being can already hold two meanings, one for negative philosophy, the other for the positive. Schelling argues that since its beginning and genesis philosophy has oscillated between these two interpretations. And while the initial failure to grasp being positively allowed the negative philosophy to become self-conscious, the remainder of the critical concept of being has been just that, a remainder of thought. In Schelling's own terminology, being, as the highest and most complete, within which no systematic development or scale of forms can be thought, a "being-itself," is the prius, the beginning as such. It is distinct from and more original than "being" as it is thought by negative philosophy, most notably at the beginning of Hegel's Science of Logic.
Again, Schelling reminds his listeners and readers that his notion of prius and of "being-itself" must not be conflated with a particular representation of being at a particular empirical moment. Rather, it is being as it makes a remainder possible from the perspective of negative philosophy. In this sense, negative philosophy allows the philosopher to clearly discern that which remains, as well as how this remainder might not be possible (i.e. through the pure development of negative philosophy, which, in Schelling's words, "posits the positive outside itself.") Such a detour through negative philosophy already presupposes, in the properly transcendental sense, the prius which Schelling speaks of, but nonetheless this latter's visibility is made explicit through the former.
To claim that the negative philosophy is necessary for the positive philosophy would be too strong a claim, since there might be various other ways in which the excess or the character of being-itself as the ground of a remainder may become manifest to the philosopher. Nonetheless, as far as historical fact goes Schelling recognizes the privileged position which the negative philosophy enjoys as the motivator of its other half.
What, then, is this "remainder" exactly? Schelling explicitly uses the term "remainder" in his Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom, in the context of his discussion of the relation between God and His ground, a very difficult yet profound meditation in its own right. This essay, and the term "remainder" which appears in its context, seems very fruitful, even necessary, for further elaborating the standpoint of positive philosophy. This is exactly the plan for the Schelling Memo No.2.
