The "ground" which has been clearly discerned in the Investigations is the proper object of the positive philosophy envisioned in the Berlin Lectures. How is this philosophy to proceed? Hints for possible directions can be discerned in Schelling's works.
The most promising texts here seems to be his Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature and First Outline for a System in the Philosophy of Nature, for Schelling has repeatedly emphasized in both his Investigations and his Berlin Lectures how it is necessary to "ground" freedom with the "appropriate" philosophy of nature, or a natural philosophy. However, these are not the only places to look for a possible positive philosophy. While texts such as Clara and Bruno offer only a very fragmentary and round-about account of the connection between the "ground" (or nature) and "spirit," other works are more suggestive and direct.
One such direct work is the Historico-Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology. This work is a posthumously published lecture series which were originally prepared after the publication of the Investigations. Schelling negotiates his way towards a possible positive philosophy by reflecting on mythology. At first sight, this might appear to be a desperate strategy of a thinker who wants to somehow go beyond the confines of the negative philosophy (chiefly of Kant and Hegel) by fleeing into a novel and marginal domain. And if this philosophical desperation does not seem too much of a concern, then, as the translator notes, the Philosophy of Mythology may seem "seriously outdated" in light of the rapid developments in the empirical study of mythology and archaeology. Both positions however miss the mark in that they do not take into account Schelling's aims.
In the Philosophy of Mythology, Schelling's aim is to arrive at an understanding of mythology which is not based on something other than mythology itself. This is neither an account which boasts its novelty in order to conceal its lack of substance, nor is it a reaction to empirical and patient analyses of excavated archaeological objects.
Nowadays, the idea of a "foundation myth" of civilization is a familiar one. Schelling takes a radical approach to mythology based on this line of thought. He asks: how is it the case that every civilization has its own mythology? Schelling rejects the facile answers provided by psychology, sociology, and aesthetics. According to psychology, mythologies are metaphorical ways of expressing the natural forces which humans have felt as threatening. For a sociologist, mythologies are constructions which serve political purposes in order to maintain cohesion of a social body. And finally for an aesthetician, mythologies are created by poets for the sake of pleasure, beauty, and edification. All of these explanations try to account for the cause or function of mythology by grounding mythology in some other aspect of the human mind. Schelling criticizes all of these approaches by pointing out that they all fail to explain what mythology as such is all about. Causes and functions are things which precede or result from mythology. Thus, they do not describe the content of mythology, of why mythology has to contain gods, and why these particular gods, etc. Moreover, these approaches do not tell us how to interpret mythology on its own terms. What does it mean for Aphrodite to descend upon Paris and Helen? Psychology, sociology, and aesthetics all efface the essential texture of mythology, namely the fact that supernatural forces and divinities play a key role in the formation of mythology's intelligibility, and thereby has to ignore the existence of Aphrodite, Paris, and Helen.
What does it mean, then, to read mythology on its own terms? Schelling suggests that mythology is concerned with something which has actually happened. This, however, does not mean that Athena or Gilgamesh literally walked on the earth as embodied characters. Schelling's critique here is not that such things are physically impossible, but rather that such interpretations are not mythological enough. To posit a body in the name of the divinities is already to impose a secondary interpretation on the original experience of mythology.
With the rejection of psychology, sociology, aesthetics, and materialism in general, Schelling is already suggesting that his account of mythology is concerned not with the luminous world of the understanding, but rather with that darkness, the impenetrable ground of existence. Schelling writes: "the meaning of mythology can only be the meaning of the process by which it emerges into being." And he further argues that such a process is universal for all human consciousnesses. This claim builds on the claims established in the Investigations, namely, that the human soul was created for the purpose of the self-revelation of God. As such, to adopt Schelling's terminology, the human soul is first and foremost a "God-positing" being.
The act of positing God, and thus at the same time giving birth to consciousness, is, Schelling speculates, a traumatic process. This original trauma is the "founding myth" of consciousness and of civilization. Mythology is a stable image of the dynamic movement which took place at the dark hour of consciousness's birth. Consciousness thus comes on the scene already with mythology in mind. When mythology is thus repeated in the light of day, despite its incomprehensibility and lack of sensible intuition corresponding to it, it thus mechanically reproduces the very trauma which still lurks as the inner founding force of consciousness.
The subjective experience of positing God is not simply one act of intuiting one concept. God is immanently "there," in every mythology. However, in order for God to reveal himself, he has to create a human soul, and let the soul little by little transport the ground into itself and thus illuminate God himself. This movement has already been described and justified in the Investigations. In the Philosophy of Mythology, Schelling takes this insight one step further and suggests that the manifestation of such a progressive illumination of the ground is found in the various systems of polytheism. Each polytheism can be read either as so many symbolizations of the one God, or as a development of the different parts or moment of the one God. The latter is what Schelling calls "relative" or "successive" polytheism, and this alone is consistent with the claim that there is only one God. (I will not go into the details of this last claim.)
Each stage of successive polytheism is expressed in each mythology. Civilization is first founded in the shared traumatic experience of the formation of consciousness, i.e. the fact that a new piece of the ground has been raised into the light of the human soul. Mythological expression gives light to this new emergence. When mythology and its counterpart, the founding trauma, becomes identical, this moment allows humanity to move onto the next part of the ground, and the same process is repeated, until finally the ground is fully revealed, and civilization completely fulfills its role as the revealer of God.
Each stage of successive polytheism is expressed in each mythology. Civilization is first founded in the shared traumatic experience of the formation of consciousness, i.e. the fact that a new piece of the ground has been raised into the light of the human soul. Mythological expression gives light to this new emergence. When mythology and its counterpart, the founding trauma, becomes identical, this moment allows humanity to move onto the next part of the ground, and the same process is repeated, until finally the ground is fully revealed, and civilization completely fulfills its role as the revealer of God.
This line of speculation, absurd and eccentric though it may appear, is actually quite a sober one. Schelling calmly distinguishes historical time from mythological time. If human consciousness is founded on an inexplicable dark traumatic process, and if mythology is the mechanical yet true expression of this process itself, and if, moreover, mythology serves as the basis of civilization, then it does seem to follow that every historical era is conditioned in some way by mythology. And actual mythology shows that the difference in the specifics of this or that mythology accounts also for the difference in civilization.
More importantly, however, mythology also offers a place to start for a speculation on what exactly took place in the ground prior to and up to the emergence of the understanding. Recall that this was the precise aim of the positive philosophy. Thus, an interpretation of mythology becomes here an urgent philosophical task. Through such an interpretation, Schelling invites other thinkers to reflect on a new way of thinking the transcendental unity of the apperception which has been given a purely negative representation by Kant. There are as many such unities as there are mythologies. Yet, such unities cannot be simply called "worlds" in the Heideggerian sense. It goes one step further, since, unlike a "world," which is after all a variable unity of the apperception, mythology is at the same time an actual event, that is, something which is just as much ontic as it is ontological. If the task of the positive philosophy is to give an ontic interpretation of mythology, then Heideggerianism also needs to be suspended for the moment.
The "ground," which has been presented as a mysterious and obscure something in the Investigations, here finds a definitely more concrete form. The Philosophy of Mythology also provides a way to access mythology which is a possible, and not merely intimated, way of starting a positive philosophy.
