II. REDUCCIÓN DE LA VULNERABILIDAD PARA UN
6. Incremento y coordinación de la cooperación internacional
The crucial difference between Schelling and Hegel can be tied down to their modal ontologies. Generally, they agree in their analysis of the second- order relation between contingency (Hegel actually speaks of “chance,” Zufälligkeit) and necessity. As Hegel has it, necessity presupposes contin- gency, because it can only be made intelligible as the oscillation between actuality and possibility. The reason for this can be summarized in the following manner. Actuality or “reality,” as contemporary language tends to call it, is divided into two aspects. On the one hand, we have the way the world is, a set of facts, while on the other, we have our potentially distorting visions (judgments, thoughts, hunches guided by affect, emotional attach- ments, imagination, etc.) about the way the world is. Yet both, the way the world is and our forms of registration of this way, belong to one and the same world. The world as the domain, which encompasses both facts and references to facts (which, of course, are also facts, albeit facts about facts), is what Hegel calls “actuality.” Now, actuality is opposed to possibility in that possibility is Hegel’s name for the domain of all occurrences within actuality. Actuality in its contingent relation to whatever occurs is possi- bility. Thus, the relation between actuality (the being there of a space of distinctions) and possibility (the various occurrences or entries within that space) is contingency. The particular determinations, or ways the world is, are not anticipated in the simple thought of a space of distinctions. In this respect, they are contingent. Now, this oscillation between actuality as the very domain within which possible occurrences become actual and actuality as an occurrence within that very space is a conceptual necessity. It is necessary that the space of distinctions be distinguished even though the very distinctions are not entailed by it. Along those lines, Hegel argues in the chapter on “Actuality” in his Science of Logic that the only “absolute necessity” is that of the oscillation of (and therefore relation between) actuality and possibility.
Against Hegel, Schelling maintains the contingency of this thought. According to him the higher-order modality of the second-order relation between actuality and possibility is not necessity, but itself contingency. In this chapter, I will fi rst discuss Hegel’s moves toward the insight into a necessary immanence of what he calls “essence.” There are not two worlds which are contingently connected (be it by the will of a transcendent being or by the laws of nature), but only one world. Where Schelling differs from Hegel is in the determination of the modal status of this all-encompassing structure. Whereas Hegel argues that necessity even governs contingency in that the very logical form of contingency is a necessary logical achieve- ment, Schelling insists on the contingency of even that operation.
In this context, I cannot fully argue for both options. In order to pre- pare the systematic presentation of contingency, it is fi rst necessary to work through some of the fundamental operations of a transcendental modal ontology. Schelling’s and Hegel’s ways of thinking about the modalities are too far away from contemporary modal logics to be presupposed by a sys- tematic revival of their insights. For this reason, in this chapter I will only defend a reading of Schelling and Hegel on the modalities along the lines of transcendental ontology. The next step will be to defend the claim to a higher-order contingency in its details.
The central tenet of this chapter is that the modalities qualify framework internal relations between elements. For example, if it is necessary that 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4, then the elements 2 and 2 are related via the addition function in such a manner that the outcome 4 could not be otherwise. Yet, the very operation on elements defi ned by “addition” is only determinate in a con- text, which is not refl ected in the axioms of number theory, set theory, or arithmetic. Mathematics does not mathematically distinguish itself from other operations on elements. This is why it could be otherwise than 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4, even though we have no grip on this possibility, because our surrounding beliefs are arranged in a manner that is not itself an object of mathema- tics. If I claim that the necessity of 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4 could be otherwise, and even that any logical necessity could be otherwise, I am not saying that it is arbi- trary to believe that 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 4 rather than 2 ⫹ 2 ⫽ 5. I am only claiming that the possibility of revision is built into every belief system. And even if mathematics were the attempt to map an eternal realm of laws (whatever that might mean), it would have to map it, and that is to say it would have to consist of claims. Claims are fi nite, because they are determinate, and determinacy entails higher-order contingency, as I hope to make plausible in this chapter against Hegel’s claim to a closure of the indeterminacy of determining.
As should be obvious by now, this is neither skepticism nor a claim to transcendence. The very point I emphasize with Schelling against Hegel is that closure cannot be achieved. Ontological thought remains fi nite, which only threatens its possibility if we presuppose a transcendence over fi nitude.