《自由的深渊》第二章（1）

DRIVES AND THEIR ROTARY MOTION

驱力及其旋转运动

How, then, does Schelling succeed in accounting for this inherent inversion of the Absolute? Perhaps the most appropriate way is by focusing on the problem of Beginning, the crucial problem of German Idealism - suffice it to recall Hegel’s detailed elaboration of this problem and all its implications in his Science of Logic. Schelling's fundamental thesis is that, to put it bluntly, the true Beginning is not at the beginning: there is something that precedes the Beginning itself - a rotary motion whose vicious cycle is broken, in a gesture analogous to the cutting of the Gordian knot, by the Beginning proper, that is, the primordial act of decision. The beginning of all beginnings is, of course, the “In the beginning was the Word” from the Gospel according to St.John: prior to it, there was nothing, that is, the void of divine eternity. According to Schelling, however, "eternity" is not a nondescript bulk - a lot of things take place in it. Prior to the Word there is the chaotic-psychotic universe of blind drives, of their rotary motion, of their undifferentiated pulsating, and the Beginning occurs when the Word is pronounced that "represses", rejects into the eternal Past, this self-enclosed circuit of drives. In short, at the Beginning proper stands a resolution, an act of decision that, by way of differentiating between past and present, resolves the preceding unbearable tension of the rotary motion of drives: the true Beginning is the passage from the “closed” rotary motion to the “open” progress, from drive to desire, or, in Lacanian terms, from the Real to the Symbolic. The beginning occurs when one "finds the word” that breaks the deadlock, the vicious cycle, of empty and confused ruminations. 

那么，谢林是如何解释绝对者的这一内在颠倒的呢？或许，最佳的途径是聚焦于开端问题，它是德国唯心论的关键问题——回想一下黑格尔在《逻辑学》中对这个问题及其含义的详尽阐述。直白地说，谢林的基本论点是，真正的开端不在开端处：有某些比开端还早的东西——一种旋转运动，它的恶性循环被真正的开端，也就是原始的决断行为，以一种类似于斩断戈迪乌斯之结的姿态打破。当然，根据约翰福音，一切开端的开端是“太初有道”，在它之前，一无所有There was nothing，或者说是神圣永恒的虚空。然而，根据谢林，“永恒”并非无可名状的庞然大物——大量的事情在其中发生。在道之先，有一个混沌的、精神病的宇宙，它是盲目的驱力、驱力的旋转运动和它的无差别的搏动，当“压抑”且拒绝进入永恒的过去（驱力的自我封闭的循环）的道被说出时，开端出现了。简言之，真正的开端是一个决心，一个决断行为，它通过区分过去和现在，解决了先前驱力的旋转运动所无法承受的张力：真正的开端是从“封闭的”旋转运动到“开放的”前进运动的转变，是从驱力到欲望的转变，或者用拉康的话说，是从实在到符号界的转变。当某人“发现了道”，从而打破了空洞且混乱的思维反刍（译者注：“思维反刍”指人反复地思考消极事件及其可能的原因与后果，陷入其中无法自拔，是强迫症的表现）的僵局及其恶性循环时，开端出现了。

In this precise sense, the problem of the Beginning is the problem of “phenomenalization”: how does it happen that God pronounces the Word and thereby discloses himself, appears to himself? We must be careful not to miss this crucial point: as with Hegel, the problem is not how to attain the noumenal In-itself beyond phenomena, the true problem is how and why at all does this In-itself split itself from itself, how does it acquire a distance toward itself and thus clear the space in which it can appear (to itself).

由此而言，开端问题是“现象化”的问题：上帝说出了道从而自我解蔽并向自己显现，这是如何发生的呢？我们千万不要忽略这一关键点：和黑格尔一样，问题不在于如何超越现象而到达自在的本体，真正的问题是：自在的本体究竟如何及为何自我分裂？它如何与自身拉开距离，从而开辟出一个能在其中向它自己显现的场域呢？

How, then, can this phenomenalization of God, this pronunciation of the Word in him that magically, in an unfathomable way, dispells the impenetrable darkness of drives, occur? It can only occur on condition that the rotary motion of drives that precedes the Beginning is itself not the primordial, unsurpassable fact. That is to say, the notion of the vortex of drives as the ultimate foundation, the "origin of all things", renders inconceivable the fact of Freedom: how can a Word emerge out of this vortex and dominate it, confer on it its shape, "discipline" it? Consequently this ultimate Ground of reality, the primordial vortex of drives, this Wheel of Fate that sooner or later engulfs and destroys every determinate object, must be preceded by an unfathomable X that in a way yet to be explained "contracts" drives. Is, however, the primordial vortex of drives not the ultimate ground that nothing can precede? Schelling would entirely agree with that, adding only that the point in question is precisely the exact status of this “nothing": prior to Grund, there can only be an abyss (Ungrund); that is, far from being a mere nihil privativum, this “nothing” that precedes Ground stands for the “absolute indifference” qua the abyss of pure Freedom that is not yet the predicate-property of some Subject but rather designates a pure impersonal Willing (Wollen) that wills nothing. At the outset of his "prehistory", prior to the Beginning itself, God unavoidably, of blind necessity that characterizes the workings of Fate (according to the first draft of Weltalter), "contracts" Being, that is, a firm, impenetrable Ground. (Schelling, of course, plays upon the double meaning of the term contraction: to tighten-compress-condense and to catch, to be afflicted with, to go down with [an illness]; the primordial Freedom "contracts” Being as a painful burden that ties it down.) Prior to this primordial contraction, to this act of engendering-ejecting one’s Ground, God is, as Schelling puts it in an unsurpassed way in the second draft of Wehalter; a pure Nothingness that “rejoices in its nonbeing”. (Significantly, Schelling resorts to the same formulation when, in his Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism, he describes the falsehood of a person entertaining the notion of his own death: when indulging in fantasies about one's own death, one always imagines oneself as miraculously surviving one's death and being present at the scene of one's own funeral in the guise of a pure gaze that observes the universe from which one is already absent. relishing the imagined pathetic reactions of the relatives, etc. We are thereby at the fundamental time-loop of fantasy: to be present as a pure gaze prior to one's own conception or decease. Is therefore the God prior to the primordial contraction, this pure gaze that finds enjoyment in contemplating its own nonbeing, also not a fantasy formation at its purest? Schelling emphasizes again and again that the passage of the pure Seinkoennen of the primordial Abyss into the contracted Ground cannot be accounted for or deduced: it can only be described (narrated) post festum, after it already took place, since we are not dealing with a necessary act but with a free act that could also not have happened - however, does this not amount to an implicit admission of the fact that its status is that of a retroactive fantasy? )

上帝的现象化，即对在他之内的道的言说，以一种神秘莫测的方式，驱散了驱力那不可透视的黑暗，这是如何发生的呢？它只能在以下条件下发生：先于开端的驱力的旋转运动本身并非原始的、无法超越的事实。也就是说，“驱力的漩涡”这一概念作为“终极的根据和”万事万物的源头”，使自由的事实变得无法想象：道如何能从这个漩涡中出现并反过来支配它、赋予它形状和“规训”它呢？因此，这个现实的终极根据、这个驱力的原始漩涡、这个迟早会吞噬和毁灭一切确定对象的命运之轮，必定以一个深不可测的未知之物为先导，后者以一种尚待解释的方式“收缩”驱力。然而，既然原始的驱力漩涡是终极的根据，那么在它之前不是什么都没有nothing吗？对此谢林完全同意，但他补充道：问题的关键正是这个“无nothing”的地位：先于根据的只能是一个深渊（无根据），也就是说，这个先于根据的“无”绝非一个“空乏的无”，而是代表着“绝对的无差别”——一个纯粹自由的深渊，它尚不是某个主词的谓词属性，而是标示着一种纯粹的、非人格化的意愿，这个意愿无所欲求。在比开端还早的“史前史”的开始处，上帝作为盲目的必然性（根据《世界时代》的初稿，这个词用来描述命运的运行），不可避免地把存在收缩成一个坚实的、不可穿透的根据（当然，谢林利用了“contract”这个词的双重含义：收紧、压缩、凝结和遭受、被…折磨、染病，原始的自由把存在“收缩”成了一个束缚着它的痛苦的负担）。在这原始的收缩之前，在这产生并排斥出存在之根据的行动之前，正如谢林在《世界时代》第二手稿中以一种无与伦比的方式指出的：上帝是“在其非存在中享乐”的纯粹的无Nothingness。（作者注：值得注意的是，谢林在《关于独断论和批判主义的哲学书信》中描述一个人关于自己的死亡的异想天开时，采取了同样的表述：当某人沉浸在自己死亡的幻想中时，他总是想象自己虽然死了，却还不可思议地“存在着”，在自己葬礼的现场，作为一种纯粹的凝视，观察着那个他已然不在其中的宇宙，欣赏着亲戚们悲戚的反应等等。故而，我们处于幻想的基本时间循环之中：在自己出生之前和死亡之后，作为纯粹的凝视而在场。因此，先于原始收缩的上帝，作为纯粹的凝视——凝视自己的非存在并以此为乐——不也是一个最最纯粹的幻想吗？谢林一再强调，原始深渊的纯粹“能在”转变成收缩性的根据，这一过程无法被解释或推断：它只能在事后——在它已然发生之后被描述或讲述，因为我们所讨论的不是一个必然的行动，而是一个不可能发生的“自由的”行动——然而，这不等于默认了这样一个事实，即它不过是一个回溯性的幻想吗？）

God qua pure Freedom that hasn't yet contracted being thus stricto sensu doesn’t exist. The spontaneous, self-generated “breach of symmetry” (we are tempted to say: the primordial “Vacuum fluctuation”, which sets in motion the development of the Absolute) is the primordial contraction by means of which God acquires being. This contraction of/into being is necessarily followed by a counterstroke of expansion - why? Let us step back for a moment and reformulate the primordial contraction in terms of the passage from a self-contented Will that wants nothing to an actual Will that effectively wants something. The pure potentiality of the primordial Freedom, this blissful tranquility,  this pure enjoyment, of an unassertive, neutral Will that wants nothing actualizes itself in the guise of a Will that actively, effectively, wants this “nothing,” that is, the annihilation of every positive, determinate content. By means of this purely formal conversion of potentiality into actuality, the blissful peace of primordial Freedom thus changes into pure contraction, into the vortex of “divine madness” that threatens to swallow everything, into the highest affirmation of God's egotism, which tolerates nothing outside itself. In other words, the blissful peace of primordial Freedom and the all-destructive divine fury that sweeps away every determinate content are one and the same thing, only in a different modality: first in the mode of potentiality, then in the mode of actuality: “the same principle carries and holds us in its ineffectiveness that would consume and destroy us in its effectiveness.” Upon experiencing itself as negative and destructive, the Will opposes itself to itself in the guise of its own inherent counterpole, the Will that wants something, that is, the positive Will to expansion. However, this positive Will's effort to break through the bars of its self-imposed contraction is doomed, since the antagonism of the two Wills, the contractive one and the expansive one, is here under the dominance, in the power, of contraction. God, as it were, repeatedly dashes against his own wall: unable to stay within, he follows his urge to break out, yet the more he strives to escape, the more he is caught in his own trap. Perhaps the best metaphor for this rotary motion is a trapped animal who desperately strives to disengage itself from a snare: although every spring only lightens the snare, a blind compulsion leads the animal to make dash after dash, so that it is condemned to an endless repetition of the same gesture. What we have here is Schelling's grandiose “Wagnerian" vision of God in the state of an endless “pleasure in pain," agonizing and struggling with himself, affected by an unbearable anxiety, the vision of a “psychotic,” mad God who is absolutely alone, a One who is “all” since he tolerates nothing outside himself - a “wild madness, tearing itself apart”. This rotary motion is horrible because it is no longer impersonal: God already exists as One, as the Subject who suffers and endures the antagonism of drives. Schelling provides here a precise definition of anxiety: anxiety arises when a subject experiences simultaneously the impossibility of closing itself up, of withdrawing fully into itself, and the impossibility of opening itself up, of admiting an Otherness, so that it is caught in a vicious cycle of pulsation - every attempt at creation-expansion-extemalization collapses back into itself. This God is not yet the Creator, since in creation the being (the contracted reality) of an Otherness is posited that possesses a minimal self-consistency and exists outside its Creator - this, however, is what God in the fury of his egotism is not prone to tolerate.

因此，严格说来，尚未收缩存在的、作为纯粹自由的上帝并不存在。自发的“对称性破缺”（一种原始的“真空波动”，它开启了绝对the Absolute的发展运动）正是上帝由以获得存在的原始收缩。这个向存在的收缩或者说存在自身的收缩必然伴随着膨胀的反抗——为什么呢？让我们暂且退一步，换个词来表述这个原始的收缩：从无所欲求的、自足的意志到实际地欲求某物的、实存的意志的转变。原始自由的这种纯粹潜能，平和的、中性的、无所欲求的意志的这种至乐的宁静与纯粹的享乐，通过表现为一个积极地、实际地欲求着“无”的意志，或者说表现为对一切肯定性的、确定的内容的毁灭，从而把它自己现实化。从潜能到现实的纯然形式上的转变，使原始自由的至乐的宁静变成了纯粹的收缩，变成了威胁吞噬一切的“神圣的疯狂”的漩涡，变成了对上帝自我中心主义的最高确证，它不容忍任何外在的东西。换言之，原始自由的至乐的宁静与扫荡和毁灭一切确定内容的神圣的疯狂是同一个东西，二者只是它的不同形式而已：它最初处于潜能的形式，继而变为现实的形式：“同样的一个原则，在不发挥作用时承载并保守着我们，而在发挥作用时却会将我们吞噬和毁灭。”这个意志一旦体验到自己是否定性和毁灭性，就会把自己表现成自己固有的对立物——那个欲求某物的意志或者说肯定性的膨胀意志——而与自己相对立。然而，这一肯定性意志注定要去奋力突破它强加给自己的障碍（即收缩），因为此时，在收缩意志和膨胀意志的对抗中，前者处于支配地位。可以说，上帝不停地冲撞他自己的围墙：他不想待在里面，他顺应着自己突围的冲动，然而，他越奋力地逃离，就越陷入到自己的罗网之中。或许，对这一旋转运动最贴切的比喻是一头拼命要挣脱罗网的困兽：尽管每一次反弹只会收紧罗网，但盲目的冲动还是致使它一次次地冲撞，它注定要无尽地重复这同一个动作。在此，我们见到了谢林宏伟的“瓦格纳式”的上帝形象：一个处于无尽的“苦中之乐”的上帝，他折磨自己，与自己斗争，为一种难以忍受的焦虑所浸染；一个疯狂的、孤身一人的“精神病人”；一个是“一切东西”的太一，因为他不容忍自己之外的任何东西；一种把自己撕裂的极端的“疯狂。这样的旋转运动是可怕的，因为它不再是非人格化的：上帝已经作为太一，作为一个忍受着驱力之对立的主体而存在了。在此，谢林给出了焦虑的精确定义：当主体体验到它既不可能封闭自身、完全地回撤进自身，又不可能敞开自身接纳他者，因而陷入到搏动的恶性循环之中——当他每一次创造、扩张、外化的努力都坍缩回自身时，焦虑就产生了。这样的上帝还不是造物主，因为在创造活动中，他者的存在（收缩的现实）被设定为拥有最小的自我一致性且存在于创造者之外——然而，这是以自我为中心的疯狂的上帝所不能容忍的。

As Schelling emphasizes again and again, this all-destructive divine vortex remains even today the innermost base of all reality:“if we were able to penetrate the exterior of things, we would see that the true stuff of all life and existence is the horrible." In this sense, all reality involves a fundamental antagonism and is therefore destined to fall prey to Divine fury; to disappear in the “orgasm of forces." “Reality" is inherently fragile, the result of a balance between contraction and expansion that can, at any moment, explode into one of the extremes. Hogrebe resorts here to an analogy from cinema: if the projection of a film is to give rise to an "impression of reality" in the spectator, the reel has to run at the proper speed - if it runs too quickly, the movement on the screen gets blurred and we can no longer discern different objects; if it is too slow, we perceive individual pictures and the continuity that accounts for the impression we are watching “real life" gets lost. Therein resides Schelling's fundamental motif: what we experience as “reality” is constituted and maintains itself through a balance between the two antagonist forces, with the ever-present danger that one of the two sides will "crack", run out of control, and thus destroy the "impression of reality". Is not this speculation confirmed by the premise of contemporary cosmology according to which the “reality" of our universe hangs in the balance, that is, hinges on the fragile tension between expansion and gravitation? If the expansion were just a little bit stronger, the universe would "explode", dissipate, no firm, stable object would form; if, on the contrary; gravitation were a little bit stronger, it would long ago have "collapsed", fallen in... 

正如谢林一再强调的，这个毁灭一切的神圣漩涡至今仍是一切现实的最内在的基础：“如果我们能穿透事物的表面，我们就会看到，一切生命及实存的真正基础都是可怕的。”由此而言，一切现实都包含着一个基本的对立，因此注定要被神圣的疯狂毁灭，注定要在“诸力量的高潮”中消亡。“现实”本就是脆弱的，它是收缩与膨胀相平衡的结果，随时会突变为其中一个极端。在此，霍格雷贝用电影来类比：如果电影要给观众制造出“现实的印象”，放映机的转轮必须以适当的速度旋转——如果它转得太快，屏幕上的运动就会变得模糊，我们就无法分辨出不同的对象；如果速度太慢，我们就只能看到分立的图片，造成我们正在观看“现实生活”的印象的连续性就会消失。这就是谢林的中心思想：我们所体验到的“现实”是被建构的，它以两种对立力量间的平衡来维持自身，二者中任何一方“崩溃”和失控的危险会随时发生，从而破坏“现实的印象”。这样的猜想不是被当代宇宙学的原理证实了吗？根据当代宇宙学，我们宇宙的“现实”存亡未卜，也就是说，它取决于膨胀与万有引力间脆弱的对立关系：假如膨胀稍强一点，宇宙就会“爆炸”和消散，坚固稳定的物体就不会形成；反之，假如万有引力稍强一点，宇宙早就“坍缩”了……