Identity-philosophy
Identity-philosophy
In general the term has been applied to any theory which failed to distinguish between spirit and matter, subject and object, regarding them as an undifferentiated unity; hence such a philosophy is a species of monism. In the history of philosophy it usually signifies the system which has been called Identittsphilosophie by Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling who held that spirit and nature are fundamentally the same, namely, the Absolute. Neither the ego nor the non-ego are the ultimate principles of being; they are both relative concepts which are contained in something absolute. This is the supreme principle of Absolute Identity of the ideal and the real. Reasoning does not lead us to the Absolute which can only be attained by immediate intellectual intuition. In it we find the eternal concepts of things and from it we can derive everything else. We are obliged to conceive the Absolute Identity as the indifference of the ideal and the real. Of course, this is God in Whom all opposites are united. He is the unity of thought and being, the subjective and the objective, form and essence, the general and infinite, and the particular and finite. This teaching is similar to that of Spinoza. — J.J.R.