抄録
In Weltalter, written in 1811, Schelling posits the barbarous principle which cannot be erased by culture or enlightenment. When Maurice Merleau-Ponty used this expression to express his notion of the Savage Being (l'Être sauvage) which holds primordial nature to be beyond scientific objectivation, he changed its meaning from that originally indicated for an archaic religious faith, to criticize the modern scientific view of nature. It is true that in his writings on natural philosophy, Schelling considered nature the subjective,
absolutely non-objective, i.e, infinite, activity. This viewpoint was influenced by the natura naturans of Spinoza and the primordial force of Leibniz, as opposed to Descarte's mechanism. Schelling's thought goes far beyond these philosophical traditions. His notion of the barbarous principle shows the nature before philosophical God to be the substance of the grounds for scientific cognition and technical control. Nature, which cannot be calculated through economic rationality, is a place of incalculable and unpredictable contingency. Schelling named it no-ground. In addition to this notion of nature as contingency, Schelling reflected on the origin of disaster, which had been denied by Leibniz as a lack of cause.Schelling reinterpreted Plato's Timaeus. He considered the meaning of original yearning in the undifferentiated state before the dualistic principle of light and darkness. This contingent yearning is unthinkable, incalculable and beyond supposition for a scientific view on nature.
In conclusion, to keep this contingency of nature in our thoughts, we should search for a language that can reveal the natural event beyond scientific supposition, which Schelling called the oldest revelation of nature.
