Jung's Red Book and its relation to aspects of German Idealism

Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2012, 57, 335–363

Jung’s Red Book and its relationto aspects of German Idealism

Paul Bishop, Glasgow, Scotland

Abstract: The late nineteenth century saw a renaissance of interest in the thought of theGerman Romantic philosopher, F.W.J. Schelling. This paper takes Jung’s engagementwith Schelling and his awareness of Schellingian ideas and interests (notably, themysterious Kabeiroi worshipped at Samothrace) as its starting-point. It goes on to arguethat a key set of problematics in German Idealism — the relation between freedomand necessity, between science and art, and ultimately between realism and idealism— offers a useful conceptual framework within which to approach Jung’s Red Book.For the problem of the ideal is central to this work, which can be read as a journeyfrom eternal ideals to the ideal of eternity. (Although the term ‘idealism’ has at leastfour distinct meanings, their distinct senses can be related in different ways to Jung’sthinking.) The eloquent embrace of idealism by F.T. Vischer in a novel, Auch Einer, forwhich Jung had the highest praise, reminds us of the persistence of this tradition, whichis still contested and debated in the present day.

Key words: German Idealism, idealism, realism, Red Book, Schelling

The Romantic can be felt in every limb.(Das Romantische steckt einem doch in allen Gliedern.)

(Jung 2009a, p. 262; Jung 2009b, p. 262)

Two years on from The Red Book, what have we learnt from it? For one thing,that Jung is an even more intriguing, even more complex, even more importantfigure than we had previously thought. What had been suspected from hintsin Jung’s 1925 seminar on Analytical Psychology (and his 1935 seminar onModern Psychology), in Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1963), and in AnielaJaffe’s C.G. Jung: Word and Image (1979), is that Jung is not simply oneof the most significant thinkers of the twentieth century, but deserves to beappreciated in his own right as a writer and a painter as well — in short, as anartist. In this regard, we have also learnt that the image of Jung that had (been)developed prior to the publication of his Red Book was not entirely wrong. Inparticular, the evidence provided by The Red Book has led, in my view, to asort of rehabilitation of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, a work which, becauseof the history of its complicated authorship and editing, we have tended to treat

0021-8774/2012/5703/335 C© 2012, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2012.01974.x

336 Paul Bishop

with a certain amount of caution (see Goldberg 1990, pp. 116–45; Elms 1994,pp. 51–70; Shamdasani 1999, pp. 33–50; Shamdasani 2005).

In Memories, Dreams, Reflections, great emphasis is placed in the chapterabout Jung’s school years and later his student years on the importancefor his intellectual development of the German philosophical tradition. Weread how, in order to orient himself in the tradition, Jung used a book hefound in his father’s library, the second edition of the General Dictionaryof the Philosophical Sciences by the German philosopher Wilhelm TraugottKrug (1770–1842) (Jung 1963, p. 79).1 By far the greatest number of thefigures mentioned here are German: we learn of Jung’s interest in Kant,in Schopenhauer, and particularly in Nietzsche; in Eschenmayer, Passavant,Justinus Kerner, and Gorres; in Eduard von Hartmann and Jakob Burckhardt.Jung’s reading was nothing if not electic: he was interested in medicine, but alsoin spiritism; in psychiatry, but also in theology; in Kant, but also in Carus. True,the names in the impressive roll-call of Jung’s reading (Pythagoras, Heraclitus,Empedocles, and Plato; Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas, and Hegel) are notsolely German; but the majority are.

From the list of names mentioned in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, onewould appear to be missing: namely, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling(1775–1854), the German Romantic philosopher famous for his work onNaturphilosophie, on aesthetics, and on mythology.2 Elsewhere, however, Jungdoes talk about Schelling. (The history of Jung’s reception of Schelling is onethat has not (yet) been written, and I do not propose to undertake to write ithere, since Matt ffytche has recently brought to press an account of Schelling’sinfluence on Freud [ffytche 2011], and Sean J. McGrath’s study of Schelling inrelation to the concept of the unconscious has just been published [McGrath2012].)3 It is, however, worth noting that the first couple of decades of the20th century saw a renaissance of interest in Schelling, reflected in the collectionof studies on Schelling published by Otto Braun (1897–1918) in 1908 underthe title Hinauf zum Idealismus! (Braun 1908). Not the least of Schelling’sachievements, on this account, had been his ‘discovery’ of the unconscious;even if – as, for example, Hans Kern (1902–1949) noted in 1926 – Schelling

1 See Wilhelm Traugott Krug, Allgemeines Handworterbuch der philosophischen Wissenschaften,4 vols, then 5 vols (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1827–1828; 1829–1834); second edition, 5 vols (Leipzig:Brockhaus, 1832–1838).2 For an introduction to Schelling’s thought, see Watson 1882; and Bowie 1993.3 Rightly, McGrath notes: ‘Unlike Jacques Lacan, neither Sigmund Freud nor Jung read the GermanIdealists carefully, but they did not need to: by the end of the 19th century, German Idealism hadinfiltrated most fields of German academic life, either negatively, inspiring materialist reactions inlogic, metaphysics, and natural science, or positively, influencing historiography, hermeneutics, andthe burgeoning science of dynamic psychiatry’ (McGrath 2012, p. 1). McGrath identifies Eduardvon Hartmann’s 1869 Philosophy of the Unconscious — ‘a bricolage of Schelling, Hegel andSchopenhauer, which everybody seems to have read’ (McGrath 2012, p. 1) — as an importantmediating link, and I agree that Hartmann is a likely source for Jung’s knowledge of Schelling (seebelow).

Jung’s Red Book and its relation to aspects of German Idealism 337

had subsequently not realized its full significance [Kern 1926, p. 14].) And in1954, the German psychiatrist and medical historian Werner Leibrand (1896–1974) recognized the relevance of Schelling for modern medicine, arguing that– without Schelling – the importance of Jung’s work could not be grasped(Leibrand 1956 [1954]). In fact, Schelling – and the intellectual debate of theperiod of German classicism and Romanticism (i.e., circa 1780 to 1830) – offersa framework within which we can better understand Jung’s project in analyticalpsychology as a whole and in The Red Book in particular.

Throughout The Red Book, we find a number of concerns that are reminiscentof texts from the period of German Idealism, and provide the cultural historicalcontext for approaching Jung’s long-withheld masterpiece. An awareness ofthis context does not detract from Jung’s inventiveness or originality; on thecontrary, it enables us to appreciate his achievement all the better. Nor is itsimply the case that Jung marshalled a number of sources when he undertookto produce The Red Book, along the model that he took a previously existingpack of cards and simply reshuffled them. Rather, my argument is that Jungis working on the same intellectual and experiential terrain as the GermanIdealists (in the broadest sense of the term), including Goethe and Schiller.4

Their problems are his problems; equally, his problems are ours. After all, asJung remarks in The Red Book: ‘The Romantic can be felt in every limb’ (DasRomantische steckt einem doch in allen Gliedern) (Jung 2009a, p. 262; Jung2009b, p. 262).

Jung and Schelling

How can Schelling and the background of German Idealism help us betterunderstand what is at stake in The Red Book? To begin with, let us brieflysurvey what Jung has to say about Schelling elsewhere in his writings. ThatJung had at least some familiarity with Schellingian thought is indicated byhis references to Schelling on a number of occasions. Most of these referencesto Schelling are made in the context of a historicization of the concept of theunconscious.

In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido (1911/1912), for instance,he mentions that Schelling considered the ‘preconscious’ (das Vorbewußte)as the creative source, attributing this view to his Philosophy of Mythology(Philosophie der Mythologie) (1842).5 In ‘A Review of the Complex Theory’

4 For the thesis that Schiller is the ‘inventor’ of German Idealism, see Safranski 2004; and for arecent discussion of the relation between Goethe and German Idealism, see the ‘Special Sectionon Goethe and Idealism’, edited by Elizabeth Millan and John H. Smith, in Goethe Yearbook, 18(2011), 1–203.5 (Jung 1911/12, para. 50, fn. 37; cf. Jung 1952, para. 39, fn. 40). I have not yet sourced thisquotation from Schelling’s Philosophie der Mythologie. In the same footnote, Jung also refers toI.H. Fichte’s notion of the ‘preconscious region’ (vorbewußte Region) as the place of origin of thereal content of dreams (Fichte, 1864–1873, vol. 1, p. 508).

338 Paul Bishop

(1934) he makes a general reference to Schelling in the context of the historyof the unconscious (Jung 1934, para. 212). In Theoretical Considerations onthe Nature of the Psyche, he refers to Wilhelm Wundt’s scepticism in hisGrundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie (1874; 5th edn. 1902–1903) aboutGustav Theodor Fechner’s notion of ‘double consciousness’ in his Elemente derPsychophysik (1860; 2nd edn. 1889), which Wundt dismisses as ‘a survival fromthe psychological mysticism of the Schelling school’ (ein “Uberlebnis aus dempsychologischen Mystizismus” der Schellingschen Schule) (Jung 1946/1954,para. 352).6

Later in the same work, Jung offers a thumb-nail sketch of the developmentof German Idealism. The ‘victory’ of Hegel over Kant, he suggests, dealt ‘thegravest blow to reason’, and the ‘forces compensating for this calamitousdevelopment personified themselves partly in the later Schelling, partly inSchopenhauer and Carus’ – one line of development in post-Kantian thought,therefore, while a second line results in the ‘bursting upon us’ in Nietzscheof ‘that unbridled “bacchantic God” whom Hegel had already scented innature’ (jener hemmunglose “bacchantische Gott”, den schon Hegel in derNatur witterte) (Jung 1946/1954, para. 358). It is interesting to note here howJung positions himself in relation to the tradition of German Idealism (ratherthan, say, to the tradition of French psychology). It is also remarkable that Jungimplicitly aligns himself with the forces of reason, associating himself with Kantand portraying Hegel in extremely negative terms as ‘a psychologist in disguisewho projected great truths out of the subjective sphere into a cosmos he himselfhad created’ (Jung 1946/1954, para. 358).

Elsewhere, Jung sketches a different history of the unconscious. In ThePsychology of the Child Archetype (1940), he distinguishes between ‘theproblem of the dark side of the psyche’ as found in Leibniz, Kant and Schelling,and the pivotal role played by C.G. Carus, then Eduard von Hartmann, inthe recognition of ‘the unconscious as the essential basis of the psyche’ (Jung1940, para. 259). Similarly, in Aion (1951), Jung distinguishes between, onthe one hand, ‘certain suggestive ideas’ about the unconscious in Leibniz, Kant,Schelling and Schopenhauer, and, on the other, the ‘philosophical excursions’ ofCarus and von Hartmann (Jung 1951, para. 11). Meanwhile, in TransformationSymbolism in the Mass (1942/1954), he offers a third genealogical trail. Onthis account, the postulation of ‘the existence of an unconscious psyche’ beginsin Leibniz and Kant, continues ‘with mounting intensity’ in Schelling, Carusand von Hartmann, before ‘modern psychology’ arrives, ‘discard[ing] the lastmetaphysical claims of the philosopher-psychologists and restrict[ing] the idea

6 See Wilhelm Wundt, Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie, 5th edn, 3 vols (Leipzig:Engelmann, 1903), vol. 3, pp. 327–28, referring to Fechner, Elemente der Psychophysik, 2nd edn,2 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Hartel, 1889), vol. 2, p. 483, where Fechner distinguishes between‘superconsciousness’ (Oberbewußtsein) and ‘subconsciousness’ (Unterbewußtsein).


of the psyche’s existence to the psychological statement’, i.e., phenomenology(Jung 1942/1954, para. 375).

Finally, in two other places (a lecture delivered at the ETH in 1932 and anencyclopedia article written in 1948), Jung acknowledges Schelling’s place –along with Leibniz’s petites perceptions, Kant’s anthropology, Schopenhauer’swill, and Eduard von Hartmann’s Absolute – in the history of depth psychologyin general and of the hypothesis of the collective unconscious in particular(see The Hypothesis of the Collective Unconscious [Jung 1932, para. 1223]and Depth psychology [Jung 1948/1951, para. 1143]). Here Jung highlightsSchelling’s notion of an ‘eternal unconscious’ (ewig Unbewusstes), an ideaproposed by Schelling in his System of Transcendental Idealism (System destranszendentalen Idealismus) (1978[1800]),7 but which Jung most likely foundin Eduard von Hartmann’s Philosophy of the Unconscious (Philosophie desUnbewußten, 1869).8

We also know that Jung, in his library in Kusnacht, owned two volumes of theCotta edition of Schelling’s Samtliche Werke,9 as well as a copy of a single work,Schelling’s treatise On the Deities of Samothrace (Uber die Gottheiten vonSamothrace), a lecture originally given by Schelling to the Bavarian Academyof Sciences in 1815 and published as a supplement to his historical project, The

7 Within the context of an argument about the unity of freedom and necessity, and in particularabout the identity of the subject(ive) and the object(ive), Schelling observes in his System ofTranscendental Idealism: ‘Such a preestablished harmony of the objective (or law-governed) andthe determinant (or free) is conceivable only through some higher thing, set over them both, andwhich is therefore neither intelligence nor free, but rather is the common source of the intelligentand likewise of the free. Now if this higher thing be nothing else but the ground of identity betweenthe absolutely subjective and the absolutely objective, the conscious and the unconscious [demBewußten und dem Bewußtlosen], which part company precisely in order to appear in the free act,then this higher thing itself can neither be subject nor object, nor both at once, but only the absoluteidentity, in which there is no duality at all, and which, precisely because duality is the condition ofall consciousness, can never attain thereto. This eternal unknown [Dieses ewig Unbewußte], which,like the everlasting sun in the realm of spirits, conceals itself behind its own unclouded light, andthough never becoming an object, impresses its identity upon all free actions, is simultaneously thesame for all intelligences, the invisible root of which all intelligences are but powers, and the eternalmediator between the self-determining subjective within us, and the objective or intuitant; at oncethe ground of lawfulness in freedom, and of freedom in the lawfulness of the object’ (Schelling 1978[1800], pp. 208–09; cf. Schelling 1858 [1800], p. 600).8 See von Hartmann 1893a, p. 22, where Hartmann cites precisely this passage from Schelling; cf.von Hartmann 1893b, pp. 120 and 170. For further discussion, see Bres 2004; and Volmicke 2005,pp. 118–42. In 1869 Hartmann had published a short study that advanced his thesis that Schelling’sphilosophy represented a unity of Hegelian and Schopenhauerian thought; see von Hartmann 1869.9 F.W.J. von Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie [Sammtliche Werke, vol. II.1](Stuttgart: Cotta, 1856), and Philosophie der Mythologie [Sammtliche Werke, vol. II.2] (Stuttgart:Cotta, 1857). Jung’s edition of Schelling’s Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology containsa number of marginalia, which I propose to discuss in a forthcoming article. For confirming thebibliographical data referring to these works and the work cited in the following note, I am gratefulto Dr. Thomas Fischer.

340 Paul Bishop

Ages of the World (Die Weltalter) (1811–1815).10 Rather than Schelling’s moretechnical philosophical works, it was his work on mythology and, in particular,on the deities of Samothrace that left an impression on Jung. In this lectureon Samothrace and its deities, we find a motif that fascinated Schelling and, inturn, Goethe, then Jung: the mysterious figures of the Kabeiroi. These deitieswere worshipped at various mystery sanctuaries, including Thebes in Boeotia,Lemnos, and Samothrace (where, according to Schelling, their cult was ‘the mostancient in all Greece’).11 Prior to Schelling, Friedrich Creuzer (1771–1858) haddiscussed these divinities in considerable detail in his Symbols and Mythologyof the Ancient Peoples (Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker) (1810–1812) (see Creuzer 1819–1821, vol. 2, pp. 302–416). But it was Schelling’saccount that became influential, informing Coleridge’s thinking on Eastern andGreek mythologies (see Pfeiler 1937), and knowledge of Schelling’s work isassumed by Goethe in the Klassische Walpurgnisnacht scene in Faust, PartTwo.12 (Indeed, it has been argued that the figure of Proteus in this scenerepresents, somewhat wickedly, none other than Schelling [see Gulyga 1989[1982], p. 281.) In Goethe’s text, the figures of the Kabeiroi, and their apparentlyindeterminate number, are at once turned into figures of fun, while with moreserious intent they form part of the motif in Faust of the ‘little people’, a themewhose presence is as insistent as its precise significance is difficult to explain.(However, the Kabeiroi in Faust – like the elves, dwarves, ants, pygmies, etc. –conform to the chief characteristics, as analysed by Patrick Harpur, of fairies,elves, pixies, daimons, etc., whose ‘elusive, contradictory, shape-shifting’ revealsthem to be ‘root metaphors for certain central aspects of modern Westernculture’– aspects which we have come to exclude and repress, much to our ownperil [Harpur 2002, p. 7].)13 In the twentieth century, moreover, the mysteriesof the Kabeiroi attracted the attention of such scholars as Karl Kerenyi andWalter Burkert (see Kerenyi 1955 [1944]; Burkert 1985 [1977], pp. 281–85;Burkert 1987), as well as Jung. Thus the Kabeiroi represent both deities (or

10 Schelling, Uber die Gottheiten von Samothrace: Beylage zu den Weltaltern (Vorgelesen in deroffentlichen Sitzung der Baier’schen Akademie der Wissenschaften am Namenstag des Konigs den12. Oct. 1815) (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1815). As the title makes clear, this lecture is related to Schelling’sWeltalter project, for further discussion of which see Oesterreich 1985.11 See Schelling 1977 [1815], p. 15. For further discussion, see Hemberg 1950; Schachter 1996;Schachter 2003; and Bowden 2010, pp. 49–67.12 See Goethe 2001 [1808/1832], pp. 229 and 231–33. See, too, Goethe’s comments on Schellingand the Kabeiroi scene in his conversations with Eckermann (Eckermann [1998 {1837–1848}],pp. 385 and 389.13 In the Red Book, the Kabeiroi perform the following functions: ‘We carry what is not to becarried from below to above. We are the juices that rise secretly, not by force, but sucked out ofinertia and affixed to what is growing. We know the unknown ways and the inexplicable lawsof living matter. We carry up what slumbers in the earthly, what is dead and yet enters into theliving. We do this slowly and easily, what you do in vain in your human way. We complete whatis impossible for you’ (Jung 2009a, pp. 320–21).


archaeological artefacts) in their own right, and their subsequent reception inGerman literature and thought: in effect, they have become symbols of the ageof German Idealism.

As Alan Cardew has recently pointed out, the Kabeiroi had been earliermentioned by Jung at a significant point in Transformations and Symbols ofthe Libido (Cardew 2012, pp. 120–22). In the introduction to the second partof this work, Jung constellates several motifs — the sun, the dwarf as a phallicsymbol of the libido, the phallus itself, the Kabeiroi, and the god Dionysos —around his central intellectual move, his revised definition of the libido (aboveand beyond Freud’s essentially sexual definition) as psychic energy. In TheRed Book, these obscure deities reappear in the chapter of the Liber secundusentitled ‘The Magician’, under the guise of

elemental spirits, dressed in wrinkled garb, [. . .] with delightful misshapen forms,young and yet old, dwarfish, shriveled, unspectacular bearers of secret arts, possessorsof ridiculous wisdom, first formations of the unformed gold, worms that crawl fromthe liberated egg of the gods, incipient ones, unborn, still invisible.14

(Jung 2009a, p. 320)

Their function in The Red Book is by no means unrelated to Jung’s discussionof them in Transformations and Symbols of the Libido. For The Red Bookabounds in the imagery of the sun, especially in the chapters ‘Death’, ‘TheRemains of Earlier Temples’, and ‘The Opening of the Egg’;15 in one of themost famous visions as transcribed in the Draft, a dwarf clad in leather guardsthe entrance to a cave (p. 237); in ‘Resolution’, Elijah becomes dwarflike, andturns into Mime;16 in Black Book 5, the figure of HAP is replaced by a phallus(pp. 339–40). Like much else, however, the entire Creuzerian-Schellingian-Goethean background to the Kabeiroi is taken for granted, and certainlynever explicitly explained. Going beyond his sources in Creuzer, Schellingand Goethe, moreover, Jung’s Kabeiroi in The Red Book then build him atower, after which they invite Jung to become the executioner of his ownbrain; rejecting this invitation, Jung turns the sword on the Kabeiroi themselves(p. 321).

14 If Goethe’s use of the Kabeiroi in Faust II refers parodically to Creuzer and Schelling, Jung’suse of this motif in The Red Book can be read either as adding a further parodic intertextual layer(i.e., as a parody of a parody), or as returning to a serious consideration of what these mysteriousfigures represent.15 See Jung 2009a, pp. 273–75, 275–77 and 286–88. See also ‘Descent into Hell in the Future’,pp. 237–39 and ‘The Anchorite’ and ‘Dies II’, pp. 267–70 and 270–73.16 Jung 2009a, p. 251; cf. p. 253: ‘If I myself endorse the pure principle, I step to one side andbecome onesided. Therefore my forethinking in the principle of the heavenly mother becomes anugly dwarf who lives in a dark cave like an unborn in the womb’; cf. pp. 279–80: ‘The outeropposition’ — i.e., of Izdubar and Jung — ‘is an image of my inner opposition. [. . .] I was dwarfishlike a child, while he was enormous like an elementally powerful hero’.

342 Paul Bishop

It is a curious coincidence that, at the same time as Jung was writingup his encounter with the Kabeiroi, these figures can be found in thelectures of another thinker, the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925).Steiner first discusses the Kabeiroi in the context of his second series oflectures on Goethe’s Faust, devoted largely to a discussion of the Romanticand Classical Walpurgisnacht scenes, given in Dornach between 1916 and1919, especially ‘Die samothrakischen Kabiren-Mysterien: Das Geheimnis derMenschwerdung’, a lecture given in Dornach on 17 January 1919 (Steiner1982, vol. 2, pp. 196–215); and then again in ‘Das Wirklichkeitsschauen inden griechischen Mythen’, a lecture given in Dornach on 18 January 1919 (pp.216–31). The indefatigable Steiner, always concerned to recycle ideas (whetherthose of others or his own),17 returned to the theme on 25 January 1919,in his eighth lecture in a series published under the title Der Goetheanismus:Ein Umwandlungsimpuls und Auferstehungsgedanke, when he examined therelationship between Menschenwissenschaft and Sozialwissenschaft (Steiner1982 [1942], 168–78). And yet again, in a series of lectures given in 1922on Geistige Zusammenhange in der Gestaltung des menschlichen Organismus,in a lecture given in Stuttgart on 4 December 1922, we find Steiner discussingthe Samothracean mysteries (Steiner 1992 [1972], pp. 265–81). On this finaloccasion Steiner related his motives for attempting to sculpt the Kabeiroi, thusgiving plastic shape to his vision (or what Steiner calls his Anschauung) in muchthe same way that Jung elaborated his fantasies in The Red Book.

According to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, one of the two statues whichJung carved out of wood in England in 1920, and subsequently had reproducedin stone for his garden in Kusnacht, giving it the name Atmavictu, was a kabir(Jung 1963, pp. 38–39); then again in 1938, in a dream that came to him inCalcutta, Jung saw a tiny cucullatus or kabir, going from miniature house toanother, reminding him of a line from Goethe’s Faust, and prompting him toreflect that ‘the great ones of the past have not died [. . .]; they have merelychanged their names [. . .] “Small and slight, but great in might” [= Faust II,ll. 8174–75], the veiled kabir enters a new house’ (ibid., pp. 311–12); and inthe 1950s Jung carved, on one side of the square stone in Bollingen, a smallhomunculus or kind of kabir, reminiscent of the Telesphorus of Asclepius thathad earlier taken the form of the little wooden manikin he had made as a youngchild and kept in a pencil-case hidden in the loft (ibid., pp. 253–54, cf. pp. 36–37).18 (This turn on the part of Jung and of Steiner to give plastic expression totheir squat imaginings of the Kabeiroi could be read as confirming the thesis of

17 Although Steiner makes no mention of Schelling, it is likely that Schelling’s essay On the Deitiesof Samothrace was one of his sources, given the close proximity between some of Steiner’s remarksand those of Schelling.18 For further discussion, see Maguire 2002; 2006, pp. 355–72. I am grateful to Carmen Reynalfor drawing this work to my attention.


the foundational significance of pottery that has been offered by Yves Bonnefoyin Pensees d’etoffe ou d’argile [Bonnefoy 2010].)19

The first actual mention of the Kabeiroi in Jung’s writings is in his letterto Freud of 30 November-2 December 1909, where these ‘“Toby jug” gods’(as the English translation inventively renders Kruggotter) are described asrepresenting ‘an extremely important, profoundly archaic streak in Hellenicmythology’ (McGuire 1974, p. 269). Later, the Kabeiroi crop up in Jung’sEranos lecture, Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, withspecific reference to Faust, Part Two (Jung 1936, paras. 203–08), and in thecontext of the great iconic dream – now known to belong to the physicistWolfgang Pauli (1900–1958) – of the ‘world clock’ (ibid., paras. 307–322),also discussed in Jung’s Terry Lectures of 1937 on Psychology and Religion(Jung 1938, paras. 108–168; see also Peat 1988). They are also mentionedin an Eranos lecture of 1940, ‘A Psychological Approach to the Dogma ofthe Trinity’, where not only is Faust, Part Two, related to the opening ofthe Platonic dialogue, the Timaeus, but the Kabeiroi are described both as‘mysterious creative powers [. . .] below the threshold of consciousness’ and asa kind of personification of the Freudian parapraxis (Jung 1942/1948, para.244; see also Bishop 2009, p.116). And a further decade on, the Kabeiroi makeanother appearance in the correspondence between Jung and the Dominicanpriest, Victor White (1902–1960). In a letter to Jung of 4 May 1950, FatherWhite described a dream, in which he is sitting with Jung at Bollingen, lookingout across the lake. On the other side is ‘a quarry or cave where men are workinghard burrowing into the mountain; it is brilliantly lit with arc-lights to enablethem to work without stopping’. For White, the scene evoked the presenceof ‘the Kabir[i]’, who ‘can carry on with their work “beyond all differences”’(Lammers & Cunningham 2007, pp. 149, 148).20

To me, all this suggests that, while Schelling is not a major intellectual sourcefor Jung, there is nevertheless a distinctively Schellingian dimension to Jung’sthought in general and to his Red Book in particular. Indeed, we might say thatthe influence of Schelling – and the philosophical outlook of German Idealismas a whole – is comparable to the ‘influence’ of alchemy that Jung detectedin Goethe.21 Moreover, Schelling can help provide a conceptual frameworkwithin which to approach The Red Book. For he engages with a problematic

19 I am grateful to Christian Gaillard (this edition pp. 299–334) for drawing our attention to thiswork at the conference on The Red Book: Two Years On.20 For the phrase ‘beyond all differences’, see Lammers & Cunningham 2007, p. 151 and note 17.21 Compare his letter of 18 January 1941 to Kerenyi where Jung, writing in response toKerenyi’s commentary on the scene ‘Rocky Inlets of the Aegean Sea’ (which brings the ClassicalWalpurgisnacht in Faust, Part Two, to a close), speculated that Goethe himself had not been awareof ‘how profoundly’ he had been influenced by alchemy. What he had read at the instigationof Susanne von Klettenberg, Jung wrote, was not sufficient to explain the ‘deep impulses’ (tiefeAnregungen) he had received from alchemy (Jung 1973/1975, vol. 1, p. 291).

344 Paul Bishop

that preoccupied all the major thinkers in the tradition of German Idealism asdeeply as it vexed Jung (and has much vexed those subsequently working inthe tradition of analytical psychology): what is science? what is art? and whatis the relation between science and art? In turn, the question of the relationbetween science and art relates to the question of freedom and necessity (ordetermination), to the question of realism and idealism, and ultimately to whatGerman Idealism understands as the ‘realism’ of ‘idealism’. In response to thecurrent global economic crisis, the French philosopher Bertrand Vergely hascalled on us to have the courage to discern our priorities (Vergely 2009). ThatThe Red Book also contains this message is something else that, two years afterits publication, we have learned from it.

Realism and idealism

In the case of ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ we are dealing, then, with a set of termsthat cover widely divergent meanings. These meanings will, I hope, becomeclear in what follows, but a short overview at this stage might be helpful. Asfar as realism is concerned, it is important to distinguish between the followingfour senses: first, as a philosophical term, realism (or dogmatism, materialism,positivism) is opposed in the critical philosophy to idealism; second, in anolder philosophical sense, realism is opposed to nominalism; third, it is usedin literary criticism with reference to nineteenth-century literature, especiallyPoetic Realism, as well as with reference in the twentieth century to SocialistRealism; and finally, in a colloquial sense, we could understand the term toindicate a pragmatic attitude: get real! (Correspondingly, idealism has botha philosophical sense, namely, as a foil to realism; and a moral sense, withreference to the notion of an ideal; and finally, in a colloquial sense, as adismissal of a ‘pie-in-the-sky’ attitude: that’s very idealistic.) These meaningsare quite distinct, yet are nevertheless connected. And their different meaningscome to the fore in the debates of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenthcentury in Germany.

In his major essay of 1796, On the Naıve and the Sentimental in Poetry(Ueber naıve und sentimentalische Dichtung), for instance, Friedrich Schiller setup his famous dichotomy of the naıve and the sentimental. As Rudiger Safranskihas pointed out, Schiller’s attempt to understand the differences betweenhimself and Goethe turned into a fundamental distinction that has becomea commonplace (Safranksi 2004, p. 418). The Romantics applied the labelsentimental to themselves, Friedrich Schlegel redefined the term sentimentalas das Interessante, and Hegel turned Schiller’s model of three epochs (thenaıve, the sentimental, and the-naıve-reconciled-with-the-sentimental) into adialectical procedure (from the naıve as immediate-natural spirit, via thesentimental as mediated-reflected spirit, to absolute spirit as the mediation ofthe naıve and the sentimental, i.e., from ‘in itself’ to ‘for itself’ and finallyto ‘in and for itself’) (ibid.). Subsequently, in Psychological Types (1921),


Jung read Schiller’s treatise in relation to his own typological distinctions,equating the naıve with the extraverted attitude and the sentimental with theintroverted attitude (Jung 1921, paras. 215 and 218), but actually discovering inSchiller’s work not simply typical mechanisms, but the psychological functionsof sensation ( = the naıve) and intuition ( = the sentimental) (para. 219).

In the conclusion to his treatise, however, Schiller shifted his focus from aconsideration of the naıve and the sentimental to a discussion of what he calls‘a very remarkable psychological antagonism among people in a century whichis in the process of civilisation’ (i.e., the eighteenth), and one which is ‘withoutdoubt as old as the beginning of culture’: namely, the conflict between realismand idealism (Schiller 1981 [1796], p. 81). Here Schiller defines the realist assomeone who ‘lets himself be defined by the necessity of nature’ and the idealistas someone who ‘by the necessity of reason determines himself’ (ibid., p. 82).

Consistent with his synthesizing approach towards the naıve and thesentimental,22 Schiller sees the advantages and benefits of both outlooks, aswell as their respective disadvantages: ‘The realist on his own’, he writes, ‘wouldnever have extended the circle of [hu]mankind beyond the boundaries of theworld of the senses, would never have made the human spirit acquainted withits independent greatness and freedom’, while ‘the striving of the idealist goestoo far above the life of the senses and too much beyond the present; he onlywants to sow and plant for the whole, for eternity, and in doing so forgets thatthe whole is only the perfected compass of the individual, that eternity is thesum of minutes’ (ibid., p. 87).23 For the realist, he argues, the world is like ‘awell-laid-out garden where everything earns its place and everything which doesnot bear fruit is banned’, and it does not occur to the realist, as Schiller pointsout, that ‘man could exist for something other than to live well and happilyand that’ – in a proto-Nietzschean image – ‘he should only put down roots inorder to send the trunk upwards’ (ibid.).24 On the other hand, for the idealistthe world is simply ‘nature, less well-used but designed on a larger scale’, and itdoes not occur to him that ‘the trunk of the tree is ruined if the roots are lacking’(ibid.).25 Here, as so often, we find Schiller arguing – in the complementaristicmanner that Jung does too: the structure of Schiller’s thought is remarkably

22 According to Schiller, ‘nature makes [the human being] one with himself, art separates anddivides him, through the ideal he returns to that unity’ (Schiller 1981 [1796], p. 40).23 Compare with Jung’s warning in Symbols of Transformation that ‘whoever loves the earth andits glory, and forgets the “dark realm”, or confuses the two (which is mostly what happens), hasspirit for his enemy; and whoever flees from the earth and falls into the “eternal arms”, has life foran enemy’ (Jung 1952, para. 615).24 Compare with ‘Of the Tree on the Mountainside’ in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche 1969,pp. 69–71).25 Jung’s last recorded dream apparently consisted of the following scene: ‘A square of trees, allfibrous roots, coming up from the ground and surrounding him. There were gold threads gleamingamong the roots’ (Hannah 1976, p. 347). For further discussion of this image, see Meredith 2005,pp. 141–47.

346 Paul Bishop

close to Jung’s – that ‘perfection lies in the tenor of the whole and in the realactual deed’ (ibid., p. 89). While alert to the dangers of true realism and idealismalike, Schiller is scathing about the effects of their false forms: the false realistbecomes a ‘common empiricist’, who subjugates himself with ‘indiscriminateblind submission’ to the power of nature; while the false idealist turns into a‘deluded visionary’, who ‘leaves nature from mere caprice, in order to be ableto give in [. . .] to the self-will of the desires and the whims of the imagination’,a path that leads to ‘a never-ending fall into a bottomless pit and can only endin complete destruction’ (ibid., p. 90).26

By bringing in the distinction between realism and idealism at the end of histreatise, Schiller was linking his work to a larger philosophical debate of hisage. Two years earlier, in Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre(Uber den Begriff der Wissenschaftslehre oder der sogenannten Philosophie)(1794) and his Foundations of the Entire Science of Knowledge (Grundlageder gesammten Wissenschaftslehre) (1794), Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) had drawn a fundamental distinction between two different kinds ofphilosophical system. It was the task of philosophy, he argued, to explain ourexperience of things (or, to put it another way, the relation between objects andour representation of them). If one derives the representation from the object,one’s philosophical system can be described as a sensualism, or a materialism,or a dogmatism; another term for the same position would be realism (Storig1987, p. 443).27 If, instead, one derives the object from its representation, oneis embracing the outlook of idealism. In this distinction between, on the onehand, the restricted metaphysical outlook of positivism and materialism (inother words, realism) and, on the other, the emphasis on the creative ego andfreedom found in idealism, we find the two great traditions of post-KantianGerman philosophy (Storig 1987, p. 436).28 The tradition of German Idealismran right throughout the nineteenth century, and into the twentieth;29 when,

26 Compare with the comments in Memories, Dreams, Reflections on why Jung gave up the projectof The Red Book (Jung 1963, p. 213).27 It is important to distinguish this sense of realism from the earlier Scholastic sense, where theterm is used to recognize in the general a higher degree of reality over the particular, in contrast tonominalism, in which general concepts do not exist in reality but only in our intellect, and hence aremere names. Confusingly, realism (in the Scholastic sense) is close to idealism (in its more modernsense) (see Storig 1987, p. 237), and neither has anything in common with the current colloquialsense of idealism or realism.28 Compare with the distinction made by Werner Deubel between a logocentric tradition stretchingfrom Plato and St Paul to Kant, and a biocentric tradition to which Goethe, Nietzsche, and LudwigKlages belong (Deubel 1997 [1934], p. 47).29 For further discussion, see Ameriks 2000 and Beiser 2008. For a discussion of Idealism in thespecific sense that it is used in this paper, see Otto Braun’s collection of essays, pre-dating Jung’sRed Book by less than a decade (Braun 1908). From the late nineteenth century on, and for thefigure of F.T. Vischer in particular (see below), Idealism became a major rallying-point for writersand intellectuals.


in 1918, the writer and critic Paul Ernst (1866–1933) wanted to refer to themomentous change of outlook that had occurred in the wake of the First WorldWar, he felt able to do so by referring to ‘the collapse of German Idealism’(Ernst 1918). Nevertheless, even in our (post-) postmodern age, Idealism (as aphilosophical concept) remains a significant topic for debate.30

Now for Fichte, as for Schiller, the distinction between these philosophicaloutlooks has ethical implications, each system being associated with differentmoral qualities; as Fichte put it, ‘the kind of philosophy one chooses thusdepends [. . .] upon the kind of person one is. For a philosophical system is nota lifeless household item one can put aside or pick up as one wishes; instead,it is animated by the very soul of the person who adopts it’ (Was fur einePhilosophie man wahle, hange [. . .] davon ab, was man fur ein Mensch ist:denn ein philosophisches System ist nicht ein toter Hausrat, den man ablegenoder annehmen konnte, wie es uns beliebte, sondern es ist beseelt durch dieSeele des Menschen, der es hat).31

Fichte’s distinction was taken up by Schelling in his early work, hisPhilosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism (Philosophische Briefe uberDogmatismus und Kritizismus) (1795–1796), in which Schelling, faced withthe choice between dogmatic and critical philosophy (i.e., between realismand idealism, or as he presented it, between Spinoza and Fichte), optedunhesitatingly for the critical philosophy: for idealism. Yet Schelling’s positioncould not be simply identified with Fichte’s. Via an attempt to elaborate asystem of Naturphilosophie in 1797 – entitled Ideas for a Philosophy of Natureas Introduction to the Study of this Science (Ideen zu einer Philosophie derNatur als Einleitung in das Studium dieser Wissenschaft) – and on the way tosetting out his aesthetics in his lectures of 1802–1803 – entitled Philosophyof Art (Philosophie der Kunst) –,32 Schelling came to develop a system hecalled ‘transcendental idealism’ and published under that title, System ofTranscendental Idealism, in 1800. Already, in his Essays in Explanation ofthe Idealism of the Doctrine of Science (Abhandlungen zur Erlauterung desIdealismus der Wissenschaftslehre) of 1796–1797, Schelling had written thattranscendental philosophy ‘aims by its very nature at what is becoming andis living, for its first principles are genetic, and the mind becomes and grows

30 See Dunham, Grant, and Watson (2011). For further indications of the vibrancy of the debatesurrounding German Idealism, see Goudeli (ed.) 2002; Hammer (ed.) 2007; and Lord 2011.Examples of contemporary scholars working on German Idealism include Frederick Beiser, J.M.Bernstein, Andrew Bowie, Manfred Frank, Frederick Neuhouser, Terry Pinkard, Robert Pippin.31 Fichte, ‘Erste Einleitung in die Wissenschaftslehre’, (in Fichte 1994, p. 20); and ‘Versuch einerneuen Darstellung der Wissenschaftslehre’ [1797/1798] (in Fichte 1970 [1797/1798], p. 195).32 In his Philosophy of Art Schelling engages, on occasion explicitly, with Schiller’s essay On theNaıve and the Sentimental in Poetry (1796), which in turn is a response to Goethe’s essay EinfacheNachahmung der Natur, Manier, Stil (1789), and Schelling discusses the concepts of manner andstyle as well.

348 Paul Bishop

together with the world’ (ist ihrer Natur nach aufs Werdende und Lebendigegerichtet, denn sie ist in ihren ersten Principien genetisch, und der Geist wirdund wachst in ihr zugleich mit der Welt).33 And in his System of TranscendentalIdealism we find Schelling already beginning to develop his aesthetics thatinformed his philosophy of art in his lectures a couple of years later.

At this point, a brief reminder: it is not the argument of this paper thatJung read Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism. It is highly likely thathe did not; his interest was mainly focused on the final (mythological andreligious) phase of Schelling’s thought, from On the Deities of Samothraceto his Philosophy of Mythology. Rather, the argument is that Schelling’sunderstanding of idealism (especially in relation to art) provides a frameworkwithin which we can understand Jung’s Red Book (and the reason why, inthe end, he felt obliged to abandon it). Although, abstractly expressed, theproblems of realism and idealism – the problems of nature and art, of necessityand freedom, and of consciousness and the unconscious – may seem remotefrom what Jung was trying to do in The Red Book, in fact they bring us to theheart of what Jung was attempting here.

The Ideal and Ideals

A particular motivic sequence can help clarify the relation between theproblematics of German Idealism and The Red Book. Jung observes (in thethe chapter entitled ‘Soul and God’) that ‘the knowledge of the heart’ is ‘in nobook and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of youlike the green seed from the dark earth’ (Jung 2009a, p. 233). In ‘The Desert’,he promises that ‘if your creative force now turns to the place of the soul, youwill see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit’(p. 236). After a sequence of anticipatory moments — ‘And behold — Ohmiracle — my green garments everywhere burst into leaf’ (p. 260), ‘I turn greenlike a tree in spring’ (p. 261); ‘I ate the earth and I drank the sun, and I becamea greening tree that stands alone and grows’ (p. 273)34; and ‘I am fully coveredin green leaves, which spring from my body’ (p. 275)—there is one of the mostastonishing episodes in this astonishing book, when Jung himself becomes aGreen Man:

But I was no longer the man I had been, for a strange being grew through me. Thiswas a laughing being of the forest, a leaf green daimon, a forest goblin and prankster,who lived alone in the forest and was itself a greening tree being, who loved nothingbut greening and growing, who was neither disposed nor indisposed toward men,full of mood and chance, obeying an invisible law and greening and wilting with thetrees, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad, merely living, primordially old

33 Schelling 1994, p. 104; Schelling 1859, p. 403. For further discussion see Shaw 2010, p. 48.34 See the continuation in the Draft and Corrected Draft (cited in Jung 2009a, p. 273, fn. 67).


and yet completely young, naked and yet naturally clothed, not man but nature, [. . .],utterly inconstant and superficial, and yet reaching deep down, down to the kernel ofthe world.35

(Jung 2009a, p. 276)

In order to make full sense of these remarkable and compelling passages, weneed to go back to the framework established at the very outset of The RedBook, where it becomes clear that the problem of the ideal is central to thiswork.

For here, in the first chapter of Liber Primus entitled ‘The Way of What is toCome’, Jung announces that as well as a ‘spirit of this time’, there exists anotherspirit that ‘rules the depths of everything contemporary’ (Jung 2009a, p. 229).This ‘spirit of the depths’ exists beyond time, for it outstrips the power of thespirit of this time ‘from time immemorial and for all the future’ (p. 229). Or inother words, there is the spirit of the real and the spirit of the ideal, but the idealis more real than the real. In this chapter, the spirit of the depths takes awayfrom Jung his ‘belief in science’, ‘the joy of explaining and ordering things’, andlets his ‘devotion to the ideals of this time die out’ in him (p. 229).

In the sixth chapter, entitled ‘Splitting of the Spirit’, and in response to avision – ‘a desert vision, a vision of the solitary who has wandered down longroads’ – most likely inspired in part by the assassination in 1914 of ArchdukeFranz Ferdinand (but surely also by his recent separation from Freud), Jungdeclares:

I felt myself transformed into a rapacious beast. My heart glowered in rage againstthe high and beloved, against my prince and hero [. . .]. Why did I feel this way? [Myking] was not as I had wished him to be. [. . .] He should be what I called ideal [wasich ideal nannte]. My soul appeared to me hollow, tasteless and meaningless. But inreality what I thought of her was true of my ideal [Was ich aber von ihr dachte, galtin Wirklichkeit meinem Ideal]. It was a vision of the desert, I struggled with mirrorimages of myself. It was civil war in me.

(Jung 2009a, p. 241; trans. modified)

Then, in the chapter entitled ‘The Remains of Earlier Temples’ – and, in theCorrected Draft, called ‘Degenerate Ideals’ (Entartete Ideale) (p. 275) – in whichJung undergoes his remarkable transformation into a Green Man, turning ‘greenlike a tree in spring’, because ‘joy is the most supreme flowering and greeningof life’ (p. 261), Jung encounters an old monk and a tall, thin, gangly man.

He knows (and we know) these figures as Ammonius the anchorite (fromLiber secundus, chapter 4) and the Red Devil (from Liber secundus, chapter

35 Compare with these other passages: ‘Within myself I had become one as a natural being, but Iwas a hobgoblin who frightened the solitary wanderer, and who avoided the places of men. But Igreened and bloomed from within myself’ (Jung 2009a, p. 277); and: ‘I was a child and grew like agreening tree and let the wind and distant cries and commotion of opposites / blow calmly throughmy branches’ (p. 280).

350 Paul Bishop

1); they had not, we read, ‘withstood life, but, seduced by life, had becometheir own monkey business [zu ihrem eigenen Affenspiel]’ and, ‘because bothof them believed in themselves and in their own goodness, each in his own way,they ultimately became mired in the natural and conclusive burial ground ofall outlived ideals [aller uberlebten Ideale]’ (p. 276). Jung insists on this pointwith a striking image: ‘The most beautiful and the best, like the ugliest and theworst, end up someday in the most laughable place in the world, surrounded byfancy dress and led by fools, and go horror-struck to the pit of filth’ (p. 276).

Yet everything in the Red Book is about transformation, and so here too:‘After the cursing comes laughter, so that the soul itself is saved from the dead’(p. 276). There follows one of the most programmatic statements in the entirework, in a paragraph when Jung talks about the collapse of the false ideal, andits replacement with the reality of life:

Ideals are, according to their essence, desired and pondered; they exist to this extent,but only to this extent. Yet their effective being cannot be denied. He who believeshe is really living his ideals, or believes he can live them, suffers from delusions ofgrandeur and behaves like a lunatic in that he stages himself as an ideal; but the herohas fallen. Ideals are mortal, so one should prepare oneself for their end: at the sametime it probably costs you your neck. For do you not see that it was you who gavemeaning, value, and effective force to your ideal? If you have become a sacrifice tothe ideal, then the ideal cracks open, plays carnival with you, and goes to Hell on AshWednesday. The ideal is also a tool that one can put aside anytime, a torch on darkpaths. But whoever runs around with a torch by day is a fool. How much my idealshave come down, and how freshly my tree greens!

(Jung 2009a, p. 276)

Previously, Jung realizes, he had not lived, but had been driven: ‘Ich lebte nicht,sondern war getrieben’ (p. 276); in other words, he had been enslaved to hisideals: he had been ‘ein Sklave meiner Ideale’ (Jung 2009b, p. 276).36

But now, blooming and blossoming from within himself, a ‘hobgoblin’ (einWaldschrat) (or, in the Corrected Draft, a ‘green creature’ [grunes Wesen])(p. 277), Jung understands that his ‘ideals’ can also be his ‘dogs’, ‘whose yappingand squabbling do not disturb me’ (p. 277).37 Like the XAMAI �E�N (i.e.,chameleon), Jung must change his colours, must renew his ideals, and be reborn:but even more, he wants ‘to exist from [his] own force, like the sun which giveslight and does not suck light’ (p. 277).38 Recalling his essentially ‘solar nature’

36 At this point, an editorial footnote helpfully points to Jung’s discussion in ‘On the psychologyof the unconscious’ (1917/1926/1943, para. 115) of ‘the transition from morning to afternoon’as ‘a transvaluation of earlier values’ (Jung 2009a, p. 277, n. 90). For further discussion of thetransvaluational moment of midlife, see Bishop 2011.37 Is there an echo here of Zarathustra? ‘Once you had fierce dogs in your cellar: but they changedat last into birds and sweet singers’ (Nietzsche 1969, p. 64).38 Again, compare with Zarathustra: ‘Ah, that I were dark and obscure! How I would suck at thebreasts of light!’ (Nietzsche 1969, p. 129), and the chapter, ‘Before Sunrise’ (pp. 184–87).


(see above), Jung wants to ‘rush’ to his ‘rising’, but it turns out that ‘ruins’ –or ‘my ideal survival’ (mein Idealuberbleibsel), as the Corrected Draft has it,i.e., what remains over from his ideals – stand ‘in the way’ (p. 277). Pushingaside ‘Good and Evil’, no longer saying ‘“Listen!” or “you should” or “youcould”’, and abandoning those ‘quarrelling powers’ which, for so long, hadstood between him and himself (mir und mir selber), Jung resumes his journey,‘wander[ing] to the far East’, seeing ‘blue horizons’ before him, and he hurries‘toward the East’ and his ‘rising’ – ‘I will my rising’ (Ich will meinen Aufgang)(p. 277).

What is the journey on which Jung is embarked? It is the journey from eternalideals to the ideal of eternity.

For the conflict around ideals – his abandonment of his old ideals, his embraceof a new, creative ideal, and his horrified realization that even a new ideal is notenough – is what the entire episode that now follows, involving Izdubar, is allabout. In ‘The Opening of the Egg’, Jung realizes his desire to reach the East,the point where the sun rises. But Jung does not rise like the sun: rather, hegives birth to the sun, becoming the ‘nocturnal mother who incubated the eggof the beginning’ (p. 287). Consequently, when ‘everything powerful, beautiful,blissful and superhuman had leaked from [his] maternal womb’, Jung discoversthat ‘none of the radiant gold remained’: instead, he is left with ‘the broken shellsand the miserable casing of [the sunbird’s] beginning’, while ‘the emptiness ofthe depths opened beneath’ him (p. 287). In The Red Book, each transvaluationof values is followed by another, and yet another: by giving birth to God, Jungis left with the problem of His afterbirth, hell:

What remains of human nature when the god has become mature and has seized allpower? Everything incompetent, everything powerless, everything eternally vulgar,everything adverse and unfavorable, everything reluctant, diminishing, exterminating,everything absurd, everything that the unfathomable night of matter encloses in itself,that is the afterbirth of the god and his hellish and dreadfully deformed brother.

(Jung 2009a, p. 287)

After leaving aside the problem of Good-and-Evil, Jung is faced again with theproblem of evil (p. 287), which occupies him in the following chapters entitled‘Hell’ (in which Jung descends to a gloomy vault where a beautiful maiden,tormented by two demons, has driven a fishing-rod into the eye of the devil)and ‘The Sacrificial Murder’ (in which Jung comes across a young girl who hasbeen recently murdered, and eats her raw liver). These and other passages prove,if nothing else, the truth of Hegel’s assertion in his Jenaer Realphilosophie that‘the human being is this night, this empty nothing, that contains everything inits simplicity – an unending wealth of many representations, images, of whichnone belongs to him – or which are not present’, for:

This night, this interior of nature, that exists here – pure self – in phantasmagoricalrepresentations, is night all around it, in which here shoots a bloody head – thereanother white ghastly apparition, suddenly here before it, and just so disappears. One

352 Paul Bishop

catches sight of this night when one looks human beings in the eye – into a night thatbecomes awful.39

(Hegel 1987 [1805–06], p. 172; translated in Verene 1985, pp. 7–8)

Again, there has been a revaluation (and hence a renewal) of the ideal: ‘Thesacrifice has been accomplished: the divine child, the image of the god’sformation, is slain and I have eaten from the sacrificial flesh’, we read in TheRed Book (while ‘this experience accomplished what I needed’, the Draft tellsus, ‘it occurred in the most abominable manner. [. . .] I destroyed the divinechild, the image of my god’s formation, through the most dreadful crime whichhuman nature is capable of’) (p. 291).

This theme of the crime is an important one.40 In ‘The Three Prophecies’,Jung’s soul dives into the distant floods, and returns with a series of grislygifts: first, ‘old armor and the rusty gear of our fathers [. . .] everything thebattles of yore have littered the earth with’; second, ‘painted stones, carvedbones with magical signs, talismanic sayings on hanks of leather and smallplates of lead [. . .] all the superstitions hatched by dark prehistory’; third,‘fratricide, cowardly mortal blows, torture, child sacrifice, the annihilationof whole peoples, arson, betrayal, war, rebellion’; fourth, ‘epidemics, naturalcatastrophes [. . .], and fear, whole mountains of fear’; and fifth, ‘the treasuresof all past cultures, magnificent images of gods, spacious temples, paintings,papyrus rolls, sheets of parchment with the characters of bygone languages,books full of lost wisdom, hymns and chants of ancient priests, stories tolddown the ages through thousands of generations’ (p. 305). Jung accepts thefirst four gifts, but at the fifth, he falters – that is ‘an entire world’, he says.But persuaded by his soul, he now accepts ‘three things’ – ‘ancient things thatpointed to the future’ (alte Dinge, die das Zukunftige bedeuten) – namely, ‘themisery of war, the darkness of magic, and the gift of religion’ (p. 306).41

Following the birth of his God, and the ‘great and dark mystery’ of thesacrifice of the divine child, Jung’s transformative, transvaluational experiencescontinue: the ‘divine folly’ of wanting Thomas a Kempis’s The Imitationof Christ (pp. 292–94), his encounter with the dead who are wandering toJerusalem (p. 294), the transformation of the Crucified (pp. 309–10), and indeedhis own transformation into Christ/Odin, hanging on the cross/tree of life andsuspended above the earth for three days and three nights (p. 326). And evenhere the visionary sequence does not end: Jung’s soul gives birth to a monstrous

39 For further discussion of this passage, see Magee 2001, pp. 85–86; and (in relation to the workof Slavoj Zizek, who discusses it in a number of occasions) see Sinnerbrink 2008.40 Compare the thematic function, stylistic tone, and literary texture of this and other episodes inthe Liber Secundus of The Red Book with the chapter entitled ‘The Murderer’ in The Life of theServant, part of Heinrich Seuse’s The Exemplar (Suso 1989, pp. 117–19).41 In the case of both Schelling and Jung alike, war – the Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars,the First World War – provided the backdrop to their work. For further discussion, see Clark 2008.


son, ‘a frightful miscreant, a stammerer, a newt’s brain, a primordial lizard [. . .]a lazy bug-eyed frog’ (p. 327), who one day emerges from the waters of a lake,with the mane of a lion and the shimmering skin of a serpent, transforms himselfinto a god, and flies away (p. 329), leaving Jung alone — alone with himself(p. 330).

This transformational dynamic is perhaps the reason why Jung found it sohard to bring The Red Book to a conclusion, for the Liber secundus is followedby the section called Prufungen, a series of dialogues between Jung and his soul,between Jung and ΦI�HM�N (Philemon), and between Jung and the shade ofa dead woman, who brings him HAP, ‘the symbol that we desired, that weneeded’ (p. 339). The dialogues with ΦI�HM�N and with his soul about HAPform the context to the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, as Jung called them (pp.346–53). But perhaps it is not so surprising that Jung found it difficult to bringThe Red Book to a conclusion: rather, what is truly remarkable is that he wasable to sustain the enterprise for so long and in such elaborate detail. That said,a conclusion of sorts (and some kind of sense of closure) can be found towardthe end of the final chapter in Liber Secundus, ‘The Magician’. And it is inthis chapter, of course, that the Kabeiroi appear: we return symbolically to thephilosophical problems and the cultural outlook of the age of German Idealism.(For the Kabeiroi are an allusion both to the content of this tradition and to thefact of the existence of this tradition.)

The transmission of Idealism to Jung: F.T. Vischer

Once again, the question of the transmission of sources arises: how much ofSchelling’s work did Jung actually know? Well, even if Jung was not widelyconversant with the philosophical texts that expounded German Idealism, hewas certainly familiar with an author who drew directly on this philosophicaltradition and who stood squarely within it: the aesthetician and novelist,Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807–1887).

Educated in Tubingen, where he became a Privatdozent, then professor ofaesthetics, Vischer moved to Zurich in 1855, before returning to Tubingenin 1886. Among his many achievements are his six-volume Asthetik oderWissenschaft des Schonen (1846–1857), a satirical continuation of Goethe’sdrama, Faust: Der Tragodie dritter Theil (1862), and a major study of theoriginal two parts, entitled Gothe’s Faust: Neue Beitrage zur Kritik des Gedichts(1875; 2nd edn. 1920).42 Vischer was also interested in dreams, and in 1875 hewrote a study on them in response to a work by the philosopher JohannesVolkelt (1848–1930).43 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Vischer

42 For further discussion, see Bruford 1966–1967.43 See F.T. Vischer, ‘Studien uber den Traum’, in Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung, Beilage, 1875,reprinted in Vischer 1881, pp. 187–232; see also Volkelt 1875.

354 Paul Bishop

achieved considerable fame among the reading public, thanks to his novel,Auch Einer (1879), a work which may have made a greater impact on Jungthan is usually realized. Vischer’s novel, like much of the rest of his work,constitutes a discussion of the problem of realism and idealism.44 In a letterto David Friedrich Strauß of 27 May 1838, Vischer once defined himself as‘a cross between philosophy and poetry’ (Zwitter zwischen Philosophie undPoesie), and as ‘an amphibian of idealism and realism’ (Amphibium zwischenIdealismus und Realismus).45 (The role of idealism and realism in Vischer’sthought in general and their relation to his aesthetic programme in particularhas been discussed in some detail.)46

In the third of his Black Books, Jung explicitly singled out Auch Einer forpraise as ‘the first attempt to elevate this truth’ – that ‘our most precious lifeis grotesque and tragic [grotesk-tragisch]’ – ‘to a system’, arguing that Vischerdeserved ‘a place among the immortals’ (Jung 2009a, p. 286, n. 135). Later,in Psychological Types, Jung praised Vischer’s novel for its ‘excellent picture’of ‘animated objects’, as well as for its ‘deep insight’ into ‘the introvertedstate of the soul’ and ‘the underlying symbolism of the collective unconscious’(Jung 1921, paras. 501 and 627). In his seminars on Zarathustra, Jung referredto the motif in Vischer’s Auch Einer of the mischievousness of objects, ordie Tucke des Objekts (Jung 1989b [1934–1939], vol. 1, p. 352). And inMemories, Dreams, Reflections, there is an allusion to the title of Auch Einerin the significant context of Jung’s secret fear that he might have affinities withFriedrich Nietzsche (Jung 1963, p. 122).

Indeed, there is much about The Red Book that invites us to think of italmost as a kind of extreme revisioning of Vischer’s novel, whose characteristicsinclude a complex structure and a confusing multiplicity of styles and narrativevoices; a lengthy (and, for most readers, interminable) interpolated story, the so-called ‘Pfahldorfgeschichte’, about a tribe of pre-historic Lake-dwellers, with itslaborious references to their mythology; as well as the striking and occasionallymoving formulations of its aphoristic reflections. These reflections recapitulate

44 For further discussion, see (in German) Zißeler 1913; Feilbogen 1916; Helmich 1933, pp.15–50; and Schlawe 1959; (in English) Heller 1954; Hewtter-Thayer 1960; and Bruford 1969;and, most recently (in German), Oesterle 1982. For a discussion of significant figures forming theintellectual background to Vischer’s thought, see Briese 1998. Evidence of a renewal of interest inVischer in our own time is provided by the international conference, entitled ‘Ich bin ein Zwitterzwischen Philosophie und Poesies’ – Friedrich Theodor Vischer (1807–1887) und die Kunst- undDenkformen seiner Zeit, that was held at the Universitat Stuttgart from 11–13 June 2009, and bythe collection of papers arising from it; see Potthast and Reck (eds), 2011.45 See Vischer’s letter to David Friedrich Strauß of 27 May 1838, in Strauß & Vischer 1952, vol. 1,p. 60. Vischer’s comment here echoes Schiller’s famous remark in his letter to Goethe of 31 August1794, where Schiller describes himself as ‘a hybrid’ (eine Zwitterart) between ideas and perceptions,between law and feeling, between a technical mind and genius (Goethe & Schiller 1877–1879,vol. 1, p. 12).46 See Mersmann 1999; for further discussion, see Oelmuller 1958; Oelmuller 1959.


some of the basic tenets of German Idealism, and among them we find thefollowing. Early on in the novel, the narrator cites the central fictional character,Albert Einhart (better known by his initials, A.E.):

The deeds and activities of the many have carved out something that stands abovethem, an upper floor, permanent structures, eternal laws, to serve which is to breathethe purest air, because this service lifts the one who serves into timelessness. [Das Tunund Treiben der Vielen {hat} etwas herausgearbeitet . . ., das uber ihnen steht, einoberes Stockwerk, bleibende Ordnungen, ewige Gesetze, denen zu dienen reine Luftist, weil dies Dienen den Diener ins Zeitlose hinaufhebt . . . .]

(Vischer 1904 [1879], p. 33)

Later, in the lengthy concluding section of entries from A.E.’s diary, we read:

A second world in the world, a second nature above nature, the ethical world . . . risesabove time and beyond time, is something unconditioned, truth in itself, one canignore, for it is irrelevant, that it arose within time, — eternal substances, that ‘hangup there inalienable and unbreakable, like the stars themselves’ [{E}ine zweite Weltin der Welt, eine zweite Natur uber der Natur, die sittliche Welt . . . hebt sich uberdie Zeit aus der Zeit heraus, ist ein Unbedingtes, an sich Wahres, man kann ganzdavon absehen, es ist auch gleichgultig, daß sie in der Zeit entstanden ist, — ewigeSubstanzen, die “droben hangen unveraußerlich und unzerbrechlich, wie die Sterneselbst”]47

(Vischer 1904 [1879], p. 337)

In these and in other passages Vischer adopts a stance that could well bedescribed as a commitment to the realism of idealism; much in the same way as,in his history of German literature, the German writer and dramatist (and one ofthe leading representatives of the Vormarz), Robert Eduard Prutz (1816–1872),embraced this position:

For true art idealism is just as indispensable as realism: for what else is art itselfthan the ideal transfiguration of the real, the taking-up and rebirth of reality in theeternally everlasting realm of the beautiful? [Der wahren Kunst ist der Idealismusebenso unentbehrlich als der Realismus: denn was ist alle Kunst selbst anders, als dieideale Verklarung des Realen, die Aufnahme und Wiedergeburt der Wirklichkeit indem ewig unverganglichen Reiche des Schonen?]

(Prutz 1859, pp. 58–59)

In their own way, both Vischer and Prutz were trying to rearticulate a positionthat had been expounded earlier by Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829), and whichcould be called poetischer Real-Idealismus. According to Schlegel, ‘idealismconsiders nature as a work of art, as a poem. The human being as it werecomposes the world, only he doesn’t know it’ (der Idealismus betrachtet die

47 Compare with Vischer (1904 [1879]), pp. 340 and 443–44. The allusion is to Schiller’s play,Wilhelm Tell, Act 2, Scene 2.

356 Paul Bishop

Natur wie ein Kunstwerk, wie ein Gedicht. Der Mensch dichtet gleichsam dieWelt, nur weiß er es nicht gleich).48

And The Red Book – with its unique symbolism, its mythology, even its owncosmology – is nothing else than a world of its own. In short, The Red Bookrepresents – or so it seems to me – the kind of project that Goethe imagines inthe final stanza of his poem, ‘Testament’ (Vermachtnis):

Und wie von alters her im stillenEin Liebewerk nach eignem WillenDer Philosoph, der Dichter schuf,So wirst du schonste Gunst erzielen.

And, just as from old, when all is stillA work of love after his own willThe philosopher, the poet made,So you, too, will attain the loveliest grace.

(Goethe 1974, p. 370)

In this sense, it is no exaggeration to describe The Red Book, as Jung himselfdid to Christiana Morgan, as a ‘church’, as a ‘cathedral’, for ‘the silent placesof your spirit where you will find renewal’.49 That we still need such renewal,and that such renewal is still possible, is perhaps also something that, two yearson, we have learned from The Red Book.

TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT

La fin du dix-neuvieme siecle a vu un regain d’interet pour la pensee du philosopheromantique allemand F. W. Schelling. Cet article prend comme point de departl’engagement de Jung avec Schelling et sa prise en compte des idees et interets schellingiens(notamment pour les mysterieux Cabires veneres a Samothrace). Il poursuit en soutenantqu’un ensemble de problemes dans l’idealisme allemand – la relation entre liberte etnecessite, entre science et art, et enfin entre realisme et idealisme – offre un cadreconceptuel utile avec lequel approcher le Livre Rouge. Car la question de l’ideal estcentrale dans cette oeuvre, qui peut etre comprise comme le passage des ideaux eternelsa l’ideal de l’eternite. (Bien que le terme « idealisme » ait au moins quatre definitionsdistinctes, leurs sens differents peuvent etre relies de differentes manieres a la pensee deJung). L’emprise evidente de l’idealisme chez F. T. Vischer dans un roman, Auch Einer,que Jung appreciait beaucoup, nous rappelle la persistance de cette tradition, qui estencore contestee et debattue de nos jours.

48 See Schlegel’s lecture on Transzendentalphilosophie given in Jena, 1800–1801 (Schlegel 1964,p. 105).49 Christiana Morgan’s account of a conversation with Jung on 12 July 1926, in her analysisnotebooks, Countway Library of Medicine; cited in Sonu Shamdasani, ‘Introduction’ (Jung 2009a,p. 216).


Das spate 19. Jahrhundert erlebte eine Renaissance des Interesses am Denken desdeutschen Philosophen der Romantik F.W.L. Schelling. Dieser Beitrag nimmt JungsBeschaftigung mit Schelling und seine Kenntnis von Schellings Ideen und Interessen(beachtenswert jenes an den geheimnisvollen Kaberoi, die auf Samothrake verehrtwurden) zum Ausgangspunkt. Von hier aus wird argumentiert, daß eine Reihe vonzentralen Problematiken des deutschen Idealismus – das Verhaltnis zwischen Freiheitund Notwendigkeit, zwischen Wissenschaft und Kunst und letztlich zwischen Realismusund Idealismus – einen nutzlichen konzeptionellen Rahmen bietet, innerhalb dessenman sich Jungs Rotem Buch zu nahern vermag. Das Problem des Idealen ist zentral fursein Werk, was als eine Reise von den ewigen Idealen zum Ideal der Ewigkeit gelesenwerden kann. (Obgleich dem Terminus “Idealismus” mindestens vier verschiedeneBedeutungen zukommt, konnen ihre unterschiedlichen Sinngehalte auf unterschiedlicheWeisen zu Jungs Denken in Beziehung gesetzt werden.) Die eloquente Begeisterung furden Idealismus durch F.T. Vischer in dessen Roman Auch Einer, den Jung in hochstenTonen gelobt hatte, erinnert uns an das Fortbestehen dieser Tradition, die bis in dieGegenwart noch immer bestritten und debattiert wird.

Il tardo secolo diciannovesimo vide la rinascita di interesse nel pensiero del filosoforomantico F.W.J. Schelling. In questo lavoro si considera l’attrazione di Jung neiconfronti di Schelling e la sua conoscenza delle idee e degli interessi schelliniani (inparticolare il misterioso Cabirio adorato a Samotracia) come il suo punto di partenza.Prosegue col sostenere che una chiave delle problematiche nell’idealismo tedesco – larelazione fra liberta e necessita, fra scienza e arte, e in definitiva tra realismo e idealismo– offre un’utile trama concettuale per mezzo della quale accostarsi al Libro Rosso di Jung.Perche il problema dell’idealismo e centrale in questo lavoro, che puo essere letto comeun viaggio dagli ideali eterni all’ideale dell’eternita. (Sebbene il termine “idealismo” haalmeno quattro distinti significati, il loro distinto senso puo essere connesso in vari modial pensiero junghiano.) L’eloquente abbraccio di F.T. Vischer nei confronti dell’idealismonella novella, Ausch Einer, per la quale Jung ebbe il piu grande apprezzamento, ciricorda la persistenza di questa tradizione, che e attualmente ancora contestata e messain discussione.

Konec dev�tnadcatogo veka uvidel vozro�denie interesa k mysli nemeckogoromantiqeskogo filosofa F.Xellinga. �ta stat�� posv�wena znakomstvu�nga s Xellingom i ego osvedomlennosti ob ide�h i interesah Xellinga (os-obenno �to kasaets� tainstvennyh Kabirov, proslavl�vxihs� v Samofrakii),takova toqka otpravleni� stat�i. Dal�xe sleduet dokazatel�stvo togo, qtokl�qevo nabor problematiki nemeckogo idealizma – otnoxeni� me�dusvobodo i neobhodimost��, nauko i iskusstvom i, nakonec, me�du realizmomi idealizmom – predlagaet poleznu� konceptual�nu�ramku dl� rassmotreni�«Krasno Knigi» �nga. Ibo problema ideala okazyvaec� central�no dl��to raboty, kotoru� mo�no proqest� kak putexestvie ot veqnyh idealov kidealu veqnosti. (Hot� termin «ideal» nadelen, po krane mere, qetyr�m�

358 Paul Bishop

razliqnymi znaqeni�mi, vse �e vse �ti otqetlivye smysly mo�no sootnesti,ka�dy po-raznomu, s myxleniem �nga). Krasnoreqivy obzor idealizma,sdelanny F.T.Fixerom v romane Auch Einer («Ewe odin»), stol� vysoko ceni-mom �ngom, napominaet nam o �ivuqesti �to tradicii, vse ewe obsu�daemoi segodn�.

El siglo XIX tardıo fue testigo de un renacimiento del interes por el pensamiento delfilosofo Romantico aleman, F. W. J. Schelling. Este trabajo toma como punto de partidael compromiso de Jung con Schelling y el conocimiento de sus ideas e intereses (enparticular, el misterioso Kabeiroi venerado en Samotracia). Procede a argumentar queun conjunto clave de la problematica en el Idealismo aleman – la relacion entre libertady necesidad, entre la ciencia y el arte, y ultimamente entre realismo e idealismo – ofreceuna armazon conceptual util para acercarse y penetrar el Libro Rojo de Jung. Por cuantoen este trabajo el problema del ideal es central, este puede ser leıdo como el viaje desdelos ideales eternos al ideal de la eternidad. (Aunque el “idealismo” tenga por lo menoscuatro significados diferentes, sus distintos sentidos pueden ser relacionados de formasvariadas con el pensamiento del Jung). El elocuente compromiso con el idealismo deF.T. Vischer en su novela, Auch Einer, por la cual Jung tuvo el mas alto aprecio, nosrecuerda de la permanencia de esta tradicion, la cual es aun refutada y.

References

Ameriks, K. (Ed.) (2000). The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Aristotle (1941). Basic Works. Ed. R. McKeon. New York: Random House.Beiser, F.C. (Ed.) (2008). The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century

Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Bishop, P. (2009). Analytical Psychology and German Classical Aesthetics, vol. 2, The

Constellation of the Self . London and New York: Routledge.——— (2011). Reading Goethe At Midlife: Ancient Wisdom, German Classicism, &

Jung. New Orleans, LA: Spring.Bonnefoy, Y. (2010). Pensees d’etoffe ou d’argile. Paris: L’Herne.Bowie, A. (1993). Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction. London

and New York: Routledge.Bowden, H. (2010). Mystery Cults in the Ancient World. London: Thames & Hudson.Braun, O. (1908). Hinauf zum Idealismus! Schelling-Studien. Leipzig: Eckardt.Bres, Y. (2004). ‘Home, Carus, Hartmann (histoire de l’inconscient)’. Revue

philosophique de la France et de l’etranger, 129/2, 225–30.Briese, O. (1998). Konkurrenzen: Philosophische Kultur in Deutschland 1830–1850:

Portrats und Profile. Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann.Bruford, W.H. (1966–1967). ‘Friedrich Theodor Vischer and his Faust Criticism’,

Publications of the English Goethe Society, 37, 1–30.——— (1969). ‘The idea of “Bildung” in Friedrich Theodor Vischer’s “Auch Einer”’. In

Essays in German Language, Culture and Society, ed. S. Prawer. London: Universityof London, Institute of Germanic Studies. 7–17.

Burkert, W. (1985 [1977]). Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical. Tr. John Raffan.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

——— (1987). Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.


Cardew, A. (2012). ‘The Archaic and the sublimity of origins’. In The Archaic: The Pastin the Present, ed. P. Bishop. New York and London: Routledge, 93–146.

Clark, D.L. (2008). ‘Schelling’s wartime: philosophy and violence in the age ofNapoleon’. European Romantic Review, 19/2, 139–48.

Creuzer, F. (1819–1821). Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker, besonders derGriechen. 4 vols. Leipzig and Darmstadt: Heyer & Leske.

Deubel, W. (1997 [1934]). ‘Auswirkungen des biozentrischen Menschenbildes’. In ImKampf um die Seele: Wider den Geist der Zeit: Essays und Aufsatze, Aphorismen undGedichte, ed. F. Deubel. Bonn: Bouvier. 47–62.

Dunham, J., Grant, I.H. & Warson, S. (2011). Idealism: The History of a Philosophy.Durham: Acumen.

Eckermann, J.P. (1998 [1837–1848]). Conversations of Goethe. Ed. J.K. Moorhead, tr.J. Oxenford. New York: Da Capo.

Elms, A.C. (1994). ‘The auntification of Jung’. In Uncovering Lives: The Uneasy Allianceof Biography and Psychology. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 51–70.

Ernst, P. (1918). Der Zusammenbruch des deutschen Idealismus. Munich: Muller.Feilbogen, F. (1916). Fr. Th. Vischers “Auch Einer”. Zurich: Fußli.Fichte, I.H. (1864–1873). Psychologie: Die Lehre vom bewussten Geistes des Menschen,

oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Bewusstseins, begrundet auf Anthropologie undinnerer Erfahrung. 2 vols. Leipzig: Brockhaus.

Fichte, J.G. (1970 [1797/1798]). Versuch einer neuen Darstellung der Wissenschafts-lehre. In Werke 1797–1798. Eds. R. Lauth and H. Gliwitzsky [Gesamtausgabeder Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. I.4]. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:Frommann; Holzboog. 183–281.

——— (1994). Introductions to the Wissenschaftslehre and Other Writings (1797–1800). Ed. and tr. D. Brezeale. Indianapolis: Hackett.

ffytche, M. (2011). The Foundation of the Unconscious: Schelling, Freud and the Birthof the Modern Psyche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Goethe, J.W. (1974). Gedichte. Ed. E. Trunz. Munich: Beck.——— (2001 [1808/1832]). Faust: A Tragedy. Ed. C. Hamlin, tr. W. Arndt. New York

and London: Norton.Goethe, J.W. & Schiller, F. (1877–1879), Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe

from 1794 to 1805. Tr. L.D. Schmitz, 2 vols. London: Bell.Goldberg, N.R. (1990). ‘Looking at Jung looking at himself: A psychoanalytic

rereading of Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. In Returning Words to Flesh: Feminism,Psychoanalysis, and the Resurrection of the Body. Boston: Beacon Press. 116–45.

Goudeli, K. (Ed.) (2002). Challenges to German Idealism: Schelling, Fichte and Kant.Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Gulyga, A. (1989 [1982]). Schelling: Leben und Werk, tr. E. Kirsten, Stuttgart: DeutscheVerlags-Anstalt.

Hammer, E. (ed.) (2007). German Idealism: Contemporary Perspectives. London andNew York: Routledge.

Hannah, B. (1976). Jung: His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir. New York:Putnam.

Harpur, P. (2002). The Philosophers’ Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination. London:Penguin.

Hartmann, E. von (1869). Schelling’s positive Philosophie als Einheit von Hegel undSchopenhauer. Berlin: Loewenstein.

——— (1893a). Philosophie des Unbewussten, Vol. 1, Phanomenologie desUnbewussten, 10th edn. Leipzig: Friedrich.

360 Paul Bishop

——— (1893b). Phanomenologie des Unbewussten, vol. 2, Metaphysik des Unbe-wussten, 10th edn. Leipzig: Friedrich.

Hegel, G.W.F. (1987 [1805–06]), Naturphilosophie und Philosophie des Geistes: JenaerSystementwurfe III, ed. R.-P. Horstmann. Hamburg: Meiner.

Heller, R. (1954). ‘Auch Einer: the epitome of F. Th. Vischer’s philosophy of life’.German Life and Letters, 8, 9–18.

Helmich, W. (1933). Verfall und Umgestaltung des realistischen Seelenlebens bei Fr. Th.Vischer und C.F. Meyer. Kiel: Kleinert.

Hemberg, B. (1950). Die Kabiren. Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksells.Hewtter-Thayer, H.W. (1960). ‘The road to Auch Einer’. Publications of the Modern

Language Association, 75, 83–96.Jaffe, A. (1979) C.G. Jung: Word and Image. Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1983Jung, C.G. (1911/1912]). Psychology of the Unconscious: A Study of the Transforma-

tions and Symbolisms of the Libido. Tr. B.M. Hinkle. London: Routledge.——— (1917/1926/1943). ‘On the psychology of the unconscious’. CW 7.——— (1921) Psychological Types. CW 6.——— (1932). ‘The hypothesis of the collective unconscious’, CW 18.——— (1934). ‘A review of the complex theory’. CW 8.——— (1936). ‘Individual dream symbolism in relation to alchemy’. CW 12.——— (1938). Psychology and Religion (The Terry Lectures). CW 11.——— (1940). ‘The psychology of the child archetype’. CW 9i.——— (1942/1948). ‘A psychological approach to the dogma of the Trinity’. CW 11.——— (1942/1954). ‘Transformation symbolism in the Mass’. CW 11.——— (1943). ‘Introduction to the religious and psychological problems of alchemy’.

CW 12.——— (1946/1954). ‘On the nature of the psyche’. CW 8.——— (1948/1951). ‘Depth psychology’. CW 18.——— (1951). Aion. CW 9ii.——— (1952). Symbols of Transformation. CW5.——— (1954). ‘Theoretical considerations on the nature of the psyche’. CW 8.——— (1963). Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Ed. A. Jaffe, tr. R. and C. Winston.

London: Collins.——— (1973/1975). Letters. Eds. G. Adler and A. Jaffe, tr. R.F.C. Hull, 2 vols. London:

Routledge & Kegan Paul.——— (1989a [1925]). Analytical Psychology: Notes of the Seminar given in 1925, ed.

W. McGuire. London: Routledge.——— (1989b [1934–1939). Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”: Notes of the Seminar given in

1934–1939. Ed. J.L. Jarrett, 2 vols. London: Routledge.——— (2009a). The Red Book: Liber Novus. Ed. S. Shamdasani, tr. M. Kyburz, J. Peck,

and S. Shamdasani. New York and London: Norton.——— (2009b). Das Rote Buch: Liber Novus. Ed. S. Shamdasani. Dusseldorf: Patmos.Kerenyi, C. (1955 [1944]). ‘The Mysteries of the Kabeiroi’. In The Mysteries: Papers

from the Eranos Yearbooks. Ed. J. Campbell, tr. Ralph Manheim. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press. 32–63.

Kern, H. (1926). Die Philosophie des Carl Gustav Carus: Ein Beitrag zur Metaphysikdes Lebens. Celle: Kampmann.

Lammers, A.C. & Cunningham A. (Eds) (2007). The Jung-White Letters. London andNew York: Routledge.

Leibrand, W. (1956 [1954]). ‘Schellings Bedeutung f[ur] d[ie] moderne Medizin’. In Attidel XIV. Congresso Internazional di Storia della Medicina, 2 vols. Rome: Societainternazionale di storia della medicina. Vol. 2. 891–93.


Lord, B. (2011). Kant and Spinozism: Transcendental Idealism and Immanence fromJacobi to Deleuze. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Magee, G.A. (2001). Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UniversityPress.

Maguire, A. (2002). The Psychology of the Archetype of the Veiled Kabir: The Geniusof C.G. Jung. London: Guild of Pastoral Psychology.

——— (2006). ‘The Psychology of the Veiled Kabir’. In The Fountain of the Love ofWisdom: An Homage to Marie-Louise von Franz, ed. E. Kennedy-Xypolitas. Wilmette,IL: Chiron Publications. 355–72.

McGrath, S.J. (2012). The Dark Ground of Spirit: Schelling and the Unconscious.London and New York: Routledge.

McGuire, W. (Ed.) (1974). The Freud/Jung Letters: The Correspondence betweenSigmund Freud and C.G. Jung, tr. Ralph Manheim & R.F.C. Hull. Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Meredith, M.E. (2005). The Secret Garden: Temenos for Individuation. Toronto: InnerCity Books.

Mersmann, B. (1999). ‘Friedrich Theodor Vischers asthetisches Realismusprogramm:Zur Wechselbeziehung zwischen Dichtung und bildender Kunst’, in Literatur immultimedialen Zeitalter: Neue Perspektiven der Germanistik in Asien: Asiatis-che Germanistentagung 1997 [KGG- Dokumentationen, 8/1999], 2 vols (Seoul:Koreanische Gesellschaft fur Germanistik, 1998–1999), vol. 2. Available online:http://kgg.german.or.kr/kr/kzg/kzgtxt/68_10.pdf. Accessed 24.11.2011.

Millan, E., & Smith, John H. (eds) (2011). ‘Special section on Goethe and Idealism’.Goethe Yearbook, 18, 1–203.

Nietzsche, F. (1969), Thus spoke Zarathustra. Trans. R.J. Hollingdale. Harmondsworth:Penguin.

Oelmuller, W. (1958). ‘Das Problem der Asthetischen bei Friedrich Theodor Vischer’.Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft, 2. 237–65.

——— (1959). Friedrich Theodor Vischer und das Problem der nachhegelschen Asthetik[Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Geistesgeschichte, NF, vol. 8]. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer.

Oesterle, I. (1982). ‘Verubelte Geschichte: Autobiographische Selbstentbloßung, komi-sche Selbstentlastung und bedingte zynische Selbstbehauptung in Friedrich TheodorVischers Roman Auch Einer’, in Vom Anderen und vom Selbst: Beitrage zu Fragen derBiographie und Autobiographie, ed. R. Grimm & J. Hermand. Konigstein im Taunus:Athenaum-Verlag. 71–93.

Oesterreich, P.L. (1985). ‘Schellings Weltalter und die ausstehende Vollendung desdeutschen Idealismus’, in Zeitschrift fur philosophische Forschung, 39/1 (Jan.-March).70–85.

Peat, F.D. (1988). ‘Divine contenders: Wolfgang Pauli and the symmetry of the world’.Psychological Perspectives: A Semi-Annual Journal of Jungian Thought, 19/1 (Spring-Summer), 14–17.

Pfeiler, W.K. (1937). ‘Coleridge’s and Schelling’s treatise on the Samothracian deities’.Modern Language Notes, 52/3 (March). 162–65.

Potthast, B., & Reck, A. Reck (eds) (2011). Friedrich Theodor Vischer: Leben – Werk –Wirkung. Heidelberg: Winter.

Prutz, R.E. (1859). Die deutsche Literatur der Gegenwart, 1848–1858, 2 vols (Leipzig:Voigt & Gunther, 1859), vol. 1, Das Jahr 1848 und die deutsche Literatur.

Safranski, R. (2004). Friedrich Schiller oder Die Erfindung des Deutschen Idealismus.Munich and Vienna: Hanser.

Schachter, A. (1996). ‘Cabiri’, in The Oxford Classical Dictionary. Ed. S. Horn-blower & A. Spawforth. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.267.

362 Paul Bishop

——— (2003). ‘Evolutions of a mystery cult: the Theban Kabiroi’. In Greek Mysteries:The Archaeology and Ritual of Ancient Greek Secret Cults. Ed. M.B. Cosmopoulos.London and New York: Routledge. 112–142.

Schelling, F.W.J. (1856). Einleitung in die Philosophie der Mythologie [SammtlicheWerke, vol. II.1]. Stuttgart and Ausgburg: Cotta.

——— (1857). Philosophie der Mythologie [Sammtliche Werke, vol. II.2]. Stuttgart andAugsburg: Cotta.

——— (1858 [1800]). System des transcendentalen Idealismus, in SammtlicheWerke: 1799, 1880 [Sammtliche Werke, vol. I.3]. Stuttgart and Augsburg: Cotta.327–634.

——— (1859). Sammtliche Werke: 1800–1802 [Sammtliche Werke, vol. I.4]. Stuttgartand Ausgburg: Cotta.

——— (1977 [1815]). Schelling’s Treatise on “The Deities of Samothrace”. Ed. & tr.R.F. Brown. Missoula, JMT: Scholars Press.

——— (1978 [1800]). System of Transcendental Idealism. Tr. Peter L. Heath.Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.

——— (1994). Idealism and the Endgame of Theory: Three Essays. Ed. and tr. T. Pfau.Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Schiller, F. (1981 [1796]). On the Naıve and Sentimental in Literature. Tr. H. Watanabe-O’Kelly, Manchester: Carcanet Press.

Schlawe, F. (1959). Friedrich Theodor Vischer. Stuttgart: Metzler.Schlegel, F. (1964). Philosophische Vorlesungen, 1800–1807: Erster Teil [Kritische

Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe, vol. 12], ed. J.-J. Anstett. Munich, Paderborn, Vienna:Schoningh; Zurich: Thomas-Verlag.

Shamdasani, S. (1999 [1995]). ‘Memories, Dreams, Omissions’. In Jung in Contexts: AReader, ed. P. Bishop. London and New York: Routledge. 33–50.

——— (2005). Jung Stripped Bare By His Biographers, Even. London and New York:Karnac.

Shaw, D.Z. (2010). Freedom and Nature in Schelling’s Philosophy of Art. London andNew York: Continuum.

Sinnerbrink, R. (2008). ‘The Hegelian “Night of the World”: Zizek on subjectivity,negativity, and universality’. International Journal of Zizek Studies, 2/2, 1–21.

Steiner, R. (1982 [1942]). Der Goetheanismus, ein Umwandlungsimpuls und Auferste-hungsgedanke: Menschenwissenschaft und Sozialwissenschaft [Gesamtausgabe, vol.188]. Dornach/Schweiz: Rudolf Steiner Verlag.

——— (1982 [1974]). Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlauterungen zu Goethes “Faust”, 2vols [Gesamtausgabe, vols 272–73]. Dornach/Schweiz: Rudolf Steiner Verlag.

——— (1992 [1972]). Geistige Zusammenhange in der Gestaltung des menschlichenOrganismus [Gesamtausgabe, vol. 218]. Dornach/Schweiz: Rudolf Steiner Verlag.

Storig, H.J. (1987). Kleine Weltgeschichte der Philosophie. 13th edn. Frankfurt amMain: Fischer.

Strauß, D.F. & Vischer, F.T. (1952). Briefwechsel zwischen Strauß und Vischer, ed. A.Rapp, 2 vols. Stuttgart: Klett.

Suso, H. (1989). The Exemplar, with Two German Sermons. Ed. and tr. F. Tobin, NewYork and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press.

Verene, D.P. (1985). Hegel’s Recollection: A Study of Images in the “Phenomenologyof Spirit”. Albany, NY: SUNY.

Vergely, B. (2009). ‘Que l’on ait le courage de discerner la priorites’. www.la-croix.com,20.2.2009. Available online http://www.la-croix.com/Archives/2009–02-21/Bertrand-Vergely-philosophe-1-Que-l-on-ait-le-courage-de-discerner-les-priorites-_NP_-2009–02-21–339459, accessed 28.11.2011.

Vischer, F.T. (1881). Altes und Neues, Vol. 1. Stuttgart: Bonz.


——— (1904 [1879]). Auch Einer: Eine Reisebekanntschaft. Stuttgart and Leipzig:Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt.

Volmicke, E. (2005). Das Unbewußte im Deutschen Idealismus. Wurzburg:Konigshausen & Neumann.

Volkelt, J. (1875). Die Traumphantasie. Stuttgart: Meyer & Zeller.Watson, J. (1882). Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism. Chicago: Griggs.Zißeler, H.H. (1913). Beitrage zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Dichtung ‘Auch Einer’

von Friedrich Theodor Vischer. Gottingen: Dieterich.

Documents

Jung's Red Book and its relation to aspects of German Idealism