Schelling AS 4 ed. M. Frank I/10, 215

631

In place of the mere being [blossen Seyenden] (the highest of all rational, logical concepts), the aforementioned philosophy posited pure being [reine Seyn], the abstraction of an abstraction. Of it, one can indeed say that that it is a pure, indeed empty concept; but for this very reason a Nothing in a completely different sense than the one which is claimed by this philosophy, rather something like the sense of the white without something white, or the red without something red. To posit Being [Seyn] as the First is to posit it without the being [das Seyende]. But what is being without the being? That which is, is the First, Being is only the Second, unthinkable for itself. Used in the same way, mere Becoming (to which a transition is made from Being) is a completely empty thought, i.e. a thought in which nothing is thought. Such superficiality and emptiness has been taken for profundity. It is incidentally neither inadvertence of expression nor a misunderstanding of the French Être, which however can mean both but philosophically employed means the being (not being) [das Seyende (nicht das Seyn)]. In the ensuing translation too, p.17, l.7 “la science de l’etre” should be translated not as science of Being, but as science of Essence or of the being [des Wesens oder des Seyenden] (as it has been translated in other places).