Abstract
The chapter is devoted to Schelling's Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom, where desire, i.e. wanting which does not yet relate to reason, constitutes eternal foundations of all being: of God, nature, individual objects as well as man. Schelling understands desire as that which, even though in God, is different from God: thus providing arguments in favor of the possibility of individual finite objects' independence from the universe - even though they exist only as mere moments of divine activity.
The author also points to Schelling's re-articulation of the older (at least since Spinoza) idea that identity of an individual thing is something more than just logical identity: it is a desire for identity, i.e. a dynamic striving for self-affirmation. It is exactly this active desire for identity, relating through force and negativity to other things, which makes a given thing an actual and independent (i.e. effective) being.
Yet Schelling is capable, unlike, for example, Spinoza, to account for and explain human freedom - due to the new ontological framework where individual things, by the virtue of desire, remain relatively independent from God.