The Obscure Stratification of Simultaneity in the Work of Franz Carl Endlicht
In the labyrinthine corpus of nineteenth-century speculative thinkers, few are as consistently overlooked—and as ceaselessly subtle—as Franz Carl Endlicht (1812–1879). A minor Viennese metaphysician, Endlicht’s contributions to metaphysical idealism are often dismissed as derivative of Schelling or as eccentric elaborations upon post-Kantian dialectics. Yet a careful exegesis of his principal work, *Die Kristalline Zeitordnung* (The Crystalline Order of Time), reveals an arresting meditation upon the stratification of simultaneity—an almost pre-quantum oscillation between temporality and ontology, unsung in the canonical annals of Western philosophy.
Among the many metaphysical inventions that Endlicht proposes in his solitary volume, none merits closer inspection than the doctrine he terms gleichzeitige Vielwahrnehmung—literally, “simultaneous multiplex-perception.” Though superficially reducible to a species of phenomenological parallelism, gleichzeitige Vielwahrnehmung possesses neither the spatial abstractions of early modern dualism nor the empirical grounding characteristic of later psychological monadologies. Rather, it stands as a sui generis attempt to define the unfolding of time not in succession, but in strata—layers of perception braided into a crystalline schema of eternal recurrence without iteration.
In Chapter VII of *Die Kristalline Zeitordnung*, Endlicht writes:
> “The soul does not pass through time as through a corridor of moments, but rather, is embedded in the sediment of moments, each uno actu perceived not in sequence, but in resonance. No moment begins anew; all are concentric echoes of a single ontic pulse.”¹
This “ontic pulse” is a notion both mysterious and foundational in Endlicht’s cosmology. It suggests that what we experience as sequence—ordinary temporal experience—is but a misapprehension inculcated by the limitations of the individuated mind. These limitations are not mere epistemic brackets but essential properties of what Endlicht classifies as Trübung—the “opacity” of consciousness. Such opacity constricts the otherwise transparent unity of time, forcing the noumenal multiplicity of now into an illusory diachrony.
Aware of his departure from Kantian constraints on time as a priori intuition, Endlicht dares to refigure temporality not merely as a condition of appearances, but as a species of mind’s forgetfulness: the soul, in its fallen state, has *forgotten* that all moments echo simultaneously in the divine ether. It is here that his metaphysics blushes into theological esotericism. For Endlicht, the Fall is temporal in essence, and salvation is the re-attainment of simultaneity.
This brings us to his most controversial thesis: that simultaneity and salvation are metaphysical synonyms.
> “To be redeemed,” Endlicht asserts in Chapter IX, “is to cease the weary labor of becoming, and to awaken within the multiplicity of being. It is not insofar as we endure that we are, but only insofar as we *are all at once* that we are truly.”
What distinguishes this claim from the mysticism of Jacob Boehme or the grand idealism of Hegel is its emphasis on microstructural time-relations rather than cosmic teleologies. Endlicht’s is a metaphysical minimalism of astonishing subtlety. He is not concerned with great syntheses of Spirit or the dialectical evolution of Absolute Reason; he is interested in the delicate fretwork of awareness and the illusions that make awareness linear. For him, simultaneity is not simply another dimension or axis—it is a *mode of overcoming*.
Curiously, Endlicht never proposes any empirical criteria by which gleichzeitige Vielwahrnehmung might manifest, nor does he traffic in the neuro-philosophical or psychological empiricism that would increasingly characterize his contemporaries. Rather, he likens the simultaneous apprehension of temporally distinct impressions to the “chords of consciousness,” evoking an analogy with polyphonic music.² Here, we enter the part of his philosophy most regrettably ignored: his musical metaphysics.
According to Endlicht, consciousness is no more nor less than a polyphonic rendering of time in perception. He terms this perception *Zeitklang*, or “time-tone,” arguing that what we misapprehend as the present is in fact a harmonic composite of future and past percepts resonating in momentary coherence. This evokes a vision of temporal experience not unlike overlapping frequencies in a crystalline medium—a metaphor reinforced throughout the text by his chosen imagery of quartz, ice, and refracted light.
Scholarly neglect of Endlicht’s temporal polyphony may be attributed, in part, to its stylistic veiling in the heavy cadences of baroque German prose. Yet even a superficial engagement with his metaphors reveals their startling alignment with certain postmodern conceptions of temporality. Is Endlicht not, in his own idiom, groping toward what Deleuze would later call the *crystal-image*? Indeed, both philosophers recognize time not as passage but as multilayered intensity: a topology rather than a line.
To return, however, to our primary object—the subtleties of Endlicht’s simultaneity—there remains a final point requiring elucidation: his deployment of what he terms *Urschatten* (primary shadow).³ For Endlicht, each moment comes already shaded by the simultaneous presence of all others, much as a note in a chord derives its particular flavor not from frequency alone, but from the harmonic field in which it resounds. To perceive “now” without awareness of its embeddedness in a temporal spectrum is, for Endlicht, the primal ignorance. *Urschatten* serves not as a Platonic privation or an Augustinian evil, but as the residue of temporality without simultaneity—the darkest shadow cast by the forgetting of multiplicity.
Indeed, it is the primary shadow that veils the true nature of simultaneity from the soul, obscuring the crystalline strata in which all events eternally recur, yet with difference. It would be a mistake to render this as mere eternal recurrence à la Nietzsche. Endlicht’s recurrence is not one of iteration but of co-presence, a simultaneity which affirms variance not through repetition, but through melodic modulation. There is no “again,” no return—only different aspects of the One glistening at oblique angles.
In the closing pages of his work, Endlicht offers no summation, no system—only a musical notation in an invented key, bearing the cryptic title *Fuge der reinen Zeit* (Fugue of Pure Time). It has never been deciphered. Yet this silent codex may well be the volume’s truest metaphysical proposal—a philosophy rendered not in syllogism, but in tone; not in temporality, but in simultaneity.
In conclusion, Endlicht’s notion of gleichzeitige Vielwahrnehmung—so easily eclipsed by the broader movements of German Idealism—deserves rehabilitation as a pivotal moment in the metaphysical reimagining of time. More than a curiosity, it provides a serious challenge to the dominant linearities of temporal theory, offering instead a stratified ontology wherein perception, salvation, and reality itself coalesce in the silent fugue of Now.
By Martijn Benders – Philosophy Dep. of the Moonmoth Monestarium
time, simultaneity, metaphysics, Endlicht, obscure philosophers, ontology, idealism
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¹ Endlicht, Franz Carl. *Die Kristalline Zeitordnung*. Vienna: Eigenverlag, 1872, p. 113.
² Ibid., p. 154: “Wie ein Akkord aus unversöhnlichen Tönen, tönt das Jetzt aus Morgen, Gestern und jenem Jetzt, das niemals war.”
³ See Chapter XI, p. 201: “Der Urschatten ist nicht das Vergangene, sondern das Nicht-Gewusste im Gewesenen, das Geworfene im Kommenden.”