Part I: The Potency Philosophy
B. The Birth of the Universe
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and solar systems – arises from such a moment of inversion.347 In order to get clearer on this and since my investigation in this text is dealing with transcendental structures and their role in predication, I will now appeal to the powers of Kant’s first Critique in order to map the functional roles of Schelling’s potencies onto a transcendental philosophy and demonstrate how the inversion Schelling discusses operates in case of predication.
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part of a conceptual opposition between it and containment. In this opposition, containment is defining space (conceptual or otherwise) which falls within the container, while extainment is taken as containment’s inverse: it is an operation of defining space which the extainer is not a part of. To think about this spatially some more: an object A placed inside another object B extains the object B – it defines that area inside B in which it is, however, not present. In addition, the relationship of extainment maps onto that of antecedence and consequence: for instance, the consequent fruit born by the tree as its antecedent ground is extained by the tree when it forms as a fruit and is differentiated from the tree. The fruit defines the border line between it, and the tree, as it were. While the German “ausschließen”, especially in the tradition of German idealism, this connotation is not obvious in English, and hence I will the words “extain” and “extainment” to highlight this.
This is relevant here because the universe in question in the statement “through the universio, the universe arises for us” is a universe produced with the active participation of thought rather than the universe which is antecedent to thought and which produces this thought in the course of its natural history. That extainment is not exclusion or elimination is evident from the discrepancy between the ways in which Schelling uses the word
“ausschließen” in the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie and the Darstellung des Naturprozesses. In lecture 13 of the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie, Schelling claims that the potencies do not ausschließen one another: “Von Ausschließen haben wir zwar früher gesprochen, aber dieß war nur im Gedanken gemeint; zum wirklichen Ausschließen gehörte, daß eines für sich seyn wollte; aber hier ist vielmehr jedes von sich abgewendet, – A das Könen nicht von sich selbst, sonder von +A, beide zusammen das Können von ±A, alle zusammen von dem was allein das selbst Seyende ist. (Sie schließen sich so wenig aus als im mathematischen Punkt, den man als den Kreis in potentia ansehen kann, Mittelpunkt, Umkreis und
Durchmesser sich aussließen.) Sie schließen sich nicht aus, weil sie nicht drei Seyende sind, keines ein Seyn für sich anspricht, das Seyn vielmehr allein dessen ist, zu dessen Attribut sie werden, zu dem sie sich als bloße Prädicate verhalten, ihr eignes Seyn also in bloßer Potenz bleibt.” (SW XIII, 318). [English: “We have spoken previously of “aussschließen”, but this was only meant in thought; it would belong to the real extainment that one would want to be for itself, but here this is only averted from itself. - A is the Can not of itself, but of +A, they both the Can of ±A, all together of that which is alone itself that which has Being. (They thus extain one another just as little as in the mathematical point, which one can be seen in the circle as potency, where the center, circumference and diameter extain one another). They do not extain each other because they are not three have-beings, none of them has claim to being for itself, being is moreover only of that whose attribute they become, that to which they relate as pure predicate, so their own Being remains in the mere potency.”] In the Darstellung des Naturprozesses however, Schelling seems to take the opposite stance. Outside the Idea, i.e., once the potencies are taken as more than merely an abstract scheme and become operative in nature,
Schelling speaks about their extainment, them engaging each other in a relationship of Ausschließen: “Wie können also die Momente, d. h. wie können - A + A ± A zu für sich seyenden werden, wie sich gegenseitig ausschließen? Denn das Erste oder das seyn Könnende (- A), solang es bloß dieses ist, solang es die reine Potenz bleibt, die es ist, so lang ist es von dem Zweiten oder von dem, was nicht seyn kann (+A), nicht unterschieden, und ebenso sind beide, das, was seyn, und das, was nicht seyn kann, von dem seyn und nicht seyn Könnenden (± A), und umgekehrt ist dieses von ihnen nicht ausgeschlossen; eine Ausschließung entsteht erst, wenn das seyn Könnende geht, d. h. wenn es sich ins Seyn erhebt.” (SW X, 306) [English: How could the moments, i.e. how could - A + A ± A become beings for-themseves, how do they reciprocally extain one another? For the first or the Can-be (-A), as long as it is only this, as long as it remains pure potency, which it is, so long as it is not
distinguished from the second or from that which can not be (+A) and therfore both (that which can be and that which can not be) are both not extained from that which can be and can not be (±A) and the latter not extained from them; an extainment arises first when the Can-being is gone, i.e. when it raises itself into being”, nor conversely the latter from the former; an extainment arises only when what can be functions, i.e. when it is raised into Being ]. The discrepancy might look like an inconsistency, but I would like to argue that it’s actually not. In the first instance, Schelling is using the word “ausschließen” to mean exclusion or elimination, and the potencies do not exclude or eliminate each other; they underlie as hypo-theses, determining each other. In the second passage, Schelling is affirming extainment not because he has suddenly decided that the potencies now eliminate one another: the telling sign is him using the word “reciprocally”. In the second passage, Schelling is using “auschließen” to mean reciprocal border definition, i.e., determination. The German is used in both sense of the word, and while Grant could be taken to claim, that it is insufficient to capture the meaning of the word
“extain” (“In the extainer/container contrastive pair, in other words, there would be no negative and positive space. Rather, all parts of space are actors. The interaction between them, in other words, is importantly not linear, as the one involves the other in the production of boundaries, such that complex forms like knots are themselves neighbourhoods formed of iterations of this couple. Moreover, as a logic of form in general, it is indifferent to the domain it spatialises or is, as Châtelet puts it, it is “autospatiality”. In other words, this is the localisation process that effects any entity whatever, the only constraint being therefore that its universality ensures that it neither begins nor ends in a form of all forms or in a featureless universe.” – Grant 2014, 29), the
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Grant draws from Schelling’s work, where it is hidden in plain sight, as it were: there are two ways to consider the concept of “universe”, and those two ways ultimately correspond to different things. One is the universe antecedent to our mind, antecedent to transcendental structures and thinking things – sheer objective nature “before thought”, while the other is the universe consequent on the mind, the “whole world” that “lies in the nets of reason”,352 to quote Schelling. Grant elaborates on this quote in order to make the stakes of this world-doubling here:
The difficulty here is clearly expressed: it is the whole world (WW) that reason captures and there is more than reason in the world (W). But if W contains “more”
than WW, then either reason, being part of W, does not for that reason contain WW and the statement simply contradicts itself, or the wholeness of the world is an artefact of the reason that contains it, so that the “whole world” is less than the world, an abstraction from it, perhaps. […S]ince the option of taking the whole world in reason and reason to be in the world to form a contradiction is effectively ruled out by the formulation’s concision on the one hand and the fact of its exact repetition after a decade and a half on the other, WW must be considered an artefact, and the assumption will be that if it is an artefact, then it is one of reason, i.e. simply a concept.353
So, the universe which is produced as a result of the inversion here is a conceptual version of the universe. What remains in order to locate the elusive +A of predication is to map out how the Universio as a conceptual and transcendental structure plays out, and try to distill the functional second potency from there.
For clarity’s sake, we will divide the operation of predication into two movements (the word used here in analogy with musical movements): both would reflect the status of predicative potencies in the process of predication, with the first movement being the disposition of potencies before the inversion and the second – the disposition after. In the first movement of the operation of predication we have the transcendental object = X, matter, pure Can, functioning as the first potency -A. It is a transcendental structure, i.e., part of the machinery of the mind. It is also the subject, in the sense of that which is being subject to determination.
We cannot help but notice that in being the subject of determination, it is an object to be determined: there is already an equivocation in how the two terms “subject” and “object” are used, and more will be said about this in what follows. In this first “movement” at the outset of determination, we must ask ourselves: what is it that could play the role of +A? What is it that determines our experience? If we here take Schelling’s definitions of +A at face value, as simply as we can, then we get +A being pure existence and the object of being, and it would
word “ausschließen” has been used in German idealism to mean reciprocal determination, even in the sense of the law of excluded middle, as Kant used it when he had theorized the principle of thoroughgoing
determination (see chapter I).
352 SW X, 143.
353 Nature Thought, p. 27.
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follow that the world in-itself – or rather, whatever bit of it that triggered determination in an instance of predication – would be in this case assuming the role of +A in order to determine our experience. This is consistent with Schelling’s texts, and yet problematic in the sense that we cannot meaningfully speak about this instance of +A. Trying to think it or seek knowledge about it would effectively amount to an attempt to think or know the thing-in-itself constitutively. In this instance, in this movement of predication, we do not know what +A is beyond its role as a determinator and an object (in the sense of being non-subject), and this is all that is knowable.
Following the movement of the Universio, I would argue it is the following initial mapping that gets inverted:
-A: transcendental structure, namely object = X, subject for determination vs. +A: object of experience antecedent to experience.
The previous section dealing with -A has already traced, through the dual nature of matter, the inversion which happens as regarding this first potency: -A, losing the potency to be anything whatsoever becomes B, pure passivity, the blind extaining existent, whose function it is to determine merely negatively. To reiterate the point that -A becomes a negatively determining factor once it has spent its potencies and become B, I would like to quote the following passage in the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie:
Denn die jetzt selbst- und machtlose Potenz – sie war auch in der Idee nicht für sich, sondern das Unterworfene (subjectum) und Untergeordnete einer höheren, des rein Seyenden (+A), und es war dieses ihr selbst die Stufe, also der Weg zum Prinzip, d. h. zum Seyn, wie sie umgekehrt diesem Grund der Möglichkeit war.
Denn wir sagten, sie sey dem rein seyenden das Können. Aber das war von ihr nur geredet, sofern sie bloßes Können (reines – A) ist. Indem sie also in das Seyn sich erhebt, ist sie jenem vielmehr das Nichtkönnen, d. h. sie negirt es: das unversehene Seyn wirkt aufhebend auf das rein seyende, aufhebend in dem doppelten Sinn des deutschen wie des lateinischen Worts (tollere). Das Seyn des rein seyendem ist ein rein aus-, nicht auf sich selbst zurückgehendes, auf dieses wirkt das Seyn, das zuvor nicht war, hemmend, aber eben damit wird jenes in sich selbst zurückgetrieben; das rein seyende bekommt eine Negation, d. h. eine Potenz, ein Selbst in sich, das zuvor selbstlose wird sich selbst gegeben, ex actu puro, das es war in potentiam gesetzt, so daß jetzt beide Elemente gleichsam die Rollen getauscht haben: was in der Idee negativ war, positiv, was positiv, negativ geworden ist.354
354 SW XI, 389. English: “For the now self- and powerless potency – it was also in the idea not for itself, but subjugated (subjectum) and subordinated to a higher one, to that which purely has being (+A) and this itself was a step for it, i.e. a way to the principle, that is, to being, as it (-A), conversely, was the ground of possibility of this has-being. For we say: it is the Can to the pure has-being. But that was said of it only insofar as it is sheer Can (pure -A). Thus insofar as it lifts itself into being, it is rather the Not-can to the pure has-being, i.e. it negates the pure has-being: the property-less being has a sublating influence on the purely being, sublating in the double sense of both the German and the Latin term (tollere). The being of the pure has-being is a pure extinguishing, not self-reversing. On it, the being which previously was not, acts as an inhibitor, but precisely therewith it is driven back into itself; the pure has-being acquires a negation, i.e. a potency, a self in itself, and the previously selfless is given self, ex actu puro, that it was posited in potentiam, so that now both elements have exchanged roles: what was negative in the idea has become positive and what was positive, negative.”
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It can be seen in this passage that the previous subject for determination is no longer the subject in any sense; now it is merely out there, objectified and negative, eliminating what cannot be: it negates the Can.355 Instead of being the subject to which predicates might be ascribed, it becomes the subjugated subject.356 Its relation to whatever subjugatingly exerts positive potentiation (a form of determination; more will be said on this very soon) upon it in that moment inverts and it becomes an object. This might seem like a superficial inversion that just plays with the ambiguous meanings of the words “subject” and “object” hinted at above, but it is not merely that: the functional roles of intellect and world are also reversed. -A, B’s
“precursor”, was a transcendental structure, but the B which recedes in this second moment of determination, insofar as it is that which recedes from the process of determination by being that which does not participate in this process at the conceptual level, but by merely extaining from the object under those determinations which are not applicable to it, is not entirely part of the transcendental structures anymore. This is a point of inter-involvement between mind (which after all is still part of the world) and world (which now is also inextricably bound with the activity of the mind), in which transcendental structures operate in a certain way – specifically, the transcendental object = X is anything whatsoever, and it is determined through disjunctive syllogism, which grounds the fact that, once we have given the transcendental object = X some determination, it, in becoming the product ±A generates a field of extainment B, whereby it determines what things around it are not, and things around it in turn determine what it is not. Incidentally, this is why Schelling claims that it is only B,
We must however remember, that in this moment the negative determination B withholds a part of its
independence and is not fully subjected. It is still active by extaining determination, something we can see in SW X 312: “Wir nehmen also an, daß die beiden Principien in die Herrschaft sich theilen, sich, so zu sagen, darüber vergleichen, auf die Weise nämlich daß das im Allgemeinen zur Unterordnung, zum ὑποκείμενον der höheren Potenz bestimmte Prinzip dennoch nich unbedingt unterworfen, daß ihm verstattet werde, zum Theil
selbständig, unberührt von der entgegengesetzten Potenz für sich zu seyn, anderntheils sich eben dieser Potenz ganz unterzuordnen und zur Ueberwindung völlig hinzugeben.” English: “We thus assume that both principles share dominance, that they, so to speak, even out in such a way that the principle determined in general to subordination, to be the ὑποκείμενον of the higher potency, is nevertheless not unconditionally subordinate and that it is allowed to it to become in part independent, untouched by the opposite potency, for-itself and, in other part, to give itself completely over to subordination and overcoming.”
355 In case this is not clear: the determination +A effects is the source of novelty, while the passive determination coming from the gradual limitation and cast-off of potential in B is merely the foreclosing of certain potentialities.
356 SW XI 398: “Der Preis also, um den es sein äußeres Seyn gleichsam erkauft, ist, daß es dem, welchem es im Innern unterworfen oder Subjekt war, daß es diesem sich im Aeußern ebenso unterwirft und einmal wirklich geworden zum Stoff sich hingibt. Diesen Moment können wir demnach auch als den Moment des Materie Werdens oder auch der Grundlegung bezeichnen, und es wird auch nicht zweifelhaft seyn, welche Wissenschaft in diesem Reich der reinen Quantitätsbestimmungen sich bewegen und das zur Materie herausgewendete Eine oder Uni-versum zum Gegenstand haben wird.” English: “Thus the price, needed to acquire for it its outer being is as follows: to that which it has been subjugated or subject inwardly, it is also to be subjugated outwardly and, having become actual, it is to surrender itself as matter. We could also designate this moment as a moment of becoming of matter or of grounding, and it is not to be doubted which science will move in this domain of purely quantitative determinations and have as its object the One which has extricated itself into matter or the Uni-versum.”
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the negative blind existent that originally has Being357 – in the sense that it is the first thing that arises in the potency scheme operative in judgment-making, of which we can say what it is and that it is not thought, but rather being.358 +A is also inverted: in the second “movement”
in the operation of predication, the active determining force is no longer the world, but rather the transcendental structures. When Schelling writes that in the Universio, the object +A becomes the subject, this means that the function of the active de-terminator +A goes from the world to the subject. “Subject” here should be taken in the sense in which it is commonly used in transcendental philosophy: as the thinking subject, actively inflicting conceptual determination upon the transcendental object = X.359 The mapping of the potencies following the Universio is then thus:
B: the negative, purely material, passive and objective determination vs +A: the transcendental machinery of determination, therefore the activity of the transcendental subject, and hence a form of positive determination.
However, it might seem questionable and disingenuous to call the determination inflicted by +A “positive”, as I did here and above. To shed light on the question of determination in the Potenzenlehre would be a difficult task, but I would like to examine the Darstellung des Naturprozesses also in regard to this topic, in order to provide a provisional solution to this problem, arguing that Schelling views determination in the Potenzenlehre in a rather unusual way, unusually enough for it to not be viewed through the maxim “determinatio est negatio”. I will also discuss the problem of individuation through the prism of positive and negative determination in chapter VII. In anticipation of that discussion, I turn to the -A/B as presented in the Darstellung des Naturprozesses. B is, as I have already shown above, the potency effecting negative potentiation, i.e. determining which potencies the resulting product ±A is not to have. In calling this form of determination “negative potentiation”, I have somewhat stepped away from what is understood by determinatio est negatio. To avoid engaging in a lengthy discussion of Spinoza and Hegel here, especially in light of the fact that the exact relationship between what those two philosophers mean by this maxim is far from completely settled,360 let us look at how Schelling has taken to understand it the few times that he discusses it. Spinoza’s maxim comes up a few times in Schelling’s earlier writings, for
357 SW X 309.
358 N.B.: that it is not thinking, but rather being, we could also say of +A as it appears in the first moment, but we could not say what it is.
359 For a discussion of how a judgement is determinate for Kant, see Schelling’s Return to Kant, p. 26-28.
360 See Stern, R. 'Determination is Negation': The Adventures of a Doctrine from Spinoza to Hegel to the British Idealists. 2016. Hegel Bulletin, 37, pp. 29-52 [cited henceforth as Determination is Negation] and Melamed, Y. “Omnis determinatio est negatio” – Determination, Negation and Self-Negation in Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel. In Stern, R. and Melamed, Y. Y. Spinoza and German Idealism. Cambridge University Press (2012), pp.
176-196.
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instance in the System des transzendentalen Idealismus,361 and is generally implicit whenever Schelling is discussing determination through the interaction of opposing forces, which restrict and partially negate each other’s action. Negative determination is therefore a determination taking place through the interaction of opposing forces where one determines the other and vice versa. In the Freiheitsschrift, Schelling has a slightly different view on negative determination, relating it less to opposing forces and more to determination from outside a particular entity.362 So, if we now look at -A/B’s “negative potentiation” and see how it compares to the classical notion of negative determination, we see that it is indeed in some sense determination from outside the entity or a product, insofar as potency B is the extainment field generated by the potency -A, but it is also not fully external, insofar as -A, +A and ±A are all joined together in ±A (as will be discussed in the last part of this chapter).
The negative potentiation effected by B, however, does not fully fit the “opposing forces”
picture of the classical understanding, as the negative potentiation does not arise merely from the interplay of opposing forces. Although it is partly due to the opposed interaction and mutual determination of -A and +A, it is also due to the limitations inherent in the matter involved in this or that particular triad of the potency process. Hence, it would seem that the Spinozist maxim understood as invoking the mutual limitation of entities or forces is not the best way to approach determination in the Potenzenlehre. But what of the “positive potentiation” effected by +A? And is there perhaps a better way to approach determination in Schelling’s late philosophy? In the Darstellung des Naturprozesses, we do see a discussion of determination, which is unfortunately very cryptic. I allow myself to quote part of that discussion:
Zwischen dem Punkt des äußersten Widerstands [von B gegen +A – DK] und dem der völligen Ueberwindung oder Umwendung des B liegt aber eine Unendlichkeit von Momenten, d.h. von Möglichkeiten, in der Mitte. Jedem dieser Momente wird nun aber ein bestimmtes zur Existenz Kommendes, also ein Existirendes, dieser Unendlichkeit von Momenten eine Reihe von Existirendem entsprechen. In jedem dieser Existirenden wird das Princip, welches behufs dieser Ueberwindung sich
361 SW III, 441: “Die eine der beiden Thätigkeiten wurde angenommen als ursprünglich aufs positiv Unendliche gehend. Aber im Unendlichen ist keine Richtung. Denn Richtung ist Determination, Determination aber = Negation.” For English see Schelling, F. W. J. System of Transcendental Idealism. Tr. Peter Heath.
Charlottesville: 1978, p. 83 [cited henceforth as System of Transcendental Idealism]. Schelling here discusses the determination stemming from mutual limitation of opposing forces.
362 SW VII, 384: “Daß etwa das intelligible Wesen aus purer lauterer Unbestimmtheit heraus ohne allen Grund sich selbst bestimmen sollte, führt auf das obige System der Gleichgültigkeit der Willkür zurück. Um sich selbst bestimmen zu können, müßte es in sich schon bestimmt seyn, nicht von außen freilich, welches seiner Natur widerspricht, auch nicht von innen durch irgend eine bloß zufällige oder empirische Nothwendigkeit, indem dieß alles (das Psychologische so gut wie das Physische) unter ihm liegt; sondern es selber als sein Wesen, d.h. seine eigne Natur, müßte ihm Bestimmung seyn. Es ist ja kein unbestimmtes Allgemeines, sondern bestimmt das intelligible Wesen dieses Menschen; von einer solchen Bestimmtheit gilt der Spruch:
Determinatio est negatio, keineswegs, indem sie mit der Position und dem Begriff des Wesens selber eins, also eigentlich das Wesen in dem Wesen ist.” See PI, 49-50 for English.