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becomes merely one element in a higher-standing triad at another. It is at the heart of this fractality, I would argue in what follows, that the key to Schelling’s different notations of the Potenzenlehre lies.

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In order to discuss this potency cycle in greater detail, it would be useful to introduce here the concept of “ungroudedness”, emphasized by Iain Grant in his work.³⁹⁴ Ungroundedness means that the operations of the potencies have neither a starting point nor an end point.³⁹⁵ The non-existence of the end point is fairly straightforward – there is no single definite future for the potencies. There is no specific teleological direction in which natural process is heading; at best there is a law they obey, the aforementioned Weltgesetz, which drives all potencies to actualization and leaves none – not in the ultimate, possibly unattainable run – suppressed.

There is no single ultimate outcome for the future of the potencies, since even the final state which, according to the Weltgesetz, will be reached once all potencies are actualized is merely an asymptotic horizon attainable only if all activity of the potencies ceased, not a defined future state.³⁹⁶ Natural production is moreover ungrounded in the direction of the past,

Wirklichkeit ist, wie früher, durch A⁰ zu bezeichnen, wobei an das arithmetische A⁰ = 1 nicht gedacht ist.”

English: “Given Can-Being posited generally = A, the immediately Can-being must be designated as A¹, but as such it first appears at the end; it appears in process (for with this relation a process is promised to the causes) straight away as de-selved, i.e. subjectless being. Hence it it would be designated as B which first is to be brought back to A. That which purely has beng, first set through B in potentiam and elevated to subject, would be designated through A². The last, which is as object is subject and vice-versa, would be designated as A³. I demand nothing of these designations except that they serve clarity and brevity, for the same reason I would deign to designate, as I did before, that which stands over all potency, the cause of being with respect to that-which-has-being and pure actuality, as A⁰, where the arithmetic A⁰ = 1 is not meant.”

At another point (SW VII, 453) he introduces B³: “Der Grundausdruck der Natur ist A=B+, oder daß in ihr das erst herrschende B – das erst herrschende Nichtseyende – seyend werde. Auf der tiefsten Stufe ist das Seyende ganz ins Körperliche verloren. Hier hat also das Nichtseyende die größte Gewalt, und also dieß, d. h. die erste Potenz der Natur, hätten wir ausdrücken können durch A¹=B³. Wo B noch in der höchsten Potenz steht, da steht A nothwendig noch in der geringsten.” For English, see Stuttgart Seminars, p. 221 and for Buchheim’s insightful take on A⁰see EvA, p. 59.

394 Among other places, in the article “Mining Conditions”: “Thus the earth is not an object containing its ground within itself, like the preformationists’ animal series; but rather a series or process of grounding with respect to its consequents. If geology, or the “mining process”, opens onto an ungroundedness at the core of any object, this is precisely because there is no “primal layer of the world”, no “ultimate substrate” or substance on which everything ultimately rests.” – Iain Hamilton Grant, Mining Conditions in The Speculative Turn, eds.

Levi Bryant, Nick Srnicek and Graham Harman, Melbourne: re.press, 2011.

395 See also Spekulation und Faktizität, 93.

396 The cessation of the potencies’ activity is not a point of view Schelling would embrace. The universe is unfolding in order to recover an original (pre-universe and pre-historical, so not really one that has existed before in any sense in which anything exists after it) unity. However, since undoing or reversing processes is impossible and any actualization for the sake of recapturing the former unity “re”-captures nothing and instead participates in building another unity from the potencies available to the ruins of the former unity. Reality is fundamentally augmentative; it will not capture the unity it strives after, but will instead continue building a rough approximation of this unity by adding small increments to it. Iain Grant has breached this topic in, among other things, his essay “Everything”, focusing on the additive element which conceiving reality or “picturing”

brings into reality: “That is, should “everything” be itself subject to epistemic claims or “takings as,” it becomes, by virtue of being so conceived, “less than” the everything amongst which it figures. Conversely, “takings as” are themselves inalienably features of the everything in which they occur. In consequence, if we take “everything”

to determine a concept of reality and add that in reality, special inflation occurs, then the everything in which such inflation occurs is subject in turn to special inflation, yielding as its outcome that reality is either unequal to itself, or that special inflation does not occur in it. Since the latter is expressly denied by the theorem, the attempt to conceive reality as everything results in the assertion that reality is not equal to reality and so renders reality inconceivable. If as recommended reality is not taken as the concept of reality but as the environment against which special inflation is assessed, the recursive operation, described above, of special inflation on that environment does not render conceptual articulation insuperable, but shows reality to be generally inflationary, or importantly nonfinal with respect to form.”

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because there is no ultimate starting point, no single identifiable fundamental unit of recapitulation for this process.³⁹⁷ If there were a certain basic kernel with which the development of the potencies began, a “unit” from which everything developed, then philosophy (or anything whatsoever) would be unable to trace the generation of this unit – both in the sense that it would not be able to investigate how this unit came about, but also in the sense that it would not be able to explain the powers this unit possesses and out of which, apparently, everything else arose. What follows from this entire logic of ungroundedness is that one can speak about potencies forming triads within which the relationship between a higher and a lower term stands while holding the possibility open that the higher potency relative to one process could be the lower one relative to another. One could also still speak about potencies operating in a sequence of first-second-third-etc., without the sequence reflecting first-ness and next-ness, or indeed any kind of hierarchy in any fixed sense.³⁹⁸ The potencies are thus ungrounded in a multitude of dimensions.

If we now use the concept of ungroundedness in order to look at the functional change ±A undergoes to become something lower, we can see that this change is inevitable. First, ±A is ungrounded in the direction of the consequent, and for it to be real at all, it must have an effect, i.e., participate in the production of something other than itself by becoming a lower stage with respect to it. Second, since the operations of the potencies are ungrounded with respect to their antecedents, it follows that any and every lower stage of a potency triad must have been a higher stage to another triad. This leads Schelling to a remarkable conclusion:

what is being in one situation is non-being in another. What at one level has being in-itself is merely matter for something else at another, as Schelling puts very clearly in the Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen, but also in later texts:

Alles Nichtseyende ist nur relativ, nämlich in Bezug auf ein höheres Seyendes, aber es hat in sich selbst doch auch wieder ein Seyendes […] Dies nun angewendet auf das, was wir das Seyn in Gott genannt haben: dieses ist in Bezug auf das Seyende in Gott allerdings ein Nichtseyendes, nämlich es verhält sich zu

397 See Iain Hamilton Grant developing what he calls an “ungrounded argument”, brilliantly, all over Philosophies of Nature After Schelling – on there being no single unit of recapitulation p.170: “[S]ynthesizing the constant decomposition of ‘nature as a whole’ charted in the World Soul with the ‘autonomous’ and ‘autarchic’, unconditioned productivity of the First Outline and the theory of to auto derived from Platonism, the Universal Deduction of the Dynamic Process (1800) finally renders the basal unit of recapitulation as the dynamic process itself […]” Also, on why it is important to have a “physics of all” rather than search for fundamental building blocks of nature, see (for instance) ibid, pp. 32-35. Also his essay Everything: “If some candidate fundamentality is discovered, what makes it a candidate fundamental is that it serves as ground for its consequents and, if fundamental as such, then for all consequents. Any such candidate fundamental, once identified, is subject to the same problem Goethe’s discovery of the primal plant demonstrates. That is, that some X satisfying

fundamentality can be identified from among all X’s renders its candidacy for fundamentality moot. Should any candidate fundamentality satisfier, or principle of sufficient reason arise, it is question begging, since rather than answering the demand for a reason for what is and how it is, it causes the question to be reposed. This is not least because there are no nondisputable fundamentality candidates.”

398 This is another way the potencies are ungrounded – in “depth”.

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ihm ursprünglich bloß als Unterlage, als das, was nicht selber Ist, was bloß ist, um dem wahren Seyenden als Basis zu dienen. Aber doch ist es wieder ein Seyendes in sich selbst.³⁹⁹

This levelling is ubiquitous, and it is the reason Schelling uses the notations he uses in order to discuss the potencies. To continue with the themes of ungrounding, he suggests that the potencies can, in the chain of generation, be ungrounded down, by investigating the deeper levels of the potency B, and uncovering further coils of potentiation down below it. Such an ungroundedness is evidenced by Schelling’s mentioning of further levels, levels that are even higher or even lower than the ones he normally addresses, as in the following quote:

Wenn ich die Formel [der Potenzenlehre] hätte verwickelter machen wollen, so hätte ich ebenso gut auch B nach den verschiedenen Graden, in welchen es A gleich (=), also Seyendes wird, durch Potenzen bezeichnen können. – Auf folgende Art.

Der Grundausdruck der Natur ist A=B+, oder daß in ihr das erst herrschende B – das erst herrschende Nichtseyende – seyend werde. Auf der tiefsten Stufe ist das Seyende ganz ins Körperliche verloren. Hier hat also das Nichtseyende die größte Gewalt, und also dieß, d.h. die erste Potenz der Natur, hätten wir ausdrücken können durch A¹=B³. Wo B noch in der höchsten Potenz steht, da steht A nothwendig noch in der geringsten.⁴⁰⁰

The potencies can also be ungrounded in the direction of the consequents, and it is here that Schelling shows that he stops at A³ simply because after it, the cycle will repeat itself:

Wir haben nun in Bisherigen bis zu dem Punkt geführt, wo das anfängliche B in ihr bis zu A³ erhoben ist. Da aber dieses A³ relativ, immer noch ein Objektives ist – nämlich in Beziehung auf das Ganze –, so verhält es sich doch, obgleich das absolute A, in Bezug auf die Natur wieder als ein B in Bezug auf ein noch höheres A. Dieses noch höhere A kann nicht mehr innerhalb der Natur liegen, denn alles ist in deser vollendet, wenn die dritte Potenz erreicht ist. Also lieft es über und außer der Natur. Wir könnten, wenn wir die Potenzen wollten fortlaufen lassen, es durch A⁴ bezeichnen, weil wir schon ein A³ in der Natur hatten, allein, wir würden dadurch doch nichts anderes ausdrücken, als daß es in Ansehung der ganzen Natur A² sey.⁴⁰¹

This ungroundedly levelled structure the Potenzenlehre explains why Schelling uses two notations for symbolizing the potencies: one with -A, +A, ±A and the other with exponents: A, A², A³. Contrary to what is usually assumed in secondary literature where the two notations

399 SW VII, 437. English: “All non-being is merely relative, namely in relation to a higher being, but it has in itself still a being […] This is only applicable to that which we can the being in God: it is certainly non-being in relation to God, namely it relates to him originally only as substratum, as that which itself is not, which merely is, in order to serve as basis to the true existent. But it is again an existent in itself.”

See also Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, Ed. von Walter Erhardt, Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992, 35: “Wir sagten ja gleich anfangs: Das, was sein wird, ist nur in Bezug auf das später hervortretende Sein Nichts, aber nicht im Vergleich mit sich selbst Nichts. Schon das sein Könnende ist ja keineswegs Nichts; es ist nur das nicht actu Seiende; es ist das nicht außer sich, sondern das im höchsten Sinne in sich Seiende.” English:

“We said this immediately at the beginning: that which is to be is nothing only in relation to the later emerging being, but not in comparison with itself. Even the Can-being is not at all nothing, it is only not that-which-has-being actu, it is not a has-that-which-has-being outside of itself, but a has-that-which-has-being in-itself in the highest sense.

400 SW VII, 451. For English, see Stuttgart Seminars, p. 221.

401 SW VII, 455. For English, see Stuttgart Seminars, p. 222-223.

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are used interchangeably,⁴⁰² they are not quite interchangeable, and Schelling’s usage of two notations is not quite superfluous. The one expresses the relations within a certain potency cycle – this is the notation -A, +A, ±A, and the plus and minus signs are used in order to symbolise the “directions” of the potencies, i.e. the undefined fluid negativity of -A and the fixed determination of +A. The other notation captures the leveled and nested development of various processes with the help of exponents (A, A², A³). While Schelling does not spell out the difference between the two notations explicitly, he distinguishes between them, at least through his use of them. In the Darstelling des Naturprozesses, for instance, there is a rare occasion of Schelling differentiating between the two: he writes that there are instances when the denomination A² cannot be applied to +A, although it in principle could. +A can be called A², but not now, says Schelling.⁴⁰³ “Not now” in the Darstellung des Naturprozesses means

402 For instance, in Prädikation und Genesis Hogrebe uses the exponential notation from the Weltalter, because his book is restricted to dealing with the Weltalter. In Eins von Allem Buchheim uses only the +/- notation, also likely because Eins von Allem restricts itself to the period, in which Schelling uses predominantly (but not exclusively) that notation. The majority of secondary literature uses only one notation or none at all (using the expressions “first potency”, “second potency” and “third potency”), without asking why are there are two notations at all. The implicit consensus appears to be, apparently, that the two notations are

interchangeable. The few usages of formal expression of potencies in Mensch im Mythos are all examples of +/- notation (e.g. MiM, p. 125). Philosophische Religion is a text on the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie and uses the +/- notation, and so does Schrödter‘s Grundlangen der Lehre Schellings. Literature on the Weltalter (see Gent, W.: “Die Kategorien des Raumes und der Zeit bei F. W. J. Schelling.” In Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung 8/3 (1954) pp.353-377, [zit. Kategorien bei Schelling], Holz’s Spekulation und Faktizität, Schulz’s Vollendung des Deutschen Idealismus, Loer’s Absolute und Wirklichkeit, Sollberger’s Metaphysik und Invention use next to know notations in discussing the potencies. The question of the difference beteween the two notations has, in fact, as far as I know, been posed only once, by Marcela Garcia in her dissertation The Significance of Aristotle for Schelling‘s Late Philosophy. In order to explain how Garcia explains the difference and why I do not share her view, it is needed to look at how she treats the difference between what Schelling calls “pure thought” and what he calls “rational science”, both discussed in more detail in chapter IV. Here it suffices to say that pure thought is usually conceived of as thought about the structure of thought, while

“rational science” is a broad name for negative philosophy, tasked with discovering ontological principles. Garcia takes pure thought to be dealing with potencies as sheer abstractions, and rational science to be engaging with them at some level of actuality, because, she argues, Schelling took the notion of actuality from Aristotle, and has made it to mean something like “priority”, and principles – which the potencies are in rational science – do have priority. The two notations, Garcia then claims, are representative of that: the integer notation is reserved for potencies in “pure thought”, and the exponential one – for potencies within rational science. This

interpretation hinges on the meaning of actuality Schelling takes from Aristotle, and I, being no Aristotle specialist, cannot argue with Garcia on this, especially here. However, while her take is very interesting, I cannot help but be sceptical, because in the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie which she examines, Schelling barely uses the exponential notation, and one would think that he would, as large parts of that text are dedicated to “rational science”. In any case, see Significance of Aristotle p. 214ff.

403 “…[E]s [das ausschließende Seyn – DK] (als Subjekt von allem) statt alles (instar omnium) war, andererseits ist es als das ausschließlich Seyende im Widerspruch mit der höheren Potenz, die wir, weil sie in der Indifferenz das Seyende war, mit +A bezeichneten (inwiefern sie die Potenz der nächst höheren Ordnung ist, die erst aus dem Seyn gesetzte, welche also nicht unmittelbar das nicht Seyende und also noch weniger

unmittelbar das Seynkönnende ist, wie die erste, werden wir sie in der Folge, aber nicht jetzt, auch mit A² bezeichnen können, wobei nämlich A das seyn Könnende bedeutet […)]” - SW X 309. English: “[I]t [the extaining Being] (as subject of all) was in place of everything (instar omnium); on the other hand, as exclusively has-being it is also in contradiction with the higher potency which, because it was that which has being in indifference, we designated +A (insofar as it was the power of the next higher order that is first posited outside Being. It is therefore not immediately that-which-does-not-have-being and hence is even less immediately the Can-being, like the first, and we will in what follows, but not now, also be able to designate it A²[…)]”.

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“not when we are still dealing with the interactions within one coil, i.e., one triad of the Potenzenlehre”. Moreover, in comparing the way Schelling uses the two notations across the different texts (for instance, in Stuttgart Privatvorlesungen and the Weltalter, where the exponential notation is used vs. Darstellung des Naturprozesses and Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie where the positive/negative “integer” notation is being used) we notice that the way the two different notations are used serves different purposes. The positive/negative notation is used when Schelling is looking into how the potencies operate in nature as a process of productive becoming at the “basic” or fundamental level – which is why it is the notation used to discuss the construction of space and electromagnetism in Darstellung des Naturprozesses.⁴⁰⁴ Granted, given Schelling’s ungrounded approach to fundamentality, the single triad set of fundamentals -A, +A, ±A is only fundamental insofar as it is cut off from the rest of the process of becoming, from its antecedents and consequents.

Still, this first notation, whenever used, represents the basic level of potency functioning. The exponential notation, on the other hand, Schelling almost exclusively uses when there are several different levels at which becoming happens in the world; this is his project in the earlier texts (Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen and Weltalter), while in the later Darstellungen, he is searching for the principles of being and becoming. He thus uses the exponential notation to classify and construct a hierarchy of levels so that the gradual development of spirit or alternatively the gradual unfolding of God could be discussed as a sequence of stages. The Potenzenlehre hierarchy is nevertheless continuous: Schelling has no intention to posit a radical break between the different levels; the higher is never something outwardly transcendent, but it is rather precisely out of the lower that it emerges.⁴⁰⁵

The existence of two notations, then, is not a private idiosyncrasy in Schelling’s work, but a means to denote at least quasi-formally the fractality of the Potenzenlehre. The most likely deducible relationship between the two notations is this: each level of the A, A² and A³ is itself formed of triads,⁴⁰⁶ and the two different notations are introduced to communicate this difference, namely that between the level provisionally taken as basic and the level which can be further decomposed and functionally analysed with respect to the different further levels of potencies that make it up. Numerous phenomena or processes can be taken as decomposable levels and analysed functionally in terms of gradual potency activity. This is why, at different

404 See e.g. SW X 350-365, SW VII 446-455 or the entire Allgemeine Deduktion des Dynamischen Prozessen oder der Kategorien der Physik in SW IV.

405 As my colleague Jesper Lundsfryd Rasmussen wonderfully put it, there are multiple doctrines, or rather multiple levels of the same doctrine identifiable through notation, such that exponentials are used for cosmogony or cosmology, while the +/- or integral notation is used for ontology.

406 Sometimes it looks indeed as if the two notations were indeed interchangeable. See passage from SW XI, 391 in ft. 393 in this work.