Nestedness and Predication

As a result of the examination of the third potency ±A, we have established that ±A has the function of an interim mediator between -A and +A that allows those two lower potencies to act. Moreover, we have discussed the ungroundedness of the potency, and the capability of the highest link in one loop of natural process become the lower stepping stone for another loop.

407 See SW VII, 449: “A² = Aether”; 450: “Bis jetzt behauptete die Schwerkraft noch ihre Substantialität im Gegensatz gegen das Licht (A²).” and 456-7: “Nur im Menschen wird endlich das absolute A², das lang gesuchte, lang ersehnte, emporgehoben aus dem B, das an sich oder suâ naturâ Seyende aus dem Nichtseyenden. Das sua natura Seyende ist Geist, und das aus dem Nichtseyenden Erhobene, insofern also Gewordene, aber doch natura sua Seyende ist endlicher Geist.” For English, see Stuttgart Seminars, p. 219 and pp. 223-224.

408 SW X, 382: “Wie das B das Ungeistige ist, A² das dem Ungeistigen Entgegengesetzte, es Negirende und dadurch den Geist Vermittelnde, so ist A³ der Geist selbst […]” English: “Just as B is the unspiritual and A² that which is opposed to the unspiritual, which negates it and thus mediates spirit, A³ is spirit itself.”

409 SW IV 153-4: “In dem Satz A=A ist die Identität selbst als Substanz, A und A aber als die bloßen Accidenzen (Formen des Seyns) dieser Substanz gesetzt. - Die Substanz ist daher (§. 6) unabhängig von den Accidenzen. Die Substanz in der Materie ist = (A = B), die Accidenzen sind A und B als Potenzen dieses Identischen (§. 64, Erklärung 1) gedacht. A = B ist daher ursprünglich und unabhängig von A sowohl als B, die letztern als Potenzen gedacht, denn es ist das primum existens (§. 51, Zusatz).” English: “In the proposition A=A identity itself is substance, while A and A are posited as sheer accidents (forms of being) of this substance. – Substance is hence (§. 6) independent of the accidents. The substance in matter is = (A = B), the accidents are A and B and thought as potencies of this identical unit (§. 64, Erklärung 1). A=B is thus originary and independent of A and of B, both of which are thought of potencies, for the former is primum existens (§. 51, Zusatz).”

410 See e.g. SW IV 133.

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This has clear implications for predication. First, in the process of predication, the resulting statement has the form of “x is y”. The statement – or rather, its form – plays the role of the mediator between the two potencies that produce it. The logic of the consequent determining the antecedent as to what it is an antecedent of is operative here as well, and is possibly even stronger in this instance: the end form “x is y” that the resulting statement takes enables the act of predication to take place. There is a subject and an object that are to be joined with a copula in a certain way – this is the way our mind operates, and it is only in the foreground of the operations of our mind that things could be encoded as subjects and objects, i.e. as predicative potencies -A and +A. The prospect and scheme of the resulting ±A, along with the fact that a ±A will indeed be formed, effectively determine the process of its formation.

Second, just as with anything else that fulfills the form of potency ±A, a statement produced in one instance of predication can and does normally end up serving as matter or major determining factor for another statement of predication. Even taken intuitively, judgments function just like potencies – in chains, with the conclusion of one argument playing the role of the premise for another. Here we have to remind ourselves, however, of the evident fact that the Potenzenlehre operates on different levels not only in the simple sense of being a continuous grounding chain, but that it also potentiates. At the level of the productive chain that constantly re-produces instances of the same (albeit new ones), the roles -A and +A are also played by instances of the same; i.e., in case of making judgments, the transcendental object = X is the matter of predication in every case, and the dual potency of world/mind plays the role of +A, invariably. At this level, it is not that the judgment which here functions as ±A is turned into matter for something else in the same way in which the transcendental object = X is the matter for a statement at the level of transcendental structures. It is rather that the resulting predicative statement ±A becomes matter for the statements that follow it by constituting B, since there is an intimate link between -A/B and ±A:⁴¹¹ it would seem that whenever the subject of Schelling’s discussion is the way a certain element of the productive process becomes matter for the other, i.e., loses the function it has otherwise in order to produce something new, he refers to it as matter, and sometimes as B. If Schelling is discussing a provisional terminal point and individuality, he refers to the potency in question as ±A – and this is precisely because ±A can become the lowest potency in another situation, i.e., become simultaneously -A and B. This, while admittedly somewhat confusing,

411 I have also previously said that it was the potency B which gives itself up for future determination. In this section ±A does the same thing. Does this mean that Schelling is inconsistently giving two different names to the same thing? I would venture to answer with a no, mostly because the potencies are functions and not things. As we have seen with ±A, which is the medium to the activity of both –A and +A, all three potencies are very tightly related. ±A is also very tightly related to B, and since it seems that Schelling considers that ±A can become the lowest potency in a new loop of the chain of natural process, he thinks it could become both –A and B.

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nevertheless illuminates some of the passages from the Darstellung des Naturprozesses where a link more intimate than expected between B and ±A is discussed:

Das zweite, ± A, ist also so weit ganz von dem Seyn ausgeschlossen, das rein Negirte, bloß das nicht Seyende, ohne das seyn Könnende zu seyn. Denn nachdem die Sphäre des Seyns ganz eingenommen von dem B, hat jenes keine Möglichkeit zu seyn, als inwiefern ihm B Antheil an dem Seyn verstattet, dieser Antheil an dem Seyn könnte ihm nur so weit zukommen, als ihm zugelassen wäre, B wieder in -A umzuwenden, B seinerseits wieder zu negiren; aber zunächst ist es von B ganz und absolut ausgeschlossen, das ihm gar keinen Zugang verstattet.⁴¹²

Schelling here claims that B assimilates the sphere of Being entirely; this can be read as saying that the entirety of ±A becomes B, which is then transformed back to -A to become the matter of yet another becoming process. Expressed simply: ±A feeds back into the process of predication by, as it were, being what it is: it determines what has already been said of the world and therefore rules out certain things which could not be said of the world anymore. At another level, the one at which the potencies undergo a qualitative change, i.e., potentiate themselves, ±A also feeds back into the potency chains of production, but it has one additional way to do so. At this level, the statements can become the objects of judgment for other statements: they become those bits of the world which act in determining factors in the first movement of predication. Both levels could well be happening at once: to return to our kitten example, the chain of producing kittens at some level reproduces more of roughly the same, and at another level, the domestic cat species could well serve as a lower stage for the production of another felid species, one that would evolve from it. To sum up – the ±A, its form “x is y”, acts as mediator between the two potencies -A and +A, and once this instance of predication “x is y” is produced, then it becomes yet another object in the world, determining – either as what has simply already been said or as the next object of investigation, which this time ascends to a meta-level – further instances of predication. Markus Gabriel can help us shed light on the potency scheme as applied to predication in particular; he proposes a tripartite structure of the production of predicative statements, as opposed to Hogrebe, who proposed a tripartite scheme of merely the statement itself. Gabriel’s tripartite structure is temporal, consisting of logical past, logical present and logical future, where the logical past are the truth conditions of a statement, pre-existing it, the logical present is being or the state

412 SW X, 309, “The second, ± A, is thus so far fully extained from being, the purely negated, the merely non-existent, without being what can be. For after the sphere of being has been entirely capture by B, this being has no possibility to be except insofar as B returns to it a portion of being, and this portion of being could only be granted to it if it were allowed to it to return B into -A again and in turn negate B; but first it is fully and absolutely excluded from B, which gives it no access at all. See also the odd passage in the Stuttgarter Privatvorlesungen (SW VII 451): “Was das A³ ist? Antwort, es ist die innerste Substanz des B selber, das ja implicite alle Potenzen in sich enthält. Die Potenzen des A drücken nichts anderes aus als die successive Erhebung des Nichtseyenden = B in das Seyende oder das A. Also A³ in der Natur drückt nichts anderes aus als das Höchste aus dem Nichtseyenden emporgehobene Seyende - also das Innerste der Natur.” For English, see Stuttgart Seminars, p. 220.

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of affairs, or determinacy, and the logical future is the statement itself.⁴¹³ While Gabriel’s structure is drawn from the Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, it is not hard to see how something like it would apply in this case – what he calls “logical past” of the statement would be its “matter”, which in this case would be its truth-conditions mediated by the general structure of predication provided by the transcendental structures. The “logical present” would be how things are, the determinate state of affairs determining the statement, and the “logical future” would be the result of putting the statement together.

***

In the course of this chapter, we have discussed the operations of the Potenzenlehre’s three potencies, largely as how they have been discussed in Schelling’s late Darstellung des Naturprozesses, and framing them into the context of predication. In this context, the dual potency -A/B is the matter of predication, correlated with Kant’s transcendental object=X. It is the initial formlessness, the “anything whatsoever”, which gets determined, and then, once one coil, one cycle of the potencies is completed, becomes the completely passive matter for the next cycle. +A is the force actively determining both the subject of predication and the transcendental object – it is also dual, since it is a role and a function which two different

“actors” perform at different stages of the process: the world/thing in-itself and the activity of the transcendental subject. ±A is then the mediator between -A and +A that results in a finite and individual, albeit interim⁴¹⁴ thing and assumes the role of a lower potency at a higher level of potency production, and so ungroundedly on and on as long as the productive natural process continues. Throughout this chapter, I have tried to adhere strictly to using the potencies as functions and speaking about them in a functional register. This raises a concern:

insofar as the potencies are treated as roles which different processes can fulfill, we now have to deal with the question of whether the Potenzenlehre is merely an abstract scheme and – more generally – what abstraction means in this line of thinking. The worry which rises at this point is that the Potenzenlehre cannot be an ontoepistemology, because the potencies are merely ideal projections, principles devoid of any metaphysical import. The next chapter will be devoted to answering this above question and staving off the above worry.

413 See on this Aarhus III, pp. 15-16 and 19-21, as well Antwort auf der Grundfrage. I am not going to comment on the temporality of this scheme as Gabriel himself sadly has not yet elaborated on that topic.

414 Which in Schelling’s chains of becoming is nothing more and nothing less than a stopped sequence:

“The particularity of the particular would accordingly be the partial arrest of a series.” – Everything, p. 161.

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A Thousand Cuts

The reading of the Potenzenlehre presented in the previous chapter – namely that the potecies are not objects or kinds of object, but functions – raises the question of their ontological status.

When roles, functions or placeholders are discussed, it can appear as if those roles were merely abstractions, i.e. methods to isolate various entities or activities from natural process, as well as to generalise and categorise them. There is thus, at least at a first glance, evidence for the view that the potencies for Schelling are merely abstractions – in the Darstellung des Naturprozesses Schelling writes of the potencies, at least at the beginning of the exposition, that they are merely in the idea – “nur in der Idee” or “nur unbedingt in der Idee”.⁴¹⁵ In Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie he also writes, concerning ±A, seemingly pointing out even its less-than-actual character:

Aber das Ganze, das sich im Gedanken mit Nothwendigkeit erzeugte, dieses wird wohl das Seyende seyn? Ja, aber im bloßen Entwurf, nur in der Idee, nicht wirklich. Wie jedes einzelne Element das Seyende nur seyn kann, so ist das Ganze zwar das Seyende, aber das Seyende, das ebenfalls nicht Ist, sondern nur seyn kann. Es ist die Figur des Seyenden, nicht Es selbst, der Stoff der wirklichen Idee, nicht sie selbst, sie wirklich, wie Aristoteles von der Dynamis im Allgemeinen sagt: sie sey nur der Stoff des Allgemeinen. Zur Wirklichkeit wird es erst dann erhoben, wenn Eines oder Etwas Ist, das diese Möglichkeiten ist, die bis jetzt bloß in Gedanken reine Noemata sind. Dieses aber, was diese Möglichkeiten Ist, kann begreiflicherweise nicht selbst wieder eine Möglichkeit seyn.⁴¹⁶

Once again the ±A is “in der Idee, nicht wirklich”. Furthermore, the Potenzenlehre is a schema – is it not, just like other schemata and mathematical models, to be applied only cautiously to reality, a mere abstraction? Should the Potenzenlehre be considered as merely instrumental – or worse, as an example of negative philosophy, the object of Schelling’s critique, that which destroys nature and drives our thought into the space of empty concepts? We must resolve these questions and clarify the ontological status of the potencies if we want to argue that we can use the potencies to understand both natural process and predication as a generation and

415 SW X, 305-306.

416 SW XI, 313. English: “But as to the whole, which produces itself in thoughts with necessity, will this indeed be that which has being? Yes, but in mere outline, only in the idea, not actually. Just as every individual element of that which has being only can be, so the whole is that which has being, but one that likewise Is not, but merely can be. It is the figure of that which has being, not It itself; the matter of actual idea, not the idea itself; actual, as Aristotle speaks of the Dynamis in general: it is merely the matter of the general. It is only then lifted to actuality when One or Something Is that is these possibilities, which until now have been pure noemata in thought.”

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actualisation, similar to this natural process and corresponding to the world. This chapter will seek to accomplish this task.

I Nature Morte

It would seem that nature is destructible in a multitude of ways. Only one of these ways, however, is a destruction of nature, as opposed to that of natural products. The systematic undermining of our precarious environmental balance, loss of animal and plant species, genetic modification, robotics – all those at their best (or maybe worst) only destroy a part of nature. Nothing short of the comically depraved plans of cinema villains who seek and have means to literally destroy everything that exists, to return All – not just every single thing, but the All, including the very processes of production/annihilation and the forces behind them – into the void could possibly be said to annihilate nature. Even then, probably not quite. This position is consequent on Schelling’s view of nature as unconditioned presented above. This nature cannot be annihilated – i.e. its functioning cannot be stopped – simply with and through the actions of human animals forming a part of it. Only a total stoppage of this activity could be nature’s undoing. Speaking very generally, nature for Schelling is not an endlessly extended set of things, as it was for Kant, but a productive force, operating in potencies.

Already, in the Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie, Schelling writes that philosophy asks for an unconditioned in nature, and that nature is in no way to be understood as an object: an objectifying idea of nature would make it into a thing (e.g. into an “Inbegriff alles Seyns”⁴¹⁷). Instead, philosophy has to conceive of nature only as active, as pure productivity – “denn philosophiren läßt sich über keinen Gegenstand, der nicht in Thätigkeit zu versetzen ist”.⁴¹⁸ Were nature completely inactive, a Naturphilosophie would have been impossible.⁴¹⁹ Schelling stands by this conviction overall in his writing, so that even in his very late Darstellung des Naturprozesses nature is defined as the activity of the three moments of being – the potencies:

Im Anfang dieser ganzen Entwicklung, liessen wir die Idee auseinander treten in ihre Momente, damit die Wiederkehr in die Einheit sich verwirkliche. Das Auseinandergehen und successiv Wiedereinswerden dieser Momente ist die Natur.

Die Wiederherstellung der Einheit ist ihre Ende und Zweck der Natur.⁴²⁰

417 SW III, 13 – If nature were presented as a mere sum (Inbegriff) of what appears to us, it would be

“daher unmöglich, die Natur als ein Unbedingtes anzusehen” – thus impossible to conceive of it as an unconditioned.

418 Ibid. For English, First Outline, 14: “We know Nature only as active—for it is impossible to philosophize about any subject which cannot be engaged in activity.”

419 Compare Blamauer, M.: Subjektivität und ihr Platz in der Natur. Untersuchung zu Schellings Versuch einer naturphilosophischen Grundlegung des Bewusstseins, Stuttgart: 2006, pp. 112-117, [cited as Subjektivität und ihr Platz].

420 SW X, 389. English: “At the beginning of this entire development, we let the idea break apart into its moments so that the return to the unity actualises. The separation and successive re-unification of these moments is nature. The restoration of the unity is its end and the goal of nature.”

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Such a nature cannot be annihilated, i.e. forced to terminate its function, exclusively through the activities of human creatures, which are ultimately parts of this nature. Only the complete halting of activity could be the undoing of this nature. In his work, Schelling also gives us hints as to the potential perpetrator of the undoing: abstraction. Schelling’s famous Freiheitsschrift diagnosis “Die ganze neu-europäische Philosophie seit ihrem Beginn (durch Descartes) hat diesen gemeinschaftlichen Mangel, daß die Natur für sie nicht vorhanden ist, und daß es ihr am lebendigen Grunde fehlt”⁴²¹ blames modern European philosophy for a very specific error – an attempt to think nature out of relevance, even out of existence through abstraction, insisting:

Der Idealismus, wenn er nicht einen lebendigen Realismus zur Basis erhält, wird ein ebenso leeres und abgezogenes System, als das Leibnizische, Spinozische, oder irgend ein anderes dogmatisches. […] Idealismus ist Seele der Philosophie;

Realismus ihr Leib; nur beide zusammen machen ein lebendiges Ganzes aus. Nie kann der letzte das Princip hergeben, aber er muß Grund und Mittel seyn, worin jener sich verwirklicht, Fleisch und Blut annimmt. Fehlt einer Philosophie dieses lebendige Fundament, welches gewöhnlich ein Zeichen ist, daß auch das ideelle Princip in ihr ursprünglich nur schwach wirksam war: so verliert sie sich in jene Systeme, deren abgezogene Begriffe von Aseität, Modificationen u.s.w. mit der Lebenskraft und Fülle der Wirklichkeit in dem schneidendsten Contrast stehen.

Wo aber das ideelle Princip wirklich in hohem Maße kräftig wirkt, aber die versöhnende und vermittelnde Basis nicht finden kann, da erzeugt es einen trüben und wilden Enthusiasmus, der in Selbstzerfleischung, oder, wie bei den Priestern der phrygischen Göttin, in Selbstentmannung ausbricht, welche in der Philosophie durch das Aufgeben von Vernunft und Wissenschaft vollbracht wird.⁴²²

This real principle Schelling addresses in the above quote, one which is to serve as the vital ground of philosophy, is nature. The abstraction here is separating nature from philosophy, from thinking, from what is mistakenly taken to be distinctly and exclusively human.

Schelling, after all, defines abstraction in the System des Transzendentalen Idealismus as follows: “Jenes Absondern des Handelns vom Produzierten heißt im gewöhnlichen

421 SW VII, 356 or, for English PI, p. 26. Abstraction in particular is here the culprit and the murder weapon here – the diagnosis passage from the Freiheitsschrift accuses realisms and idealisms that operate according to the assumption that the real and the ideal principles are separate, of precisely being too lifelessly abstract as long as the real (i.e., Nature) is not taken as the foundation of the ideal.

422 Ibid. For English see PI, p. 26: “Idealism, if it does not have as its basis a living realism, becomes just as empty and abstract a system as that of Leibniz, Spinoza, or any other dogmatist. […] Idealism is the soul of philosophy; realism is the body; only both together can constitute a living whole. The latter can never provide the principle but must be the ground and medium in which the former makes itself real and takes on flesh and blood. If a philosophy is lacking this living foundation, which is commonly a sign that the ideal principle was originally only weakly at work within it, then it loses itself in those systems whose abstract concepts of aseity, modifications, and so forth, stand in the sharpest contrast with the living force and richness of reality. Where, however, the ideal principle is actually active to a great degree but cannot find a reconciling and mediating basis, it generates a bleak and wild enthusiasm that breaks out into self-mutilation or, like the priests of the Phrygian goddess, self-castration which is achieved in philosophy through the renunciation of reason and science.”