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The following section of this chapter will continue with this approach to first look at the role of +A in the general abstract structure of potencies (“in the idea”,³³³ as Schelling puts it) and second, apply the scheme to the fairly specific domain of transcendental structures operative in predication. In the course of this investigation, a peculiar inversion within the chain of potencies that makes the potency-subject into a potency-object and vice versa and which Schelling calls “Universio” will also be looked into. I will argue that the Universio is indeed a relative inversion within the series of the potencies, and that this, if taken merely in relationship to the question of predication, does not mean anything more (or less) than the mutual conditioning of mind, which sets conceptual determination unto any pre-conceptual

“given” and world, which after all affects the mind perceiving it.

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have being, but is pure fluidity and becoming, which is nevertheless “pulled” towards being by receiving an “imprint” of that which is fixed pure being. However, this similarity holds only if we are comparing the two abstract schemes (as Schelling puts it, “in the Idea”³³⁹) without looking at the mode of operations of the two schemes – or to be more precise, of the Schellingian scheme, as its Platonic counterpart, in addition to being simply not the focus of the investigation here, is never expanded upon as a scheme of becoming per se, beyond the very figurative presentation given in the Timaeus discussed in the previous section. The previous section has also argued that in the Schellingian scheme of potencies, the matter -A is not, for every case of becoming, some “scoop” of formless stuff taken from the same bottomless reserve of pure Can. Rather, when it comes to the analysis of the potencies in the production of definite things, we discover that the role of -A can be played by different objects – anything which can be destroyed as what it is in order to generate something other than itself (which translates into anything whatsoever) can assume the function of -A. To present this in a simplified way – at a certain crude level, the zygotes a pregnant cat carries are literally matter for kittens, because over the process of the cat’s pregnancy, they are going to stop being merely zygotes and become full-fledged small furry mammals – they are the kittens’ matter, and functionally they are -A. Following this logic, namely that potencies are functional roles which can be fulfilled by different things and their powers – Schelling’s scheme of peras and apeiron is simply that of something, which does not even have to be a thing, but could be a locus of productivity, playing the role of something to be put under determination, while something else is playing the role of the determining factor. To continue with the crude feline example, the kittens’ DNA would be the major determining factor. Therefore, an identification of +A with the Idea is problematic – it would seem that Schelling and Plato, when dealing with their accounts of natural becoming, operate at different levels of abstraction at the very least.³⁴⁰

However, this fairly simple relation between the determining and the determined factors is not all there is to the interaction between -A and +A. If it merely were the case that determination functioned straightforwardly in one direction with +A determining -A entirely without the latter’s functional “resistance” and consequently at least some degree of mutual determination, then the potential for creating novelty in a certain determination operation would be quickly exhausted by this one-sidedness: the determining potencies of +A would be completely exhausted in the product of the determination process (±A) producing, in effect, a product that is not novel, but merely another instance of +A. The cycle would have been merely capable of

339 SW XI, 305.

340 In other words: in Plato, the apeiron and peras can be only matter and the Idea. In Schelling, different entities or activities can play the roles of -A und +A.

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endlessly repeating itself, or even worse – be static and nothing but. The whole point of the Potenzenlehre, however, is to explain, at multiple levels, the production of novelty – that is what potentiation is in the first place. Thus we can only conclude that this interaction between the two potencies is not unidirectional. Confirming, Schelling proposes a mechanism for a solution, which unfortunately turns to be one of the most unclear and, apparently, deceivingly complex spots of the Potenzenlehre – the Universio.³⁴¹ It is to this mechanism that I now turn.

If -A and +A are the functional elements of the potentiation process and ±A is the tentative endpoint, the Universio is a “fulcrum” of the process – the point at which a chaining series of determinations, with each consequent grounded in the antecedent, becomes possible, because -A and +A are inverted due to co-determination.³⁴² This simple explanation is behind Schelling’s following cryptic passage:

Betrachten wir den hier geforderten oder als möglich gezeigten Vorgang im Allgemeinen, so erscheint er als ein Vorgang der Umkehrung und zwar einer Umkehrung des Einen, des vorwirklichen Seyenden, des Prototyps aller Existenz, indem, was in diesem das Subjekt ist, -A zum Objekt, was Objekt ist (+A) zum Subjekt wird. Dieser Vorgang kann daher die Universio, genannt werden, das unmittelbare Resultat des Vorgangs ist das umgekehrte Eine – Unum versum, also Universum.³⁴³

It is no wonder the passage is cryptic, for the Universio is difficult to explain without attaching inaccurate terms to it. It is to be described purely functionally, just like the potencies, although Schelling identifies it with the universe, i.e. with an entity. Generally speaking, it is a movement which occurs to the operative function +A and interchanges the functions of the two potencies. The “One” Schelling speaks about is nothing other than the entire process of potentiation.³⁴⁴ It is called the “pre-actually existent” [“vorwirkliche Seyende”] and the

341 For a very clear presentation of the concept of the Universio, see Metaphysik und Invention, p. 243.

342 On this point compare Unendliche Mangel, pp.192-193 and 213-215.

343 SW X, 311, English: “If we consider the procedure postulated or shown as possible here, it appears as a procedure of inversion, and at that an inversion of the One, of the pre-actual existent, of the prototype of all existence, in that what in this subject is -A turns to object and what is object (+A) to subject. This procedure can thus be called Universio, and the immediate result of the procedure is the inverted One – Unum Versum, thus Universe.” See also 309-310: “Zu dem Ende aber müßte es selbst auf die Stellung verzichten, die es bis jetzt noch eingenommen, es müßte die Stelle des Seynkönnenden oder Subjekts, an der es sich noch behauptet, aufgeben, um sie dem +A einzuräumen, es selbst müßte gegen +A vielmehr Objekt (ihm gegenständlich) werden, sich ihm als Materie seiner Verwirklichung unterordnen, sich gegen +A materialisieren […]”. English: “To this end, however, it must have first relinquished the stance which it has until now taken, it must have given up the place of the Can-Be or the subject to which it still holds itself, in order to accommodate +A, it must have become object to +A (opposed to it), subordinate itself as matter for +A’s actualisation, materialise itself against +A”.

344 Schelling writes what the “One” is at different point in his work. It is the grounding existing unity which is subdivided into the three potencies; and then it becomes the entirety of the tripartite potecy series: “Nun aber ist es Zeit, auf das Seyende zurückzusehen und auf die Elemente desselben, wie diese sich verhalten, nachdem Eines Ist das sie ist. Also, diese Unterschiede sind nun seine Unterschiede, dieses bestimmten Einen, das in ihnen Anfang, Mittel und Ende seiner selbst, aus sich selbst (in seinem an-sich-Seyn), durch sich (als das außer-sich-Seyende), in sich (das ewige bei-sich-Seyn) gehend. Das bei-sich-Seyn ist das Mittlere vom an sich und und außer sich seyenden, bei sich ist nur was auch außer sich ist. Nicht das Subjekt, nicht das Objekt, nicht das Objekt Ist, sondern das bestimmte Eine ist das Subjekt, ist das Objekt, und ist das

Subjekt-Objekt[...]” (SW XI, 317) English: “However it is now time to look back at what is being and to its elements, how

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“prototype of all existence” [“Prototyp aller Existenz”] not because it is some sort of model like the one Plato’s demiurge uses to create the universe in the Timaeus, but merely because it is the sequence of stages that nature follows in order to develop – existing “pre-actually”, potentially, like a law of nature which does not pre-exist nature itself, but is the way the

“puzzle pieces” fall when nature actualizes. It is also the schematic in accordance with which our faculties operate in order to understand nature, so it is the “prototype” in the sense that every construction we have of nature and natural products necessarily – according to Schelling – unfolds like the One does, and harbours this inversion at its middle. The inverted progression of the potencies is the world, and the obverse of the One is the All.³⁴⁵ The inversion is nevertheless purely relative, and Schelling confirms it:

[…D]iese ganze Umwendung in das Objekt bloß relativ zu nehmen ist; denn in sich bleibt das, was gegen +A auf seine Innerlichkeit verzichtet, in sich bleibt es immer Subjekt, nur relativ gegen +A macht es sich äußerlich und zum Objekt, nämlich zum Gegenstand der Ueberwindung durch +A; es macht sich hiermit der ausgeschlossenen Potentia non existendi nur erst zugänglich, überwindlich; aber es ist noch keineswegs überwunden, es ist in sich noch, was es zuvor war, und nur gegen die höhere passiv und in der Bereitheit, Modifikationen von ihm anzunehmen.³⁴⁶

To paraphrase Schelling here: despite the inversion, the role of -A is still to stop being what it is and “absorb” determinations from +A; the role of +A is still to exert these determinations.

-A still functions as a subject for these determinations, i.e., it is still antecedent to +A in the sense that +A needs it to fulfill its function – let us call this “functional antecedence” in order to distinguish it from causal antecedence. The point behind the inversion of the potency scheme is, in light of those considerations, clear enough. However, the above passages leave the reader wondering how the inversion happens and what exactly Schelling means when he insists that it is in the movement of the Universio that the universe – our universe, with planets

they behave, after One Is, which is them. Thus, these differences are now its differences, the differences of the determined One, its own in their beginning, middle and end, going out of itself (in its being-in-itself), though itself (as what is being-outside-itself), and in itself (eternal being-next-to-itself). Being-next-to-itself is intermediary being between in and outside itself; something is next to itself just when it is also outside itself.

Neither the subject, the object, nor the subject-object is, but rather the determinate One is the subject, is the object, and is the subject-object[...]” The potencies culminate at an eschatological end, and it seems that at this end, the One is no more the tripartite unity, but once again a One in full sense of the world. I will explore this topic further in chapter V.

345 The obverse of the One is not only the All, but also universality – it enters into the picture exactly at the moment oft he inversion, because it is at that moment that our predication machinery acquires the possibility to use univeresals, as it determines the object of an instance of predication. More about this in what follows and in chapter VI.

346 SW X, 310. English: “[...T]his entire inversion into the object is to be taken merely relatively; for it remains in itself that which renounces its inner character against +A, in itself it always remains subject and only relative to +A does it make itself external and Object, namely object of overcoming through +A. It makes itself thus only accessible to the extained Potentia non existendi; in itself it is still what it was before, and only passive against the higher, and in its readiness to accept modifications from it.

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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.