Schelling

That matter can be both incorporeal and imperceptible and the root of materiality and embodiment can seem like a paradox. However, it is time to return to Schelling’s Potenzenlehre – more specifically, to the Darstellung des Naturprozesses, the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie and to a lesser extent the Allgemeine Deduktion des dynamischen Prozesses in order to shed light on both the Potenzenlehre and this question of materiality. As the following analysis will show, Plato and Schelling illuminate each other in numerous interesting ways.

I would like to leap straight back into the thick of Schelling’s Potenzlehre. Ever since the Outline of a System for a Philosophy of Nature, Schelling has been inclined to look at nature

281 PoNaS, p. 34.

282 Without at that becoming an Aristotelian hypokeimenon, as the Aristotelian hypokeimenon is a merely logical substrate, and is not primary (see PoNaS pp. 30-38).

283 One can claim here, that this discussion of matter makes no sense. What does it really mea nto say that matter in Plato’s theoretical framework is an Eidos? I am here primarily concerned with Schelling, so it would be outside the scope of this text to answer this objection extensively or to undertake an investigation into the meaning oft he word “Eidos“ in Plato, hence I cannot examine the consequences of the claim that matter is an Eidos for Plato’s doctrine. Nevertheless, I can point to a possible answer within Plato’s own corpus: the Phaedo demonstrates, that there is only one cause of both being and becoming, namely the idea. All ideas are a sort of attractor, towards which things become – that is what it means to be a model in Plato’s philosophy.

Matter being an Eidos would then mean that it is the principle of generation of material things. To quote Plato:

“I cannot understand these other ingenious theories of causation. If someone tells me that the reason why a given object is beautiful is that it has a gorgeous colour or shape or any other such attribute, I disregard all these other explanations – I find them all confusing – and I cling simply and straightforwardly, naively perhaps, to the explanation that the one thing that makes that object beautiful is the presence in it or association with it (in whatever way the relation comes about) of that other Beauty. I do not go so far as to insist upon the precise detail; only upon the fact that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful. This, I feel, is the safest answer for me or for anyone else to give, and I believe that while I hold fast to this I cannot fall; it is safe for me or for anyone else to answer that it is by Beauty that beautiful things are beautiful.” - Plato, Phaedo 100d-e.

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as composed of actants, or proto-potencies.²⁸⁴ The logic behind this is simple: if a philosophical investigation of nature is to look at the unconditioned in nature, then it inevitably realizes that bodies cannot be unconditioned, because the unconditioned cannot be found in any individual thing. The unconditioned, then, is nature’s incessant activity, and bodies are therefore secondary to primary actants that make them up. With the development of Schellingian philosophy, the concept of simple actant gets transformed into that of potency – a principle which makes up all natural phenomena – extension, magnetism, electricity, gravity, etc.

Let us begin with constructing a crude provisional sketch of the theory of potencies Schelling builds up throughout his work. This sketch will later be refined as I explore the second and third potencies and uncover more and more additional nuance. For now, however: the first potency, the starting point for the Potenzlehre is sheer ability, sheer Can. It is posited with a privation, the privation of a kind of being: it is not nothing, so not not A tout court, but not +A. Hence, it is -A.²⁸⁵ It lies at the beginning because, according to Schelling, thought cannot already begin with something determinate. To quote Thomas Buchheim: “[f]inge das Denken nicht in der steretischen Version von Bestimmung an, sondern mit irgendeiner Bestimmung selbst, so gäbe es kein Denken.”²⁸⁶ In the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie the function of -A is defined as follows:

[D]as Können als Schranke des Seyns gesetzt war, als das aus aller Schranke Getretene, an sich Grenz- und Bestimmungslose, also ganz gleich dem pythagorischen und platonischen Unendlichen (ἄπειρον), das freilich in der Erscheinung nicht anzutreffen; den alles Seyn, das in dieser sich findet, ist schon wieder ein in Schranken gefaßtes und begriffliches; indeß enthält die Erscheinung selbst Anzeichen, daß allem Seyn ein an sich schrankenloses, der Form und Regel widerstrebendes zu Grunde liegt. Dieses seiner selbst ohnmächtige, also für sich eigentlich nicht seyn könnende Seyn wird dennoch der Grund und Anfang seyn alles Werdens; und in aristotelischer Ausdrucksweise die erste, nämlich material Ursache alles Entstehenden.²⁸⁷

284 SW III 11: “Welcher Gegenstand Objekt der Philosophie seyn soll, derselbe muß auch als schlechthin unbedingt angesehen werden. Es fragt sich, inwiefern der Natur Unbedingtheit könne zugeschrieben werden.

[…] Erster Satz. Das Unbedingte kann überhaupt nicht in irgend einem einzelnen Ding, noch in irgend etwas gesucht werden, von dem man sagen kann, daß es ist. Denn was ist, nimmt nur an dem Seyn Theil, und ist nur eine einzelne Form oder Art des Seyns. - Umgekehrt kann man vom Unbedingten niemals sagen, daß es ist. Denn es ist das Seyn selbst, das in keinem endlichen Produkte sich ganz darstellt, und wovon alles Einzelne nur gleichsam ein besonderer Ausdruck ist.” For English, see First Outline, 77.

285 See the Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie, SW XI, 288 and the long discussion of the

distinction between μὴ ό̓v (what exists non-actually) and οὐκ ό̓v (what actually does not exist) in the Darstellung des Philosophischen Empirismus – SW X, 282-284.

286 EvA, pp. 119. English: “if thought did not begin in the steretic version of determination, but with some determination itself, there would have been no thought.”

287 SW XI 388. English: “The can-being is posited as the limit of being, as that which has stepped beyond all bounds, in itself devoid of border and definition, thus quite the same as the Pythagorean and Platonic indefinite (ἄπειρον), which is certainly not to come up in appearance, for all being found in appearance is already captured in bounds and conceptual. In this, appearance itself contains evidence that all being has as its

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This, then, is Schellingian matter: unlimited, undefined, nothing in particular: the apeiron, and also the receptacle. It is the dark principle at the ground of creation, untouched by the light of reason. Is this all there is to Schelling’s matter, though? Quite predictably, it turns out not. Just as the unlimited is offset by the limit introduced into it – which is how “real being” is generated in Plato’s Philebus²⁸⁸ – the pure Can, -A, is offset by +A, “that which simply has being [das rein Seyende”].²⁸⁹ -A wills +A, which serves as an attractor, and thus as a de-terminator.²⁹⁰ The -A determined by the +A therefore produces ±A as a result – real being, which is simultaneously that which is, and that which has the capacity to be, much like the Platonic apeiron into which peras is introduced produces real being.²⁹¹ In this process, however, the “material cause”, -A, now elevated to being in the end product ±A loses its potency, becomes the “blind existent” B, the existent which has “lost itself”.²⁹² Of the role of B Schelling write that it is “ausschlisende[n] Seyn, denn es versagt dem nicht seyn Könnenden, der potentia non existendi (d. h. dem, was in der Indifferenz reines, durch kein Können afficiertes Objekt war), es versagt diesem das Seyn”²⁹³ – i.e., B’s role is to exclude that which cannot be from the process of producing being; it determines that, which being cannot be. Schelling also calls it the “nicht seyn Sollende”,²⁹⁴ that which should not be – here,

“should” is not to be read in any normative sense, but as that which has already been used up and discarded, and is not to be again. Just as +A defines by attraction, B defines the resultant being by negation, as it is “qualitätslose, wüste und leere” (without quality, desert and void).²⁹⁵ The cycle of material production brings the potency-to-be-everything to a state whereby this potency is turned into a sort of negative determination which I will in what follows call negative potentiation. This is what Thomas Buchheim also speaks about when he calls Schelling’s matter “repulsive”: “Die Materie Schellings ist nicht prätensive, sondern repulsive Möglichkeit des Wirklichen; Materie ist der Rückstoß des Wirklichen”. “Repulsive” is here

ground something boundless, going against all form and rule. This of itself powerless being, thus unable to be for itself, becomes the ground and beginning of all becoming, and in Aristotelian parlance it is the first, namely the material cause of all emergence.”

288 Philebus 26d.

289 SW XI 390.

290 This is an interesting possible interpretation of Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, presented by Iain Grant in his Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, where he writes: “the Idea acts as the limit-attractor towards which becoming never ceases to become” (PoNaS, p. 45). This reading would confirm the reading I propose of Phaedo in footnote 67, where Plato seems to claim that ideas direct the becoming of things.

291 Compare Frigo, G.: “Die Rolle der Mythologie in Spätphilosophie Schellings“. In Adolphi, R. und Jantzen, J. (Ed.): Das antike Denken in der Philosophie Schellings, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: 2014, pp. 275-304, hier pp. 291-293, although Gian-Franco Frigo reads the potencies explicitly as elements of original creation. Also note: in Das Potenzlose (p.29), Alejandro Jimenez identifies apeiron and peras with Bestimmbarkeit

(determinability) and Bestimmung (determination).

292 It has lost itself - “[hat] sich selbst (seyne Potenz) verloren”. – SW X 308.

293 SW X, 308. English: “excluding being, for it denies being to that which can not be, to the potentia non existendi (i.e. to that which, in the indifference, was the pure object, not affected by any Can).

294 SW X, 285.

295 SW X, 312.

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not meant in the classical naturphilosophical sense of repulsive and attractive forces, but rather signifies that, as B, matter for Schelling is the potency which determines by exclusion that which cannot be.²⁹⁶ The cycle of production, whereby -A is attracted by +A to become ±A, with the material principle -A turning into blind potency B, is reset once B transforms back to potency -A, thus becoming fertile ground for more production,²⁹⁷as it repotentiates itself: B is here “selbstlose Materie, daß das außer sich gesetzte Prinzip sich selbst wider gegeben, seine selbst mächtig werde.”²⁹⁸ It must be noted, that it is only after this transformation – whereby B becomes the ground for another, transforming itself into -A – that it can be called matter in the full sense of the word: that out of which something else is made.

From the above we can conclude, therefore, that the Schellingian material principle is dual, much like its Platonic correlate;²⁹⁹ it is a dual potency, if it can be extricated from the workings of the other potencies and considered separately at all.³⁰⁰ Assuming that it meaningfully can – it is on one hand the pure Can, that which is unlimited and can become anything whatsoever, and on the other hand, once it becomes matter for something, it turns to passivity, whose role is to determine becoming in its transformation,³⁰¹ “disabling” certain

296 It is rather well-known that when Schelling talks about opposing forces, he is also, in addition to the forces of Kant’s writings on physics and nature, referring to the expansion and contraction of God, an idea he borrows from the theosophical writings of Oetinger and Böhme, who in turn take it from the Kabbalistic doctrine of Zimzum. For more on this, see Schulze, W.A. “Schelling und die Kabbala”. In Judaica 13 (1957), pp.

65-99, 143-170, 210-232.

297 SW X, 324.

298 SW X, 384. English: B is “the selfless matter, that which gives the principle posited outside of itself back to itself, making its self potent.”

299 “Alles Seynkönnen im transitiven Sinn, um den früher gebrauchten Ausdruck hier wieder anzuwenden, steht zwischen einem doppelten Seyn, dem von welchem es herkommt, und dem, welchem es zugeht, darum ist es seiner Natur nach doppelsinnig (natura anceps); Zweiheit (duas) im pythagorischen und platonischen Sinn, welche von selbst unbestimmte ist, αόριστον δυάν, wie sie auch genannt worden.” – SW XI, 395-396. English: All Can-being in the transitive sense, in order to use an expression used previously here again, stands between a doubled being: that from which it originates and that to which it approaches. Thus it is according to its nature ambiguous (natura anceps); duality (duas) in a Phythagorean and Platonic sense, which by itself is

undetermined αόριστον δυάν, as it has been called.”

300 In a certain sense, the entire structure of the potencies is “material”. +A is similar to Plato’s concept of the Idea of matter (SW X 328): “Als Materie sind sie im Raum (wenn sie ihn auch noch nicht körperlich erfüllen – Materie ist eben nur Materie, d. h. Grundlage der Körper, aber darum sofort nicht körperlich [emphasis mine – DK]) - als Materie sind sie im Raum (jene Wesen), und in der Hinsicht, daß sie außereinander (im Raum) sind, sind sie nicht mehr Subjekte, als Subjekte sind sie ineinander, wie eben die allgemeine Attraktion zeigt, von der es ganz falsch ist sie als eine Wirkung der Materie anzusehen; auch wenn sie der Materie proportional erscheint, ist es falsch zu sagen, daß die Attraktion eine Wirkung der einzelnen Theile der materiellen Körper ist.” [English:

“They are in space as matter (even if they do not fill it corporeally – matter is precisely only matter, i.e. the foundation of corpuscles, but hence straight away not corporeal – as matter they are in space (this essence) and in this respect in which they are in space outside each other, they are subjects no more. As subjects they are in each other, as demonstrated by general attraction, which should not be viewed as an effect of matter. Even if it appears to be proportional to matter, it is false to say that the attraction is an effect of the single particles of material body.”] We are however not interested here in a classification of the concepts of Schelling’s philosophy into “material” and “non-material” – but the question of how the potencies – in their materiality as much as in their other functions – function and how they can help us understand the process of predication according to Schelling.

301 Thomas Buchheim writes about this doubling of matter in Eins von Allem pp.54-55, especially pointing out the role of matter in becoming: “Zeugung wird von Schelling einmal sehr eindrücklich folgendermaßen

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paths of material development becoming is to take, and thus directing the process of becoming. Matter for Schelling is thus a material principle and a function, a dually operating potency, a force of production – and a force of determination. The unlimited -A and the limiting B,³⁰² – this is the first potency, and this is Schelling’s matter. It remains to see how a similar conception of matter can be traced in predication theory, but before this chapter moves on to investigating matter as predication, it is worth the time to take a short look onto why this view of matter is so important.

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Interjection: Matter as power

In Cause, Principle and Unity, Giordano Bruno writes: “Certainly, this principle, called matter, can be considered in two ways: first, as potency; second, as substratum.”³⁰³ From the above analysis, it is evident that both Plato and Schelling choose to treat matter as primarily potency – and therefrom make its being-substratum a part of its being-potency. And at any rate, even this substratum is, for both Plato and Schelling, not an inert body which somehow acquires its characteristics consequently to its state of being body. Platonic and Schellingian physics are not sciences of the body; they are not somatic. Both philosophers want to demonstrate how the world becomes material,³⁰⁴ how matter arises – for both the nature that we live in is a nature that has been generated, and at least to an overwhelmingly large extent has generated itself. If our philosophical understanding of matter is to be based in the existence of a fundamental body, a fundamental material entity, a mere substratum without potency, then we run the risk of being unable to trace the generation of this substratum – both in the sense that we would not be able to investigate how the substratum came about, but also in the sense that we would not be able to explain the powers this substratum possesses. In other words, we would find ourselves in a dualism of power and body.³⁰⁵ The question “is power derivative from body or is body derivative from power?” can be answered only in one way if we are to avoid this dualism. Following the Platonic tradition all the way to Schelling, then, we are led to conclude that matter is not reducible to any particular body or kind of body

definiert: „‘zeugen‘ bedeutet nichts anderes als einem anderen, das von sich selbst nicht sein könnte, eine Materie zu seiner Verwirklichung geben.“ [English: “Generation is defined by Schelling very impactfully in the following way: ‘“zeugen” means nothing but to give to an other, one which could not be out of itself, a matter for its actualisation.”]

302 Both +A and B are determining factors; attractors, just like in Plato there is an Idea of matter – matter itself, and other Ideas. B determines the material becoming qua material, +A determines it qua specific becoming. Ultimately, though, Schelling is more complex than Plato; and Schellingian “raw matter” can only be extracted at the cost of nuance and at the risk of abstraction.

303 Bruno, G. Cause, Principle and Unity. Ed. by R.J. Blackwell and Robert de Luca. Cambridge: 1998, p. 65.

304 PoNaS, p. 28.

305 See Iain Hamilton Grant on this, brilliantly, all over Philosophies of Nature After Schelling, for instance pp.73-74

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– this is what the discussion in the Timaeus and in Schelling’s naturphilosophical works brings us to. An account which insists otherwise and wishes to keep its discourse of matter strictly somatic, discussing it in terms of ultimate basic particles with forces derivative solely from the interactions of these particles cannot but be mechanical. Thinking the construction (and destruction) of matter, however, requires dynamism. It is to an attempt of transposing this dynamism into the transcendental spheres that we now turn.