Part I: The Potency Philosophy
C. The matter of thought
II. The Second Potency
Having considered the first potency of Schelling’s Potenzenlehre (-A – the subject of being, which turns to be matter, specifically the matter of predication for the purposes of this chapter) – I now turn to the second potency, +A. The Darstellung des Naturprozesses describes +A as mere existence “bloße Existenz” or pure Being, which in its kind is as infinite as the Can [“reines Sein, daß in seiner Art so unendlich ist wie das Könnnen”]324, and as the subjectless object counterpart to -A’s objectless subject. This makes a discussion of +A, if such a discussion were to be conducted by taking +A in maximal abstraction from other potencies and the process they form as a triad, look particularly problematic. It seems that there is no way a philosophy could present what is absolutely subjectless without contaminating it with subjectivity.325 Schelling himself confirms that an object can be posited only in the aftermath of a subject:
Damit etwas Objekt ist, muß erst ein Subjekt da sein, dagegen im zweiten Gedanken kann ich dem Subjekt gegenüber ein Objekt setzen, man kann in den Gedanken nur vom Subjekt ausgehen.326
He also makes it clear, that being – anything that exists – is only the entire threefold of potencies taken together:
323 SW XIII, 76. See GPP 142-143 for English: “[B]eing is just as much Itself as well as the matter of a different being [Seyn]. The potency (the immediate content of reason) is indeterminateness per se (το
αοριστον), insofar as it can be potency, subject, matter (since these are synonymous expressions), or even being [das Seyende].“
324 SW X, 305.
325 Compare Passive Bewegtheit, p. 382.
326 SW X, 304. English: “For something to be in object, a subject must first be present; although on second thought I can posit the subject against an object, we can only start from the subject in thought.”
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Nun müssen wir aber sogleich hinzufügen, daß nicht das Subjekt, nicht das Objekt, und auch nicht das Dritte oder das Subjekt-Objekt, keines von diesen, wenn wir sie durch Zahlen bezeichnen, nicht 1, nicht 2, nicht 3 für sich ist das Seyende; das Seyende selbst ist erst, was 1+2+3, ist.327
It could moreover be objected here that even in our discussion of the subject of being, we could only posit it as subject up for determination, so not alone or in itself.328 Indeed, this is what Schelling means when he says that one can posit -A only as second to +A: “[man kann]
unmittelbar nur -A setzen, erst als das zweite von diesem (als das Angezogene desselben) +A
= reines Seyn.”329 -A is to be posited immediately and first, and yet it is only to be posited as that which is necessarily subject to the determining power of the +A.330 Thus, if +A is to be considered in abstraction, as something that simply sheerly exists “out there”, a conceivable in-itself not affecting the subject of being and unaffected by it and yet somehow operative in the process of predication, then it ultimately suffers a sad fate akin to what the objects of Schelling’s “positive philosophy” would suffer, if “positive philosophy” was taken the way Schelling warns it should not be taken when objecting to the highly tempting “mystical”
readings of it – i.e., all we could say about +A would be that it exists.
Nevertheless, the previous section had managed to consider the role of -A in the chains of potency operation as isolated from the other elements of the chain, without treating this abstraction of -A as any more than provisional. The role of -A has been studied by considering what kind of function it has to perform in order to be the sheer Can it needs to be within Schelling’s Potenzenlehre: the bigger structure that -A is a part of has not been completely ignored. Since -A is nothing but what is to be determined by +A, it has been treated as that which is to be functionally enmeshed with +A. +A in turn should be investigated similarly, i.e.
functionally, with its function in the chain of potencies inferred from what it does to -A in the
327 SW XIII, 78. See GPP, 144: “Now we must promptly add that not the subject, object, and also not the third or the subject = object, none of these (if we indicate them with numbers, not 1, not 2, not 3, is, in its own right, being; being itself is only when 1+2+3 are combined.”
328 Schelling says, in Darstellung der Reinrationalen Philosophie, calling potencies there “moments of what has being”: “Von jenen Momenten des Seyenden ist freilich keines ohne das andere, es ist hier alle wie in einem organischen Ganzen gegen sich wechselseitig bestimmend und bestimmt; das nicht seyende ist dem rein seyenden der Grund (die ratio sufficiens), aber hinwieder ist das rein seyende die bestimmende Ursache (ratio determinans) des bloßen An-sich-seyns, und auch das Dritte vermittelt den vorausgehenden ebenso Momente des Seyenden zu seyn, wie eben dieses ihm durch sie vermittlelt ist; es müssen deßhalb alle oder es kann keines gesetzt seyn.“ – SW XI, 311. English: “Of these moments of what has being, certainly no single one is without the other; here, like in an organic whole, everything is reciprocally determined and determining of each other. The non-being is the ground (die ratio sufficiens) of what purely has being, but, in turn, what purely has being is the determining cause (ratio determinans) of the sheer being-in-iteslf, and also the third mediates moments of what is being-to-be to the antecedent, precisely as the latter is then mediated through it; therefore either all must be posited or none can.”
329 SW X, 305.
330 Hence, when Schelling calls –A the Anziehungspunkt (point-attractor), it doesn’t seem to be his point that –A as the indeterminate potency attracts determination towards it, but rather that it is the point at which the force of attraction exerted on –A is applied, just like gravitational force is applied onto the centre of gravity of objects.
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process of determination (here, predicative determination). Therefore, at no point does +A need to be treated as a placeholder for only one specific kind of entity, the definition of which cannot be given because it is inextricably bound with other entities. Instead, it will be treated as a dynamic function and part of a process, just as matter (-A/B) was. Since +A can be posited only in consequence of -A, and since the presence of -A is necessary for the function of +A to unfold, it turns out that the impossibility of presenting +A in isolation, untainted as it were by the “subject of being” is not an unfortunate deficiency in Schelling or in my account of him, but rather the expected turn of events. Any attempt to present +A in antecedence of -A, and therefore in antecedence of the effect it has on -A is doomed, because it is like any simple and simplistic attempt trying to discover the in-itself antecedent to thought. It should also not be forgotten, that Schelling’s Potenzenlehre scheme and by extension, the positions and arguments presented in this text are at heart transcendental; Schelling is never concerned with deriving or deducing the existence of something, including +A – such a tactic would be exactly what he, in agreement with Kant’s fundamental maxim “existence is not a real predicate” criticized in the Grounding of Positive Philosophy.331 Rather, Schelling’s scheme begins from the reality of the becoming processes he wants to analyse and reconstruct, which he thinks can only be done from and via the potency triad he postulates: +A, in effect, is as fundamental as -A.332 The Potenzenlehre deals with the question “how is there something rather than nothing?”, with the mode of something arising; the “why” is a separate quest.
331 See for instance the fifth lecture of the Grounding, which looks at the difference between being and essence (Sein and Wesen), and consequently the difference between positive and negative philosophy. In that lecture, Schelling describes the paradox of being: we can ascribe being to an object, but this operation does not add anything to this object: “Das Seyende muß allerdings zuerst Subjekt des Seyns - das was seyn kann -, insofern die Potenz des Seyns seyn, aber nicht die Potenz von etwas, das es noch nicht ist (denn da wäre es ja eben nicht das Seyende), sondern die Potenz dessen, was es schon Ist, was es unmittelbar und ohne Uebergang ist. Nochmals: das Seyende, das wir suchen, ist unmittelbar und im ersten Gedanken Potenz des Seyns, Subjekt, aber Subjekt, das unmittelbar seine Erfüllung mit sich hat (das Subjekt an sich eine Leere, die erst durch das Prädicat erfüllt werden muß) - das Seyende ist daher ebenso unmittelbar das seyende, als es das seynkönnende ist, und zwar das rein seyende, das ganz und völlig objektiv seyende, in dem ebenso wenig etwas von einem Können ist als in dem Subjekt etwas von einem Seyn […]” – SW XIII 77. For English, see GPP, p. 143.
332 The fact that thinking about +A presupposes thinking about –A does not mean that +A is, in the ontological-functional scheme of potencies, consequent or secondary. Indeed, the relationship of depending on each other for existing is different from that of presupposition here: -A and +A depend on each other for existence, but thinking about +A presupposes thinking about –A: “Aber eben weil das eine subjekt- wie das andere absolut objektlos ist, kann keines von beiden für sich bestehen ohne das andere. Dem Seyn ist das Können Subjekt, dem Können das Seyn Objekt, die Unendlichkeit des Seyns in dem einen macht den Abgrund des nicht-Seyns in dem andern möglich, umgekehrt fordert die Unendlichkeit des nicht-Seyns in dem einen eine gleiche Unendlichkeit des Seyns in dem andern - beide zusammen, also weder das erste noch das zweite für sich, sind nur erst das Seyende.” – SW X, 304. English: “But precisely because the one is subjectless just as the other is objectless, none can exist for-itself without the other. Can is subject to Being, Being is object to Can, the infinity of being in one makes the abyss of being in the other possible, and vice-versa: the infinity of non-being in one stipulates the infinity of non-non-being in the other. Only both together, so neither the first, nor the second for-itself, are first that which has being”.
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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.