A :D T C

Diana Khamis1
(Rheinische-Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

If we want to ask ourselves whether nature is facing a crisis and

whether there is still place for a philosophy of nature, we should also ask
ourselves what definition of “nature” are we using to approach this in-
quiry. Philosophy, it seems, has deferred the standard definition of nature
to physical sciences, where nature is whatever these sciences study. That
does not, however, cater to the philosophical dimension of the question
“what is nature?” To address that dimension in the philosophical landscape
of modern and contemporary philosophies, Immanuel Kant might perhaps
be a better starting point – the Critique of Pure Reason tells us that “nature
is nothing in itself but a sum of appearances, hence not a thing in itself but
merely a multitude of representations of the mind.”2 This is true at least
of the nature presented in the first Critique – Kant’s project does get more
complex in the third Critique, but even this complexity comes arguably
largely, if not entirely from our moral faculties and human freedom. This
position seems to be as damning as it gets for nature – if nature is to be
taken as a multitude of appearances, then it loses all independence, and we
do not need a philosophy of nature or a serious engagement with it. With
nature as sum of appearances, all we need to (and even can) philosophical-

1
[email protected]
2
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 236.

Philosophica, 47, Lisboa, 2016, pp. 43-59.

44 Diana Khamis

ly investigate is how things appear, or even more precisely – how they are
“taken” by a subject. Even if nature, instead of being conceived as the sum
of appearances, is taken as a limited domain of objects, this is still fairly
damning: it permits to draw a line at a certain point of the investigation
and claim that nature goes no further, and that whatever phenomena are
investigated within this “further” can be investigated without recourse to
nature. Either way, on this view of nature, there is clearly not much room
for Naturphilosophie or even for nature being given a significant role in
philosophy. If a Naturphilosophie is to be attempted at all, a different view
of nature is needed.
In what follows, I will present such a view developed partly in re-
sponse to Kantian philosophy, one which takes nature to be a lot more than
just a sum of things – a productive force. This view of nature has been
put forward by F.W.J. Schelling. I would like to argue that Schelling’s
philosophy – not only what has been considered his “Naturphilosophie
phase”, but also certain works from the later stages of his oeuvre – gives
us a conception of nature such that Naturphilosophie remains viable and
nature remains relevant, indeed, inevitably so. In a Schellingian scheme
of presenting nature, however, one threat to Nature remains – namely, ab-
straction. This can be potentially problematic for philosophical thinking,
therefore, in the last part of my paper, I will look at how one is to approach
abstraction as a useful tool, and not as an instrument of destruction.

1. Naturphilosophie

The view of Nature Schelling develops in his Naturphilosophie is

partly a response to Kant and partly a response to mechanistic views of
nature. The problem with mechanism, Schelling claims, is its inability to
explain how nature arises. The mechanical nature is a network of causes
and effects, all affecting each other in the same way, and such a network
itself could only have been brought into existence by an external cause.
Schelling, with his obvious reluctance to simply announce that God the
creator was this cause, considers this feature to be a deadly problem of
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 45

mechanism.3 The first Critique’s view of nature as a sum of appearances,

on the other hand, was rejected by Schelling not only because Kant had
considered nature from different angles in the third Critique, as well as
in the Metaphysical Foundations of the Natural Sciences, but also fun-
damentally because no matter what Kant does, he does not convincingly
solve the problem of the gap between the transcendental free subject and
the allegedly unfree nature. This gap is, for Schelling, particularly prob-
lematic, since he wants to philosophically engage with the fact that human
beings are, apparently, natural creatures – a claim even Kant would not
wholly deny.
In order to solve the problem of the emergence and development
of natural things, Schelling proposes a different view of nature – that of
a productive force operating in powers, rather than simply an indefinite-
ly extended series of all things. This is – to put it simply – because if
faced with the choice between the primacy of either things or powers,
one chooses the primacy of things, then, as Iain Hamilton Grant has put
it, one’s “ontology becomes dualistic, comprising powers irreducible to
substances and substances without powers as inert substrata for them, but
with no account of a vinculum to bond them.”4 It is far more productive
– in the face of mechanism, and in the face of addressing the problem of
becoming – to choose powers as the currency of a Naturphilosophie, and
this is what Schelling does.

3
F.W.J. Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. Peter Heath and Errol E. Harris,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 30: “The dogmatist, who assumes
everything to be originally present outside us (not as coming to be and springing forth
from us) must surely commit himself at least to this: that what is external to us is also to
be explained by external causes. He succeeds in doing this, as long as he remains within
the nexus of cause and effect, despite the fact that he can never make it intelligible how
this nexus of causes and effects has itself arisen. As soon as he raises himself above the
individual phenomenon, his whole philosophy is at an end; the limits of mechanism are
also the limits of his system.” [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. II, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher
Verlag, 1857, p. 40: „Der Dogmatiker, der alles als ursprünglich außer uns vorhanden
(nicht als aus uns werdend und entspringend) voraussetzt, muß sich doch wenigstens
dazu anheischig machen, das was außer uns ist auch aus äußern Ursachen zu erklären.
Dieß gelingt ihm, so lange er sich innerhalb des Zusammenhangs von Ursache und
Wirkung befindet, unerachtet er nie begreiflich machen kann, wie dieser Zusammenhang
von Ursachen und Wirkungen selbst entstanden ist. Sobald er sich über die einzelne
Erscheinung erhebt, ist seine ganze Philosophie zu Ende; die Grenzen des Mechanismus
sind auch die Grenzen seines Systems.“]
4
Iain Hamilton Grant, “Does Nature stay what it is?” in The Speculative Turn: Continental
Materialism and Realism, eds. Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, Nick Srnicek, Melbourne:
re.press, 2010, p. 67.
46 Diana Khamis

Moreover, as early as Schelling’s First Outline of the System for

a Philosophy of Nature all philosophy is said to be inquiring after an
unconditioned, Naturphilosophie being no exception: it enquires after
nature as unbedingt, i.e. not nature as an object, or “the sum total of
existence, [for then] it would therefore be impossible to view Nature as
an unconditioned”,5 but “Nature only as active, [as an infinite product]—
for it is impossible to philosophize about any subject which cannot be
engaged in activity.”6 If nature were inactive, if nature were completely
inert, no philosophy of it would have been even possible. So, in Schelling,
we have a nature that, being productivity, must be approached in terms of
productive forces as opposed to discrete units. This conviction remains
with Schelling, somewhat surprisingly and contrary to expectations, all
throughout his philosophical work, so that in the very late text Darstellung
des Naturprozesses (1843-44) nature is still a clear concern, and is still
defined as activity – this time, as a function of the three potencies, three
moments which every process of creation passes through:

At the beginning of this entire explication, we had three moments

emerge separately from the idea so that it actualizes itself in returning to
unity. The separation and reunification of these moments is nature. The
reproduction of unity is for it the end and the goal of nature.7

The approach Schelling takes towards nature obviously varies from his
earliest to his latest texts in its specifics; however, consequent on the broad-
er view of nature as productivity, certain features remain. Two of the most
prominent ones are the primacy of power over body, and the non-existence
of any fundamental level or unit in nature. These two features are tightly
related. They stem from Schelling’s desire to explain how nature – which

5
F.W.J. Schelling, First Outline for a System of the Philosophy of Nature, trans. Keith R.
Peterson, New York: SUNY Press, 2004, p. 14. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. III, Stuttgart:
J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1858, p. 13: „Nun ist aber nach allgemeiner Uebereinstimmung
die Natur selbst nichts anderes als der Inbegriff alles Seyns; es wäre daher unmöglich,
die Natur als ein Unbedingtes anzusehen […]“].
6
Ibid. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. III, p. 13: „Wir kennen die Natur nur als thätig,
- denn philosophieren läßt sich über keinen Gegenstand, der nicht in Thätigkeit zu
versetzen ist.“]
7
Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. X, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1861, p. 307: „Im
Anfang dieser ganzen Entwicklung, liessen wir die Idee auseinander treten in ihre
Momente, damit sie 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.“
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 47

for him is to an overwhelmingly large extent self-generated – arises. The

combination of atomism (fundamental unit) and somatism (bodies are pri-
mary to powers) gives philosophy a mere substratum without potency to
work with. In this case, philosophy is unable to trace the generation of
this substratum – both in the sense that it is not able to investigate how the
substratum came about, and in the sense that it is able to explain the gener-
ation of powers this substratum possesses. Even when it comes to powers,
however, taking any level of natural activity as “fundamental”, i.e. one
below which there is no activity whatsoever is, for Schelling, problemat-
ic – the problem is one of explaining how this “fundamental” level arose
and why the philosopher has chosen it as fundamental. This issue will be
discussed in more detail later in the paper.
As an aside, one might say that on this account, Schelling’s philoso-
phy fares no better than mechanism. With the former we have to recourse
to more and more powers, just as with this latter, in order to explain the
generation and powers of certain bodies, we had to constantly fall back
on other bodies. And yet, the issue is different. Mechanism postulates an
endless chain that could not possibly be endless – some cause, at the be-
ginning of the chain, would have to be external. Of powers, on the other
hand, there can be an unending chain; Schelling would be perfectly fine
with such a chain. Indeed, this could well be why, when discussing the
beginning of the world in the Weltalter, Schelling speaks of eternal past
and eternal future.8
In any case, we now have a sketch for what nature is according to
Schelling’s Naturphilosophie: it is unconditioned productivity, it deals in
powers; it has no fundamental level to its activity. However, how are we to
think this unconditioned nature? How does such a conception fit together
with philosophy’s requirement for abstract thought? It would seem that
this formidable nature would be killed by abstraction. I turn to the ques-
tion of what abstraction is for Schelling and how we are to deal with it.

2. The Culprit

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 envi-

8
See F.W.J. Schelling, Ages of the World, trans. Jason M. Wirth, New York: SUNY Press,
2000, pp. 38-39.
48 Diana Khamis

ronmental 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 movie 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. In his work, Schelling also gives us hints as to
the potential perpetrator of the undoing: abstraction. Schelling’s famous
Freiheitsschrift diagnosis “[t]he whole of modern European philosophy
since its inception (through Descartes) has this common deficiency – that
nature does not exist for it”9 blames modern European philosophy for a
very specific error – an attempt to think nature out of relevance, even out
of existence through abstraction,10 insisting:

[…] Spinoza’s realism is as abstract as the idealism of Leibniz. Ideal-

ism is the soul of philosophy; realism is its body; only the two together
constitute a living whole. Realism can never furnish the first principles
but it must be the basis and the instrument by which idealism realizes
itself and takes on flesh and blood. If a philosophy lacks this vital basis,
usually a sign that the ideal principle was but weak from the outset,
it then loses itself in those systems whose attenuated concepts of ase-
ity, modality, etc., stand in the sharpest contrast to the vital power and
fullness of reality. On the other hand, where the ideal principle really
operates to a high degree but cannot discover a reconciling and mediat-
ing basis, it gives birth to a dreary and fanatic enthusiasm which breaks
forth in self-mutilation or – as in the case of the priests of the Phrygian
goddess – in self-emasculation, which in philosophy is accomplished by

9
Id., Philosophical Inquiries into the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. James Gutmann,
Chicago: Open Court, 2003, p. 25. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. VII, Stuttgart: J.G.
Cotta’scher Verlag, 1860, p. 356: „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.“]
10
And it is abstraction in particular that is 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.
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 49

the renunciation of reason and science.11

This real principle 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. This separation, which indeed began with Descartes’ dualism and
continued with the idealism/realism archrivalry, found a strange inverted
resolution in Kant, whereby nature became dependent on conditions of
experience. This has yet again taken place through abstraction – abstrac-
tion12 of the human from the natural conditions of experience. The result
of all this abstraction is physiocide, but it is also sui/anthropocide – insofar
it leads to humanity uprooted from nature, left unable to think its material
grounds and what sort of beings its members are. Abstraction, therefore,
suggests itself as a problem, and posits itself persistently whenever the
sphere of nature is limited and nature is not taken to ground the human.
The result – a philosophy that begins with and in abstraction instead of
beginning in a real ground – would be, as Schelling argues, merely neg-
ative, “flee[ing] into a complete wasteland devoid of all being.”13 And
yet, abstraction is a double-edged sword. In this part of the paper, I will
determine what abstraction is for Schelling, through an examination of the
First Outline and Darstellung des Naturprozesses. Moreover, I will pres-
ent a reading of Schelling’s late philosophy of natural process according
to which the elements of the process are abstractions. They are, however,
abstractions not in the sense of being mental cutouts made for human con-
venience and/or thought-experimentation, but rather function as abstract
11
Ibid. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. VII, pp. 356-357: „Spinozas Realismus ist dadurch so
abstrakt als der Idealismus des Leibniz. 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.“]
12
“Abstract” after all comes from Latin abstrahere, “draw away”.
13
F.W.J. Schelling, The Grounding of Positive Philosophy, trans. Bruce Matthews, New
York: SUNY Press, 2007, p. 142. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. XIII, Stuttgart: J.G.
Cotta’scher Verlag, 1858, p.76: “um in eine völlige Wüste alles Seyns zu fliehen“.]
50 Diana Khamis

stages of the process of temporal production, and are thus abstractions that
move natural process forward. As a result of this discussion, it should then
become clear that thinking about abstraction is not itself necessarily an
abstraction. That abstraction can be thought of as processual, dynamic and
positive; that it – short of being a hindrance or disease which leads to the
denial of our natural material ground, the death of nature and the patholog-
ical entrapment of the mind within the sterile limited sphere of a certain
kind of philosophy – is nothing but itself part of nature. Abstraction will
be demonstrated to be tied inextricably with reality.
The idea of nature as composed of “bits” of power in Schelling goes
all the way to the aforementioned First Outline, where to think the uncondi-
tioned that is nature, Schelling introduces abstract atoms – “simple actants:”
What IS in space is in space by means of a continually active filling-up
of space; therefore, in every part of space there is moving force, so also
mobility, and thus infinite divisibility of each part of matter, no matter
how small, from all the remaining ones. The original actants, however,
ARE not themselves in space; they cannot be viewed as parts of matter.
Accordingly, our claim can be called the principle of dynamic atomism.
For us, every original actant is just like the atom for the corpuscular
philosopher; truly singular, each is in itself whole and sealed-off, and
represents, as it were, a natural monad.14

The footnote to this paragraph is also important:

If the evolution of Nature were ever complete (which is impossible),

then after the general decomposition of each product into its factors
nothing would be left other than simple factors, i.e. factors which are
no longer themselves products. Therefore, these simple factors can only
be thought as originary actants, or—if it is permissible to express it this
way—as originary productivities.
Our opinion is thus not that there are such simple actants in Nature,
but only that they are the ideal grounds of the explanation of quality.

14
Id., First Outline for a System of the Philosophy of Nature, pp. 20-21. [Id., Sämmtliche
Werke, Bd. III, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1858, pp. 22-23: „[W]as im Raum ist,
ist im Raum nur vermittelst einer continuirlich-thätigen Raumerfüllung; in jedem Theil
des Raums ist also bewegende Kraft, sonach auch Beweglichkeit, daher Trennbarkeit
jedes noch so kleinen Theils der Materie von allen übrigen ins Unendliche. Die
ursprünglichen Aktionen aber sind nicht selbst im Raum, sie können nicht als Theil der
Materie angesehen werden 1 . Unsere Behauptung kann sonach Princip der dynamischen
Atomistik heißen. Denn jede ursprüngliche Aktion ist für uns ebenso, wie der Atom
für den Corpuscularphilosophen, wahrhaft individuell, jede ist in sich selbst ganz und
beschlossen, und stellt gleichsam eine Naturmonade vor.“]
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 51

These simple actants do not really allow of demonstration— they do

not exist; they are what one must posit in Nature, what one must think
in Nature, in order to explain the originary qualities. Then we need only
prove as much as we assert, namely, that such simple actions must be
thought as ideal grounds of explanation of all quality, and we have pro-
vided this proof.15

Nature here is taken as consisting of ideal originary actants that are the-
oretical entities. Already here, Schelling is skeptical that static material
mechanical atoms can explain the qualities in nature, and sees the need to
resort to these dynamic atoms, each of them nothing but “a bit of force”,
“a unit of productivity.” This later develops into what he will call his Po-
tenzenlehre. Before I move on there, however, the key term of this paper
– abstract, as it appears locally in the above passage – should be explained
and qualified.
It is easy to read this above passage as demonstrating that Schelling,
at least at some point in his long philosophical life, was a scientific an-
ti-realist. He seems to be saying: “we philosophers need to explain quali-
ty, therefore we pragmatically postulate non-existent entities that help us
understand and manipulate nature.” In light of such a beginning to his
naturphilosophische project, one can rightfully ask whether it makes any
sense to talk about forces that stand behind the process of nature as op-
posed to thinking nature in terms of useful fictions. This is why we have
to think about what makes primary actants in the above passage abstract,
for despite appearances, Schelling is doing ontology in the First Outline.
If we look closely at the passage concerning simple actants, it is
clear that they are that level of matter whereby it becomes indivisible. The
lowest, the basic, the simple, the originary, the maximally decomposed.
Their abstraction stems precisely from here: it is not that we don’t know
15
Ibid., p. 21f. [Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. III, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1858,
p. 23f: „Wäre die Evolution der Natur je vollendet (was unmöglich ist), so würde nach
diesem allgemeinen Zertrennen jedes Produkts in seine Faktoren nichts übrig bleiben als
einfache Faktoren, d.h. Faktoren, die nicht selbst mehr Produkte sind. Diese einfachen
Faktoren können daher nur als ursprüngliche Aktionen, oder – wenn es erlaubt ist so sich
auszudrücken – als ursprüngliche Produktivitäten gedacht werden.
Unsere Behauptung ist also nicht: es gebe in der Natur solche einfache Aktionen,
sondern nur, sie seyen die ideellen Erklärungsgründe der Qualität. Diese einfachen
Aktionen lassen sich nicht wirklich aufzeigen – sie existiren nicht, sie sind das, was
man in der Natur setzen, in der Natur denken muß, um die ursprünglichen Qualitäten zu
erklären. Wir brauchen also auch nur so viel zu beweisen, als wir behaupten, nämlich,
daß solche einfache Aktionen gedacht werden müssen als ideelle Erklärungsgründe aller
Qualität, und diesen Beweis haben wir gegeben.“]
52 Diana Khamis

whether these actants exist or not; this is not a Kantian access problem
and Schelling is not digging here at the unfathomable depths of nature,
forced to postulate something just to explain anything. The abstraction
stems from the abstract stoppage of natural production at the level of
these actants; what is abstract is that the Naturphilosoph drew a line after
these actants and said that this was it. I have already mentioned in my
introduction, that Schelling is a philosopher who avoided – and at times
this has made him look quite slippery – drawing final lines and setting
ultimate foundations, as he cannot conceive of a situation where such lines
and foundations would not need lines and foundations in turn. Moreover,
a somewhat similar reason is at stake for Schelling’s refusal to draw the
line at some level and declare that level to be the “fundamental” level
of power, basic, simplest, below which there is no power. We could go
“down” or “back” in thinking to ground the subjects of our investigation
until we seem to have hit a level that seems to us to be basic, but it would
be absolutely unclear how to proceed with the reverse direction; i.e., if
below that line of ground there is no activity, how on earth did activity
ever start at the line of ground? Schelling has no answer for something
coming out of nothing, unsurprisingly.
As Iain Grant points out, we cannot think the inception of the uni-
verse. If we were to, then the universe-creation we would be thinking
about would be different from the one that brought us here, the former (i.e.
the one we are thinking about) being clearly consequent on the latter and
on our existence.16 Any time a Naturphilosoph wants to think potencies,
any beginning he would take would be, then, not a beginning in some ab-
solute sense. Any attempt to turn those powers, those primary productivi-
ties, into units, and give them – as if it were in a physics lesson in middle
school – points of application whereby they begin, would be as giving
them merely local beginning, almost entirely arbitrary, like a line drawn
by abstraction just to give the current investigation a starting point. Once
again, the problem here, for Schelling, is not infinite regress – it would be
that the stopping of the regress at any level would have no better justifica-
tion than its stopping at any other level: i.e. convenience and the purposes
of a specific investigation at hand. Schelling’s “simple actants” from the
First Outline are abstractions not because we are not able to tell whether
they exist or not, not because we postulate them as thought-entities, but

16
See Iain Hamilton Grant, “Inflationary hypotheses: The construction of matter and the
deep field problem”, ed. S. Pfeffer, in Speculations on Anonymous Materials, Berlin:
Merve, 2015.
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 53

because we cut them off from their grounds and designate them as basic
without any weightier ontological reason than provisional simplicity.17
True to Schelling’s antipathy to atomism I have mentioned before, they
are also “atoms” only in the sense that we treat them as such. Hence, when
Schelling says that simple actants don’t exist and are abstractions, then
that means that they don’t exist in nature as simple actants, not that there
are no actants in nature tout court.
If we take the case of the simple actants as exemplary, we can say
that abstraction consists in two moments. The first – very obvious – is
localization and limitation: in order to draw something away from some-
thing else (an element from its context, a productivity from the chains of
natural process/production), this context must first be at least minimally
delimited. Abstraction, then, always begins with some kind of localiza-
tion, with zooming into a node before its extraction. The simple actants are
thoroughly localized at the deepest level of material nature possible. This
moment of localization taken alone, however, is not yet abstraction, as
locality – boundedness by antecedents and consequents18 – is the feature
of anything and everything finite. True abstraction is when the localized
node of the natural process is then taken to be somehow independent –
simple, basic or having undergone such a qualitative transformation while
arising from whatever came before it, that it can shed the after-influence
of its antecedent. Schelling invites us to temporarily consider the simple
actants separately from any grounding principle, but rather the basis for
explaining everything in nature. Such an element cannot but be abstract.

3. Natur-Mord

With this, we can look at how abstraction plays out in Schelling’s

later texts – in the networks of the Potenzenlehre. For simplification, I will
only look at Schelling’s latest texts dealing with the potencies and Nature,
most prominently, the Darstellung des Naturprozesses and the Darstellung
der Reinrationalen Philosophie. In those texts, Schelling operates with the

17
Saying here that nevertheless these primary actants are merely ideal, fictional
explanatory entities just because Schelling decides to adopt them as units of productivity
would be similar to claiming that gravity is merely ideal just because we think of it as
a force of mutual attraction, while it is far from that scientifically simple and can be
explained further.
18
On this, see Iain Hamilton Grant, “How Nature Came to Be Thought”, Journal of the
British Society for Phenomenology 44, 1 (2013), pp. 24-43.
54 Diana Khamis

potencies using the notation –A, +A, ±A, where –A is pure Can, mere
ability or subject of existence, +A is pure existence or object, and ±A is
the subject-object. While presenting this model, Schelling first gives its
form, a bare-bones schematic of the three elements. The potencies operate
as follows: -A is the material principle:19 unlimited, undefined, nothing
in particular, the dark principle at the ground of creation, untouched by
the light of reason. If we look back to ancient philosophy we find that
a similar role is played by the Platonic unlimited, the apeiron. And just
as the ancients’ apeiron is offset by the peras, the limit introduced into
it – which is how “real being” is generated20 – the pure Can, -A, is offset
by +A, “d[a]s rein seyende.”21 –A strives towards +A, which serves as an
attractor, and thus as a determining force. If +A is to be described in any
way – and a potency is probably best described functionally in terms of
what its role in the cycle of natural processes is – then +A is most akin
to Plato’s Idea. It is something which sheerly exists, by virtue of which
individual things individuate. The -A determined by the +A therefore
produces ±A as a result – a real individual being, which is simultaneously
that which is, and that which has the capacity to be.

19
F.W.J. Schelling, , Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. XI, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856,
p. 388: “[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; denn alles Seyn, das in dieser sich findet, ist schon wieder ein in Schranken
gefaßtes und begreifliches; 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 materiale Ursache alles Entstehenden. [[T]he
Can was posited for it as a barrier to Being, as what finds egress from all barriers,
the limitless and indeterminate in itself, entirely akin to the Pythagorean and Platonic
infinite (ἄπειρον), that, of course, is not to be found in appearance. For every Being
situated in the infinite, is already in turn held behind barriers and is [thus] susceptible
to being conceived. Meanwhile the appearance itself contains the mark that all Being
is grounded in something in itself barrier free, striving against all form and rule. Itself
impotent, so for itself properly not able to be being, it will nevertheless be the ground
and beginning of all becoming, and in Aristotelian terms, the first, namely the material
cause of all emergence.”]
20
Plato, Philebus, tr. Benjamin Jowett, available from http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/
greek-texts/ancient-greece/plato/plato-philebus.asp
21
F.W.J. Schelling, , Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. XI, p. 389. [“not yet a matter of actuality, but
only of existing in the idea”.]
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 55

In this bare-bones schematic, Schelling then points out, “not yet a

matter of actuality, but only of existing in the idea”,22 i.e. it is negative,
an abstraction. Taking this series of three elements is Schelling’s attempt
to clarify the form by cutting away from it as much content as possible,
leaving solely a “reiner Vernunft-Organismus” or a “Vernunft-Idee.”23 In the
hypothetically distilled and dissected unfolding of any natural process, the
raw indeterminacy of sheer Can -A, the past “potency” which has already
once spent its powers, the cold harsh raw determinacy and formalism of +A
and the separate existence of their product ±A are all abstractions, powerless
and static. It is the simplified logical kernel of the Potenzenlehre, which
is localized as an answer to the question of reason “What am I thinking
when I think what exists?”24 The transition from thinking this reason-idea
out of negativity and to thinking the world outside it is to “posit the first
element of it as existing in itself” and then following its elements through
the cycle of mutual extainment. To put this as simply as possible, the pure-
reason-organism is to be plugged back in into the nets of the world just
as it was previously surgically extracted. The Naturphilosoph extracts the
mechanism to examine, understand, all the better localize and retrace it;
when he understands the mechanism, he reconnects it with that which it is
a mechanism of, and witnesses the natural process run before him in its full
glory as a result. Without this reconnection, though, the formalistic core of
Schelling’s Potenzenlehre is an abstract representation of a natural process,
no more; its separate elements are also no more than specks of abstraction
unless put into a relationship of mutual extainment, i.e. unless they are
allowed to have an effect.
This reconnection, “plugging back in”, is however not some kind of
pure “thinking potencies into existence.” The point here is not to think
hard enough until whatever thousand deadly abstract cuts you were mak-
ing miraculously undo, fuse and concretize. The reconnection is rather one
of excavation and navigation, tracing the productive history of whatever
supposedly abstract element we are examining into both its future and the
past. If we look at Schelling here:

[I]f a world outside the idea is thought, then it can only be thought in
this manner, and moreover can only be thought as such a world-outside-
the-idea. So in order to attain the world outside the idea we must first
22
Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. X, Stuttgart: J.G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1861, p. 305: „noch
von keiner Wirklichkeit die Rede ist, nur vom Existirenden in der Idee.“
23
Ibid., p. 306.
24
Ibid., p. 303: „Was denke ich, wenn ich das Existirende denke?”
56 Diana Khamis

posit the first element of it as existing in itself, and the question is how
this can be. Now we have, however, acknowledged from the outset that
according to the idea, this subject is only directed to the higher object
(+A), not the subject or potency of itself, but precisely rather the exis-
tent, but according to its nature therefore it can equally only be this latter
(potency of itself) directed away from infinite Being, in order to be the
existent itself; in which respect this ability presents itself according to
its nature as ambivalent nature, as Δυας. But in that we think a going-
out-of-itself of the idea, we must of course at the same time view this in
the sense that, so that unity is indeed suspended, raised into making the
transition to thought, but only from the perspective that it reconstitutes
itself and precisely thereby makes itself actual and proves itself to be
ineliminable.25

we see that in order to exit the negativity of the mere idea, Schelling sug-
gests we treat the potencies not as a threefold unity, but also not as a dis-
jointed threefold, but rather as an operative unity, dividing and reconsti-
tuting itself. This, combined with Schelling’s persistent view that there is
no basic level to nature, gives us the key as to what to do with abstraction
to bring it back to life – ground it in its past and its future, ultimately un-
grounding it in both directions. These operations of both past and futural
grounding/ungrounding are inevitable, because whatever element we are
examining cannot but have a causal history. Even abstract elements, even
abstraction itself, they all have a ground.
The presentation of the potencies at the beginning of Darstellung des
Naturprozesses is thus abstract only insofar as it is Schelling setting up
a philosophical toolbox. Whenever the philosopher is to think abstractly
and give abstraction justice, it is only possible through recognizing that, if
abstraction means unconditional declaration of independence and auton-
25
Id., Sämmtliche Werke, Bd. X, p. 307: [W]enn eine Welt außer der Idee gedacht wird,
so kann sie nur auf diese Weise, und kann dann ferner nur als eine solche gedacht
werden. Um also zur Welt außer der Idee zu gelangen, müssen wir erst das erste Element
derselben als für sich Seyendes setzen, und die Frage ist, wie dieß seyn könne. Nun
haben wir aber gleich anfangs erkannt, daß jenes Subjekt zwar der Idee nach nur dem
höheren Objekt (+ A) zugewendet, nicht Subjekt oder Potenz seiner selbst, sondern eben
des Existirenden sey, aber seiner Natur nach doch ebensowohl dieses (Potenz seiner
selbst) seyn, vom unendlichen Seyn sich abwenden kann, um für sich selbst Seyendes
zu seyn; in welchem Betracht dieses Können als die ihrer Natur nach zweideutige Natur,
als Δυας, sich darstellt. Indem wir aber ein Auseinandergehen der Idee denken, müssen
wir doch sie zugleich als unaufheblich in dem Sinne ansehen, daß die Einheit zwar
suspendirt - vorübergehend im Gedanken aufgehoben werden kann, aber nur in der
Absicht, daß sie sich wiederherstelle, aber eben damit verwirkliche, sich als die nicht
aufzuhebende auch erweise.
 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 57

omy, then it can only be sterility and premeditated murder of whatever is

abstracted. Abstraction is precisely local and conditional – conditional on
the abstracted object’s previous pluggedness into networked processes of
concretion. This connection/disconnection is what distinguishes the use of
abstraction as a surgical tool and its use as a weapon of murder, capable of
killing everything, even itself, i.e., turning abstraction to meaningless iso-
lation and sterility. The problem of Naturphilosophie, the weapon that at-
tempts to strike down nature then, is not purely abstraction, but abstraction
torn from the processes of natural production and unhinged from history.

***

F.W.J. Schelling’s Naturphilosophie gives philosophy what is still

a rather poorly-explored option – a concept of Nature as absolute pro-
ductivity, one which is best thought of in terms of power. It is an an-
swer to Kantian and mechanistic conceptions of nature, and while it may
seem like this unconditioned nature is so unamenable to abstraction that
there can, paradoxically, be no philosophical thought about it, this is far
from the truth. I have attempted to show that Schelling takes abstraction
to mean uprootedness from antecedents and consequences, and that once
this uprootedeness is understood to be merely provisional, there is no ob-
vious problem with his conception of Naturphilosophie, which is curious-
ly viable (or at the very least has its viability pending) simply because it
operates with a different understanding of nature.
58 Diana Khamis

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 Abstraction: Death by a Thousand Cuts 59

ABSTRACT

In the Lectures on the Method of Academic Study in 1802, F.W.J. Schelling

warned his listeners against the annihilation of nature. The annihilation he had
in mind was not ecological in the usual sense of the word, but an annihilation
caused by a certain way of looking at nature – a philosophical annihilation. The
issue Schelling had in mind was that of understanding nature as mechanical, or
as merely a domain of things, and of understanding humans as somehow more
than natural. This paper is set to describe and argue for a Schellingian alternative
to the “annihilation” of nature, to demonstrate why, on such an understanding of
nature, the only thing which could undermine it is abstraction and to see how a
philosophy should approach abstract thinking in order to deal with this apparent
problem. For that, different ways to apply the “knife” of abstraction will be then
discussed – some murderous, some surgical.

Keywords: Schelling – Naturphilosophie – Abstraction – Potency – Productivity

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

In der Vorlesungen über die Methode des akademischen Studiums in 1802,

warnte F.W.J. Schelling seine Zuhöher vor der „Annihiliation der Natur“. Diese
gefürchtete Annihilation war nicht ekologisch in dem üblichen Sinn des Wortes,
sondern verursacht durch eine gewisse Vorstellung von Natur, d.h., eine philoso-
phiche Annihilation. Die problematische Vorstellung ist von Natur als etwas me-
chanisches, und von den Menschen als irgenwie mehr als natürlich. In was folgt
beschreibe ich die schellingsche Alternative zu dieser Annihilation, demonstriere
wieso und in welchem Sinn nur Abstraktion diese schellingsche Natur bedrohen
kann und schlage vor, wie das philosophische Denken den Messer der Abstrakti-
on verwenden soll, um dieses Problem zu vermeiden.

Schlusselwörter: Schelling – Naturphilosophie – Abstraktion – Potenz – Produk-

tivität der Natur