3. Third Lecture: Initial stage - the Absolute (Ungrund), and the First Potency (A=B)

In this lecture, I begin a step-by-step explanation of Schelling's “Weltformel.” This lecture is divided into two parts: the Ungrund and the first potency. Both concepts require detailed explanation, as they are central to understanding potency and the initial force that creates the first potency. After examining the initial stage, we transition to the first potency. Essentially, the first potency represents the emergence of potency from non-potency through internal resistance.

Ungrund

The absolute is an eternal and endless state of affairs that lacks nothing. From the theological aspect, it is God. When we explore the forces within the absolute, we can see that there is constant, never-ending circulation: A¹ → A² → A³. What does this mean? A¹ is the drive that wills itself, contracting into itself; A² is the drive that wills the other and expands outward; A³ is the combination of both (the affirmation of the second, A³, counterbalances the negation of the first, A¹). The reason there is no B in the initial state is related to the balance of these three wills. They are all qualitatively the same—their essence is one. They only expand and contract calmly, changing the quantity of the same essence; none of these sources breaks out of the cycle to triumph over the others.

Žižek, characteristically, turned the "speed button of the blender to the max" and saw it as a "vortex of drives." However, for Schelling, the constant transition in the absolute was smoother. He states: "There, all forces are indeed present and in natural interaction amongst themselves, excited by gentle interplay; but no character, no I-hood, no one has yet stepped forth to dominate and control them.”

Schelling states, "It [the unground] certainly is nothing, but in the way that pure freedom is nothing. It is like the will that wills nothing, that desires no object, for which all things are equal, and is therefore moved by none of them. Such a will is nothing and everything."

The initial state of the absolute as the total and as the "One" is also the same in the sense of identity. It has no opposition or otherness and produces no needs. In this state, the One wills nothing because it produces no will for anything. Later, Schelling also refers to that state as the initial state of the Trinity. As God, it has no pressure to change the situation (hence everything that happens next can be related to the motif of contingency). From the psychological perspective, this is a state prior to consciousness that includes the potential for consciousness. Then something interesting happens.



First potency: (A=B)

An imbalance occurs at a random moment or based on God's free will. From a theological perspective, part of God that shares God's nature does not identify itself with God, thus becoming a source of quantitative imbalance.

Schelling refers to this, as expressed in the Bible, as divine “wrath”: "This force is the white heat of purity, intensified to a fiery glare by the pull of nature. It is unapproachable, unbearable to all created things, and would rage against every creature like ruinous fire, eternal wrath that tolerates nothing, fatally contracting but for the resistance of love."

Part of the absolute is now different in the sense of a narcissistic, self-centered selfhood that is not counterbalanced by outward focus or any sort of altruism (also referred to as "ipseity"). It is a will that negates and rejects, an overpowering selfish drive, inward motion, and contracting force that lacks nothing and wills nothing.

It does not see the other and feels it has all that it needs—in other words, it needs nothing from anyone and has a self-assertive, negating, aggressive drive. Within such an attitude lies the "Dark ground" that creates the possibility of evil appearing. In the original theogony, Boehme called this the "Dark principle," while Schelling mostly referred to it as "ground" and also “real.” However, these terms should not be taken literally (as a ground to stand on); the dark principle can also be related to material nature in the sense of “natura naturata” (“nature made”) as a finished, visible product.

Whether God makes this move intentionally (for the greater good, eventually granting consciousness to humanity or transforming the status of His non-being) or as a random act, it sets a series of events in motion because it creates a lack in the system (due to the imbalance). This action "ends the darkness." Schelling says: "Darkness and concealment are dominant characteristics of the primordial time. All life first becomes and develops in the night; for this reason, the ancients called night the fertile mother of things and indeed, together with chaos, the oldest of beings ['Wesen']."

As a result, there is an excess of the most primordial aspect of the absolute (or God), an excess of pure unconscious "being" ("das Seyn"). This ground has potential derived from the unground that cannot be realized by itself.
From a psychological perspective, this is a self-centered, schizophrenic stage, where an individual does not recognize the other and is not intact with their true identity. However, as we shall soon see, this drive also yearns deep down inside—it senses that vices alone cannot achieve perfection.

Let us examine how Schelling depicts this in the formula. First, the excess has the qualities of the absolute (same origin); thus, we can say: A=A. In this part of the absolute, the balance has shifted from the neutral center to one end. That finite part is now, in terms of quantitative balance, different from the universal, and we can refer to that difference as A≠A. This means that A posits something that is not A, as "I" posits "the not-I." We can substitute "not-A" with "B," and this can be depicted as (A=B).

The last point regarding the first potency is that the infinite, eternal absolute (God, unground, One) cannot initially be identified with a certain symbol such as "A." We are using "A" only as a marker for the amount of the absolute that was seized by "B" in this first move (first potency). This finite cut or gap into infinity, created by the first potency, makes the irrational and incomprehensible absolute rationally understandable for us retroactively (therefore, we can also posit "A" after this move). The contradiction, which creates an excess of one (negating) will, generates the lack that now must be filled.