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Philosophies of Nature after Schelling
'The whole of modern European philosophy', wrote F.W.J. Schelling in 1809, 'has this common deficiency - that nature does not exist for it.' Despite repeated echoes of Schelling's assessment throughout the natural sciences, and despite the philosophy of nature recently proposed but not completed by Gilles Deleuze, Philosophies of Nature After Schelling argues that Schelling's verdict remains accurate two hundred years later. Presenting a lucid account of Schelling's major works in the philosophy of nature alongside those of his scientific contemporaries who pursued and furthered that work, this book does not simply aim to present Schelling's extravagant 'speculative physics' as an historical episode. Rather, Schelling's programme is presented as a viable and necessary corrective both to the rejection of metaphysics and the correlative 'antiphysics' at the ethical heart of contemporary philosophy.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
246 pages, Hardcover
First published June 18, 2006
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December 21, 2022Grant maintains that insofar as contemporary philosophy is still Kantian, Schelling's attempts to overcome Kant make him our contemporary. Grant aims to combat the view of Schelling as historical footnote, an intermediary figure linking Kant and Hegel, or as a mere precursor of modern self-organisation theory and field theory regrettably limited by the science of his day.
Schelling is a thinker typically divided into different eras of thought – with his 'naturephilosophy' superseded by his later philosophy. It's a central claim of this book that Schelling's entire corpus was concerned with the philosophy of nature and must be read through this lens. This is what makes the book difficult – there is no extended exegesis of any particular text by Schelling, as his writings are blended together and reconstructed in order to address the various sets of ontological problems Grant sees presented by Schelling's engagements with Plato, Kant, Kielmeyer and various other contemporaries. In his view, the "genesis of matter" and "materiality of becomings” is “the central naturephilosophical problematic" ([Grant, 2006, p. 22].
Clearest to me were the sections on Schelling as a philosopher concerned with the 'genetic', and its reading of Schelling's view that we must understand nature as 'subject'.
The 'genetic': the question of origins, of differentiation and descent from first principles. These first principles, however, contrary to Kant and Fichte, cannot be purely formal but must also be material. Schelling acknowledges the primacy of the idea as well as the necessity of material structure, of embodiment of the Idea. He arrives at a "somaticism" that is far from degenerative from the purity of the Idea, as in Plato, but fundamentally generative. The rational structure of nature reflects or is reflected in the structure of the individual mind.
‘nature itself, necessarily and originally, should not only express, but even realise, the laws of our mind’ (II, 55–6; 1988: 41–2)
This is not because nature is self-differentiating mind, though,– nor is it because nature is posited by an infinite intellect subdividing itself. The source of natural productivity is unknowable as object (it is 'unthinged') precisely because objects (as products) are logically posterior to the germ of universal organism. What comes first is ground, as "unconditioned", pure auto self-reflexivity.
As always with German idealist philosophy the reasoning seems to circle around a fundamentally unknowable but also absolutely necessary foundation. For Schelling the difference seems to be that rather than beginning with individual subjectivity and extracting determining and counter-determining forces from the formal structure of mind, these components of mind are posited as following from the dynamics of motion and force at work in observable nature. More than this – this force and motion as conceived by physics has already been domesticated as appearance, subordinate to the Idea. Instead, we have to see these forces as evidence of a natural productivity that is at once material and subjective, and amenable to ideation only because it is subjective in-itself.
Subject: Grant is careful to avoid presenting Schelling's view of nature-as-subject as though there is some divine or cosmic 'point of view'.
“In none of these cases have we to do with an ascription of ‘subjectivity’ to nature that would be recognizable from the standard post-eighteenth-century philosophical concept of ‘the subject”(p. 29)
The subject does not have a point-of-view, nor does it have intentionality etc. It is subject insofar as it is active, unthinged, and productive. It is active in the sense that its causal agency exceeds the degree to which it is receptive to the causal influence of other actors. (The ultimate agency of nature-as-subject is of course absolutely unconditioned, but Schelling also describes the organism as subject, in which case we presumably understand his meaning in this Spinozist way – the organism is subject when it is more active than receptive).
"The auto has the irremediable externality of the automatic, the autonomic, its only ‘in itself’ deriving exclusively from the irreversibility of dependency relations stemming from it, rather than extending to it." ([Grant, 2006, p. 29]
Grant follows this remark by pointing out that as such Schelling's system can be read as autopoietic. (In my view Grant's characterisation doesn't obviously mirror Maturana and Varela's autopoiesis, though, which on the face of it comes closer to a more Fichtean account of self-positing (as Zizek has pointed out). In the above quotation Schelling's 'auto' inaugurates pure externality, with dependency relations branching out but not in. But in autopoiesis the key point is that the system establishes interiority, and its dependency relations are recursive.)
Schelling is a thinker typically divided into different eras of thought – with his 'naturephilosophy' superseded by his later philosophy. It's a central claim of this book that Schelling's entire corpus was concerned with the philosophy of nature and must be read through this lens. This is what makes the book difficult – there is no extended exegesis of any particular text by Schelling, as his writings are blended together and reconstructed in order to address the various sets of ontological problems Grant sees presented by Schelling's engagements with Plato, Kant, Kielmeyer and various other contemporaries. In his view, the "genesis of matter" and "materiality of becomings” is “the central naturephilosophical problematic" ([Grant, 2006, p. 22].
Clearest to me were the sections on Schelling as a philosopher concerned with the 'genetic', and its reading of Schelling's view that we must understand nature as 'subject'.
The 'genetic': the question of origins, of differentiation and descent from first principles. These first principles, however, contrary to Kant and Fichte, cannot be purely formal but must also be material. Schelling acknowledges the primacy of the idea as well as the necessity of material structure, of embodiment of the Idea. He arrives at a "somaticism" that is far from degenerative from the purity of the Idea, as in Plato, but fundamentally generative. The rational structure of nature reflects or is reflected in the structure of the individual mind.
‘nature itself, necessarily and originally, should not only express, but even realise, the laws of our mind’ (II, 55–6; 1988: 41–2)
This is not because nature is self-differentiating mind, though,– nor is it because nature is posited by an infinite intellect subdividing itself. The source of natural productivity is unknowable as object (it is 'unthinged') precisely because objects (as products) are logically posterior to the germ of universal organism. What comes first is ground, as "unconditioned", pure auto self-reflexivity.
As always with German idealist philosophy the reasoning seems to circle around a fundamentally unknowable but also absolutely necessary foundation. For Schelling the difference seems to be that rather than beginning with individual subjectivity and extracting determining and counter-determining forces from the formal structure of mind, these components of mind are posited as following from the dynamics of motion and force at work in observable nature. More than this – this force and motion as conceived by physics has already been domesticated as appearance, subordinate to the Idea. Instead, we have to see these forces as evidence of a natural productivity that is at once material and subjective, and amenable to ideation only because it is subjective in-itself.
Subject: Grant is careful to avoid presenting Schelling's view of nature-as-subject as though there is some divine or cosmic 'point of view'.
“In none of these cases have we to do with an ascription of ‘subjectivity’ to nature that would be recognizable from the standard post-eighteenth-century philosophical concept of ‘the subject”(p. 29)
The subject does not have a point-of-view, nor does it have intentionality etc. It is subject insofar as it is active, unthinged, and productive. It is active in the sense that its causal agency exceeds the degree to which it is receptive to the causal influence of other actors. (The ultimate agency of nature-as-subject is of course absolutely unconditioned, but Schelling also describes the organism as subject, in which case we presumably understand his meaning in this Spinozist way – the organism is subject when it is more active than receptive).
"The auto has the irremediable externality of the automatic, the autonomic, its only ‘in itself’ deriving exclusively from the irreversibility of dependency relations stemming from it, rather than extending to it." ([Grant, 2006, p. 29]
Grant follows this remark by pointing out that as such Schelling's system can be read as autopoietic. (In my view Grant's characterisation doesn't obviously mirror Maturana and Varela's autopoiesis, though, which on the face of it comes closer to a more Fichtean account of self-positing (as Zizek has pointed out). In the above quotation Schelling's 'auto' inaugurates pure externality, with dependency relations branching out but not in. But in autopoiesis the key point is that the system establishes interiority, and its dependency relations are recursive.)
December 15, 2021
Philosophies of Nature After Schelling was actually one of the four books I was excited to read in 2021. In it Iain Hamilton Grant resurrects a fiercely post-Kantian image of Schelling as a thinker of forces and dynamisms whose progressive currents of potentiation begets the familiar Idealist 'I' as a product. This means folding transcendental philosophy into nature philosophy. Unbinding physics from ethico-practical imperatives that Kant-Fichte has subjected to it, transcendental philosophy is internally and externally reconfigured to yield a philosophy of nature capable of a Platonist one-world metaphysics, and one that recognizes no higher apriority than nature herself. Grant's presentation of naturphilosophie as a kind of realism forming a kind of coalition-system with the more 'speculative' side of the natural sciences of the age, specifically, geology, and his recovery of the simultaneously philosophical and natural-scientific concerns driving the mind itself--the most tension-ridden among all of nature's products--to construct such a cutting edge system, is a step in the right direction to counteract the received wisdom which unjustly reduces philosophy of nature to an artefact of a bygone era; an embarassing cautionary tale of speculation going off the rails.
In fact, speculation has not been pursued far enough. One is yet to reiterate, in the order of the ideal and in a successive manner, the non-phenomenal forces ('unlimited productivity') and their bifurcations that engendered the self-consciousness, alongside other determinate products, of which there are potentially infinite. In this respect the philosopher fulfills the role not unlike that of an experimental physicist running a controlled experiment in the conceptual realm to test all systems of their allegiance to maximal extensity, affirming only those that affirm a qualitative identity in duplicity of nature and intelligence. However, Grant, following Schelling, makes it clear that we can only reverse engineer the process to a certain extent, given that nature as unlimited productivity phenomenally exceeds its products ("Nature freely evolves along all possible trajectories"). At a certain point in a genetic account it becomes simply impossible to retrace the whole series ("The regionality of the Ich to becoming as such constitutes an insuperable barrier preventing any recovery of the infinite in consciousness 182), and the I is pushed to generate a new series in its very effort to intuit the past, or the natural history of the mind.
But if nature is nonobjective infinite productivity, and no longer a totality of possible conceptual-sensory representings ('dead' mechanism), why are there determinate products at all? Products are momentary arrestations of activity in all its fury. But activity of what? Grants identifies Schelling preoccupation with thinking the becoming of being as early as the latter's commentary on Timaeus. As a true heir to Plato, Grant's Schelling rejects the Aristotelian primary substance, instead mobilizing construction itself as being itself, which as an Idea exceeds both physical nature and thinking nature. Grant also sets the record straight on the radical use of the theory of recapitulation--what is recapitulated in every instance of production are not bodies, or organisms but time in the phenomenal form of organisation, or the proportion of forces. Taking nature as the highest apriori turns transcendental philosophy inside out and turns what thinks inside of us into what lies outside of us. Ultimately, against the image of Schelling as a protean thinker who starts and starts anew, and who in his 'middle period' folded the real into the ideal, Grant identifies the geophilosophical impulse to naturalize the transcendental as the enduring concern of the great philosopher; a concern that to this day remains not fully unrealized by his contemporaries.
My only gripe with Grant's otherwise impressive defence of Schelling's naturephilosophy first approach is that Grant neglects to expand on how human freedom, though having an independent life for itself, is nonetheless premised on nature's freedom. For example, Grant misses the opportunity to address the more 'theodical' side of the Freitheit Essay in which the real comes close to being overwhelmed by the ideal. This is somewhat to be expected, since Grant's selection of texts seem to lean heavily on the early and middle period of Schelling's intellectual output.
Criticisms aside, if you are fan of German Idealism, and curious about the exact nature of Schelling's naturephilosophical project, then you will definitely enjoy Philosophies of Nature After Schelling.
In fact, speculation has not been pursued far enough. One is yet to reiterate, in the order of the ideal and in a successive manner, the non-phenomenal forces ('unlimited productivity') and their bifurcations that engendered the self-consciousness, alongside other determinate products, of which there are potentially infinite. In this respect the philosopher fulfills the role not unlike that of an experimental physicist running a controlled experiment in the conceptual realm to test all systems of their allegiance to maximal extensity, affirming only those that affirm a qualitative identity in duplicity of nature and intelligence. However, Grant, following Schelling, makes it clear that we can only reverse engineer the process to a certain extent, given that nature as unlimited productivity phenomenally exceeds its products ("Nature freely evolves along all possible trajectories"). At a certain point in a genetic account it becomes simply impossible to retrace the whole series ("The regionality of the Ich to becoming as such constitutes an insuperable barrier preventing any recovery of the infinite in consciousness 182), and the I is pushed to generate a new series in its very effort to intuit the past, or the natural history of the mind.
But if nature is nonobjective infinite productivity, and no longer a totality of possible conceptual-sensory representings ('dead' mechanism), why are there determinate products at all? Products are momentary arrestations of activity in all its fury. But activity of what? Grants identifies Schelling preoccupation with thinking the becoming of being as early as the latter's commentary on Timaeus. As a true heir to Plato, Grant's Schelling rejects the Aristotelian primary substance, instead mobilizing construction itself as being itself, which as an Idea exceeds both physical nature and thinking nature. Grant also sets the record straight on the radical use of the theory of recapitulation--what is recapitulated in every instance of production are not bodies, or organisms but time in the phenomenal form of organisation, or the proportion of forces. Taking nature as the highest apriori turns transcendental philosophy inside out and turns what thinks inside of us into what lies outside of us. Ultimately, against the image of Schelling as a protean thinker who starts and starts anew, and who in his 'middle period' folded the real into the ideal, Grant identifies the geophilosophical impulse to naturalize the transcendental as the enduring concern of the great philosopher; a concern that to this day remains not fully unrealized by his contemporaries.
My only gripe with Grant's otherwise impressive defence of Schelling's naturephilosophy first approach is that Grant neglects to expand on how human freedom, though having an independent life for itself, is nonetheless premised on nature's freedom. For example, Grant misses the opportunity to address the more 'theodical' side of the Freitheit Essay in which the real comes close to being overwhelmed by the ideal. This is somewhat to be expected, since Grant's selection of texts seem to lean heavily on the early and middle period of Schelling's intellectual output.
Criticisms aside, if you are fan of German Idealism, and curious about the exact nature of Schelling's naturephilosophical project, then you will definitely enjoy Philosophies of Nature After Schelling.
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