Life, Organisms, and Human Nature: New Perspectives on Classical German Philosophy (Studies in German Idealism, 22)

This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resource for scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally. Introduction Understanding Organic Life: At the Crossroads Between Philosophy and the Natural Sciences Understanding the Human Life Form: Between Nature, Spirit, and Society Naturalism and the Bounds of Nature References Acknowledgments Contents Contributors Part I: Understanding Organic Life Between Philosophy and the Natural Sciences Organisms and Natural Ends in Kant’s Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment 1 Kant on Judging Nature Teleologically 1.1 Judgments According to External Purposiveness 1.2 The Paradoxical Feature of Ends in Nature 2 On the Pecularity of Natural Phenomena 3 The Application of the Concept of a Natural End by Analogy 3.1 The Two Steps of the Derivation of the Concept of a Natural End 3.2 The Failure of the Second Analogy in the Derivation of the Concept of a Natural End 4 The Conceptual Relation Between the Concept of a Natural End and That of Organisms 4.1 Two Objections 4.1.1 The Exegetical Evidence 4.1.2 A Circularity Problem? 5 Concluding Remarks References Kant and Biological Theory 1 Kant’s Descriptive Metaphysics 2 Accretionists, Extenders, and Kant 3 Synthesis in Practice 4 Synthesizing from the Human Standpoint 5 Conclusion References Rethinking Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature Through a Process Account of Emergence 1 How Should We Understand Schelling’s Project of a Philosophy of Nature? 2 Self-Organization and Constraints: A Contemporary Perspective 2.1 From Physicalism to a ‘Physics of Organization’ 2.2 Constraints, Processes and Work 2.3 Deacon on the Emergence of Life and Mind 3 Schelling’s Physics of Self-Organization 4 Conclusion References “Inadmissible Application”: Some Notes on Causality and Life in Hegel 1 Methodological Approach to Hegel 2 Causality as Identity 3 The Note on Causality and Life 4 On the Plausibility of Hegel’s Thesis 4.1 Duress and Deception 4.2 Market Laws 4.3 Smoking Causes Lung Cancer 5 Causality and Life in the Logic of the Concept: Towards a Solution? 6 What Do We Learn About Hegel’s Theory of Causality? References Concepts with Teeth and Claws. On Species, Essences and Purposes in Hegel’s Organic Physics 1 Essentialism for Historians, Essentialism for Philosophers 2 The Lack of a Clear-Cut Definition of Species 3 The Non-specific Genus of Living Beings 4 The Immanent Purpose of Organisms 5 Concrete Animality as a Normative Standard 6 Prototypes, Defects and Reproductive Communities References Hegel’s Theory of Space-Time (No, Not That Space-Time) 1 Ways of Combining Space and Time 2 On the Notion of a Dimension 3 On the Dimensionality of Space 4 On the Dimensionality of Time: How Freedom Dimensions Integrate Linearity and Inclusion Dimensions 5 Conclusion References Part II: Understanding the Human Life-Form Between Nature, Spirit, and Society ‘All is Act, Movement, and Life’: Fichte’s Idealism as Immortalism 1. Caput Mortuum 2. The I and the Thing in Itself 3. The I and Nature's Moral Perfection 4. Life and Death References “True Life Is Only in Death.” On Rejecting Life and Nature in Romanticism (Fichte, Novalis, Schlegel) 1 The End of the Cosmos and the Immorality of Nature: From Kant to Fichte 2 The World in Feeling: Novalis 3 A Flawed Universe: Schlegel 4 Conclusion References Schelling on the Nature of Freedom and the Freedom of Nature: The Role of the Naturphilosophie in the Freiheitsschrift 1 The Naturphilosophie 1.1 Freedom in the Naturphilosophie 1.2 Problems from the Naturphilosophie 2 The Naturphilosophie in the Freiheitsschrift 3 The Freiheitsschrift 4 Making Sense of Ownership 5 Making Sense of Responsibility References The State as Second Nature in Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism 1 Nature and Freedom in the Early Schelling 2 The State as a Second Nature in the System of Transcendental Idealism 3 Teleology and Necessity in History: The Involuntary Community References The Psychical Relation 1 Transformation and Second Nature 2 The Feeling Soul 3 Interiorization and Embodiment 4 Birth 5 Concluding Remarks References The Physical Body and Its Role in Hegel’s Mature Ethical Theory 1 Individuals and the Physical Body: Three Models 2 Society and the Physical Body: The Social Conditions of Our Bodily Self-Relationship 3 The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel’s Position References Second Nature and Self-Determination in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit 1 ‘Second Nature’ as a Contested Notion 2 Bildung as Sprit’s Self-Cognition 3 Two Accounts of Second Nature in Hegel 4 Voice and Language 5 Natural and Ethical Will 6 The Limits of Second Nature References Gattungswesen and Universality: Feuerbach, Marx and German Idealism 1 The Apparent Puzzle 2 Gattung in Feuerbach’s Hegelian Phase 3 Marx’s Texts of 1843 and 1844: Universality and the Threat of Bifurcation 4 Concrete Universality References Part III: Naturalism and the Bounds of Nature The Third Antinomy in the Age of Naturalism 1 The Persistence of an Antinomy 2 Freedom and Nature 3 The Indispensability of Freedom 4 The Impossibility of Freedom 5 Beyond the Antinomy? References Post-Bonnetian Naturalism 1 The Natural History of Perfectibility 2 Anomalous Naturalism and the Post-Bonnetian Tradition References Romantic Empiricism in the Anthropocene: Unlocking A. v. Humboldt’s and F. W. J. Schelling’s Potential for the Environmental Humanities 1 Natural Science Versus Philosophy of Nature? 2 Characteristics of a Romantic Empiricism after Humboldt and Schelling 2.1 Critique of Dualism and Mechanism 2.2 Wholeness and Unity of Nature 2.3 Becoming or Dynamic Stepladder of Nature 2.4 Secret Bond or Natural History of the Spirit 2.5 Nature Painting or Aesthetic Epistemology 2.6 World Painting or Nature-Ethics 3 Conclusion References Beyond Naturalism, Spiritualism and Finite Idealism: Hegel on the Relationship Between Metaphysical Truth, Nature and Mind 1 Hegel and Universal Explicability 1.1 A Geistige Philosophy of Nature? 1.2 Nature and Philosophy as the Idea’s Self-Thinking 2 Hegel’s Three Syllogisms of Philosophy 2.1 The First Syllogism 2.2 From Idea to Nature 2.3 From Nature to Geist 2.4 The Second Syllogism of Philosophy 2.5 The Third Syllogism of Philosophy 2.6 Philosophy and the Absolute Idea 2.7 Idea and Concept 3 Hegel’s Non-naturalist and Non-spiritualist Idealism 3.1 Naturalism and Hegel’s Nature 4 Conclusion References Scientism as Ideology; Speculative Naturalism as Qualified Decoloniality 1 1 2 2 3 3 3.1 3.1 3.2 3.2 References