This is a pre-publication version of an article set to appear in a special issue of the journal Europeana on the relationship between Europe and ecology.European Philosophy and the Question of Nature: The Death of Nature and the Rebirth of PhysisAbstractSerge Moscovici has argued that the current epoch of history is defined above all by the natural question: the question of humanitys relationship to nature. This article argues that European philosophy is torn between two quite different responses to this question. The first, expressed most notably by Bruno Latour, considers that the word and concept of nature is insurmountably problematic and must thus be discarded. The second, developed within systems theory by Edgar Morin and within phenomenology by Martin Heidegger, advocates a rediscovery and regeneration of the original Pre-Socratic interpretation of nature as physis. Drawing on and articulating the work of Morin and Heidegger, this article argues firstly that the appropriate response to the natural question is to consider nature as physis qua self-disclosure or self-bringing-into-the-Open, and secondly that the Open must be understood as an agora a public space consisting of markets, parliaments, law courts, conferences into which things may in one way or another be brought. This interpretation of the Open as agora draws on Hannah Arendt, though it also despite other fundamental differences overlaps with the political philosophy of Bruno Latour.BiographyHenry Dicks is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophical Research (IrPhil) of University Jean Moulin Lyon 3. His research and teaching focus on environmental philosophy, particularly environmental ethics, political ecology, eco-phenomenology, and eco-poetics. A member of the industrial chair, Rationalities, Uses, and Imaginaries of Water, funded by Lyonnaise des Eaux, and the Intelligence of Urban Worlds (IMU) project on Biomimetic cities, his current research applies his work in environmental philosophy to the fields of water, biomimicry, and urbanism.IntroductionWriting in 1968, the French philosopher Serge Moscovici claimed that each century or epoch must answer a different question. The eighteenth century had to answer the political question: the question of the best or most appropriate form of government. The nineteenth century had to answer the social question: how best to guarantee the welfare of civil society. And the twentieth century had to answer the natural question: the question of humanitys relation to nature. This is not to say, of course, that Moscovici thought the natural question had never previously been asked, but simply that he considered that it is only recently that it has emerged as the essential question (Moscovici 1977, 5) of an entire epoch. The current importance of the natural question, Moscovici further argues, is ultimately a result of the power of science and technology, which have given us the ability radically to alter the earth (Moscovici 1977, 6-7). The natural question, then, goes hand in hand with the emergence of the so-called ecological crisis, as well as with what many have since taken to calling the Anthropocene.This article argues that European philosophy is torn between two radically different responses to the natural question. The first finds an apt summary in Timothy Mortons slogan of ecology without nature (Morton 2009). The word and concept of nature, Morton and others argue, are problematic and must thus be discarded, or at least deconstructed. Indeed, nature is variously accused of being: too ambiguous or polysemic, always already technological, a social construct, a fiction, a cover for injustice, metaphysical, ethnocentric, and so on. After the deaths of God and Man, it would appear to be Natures turn to be put to the sword. As Bruno Latour remarks:

When the most frenetic of ecologists cry out in fear: nature is going to die, they are unaware how right they are. Thank God, nature is going to die. Yes, the great Pan is dead! After the death of God and of Man, nature too must come to an end. (Latour 1999, p.42, my translation)

It is frequently the case that those who adopt this first approach to the natural question criticize the standard subject/object dualism of modernity, but, rather than replacing this dualism with something different, they seek instead to explore what Bruno Latour (1991) calls the Middle Kingdom, that is to say, the intermediary space between active human subjects and passive natural objects, which is variously thought to be populated by such entities as plants, animals, children, the mentally retarded, technological artefacts, and cyborgs. On a more conceptual level, this Middle Kingdom can be said to be composed of what Latour calls quasi-subjects, quasi-objects, and hybrids. Such non-modernism (Latour 1991) or post-modernism (Callicott 1995) thus maintains the standard oppositions of modern thinking (subject/object, freedom/determinism, etc.), while at the same time showing that these opposing elements constitute two extreme poles of a multi-dimensional actor-network (Latour 1991) or continuum (Callicott 1995), the simplistic, binary partitioning of whose elements is held responsible for the characteristic violence towards non-humans characteristic of modernity (see also Derrida 2006).The second response to the natural question is also critical of modernity, but instead of exploring the interstices of modern subject/object dualism, it seeks to rediscover and regenerate the thinking about nature undertaken by the first poets and philosophers of the West. Nature, from this perspective, first disclosed itself at the dawn of Western history to the Pre-Socratics as physis, and it is this thinking of physis that must be regenerated and further explored if we are to avoid the impending ecological catastrophe. This second response to the natural question finds its most fully developed expression in the thought of Edgar Morin and Martin Heidegger, both of whom, despite their very different intellectual traditions systems thinking and phenomenology, respectively , argue in favour of a rediscovery and regeneration of Pre-Socratic thinking about physis, understood as self-production (Morin 1977) or poisis en heauti (Heidegger 1993a).Two key sayings may be associated with this second response to the natural question. The first, which is quoted by both Heidegger (1993a, 333) and Morin (2007, 127), is Hlderlins famous verse: But where danger is, grows / the saving power also. On the interpretation of this saying put forward in the present article, the danger is self-destruction, that is to say, the danger that Western civilization which was born when Being or nature unveiled itself to the ancient Greeks, and which has since, as both Morin and Heidegger observe (Morin 2011, 114), become planetary will destroy itself. And the saving power that this danger harbours is the opposite of self-destruction: the thinking of Being or nature as physis or self-production. The second key saying comes from Heidegger, but has been frequently quoted by Morin: The origin is not behind us, it is in front of us (Morin 2007, 124; 2011, 115). What this means is that in order to respond appropriately to the natural question we must rediscover the Pre-Socratic thinking of physis in such a way that there may emerge a new beginning, which, unlike the first beginning, will stay with and develop the path opened up by the thinking of Being qua self-production.

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The first response to the natural question, whose various permutations include non-modernism, post-modernism, and deconstruction (in Derridas sense[footnoteRef:1]), is currently much more widespread than the second and its various permutations have been developed in great detail by a wide variety of thinkers. In view of this, it will not be possible to examine it in anything like a comprehensive manner. It will, however, be important to have a reference point with respect to which the second response may be compared and contrasted. This reference point will be the work of Bruno Latour, who has not only widely proclaimed the death of nature, but is also one of the most prominent and influential figures of contemporary European thought. [1: The fundamental difference between Heidegger and Derrida as regards deconstruction is that whereas Heidegger thinks it is necessary to deconstruct the interpretations of Being (or nature) which define the various epochs of metaphysics, so as to uncover and regenerate the original Pre-Socratic understanding of Being (or nature) as physis, Derrida thinks that there is no original understanding of Being (or nature) to which one may get back.]

As already noted, the key proponents of the second response are Martin Heidegger and Edgar Morin. Importantly, however, since their respective interpretations of physis arise in the very different philosophical traditions of systems thinking (Morin) and phenomenology (Heidegger), it will be necessary to spend some time articulating them. We will thus begin by sketching out the interpretation of physis presented by Morin in tome 1 of La Mthode, before drawing on Heidegger to argue that this interpretation is hindered by a problematic realism and that physis must instead be understood phenomenologically, that is, not simply as self-production, but, more broadly, as self-disclosure or self-bringing into the Open. It will further be argued that the Open in which natural beings self-disclose must be understood as an agora: a shared and indeterminate space of appearance in which beings may, following their initial disclosure, undergo various forms of categorization. This part of our analysis will draw extensively on Hannah Arendts phenomenological interpretation of the Greek polis put forward in The Human Condition (1998).The second response to the natural question, which the present article both defends and develops, can thus be described as a synthesis and articulation of the Greek-inspired thinking of Edgar Morin, Martin Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt. It stands in stark contrast to the celebration of the death of nature characteristic of the post-moderns or non-moderns, particularly Bruno Latour. Nevertheless, the second response does share one key point in common with Latours thought, for, as we will see, his republic of things draws on an ancient understanding of things previously brought to light by Heidegger, and, in so doing, overlaps in some important respects with our phenomenological interpretation of the agora.

Bruno Latour: the Death of Nature

Latour sometimes presents his work in relation to the claim made by or at least associated with French theorists of the 1960s and 1970s that everything is text (Latour 2001, 278-279). For these theorists, language does not enable us accurately to represent some sort of independent, external reality. On the contrary, reality itself is constituted by shifting structures or systems of signs, with respect to which there is no outside. Latour traces his partial break with this paradigm to his research into scientific texts and laboratory practice. According to Latour, the idea that everything is text encounters resistance primarily from natural scientists, who often continue to see language as to borrow and adapt a phrase from Richard Rorty (1993) the mirror of nature. Where the text-centred paradigm of the 1960s and 1970s thus becomes problematic for Latour is in the case of science. And yet Latour does not defend the view of language often supposed or presupposed by natural scientists. On the contrary, he extends the idea of a structure or system with respect to which there is no outside such that it includes not just linguistic and other signs, but also social and political power struggles, and the various non-human entities studied by natural scientists. Much of Latours appeal, then, is that he does not force us to choose between the three main branches of academia: language and literature, which often tend towards the view that everything is text; the social sciences, which often tend towards social constructivism; and the natural sciences, which often tend towards philosophical naturalism (Latour 1991, 13-15).[footnoteRef:2] [2: Latour further claims to leave room for philosophy, understood, following Heidegger, as thinking about Being (Latour 1991, 88-91). However, as we will see, Latours philosophy is radically oblivious to Being or nature qua physis and in that respect remains problematically restrictive in scope.]

Another important point to note concerning Latour is that, rather than appropriating the foundational concepts of structuralism and systems theory, he prefers to talk of networks and, more specifically, actor networks, that is to say, networks composed of various entities all of which act in various different ways on each other, thus influencing each others behaviour. From this point of view, the limitation of the technological concept of the network is that technological networks transport, communications, water, etc. are easily construed as passive material objects constructed by active human subjects. However, were the student of actor-networks to study the construction of, say, a water distribution network, Latour thinks she would quickly discover that even the physical things out of which the network is constructed are also actors in the sense that they have effects on the actions of other actors, including the human actors.Latour further claims that modernity attempts to categorize the various different elements of these actor-networks as either human (or made by humans) or natural (not made or acted upon by humans). Every being may thus be partitioned off onto one side or the other of what Latour calls the Modern Constitution. At the same time, however, Latour maintains that the Modern Constitution gives rise to an endless proliferation of hybrids (1991, 53). His position thus resembles that of Bill McKibben (2006) who, in The End of Nature, argues that because of anthropogenic climate change, the effects of which are now ubiquitous on earth, there is no longer any such thing as nature where nature is understood as that which has not been acted on or influenced in any way by humans. Every being on earth, it would seem, has now become what Latour calls a hybrid, something that is at least partly of human making. However, whereas McKibben laments the end of nature, Latour is concerned rather with its political consequences. Nature, Latour thinks, has long been thought to be accessible only to Science, which is capable of establishing rigorous facts about it. These facts, Latour further claims, are often invoked with a view to putting an end to all political debate and discussion. Scientists (with a capital S), on this view, are like the philosopher-kings of Platos cave, who, having discovered the objective truths of the outside world, may then return to the cave and liberate those prisoners still tied to the subjective shadows and illusions of the senses (1999, 23-32). In opposition to this, Latour proposes that what scientists should bring to democratic debate are not indisputable matters of fact but rather debatable matters of concern involving complex networks of human and non-human actors.

Edgar Morin: Nature as Self-production

The interpretation of nature common to McKibben and Latour the view of nature as that which has not in any way (whether intentionally or otherwise) been acted upon by humans is very different from that of Morin. Drawing explicitly on the Pre-Socratics, Morin interprets nature as physis or self-production (Morin 1977, 27, 368). Production, he further claims, means bringing into being and/or existence (157). Natural beings, then, are those beings that bring themselves into existence. To understand what Morin means by this, let us take a look at the front cover of tome 1 of La Mthode.

Fig. 1. M. C. Escher, Drawing hands (reproduced on the front cover of Edgar Morin, La Mthode, Tome 1: La Nature de la Nature, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977).

What we see here is a work of art by M. C. Escher. It depicts two hands drawing each other, but at the same time also a work of art drawing itself. All of this is of course an illusion. The hands did not draw each other, and the work of art did not draw itself. The hands and indeed the work itself were drawn by the artist, Escher. Nevertheless, in the case of nature qua physis, Morin maintains that beings can and do produce themselves. The principal example he gives of this is the vortex, whose various different moments produce each other in a circular manner, such that the vortex as a whole may be said to self-produce. But could it not be objected here that the vortex is ultimately produced by an influx of energy? With this objection in mind, let us note that while Escher clearly required energy to produce his work of art, energy alone could not have produced it. Creativity or, to use Morins terminology, poisis was also required. In the case of the work of art, the form of poisis in question is clearly allopoiesis: the creation (poisis) by one thing, the artist, of something other (allo), the work of art. In the case of the vortex, by contrast, this poisis or creativity does not come from some maker outside the vortex, but nor does it come from energy, which provides mere calories for work. The creativity or poisis is intrinsic to the vortex. The vortex creates itself or brings itself into existence.So which beings does Morin think belong to physis and thus self-produce? Other than vortices, the principal physical examples of self-producing beings Morin analyses are stars, which initially produce themselves from out of vast clouds of mainly hydrogen atoms. Moreover, it is more or less exclusively in self-producing beings, such as stars, that new elements or systemic properties may emerge. It is, for example, in stars that the heavier atomic elements carbon, nitrogen, oxygen are all created. An important consequence of this view is that, taken on their own, rocks or meteors do not belong to nature qua physis, for they are not self-producing. Rocks and meteors are mere aggregates of matter, remnants of natural, self-producing beings which alone are born (nascere), develop, and eventually die.[footnoteRef:3] [3: This distinction in turn allows us to see the limitations of Latours actor-network theory. For Latour, all entities rocks, tables, stars, living beings, cities, the biosphere are ultimately just networks (Latour) of actors. On this view, there is no significant ontological difference between self-producing beings, such as stars, and clumps or aggregates of smaller elements, such as rocks. Likewise, the fact that only self-producing beings are creative is also overlooked and the concept of creation or poisis thus plays little or no role in Latours overall philosophy.]

Living beings, Morin claims, are likewise self-producing. In saying this, he adopts a position which is very close to Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1980), who see the essential characteristic of life as autopoiesis, and Stuart Kauffman (1995), who sees lifes essential characteristic as autocatalytic closure. What all these interpretations of life have in common is their rejection of the view of life as based on template replication and typically associated with Neo-Darwinism. In Richard Dawkinss (1989, 1996) archetypally Neo-Darwinian speculations on the origin and nature of life, selfish replicators the ancestors of genes came into existence before the first single-celled organisms. Their selfishness consisted in their attempts to replicate themselves as widely as possible where attempt is but a short-hand for the phenomenon whereby those molecules that are most successful in replicating themselves are naturally selected. From this Neo-Darwinian perspective, life emerged when these primitive replicators constructed robot vehicles (Dawkins 1989, v) around themselves, which in turn increased the replicators likelihood of making copies of themselves and were thus favoured by natural selection. At this precise moment, the selfish replicators became genes, understood as entities which unilaterally generate a phenotype, itself understood as a cybernetic machine whose purpose is to satisfy the aims or desires of the selfish genes (50-52).Stuart Kauffmans theory of the origin and nature of life is quite different. He thinks that life emerged not from macro-molecular replicators, but rather through a deeper logic he calls autocatalytic closure:

I hold a renegade view: life is not shackled to the magic of template replication, but based on a deeper logic []. Life emerged, I suggest, not simple, but complex and whole, and has remained complex and whole ever since not because of a mysterious lan vital, but thanks to the simple profound transformation of dead molecules into an organization by which each molecules formation is catalyzed by some other molecule in the organization. The secret of life, the wellspring of reproduction, is not to be found in the beauty of Watson-Crick pairing, but in the achievement of collective autocatalytic closure. (Kauffman 1995, 48)On Kauffmans view, then, autocatalytic reactions can under certain circumstances come to constitute closed networks or autocatalytic sets capable of enduring over extended periods of time (130). He further argues that at a certain point in their growth these autocatalytic sets may spontaneously break in two and thus self-reproduce (66). The beings that result from this self-reproduction may thereafter come into competition for existence. This in turn makes possible the differential survival of those beings better able both to produce and to reproduce themselves, and therewith also evolution by natural selection. Nevertheless, for evolution by natural selection to take place, Kauffman does not think it is necessary for the beings in question to possess a genome. New molecules may arise at random within the autocatalytic set and, if these molecules catalyse their own formation, they will become an integral part of the closed autocatalytic network. But such molecules cannot necessarily be classified as part of the genotype, as distinct from the phenotype. Within autocatalytic sets, Kauffman thus claims, there is no distinction between genotype and phenotype:

Biologists divide cells and organisms into the genotype (the genetic information) and the phenotype (the enzymes and other proteins, as well as the organs and morphology that make up the body). With autocatalytic sets, there is no separation between genotype and phenotype. The system serves as its own genome. (73)This absence of separation between genotype and phenotype, between creator and created, is the basic trait of physis qua self-production. To say that the system serves as its own genome is to say that it produces itself. In the case of what Kauffman calls autocatalytic sets (as opposed to simple vortices), evolution may over time give rise to an increasing differentiation of the various different components of the being in question, such that we may come to identify some of these as belonging to the genotype and others to the phenotype; but such differentiation always occurs within an entity that comes into existence and thereafter remains complex and whole thanks to the basic ontological process that is self-production. Conversely, the Neo-Darwinian postulation of a radical separation between genotype and phenotype implies an understanding of physis (autopoiesis) by analogy with tekhn (allopoiesis). In Dawkinss schema, phenotypic individuals are seen as the technological creations robot vehicles of self-replicating molecules, and their ultimate purpose is to enable the selfish replicators to fulfil their aim or desire of making copies of themselves. Dawkins may himself be a staunch atheist, but his basic philosophical framework remains that of a creationist: life, for Dawkins, is a technological creation brought about by a pre-existing desire or aim. The principal difference with the Christian variant of creationism is that blind, selfish replicators take the place of God.[footnoteRef:4] [4: It is interesting to note that Timothy Mortons view of life as technological, which he invokes to help justify the principle of ecology without nature, presupposes precisely this Neo-Darwinian theory of the origin and nature of life as a mere vehicle for selfish genes: [e]volution theory deconstructs life itself. Life is a word for some self-reproducing macro-molecules and their transport systems. (Morton 2010, 67)]

Physis qua self-production is not, however, only characteristic of certain physical and biological entities. Indeed, Morin thinks that the interactions of living beings with their environment give rise to ecological instances of self-production. He further claims that these are often ignored by the science of ecology. In particular, he thinks that ecology has privileged the notions of the ecological cycle (water, nitrogen, etc.) and the food chain (from plants to herbivores and carnivores), thus overlooking or downplaying the notion of the trophic cycle, which proceeds from production (algae, plants), to consumption (animals, insects), then on to decomposition (fungi, bacteria, etc.), and finally back to production (Morin 1980, 29). Moreover, according to Morin, it is this failure to see and act in accordance with these self-producing ecological loops that explains why contemporary technology is so environmentally destructive. Driven by what he calls the logic of the artificial machine and its focus on the linear accomplishment of isolated programmes or goals, technology breaks open and disrupts the complex trophic loops in which one beings waste is another beings food. Morins general theory of physis (2005, 69) thus ties in with Barry Commoners criticism of contemporary technology as having broken out of the circle of life, putting us instead on a linear, self-destructive course (Commoner 1971, 299).It should now be clear that Morins view of nature as physis or self-production is radically different from the modern view of nature, according to which anything not acted upon in any way by humans is natural. Nature, for Morin, is not defined negatively as what is not acted upon or produced by humans, but positively as what produces itself (see Dicks 2014a, 420-421), where self-production is itself interpreted as an ontological process: self-bringing into existence. Moreover, as Morin often remarks, the view of nature as physis transcends the standard divisions between the physical, life, and human sciences. Nature qua self-production is common to stars, living beings, ecosystems, and even human societies provided they are capable of recognizing and acting in accordance with natural processes of self-production, rather than breaking open these natural cycles, as is the case regarding the technological interpretation (and manipulation) of life characteristic of Neo-Darwinian biology, and the technological rupture of trophic cycles characteristic of contemporary industry.

Martin Heidegger: Nature as Self-bringing-into-the-OpenHeidegger, it is well-known, was concerned above all with overcoming humanitys current obliviousness to Being itself. This overcoming, he thought, would give rise to a new beginning or perhaps rather another beginning (Heidegger 1999, 3). Being itself, he further claimed, was physis (Heidegger 1999, 328; 2000, 15), and it was something that he thought had been glimpsed briefly by the Pre-Socratics, but that subsequent Western philosophy had somehow been unable to stay with and further explore, the result being that there came instead to prevail a fundamentally technological way of thinking about Being common to all subsequent metaphysics, from Platonism and Christianity to the so-called reversal of metaphysics characteristic of Marx and Nietzsche (see Zimmerman 1990).But if Heidegger views Being or Nature as physis, does that mean that his basic philosophical position is the same as that of Morin? There can be little doubt that Heidegger also sees physis as in some sense self-production. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he writes: phuein means to let grow, procreate, engender, produce, primarily to produce its own self (Heidegger 1988, 107). In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, he writes: We shall now translate physis more clearly and closer to the originally intended sense not so much by growth, but by the self-forming prevailing of beings as a whole (Heidegger 1995a, 25). And in The Principle of Reason, he writes: The being of what emerges and comes to presence on its own is called physis (Heidegger 1991, 63). Furthermore, in his reading of Aristotles Physics, he argues at length that physis is self-production and, as such, cannot be understood by analogy with tekhn, for tekhn implies the existence of an external maker:

In genesis as self-placing, production is entirely the presencing of the appearance itself without the importation of outside help whereas such outside help is what characterizes all making. Whatever produces itself, i.e., places itself into appearance, needs no fabrication. [] The renewed attempt to falsify the essence of physis by way of an analogy with tekhn fails precisely here from every conceivable point of view. (Heidegger 1998, 222-223)There is, however, a major difference between Morin and Heideggers thinking about physis. This difference, which is due in large part to the very different philosophical traditions systems thinking and phenomenology[footnoteRef:5] in which they were working, manifests itself in their contrasting interpretations of production and poisis. For Morin, production means bringing into existence. Moreover, he thinks that it comes in two basic forms: reproduction (copying) and creation (poisis). An example of reproduction would be the photocopying of a document. An example of creation or poisis would be the birth of a star, for, unlike a photocopy, a star brings itself into existence without being based on some sort of model or template. For Heidegger, by contrast, production and poisis mean the same thing, namely, letting appear, disclosing, or bringing into the Open. The difference between these contrasting interpretations of production may become apparent through consideration of the expression to produce a witness. When a witness is produced, nothing at all has been produced in Morins sense of the word: no model has been copied and no new physical being has come into existence in the sense of having been created. And yet, something has been brought forth (poiein) or pro-duced (hervor-bringen). For Heidegger, then, to produce in Morins sense of the word is but one distinct mode of a more fundamental and general process: disclosing or bringing into the Open. [5: If one allows that structuralism is a branch of systems thinking, these two philosophical traditions may be considered the two main branches of twentieth-century European philosophy. Their respective convergence around the concept of physis qua self-production or autopoiesis arguably opens up the possibility of overcoming their longstanding separation and opposition.]

These differing interpretations of production have significant philosophical implications. While Morin does not spend much time discussing the various competing isms constitutive of so much philosophical debate, his general theory of physis would appear to go hand in hand with philosophical realism. For a star, a living being, or indeed any other self-producing entity to exist, Morin does not appear to think that there must be some sort of Open region or space of appearance the law court in our earlier example of the witness into which the entity in question must be brought and which is inextricably tied to humanity. Morin clearly thinks, for example, that the first stars and the first living beings came into existence billions of years ago, in which case their existence he even speaks of their Dasein (Morin 1977, 136) is not tied in any way to humanity. But how, then, may we characterize Heideggers thinking with respect to the most common philosophical isms? In Being and Time, Heidegger claims that realism is inadequate, for it presumes that entities can exist independently of the understanding of the as characteristic of Dasein (1995b, 251). This rejection of realism does not imply, however, that Heidegger is an idealist. Indeed, not only is it clear that Daseins average, everyday understanding of the as does not take the form of grasping the Ideas or eternal forms behind things, but the space in which things appear as this or that is not some sort of subjective mind or individual consciousness. For Heidegger, things appear in the world or in the Open, and this world or Open is a space intrinsically characterized, amongst other things, by what he calls being-with (1995b, 153-163). So, whereas modern philosophy, with its starting point in subjective consciousness, sees the external world and other persons as problems requiring justification, Heidegger (1995b, 246-252) thinks that what instead requires justification or rather explanation is the presupposition characteristic of modern philosophy according to which one must begin with subjective consciousness (res cogitans) and then try to justify the existence of other entities (whether res extensa or res cogitans). It follows that the Open region where things exist is neither a space independent of humans (realism), nor a subjective consciousness outside of which things cannot exist (idealism), but rather a public world intrinsically characterized by being-with and in which things may in one way or another get disclosed. This is not to say, however, that Heidegger espouses a kind of social constructivism, according to which it is humans or human society that makes or constructs all that is. For what Heidegger calls physei-beings to exist requires Dasein, and therewith also the Open region in which physei-beings self-disclose, but this does not imply that physei-beings are some sort of human or social construct. Indeed, by their very definition, physei-beings are not brought into the Open or constructed by man, by society, or even by Dasein, but rather by themselves.

Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt: The Open qua Agora

It is possible to articulate Heideggers analysis of the open region where beings get disclosed whether by themselves, by other beings, or by some combination of the two with the phenomenological reading of the Greek polis put forward by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition.[footnoteRef:6] According to Arendt, the Greeks made a radical distinction between the private (idiom) and the public (koinon). The public, she further notes, was primary and thus took precedence over the private in two important senses: first, it constituted the space of appearance in which things were in the first instance disclosed; second, it was where all truly significant human action took place. In accordance with the etymology of the word private, Arendt concludes that the private must be understood in a secondary and restrictive sense as a sphere of privation (Arendt 1998, 58). [6: Arendt had hoped to dedicate The Human Condition to Heidegger, writing in correspondence to him: it owes you just about everything in every regard (Arendt, quoted in Wolin 2001, 51). This is perhaps an exaggeration, but it nevertheless suggests the viability of exploring the idea that The Human Condition constitutes a political adaptation and interpretation of Heideggers phenomenology. For a detailed analysis of the philosophical relation between Arendt and Heidegger, albeit one that is very different from that of the present article, see Taminiaux (1992).]

Within the ancient Greek polis, this public sphere or space of appearance was the agora. According to Lewis Mumford, the agora is an open space, publicly held and occupiable for public purposes, but not necessarily enclosed. (Mumford 1961, 150) These public purposes are multiple: the agora is the site of market exchange, politics, legal proceedings, philosophical discussion, and poeticizing.[footnoteRef:7] What everything that appears in the agora has in common is its openness. When something is brought to market, it may still belong to the seller, but at the same time it becomes open to purchase by others. The ownership of the good is thus put up for decision. A similar principle applies to the other activities that take place in the agora. It is in the agora that things become open to political deliberation, judgment and decision-making. The outcome of a fair legal trial is likewise open, and as such put up for judgment and decision. Similarly, both the nature of things and the nature of Nature (or the essence of Being) likewise become open to philosophical interpretation, debate, judgment, and decision-making. Indeed, it was in philosophy (and poetry) that Heidegger thought that Being or Nature qua physis first disclosed itself (2000, 15-16). Lastly, in poetry, it is the world itself that is brought into the Open or disclosed, as Heidegger argued in The Origin of the Work of Art (1993b), and as I have elsewhere argued occurred for the Greeks in the poetry of Homer (Dicks 2014b), who sang his poems in the agoras of Greek poleis. [7: Arendt has occasionally been criticized for a Neo-Aristotelian celebration of the public sphere of politics and a denigration of the private sphere of economics, understood as the management of the household (see Wolin 2001, 64-66). Seeing the space of appearance as an agora and the agora as a place of both market exchange and political deliberation constitutes a powerful response to these criticisms. Indeed, while Arendt herself may arguably have followed Aristotle in privileging the political in the narrow sense a move which corresponds to Aristotles desire to set the agora as marketplace apart from the agora as political forum (Mumford 1961, 187) our interpretation of the agora is radically opposed to any Neo-Aristotelianism of this sort.]

As we have just seen, when beings are brought into the Open or agora, they themselves become open to interpretation, debate, judgment, decisions, misunderstanding, and so on. At the same time, however, they also become subject to various forms of categorization (from Gk. cata, meaning against, and agora, meaning open or public space). Categorization, in this broad sense, is the withdrawal or dismissal of beings from the agora in such a way that they become closed off as this or that: as mine, yours, hers/his/its, ours, yours, or theirs (via markets or other fora for property attribution); as collectively to do or not to do (via parliaments); as guilty or innocent, legal or illegal (via law courts); as correct or incorrect as proved by rational experiment (science); as essential or accidental (philosophy); as world-forming or mundane (poetry). The public space or agora thus comes to an end when things are no longer open to a diverse plurality of potential categorizations. As Arendt remarks, the end of the common world has come when it is seen only under one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one perspective (Arendt 1998, 58). The understanding of Being, that is to say, the understanding of the as, is thus ineluctably tied to the Open, for the Open is by definition the space of appearance where beings may be understood as this and/or that.

Heidegger, Arendt, and Latour: The Politics of Physis

As earlier noted, our phenomenological interpretation of the polis has certain things in common with Latours politics of nature. Moreover, it is interesting to note that Latours political thinking departs from his usual modern and post-modern frames of reference, drawing instead on Heideggers observation that things (Res, Ding) were in the first instance matters of concern for public assemblies or republics (res publica) (Latour 2004). So, whereas Science, Latour thinks, is concerned with matters of fact, that is to say, with things inasmuch as they have been categorized and thus closed off from debate (temporarily at least), when the sciences enter democracy in the way Latour thinks they should they are concerned rather with things, understood as pro-positions to be debated in a public assembly and which, following debate, may be subjected to what he calls institutionalization, a process that results from what he calls the necessity of closure (lexigence de clture) (Latour 1999, 159).This closing off or institutionalization of things corresponds in many respects to what we have called categorization. There are, however, several major differences between Latours politics of nature and our phenomenological interpretation of the polis. The first difference concerns the fact that nature, understood as the realm of all those things that are not made by man (intentionally or otherwise), is, at least as far as Latours politics is concerned, only accessible to scientists. Of course, Latour further claims that nature thus understood no longer exists, for it is caught up in an actor-network in which humans play increasingly influential roles, thus acting on allegedly natural things in such a way that they become not only hybrids, but also things in the sense of matters of concern.[footnoteRef:8] But, even if it is true that the political role of the sciences (as opposed to Science) is to be concerned with things qua matters of concern, it would also appear to be true that these things may only be brought into the political sphere by scientists. In our much wider view of the public space of the polis as an agora, by contrast, things may emerge into the Open by themselves (physis), by various forms of tekhn, or by some combination of the two.[footnoteRef:9] [8: For Latour, it is typically because we have acted upon these formerly natural things, thus hybridizing them, that they have become matters of concern for us. In the case of the climate, for example, it is precisely because we are acting on it that it has become an object of concern for us.] [9: To be fair, Latours later text, From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public (2005), talks about the necessity of setting up a multitude of agoras, not just narrowly political ones (parliaments), thus opening up the possibility for artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and so on, to bring things into the agora.]

The second difference between our position and that of Latour concerns his dictum: no reality without representation (1999, 178). As already noted, Latour defends a republic or parliament of things in which scientists represent non-human entities and politicians represent people. What this means is that any given entity is not a thing in the sense of a matter of concern unless it is represented publicly by a capable spokesperson (bon porte parole) or reliable witness (tmoin fiable) a scientist in the case of things and a politician in the case of people. Latour thus defends a dualistic vision of the world, according to which there are unmediated presences outside of the public sphere, which in turn get represented in the public sphere in the form of what he calls pro-positions (Latour 1999, 124). His thought thus repeats, in its own slightly idiosyncratic way, the long-standing philosophical dichotomy between entities that are physically present and representations of those entities that take the form of propositions and which may be more or less faithful to the entities in question. This is not to say, of course, that linguistic propositions are not, for Latour, ultimately just actors in networks, but rather that network paths consisting of linguistic propositions may with a degree of fidelity that is always open to debate translate other network paths, such as those consisting of physical entities. Within our phenomenological interpretation of the public sphere as an agora, by contrast, all forms of poisis are but variations on making present, where presence is understood as a state of openness or dis-closure. A farmer who brings his crops to the market makes them present in the sense of opening them up to public scrutiny and appropriation by others in the agora. Likewise, when a scientist, politician, environmental activist, or whoever, raises public doubts about the pollution resulting from the farmers cultivation practices, she also makes things present in the sense of opening them up to public scrutiny and debate in the agora. It is not the case, therefore, that language be it that of scientists or politicians represents in the form of pro-positions things that are present in the physical world prior to and outside of the sphere of propositional, linguistic representation. Language does not re-present things more or less faithfully, but is instead characterized by what Heidegger calls showing or letting appear.[footnoteRef:10] So, whereas Latour is ultimately a realist who sees humans as late-comers to actor-networks that existed without us for billions of years, Heidegger thinks that things only come to exist once they are disclosed in the Open, a process which, on our view, only occurs when they become present in the agora[footnoteRef:11] and may thereafter be closed off or categorized as such and such, thus withdrawing, temporarily at any rate, from the Open[footnoteRef:12]. So, while there is a certain parallel between Latours interpretation of the agora and the one defended in this article, there is also a major difference. Whereas for Latour the agora is a sphere of re-presentation, for us it is a sphere of presentation or letting appear.[footnoteRef:13] [10: As Heidegger explains in The Way to Language: Greek civilization at its acme experiences the sign on the basis of showing. From the Hellenistic (and Stoic) period onward, as the convention becomes sheer stipulation, the sign comes to be an instrument for designating; by means of such designation, representation is coordinated and directed from one object to another. Designation is no longer a showing in the sense that it lets something appear (Heidegger 1993d, 401-02).] [11: It may here be objected that such a position entails the rather peculiar conclusion that nothing existed before the polis because it is only in the polis that one finds the agora. In response to this, it is possible to maintain that the Open has not always taken the form of an agora. For Heidegger, the original space where Being presented itself even if only pre-ontologically was the clearing in the woods. So, rather than see the clearing as a metaphor for human openness to things, it can instead be seen as the original Opening where the pre-ontological understanding of Being, and thus also Dasein, first emerged, and which later takes the form of an urban agora. This view of the clearing not as a metaphor, but rather as the original birthplace of Dasein, and in which Dasein in a sense still dwells, makes possible an articulation of Heideggers thought with that of Vico (1948), who explicitly argues that mankind was born in clearings in the woods.] [12: This also holds true for the pre-ontological understanding of Being discussed in Being and Time. When, in average, everyday situations, someone understands a hammer as something-in-order-to bang nails in, this is only possible because hammers have previously been brought into the Open most obviously by market-destined manufacture and categorically accepted as something that possesses that function. Someone may of course use a hammer for other purposes, or even see it as something other than a tool, but that interpretation will remain a mere idiosyncrasy the mixing (krasis) together (syn) of ones own private traits (idion) unless it is likewise brought into the Open and given due public consideration in the agora. Moreover, it is this bringing into the Open or poisis that is the essential criterion of authenticity, and it is opposed to both fallenness (unthinkingly accepting the prior categorizations of das Man) and idiosyncrasy (doing things differently from das Man without bringing these differences into the Open in such a way that they can be openly considered, thus potentially modifying the being-in-the-world of das Man).] [13: This is not to deny that things may also be re-presented in the agora. Someone who re-publishes a text or re-presents a talk already made in another public setting may be said to be engaged in re-presentation. This latter distinction between presentation and re-presentation thus corresponds in some respects to Edgar Morins distinction between creation (poisis) and reproduction (copying), the key difference being, of course, that Morin does not interpret either form of production in the phenomenological sense of bringing forth or presenting.]

Another key difference concerns the question of Being or Nature. Latour does of course discuss the philosophical question par excellence of Being or nature in his published writings, but these writings reveal a radically closed way of thinking. Nature is, and apparently can only be, what Latour thinks it was in the Modern Constitution, that is to say, all those beings that have not been acted upon or influenced in any way by humans. And, Latour reasons, since that nature no longer exists, nature in general also no longer exists.[footnoteRef:14] The possibility that nature may be interpreted differently, let alone that it may disclose itself as physis, is barely considered. [footnoteRef:15] On our understanding of Nature as physis, by contrast, nature is self-disclosure, and, over the course of human history, it has disclosed itself in various different ways, including the modern way Latour seems to think is the only one.[footnoteRef:16] [14: As already noted, Latours position here is remarkably close to that of McKibben, who at one point writes: we have ended the thing that has, at least in modern times, defined nature for us its separation from human society. (McKibben 2006, 55) However, while McKibben at least acknowledges that this idea of nature only applies to modern times, Latour seems reluctant seriously to countenance the possibility that this modern interpretation of nature is not the only one.] [15: It could at this point be objected that Latour advocates what he calls an experimental metaphysics (1999, 182), according to which a new metaphysics may emerge from the workings of the political agora. There are, however, three problems here: (i) whatever this new metaphysics will be, it must, Latour insists, be something other than a metaphysics of nature (1999, 182), for nature, he insists, is dead; ii) the way Latour sets up his agora is not as neutral and impartial as he seems to think, for it already makes all sorts of metaphysical suppositions regarding the nature of nature, of reality, of presence, and so on, hence also the possibility of Graham Harmans book-length study of latourian metaphysics (Harman 2009); iii) the book in which Latour proposes this idea is concerned solely with the narrowly political dimension of the agora, in which only politicians and scientists (so not philosophers) have any apparent right to speak, and in that case it is hard to see how any explicit metaphysics might emerge from this parliament of things. Put simply, it is a parliament of things, not a parliament of Being.] [16: A partial exception to this forgetting of physis can be found in What if we talked politics a little? (Latour 2003) In this text, Latour argues that ever since Socrates what the Greeks called autophuos has been constantly rejected by rationalists of all sorts. Autophuos, he notes, may be translated as self-begetting (auto-engendrement), and he further points out that phuos comes from phuo, a word which he says still resounds in our word physics (154). According to Latour, autophuos constitutes a political circle by virtue of which the interests of the Many (the individual citizens) are more or less faithfully translated via political representation into that of the One (the political collective), and then back to the Many through more or less faithful obedience to the One, and so on, circularly, for as long as genuine politics continues to exist. The reason Socrates rejects autophuos, Latour explains, is that policies which emerge via the circular logic of autophuos are not grounded in some original principle or solid foundation from which they may be shown to derive in a rational, linear manner. For Socrates, any policy that emerges into the agora via the logic of autophuos is thus tautological, for instead of being grounded in something else, as would be required by the principle of reason, it grounds itself in a circular manner. For Latour, by contrast, autophuos is not tautological, but the very condition of the genuine autonomy and freedom of the political collective (155). Moreover, he maintains that the desire to impose some sort of rational order on politics, such that policies derive from some basic principle, rather being part of a circular process of self-begetting that takes place in the commotion of the agora (155), has caused far worse monstrosities than those that the rationalists aimed to avoid.The reason Latours reflections on autophuos constitute only a partial exception to his overall failure to think of nature as physis is that he cannot see that the distinctively political self-engendering he describes is but one form albeit one unique to humans of physis qua poisis en heauti. He does not, for example, realize that an analogous criticism of rationalism can be applied to, say, living beings. As Heideggers reading of Angelus Silesius makes clear, when a rose is viewed as belonging to physis it does not bloom because of some other thing that causes it to bloom; it blooms because it blooms (Heidegger 1991; see also Dicks 2011). And yet, as in the case of Latours autophuos, this is not a tautology, for, as we have already seen in our discussion of Morin, Maturana, Varela, and Kauffman, living beings produce themselves in a circular manner (autopoiesis). To see the origin and nature of life as a linear process in which selfish genes command the phenotype to do their bidding in an unmediated and unilateral manner could thus be said to be analogous at least in some important respects to thinking that politicians should simply carry out the orders of the electorate in an unmediated and unilateral manner. So, despite recognizing that the characteristically metaphysical prioritizing of linear, reasoned arguments emerged with Socrates (and Plato), and despite noting that autophuos means self-begetting, Latour fails to make the connection between autophuos and the Pre-Socratic notion of physis qua poisis en heauti, thus also failing to see that circular self-bringing forth constitutes an alternative conception of nature to the one characteristic of the Modern Constitution.]

A final, related difference concerns the question of hybrids. Latour seems to think that the moment a human has in some way acted upon a non-human, perhaps only by accidentally touching it or indirectly raising its temperature (as in the case of climate change), the non-human entity has in a sense been denatured, thus becoming a hybrid. If, however, nature is physis, then acting upon a natural being does not necessarily denature it. Heidegger at one point draws on Aristotle to give the example of a doctor who, using medical skill, successfully treats himself (1998, 196). In this instance, Heidegger claims, tekhn co-operates with physis, such that the doctor once again regains his health (197). Tekhn, it follows, does not inevitably denature what Heidegger calls physei-beings, but may on the contrary let them be (i.e., let them continue producing themselves). Farming, understood as a form of tekhn, may be interpreted in much the same way. It is the cooperation of tekhn with physis that enables the cultivated plants or animals, as well as the trophic cycles of which they are a part, to remain healthy. Nevertheless, it is also true that contemporary agriculture is in the main highly destructive of nature, for it typically breaks open the self-production of both living beings and the trophic cycles to which they belong (via genetic manipulations, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides, and so on). Tekhn, in these instances, is no longer co-operating with physis, but rather ignoring and destroying it. Latour, however, knows almost nothing of nature qua self-production and, as a result, does not make a distinction between two ways of relating to nature: co-operating with nature (qua physis) or, alternatively, supplanting nature (qua physis) both in theory and in practice with technology. Indeed, for Latour, this distinction is not relevant, for his modern interpretation of nature is such that both these ways of relating to nature would be reduced to the broad category of acting on nature where nature is understood as that which has not in any way been touched by humans , thereby producing socio-natural hybrids. The key problem we currently face, then, is not so much our failure to recognize hybrids, but rather the fact that our Modern understanding of nature prevents us from making a distinction between cooperating with nature (qua physis) and supplanting and destroying it.

Conclusion

It is at present common to categorize and dismiss nature as a fiction, a social construct, metaphysical, a cover for injustice, and much else besides. Perhaps the most widespread view of nature, however, consists in saying that it no longer exists, at least not on earth, for we humans are strangers to nature and in coming into contact with it we have denatured it, transforming it into a socio-natural hybrid. Nature, from this point of view, is what has not in any way been acted upon or influenced by humans. In opposition to this characteristically modern view of nature, the present article has endeavoured to articulate and synthesize the work of two thinkers who attempt to revive the Pre-Socratic view of nature as physis: Edgar Morin and Martin Heidegger. According to Morin, physis is self-production and it is characteristic of any being that brings itself into existence, such as stars, living beings, or mature ecosystems. The principal limitation of Morins position, however, is that he interprets physis as self-production, understood in accordance with philosophical realism as a process that occurs independently of any human-dependent space of appearance. In contrast to Morins realist interpretation of physis, Heidegger puts forward a phenomenological interpretation of physis as self-disclosure or self-bringing-into-the-Open, where the Open is inextricably linked to Dasein.By drawing on the phenomenological analysis of the Greek polis developed by Hannah Arendt, it is possible to interpret this Open as an agora or space of public assembly into which any given thing first emerges as a question or matter of concern. Nothing exists that has not first emerged into the Open, thus becoming open to categorization withdrawal from the agora as this or that. The understanding of Being characteristic of Dasein is thus tied inextricably to the Open, for it is only because a being is in the Open, or has previously appeared in the Open and thence been categorized, that it may appear as something or other. Beings are not, however, the only things that appear in the Open. Being or nature also appears in the Open, sometimes disclosing itself metaphysically as a technological instrument whose purpose is to fulfil some sort of will whether of God, Man, or Selfish Replicators and at other times disclosing itself only negatively as that which has not in any way been acted upon by humans. The time has come, however, for Being or nature at last to disclose itself as itself, that is to say, as physis. Moreover, the ultimate reason that this self-disclosure of Being must now occur is that our current path, the path of self-destruction, confronts us with the supreme danger of nothingness, of the annihilation of Being.[footnoteRef:17] To say this does not, however, imply that Being is disclosed by something other than itself. Indeed, despite our talk of reasons, Beings self-disclosure is not grounded in some other thing, but rather in what Heidegger calls the no-thing (das Nichts).[footnoteRef:18] To say both that Being discloses itself and that Being is disclosed by the no-thing is thus far from contradictory. Moreover, if it is true that Being discloses itself, all that we humans can do is to let Being disclose itself, rather than put up obstacles to its self-disclosure by closing our minds, by obstinately conceiving beings only one way, by becoming so overawed by the powers of science and technology that we lose our ability to think,[footnoteRef:19] or by categorizing Being or nature as various different things which it is not (a construct, a fiction, totalitarian, metaphysical, etc.). At a time when the natural question the question of humankinds relation to nature has become the key, existential question of a new epoch of history, salvation would thus appear to lie in cooperating with Being or Nature (qua physis), thus letting it be in the sense of producing and disclosing itself. [17: Such a position is in this respect close to the enlightened catastrophism of Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who in the final paragraph of Pour un Catastrophisme Eclair writes: Enlightened catastrophism consists in thinking the continuation of human experience as resulting from the negation of a self-destruction (Dupuy 2002, 216, my translation). Dupuys thinking falls short, however, in not seeing how from the negation of self-destruction there may arise a renewed experience of Being as self-production.] [18: The idea that the self-disclosure of Being is due to our having unknowingly embarked on a path of self-destruction may thus be seen as in some respects a collective, political analogue to Heideggers analyses of anxiety, being-towards-death, and the no-thing put forward in Being and Time (1995) and What is metaphysics? (1993c). A key difference, however, is that whereas an individual human being has a given life expectancy, this is not the case for Western civilization. Western civilization may be mortal in the sense that it could die, but when it will die is as yet uncertain: perhaps it will die relatively soon, maybe even in the next century or two, or perhaps it will begin again, in which case it could endure much longer.] [19: Heidegger has controversially maintained that science does not think (1993e, 373). What he means by this is not that scientists are completely empty-headed, but rather that they do not think about Being. This is very much in keeping, moreover, with Morins claim that the concept of physis is completely absent from physics (Morin 1977, 94; 102). The limitation of Morins position, however, is that, since he does not interpret production phenomenologically as bringing forth, he cannot adequately distinguish self-production from self-organization. This gives rise to complications because scientists of all disciplines frequently talk of self-organization, but almost never of self-production. The reason scientists can readily talk about self-organization, but not about self-production, concerns the fact that in science it is the scientists who isolate the systems they study with respect to their environment, thus making them exist where existence is understood in accordance with its etymology as standing out (ek-sisting) with respect to a background. In cases of self-organization, for example, scientists will define a system, that is to say, decide the parameters and variables that serve to mark the system out, and then observe that the system thus defined self-organizes under certain conditions. If, however, nature is physis or self-bringing forth, there is nothing natural about such a system; it is the scientists who defined the systems parameters and variables, thus bringing it forth. As the French systems theorist, Ren Passet, notes: [a] system has no existence in itself. Its the observer who elaborates it when she defines the variables she considers strategic and the relations which unite them. (Passet 1979 210, my translation) Science, in other words, is a form of technology: it is a skill or way of knowing (pistm), in which certain entities (scientists) bring forth other entities (physical systems) in accordance with specific epistemological procedures (experimentation, reasoning, etc.). In the case of self-production, by contrast, it is the beings themselves that bring themselves into existence. In producing themselves, stars and living beings set themselves apart from their environment, thus coming to exist in the sense of standing out from a background. But the same could not be said as regards the so-called systems from which stars or living beings first emerged: neither a cloud of hydrogen nor a molecular soup delimits itself from its environment. Any definition of the boundaries necessary for the existence (standing out from a background) of these apparently natural systems is artificial. So, whereas scientists will typically see a star as arising from a prior system (a material cloud of hydrogen atoms), which, thanks to work or energy, develops the emergent property of self-organization (thus taking the form of a star), the thinker of Being itself qua physis will see the star as an emergent being: a being that brings itself into existence. On the one hand, then, we have the classic technological schema of energy (work) giving form to matter, and, on the other, the self-bringing forth of a natural being. It should be clear that the thinking required to make this distinction is not scientific, but philosophical, in which it is quite true that scientists do not think.]

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