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ANGELAKIjournal of the theoretical humanitiesvolume 10 number 1 april 2005

What Schelling calls philosophy of nature,

does not merely and not primarily mean

the treatment of a special area nature,

but means the understanding of nature in

terms of the principle of Idealism, that is,

in terms of freedom [. . .].

Heidegger, Schellings Treatise on the

Essence of Human Freedom 94

What ultimately is the essence of his [Fichtes]

entire understanding of nature? [. . .] Actually,

nothing but a moralizing of the entire

world that undermines life and hollows it

out, a true disgust towards all nature and

vitality except what there is of this in the

subject, the crude extolling of morality

and the doctrine of morals as the only

reality in life and science.

Schelling, SW VII: 1819

Presenting Schellings Naturphilosophie in theethical or practical terms for which Schellingcastigated the inadequacies of the Fichtean

philosophys concept of nature, the precepts

underlying Heideggerianism are here shown, like

those underlying Fichteanism, to be the fruit of

a culture in which unnature now actually serves

as nature (SW VII: 80). Schelling in particular,

but the Naturphilosophen in general, never

stopped railing against ethics as antiphysics;

even Oken, for instance, greatly despised2

asan arch-idealist and an intolerable meddler in

organic physics, argues that an ethics apart

from a philosophy of nature is a nonentity, a bare

contradiction, just as a flower without a stem is

a non-existent thing (1847, 656). Therefore,

the extent to which Heideggerianisms remain

possible the extent, that is, to which morality

is crudely extolled as the only reality is

the extent to which our philosophical culture is

the victim of an Idealism it has invented to

disguise the physicalism on whose rejection

its metaphysics is in fact grounded. When

Badiou (2000, 100) therefore sets contemporary

philosophy particularly of the popular (because

undemanding) post-metaphysical variety3 not

merely the question Is metaphysics still possi-

ble?, but rather the challenge Are we capable ofit?, we here explore a prospect Badiou himself

deems impossible; that is, whether the capacity

for metaphysics is not dependent on the true and

necessary juncture of philosophy and physics

(SW VII: 101). In what follows, we will attempt to

specify the dimensions of the problem and to

outline a solution.4

Accordingly, antiphysics has at least a two

hundred year history, established so that the

primacy of pure practical reason counters

iain hamilton grant

THE ETERNAL AND

NECESSARY BOND

BETWEEN PHILOSOPHY

AND PHYSICS1

a repetition of the difference

between the fichtean and

schellingian systems ofphilosophy

ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469- 2899 online/05/010043^17 2005 Taylor & Francis and the Editors of AngelakiDOI: 10.1080/09697250500225164

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Kants late return to Naturphilosophie in what

Schelling knew as Transition between Meta-

physics and Physics (SW VI: 8). In other words,

the immediately post-Kantian situation remains a

contested zone, bifurcating into, on one side, the

transition between physics and metaphysics; and,on the other, the Fichtean antiphysics Heidegger

betrays in the form of a Schelling for whom nature

must be subsumed under freedom, or even become

an artefact of it, a product of intelligence, as

Fichte has it (W XI: 362). The latter solution is

not, however, restricted to Heidegger: Jason

Wirths Conspiracy of Life repeats this interpreta-

tion ofNaturphilosophie, rendering its practicism

a priori by subjecting it to the imperatives of

self-evaluative life, which Schelling disparagedas Fichtes economic-teleological anti-ontology

(SW VII: 17). Accordingly, Badious characterisa-

tion of Deleuzes metaphysics, which latter draws

immensely on Idealist precursors,5 as subjecting

the concept to the trial of biological evaluation

(1994, 63), repeats the test of life into which

Jaspers (1955, 114) transforms Schellings phi-

losophy as a whole (although Schelling mentions it

only once, at SW XIII: 177). The evaluative

vitalism of JaspersBadiou not only echoesHeideggers (1941) subsumption of nature by

freedom but itself accords with the generally

Fichtean tenor of a great deal of philosophical

and scientific commentary by Schellings contem-

poraries. In an article published in the philoso-

phers New Journal of Speculative Physics (I,3),

the physicist Karl Friedrich Windischmann,

for instance, declared in 1802 that Schellings

Naturphilosophie, like all possible philosophical

approaches to nature, pursues the physical

only under the protection and direction of the

ethical (Schelling 1969, 91), while in the previous

years Journal of Speculative Physics (I,2 1801),

the physician Karl August Eschenmayer con-

tended that, for Naturphilosophie, all laws of

nature are simply transposedfrom our mind, [and]

the first impulse of nature dwells in ourselves

(Schelling 2001, 267), in the form of the equation

spontaneityWorld Soul, which Eschenmayer

interprets as a strict Fichtean.6

In the above sense at least, Heidegger accords

with common sense regarding philosophical

idealism. This accord is far from accidental, but

attests to the essentially Fichtean solution to the

metaphysics of nature underwriting the predomi-

nant trajectories of contemporary philosophy.

It is as a consequence of this that our phi-

losophy idealises Naturphilosophie, rather than,

as Schelling maintained, providing the physicalexplanation of idealism (SW IV: 76). Beyond the

self-limitations of a philosophy that rejects physis

such as Schelling ridiculed in Fichte, the problem

not only of a naturalist ontology (physicalist

metaphysics) but also of the ontology of nature

itself (the metaphysics of physis), has assumed

increasing urgency in a variety of fields. For

example, while Deleuze asserts that metaphysics

must necessarily embrace all the concepts of

nature and freedom (1994, 19), Badiou declaressuch a philosophy of , or rather [. . .] as nature

to be a contemporary impossibility (1994,

6364). While Bonsepien opposes a mathematical

to a speculative Naturphilosophie,7 numbering

Schelling amongst the latter as serving, in

proper Fichtean economic-teleological manner

(SW VII: 17), moral ends, this simple, romantic

and common equation is rejected both by Walther

Zimmerli (in Hasler, 1981), who ironically deploys

the arch Fichtean Eschenmayer to demonstratethe mathematical roots of Schellings theory of

the powers (Potenzlehre), and, more recently, by

Chatelets recovery of the mathematical dimen-

sions of the naturephilosophical project. The very

terms, meanwhile, in which the avatars of prac-

ticism in philosophy obtained their ideal and

effective-actual primacy, have resurfaced as the

poles by which the ontology of nature itself that

is, metaphysics is contemporarily articulated.

For example, the Naturphilosoph C.G. Carus

Organon of the Cognition of Nature and Mind

(1856) argued that nature be reconceived

as Becoming (das Werdende, in Bernouilli

and Kern 1926, 303 n.), echoes in the reconcep-

tion of nature provoked by the sciences of

complexity (Heuser-Kessler 1986).8 Both,

however, are opposed by Fichtes practicist

argument that not only is all change [. . .]

contrary to the concept of nature (W III:

115; 2000, 105) but the resultant being is

secondary to and derived from activity (W I:

499; 1982, 69), the inert residuum of an

exhausted force (W XI: 364).

systems of philosophy

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Heideggers claim that freedom is the

principle of Idealism remains, then, true only

of our false idealism. Accordingly it blazes the trail

that practically all post-Heideggerian Schellingian

interpretations will follow, from Jaspers to

Habermas to, most recently, Wirth. What makes

Heideggers accomplishment all the more perverse

is that it achieves this primatisation of the practical

as the only possible philosophical approach to

nature. A naturalistic Naturphilosophie, specula-

tive physics as such the mere mention of such

obviously metaphorical conceits brings peristalti-

cally immediate reactions: its impossible

(1994: 64), cries Badiou, except as narrative,

description, or a novel; a continental science

fiction narrative, adds Bowie (2005, 46), only toerupt, [dont they] realize that hardly anybody is

listening anymore? Likewise, when contempor-

ary philosophers turn uncharacteristically to

the subject of nature, and of Naturphilosophies

naturalism, they repeat Heideggers transmutation

of physis into freedom, as in the following,

excerpted from the Introduction to the recent

translation of Schellings First Outline of a System

of the Philosophy of Nature:

It is often overlooked that the method of

construction [which Schelling deploys in his

naturephilosophy] [. . .] also involves, in the act

of postulating, the engagement of human free-

dom in transcending mechanism from the start.

Not only epistemological and ontological, the

philosophy of nature is an expressly ethical

project. (Peterson 2003, xxxiii)

What could better illustrate the primacy of the

practical over the theoretical, the triumph of a

merely praxical philosophy, or the postulation

of a good beyond being? The Heideggerian

understanding of Schellings Naturphilosophie is

thus established beyond question. Krell is there-

fore right when, proposing to investigate the forces

of birthing and dying in the naturephilosophies

of Novalis, Hegel and Schelling, he condemns

contemporary philosophy for being so busy

making speeches about ethics and politics, and

for its failure to philosophise on the sheer scale

of so-called Idealism, precisely because of our

ignorance of physics (in the extended sense of

the term). That said, it is an alarming indication

of a philosophy not merely antipathetic towards

but actually incapable of metaphysics that, rather

than attempting to correct these flaws, Krell

mobilises merely textualor philologicalapparatii

to engage a merely logical9 nature, and focuses

even this limited rubric on those natural phenom-ena that affect life and death alone (disease,

sexuality). Leaving aside the question of a philol-

ogy of nature for the moment, Krell is not alone

in treating animality or life as marking the limits

of thinkable or free nature; we can see, for

instance, no other reason for Badious invocations

of organicity and the great animal totality in

his (1994) assessments of Deleuzes philosophy of

nature. For present purposes, the most recent

iteration of this paradigm, which might for thepresent be called the organo-ethical, can be

found in Jason Wirths (2003) meditations on

Schelling, entitled The Conspiracy of Life, where

everything is brought together: Levinass good

beyond being is invoked from the outset

(2003, 6ff.), and the meditations themselves

begin with living and with dead dogs, painted,

poetic and rhetorical, all collated under the

rubric of an exploration of F.W.J. Schelling, a

great and greatly neglected philosopher oflife (2003, 1). It may seem simply ironic that a

Lebensphilosophie should end with the require-

ment that nature be murdered (2003, 94f.), but

there is more than irony at stake, as Wirth equally

contends. We will argue that nature-cide is the

Fichtean answer Schelling rejects as ontologically

inconsistent to the transcendentalquestion posed

in the Oldest System-Program of German

Idealism: how must a world be constituted for

a moral being? (in Frank and Kurz 1975, 110);

and the solution that Wirths meditations yields

does not follow merely ironically or contingently,

but, we shall argue, necessarily from the practicist,

ethico-political philosophy that not only deter-

mines the address to relatively underexplored

corners of German Idealist philosophy but

also constitutes the default of contemporary

philosophy in general.

Yet the practicist deduction of nature for

a moral being ignores that the subject (both

grammatically and metaphysically) of the question

is the world, or at very least, its being qua

constituted; the problem, in other words, is not

grant

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how freedom can give rise to nature but how nature

can give rise to freedom. As we shall see, this is

precisely the reverse of the position that Fichtes

most naturephilosophical of texts Propositions

for the Elucidation of the Essence of Animals

(henceforth Propositions) adopts. EvenSchellings Philosophical Inquiries into the

Nature of Human Freedom is overt regarding

the one-sidedness of Fichteanisms free world,

as we shall see. Not only the nature of the

problem but also the nature of the transcend-

ental, is thus altered. The transcendental dimen-

sion of the problem of nature, which is

automatically assumed to be resolved by the

primacy of practical reason inherited from

Fichteanised Kantianism, is therefore crucialto a post-Kantian naturalism: in what regard

is physis itself transcendental, that is, the

unconditioned-conditioning? Just as, therefore,

Badious dismissal of Kant (2000, 46) follows

too swiftly from his anxiety regarding the

reinstitution of a classicism twisted by the

modernist addition of freedom, making

it impossible for him to investigate the problem

of the transcendental (a crucial element of

Deleuzes metaphysics); so too his rejection ofnaturephilosophy as an impossibility deprives

philosophy of the means to meet the challenge

he sets it regarding not merely Is metaphysics

still possible?, but more poetico-existentially

(a crucial element both of Guattaris and

Badious practicism), Are we capable of it?

(2000, 100). Such practicisms leave a nature

that is the residuum of freedom; a philosophy

of nature reducible to a logos of physis; or a

nature extending no further than the phenom-

ena of life: these restricted concepts mark

the incapacity of contemporary philosophy not

only for metaphysics but also, as Krell acknowl-

edges (1997, 2) only then to demonstrate, for

physics.

The dimensions of the problem of a philosophy

of nature to be introduced here are:

1. The nature, limitations, and philosophical

ubiquity of Fichtean nature.

2. The differentiation of Schellingian from

Fichtean Naturphilosophie.

3. How is a Transcendental Naturephilosophy

possible, and why is it necessary?

I fichteanism and animality: nature-philosophy as two-worlds antiphysics

THEORY OF FORMING NATURE.

Nature should become moral. We are its

educator its moral tangent its moralattractor [Reize].

Novalis, Wercke 450

Intellect and thing inhabit two worlds,

between which there is no bridge.

Fichte W I: 436; 1982, 17

Life infinite metabolic reciprocity in

oneself, but outwardly directed [. . .]

Fichte W XI: 365

The ubiquity of Fichteanism in contemporaryphilosophy may be assessed not only by the

number of works bearing his name (Martin 1997;

Zoller 1998; Breazeale and Rockmore 2002),

although even this seems to crop up where we

least expect it (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 207;

Alliez 2004, 30).10 Rather, a covert species of

Fichteanism continues to inflect the majority of

philosophical encounters with Schelling,11 and

thereby the nature of the philosophy of nature.

Recent studies of Schelling by WolfgangBonsepien (1997, 165), Camilla Warnke (1998,

195), and Thomas Bach (2001) echo Dietrich von

Engelhardt and Nelly Tsouyopoulos (in Hasler

1981) in demonstrating the same incapacity to

distinguish the Schellingian from the Fichtean

philosophies as Hegel (1977a, 79ff.) found in

Reinhold. Again, it is not in their overt mentions

of Fichte alone that their Fichteanism consists,

but rather in their attempt to redefine Schellings

philosophy of nature as restricted to animal

particularity. Again, this is less Schelling than

Fichte, whose Propositions (1800) constitutes the

latters attempt to demonstrate, against Schellings

accusations to the contrary,12 that the science of

knowledge can indeed address nature, which is

not so alien to practical philosophy as it may seem

on first glance (GA II,3: 24344). Investigating

what kind of nature this might be, in order to

differentiate Naturphilosophie from the science

of knowledge, Schelling is forced to note against

Fichteanism that nature is also partly non-living

(SW VII: 10), precisely because Fichte explicitly

denies this, arguing instead that life exhausts


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nature, so that non-living nature is only the

inert residuum of exhausted force (W XI:

364). This examination of Fichteanism is under-

taken for two reasons, therefore: firstly, because its

ubiquity will demonstrate its philosophical actu-

ality; secondly, because besides offering an effec-tive metaphysics of the practical, and

experimenting in the field of the transcendental,

Fichtes ontology is tortured by a nature it

disavows: It pressures him, hits him, gnaws at

him from all directions, forever threatening and

restricting (SW VII: 17).

Although an immense gulf that Nature has

appointed between animate and inanimate

Creation might be mistaken for a metaphysi-

cians idea, it derives in fact from Blumenbach(uber den Bildungstrieb, Gottingen, 2nd ed.,

1789, 71), and thus from the natural sciences.13

It is, however, Kants Critique of Judgement that

is to be credited with transforming this from a

physically into a transcendentally divided nature,

now comprising, as Schelling critically remarked

(SW VI: 8), an organic nature entirely separate

from nature in general. For Kant, a Newton of

the blade of grass (Ak.V: 400; 1987, 282), i.e., a

physics of organisation, is not merely contin-gently, as a matter of historical fact, but neces-

sarily unavailable, due to transcendental

conditions, since organisation cannot be judged a

constituent of nature itself. The gulf the third

Critique seeks famously to bridge (Ak.V: 175;

1987, 14)14 is no longer a product of nature in

nature, as Blumenbach conceived it; rather, nature

becomes the divided product of a transcendental

differentiator. Nor is Kant alone: philosophers

show a disturbing propensity to adopt theses

stemming from the natural sciences as axioms for

addressing nature, while historians of ideas look to

such sources as grounds for authority. Thus

Blumenbachs distinction survives in Bernouilli

and Kerns (1926, viii) identification of opposing

biocentric and logocentric, vitalist or formalist,

tendencies within Naturphilosophie. It has

recently been repeated in Badious stark separa-

tion of animal from number (1994, 63) and,

consequently, of naturephilosophy from ontology.

In both these latter instances, while Kants

transcendental subtlety has been supplanted by

critical15 stringency, a further dimension of the

problem is invented. This new dimension consists

in the increasing tendency to define the whole

of nature as animality, not to acknowledge that

nature is also partly non-living (SW VII: 10).

From this perspective, it is surprising that

Fichteanism is usually considered only as thepractical completion of the Kantian critical

system, as the subjugation of knowledge to the

idea, as making knowledge the artefact of an

activity that renders the latter primary with

respect to the former.16 Although, as we have

suggested, this simplistic view accords with the

various forms that contemporary philosophy has

sculpted for the primacy of the practical over

metaphysics, Fichte does not straightforwardly

assert this without transforming the constitutionof ontology in turn. Indeed, one of the resources

on which this new Fichtean ontology will draw is

the introduction of the concept of force in

transcendental philosophy, by which Kant was

seeking contemporaneously to make the

Transition from Metaphysics to Physics.17

Rather than drawing this concept from dynamics

in the natural sciences, however, Fichte main-

tained its strictly transcendental application,

so that the theory of scientific knowledge mustdemonstrate that all of those specific actions

which the human mind is necessarily forced to

perform (W I: 63; 1988, 120; emphasis added),

at the same time constrain it to the production of

actuality. Somehow, however, the exercise of these

transcendental forces in the form of acts of

mind or of an I, must impact upon nature, on the

Not-I. The problem the Wissenschaftslehre

must therefore resolve is the nature of this Not-I,

or as the second edition Concerning the Concept of

Wissenschaftslehre (1798) has it, nature:

The Wissenschaftslehre furnishes us with

nature as something necessary with nature

as something which, both in its being and

its specific determinations, has to be viewed

as independent of us. (W I: 64; 1988, 121)

The Not-I is everything that does not act, every-

thing that is determined or that is always what it

is, everything that is being rather than force.

As Hegels Difference essay will realise and exploit

even while seeming to disparage it beyond serious

philosophical attention, Fichtes revolutionary

grant

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gesture is to have made being and matter

equivalent, as opposed to the ancient concept of

matter as not-being, me on or non-ens. In so far

as this is the case, the role of the Not-I becomes

simply to limit the I, while the I has as its goal the

maximal reduction of the Not-I; at stake betweenthe two is transposing the free determination of

being by activity from the sphere of the I to that of

the Not-I, thus determining not only how mind

ought to act but also how the whole universe

ought to be (GA II,3: 247). But how is what acts

but has no being to limit what is but does not act;

and how is what does not act but simply is, to limit

what acts but is not? This is the root of what

Schelling presents as Fichtes contradictory

concept of nature (SW VII: 9), which, trans-cendentally presented that is, in terms of

forces under the rubric of the Not-I from

Fichtes first sketches of the Wissenschaftslehre,

is necessarily held to spill beyond force and into

being, beyond the act into being. Just as in Kant,

the transcendental differentiates in nature, so

Fichtes limit must be a transcendental actor

locatable in nature.

Fichte pursues forces to the point of their

exhaustion in Propositions, and locates this pointinnature.Thatistosay,animate-organicnatureat

its lowest threshold of consistency, Fichtes trans-

cendental animal is composed of a system of

plant-souls (W XI: 366); at its highest,

it comprises the entire universe (GA II,3:

247) articulates the juncture where exhausted

force issues in being as its residuum. The

Propositions calls this process of residual produc-

tion crystallization which, although for Kant it

betrayed visible evidence of intelligible structure,

for Fichte signifies the end of the road for force:

there is only result here, no organisation (W XI:

364). In what Fichte himself calls his Naturphi-

losophie (W XI: 363), being has thus become

phylum-specific, attaching only to the mineral

realm, so that nature itself is now ontologically

divided. Accordingly, if the Wissenschaftslehre is

to demonstrate the absolute totality by which it

is differentiated from other sciences (W I: 59 n.;

1982, 117 n.), then the transcendental philosophy

derived from its three a prioris or absolutes

(I, Not-I, Limit; cf. GA I,1: 151 n.; 1988, 134 n.)

must now comprise nature, as something

necessary and independent of us (W I: 64; 1988,

121) and yet as something deducible in terms of the

acts of mind the Wissenschaftslehre demon-

strates to be necessary. It follows from this that

Fichte is constrained to argue that (a) nature is the

product of intelligence (W XI: 362) and that (b) itremains nevertheless necessary and independent

of us (W I: 64; 1988, 121). What Schelling calls

Fichtes contradictory solution is cited therefore

at the outset of the Propositions:

I transfer, runs the Wissenschaftslehre, the

concept of my self onto nature as far as

I can without eliminating from it its character-

istics as nature itself, i.e., without making

it into an intelligence (into a self-positing I).

(W XI, 362)

Accordingly, the Propositions begins with a

refutation of the argument that Intelligence is a

higher power [Potenz] of nature (W XI: 362);

or, in terms of the Schellingian Naturphilosophie

the Propositions is designed to counter,18

Intelligence [. . .] is a simple consequence of

natures incessant potentiation for which it has

made long preparations (SW IV: 76). Schelling

concluded thus on the grounds that a transcen-dental philosophy could account only for the

products, but not, however, for the production,

of intelligence itself, for which purpose a

Naturphilosophie is therefore required. Now

since Fichte presents the Wissenschaftslehre as

the one complete science, it is imperative that,

rather than adopting a Naturphilosophie along the

lines that Schelling stipulates, the latter can be

constructed under the rubric of transcendental

philosophy. In order to achieve this, Fichte must

show the derivation of material being from

activity. In the Wissenschaftslehre, therefore,

the concept of being is by no means considered

primordial, but rather derivative, a concept

derived [. . .] from contradiction with activity,

and so a merely negative concept. (W I: 499;

1982, 69)

How, then, does material nature arise? Fichte gives

two solutions to the problem of the generation of

material nature. The first, in the Crystal Clear

Report, merely states that our existing world is

complete, but goes on to add Life is not


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a producing, but a finding (GA I,7: 249;

Behler 1987, 98). Fichtes second, and more

complex, solution stipulates that despite opposing

the Is activity, being is only within the I: nothing

is outside of the I (W I: 33536; 1988, 248). The

division here seems to fall between the transcen-

dental foundation of all matter, as will become

clearer and clearer, enthuses Fichte, on the one

hand, and the practical business of life engaging

with a world that is already complete and does not,

pace Schellings Naturphilosophie, require to

be generated. In other words, the entire

Wissenschaftslehre would reduce to a choice

between a practical engagement with the world

as it is, and a theoretical engagement in forming all

the concepts to generate a transcendental world, aworld as it might be. But the being of the world as

we find it could not be the material being founded

by the production of passive or static material,

since the world as we find it is found precisely in so

far as it is not produced, whereas the foundation

of all material and all enduring substrata is

precisely the mere product which results from

the unification of opposed activities, of the I

and the Not-I (W I: 336; 1988, 248).

While contradictory, it would be difficult to saythat this contradiction lay within the Fichtean

concept of nature, as Schelling argues. If, however,

the problem of the generation of material nature is

posed within the framework that Fichte supplies in

the Propositions, a different solution emerges that

places the contradiction at the core of natural

production. We noted above that the lowest

threshold of consistency that the Propositions

gives for the transcendental animal consists in

the system of plant-souls. This is because, Fichteargues, there is reciprocity between plant and

environment, rather than an artificial or, rather,

artefactualcausality that generates abstractions:

Either one-sidedly, mere causality, that gives

rise to a product, so that that on which it acts is

not determined by itself to retroact, thus

remains just an inert residuum of the exhausted

force. The mineral [. . .] [:] There is only

result here, no organisation; hence no

developing, self-renewing reciprocity with the

world, because the chemical force is bound

by the non-penetrated equivalent masses.

(Again, an abstraction). Or reciprocally,

that both or all penetrate each other

internally, forming a reciprocal solution, and

flow together into a new whole. (Organisation,

presented in the simplest abstraction in

plants.) (W XI: 364)

Fichtes distinction works by opposing the imma-

nent causal determination of the fixed particular

(this mineral, that crystal, etc.) to transcendental,

i.e., non-phenomenal, organisation comprising

many systems (plant-souls). The entire orientation

of Propositions is to build the transcendental

animal not from this or that causal property, nor

into a particular form,19 but from the convergence

of all reciprocity into a new whole [. . .], the most

intimate union in the All. In the end, therefore,

there will be only one force, one soul, one mind(W XI: 364), and it is in this sense that the animal

becomes transcendental organic activity trans-

cends the particularity by which it falsely signals

phenomenal completeness.

Meanwhile, it follows from the first of the

Propositions that nature is the product of

intelligence (W XI: 362) that such activity is

doubly transcendental, both in the sense that this

is not simple activity such as is found in complete

[fertig] nature, but also activity in so far as itsgeneration is intelligible. Accordingly, nature

and intelligence terminate in each other without

hiatus (ibid.), i.e., without interrupting transcen-

dental reciprocity. The foundation of all matter

thus generated produces not simply a particular

product with this or that set of properties or

attributes that may then be enumerated and its

being determined, but rather a transcendental

substrate of activity in general. The production of

the transcendental substrate thus coincides with,but is not, the point at which the activity of the

I meets resistance, in so far as it, necessarily alive,

encounters the ready-made world (the transcen-

dental animal stumbles on a crystal). The complete

world is not a whole, but a finite particular

precisely in so far as it is complete, whereas life

is infinite reciprocity, outward directed and in

itself (W XI: 365). It is a consequence, then, of

Fichtes transcendentalism that life becomes the

reciprocal condition of the continuous flow of

intelligence into nature, and plant-souls into the

All, while minerality becomes artificial, an unflow-

ing, fixed particulate being incapable of activity,

grant

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illustrating what Hegel (1970, 23) calls the

impotence of nature.

Indeed, this is exactly what Hegels Natur-

philosophie draws from Fichte. Expressing the

point as though Hegel were commenting on the

metaphysics derived from the Propositions, Hegel

writes:

Naturephilosophy takes up the material which

physics has prepared for it empirically, at the

point to which physics has brought it, and

reconstitutes it, so that experience is not its

final warrant and base. Physics must therefore

work into the hands of philosophy, in order

that the latter may translate into the Concept

[Begriff] the abstract universal transmitted to

it [. . .

] It is because the method of physicsdoes not satisfy the Concept that we have to

go further. (Hegel 1970, 10)

The world as it is is simply the world as

empirically prepared by physics; since physics

does not satisfy transcendental philosophy, its

material must be reconstituted, with experience

providing neither evidence of, nor foundation

or basis for, the nature of material nature. The

jettisoning of all corporeal particularity that is,

not just the peculiarities of this body (the

sthenic philosopher, the impotent mineral),

but also the particularity attaching to body as

such, its immanent detachment is a prerequisite,

Hegel argues (1977a, 88), for philosophy to

undertake the reconstitution of matter. Yet

Fichte is far from recommending the abandon-

ment of the particularity of the world as it is,

making the modification of matter (W I: 307;

1982, 269) into the metric of philosophys

practical actuality; at its highest threshold of

consistency, then, life infinite metabolic

reciprocity, outwardly directed and in itself

is expressed as the ontological imperative,

the whole universe ought to be an organised

whole (GA II,3: 247). While Fichte withdraws

all capacity to act from physical nature,

Hegel grants Nature this capacity even beyond

bodily particularity, so that matter becomes

a pure abstraction (1977b, 351), only in order

that it demonstrate its impotence [. . .

] to

adhere strictly to the Concept (1970, 2324).

If for Hegel natural objects do not think

(1970, 7) because they are irremediably

particular, Fichtean nature cannot think because

it cannot act.

Thus Fichtes only error, and one Hegel

commits in turn when he supports Mosaic history

against evolution on the grounds that the formerguarantees that each thing was always what it

now is (i.e., nothing emerged from something

other; Hegel 1970, 284), is to deny activity to

nature on transcendental grounds while rejecting

the central precept of dynamic physics as emerg-

ing under BoscovichPriestley, and later Oersted

and Faraday,20 i.e., that there is no substance

behind the powers. In other words, by maintaining

a distinction between force and substance,

activity and being, animal and artifice, Fichteensures that between intellect and thing [. . .]

there is no bridge (W I: 436; 1982, 17).

Accordingly, while sharing a vocabulary with a

physics to which his philosophy is entirely blind,

Fichtes dynamics transforms his attempts at a

naturephilosophy into an antiphysics that prepares

the ground for Hegel, although the latter does not

acknowledge Fichtes preparatory labour. Against

this, Schellingianisms physicalism is entirely

clear: nature has made long preparations for theheights she reaches through reason (SW IV: 76).

Having, as Schelling advises, set aside all

practical admixture (SW IV: 86) in order to

properly diagram Fichtes transcendental

animality, or biocentric naturephilosophy, as a

two-worlds antiphysics, and before proceeding to

differentiate the Schellingian from the Fichtean

naturephilosophy, we will turn to one amongst

many instances of neo-Fichteanism.

II neo-fichteanism: the vital instanceas the incapacity for physics

One does not think without becoming some-

thing else, something that does not think

an animal, a molecule, a particle and that

comes back to thought and revives it.

Deleuze and Guattari, What is

Philosophy? 42

By grounding naturephilosophy on animal

being, Fichte gives credence to the dichotomy

that Bernouilli and Kern establish between


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a biocentric and a logocentric Naturphiloso-

phie, although they falsely locate this dichotomy

in Schelling. They write:

The later mutilations of the Schellingian

Naturphilosophie by its own creator provethat Schelling was logocentrically rather than

biocentrically oriented. (1926, viii)

That this is a false dichotomy is evident in many

ways. Firstly, while it is manifestly false that

Schellings Naturphilosophie, late or early, was

ever logocentrically (as opposed, say, to

transcendentally)21 oriented, such a combina-

tion would arguably cease to be a philosophy of

nature in any sense at all.22 Secondly, the

appearance of dichotomy is undermined even ifwe assume that the only way, therefore, to pursue a

philosophy of nature is to select for life rather than

language, to go biocentric. This is indeed the

path adopted by many contemporary philosophers

of a naturalistic bent, so that biology marks the

limits if not of nature itself, then of plausible

philosophical attention. Biocentrism does not,

however, define nature- against language-

philosophy, as we might think, but rather defines

the moment beyond which the phenomenologicalenvelope will not extend, precisely because life is

thought not in itself, but for consciousness.

Biocentrism marks the point, that is, where a

phenomenology of nature23 turns back from nature

itself, through life, and towards the conscious-

ness that life vehiculates. Finally, the dichotomy

collapses because logos and bios are the elements

of species man; both poles, therefore, of the

distinction, remain reducible humanisms, and

differentiate only along the lines of arid philoso-

phies of language versus lush philosophies of life.

Philosophers, then, repeatedly use animality as

the threshold beyond which the fabric binding

consciousness to the practical shreds irreversibly,

and action ceases to be possible. Accordingly, we

might propose that from the organo-ethical

perspective, to venture beyond animality (one

does not think without becoming something else,

something that does not think, write Deleuze and

Guattari (1994, 42), giving animal as a first

example before following through, [. . .

] a mole-

cule, a particle [. . .]) is a regrettable passion that

acts on me, something suffered or undergone; to

descend from cognition to animality marks out the

territories of agency in the contours of the act, now

traced in political and existential histories rather

than mammalian odo-geographies.

It is precisely in its attachment to the vital

instance that attempts at a naturephilosophy arecaught within the infinitely reciprocating circuit of

Fichtean life, wavering on the thresholds of

physis and ethos. Thus we may already observe

Fichteanism in the biologism of Warnke and Bach,

and in the medicalism of von Engelhardt and

Tsouyopoulos, just as surely as we can identify the

Fichteanism of contemporary philosophy in its

assumption that prioritised practicism is grounded

in the somatic intimacy of life. Nature in

Fichteanism serves as the ground, therefore,from which to begin the ascent to its determination

by consciousness, rather than the unground or

abyss into which the naturephilosopher descends:

the naturephilosopher puts himself in the place

of nature (Schelling 2001, 192), every particular-

ity dissolved in the All (SW VI: 18384).

Wirths recent study of Schelling thus begins

(2003, 6ff.) by updating Fichteanism, applying

Levinass (1974, 95) prioritisation of the Good

over the True to the foundations of post-Kantianphilosophy, in order to present Schellingianism in

general, and Naturphilosophie in particular,

as an ethics. While ultimately this is a false,

Fichteanised Schelling, Wirths arguments are for

that very reason revealing both as regards the

Fichtean grasp of contemporary philosophy, and

as regards the resultant problems being played out

in the naturephilosophical context.24 Wirths

argument is that the nature spiritualised in

Schellings Philosophical Inquiries into the

Essence of Human Freedom, render[s] [. . .] its

foundation as ideal (2003, 68), so that this

becomes a nature wherein freedom rules (SW

VII: 350; 1986, 24). The question is whether this

rendering of the foundation as ideal is sufficient

to achieve the prioritisation of the practical over

the physical, as Wirths contends. Schelling,

following the passage just cited, explicitly denies

that the primatisation of the practical demand

is ontologically sufficient: it would by no means

suffice to declare that Activity, life and freedom

are alone true actuality [das wahrhaft

Wirkliche], since even a subjective idealism

grant

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(which does not understand itself) such as

Fichteanism can go that far (SW VII: 351;

1986, 24; translation modified.). The insufficiency

of such actuality derives from its restriction of all

actuality, nature, the world of things (SW VII:

351; 1986, 24; translation modified) to particulars,especially activity, life, freedom. Rather it is

required, corrects Schelling, that all actuality

(nature, the world of things) be grounded in

activity (ibid.). It is, in other words, insufficient

to show, with Fichte, that freedom consists in the

modification of matter (W I: 307; 1982, 269);

rather, if freedom is actual, there must be not

merely an ethical usage (which Schelling calls

Fichtes economic-teleological ontology, SW

VII: 17) of nature, since actual freedom necessi-tates an ethology of matter, without conscious-

ness, even without life.

Clearly, when Wirth attempts to ground this

practical demand, and free action is made depen-

dent on consciousness, that is, on the human

co-science (Mitwissenschaft) with nature,

whereby nature comes to affirm its own prodigal

animality (2003, 25), his is a Fichteanism

masquerading as Schellingianism. Activity, life,

freedom are not found in nature, but only inconscious human animality. The ontological

demand for a philosophy of nature is not satisfied

by the restrictedness of animality, no matter

how prodigal, but rather confronts it directly:

what is not free cannot be determined as free, but,

if freedom is to dominate, must rather be used

and then eliminated in the nature-cide towards

which Wirths titular life conspires (2003, 94f.).

Fichte defines life, as the second of the two

epigraphs above has it, as infinite metabolic

reciprocity in oneself, but outwardly directed

(W XI: 365); that Fichtes concept of nature is

contradictory did not escape Schelling (SW VII:

9). Wirth is only following Fichte in reaching for

animal being in order to ground the practicism of

his critico-transcendental ontology; but life,

the animal, apparent paradigms of nature, do not

conjoin consciousness to nature, but rather

segregate the one from the other.

Wirths Fichteanism gets it wrong on

two counts, regarding the assertion of an

unequivocal practicism driving Schellingian

naturephilosophy: firstly, since this presents

only a one-sided, therefore only a partially true,

and being only partially true, wholly false,

account of the Philosophical Inquiries; and

secondly, the assertoric mode of Wirths account

misrepresents transcendental arguments from the

Oldest System-Program as what, from that philo-

sophical perspective, would be anarcho-dogmatic

ones. This requires that all the dimensions of

the problem be properly laid out, and the problem

of the relation of transcendental to nature-

philosophy examined. For one reason, the

Philosophical Inquiries does attest to a spiritua-

lisation or potentiating [potenzierende] of

nature, but one that is a power of nature rather

than an act that passive nature suffers at divine or

otherwise non-natural yet spontaneous causality,making transcendental conditions coincident with

physical ones. For another, the transcendentalism

of the Oldest System-Programs account of how a

world, how nature, must be constructed for a

moral being (Frank and Kurz 1975, 110) does not

entail the automatic assumption of the primacy of

the practical, nor does it ground this primacy as

nature for a moral being; rather, transcendental

sufficiency, as in the passage from the

Philosophical Inquiries (SW VII: 351; 1986, 24)examined above, is given only when the conditions

become themselves unconditioned, unthinged

[unbedingt] or absolute, i.e., when they lose all

particularity. In terms of the overt relation of

philosophies of life to Fichtean rather than to

Schellingian philosophy,25 therefore, Wirths

account is exemplary, not only revealing the

ethical-epistemological axis of the problem (the

good vs. the true), but also the formal ontological

dimension of Fichtean naturephilosophy, to whichwe now turn before considering the transcendent-

alism of Naturphilosophie, as disputed between

Schelling and Eschenmayer.

III the disputed transcendentalism ofnaturephilosophy

I absolutely do not acknowledge two differ-

ent worlds, but rather insist on only one and

the same, in which everything, even what

common consciousness opposes as nature

and mind, is comprehended.

Schelling, SW IV: 10102


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We cannot agree with Hegels judgement that

Schellings answer to Eschenmayers idealistic

objections against the Naturphilosophie

(1977a, 79) fails to bring into sharp relief the dif-

ference between the Schellingianising and Fich-

teanising tendencies in the philosophy of nature

(not least in Hegels own). Indeed, the argu-

ments around which this exchange of two articles

Eschenmayers SpontaneityWorldsoul and

Schellings On the true concept of nature-

philosophy is constructed continue to divide

these tendencies, as we have seen, into the

contemporary.

Here, in list form, is the core of Eschenmayers

argument (Schelling 2001, 23334):

1. Naturephilosophy problematises, butcannot resolve, the nature of the connection

between nature and concept, law and freedom,

dead mechanism and vital dynamics.

2. Eschenmayer cites Schellings formulation

of the second problem: what is the universal

source of activity in nature? (SWIII:20; 2004, 19)

nature itself (Schellings unconditioned or

unthinged empiricism) or the I (Fichte,

Eschenmayer)?

3. If Schelling is correct, then there can be noprinciple of becoming, but only actual becomings,

none of which could furnish a principle for any

other. Therefore, a transcendental philosophy is

necessary in order to produce the free concept.

4. This free concept must be free according

to principles that are themselves spontaneous

and undetermined by nature. Therefore, a

transcendental investigation of the concept of

becoming in nature leads not to material nature

as its source and principle but rather to vital

consciousness, i.e., to spontaneity, the soul of

the world.

In other words, the argument hinges around

whether nature itself is active, and whether a

transcendental philosophy or a philosophy of

nature, which Eschenmayer calls an uncondi-

tioned empiricism (unbedingten Empirismus;

Schelling 2001, 234), is capable of resolving this

problem. Against the Fichtean transcendentalism

Eschenmayer offers, Schelling writes: some,

misled by the term naturephilosophy, will think

they should expect a transcendental deduction

of natural phenomena (SW IV: 81). On the

contrary, the reason, writes Schelling, for the

opposition of naturephilosophy and transcenden-

tal philosophy, and why these two sciences

proceed along entirely different lines [. . .], lies

in things (SW IV: 83). Schelling is always clear

that, while connected, the transcendental andnaturephilosophy operate along contrary axes.

The mistake is often made, following Hegels

characterisation of Schellings philosophy in

On the Difference between the Fichtean and the

Schellingian Systems of Philosophy, of merely

viewing the two as the symmetrical constituents

of a philosophical science as such, reducible to

neither. Yet Schelling consistently insists that the

relation is asymmetrical: transcendental philoso-

phy is identical to dynamics (SW III: 452;1978, 91), but dynamics restricted to a single

region of nature, namely the natural history of

mind (SW II: 39; 1988, 30), whereas nature-

philosophy is concerned with what is not recover-

able in mind, that is, the natural productivity that

is as active in geology as in ideation. Caught, then,

between a false equilibrium of the two sciences in

philosophical science per se, and a naturalistically

false prioritisation of mentation over physis,

Schelling opts to reject any transcendentalism innaturephilosophy whatsoever. In doing so,

however, Schellingian naturephilosophy is indeed

open to the charge (if charge it is) of uncondi-

tioned empiricism levelled at it by Eschenmayer.

The question is, granted that Kant and Fichte

are transcendental philosophers, and granted that

Schelling does not wish to repeat their errors, is

there another means of pursuing a transcendental

naturephilosophy that does not entail these errors?

For instance, does Wirths error regarding the

transcendental background to the problem of

world-constitution for a moral being provide an

alternative means to construct a transcendental

naturalism?

Before addressing this directly, what solu-

tions does Schelling offer to Eschenmayers

criticisms? Key to this is Schellings solution to

Eschenmayers second point, concerning the

source of activity in nature: this solution proposes

activity to be the unconditioned or unthinged

[dasUnbedingte]innature(SWIII:11;2004,13).

Thus, overtly contra Fichte and Hegel, Schelling

posits activity in nature that is not only

grant

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autochthonous but law-governed: In nature-

philosophy, I say that nature is its own lawgiver

(SW IV: 96). In so far as this is the case, the sphere

covered by transcendental philosophy is not so

much separable from that covered by the philoso-

phy of nature as it is generated by it. It does notdo so, however, in accordance with the simplistic

alternative of causality vs. reciprocity with which

Fichte works in the Propositions; rather, the acts

which are derived in the theoretical part of

idealism are acts the simple powers of which

exist in nature and are set out in naturephiloso-

phy (SW IV: 92); or, as Schelling puts it earlier in

the same work, electricity in nature [is] intelli-

gence [. . .] [as] a simple consequence of natures

constant potentiation (SW IV: 76). In otherwords, the final phenomenal link between the act

of thinking and the experience of the content of

thought has been broken; to reinstate it is

thereafter the function of transcendental philoso-

phy, the only science with such a double series

according to Schelling: Transcendental philoso-

phy, since its object is the original genesis

of consciousness, is the sole science in

which this twofold series occurs (SW III: 398;

1978, 49).Rather than pursuing this here, which would

take us into the arena of formalism in naturephi-

losophy, I wish to conclude with an idea of

transcendental naturalism left open by the

problem posed in the Oldest System-Program;

that is how must a world be constituted for a

moral being? (in Frank and Kurz 1975, 110).

If we add to this Schellings solution to the second

of Eschenmayers criticisms, i.e., that nature is

its own lawgiver, then the problem can be recast

in terms of a naturalism structured around the

world as the constituting agent. This inverts the

transcendental order understood in Kanto-

Fichtean terms, and thus as understood by

Eschenmayer, but it opens up two potential

solutions for a transcendental naturalism not

subject to this transfer of intelligence from the

I onto nature (W XI: 362) account.

The first of these solutions operates the con-

ceptualisation of constructions on the basis of

Leibnizian sufficient reason, rather than on the

completeness of a transcendental deduction. Since

Schelling has already noted that we are misled

if we expect to discover such deductions in his

Naturphilosophie, sufficiency provides a guaran-

tor for the transcendental construction that is the

same as the guarantor for the physical, but that

does without the finally conditioning instance

that settles the constructed into exclusively

transcendental territory.

The second solution concerns Schellings

constant search for the unconditioned in

nature: to the extent that this is a possible

programme, there can be no guarantee that

the unconditioned has been reached. Accordingly,

the transcendental would again lack conditions of

closure, and would instead open onto sequences of

unconditioning that carry the entire process back

beyond the envelope of the second of the twofoldseries in which transcendental philosophy consists,

and into naturephilosophy itself. As Schelling

put it in the Journal, the naturephilosopher

puts himself in the place of

nature (Schelling 2001, 192):

this is not to be understood as the

transfer of intelligence, but as the

motions of its physical precursors.

notes

1 In the Exposition of the True Relation of

Naturephilosophy to the Improved Fichtean Theory

(1806), Schelling writes: Above all, the true signifi-

cance of the eternal and necessary bond between

philosophy and physics remains a mystery even in

our time (SW VII:101). References are to Friedrich

Willhelm Joseph von SchellingssammtlicheWerke, XIV

vols., ed.K.F.A. Schelling (Stuttgart and Augsburg:

J.G. Cottascher, 1856^ 61). Where available, trans-

lated sources follow these citations; otherwise,all translations are my own.

2 That Oken remains despised is clear from the

most recent treatment of his work by the histor-

ian and philosopher of science Nicholas Jardine

(Scenes of Inquiry (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000) 1),

who delights in the grotesque nature of his

system. The biologist and theoretician Gould

(Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

UP,1977)), meanwhile, does not bellow his disdain

with the same excess of sobriety. Pursuing the

contrasting degrees of abstraction tolerable by

the natural as opposed to the human sciences

would be instructive.


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3 I use Habermass (1992) formulation not only

because it can stand tolerably well for all those

who assert the end or death of metaphysics to

have occurred as either an historical or as a meta-

physical fact; but specifically because Habermas

delights, like Cromwell in a cathedral, in liberatingmoral-practical problems from conceptual strin-

gency of any sort, and in reducing metaphysical to

discoursive-historical objects. In place, then, of

standing like Nietzsches Zarathustra, at the

gateway Moment, at the juncture of eternity

and recurrence, post-metaphysics confronts

philosophy with a decision: Left and Right

Hegelianism? And in place of the manifest

impracticality of metaphysics as textual scholar-

ship, the equally transparent practicality of

post-metaphysics as speech.4 In part this paper has been provoked by

having spent a year in the company of several col-

leagues, especially Peter Jowers and Sean Watson,

wondering repeatedly howexactlyit mightbe pos-

sible to develop a metaphysics that embraces

all the concepts of nature and freedom (Deleuze

1994, 19). The papers title is an expression of my

thanks to them, and its use of the collective we,

therefore, not even empirically inaccurate.

5 To say nothing of the more overt statements tothis effect in What is Philosophy? (Deleuze and

Guattari1994, 11^12, 102, 208), amongst the devel-

opments in Difference and Repetition indebted to

Idealism we might number the discussion of the

relation between good sense, science and philoso-

phy in terms drawn from Hegels Differenzschrift

(1994, 224f.); while the geo-logical articulation of

depth, ground, ungrounding, the profound, and

transcendental volcanism (1994, 228 ^32, 241)

draws on Schellings citations and development of

Steffens geological researches (SW IV: 504 ^ 05,citing Steffens essay, On the Oxydation and

Deoxydation Processes of the Earth, published in

Schellings Journal of Speculative Physics I.1 (1800), in

Schelling2001,100 ^ 01).Catherine Malabou (in Paul

Patton (ed.), Deleuze: A Critical Reader (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1996) 114 ^38) has prompted a recon-

sideration of Hegels role in Deleuzes metaphysics,

an unpopular view seconded by James Williamss

argument, in his Gilles Deleuzes Difference and

Repetition: A Critical Introduction and Guide

(Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2003) 26, that general-

ized anti-Hegelianism is a trap laid by the book.

As noted elsewhere, Eric Alliez recommends

the philosophical value of a confrontation with

the Fichtean standpoint in his The Signature of the

World (London: Continuum) 30.

6 Fichte agreed with this verdict of Eschenmayer,

whose anonymous review of Schellings First Outline

of a System of the Philosophy of Nature and

Introduction to the Outline (both 1799) had appeared

in the Erlanger Literatur-Zeitung for April 1801,

and which Fichte expressly praised in his letter

to Schelling of 31 May 1801. It is Eschenmayers

(increasing, according to Durner, in Schelling

2001, 2: xix) Fichteanism that makes his

SpontaneityWorld Soul, which appeared in

volume II.1 (1801) of Schellings Zeitschrift fur

spekulative Physik, along with Schellings simulta-

neously published response,TheTrue Concept of

Naturphilosophie and the Proper Technique for

Resolving its Problems (SW IV: 79^104), into atheatre in which the divergence of Fichteanism

from physics is played out. In the Difference

between Fichtes and Schellings System of Philosophy

(published September 1801), Hegel claims that

Schellings answer to Eschenmayers idealistic

objections against the Naturphilosophie (Hegel

1977a, 79) precisely fails to bring the distinct-

ness of the two systems out into public

discussion, and notes the distortion of the

Schellingian by the Fichtean system this occasions.

Hegels derogatory use of idealistischen here isto be noted.

7 Reinhard Lows critique of the modern, mathe-

matico-physical philosophy of nature, against

which he positions what he styles as Schellings

advancement of the interests of reason: how

must nature be thought so as to conceptualize

actuality on the one hand and on the other, so

that man can understand himself as an intellectual

and moral being?(in Hasler 1981, 103), perfec tly

and falsely exemplifies the tendency that

Bonsepien follows and that Zimmerli and

Chatelet reject.

8 Heuser-Kesslers study concentrates on estab-

lishing conceptual likenesses between theprecepts

of specifically Schellingian Naturphilosophie and

the contemporary natural-scientific paradigm to

which the studys title adverts. The current con-

text, however, is oriented towards the problem of

an ontology of nature rather than theoretical

homologies.

9 Noting that Aristotles name for his forebears

is physiologoi, Heidegger asks what this means:

the physiologoi are neither physiologists in the

grant

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contemporary sense [. . .] nor are they philoso-

phers of nature.The physiologoi is rather a genuine

primordial title for a questioning about beings as a

whole, the title for those who speak out

about physis, about the prevailing of beings as a

whole [. . .

] (1995, 28). Thus arises a merelylogico-discursive nature.

10 As philosophers of the concept, Deleuze

prefers Hegel, Schelling and even Maimon

(cf. Deleuze 1993, 89) to Fichte, while the latent

existentialism of Alexis Philonenkos Fichte

(La Liberte humaine dans la philosophie de Fichte,

2nd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1980)) appeals to Guattari.To

advance the cause of philosophy as onto-ethology,

which is how he reads Deleuze and Guattaris

What is Philosophy?, Alliez notes the timeliness

of a confrontation with the Fichtean standpoint(2005, 30).

11 Jaspers (1955,178) inaugurates this Fichteanised

Schelling with his mid-century Schellingian revival:

For Schelling, Kant is the turning-point, Fichtes

idealism the foundation, and he himself the com-

pletion of the philosophy of freedom that can

recreate metaphysics quite otherwise than all

prior metaphysics. Similarly, despite citing

Schellings condemnation of Fichte from the

Stuttgart Seminars (SW VII: 445; 1994, 215;

Heidegger1985, 93) to the effect that the Science

of Knowledge delivers a complete deathblow to

nature, Heideggers Schelling wavers between

Fichteanism and Schellingianism precisely as

regards the problem of nature.

12 See Walter Schulz (ed.), Briefwechsel

Fichte-Schelling (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp,

1968), and the Selections from Fichte ^Schelling

Correspondence, translated in Jochen

Schulte-Sasse et al. (eds.), Theory as Practise

(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,1997) 73^90.13 Blumenbach does not so much create a wholly

new method in the natural sciences as translate

outmoded Stahlian debates surrounding vitalism

into a positivistic-naturalist context. Similarly, it is

not so much in its great utility to natural history,

whatever Kantians such as Girtanner had to say,

as it is in the transformation of this from a straight-

forwardly naturalistic into a transcendental

problematic that the Kantian principle acquires

its philosophical significance.

14 For Kants brief acknowledgement of

Blumenbach in the third Critique, see Ak.V: 424;

1987, 311. For a naturalistic solution of this

transcendental gulf, see my Physics of Analogy

in Rachel Jones and Andrea Rehberg (eds.), The

Matter of Critique. Readings in Kants Philosophy

(Manchester: Clinamen, 2000) 37 60.

15 Although Badiou (2000, 45) likes to think that

his classicism surpasses its criticistprecursors,cri-ticality is moreproperly the dimension he retains,

mistakenly jettisoning the transcendental in its

stead. Further, the sense Fichte gave to philoso-

phical critique in Concerning the Concept of the

Wissenschaftslehre accords with the usage Badiou

intends of precisely such distinctionsbetween clas-

sicism and criticism: One can philosophise about

metaphysics itself [. . .] One can embarkon investi-

gations into the possibility, the real meaning, and

the rules governing such a science. And this is

very advantageous for the cultivation of thescience of metaphysics itself. The philosophical

name for a system of this sort of inquiry is

critique (W I: 32; 1988, 97). However, the

dimension ofcriticality to which we wish to draw

attention at the present moment consists in its

eliminative one: a pure critique, stipulates Fichte,

is intermixed with no metaphysical investiga-

tions (ibid.), i.e., expels all metaphysical elements

from its field.

16 It is equally important to note that the stan-

dard story regarding Fichte ^ the one that is

standardly derived from Hegel ^ is not the only

one told. See Pippin in Sedgwick (2000, 147^70).

Regarding Fichtes Naturphilosophie, see the reveal-

ing and heavily guarded acknowledgement by

Breazeale (in Sedgwick 2000, 179) that Fichtes

philosophy of nature, while barely developed, is

concerned with the nature of experience, or in

Breazeales own terms, with what experience, and

hence nature, necessarily is and must be (emphasis

in original).

17 The important Fichtean texts in the present

context ^ Concerning the Concept of the

Wissenschaftslehre, Outline of the Distinctive

Character of the Wissenschaftslehre with Respect to

the Theoretical Faculty, Foundations of the Entire

Wissenschaftslehre, Foundations of Natural Right

and the Propositions for the Elucidation of the

Essence of Animals were all published between

1794 and 1800, while the relevant texts of Kants

Opus postumum (1993, known by Schelling

(SW VI: 8) as ubergang von der Metaphysik zur

Physik, as noted above) were written between

1798 and 1801 (see Kant 1993, xxvi^xxix for the

chronology).


56


15/17

18 This is Fichtes first recorded use of the term

Potenz, which, having been one of the conceptual

mainstays of Schellings philosophy since the lat-

ters Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (SW II: 314 n.;

1988, 249 n.) took it from Eschenmayers Principles

fromthe Metaphysics of Nature (1796), demonstratesthat the Propositions is a response to Schelling

(cf. GA II,5: 419). Further demonstrations of this

can be found by comparing the substance of

the Propositions with the exchange of letters

between Fichte and Schelling, specifically

those Fichte drafted or sent to Schelling on

27 December1800.

19 Fichtes animal is thus exceptional in the

Goethean age, where morphogenesis and com-

parative anatomy were determined almost exclu-

sively to search for the Urtyp. For more exceptionsto this supposed rule of natural science during the

Romantic era, and in Naturphilosophie in particular,

see my Philosophies of Nature After Schelling

(Continuum, forthcoming 2006).

20 R.J. Boscovichs theory of point-atoms

(in Crosland1971, 210 ^14), and J.B.Priestleys defini-

tion of matter by powers rather than substances

(ibid. 115^19) were amongst the eighteenth-

century sources for the dynamic atomism in

Schellings First Outline of a System ofNaturephilosophy (SW III: 22^24; 2004, 20^22);

Hans-Christian Oersted discovered electromag-

netism in 1820 (although this is usually credited to

Faradayin1831), and thus prepared theway for the

field theories of force promulgated by Michael

Faraday, for example, for whom the substance is

composed of its powers (Experimental Researches

in Electricity, 3 vols. (London: Taylor 1839^55) 1:

362.

21 In the 1844 Presentation of the Process of Nature,

for instance, Schelling demonstrates a markedshift from the position he adopted forty years

earlier as regards Kants Critique of the Power of

Judgment. In the earlier text, Kants work divides

organic being from nature in general (SW VI: 8),

contrasting with the more positive use of that

Critique in the later work (SW X: 366 ^75).

22 The prime example of this tendency remains

Heidegger (cf. n. 9, above), whose etymology

of physiologia demonstrates him incapable of a

philosophy of nature precisely because his is a

philosophy of logos. Amongst other philosophers

promoting an essentially logocentric nature-

philosophy, Krings (in Hasler 1981, 73^76; 1982,

350) and Peterson (2003, xxvff.) propose

a logogenetic approach even to Schellingian

Naturphilosophie, which Low (in Hasler 1981, 103)

summarises thus:

If modern, mathematico-physical philosophy

of nature shows us a real-genetic image of

actuality, which men are neither familiar

with nor can form concepts of, then

Schellings transcendental construction

characterized the countervailing interests

of reason: how must nature be thought so

as to conceptualize actuality on the one

hand and on the other, so that man can

understand himself as an intellectual and

moral being? Hermann Krings has intro-

duced the concept of logogenesis for such

a construction.

Meanwhile, Roland Omne' s, rather than

giving a logocentric naturephilosophy, undertakes

a naturephilosophical examination of Logos in

Quantum Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton UP,

1999) 275: Unlike reality, Logos never offers itself

in a concrete form, evenif it is present everywhere

[. . .] We may not know much about Logos, but we

possess a sort of living mirror of it: the brain,

which [. . .] carries a trace of its matrix as a

meteor carries that of an inaccessible planet.Thus biocentrism and logocentrism share the

same formal insufficiency, and both hinge around

an essentially phenomenological approach to

nature.

23 See, for example, Gernot Bo hmes

Introduction to Phanomenologie der Natur

(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), esp. 41f.:

The phenomenology of nature is nature-knowing

as self-knowing.

24 The project retreats at moments of greattension to the French-Heideggerian rubric of

philosophical discourses (2003, 2), thus supplying

a general validation of the empirical accuracy

of Bernouilli and Kerns (1926, viii) division of

Naturphilosophie into the biocentric and the

logocentric.

25 Such relations might be further explored in

the context of the renewed interest in Bergson

and Nietzsche from the point of view of the

life sciences. In both instances, Keith Ansell

Pearson has blazed trails that may bear fruitful

comparison with a properly understood

Schellingian naturalism.

grant

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Iain Hamilton Grant

School of Cultural Studies

University of the West of England

Frenchay Campus

Bristol BS16 1QYUK

E-mail: [email protected]

grant

grant- philosophy and physics 17p

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