Re: First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature
Posted: Sun Oct 06, 2019 8:29 am
NOTES
Translator’s Introduction
1. See, for example, Sandra G. Harding, Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998).
2. See, to name but a few, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Signs of Meaning in the Universe, trans. Barbara J. Haveland (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996); Erich Jantsch, The Self- Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980); Stuart A. Kauffman, Investigations (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000); Richard C. Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000); J. E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987); Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (New York: Basic, 1998); I. Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York: Free P, 1997); Stanley N. Salthe, Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology (Cambridge: MIT P, 1993); and Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford UP, 1997).
3. Friedrich Heinrich Loschge’s review of the Outline in 1800 remarks that it is filled with “many sorts of laughable comparisons and combinations” and amounts to nothing more than “a spirited play with concepts”; and in this century Erik Nordenskiold says of Lorenz Oken that “his speculations were as grotesque as they were irrational.” Loschge, cited in AA 1,5 52; Nordenskiold cited in Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977) 416.
4. Cohen, in 1947, describes this classical prejudice against Naturphilosophie (cited in ibid., 38). Gould argues that without this speculative element later evolutionary theories of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny” would never have developed, and Barry Gower shows how Hans Christian O/ rsted’s discovery of electromagnetism was facilitated by Schelling (as O/ rsted himself admits). See Barry Gower, “Speculation in Physics: The History and Practice of Naturphilosophie,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 3.4 (1973): 301–56; and H.-J. Treder, “Zum Einfluß von Schellings Naturphilosophie auf die Entwicklung der Physik,”Natur und geschichtlicher Prozeß: Studien zur Naturphilosophie F. W. J. Schellings, ed. H. J. Sandkühler (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1984) 326–34.
While among many scientists and philosophers the above prejudice no longer rings true, it is by no means unheard-of today, even among those who one might think would find its holism hospitable. Among philosophers influenced by Schelling, C. S. Peirce and Henri Bergson leap readily to mind. On the reception of Naturphilosophie in nineteenth-century America, see Joseph J. Esposito, Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1977) 186–207.
5. In the literature this is a relatively well-accepted way of considering Schelling’s development. Some writers think the changes to be more or less drastic and numerous. Esposito thinks that a major difficulty in Schelling interpretation arises because “between 1797 and 1806 Schelling produces at least six major reformulations of his system,” but he is not specific about how many changes take place before 1801 (see ibid., 125.) The editors of the new Schelling critical edition suggest a major change after 1800, when “the relation to the empirical sciences clearly takes a backseat,” and his philosophy takes on a “predominantly speculative form” (see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Werke: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner,Wilhelm G. Jacobs, and Hermann Krings [Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1976ff.], I,5–9Suppl. XIV. (Hereafter this edition will be cited as “AA,” with series, volume, and page number, for example, AA I,7 45.) Harald Holz, however, disputes that any truly major change takes place between 1796 and 1806, and sees the transcendental philosophy, nature philosophy, and philosophy of identity as “correlative aspects” of one systematic whole (see his “Perspektive Natur,” Schelling: Einführung in seine Philosophie, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner [Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1975] 63). Finally, Schelling himself in the 1830’s lectures On the History of Modern Philosophy only notes that the special method established in the philosophy of nature and System of 1800 became the “soul of the system independent of Fichte,” and he characterizes his earlier work in terms of the identity philosophy in order, clearly, to contrast it with his then-current move away from such “negative” rationalistic philosophy and toward a “positive” empirical philosophy (see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, ed. M. Buhr [Leipzig: Reclam, 1975] 115; On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. A. Bowie, ed. R. Geuss, Texts in German Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994] 111).We cannot anticipate coming to any conclusions about this issue here, and adopt the given distinction heuristically. (Note: All translations are my own unless otherwise noted, and references to existing English translations have been provided for the reader’s convenience.)
6. A more extensive account of these inclinations and the development of the theory of the postulate can be found in Michael Rudolphi, Produktion und Konstruktion: Zur Genese der Naturphilosophie in Schellings Frühwerk, ed.Walter E. Eherhardt, vol. 7, Schellingiana (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 2001) 51–81.
7. AA 1,1 265–300; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794–1796), trans. Fritz Marti (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1979) 38–55.
8. Cf. “How are a priori synthetic judgments possible? . . . this question in its highest abstraction is none other than: How is it possible for the absolute I to step out of itself and oppose to itself a not-I?” AA I,2 99; and ibid., 81. Or again: “How could the absolute come out of itself and oppose to itself a world?” AA I,3 78; and ibid., 164.
9. Schelling overcomes the philosophy of reflection, or separation, by returning to the original unity out of which the two terms have emerged as a result of reflection: “[A]fter we had separated object and representation through freedom, we wanted to unite them again through freedom, we wanted to know that, and why, there is originally no separation between them” (AA I,5 73; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. E. Harris and P. Heath [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988] 13). One of the consequences of the philosophy of reflection is the institution of the Kantian Ding-an-sich: “It makes the separation between human beings and the world permanent, because it treats the latter as thing-in-itself, which neither intuition nor imagination, neither understanding nor reason can reach” (AA I,5 71–72; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 11).
10. AA I,3 103; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 167.
11. Cf. Hegel’s arguments against mere “propositions” as first principles of philosophy in his Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie (1801) (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam Verlag, 1981) 37–42, and The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State U of New York P, 1977) 103–09.
12. AA I,3 193; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 128.The SW edition has “The first Postulat of philosophy” where the AA reads “The first Resultat of philosophy.” The latter presents the definitive first edition text, but I have tried to preserve the parallel somewhat. The idea of freedom is the “postulate” that demands action as a ‘‘result,’’ that which issues from the idea.
13. AA I,3 192; and ibid., 127.
14. AA I,3 193; and ibid., 128.
15. AA I,5 74–75; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 14. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson asks, “Who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter?” (see R. W. Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures, ed. J. Porte [New York: Library of America, 1983] 953).
16. AA I,3 73; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 171.
17. AA I,2 166; and ibid., 122.
18. AA I,2 166–67; and ibid., 122–23.
19. AA I,2 169; and ibid., 123.
20. On this phraseology as typical of “deductions” in Kant, see Dieter Henrich, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique,” Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. E. Foerster (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989) 44.
21. Despite its seeming clarity, the notion of “development,” whether used in transcendental or natural philosophy, is profoundly ambiguous. It is wise to assume that Schelling was aware of this, and sometimes purposely uses the word in contexts where it may be interpreted to mean both a historical or an empirical series of events and a logical or constructive series of categories. Used in the former sense, however, its occurrence is quite rare, and Schelling, like Oken after him, understands “development” as a conceptual, rather than a real empirical unfolding. See the section “Logogenesis, Construction, and Potency in the Philosophy of Nature.”
22. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling, 14 vols. (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856ff.), I,3 320n.; above p. 195. (Hereafter this edition will be cited as “SW,” with volume and page number, for example, SW III 273. Because only the first seven volumes of the critical edition have been published, the SW text will be cited when the work has not yet appeared in the critical edition.)
23. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992) 45; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1978) 32. (Translation modified, bracketed portions added by translator.)
24. AA I,5 93; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 30 (translation modified). The terms natural history, genesis, and becoming, like development above, always imply conceptual, rather than empirical, evolution. Again, see the section on “Logogenesis.”
25. AA I,5 96; and ibid., 32 (translation modified).
26. AA I,5 100; and ibid., 36 (translation modified).
27. AA I,5 106; and ibid., 41 (translation modified). The theory of compulsion or of a “feeling of constraint” that seems both to imply and also to substitute for a relation of logical necessity is never adequately developed by Schelling, and it is partially by virtue of this ambiguity that he is often able to speak of theoretical necessity and practical constraint, and hence theoretical and practical philosophy, as if they were one. The “necessity” in the judgment of purposiveness will be further explored in the section “Transcendental Deductions and the Idea of Nature.”
28. AA I,6 69.
29. AA I,7 310; and see above p. 79. Cf. “There has long been a theory that the magnetic, electric, chemical, and, finally, even the organic phenomena, are interwoven into one great interdependent whole. This must be established” (SW III 319; and see above p. 227).
30. AA I,6 192–93.
31. “We can say—at least in a certain sense—that if the universal activity of Nature has the same conditions as the organic, sensibility does not belong exclusively to organic nature, but is a property of the whole of Nature, and that the sensibility of plants and animals is only a modification of the universal sensibility of Nature” AA I,7 183n iii; and see above p. 117).
32. Henrich, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique,” 35. Most of the literature on “deduction” in Kant focuses attention on the deduction of the categories of the understanding, but below I refer to the dependence of Schelling’s method on the Kantian deduction of the ideas in the first Critique (see, for example, Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunfi, ed. W. Weischedel, vol. 3–4, Werkausgabe [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 1974] B697–98).
33. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, B117. As an example of an “empirical deduction” Kant cites Locke’s empirical psychology (B119).
34. “It is thus conceivable that speculative physics—the soul of real experiment— has, in all time, been the mother of all great discoveries in nature” (SW III 280; and see above p. 199).
35. SW III 279; and see above p. 199. On the relationship between experiment, experience, and speculation in Schelling’s philosophy of nature, see Hans Poser, “Spekulative Physik und Erfahrung. Zum Verhältnis von Experiment und Theorie in Schellings Naturphilosophie,” Schelling: Seine Bedeutung für eine Philosophie der Natur und der Geschichte, ed. L. Hasler (Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1981) 129–38.
36. SW III 276; and see above p. 197. This experimental prophecy is meant to confirm that, in Fichte’s words, “we do not learn these laws of nature by observation, but rather that the laws provide the basis for all observation” (see J. G. Fichte, “Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre,” Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. Daniel Breazeale [Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988] 121n).
37. SW III 276. One should note Kant’s implicit endorsement here: “He who would know the world must first manufacture it” (see Immanuel Kant, Opus Postumum, trans. Eckhart Förster and Michael Rosen, ed. Paul Guyer and Allan W.Wood, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993] 240).
38. Cf. AA I,6 91.
39. SW III 277; and see above p. 197.
40. AA I,5 96; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 32.
41. There is, admittedly, a logical problem with this argument. If we accept the premise of the reciprocal presupposition of ideal and real, and if human beings are compelled to think or must by necessity think a certain concept when they encounter organisms, this does not of itself account for the specificity of the concept thought (e.g., “purposiveness”), which may be relative to the thinker or culture. Schelling believes that he has shown that teleology is the only possible alternative to mechanism, once mechanism has been proven to be inadequate, and so imagines an exclusive disjunction where to our eyes other (nonmechanistic) concepts may be possible and more plausible in the explanation of living beings.
42. SW III 278; and see above p. 198.
43. SW III 279; and see above pp. 198–199.
44. Hermann Krings, “Die Konstruktion in der Philosophie. Ein Beitrag zu Schellings Logik der Natur,” Aspekte der Kultursoziologie, ed. J. Stagl (Berlin:D. Reimer, 1982) 350:
See also Hermann Krings, “Natur als Subjekt: Ein Grundzug der Spekulativen Physik Schellings,”Natur und Subjektivität: Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der Naturphilosophie des jungen Schelling, ed. R. Heckmann, Hermann Krings, and R.W. Meyer (Stuttgart: Fromann- Holzboog, 1983) 111–28.
45. SW IV 4.
46. Very different from the Hegelian dialectic; readers should refer to Schelling’s critique of Hegelian method in his On the History of Modern Philosophy, 142–43.
47. SW IV 25.
48. AA I,7 356; and see above p. 181.
49. AA I,7 83n; and see above p. 18.
50. Krings outlines the terminology Schelling uses in such constructions in successively more concrete stages: productivity, production, force, product, matter, body, object. On this series of categories, see his “Natur als Subjekt,” 118–23.
51. AA I,7 112; and see above p. 49.
52. AA I,7 105n, 106n; and see above p. 40, 41.
53. “Organic nature maintains the whole wealth and variety of its products only by continually changing the relation of those three functions.—In like manner inorganic Nature brings forth the whole wealth of its products only by changing the relation of those three functions of matter to infinity; for magnetism, electricity, and chemical process are the functions of matter generally, and on that ground alone are they categories for the construction of all matter” (see SW III 322n; and above p. 229).
54. Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, 125; and Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, 119.
55. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977) 98n.
Foreword
1. On George-Louis Lesage, and on mechanistic versus dynamic philosophy, see AA I,5 196–207; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. E. Harris and P. Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) 161–69.
Outline of the Whole
1. Schelling uses the latinate term Aktion. In an attempt to mirror the foreignness of the term in German, in most cases I have chosen to translate “actant” rather than “actor” or “action” in English, since the latter is too broad here (although it is used more frequently later in a broader sense) and the former too full of intentionality. The “dynamic atom” that Schelling designates by Aktion is best understood as an individual “actant,” a “natural monad” or “simple productivity.”
2. He uses the terms indecomponible and componible, borrowing directly from the French of Lesage or Pierre Prévost, so I have retained the parallel in the translation.
3. Schelling will use the terms organisch, anorganisch, and unorganisch, translated here as organic, anorganic, and inorganic. Anorganic is normally directly opposed to organic, and refers to the resources in the external world that nourish or inhibit the organic activity of a particular being. Inorganic seems to include this, as well as a reference to “universal” nature, or the largest scale of nonorganic nature, but Schelling is not always clear about this.
4. Intussusception is a piece of medical jargon that means the telescoping of one portion of the intestine into another. Generally meaning “infolding,” Schelling also uses the word involution as a synonym.
5. Diremption (from Latin dirimo, to separate, break off, interrupt) throughout translates Entzweiung (“bifurcation” or “becoming two”), an important term that designates the ontological dualization or duplicity already inherent in any unity (including the Absolute), the ultimate cause of which remains undetermined in this text.
First Division
1. Very often Schelling uses the word Prinzip (principle) as the equivalent of Ursache (cause) or Grund (ground, reason). Thus it sometimes appears without a definite or indefinite article, as on pp. 19–20.
2. “Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.” From Albrecht von Haller’s “Incomplete Poem on Eternity” (1762). See AA I,7 364–65.
3. The full quotation from Lucretius runs: “Something must stand immovable, it must, / Lest all things be reduced to absolute nothing” (see R. Humphries, trans., Lucretius: The Way Things Are [Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1969] 42; and Cyril Bailey, ed., De rerum natura [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1947], Libr. I, V. 790f ).
4. There is no number (5) in the text.
5. The German sentence seems to be grammatically incorrect here. It reads “Die Ausbreitung der Flügel . . . geschieht vermittelst einer schnellen und kräftigen Entwicklung des Gefäßsystems im Centrum, durch ein Zuströmen der Flüssigkeit von innen—nicht etwa durch ein bloßes Auseinanderbreiten des übereinander geschlagenen Schmetterlings, oder durch den Druck der von außen eindringenden Luft” (AA I,7 286). I have compensated in the translation—Trans.
6. “Bestimmung des Begrifs einer Menschenrace” (1785), in Immanuel Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften, 22 vols. (Berlin: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900–42) 8:106 (hereafter AkA).
7. “Bestimmung des Begrifs einer Menschenrace,” in Kant AkA VIII 89–106; “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie” (1788), also in AkA VIII.
8. Most likely, Schaftesbury is referred to on the basis of Kant’s own citation in “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie” (AkA VIII 166).
9. Schelling refers to the text “Exercitationes de generatione animalium” (1651).
10. Schelling presents a viewpoint that he believes would be held by a chemical materialist, e.g., Reil (as just mentioned), but includes some aspects of his own position.
11. Although the quotation marks are discontinued at this point, this staged speech extends to page 60 where the quote is closed.
12. Schelling here speaks in the voice of Brandis (see appendix).
13. Schelling refers most likely to Haller’s “De partibus” (1753), translated from the Latin in Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie des menschlichen Körpers, 8 vols. (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Boss, 1759–1776).
14. The second parenthesis is missing in the original.
Second Division
1. Schelling goes on to express almost word for word the corpuscular position of Pierre Prévost in his “Magnetische Kräfte” (1794).
2. The present idea is expressed in Franklin’s “Letter to Abbé Soulaire,” European Magazine and London Review 24 (1793): 84–86.
3. The following interpretation is likely derived from Kant’s “Universal Natural History” (1755), in AkA I.
4. AA I,5 185; and Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 144.
5. AkA I 275.
6. AA I,5 176f.; and Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 132f.
7. pp. 28–31.
8. The specific experiment referred to here is recounted in AA I,5 152 (Ideas, 102) and AA I,6 137f., where a white ribbon becomes positively electrified when rubbed with a black, which in its turn becomes negatively electrified.
Third Division
1. Schelling is summarizing his own text here, see pp. 78–104.
2. No closed parenthesis is provided in the AA here, but it seems necessary to supply it.
3. See AA I,6 214 and the note to that passage.
4. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georg Christoph Tobler, Goethe’s Botany: The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Tobler’s Ode to Nature (1782), trans. Agnes Arber (Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica Co., 1946).
5. See AA I,6 200.
6. Schelling is likely quoting from memory. The most similar passage reads “Bodies driven by a compelling force move slowly; but those which move of their own accord possess alertness.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1917–25, 3 vols.) Volume III, Letter CXXI, p. 401.
7. “Some say that unto bees a share is given / Of the Divine Intelligence.” P. Vergilius Maro, Georgicon, ed. and trans. J. B. Greenough (The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, June 2003), Book IV, Vv. 220–21.
8. A second occurrence of “higher” in this sentence has been replaced with “lower” by the translator.
9. The citation could not be found.
10. Schelling’s attention to the problems of medical science in this text earned him great respect among many contemporary physicians, many of whom refer to Schelling on the dedication page of their works. See AA I,7 57–59. For Schelling’s influence on medical science, see Nelly Tsouyopoulos, “Schellings Krankheitsbegriff und die Begriffsbildung der Modernen Medizin,”Natur und Subjektivität, ed. R. Heckmann, H. Krings, and R.W. Meyer (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1985), 265–90.
Translator’s Introduction
1. See, for example, Sandra G. Harding, Is Science Multicultural?: Postcolonialisms, Feminisms, and Epistemologies (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998).
2. See, to name but a few, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Signs of Meaning in the Universe, trans. Barbara J. Haveland (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996); Erich Jantsch, The Self- Organizing Universe: Scientific and Human Implications of the Emerging Paradigm of Evolution (Oxford: Pergamon, 1980); Stuart A. Kauffman, Investigations (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000); Richard C. Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000); J. E. Lovelock, Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987); Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution (New York: Basic, 1998); I. Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, The End of Certainty: Time, Chaos, and the New Laws of Nature (New York: Free P, 1997); Stanley N. Salthe, Development and Evolution: Complexity and Change in Biology (Cambridge: MIT P, 1993); and Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford UP, 1997).
3. Friedrich Heinrich Loschge’s review of the Outline in 1800 remarks that it is filled with “many sorts of laughable comparisons and combinations” and amounts to nothing more than “a spirited play with concepts”; and in this century Erik Nordenskiold says of Lorenz Oken that “his speculations were as grotesque as they were irrational.” Loschge, cited in AA 1,5 52; Nordenskiold cited in Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1977) 416.
4. Cohen, in 1947, describes this classical prejudice against Naturphilosophie (cited in ibid., 38). Gould argues that without this speculative element later evolutionary theories of “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny” would never have developed, and Barry Gower shows how Hans Christian O/ rsted’s discovery of electromagnetism was facilitated by Schelling (as O/ rsted himself admits). See Barry Gower, “Speculation in Physics: The History and Practice of Naturphilosophie,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 3.4 (1973): 301–56; and H.-J. Treder, “Zum Einfluß von Schellings Naturphilosophie auf die Entwicklung der Physik,”Natur und geschichtlicher Prozeß: Studien zur Naturphilosophie F. W. J. Schellings, ed. H. J. Sandkühler (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1984) 326–34.
While among many scientists and philosophers the above prejudice no longer rings true, it is by no means unheard-of today, even among those who one might think would find its holism hospitable. Among philosophers influenced by Schelling, C. S. Peirce and Henri Bergson leap readily to mind. On the reception of Naturphilosophie in nineteenth-century America, see Joseph J. Esposito, Schelling’s Idealism and Philosophy of Nature (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1977) 186–207.
5. In the literature this is a relatively well-accepted way of considering Schelling’s development. Some writers think the changes to be more or less drastic and numerous. Esposito thinks that a major difficulty in Schelling interpretation arises because “between 1797 and 1806 Schelling produces at least six major reformulations of his system,” but he is not specific about how many changes take place before 1801 (see ibid., 125.) The editors of the new Schelling critical edition suggest a major change after 1800, when “the relation to the empirical sciences clearly takes a backseat,” and his philosophy takes on a “predominantly speculative form” (see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Werke: Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner,Wilhelm G. Jacobs, and Hermann Krings [Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1976ff.], I,5–9Suppl. XIV. (Hereafter this edition will be cited as “AA,” with series, volume, and page number, for example, AA I,7 45.) Harald Holz, however, disputes that any truly major change takes place between 1796 and 1806, and sees the transcendental philosophy, nature philosophy, and philosophy of identity as “correlative aspects” of one systematic whole (see his “Perspektive Natur,” Schelling: Einführung in seine Philosophie, ed. Hans Michael Baumgartner [Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber, 1975] 63). Finally, Schelling himself in the 1830’s lectures On the History of Modern Philosophy only notes that the special method established in the philosophy of nature and System of 1800 became the “soul of the system independent of Fichte,” and he characterizes his earlier work in terms of the identity philosophy in order, clearly, to contrast it with his then-current move away from such “negative” rationalistic philosophy and toward a “positive” empirical philosophy (see Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, ed. M. Buhr [Leipzig: Reclam, 1975] 115; On the History of Modern Philosophy, trans. A. Bowie, ed. R. Geuss, Texts in German Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994] 111).We cannot anticipate coming to any conclusions about this issue here, and adopt the given distinction heuristically. (Note: All translations are my own unless otherwise noted, and references to existing English translations have been provided for the reader’s convenience.)
6. A more extensive account of these inclinations and the development of the theory of the postulate can be found in Michael Rudolphi, Produktion und Konstruktion: Zur Genese der Naturphilosophie in Schellings Frühwerk, ed.Walter E. Eherhardt, vol. 7, Schellingiana (Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 2001) 51–81.
7. AA 1,1 265–300; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794–1796), trans. Fritz Marti (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1979) 38–55.
8. Cf. “How are a priori synthetic judgments possible? . . . this question in its highest abstraction is none other than: How is it possible for the absolute I to step out of itself and oppose to itself a not-I?” AA I,2 99; and ibid., 81. Or again: “How could the absolute come out of itself and oppose to itself a world?” AA I,3 78; and ibid., 164.
9. Schelling overcomes the philosophy of reflection, or separation, by returning to the original unity out of which the two terms have emerged as a result of reflection: “[A]fter we had separated object and representation through freedom, we wanted to unite them again through freedom, we wanted to know that, and why, there is originally no separation between them” (AA I,5 73; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. E. Harris and P. Heath [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988] 13). One of the consequences of the philosophy of reflection is the institution of the Kantian Ding-an-sich: “It makes the separation between human beings and the world permanent, because it treats the latter as thing-in-itself, which neither intuition nor imagination, neither understanding nor reason can reach” (AA I,5 71–72; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 11).
10. AA I,3 103; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 167.
11. Cf. Hegel’s arguments against mere “propositions” as first principles of philosophy in his Differenz des Fichte’schen und Schelling’schen Systems der Philosophie (1801) (Leipzig: Philipp Reclam Verlag, 1981) 37–42, and The Difference between Fichte’s and Schelling’s System of Philosophy, trans. H. S. Harris and Walter Cerf (Albany: State U of New York P, 1977) 103–09.
12. AA I,3 193; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 128.The SW edition has “The first Postulat of philosophy” where the AA reads “The first Resultat of philosophy.” The latter presents the definitive first edition text, but I have tried to preserve the parallel somewhat. The idea of freedom is the “postulate” that demands action as a ‘‘result,’’ that which issues from the idea.
13. AA I,3 192; and ibid., 127.
14. AA I,3 193; and ibid., 128.
15. AA I,5 74–75; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 14. Or as Ralph Waldo Emerson asks, “Who and what is this criticism that pries into the matter?” (see R. W. Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures, ed. J. Porte [New York: Library of America, 1983] 953).
16. AA I,3 73; and Schelling, The Unconditional in Human Knowledge, 171.
17. AA I,2 166; and ibid., 122.
18. AA I,2 166–67; and ibid., 122–23.
19. AA I,2 169; and ibid., 123.
20. On this phraseology as typical of “deductions” in Kant, see Dieter Henrich, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique,” Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, ed. E. Foerster (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1989) 44.
21. Despite its seeming clarity, the notion of “development,” whether used in transcendental or natural philosophy, is profoundly ambiguous. It is wise to assume that Schelling was aware of this, and sometimes purposely uses the word in contexts where it may be interpreted to mean both a historical or an empirical series of events and a logical or constructive series of categories. Used in the former sense, however, its occurrence is quite rare, and Schelling, like Oken after him, understands “development” as a conceptual, rather than a real empirical unfolding. See the section “Logogenesis, Construction, and Potency in the Philosophy of Nature.”
22. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Sämmtliche Werke, ed. K. F. A. Schelling, 14 vols. (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’scher Verlag, 1856ff.), I,3 320n.; above p. 195. (Hereafter this edition will be cited as “SW,” with volume and page number, for example, SW III 273. Because only the first seven volumes of the critical edition have been published, the SW text will be cited when the work has not yet appeared in the critical edition.)
23. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, System des transzendentalen Idealismus (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1992) 45; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, System of Transcendental Idealism (1800), trans. Peter Heath (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1978) 32. (Translation modified, bracketed portions added by translator.)
24. AA I,5 93; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 30 (translation modified). The terms natural history, genesis, and becoming, like development above, always imply conceptual, rather than empirical, evolution. Again, see the section on “Logogenesis.”
25. AA I,5 96; and ibid., 32 (translation modified).
26. AA I,5 100; and ibid., 36 (translation modified).
27. AA I,5 106; and ibid., 41 (translation modified). The theory of compulsion or of a “feeling of constraint” that seems both to imply and also to substitute for a relation of logical necessity is never adequately developed by Schelling, and it is partially by virtue of this ambiguity that he is often able to speak of theoretical necessity and practical constraint, and hence theoretical and practical philosophy, as if they were one. The “necessity” in the judgment of purposiveness will be further explored in the section “Transcendental Deductions and the Idea of Nature.”
28. AA I,6 69.
29. AA I,7 310; and see above p. 79. Cf. “There has long been a theory that the magnetic, electric, chemical, and, finally, even the organic phenomena, are interwoven into one great interdependent whole. This must be established” (SW III 319; and see above p. 227).
30. AA I,6 192–93.
31. “We can say—at least in a certain sense—that if the universal activity of Nature has the same conditions as the organic, sensibility does not belong exclusively to organic nature, but is a property of the whole of Nature, and that the sensibility of plants and animals is only a modification of the universal sensibility of Nature” AA I,7 183n iii; and see above p. 117).
32. Henrich, “Kant’s Notion of a Deduction and the Methodological Background of the First Critique,” 35. Most of the literature on “deduction” in Kant focuses attention on the deduction of the categories of the understanding, but below I refer to the dependence of Schelling’s method on the Kantian deduction of the ideas in the first Critique (see, for example, Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunfi, ed. W. Weischedel, vol. 3–4, Werkausgabe [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 1974] B697–98).
33. Kant, Kritik der reinen Vemunft, B117. As an example of an “empirical deduction” Kant cites Locke’s empirical psychology (B119).
34. “It is thus conceivable that speculative physics—the soul of real experiment— has, in all time, been the mother of all great discoveries in nature” (SW III 280; and see above p. 199).
35. SW III 279; and see above p. 199. On the relationship between experiment, experience, and speculation in Schelling’s philosophy of nature, see Hans Poser, “Spekulative Physik und Erfahrung. Zum Verhältnis von Experiment und Theorie in Schellings Naturphilosophie,” Schelling: Seine Bedeutung für eine Philosophie der Natur und der Geschichte, ed. L. Hasler (Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt: Fromann-Holzboog, 1981) 129–38.
36. SW III 276; and see above p. 197. This experimental prophecy is meant to confirm that, in Fichte’s words, “we do not learn these laws of nature by observation, but rather that the laws provide the basis for all observation” (see J. G. Fichte, “Concerning the Concept of the Wissenschaftslehre,” Fichte: Early Philosophical Writings, ed. Daniel Breazeale [Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988] 121n).
37. SW III 276. One should note Kant’s implicit endorsement here: “He who would know the world must first manufacture it” (see Immanuel Kant, Opus Postumum, trans. Eckhart Förster and Michael Rosen, ed. Paul Guyer and Allan W.Wood, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant [Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993] 240).
38. Cf. AA I,6 91.
39. SW III 277; and see above p. 197.
40. AA I,5 96; and Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 32.
41. There is, admittedly, a logical problem with this argument. If we accept the premise of the reciprocal presupposition of ideal and real, and if human beings are compelled to think or must by necessity think a certain concept when they encounter organisms, this does not of itself account for the specificity of the concept thought (e.g., “purposiveness”), which may be relative to the thinker or culture. Schelling believes that he has shown that teleology is the only possible alternative to mechanism, once mechanism has been proven to be inadequate, and so imagines an exclusive disjunction where to our eyes other (nonmechanistic) concepts may be possible and more plausible in the explanation of living beings.
42. SW III 278; and see above p. 198.
43. SW III 279; and see above pp. 198–199.
44. Hermann Krings, “Die Konstruktion in der Philosophie. Ein Beitrag zu Schellings Logik der Natur,” Aspekte der Kultursoziologie, ed. J. Stagl (Berlin:D. Reimer, 1982) 350:
Construction in philosophy is to be interpreted as a logo-genesis (of matter, body, organism, for instance). To conceive nature as constructing activity does not explain nature, rather it is a logic of nature, i.e., a doctrine of those absolute rules according to which a nature, and not only a nature, but also consciousness and self-consciousness, art and history can be thought, but not explained, as a whole constructing itself in ever higher potencies.
See also Hermann Krings, “Natur als Subjekt: Ein Grundzug der Spekulativen Physik Schellings,”Natur und Subjektivität: Zur Auseinandersetzung mit der Naturphilosophie des jungen Schelling, ed. R. Heckmann, Hermann Krings, and R.W. Meyer (Stuttgart: Fromann- Holzboog, 1983) 111–28.
45. SW IV 4.
46. Very different from the Hegelian dialectic; readers should refer to Schelling’s critique of Hegelian method in his On the History of Modern Philosophy, 142–43.
47. SW IV 25.
48. AA I,7 356; and see above p. 181.
49. AA I,7 83n; and see above p. 18.
50. Krings outlines the terminology Schelling uses in such constructions in successively more concrete stages: productivity, production, force, product, matter, body, object. On this series of categories, see his “Natur als Subjekt,” 118–23.
51. AA I,7 112; and see above p. 49.
52. AA I,7 105n, 106n; and see above p. 40, 41.
53. “Organic nature maintains the whole wealth and variety of its products only by continually changing the relation of those three functions.—In like manner inorganic Nature brings forth the whole wealth of its products only by changing the relation of those three functions of matter to infinity; for magnetism, electricity, and chemical process are the functions of matter generally, and on that ground alone are they categories for the construction of all matter” (see SW III 322n; and above p. 229).
54. Schelling, Zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, 125; and Schelling, On the History of Modern Philosophy, 119.
55. Immanuel Kant, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1977) 98n.
Foreword
1. On George-Louis Lesage, and on mechanistic versus dynamic philosophy, see AA I,5 196–207; and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, trans. E. Harris and P. Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988) 161–69.
Outline of the Whole
1. Schelling uses the latinate term Aktion. In an attempt to mirror the foreignness of the term in German, in most cases I have chosen to translate “actant” rather than “actor” or “action” in English, since the latter is too broad here (although it is used more frequently later in a broader sense) and the former too full of intentionality. The “dynamic atom” that Schelling designates by Aktion is best understood as an individual “actant,” a “natural monad” or “simple productivity.”
2. He uses the terms indecomponible and componible, borrowing directly from the French of Lesage or Pierre Prévost, so I have retained the parallel in the translation.
3. Schelling will use the terms organisch, anorganisch, and unorganisch, translated here as organic, anorganic, and inorganic. Anorganic is normally directly opposed to organic, and refers to the resources in the external world that nourish or inhibit the organic activity of a particular being. Inorganic seems to include this, as well as a reference to “universal” nature, or the largest scale of nonorganic nature, but Schelling is not always clear about this.
4. Intussusception is a piece of medical jargon that means the telescoping of one portion of the intestine into another. Generally meaning “infolding,” Schelling also uses the word involution as a synonym.
5. Diremption (from Latin dirimo, to separate, break off, interrupt) throughout translates Entzweiung (“bifurcation” or “becoming two”), an important term that designates the ontological dualization or duplicity already inherent in any unity (including the Absolute), the ultimate cause of which remains undetermined in this text.
First Division
1. Very often Schelling uses the word Prinzip (principle) as the equivalent of Ursache (cause) or Grund (ground, reason). Thus it sometimes appears without a definite or indefinite article, as on pp. 19–20.
2. “Ich tilge sie, und du liegst ganz vor mir.” From Albrecht von Haller’s “Incomplete Poem on Eternity” (1762). See AA I,7 364–65.
3. The full quotation from Lucretius runs: “Something must stand immovable, it must, / Lest all things be reduced to absolute nothing” (see R. Humphries, trans., Lucretius: The Way Things Are [Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1969] 42; and Cyril Bailey, ed., De rerum natura [Oxford: Oxford UP, 1947], Libr. I, V. 790f ).
4. There is no number (5) in the text.
5. The German sentence seems to be grammatically incorrect here. It reads “Die Ausbreitung der Flügel . . . geschieht vermittelst einer schnellen und kräftigen Entwicklung des Gefäßsystems im Centrum, durch ein Zuströmen der Flüssigkeit von innen—nicht etwa durch ein bloßes Auseinanderbreiten des übereinander geschlagenen Schmetterlings, oder durch den Druck der von außen eindringenden Luft” (AA I,7 286). I have compensated in the translation—Trans.
6. “Bestimmung des Begrifs einer Menschenrace” (1785), in Immanuel Kant, Kants gesammelte Schriften, 22 vols. (Berlin: Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1900–42) 8:106 (hereafter AkA).
7. “Bestimmung des Begrifs einer Menschenrace,” in Kant AkA VIII 89–106; “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie” (1788), also in AkA VIII.
8. Most likely, Schaftesbury is referred to on the basis of Kant’s own citation in “Über den Gebrauch teleologischer Prinzipien in der Philosophie” (AkA VIII 166).
9. Schelling refers to the text “Exercitationes de generatione animalium” (1651).
10. Schelling presents a viewpoint that he believes would be held by a chemical materialist, e.g., Reil (as just mentioned), but includes some aspects of his own position.
11. Although the quotation marks are discontinued at this point, this staged speech extends to page 60 where the quote is closed.
12. Schelling here speaks in the voice of Brandis (see appendix).
13. Schelling refers most likely to Haller’s “De partibus” (1753), translated from the Latin in Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie des menschlichen Körpers, 8 vols. (Berlin: Christian Friedrich Boss, 1759–1776).
14. The second parenthesis is missing in the original.
Second Division
1. Schelling goes on to express almost word for word the corpuscular position of Pierre Prévost in his “Magnetische Kräfte” (1794).
2. The present idea is expressed in Franklin’s “Letter to Abbé Soulaire,” European Magazine and London Review 24 (1793): 84–86.
3. The following interpretation is likely derived from Kant’s “Universal Natural History” (1755), in AkA I.
4. AA I,5 185; and Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 144.
5. AkA I 275.
6. AA I,5 176f.; and Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 132f.
7. pp. 28–31.
8. The specific experiment referred to here is recounted in AA I,5 152 (Ideas, 102) and AA I,6 137f., where a white ribbon becomes positively electrified when rubbed with a black, which in its turn becomes negatively electrified.
Third Division
1. Schelling is summarizing his own text here, see pp. 78–104.
2. No closed parenthesis is provided in the AA here, but it seems necessary to supply it.
3. See AA I,6 214 and the note to that passage.
4. See Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Georg Christoph Tobler, Goethe’s Botany: The Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Tobler’s Ode to Nature (1782), trans. Agnes Arber (Waltham, MA: Chronica Botanica Co., 1946).
5. See AA I,6 200.
6. Schelling is likely quoting from memory. The most similar passage reads “Bodies driven by a compelling force move slowly; but those which move of their own accord possess alertness.” Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Moral Epistles, trans. Richard M. Gummere, The Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1917–25, 3 vols.) Volume III, Letter CXXI, p. 401.
7. “Some say that unto bees a share is given / Of the Divine Intelligence.” P. Vergilius Maro, Georgicon, ed. and trans. J. B. Greenough (The Perseus Project, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, June 2003), Book IV, Vv. 220–21.
8. A second occurrence of “higher” in this sentence has been replaced with “lower” by the translator.
9. The citation could not be found.
10. Schelling’s attention to the problems of medical science in this text earned him great respect among many contemporary physicians, many of whom refer to Schelling on the dedication page of their works. See AA I,7 57–59. For Schelling’s influence on medical science, see Nelly Tsouyopoulos, “Schellings Krankheitsbegriff und die Begriffsbildung der Modernen Medizin,”Natur und Subjektivität, ed. R. Heckmann, H. Krings, and R.W. Meyer (Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 1985), 265–90.