Schelling’s philosophy of nature and the environmental challenge

Project Information

SCHELLEC

Grant agreement ID: 101068328

DOI

10.3030/101068328

Project closed

EC signature date 18 July 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 30 September 2024

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 190 242,00

Coordinated by

KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT LEUVEN
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SCHELLEC (Schelling’s philosophy of nature and the environmental challenge)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The project “Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature and the Environmental Challenge” (Schellec) foregrounds the contemporary stakes of the philosophy of nature worked out by the German philosopher Friedrich Schelling at the turn of the 19th century. Schelling is perhaps the main figure of a research program called 'Naturphilosophie', which was highly influential from the 1790s to the 1830s. Key to this movement was the attempt to conceive of nature not only as an object of cognition but also as a subject with a certain degree of spontaneity and autonomy. Nature, from this perspective, is the bearer of some properties that are usually attributed exclusively to humans.

Schellec takes these ideas to be relevant for two reasons. First, Schelling’s philosophy of nature is formulated at a time in which the instrumentalization of nature at the core of the current environmental crisis began to gain traction. Schelling explicitly opposes his own conception of nature to a mechanistic one, which, according to him, leads to the subordination of nature to human purposes. Schelling’s undertaking can thus be seen as an early philosophical reaction to developments leading to a crisis we now face. Second, Schelling’s attribution of subjectivity and autonomy to nature offers an epistemological framework to conceive of nature as a subject of rights. This attempt resonates both with contemporary discussions in environmental ethics and with the language used in the formulation of environmental policies.

Objectives of Schellec were (1) to situate Schelling’s project in the context of philosophical responses to the rise of modern science; (2) to show that the key to Schelling’s project is not his conception of life, as usually argued in the secondary literature, but rather his conception of self-organization of matter; (3) to foreground the pivotal role of this notion of material self-organization in Schelling’s argument against the subordination of nature to human purposes; (4) to assess Schelling’s approach in the light of contemporary environmental debates.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Schellec was carried out in 4 work packages (WPs). WP1 sought to reconstruct the historical context of Schelling’s project by focusing on the changing relationship between philosophy and science at the turn of the 19th century. Particular attention was given to reconstruct the debates surrounding Kant’s 1786 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, which is perhaps the most influential philosophical response to these developments and the book that has most directly impacted Schelling’s project. In it, I organized one international conference and prepared a draft that has now been published as a book chapter.

WP2 focused on Schelling’s account of matter. Key to WP2 was to reconstruct Schelling’s engagement with chemistry and other experimental sciences of the time. I paid special attention to Schelling’s interpretation of Lavoisier’s modern chemistry as I take it to be pivotal to Schelling's attempt to conceive of matter as compatible with emergence of life. Based on the research carried out in WP2, I gave three conference talks and prepared two article drafts (one accepted for publication and the other currently under review).

WP3 carried out the task of connecting the results of WP1 and WP2 with Schelling's conception of nature as subject. To highlight the particularities of Schelling's approach, I sought to reconstruct his conception of nature as subject in contraposition to other conceptions of nature worked out at the time, in particular, Fichte’s. As part of WP3, I edited a volume on the concept of nature in classical German philosophy and prepared a draft recently submitted to a top-tier journal.

WP4 aimed to bring Schelling’s conception of nature as subject to bear on contemporary discussions in environmental ethics. This work package was particularly focused on reconstructing current debates on anthropocentrism. By anthropocentrism I understand the position according to which all relevant ethical positions concerning the environment should be formulated in terms of human values. As part of WP4, I am currently organizing an international conference on the history and philosophy of environmental thought (March 28-29, 2025, at KU Leuven). Part of WP4 research was incorporated into the recently submitted draft above mentioned. WP4 will also inform book project I plan to submit early April 2025.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Schellec has shed new light onto a research program developed at the turn of the 19th century, the so-called Naturphilosophie. This research program has usually been seen as mystical and incompatible with proper science. Counteracting this view, the project has shown that Naturphilosophie is a sort of philosophy of science that seeks to spell out the underlying epistemological model presupposed the by rise of modern natural sciences as well as the consequences thereof for our views of nature. Schellec has argued that one of the consequences extracted by Schelling from such a model is the view of nature as something amenable to processes of transformations. Chemistry, which is treated by Schelling as the science of the transformations of qualitative properties of matter, accordingly acquires a prominent role in such a philosophy of nature.

A further result of Schellec is that Schelling draws on his engagement with chemistry to work out a conceptual framework aimed at making sense of the rise of new scientific disciplines such as life sciences. The project has advanced the state of the art by arguing that key to this framework is not Schelling’s conception of life, but rather his conception of matter. Schellec has accordingly shown that the details of such a concept of matter are worked out in the context of Schelling’s engagement with a wide range of experimental sciences tackling both inorganic and organic phenomena.

Schellec has drawn on the previous results to argue that Schelling’s conception of nature as subject is the result of this philosophical engagement with chemistry and experimental sciences. Thus, what at first sight might appear as a mystical and far-fetched thesis is rather a consequence Schelling extracted from what he takes to be the epistemological model presupposed by certain sciences. This result is, in my view, important, as it neutralizes the objection that such an approach to nature is anti-scientific.

A key result beyond the state of the art consists in the contemporary relevance of Schelling’s project. Schelling’s conception of nature as subject is, on the one hand, implicitly presupposed in some contemporary attempts to view nature as a subject of rights, whereas, on the other hand, the conceptual implications of such a view are not explicitly tackled in debates in environmental ethics. This project has thus argued that Schelling’s philosophy of nature lays the groundwork for a position that is not as such represented in current debates in environmental ethics, even though it is highly relevant thereto.

Image of the Amazon River taken by Copernicus Sentinel 2-A(2017), processed by European Space Agency