Nature, Speculation and the Return to Schelling

Tyler Tritten, Daniel Whistler, Tyler Tritten, Daniel Whistler

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138505315
• eBook ISBN: 9781351379410
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della filosofia

Two decades ago, Schelling first resurfaced in Žižek's Indivisible Remainder, and the same argumentative move of redeploying Schellingian themes for contemporary ends has continued to play a significant role in critical theory since (Markus Gabriel, Iain Hamilton Grant, Jean-Luc Nancy). All the articles in this volume attempt to take seriously the idea of Schelling as a contemporary philosopher: Schelling is read in dialogue with key figures in the canon of European philosophy and critical theory (Alain Badiou, Émilie du Châtelet, Gilles Deleuze, Paul de Man, Quentin Meillassoux, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilbert Simondon, Slavoj Žižek), as well as in light of recent trends in analytic philosophy (Brandomian pragmatism, powers-based metaphysics and semantic naturalism) – and such readings are not meant merely to highlight Schellingian influences or resonances in contemporary thinking but rather to challenge and interrogate current orthodoxies by insisting upon the contemporaneity of Schellingian speculation. That is, the aim is both to evaluate and constructively build upon this repeated return to Schelling: to probe, to diagnose and to experiment on the latent Schellingianisms of the present and the future. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.

michael o’neill burns

VITALITY OR WEAKNESS?
on the place of nature in recent materialist philosophy

We remain convinced that no genuine materialist philosophy legitimately can neglect the natural sciences generally and that no authentically materialist theory of subjectivity defensibly can sideline the life sciences specifically.

Johnston and Malabou, Self and Emotional Life ix

[…] there is no Nature of nature.

Johnston, “The Weakness of Nature” 167

Contemporary materialist philosophy, in its many contradictory guises and diverse research programs, has included within its various developments a return to the question of the philosophical status of nature. This recent return to nature has led to debates on the relationship between naturalism and materialism, with some aiming to develop naturalist materialisms, others arguing for materialist naturalism, while still others attempt to utilize materialist philosophy to argue against the very possibility of the classical category of nature (Badiou).

While there is no shortage of varied perspectives at the intersection of materialist philosophy and the philosophy of nature, the present essay will be focused on two recent forms of philosophical materialism, both of which attempt to think the conjunction between matter, nature, and the political. The first form, grouped loosely under the moniker the new materialism, is a perspective that has overtly embraced the conceptual apparatus (and the accompanying problems) of a philosophical and political project centred largely on the concept of nature, and one which is indebted largely to a theory of nature running from Spinoza to Deleuze. While there are a host of thinkers associated with this tradition, this essay will take as the paradigmatic examples of the best this perspective has to offer both the vital materialism of Jane Bennett as outlined in her Vibrant Matter, and the immanent naturalism of William E. Connolly.

The second form to be discussed in the present essay, transcendental materialism (which is just a name for the most recent developments in contemporary dialectical materialism), has offered a more complicated picture of the relationship between materialist philosophy and the philosophy of nature, and this perspective is firmly in line with the Hegelian–Marxist tradition of dialectics. This position will be considered critically via the work of two of the most prolific philosophers working to develop a contemporary dialectical materialism: Adrian Johnston and Catherine Malabou.

This essay will attempt to analyse the role of nature in contemporary materialist philosophy by first delineating these two distinct strands of materialism, via a comparative analysis of differing historical sources, conceptual commitments, and political programmatics. Through this delineation I will attempt to highlight the precise stakes of these differing conceptions of nature in terms of their effects on thinking materialism, philosophy, and the political. One of the primary theoretical disjunctions at play in this consideration will be the one between monist accounts of nature as vital and immanent substance and dialectical materialist accounts of nature as self-sundering and marked by immanent fracture. Put differently, these two perspectives offer a contemporary materialist repetition of the well-rehearsed theoretical question: Hegel, or Spinoza?

After delineating the stakes of these two contemporary materialisms, the essay will move to some brief considerations of the contemporary influence of F.W.J Schelling’s nineteenth-century Naturphilosophie on these contemporary materialist conceptions of nature. In particular, I will show that Schelling’s own account is neither a Spinozist monism (as articulated by many of the new materialists) nor a classically dialectical account (as offered by transcendental materialism), and in this sense Schelling’s philosophical considerations on the relationship between mind and matter complicate both strands of recent materialism in equal measure, and create the space for further developments and engagements with the natural sciences by twenty-first-century philosophers concerned with the relations between nature and matter. To this extent I hope to show that the previously mentioned philosophical question (Hegel, or Spinoza?) would benefit from the addition of a third option, thus reframing the theoretical options as: “Hegel, or Spinoza, or Schelling?” for those aiming to think nature from a materialist perspective, and matter from a naturalist perspective.

Finally, I will conclude this essay with some brief considerations on the politics of nature. In particular, as both theoretical orientations outlined in this essay ultimately aim at radical political projects (eco-politics and Marxism respectively), I will highlight the political consequences for their respective conceptualizations of matter and nature. While acknowledging the political importance of both perspectives, I will argue ultimately that the macropolitical perspective offered by contemporary dialectical materialism, and its accompanying reliance on using contemporary natural science to better think human subjectivity, is significantly more necessary for the contemporary political moment.

• • •

One of the recent tendencies in materialist philosophy (and in the theoretical humanities more generally) has been the move towards what is called the new materialism.¹ The name of this theoretical perspective immediately raises the question as to what precisely is so new about this strand of materialism. (Or, why the new materialism rather than simply a new materialism?) Obviously the self-designation of this newness implies that this materialism is different from some other less desirable, old materialism. As such, it becomes simple to identify that old materialism that the new materialism defines itself in opposition to: dialectical materialism operating in fidelity to the Hegelian–Marxist tradition.

One of the ways in which this materialism aims to distinguish itself from the older variations of Hegelian–Marxist dialectical materialisms is through a renewed concern with the question of nature and the resources offered by the natural sciences. In particular, there is a strong emphasis on environmental sciences and ecology, along with the use of ecological metaphors to reconsider traditional forms of subjectivity in a more immanent and non-humanist fashion. As Jane Bennett states, when offering a counter-genealogy of her own materialist project, “I pursue a materialism in the tradition of Democritius–Epicurious–Spinoza–Diderot–Deleuze more than Hegel–Marx–Adorno” (xiii). While there are a number of diverse and creative thinkers engaged in the various strands of the new materialism, for the present essay I will focus in particular on recent texts by Bennett and William E. Connolly. This is due to the fact that their dual projects provide two of the most rigorous and convincing philosophical and political new materialisms, as well as the most productive contrast with contemporary dialectical materialism.

The various philosophical and political projects associated with the new materialism are all in various ways interested either in developing new philosophies of nature or reconsidering the ways in which the natural and biological sciences can inform the contemporary theoretical humanities. For the new materialism, nature is usually reminiscent of the monist substance of Spinozist nature, and shares a strong fidelity to the conceptions of nature and immanence as developed by Deleuze. This emphasis on nature leads many working in the new materialism to utilize developments in the natural and environmental sciences; it also orients the social and political aims of the new materialism around explicitly ecological and environmental questions. We will return to the specific question of the role of nature in the new materialism throughout the present essay.

While there is an impressive amount of diversity in the perspectives of those working within the new materialism, one commonality is the shared theoretical heritage of the Spinozist tradition. To be as concise as possible, many of the new materialists are: committed to philosophies of immanence, grounded in a monist account of natural substance; rigorously non-dialectical in their accounts of both matter and thought; non-subjectivist in their conception of the role of the human in philosophical speculation; and building on all of these, absolutely non-idealist in their intellectual frameworks. This follows from a commitment to an intellectual heritage grounded in a certain tradition of monism and immanence, and one that stands firmly against any tradition of materialism that claims theoretical fidelity to Hegel and Marx.

Building on this commitment to a Spinozist account of monism and a largely Deleuzian conception of immanence, another crucial aspect of the new materialism is its commitment to a non-anthropocentric conception of philosophy and the political. As Bennett argues:

Dogged resistance to anthropocentrism is perhaps the main difference between the vital materialism I pursue and this kind of historical materialism. (xvi)

This has led a number of its partisans and fellow travellers to describe their work as post-, anti-, or trans-humanist in theoretical orientation. This can also be seen as a reaction against the legacy of humanism and subjectivism seen to be carried into contemporary thought via German Idealism and the more humanist strands of Marxism and existentialism. Bennett clearly describes this move away from human-oriented thinking as such:

To attempt, as I do, to present human and nonhuman actants on a less vertical plane than is common is to bracket the question of the human and to elide the rich and diverse literature on subjectivity and its genesis, its condition of possibility, and its boundaries. The philosophical project of naming where subjectivity begins and ends is too often bound up with fantasies of a human uniqueness in the eyes of God, of escape from materiality, or of mastery of nature; and even where it is not, it remains an aporetic or quixotic endeavor. (ix)

While Bennett makes the decision to bracket the question of the human for the sake of pushing philosophy towards a more radical conception of immanence and naturalism, William E. Connolly has a subtler perspective on the role of the human in the new materialism, stating that:

the tendency neither to erase the human subject nor restrict it entirely to human beings and/or God is accepted […] Indeed, we seek to stretch prevailing modes of subjectivity in a new direction. (400)

For Connolly the aim is not to make philosophical and political thought less subjective but rather to make the very category of subjectivity less bound up with the human. In this way a whole number of non-human actants and processes could be considered using the theoretical framework of subjectivity. In a further comment that provides a clear point of demarcation between Connolly’s project and many other thinkers of the new materialism, he states that:

To me, the most unfortunate titles through which to represent such a general agenda today are perhaps those of “posthumanism” and “antihumanism.” (402)

While, as we see in Connolly, there is serious debate on the status of subjectivity within the ranks of the new materialists, there is little debate as to the status and importance of particularly human subjectivity. This shift away from traditional conceptions of subjectivity leads directly into the particularly non-subjective form of politics advocated by the new materialism.

One of the clearest distinctions to make in regards to the politics of the new materialism is that it is largely anti-Marxist in its aims. As Connolly states, two of the tendencies that the new materialisms contest are “classical Marxism and the linear sciences” (399). Following this disavowal of the scale and aim of classical Marxism, Connolly notes that for the new materialists, “micropolitics plays an important role in our thinking” (401). This micropolitical analysis and activity stands in opposition to what could be called the macropolitical aims of traditional forms of Marxist dialectics utilized by contemporary dialectical materialism. Against this tradition of revolutionary social and economic change, Connolly advocates for the new materialism’s ability to theorize the importance of radical political action on a much smaller scale:

When you, say, start a blog with others, or contribute to one in motion, you again open up new adventures of collective inspiration and action. And so it goes. Do not underestimate the subterranean, affective flows that connect identity, faith, belief, role performance and larger political movements. (411)

At the risk of over-simplification, if the political project of Marxist materialism largely endorses a large-scale (or top-down) dialectical political approach via the transition to socialism on the way to communism via new forms of party politics, the new materialism aims at a bottom-up approach by which a diverse range of political actors can participate in a wide array of localized activity to push towards a new conception of the political. This model aims to avoid traditional conceptions of collective political parties and individual political subjects, as according to Connolly:

A philosophy of immanent naturalism thus resists both methodological individualism and holism in favour of the thesis of diverse connections between heterogeneous systems in a cosmos that is open to some uncertain degree. (412)

Once again, the language of dialectical opposition and productive tension is abandoned for the language of immanence, complexity, and system. This new materialism has littl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Editorial Introduction: Schellingian Experiments in Speculation
• 1. Vitality or Weakness? On the Place of Nature in Recent Materialist Philosophy
• 2. Lamps, Rainbows and Horizons: Spatializing Knowledge in Naturphilosophical Epistemology
• 3. Space Philosophy: Schelling and the Mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century
• 4. Nature’s Capacities: Schelling and Contemporary Power-Based Ontologies
• 5. The Parallax of Individuation: Simondon and Schelling
• 6. Naturalism and Symbolism
• 7. Schelling’s Shadow: Merleau-Ponty’s Late Concept of Nature
• 8. Is the Late Schelling Still Doing Nature-Philosophy?
• 9. Against Kant: Toward an Inverted Transcendentalism or a Philosophy of the Doctrinal
• 10. On the Possibility of Speculative Ethical Absolutes after Kant: Returning to Schelling through the Frailties of Meillassoux and Badiou
• Index