which depicts the nature-philosophy as no more than an
ephemeral episode (roughly 1797–1800) in Schellingʼs
fifty-year career. Instead, he argues that the recognition
of its persistence throughout Schellingʼs oeuvre is the
only way to grasp the latterʼs internal coherence. Thus
the expository incompleteness and hyper-periodization
characteristic of previous commentariesʼ presentations
of Schelling are merely symptoms of a reluctance
to accept the nature-philosophyʼs fundamental status.
Accordingly, the majority of Grantʼs engagement with
rival secondary literature focuses on its evaluations of
the nature-philosophyʼs significance (e.g. whether it is
depicted as an autonomous ontological enterprise or
a mere extension of transcendentalism). But although
such a strategy is necessary given the objective, it is
not sufficient on its own. By passing on a chance to
criticize non-naturalistic interpretations of Schelling
such as those of Slavoj Žižek, Peter Dews and Jason
Wirth, Grant also misses the opportunity to explain
the apparently non-naturalistic elements of Schellingʼs
thought upon which those interpretations seize. For
example, Grantʼs contention that the Philosophical
Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom and the
Ages of the World operate on a naturalistic (and, specifically, geological) basis is compellingly defended,
as is the assertion of continuity between earlier works
and these texts via the latterʼs ʻabyss of forcesʼ being
the cosmological antecedent to the formerʼs ʻpure
productivityʼ. But what Grant does not address are
the clearly visible theological strains of these two
texts, concerned as they are with the conditions of the
possibility of a personal god. Furthermore, Schellingʼs
later philosophies of mythology and revelation, usually
considered to be even more theologically motivated,
receive much less attention. To be fair, the mere presence of these elements in Schellingʼs work is certainly
not fatal for Grantʼs reconstruction, but their absence
from his exposition does render it incomplete. A more
effective approach would have sought to demonstrate
their ultimate amenability to Grantʼs project, or would
have exposed their illegitimacy in Schellingʼs by way
of an internal critique.
Nevertheless, Philosophies of Nature after Schelling sets a new standard for Schelling scholarship.
More than this, it is an important work of philosophy
in its own right, for all its problems. The book closes
with the words: ʻSchelling is not a forerunner of
anything, but a precursor of philosophical solutions, or
“experiments in dynamic physics”, yet to come.ʼ There
is reason to hope that Grant will keep the promise
implicit in this declaration.
Dustin McWherter
Only what acts thinks
Alberto Toscano, The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze, Palgrave
Macmillan, London, 2006. xiii + 249 pp., £45.00 hb., 1 4039 9780 2.
Works such as this, along with the renewed interest in speculative metaphysicians like Whitehead and
Bergson, have begun to redefine the project of contemporary metaphysics, on the basis of four claims of
particular importance. First, there can be no aprioristic
exclusions from its ambit: metaphysics proves itself in
its extensity, and any restrictions thereupon can only
disqualify it as metaphysics. Second, and derivatively,
the engagement with nature is essential: metaphysics is
not other than physics, but rather the phusis of the All,
the nature of nature; accordingly, metaphysics without
nature is a priori inadequate. Third, if the principle is
the atom of metaphysics, a field theory must supplant
it. Finally, the post-metaphysical settlement into which
both the main traditions in philosophy slumped at
the end of the last century must be countered, and its
post-Kantian development reoriented.
In these terms, Theatre of Production proposes
nothing less than a confounding of Aristotleʼs denial
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Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
that there could be a ʻscience of the individualʼ by
impugning Kantʼs restriction of judging natural purposes to a regulative use of speculative reason, and
pursuing instead a metaphysics based not on given
existents, but on ontogenesis. Toscanoʼs metaphysical
recommendations echo developments in the philosophy
of biology that seek to refocus the problems of molecular biology around ontogeny rather than phylogeny (e.g.
Lenny Moss, What Genes Canʼt Do, 2003) so as to
focus on individualʼs ability to evolve rather than on
supposed trans-generationally subsistent entities. Just
as this Platonism of molecular biology denies the historicity of the laws of nature, so Aristotelian substances
deny the individuation of productivity. Already three
principles of a metaphysics of ontogenesis emerge.
First, ontology cannot be pursued as a science of
being qua being without failing in regard to determination (the elimination of the science of the individual
entails an ontology without entities). Second, failures
of determination equally arise from the relegation of
speculation to the domain of analogy (the determination of the domains of reason, not of being) as from
any commitment to the Absolute. Third, avoiding the
Heideggerian verdict that it is sufficient to hypostatize
ontological difference, Theatre of Productionʼs central
hypothesis is that determination is satisfied only
through the immanent productivity of a consequently
particular individuality. To this Toscano tentatively
gives the name of a ʻsuperior nominalismʼ.
The problem at the base of this book is this: how
to understand the ʻoperations of individuation without
the inaugural presupposition that these operations may
be captured by a point-like idea or principleʼ? The
proposed solution is ʻto persevere in the thinking of
the unity of being and concept … from the standpoint
of individual differenceʼ. Only by attending to the
operations of individuation as operations, that is, do we
generate an adequate typology of the operations not of
being as such, but of this becoming, this productivity.
Accordingly, alloying a concept of ʻrecursive evolutionʼ
taken from the philosophy of computation with an
individuating account of Parmenidean unity, the book
proposes an ontology based on the recursion of generic
operations in thought and being. Since operation recurs
upon operation, the assumption of a product other than
the productivity of operations constitutes a transcendental illusion, falsely withdrawn from productivity to
stand over and against it.
The problem this entails is the following: is this
a universal or a particular science of the individual?
If there are grounds for asserting the particularity
of the science of the particular, they derive from the
determination to avoid abstraction from the immanent
context – the theatre – of productivity. Despite this
ʻtranscendental materialistʼ critique of the separation
of product and productivity, there remains a confessed
ʻbiophilosophicalʼ, albeit anti-organicist, focus. In part,
this is to maintain the advantages of an immanence of
ontogenesis in being, experience and consciousness; the
risk, however, is a nature divided by a biophilosophical
imperative. That is, as Toscano urges against Cassirer,
if one ontic kind is acknowledged as primary for the
metaphysics of ontogenesis, then the critical strictures
against a transcendence of product over productivity
are vitiated. Whether physicalistically grounded on
a materialism regarding the occasions of consciousness, strategically on the location of the problem,
or ethico-politically in the essential ʻdramatiz[ation
of] the process of individutionʼ, biophilosophy leaves
nature riven not between the organic and the inorganic
but – inquiring as to ʻwhat is living and what is dead
in biophilosophyʼ – between those regions of being
wherein the formal and the abstract consciously arise,
and those where they do not. The immanence of
abstraction to conscious production – an apperception
governed by individuation rather than unity – thus
restricts ʻthe unity of being and conceptʼ. The problem
becomes how the two inhere in a singular nature, just
as it was for Kant: is it only where nature attains a
ʻhighestʼ individuation that it acts? Toscanoʼs solution
is that the abstract problem of thought and being is
posed as an ʻoriginal dualityʼ that is only ʻconcretely
resolvedʼ. Finally, however, it is ʻthought itselfʼ that
ʻmust… construct both the problematic fields of individuation and their solutionsʼ. Thus the question ʻwhat
is the place of thinking?ʼ is answered through a further
question, ʻwho acts in the theatre of production?ʼ, and
being becomes the exclusive passion of thinking. Here,
then, the second of the problems a metaphysics must
satisfy comes into focus in so far as it confronts the
fourth: even allowing the proposed ʻmaterialization
of intentionʼ, a riven nature is the primary legacy of
post-Kantian metaphyiscs.
Although the insistence on the movements of
thought and the immanent determination of concrete
particularity cannot but recall Hegel, it is the ʻenduring legacy of Kantianismʼ that for Toscano forms
the matrix of engagement here. Countering Badiouʼs
premissing of metaphysicsʼ future on the rejection of
the critical philosophy, five elements of this legacy
stand out with particular clarity. These are: (1) the
problems of immanence, reoriented around matrices
of production rather than the legitimacy of critique;
(2) the powerful Marxian echo of a corresponding
reorientation of critique around the problem of production; (3) ontologyʼs locus as acts or ʻoperationsʼ
of production (esse sequitur operare); (4) experience,
taking up the baton from Deleuzeʼs ʻsuperior empiricismʼ, as the guarantor of the immanence of thoughtas-operation; and (5) in consequence, the guiding
question of a critical philosophy of the operations of
productivity as ʻwho acts?ʼ
It is in the last of these that the particularity of
Toscanoʼs determination of the problem comes into
focus. Announcing early on its concern with biophilosophy, Theatre of Production proposes that an
operationalist ontology devolve from operating onta,
from living beings. This specification is certainly
not conducted under the rubric of Lebensphilosophie, as the critical engagement with current revisionist Nietzscheans demonstrates. The problem is
instead pursued through the problems of causation
philosophically bequeathed by Kantʼs finally ʻas ifʼ
Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
53
organicism, alongside the scientific ʻsolutionsʼ that so
many unequivocally locate in the theory of autopoiesis (here refreshingly critiqued). If this does provide
a solution, Toscano correctly points out, it does so
only phenomenologically, and ignores the ontological
dimensions of the problem, making no advance whatever on the condition that the philosophy of nature
was left in by Kant. Be this as it may, we thus have
an initial answer to the question posed above: this is
a particularist ʻscience of the individualʼ. The grounds
of this particularity are not incidental or ontically
contingent but transcendental, however, in that an
operationalist ontology cannot consistently be held
to act on non-operational beings without conceding
its regionality with respect to Being; this is why a
ʻtranscendental materialismʼ is compelled to conceive
matter as either activity or operation.
Accordingly, the bookʼs forensics of Kantʼs philosophy is itself critical, imposing productivist ʻstrainsʼ
on the ʻenduring legacyʼ. Specifically, an operationalist
Parmenideanism imposes an identity of knowing and
acting, making ʻbeingʼ transitive, and entailing the
transfer of ontology from atomistic questions of being
to operational fields of becoming. From this it follows
first that production is material rather than reducibly
cognitive (paraphrasing an early thesis in the book,
ʻgenesis is larger than epistemologyʼ); and second that
matter is not entity but operation. It is as attempted
satisfactions of these operationalist strains that Toscano
conducts some extraordinarily lucid analyses of the
contributions of Whiteheadʼs philosophy of organism (the difficulty of which task cannot but provoke
sympathy among readers of Process and Reality) and
Peirceʼs evolutive cosmology.
Pursuing, then, a materialist philosophy of production by transcendental means yields a multiply
strained Kantianism: critique remains, but is oriented
around production; the transcendental ceases to be
simply an epistemogenic method, and is materialized (ʻtranscendental materialismʼ), and the dualism
for which Kant was notorious among the immediate
post-Kantians is abolished not along the lines of an
identity of thought and being, but as an asymmetrical
identity of operativity and cognition: asymmetrical
because operativity is the generated prius of cognition, so that identity becomes a dynamic concept
measuring the strains in immanence. The question
is: how far is Kant thus strained? Kantʼs own manufacturing ethos of cognition – ʻhe who would know
the world must first manufacture itʼ – is apparent in
the never-completed Transition between Metaphysics and Physics, as the Opus postumum would have
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Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
been called. And it was Fichte who ʻoperationalizedʼ
Kantianism, viewing himself as its legitimate successor, under the primacy of the practical. For Fichte,
too, ontology became a field of determination by a
thinking secondary to acting. While not suggesting
Toscanoʼs outlined metaphysics is identical to Fichteʼs,
there are parallels: Fichte too would not extend the
operations of determination beyond those immanent
to complex biological phenomena; the primacy of
activity is not considered by Fichte as reducibly an
ethical, but rather an ontological project, similarly
pursued by transcendental means; but whereas Fichte
pursued this through Idealism, Toscano here launches
a transcendental materialism.
The problematic element can be demonstrated by
something the notorious Stirling wrote in his Secret
of Hegel: ʻThe electricity was a product – a product
of your energy, of your operation, of your process,
of your experiment.ʼ First, then, Idealism is equally
capable of a genetic ontology premissed on production.
Second, the electrical operativity of nature extends
beyond the immanence of cognition and action, unless
the former can recapture its prius in reflection. The
question how far operativity extends (as far as the
immanent genesis of electricity?) may either be taken
to settle the limits of immanence, or to demonstrate
the requirement that a materialism extend beyond
them (this of course is why we have here to do with
a transcendental rather than a ʻcrudeʼ materialism). On
this scale, to settle with the former trajectory is to
settle with the Fichtean solution, making it a matter
of indifference whether the resulting programme is
called ʻidealistʼ or ʻmaterialistʼ. Ultimately, it is the
restrictive use of Parmenidean identity – only what
acts thinks – that differentiates them. The Idealist
inheritance offers this alternative: nature becomes the
prius determinant of all, including abstract operations,
exacerbating the asymmetry of thought and operativity
at the cost of immanence.
Merely to problematize these issues in this work
is, however, something to be celebrated, not only
in that it confirms that, for all philosophyʼs recent
posturing, metaphysics requires engagement with the
still unsettled bequest of Kantʼs philosophy of nature
in the third Critique; but also for the sheer exuberant
joy of the reaffirmed powers of thinking. In its spartan
lucidity and the complexity of its engagements, in the
problems that it re-energizes, this is a model work of
post-anxious metaphysics, which contributes greatly
to the re-emergence of speculative metaphysics after
an age of austerity.
Iain Hamilton Grant