Absolute naturalism
Iain Hamilton Grant, Philosophies of Nature after Schelling, Continuum, London and New York, 2006. xi +
232 pp., £65.00 hb., 0 8264 7902 2.
Although prospective readers may be surprised to
discover that this book has relatively little to say about
the history of post-Schellingian philosophy of nature,
such concerns quickly dissolve when it becomes apparent how much more intriguing and ambitious the
bookʼs actual content is than its title might indicate.
Philosophies of Nature after Schelling is indeed a
work of painstaking historical scholarship, but its
expository dimension primarily functions as an aid to
its prescriptive one. Grantʼs interpretive thesis is that
ʻSchellingianismʼ is ʻnature-philosophyʼ. Furthermore,
he claims that revisiting it is a contemporary necessity given (1) nature-philosophyʼs critical relationship
to Kantian epistemology, and (2) the latterʼs continuing circumscription of the conceptual possibilities
legitimate available to present-day philosophy. Supplementing historical perspicacity with an eye to the
future, Grant reconstructs nature-philosophy as an
indispensable corrective to what he sees as the currently dominant philosophical paradigm: an ethically
or politically motivated ʻantiphysicsʼ that can only
prioritize the practical by segregating it from the physical. Most importantly, Grant argues, the stark divisions
of labour between philosophy and science that such
ʻpracticismsʼ implicitly or explicitly advocate inevitably end up curtailing thoughtʼs speculative prowess by
denying philosophyʼs bolder aspirations. Consequently,
the bookʼs overarching injunction concerns ʻphilosophy
becoming capable once again of metaphysicsʼ – but
with the caveat that the latter ʻcannot be pursued in
isolation from physicsʼ. (Grant often uses the term
ʻphysicsʼ in the sense of physicalism, which conveys
something more general than a specific branch of
natural science and its methodologies.)
Essential to the success of this transformation of
philosophyʼs capabilities and self-conception, then, is a
reassessment of those historical moments in which the
relations between physics and metaphysics were most
definitively shaped. Grant locates the prototype of such
situations in the transition from Platonism – provocatively recast as a ʻone-world physicsʼ encompassing
matter and the Ideas – to Aristotelianism – depicted
as the primary instigator of the physics–metaphysics
disjunction. More specifically, Plato and Aristotle are
shown to be divided by the differing conceptions of
matter that determine their differing conceptions of
nature. At issue here is the question of somatism, of
whether or not materiality is reducible to corporeality.
For Grant, somatic theories of matter, such as those
adopted by Aristotle and Kant, rarely fail to reveal their
complicity with the practicist agenda. This is because
somatism always provides an alibi for the excision of
nature from philosophy. For example, the restriction of
matter to body entails that nature be conceived of as an
aggregate of bodies, and given that this aggregate will
inevitably require a non-corporeal substrate in which
those bodies must inhere, the more fundamental term
of this relation has to be non-physical since materiality
extends no further than body. With principles like this,
an estrangement of physics from metaphysics follows
as a matter of course: materiality is relegated to the
sciences while philosophy distinguishes itself as the
ʻdeeperʼ discourse.
In short, somatic theories of matter can grow no
larger than a ʻphysics of all thingsʼ, to which Grant
opposes the Platonic ʻphysics of the allʼ. Grant contends that Platoʼs anti-somatism, echoed in Schellingʼs ʻmateriality is not yet corporealityʼ, conceives of
matter as ʻpowerʼ, which allows the fundamentality
of physicality to be maintained since material bodies
(as well as Ideas and everything else) genetically
emerge from potentiated, self-organizing matter. The
continuity that this genetic physicalism establishes
between the organic and the inorganic vitiates another
practicist tactic: the vitalist isolation of organic life
from inorganic matter. However, Grantʼs management
of this issue illustrates the extent to which one facet
of his overall position remains unclear. He criticizes
vitalism as ʻantiphysicsʼ in so far as it centralizes life
in order to safeguard ethical and political programmes
from the anti-practicist effects of a genuine engagement with nature; yet the Platonic ʻworld-soulʼ and
Schellingian ʻnature as pure productivityʼ (both principles of ʻself-generating motionʼ) which he defends
would hardly satisfy a staunch anti-vitalist. Thus Grant
– like Schelling – may not succumb to the vitalism he
decries, but the position he adopts ends up complicating the issue by generating uncertainty as to whether
he is simply espousing a different kind of vitalism or
actually illuminating theoretical options irreducible to
vitalism or mechanism.
The dynamized absolute which Grant extensively
and compellingly explicates is, in fact, what he calls
ʻnature as subjectʼ, a term which does not indicate
Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
49
50
Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
this maximized extensity, impossible. Accordingly,
the disqualification of practicism would merely be
the impartially generated consequence of a fidelity
to extensity rather than an ideologically motivated
dismissal.
Two problems arise here. The first concerns the
question of Grantʼs success in completing his own
objective. While he argues quite convincingly that
a genuine engagement with nature makes any philosophical privileging of the practical impossible, he
also seems to suggest that the Platonic–Schellingian
modelʼs encompassing of ideation is pre-emptory with
respect to whatever practicism could petition in order
to secure this privileging. However, Grant appears a
long way from being either willing or able to explain
a political situation or an aesthetic phenomenon in
physicalist terms (although he does discuss the naturalistic basis of human freedom). And if he thinks
that such domains are illusory or not worth attention,
then he risks inviting the charge of being almost
as ʻeliminativeʼ with regard to them as he claims
practicism is with regard to the physical domain. (I
say ʻalmostʼ, because a genetic physicalism surely
has a better chance of explaining any kind of human
activity than an ethical or political philosophy does
of explaining natural phenomena.) So, while the idea
Courtesy of Richard Paul
similarities with more familiar conceptions of human
or divine subjectivity but is instead a way of conceptualizing natureʼs unconditional autonomy. Crucially,
this autonomy entails an absolute in irrecuperable
excess of human thought and perception (as the timescales involved in natural geneses make clear), and so
Schellingianism at its best is powerfully presented as
an anti-anthropocentric metaphysical realism which
affirms natureʼs full independence of any cognitive
relation to it. At other times, though, Grant seems to
oscillate between construing ideation as a regionalized
natural phenomenon and as Platonic Ideas universalized as ousia. The latter results in Schellingianism
sometimes appearing as a less interesting objective idealism. While this equivocation obviously has its roots
in Platonic idealismʼs incompatibility with Schellingʼs
version of transcendental idealism (which also entails
an inconsistency in Schellingʼs intellectual trajectory),
the emergence of objective idealism in Grantʼs project
is indicative of the importance of a problem which any
absolutization of nature must confront. To wit, this
brilliant ʻnature as subjectʼ thesis exhibits the viability
of an absolute that is wholly real (mainly because it is
wholly material), but it seems as though, once many
philosophical naturalists begin to explain ʻnaturalityʼ, idealism and/or vitalism invariably resurface (e.g.
Bergson, Whitehead, Deleuze). Nevertheless, this is
not to say that Grant lacks the resources to overcome
this obstacle and ʻpurifyʼ his naturalism; on the contrary, he proves the opposite to be the case.
If Grant does not elaborate on these questions it is
probably because he is not that concerned with them
in the long run. What he does care about are the philosophical benefits that a dynamized nature allows him
to enjoy. In particular, the latter is allegedly capable
of explaining physicality and ideality through the
ascending levels of matterʼs self-construction, while
all the variants of ʻantiphysicsʼ and its accomplices
(practicism, organicism, somatism, subjective idealism, etc.) betray an inadequacy in the elimination of
nature which is their condition of possibility. With this
idea, one of the most significant premisses of Grantʼs
arguments comes to light. Throughout the book Platonic physics and Schellingian nature-philosophy are
advanced as standard-setters for a test by which the
extensity of philosophical systems should be measured.
The operative assumption seems to be that a philosophy which can encompass what another is incapable
of handling thereby demonstrates its superiority with
respect to the other. This is why Grant finds the Platonic–Schellingian model preferable to all ʻantiphysicsʼ: the latter makes metaphysics, which is precisely
of a test of extensity is by no means a worthless one,
given the desirability of increased explanatory power,
its consistent application sets an extraordinarily – and,
some would say, unrealistically – high standard.
The second problem is more obvious but even more
crucial, since it goes straight to the heart of the critique
of metaphysics which Grant wants to overcome. That
is, even if this maximized extensity is conceptually
envisageable, in what way is it cognitively realizable?
What are the epistemological conditions of claims
made about such an immense field of objects? One
cannot help but be struck by Grantʼs expressed lack
of concern for such questions, as the absolute priority
of ontology over epistemology seems to be the bookʼs
working presupposition rather than a demonstrated
conclusion. This is a serious obstruction to Grantʼs
proposed rehabilitation of metaphysics, and until it is
removed he will always be open to the charge that he
has yet to engage fully with his most powerful opponent
on the latterʼs own terms (despite the meticulousness
with which he exposes fatal flaws in Kantʼs attempts at
a philosophy of nature). Interestingly, this is one point
where Grant and Schelling certainly diverge, as the
System of Transcendental Idealismʼs explicitly stated
epistemological agenda makes clear. Grantʼs omission
of this only underscores his disdain for epistemology,
something which is all the more inexcusable given that
transcendental subjectivity is only the externality of
inorganic matter at a ʻhigher potencyʼ. Hence the title
of what may be the most stimulating chapter, ʻWhat
thinks in me is what is outside me.ʼ
Most impressive, though, is the thoroughness and
consistency with which this naturalization of ideality
is carried out, providing a lucid account of thoughtʼs
reflexive capacity as inherently resistant to idealistic
totalization. Grant shows how Schelling achieves this
through the Systemʼs unwavering commitment to the
unceasing productivity of ideation and its temporality,
which determines the dimensionality of thought to be
an irreversible uni-directionality. This means that any
idea, regardless of its ideatum, is always new, and
therefore the pure productivity that is ideation (and
nature) is always recapitulated but never recuperated
with every product of thought:
To turn, as it were, from the product and form a
concept of the producing does not complete the
intuition, but renders the producing a product itself
produced by another producing, thus leaving an
ʻirreducible remainderʼ of forces that cannot be
resolved into the product.
Courtesy of Richard Paul
Schelling may have provided the resources required for
defending ontological naturalism on epistemological
grounds in that text. In this regard, Grant misses a
significant opportunity to strengthen greatly his overall
position.
Yet even if an ontology with no epistemological
scruples is suspect, an epistemology which tries to
excuse itself from clarifying the ontological status of
its components should not go uninterrogated either.
This is one reason why Grantʼs treatment of the System
deserves special mention. In a remarkable tour de
force of textual exegesis and conceptual synthesis,
Grant situates Schellingʼs transcendental philosophy
within the nature-philosophy. The resultant structure
of Schellingianism determines the ontological constitution of the transcendental to be physical by rendering self-consciousness immanent to a nature upon
which it depends, with which it is continuous (but
not commensurate), and in which it is merely local.
Therefore, bearing in mind matterʼs inherent tendency
to self-organization – the auto-productive capacity of
ʻnature as subjectʼ – it follows that the internality of
Nevertheless, this supposedly enables thought to
cognize its own immanent activity without appearing
to transcend that activity, because the object of this
(and every) cognition is a product, while the cognition itself is a producing which can itself become a
product.
Furthermore, Grantʼs identification of the asymmetrical relation between Schellingʼs nature-philosophy
and his transcendental philosophy (a reflection of the
productivity–product asymmetry) allows him to demolish Hegelʼs interpretation of Schellingʼs ʻsystemʼ in
the Difference essay. This is a significant polemic,
because it is Hegelʼs presentation of the ʻtwo sciencesʼ
of Schellingʼs philosophy as ʻrelative totalitiesʼ in
symmetric opposition (rather than two intersecting
trajectories) which enables him to set the stage for
his later sublation of such antitheses in his completed
system. The implication is that the portrait of Schelling
which the Difference essay praises eventually becomes
a straw man in Hegelʼs self-congratulatory reading of
the development of German Idealism. Grant attributes
this mischaracterization to Hegelʼs employment of his
own conception of identity as latent in opposition,
while Schellingian identity (natural productivity) is
actually recapitulated in the proliferation of differences
(products), a process afforded by the infinite bifurcations in matterʼs self-construction.
With respect to the bookʼs interpretive thesis, Grant
builds a strong case against the conventional view
Radical Philosophy 144 (July/August 20 07)
51
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
52
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