Iain Hamilton Grant: Reconstructing Schelling's Naturephilosophy - Part II
"Schelling’s Timaeus commentary is an essay in the philosophy of dynamics."
-Iain Hamilton Grant
2
Grant describes commentary as being "less the ‘series of footnotes to Plato’ that worried Whitehead, than it is a collaborative ideating, a species of ‘co-mentation’, not merely with regard to ‘meanings’, but rather to the objects of thought" (26). He goes on to tell us that the "objects of this science - ‘speculative physics’ or ‘the physics of the All’ - are twofold and inseparable, for ‘philosophers of every age’: matter and Idea, or ‘the material of the universal’" (26).
After a careful reading of Plato's Timaeus and Schelling's essay on it Grant goes into an intricate and detailed account concerning the relation between Plato's physics and Aristotle's (of which we will not detail out here). He tells us that Aristotle creates a "matterless nature" by systematically eliminating matter from form, thereby dividing philosophy into a primary and secondary mode: the primary, in which the "formula is distinguished from the sensible particular, giving rise to an ontologically grounded prioritization of immaterial over material substance" (34); and, a secondary, physics, in which "form is ‘more essential’ than matter, since the nature of the concrete whole under physical investigation depends on its particularity as such-and-such, its ‘what-it-is-ness’. Accordingly, ‘form and the combination of form and matter are more truly substance than matter is’" (35).
After having followed "the vicissitudes of the dematerialization of form in the emergence, through Aristotle, of phenomenologizing physics and metaphysics as the predication of essences" (35), he investigates Schelling's use of Plato to counter the Aristotelian turn taken by Kant and concludes, saying, "The Timaeus essay attempts to combine these Platonic focii in order to produce a logical and material, ontic and metaphysical, account of the becoming of being. In other words, Schelling’s Timaeus commentary is an essay in the philosophy of dynamics" (see note on "foci")* (39).
2.2
Schelling, following Plato, affirms that the 'existent' is apprehensible by thought and reason, and that "what is becoming always and never is existent is an object of opinion and of an ‘intuition . . . contrary to the idea" (40). Grant tells us "while it is true that everything sensible is a mode of becoming, it is not true that all becoming is sensibly apprehensible, which is especially apparent in two areas, which we explore conjointly below: the dynamics of ideation and the generation of the cosmos" (40-41).
Next Schelling affirms after Plato the proposition that ‘all becomings and destructions must of necessity become owing to some cause’" (41). Grant defines the distinct use of the word 'soul' within Schelling following Plato as "self-generating motion" or that "‘soul’ is simply a name for ‘autokinesis’" (41). Grant brings this concept of soul to conclusion saying "soul means nothing other than: the ceaseless becoming that is motion is by nature prior to somatic becomings. Hence kata physin - ‘in accordance with nature’ - is always kata dunamin - ‘in accordance with power’" (42).
After a lengthy commentary on Schelling's use of Platonic concepts he tells us "the logic proper to nature is composed of kinds, gene, compounds of being and becoming, genesis" (42). Schelling follows Plato's Philebus in theorizing the kinds as "unlimited [apeiron], the second, limit [peras] and the third a being [ousian] generated by a mixture of these two. And [ . . . ] the cause of this mixture and generation[I call] the fourth’" (43). Grant tells us that the "Platonic gene is like a phase space of the Idea, diagrammed in the genesis of matter" (45). He goes on to define it in detail, saying, "it is a phase space of the Idea in unlimited not-being, that is, the always-becoming, where the Idea acts as the limit-attractor towards which becoming never ceases to become, the auto or absolute approximated but never realized in the generated particular, the whole caused by and causing productive and intelligent nature" (45).
In summation Grant tells us (I will quote the complete passage):
"...granting the core Platonic axiom of the objective existence of the Ideas, alongside the equally objective account of the kinds we have developed from their deployment in the context of the becoming of being, the conjunction of being and becoming, of Idea and matter, forms a dynamics of ideation that is, so to speak, substrate independent. This, we affirm, is a problem to be confronted by any philosophy of nature, insofar as it rejects a priori the reduction of its elements to the phenomenological envelope attendant upon the Aristotelian-Kantian formal or phenomenal natures. The materiality of ideation is not a contingent problem given Plato’s proto-Schellingian postulation of ‘nature’s autarchy’), precisely because, as one-world physics both, neither the external limits of physical nature nor the internal limits of thinking nature contain the Idea, which must in both cases arise objectively (the becoming of being). The transcendental problem of the locus of the Idea thus becomes the naturephilosophical one of the physical conditions of its emergence; accordingly, ‘philosophy is nothing other than a natural history of our mind’" (45).
2.3
If philosophy is nothing other than a natural history of our mind then what is history? Grant tells us that the "problem of the nature of history first therefore confronts the problem of the ‘nature of nature’: does nature consist in the straightforward repetition of necessary laws, or does it act in ways recalcitrant to ‘a priori’ determination" (47)? He tells us that Schelling offers two solutions to this question: 1) the first consists of mythology as "self-articulating nature" (47) ("mechanism assumed under the first solution’s theory of nature is properly historyless: that is, there is only a cyclical repetition of events, with no ‘has happened’ that is not also necessarily a ‘will happen’" (48)).; and, 2) the second, dealing with natural history - a "philosophy of natural history will resolve the problem of the nature of history to the extent that it makes ‘progressivity’ not aberrant with regard to a mechanically repeating nature, but necessary to a nature that acts quite otherwise" (48). He goes on to explain this 'progressivity': "Progressive nature is a priori with regard to mechanical - or organic - nature precisely in the sense that it generates the ‘individual forms’ or products of nature" (49).
But this progressive nature is not about the perfectibility of humans as some pinnacle of evolution, instead we discover that "man is necessarily transitional. Nature is not therefore completed in the production of man (a conceit to be found throughout the majority of commentary on the naturephilosophy); rather, its progressivity pursues that creature’s transformation: ‘the time had come for a new species, equipped with new organs of thought, to arise . . .’" (55). Humanity is a transitional animal, not a finished product or productivity. Ultimately natural history consists in "maps of becoming that exceed phenomenal or sensible nature both in the direction of time and in that of the physiology of the senses, Finally, in so doing, we have prepared the ground for the differentiation of the linear from the non-linear uses of the theory of recapitulation that is the ‘epoch-altering’ contribution of Kielmeyer to natural history" ( 55).
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII
Enough for now... part three coming next...
Note: (The "focii" in the above passage dealing with the cooperation of the four kinds("identified in the Philebus, and which Schelling will characterize as categories" (38) ) - unlimited, limit, bond and cause - characterize the ‘synthesizing causation by which order emerges, qua intelligible, in ‘productive nature'" (39).)
1. Philosophies of Nature After Schelling Iain Hamilton Grant 2006
-Iain Hamilton Grant
2
Grant describes commentary as being "less the ‘series of footnotes to Plato’ that worried Whitehead, than it is a collaborative ideating, a species of ‘co-mentation’, not merely with regard to ‘meanings’, but rather to the objects of thought" (26). He goes on to tell us that the "objects of this science - ‘speculative physics’ or ‘the physics of the All’ - are twofold and inseparable, for ‘philosophers of every age’: matter and Idea, or ‘the material of the universal’" (26).
After a careful reading of Plato's Timaeus and Schelling's essay on it Grant goes into an intricate and detailed account concerning the relation between Plato's physics and Aristotle's (of which we will not detail out here). He tells us that Aristotle creates a "matterless nature" by systematically eliminating matter from form, thereby dividing philosophy into a primary and secondary mode: the primary, in which the "formula is distinguished from the sensible particular, giving rise to an ontologically grounded prioritization of immaterial over material substance" (34); and, a secondary, physics, in which "form is ‘more essential’ than matter, since the nature of the concrete whole under physical investigation depends on its particularity as such-and-such, its ‘what-it-is-ness’. Accordingly, ‘form and the combination of form and matter are more truly substance than matter is’" (35).
After having followed "the vicissitudes of the dematerialization of form in the emergence, through Aristotle, of phenomenologizing physics and metaphysics as the predication of essences" (35), he investigates Schelling's use of Plato to counter the Aristotelian turn taken by Kant and concludes, saying, "The Timaeus essay attempts to combine these Platonic focii in order to produce a logical and material, ontic and metaphysical, account of the becoming of being. In other words, Schelling’s Timaeus commentary is an essay in the philosophy of dynamics" (see note on "foci")* (39).
2.2
Schelling, following Plato, affirms that the 'existent' is apprehensible by thought and reason, and that "what is becoming always and never is existent is an object of opinion and of an ‘intuition . . . contrary to the idea" (40). Grant tells us "while it is true that everything sensible is a mode of becoming, it is not true that all becoming is sensibly apprehensible, which is especially apparent in two areas, which we explore conjointly below: the dynamics of ideation and the generation of the cosmos" (40-41).
Next Schelling affirms after Plato the proposition that ‘all becomings and destructions must of necessity become owing to some cause’" (41). Grant defines the distinct use of the word 'soul' within Schelling following Plato as "self-generating motion" or that "‘soul’ is simply a name for ‘autokinesis’" (41). Grant brings this concept of soul to conclusion saying "soul means nothing other than: the ceaseless becoming that is motion is by nature prior to somatic becomings. Hence kata physin - ‘in accordance with nature’ - is always kata dunamin - ‘in accordance with power’" (42).
After a lengthy commentary on Schelling's use of Platonic concepts he tells us "the logic proper to nature is composed of kinds, gene, compounds of being and becoming, genesis" (42). Schelling follows Plato's Philebus in theorizing the kinds as "unlimited [apeiron], the second, limit [peras] and the third a being [ousian] generated by a mixture of these two. And [ . . . ] the cause of this mixture and generation[I call] the fourth’" (43). Grant tells us that the "Platonic gene is like a phase space of the Idea, diagrammed in the genesis of matter" (45). He goes on to define it in detail, saying, "it is a phase space of the Idea in unlimited not-being, that is, the always-becoming, where the Idea acts as the limit-attractor towards which becoming never ceases to become, the auto or absolute approximated but never realized in the generated particular, the whole caused by and causing productive and intelligent nature" (45).
In summation Grant tells us (I will quote the complete passage):
"...granting the core Platonic axiom of the objective existence of the Ideas, alongside the equally objective account of the kinds we have developed from their deployment in the context of the becoming of being, the conjunction of being and becoming, of Idea and matter, forms a dynamics of ideation that is, so to speak, substrate independent. This, we affirm, is a problem to be confronted by any philosophy of nature, insofar as it rejects a priori the reduction of its elements to the phenomenological envelope attendant upon the Aristotelian-Kantian formal or phenomenal natures. The materiality of ideation is not a contingent problem given Plato’s proto-Schellingian postulation of ‘nature’s autarchy’), precisely because, as one-world physics both, neither the external limits of physical nature nor the internal limits of thinking nature contain the Idea, which must in both cases arise objectively (the becoming of being). The transcendental problem of the locus of the Idea thus becomes the naturephilosophical one of the physical conditions of its emergence; accordingly, ‘philosophy is nothing other than a natural history of our mind’" (45).
2.3
If philosophy is nothing other than a natural history of our mind then what is history? Grant tells us that the "problem of the nature of history first therefore confronts the problem of the ‘nature of nature’: does nature consist in the straightforward repetition of necessary laws, or does it act in ways recalcitrant to ‘a priori’ determination" (47)? He tells us that Schelling offers two solutions to this question: 1) the first consists of mythology as "self-articulating nature" (47) ("mechanism assumed under the first solution’s theory of nature is properly historyless: that is, there is only a cyclical repetition of events, with no ‘has happened’ that is not also necessarily a ‘will happen’" (48)).; and, 2) the second, dealing with natural history - a "philosophy of natural history will resolve the problem of the nature of history to the extent that it makes ‘progressivity’ not aberrant with regard to a mechanically repeating nature, but necessary to a nature that acts quite otherwise" (48). He goes on to explain this 'progressivity': "Progressive nature is a priori with regard to mechanical - or organic - nature precisely in the sense that it generates the ‘individual forms’ or products of nature" (49).
But this progressive nature is not about the perfectibility of humans as some pinnacle of evolution, instead we discover that "man is necessarily transitional. Nature is not therefore completed in the production of man (a conceit to be found throughout the majority of commentary on the naturephilosophy); rather, its progressivity pursues that creature’s transformation: ‘the time had come for a new species, equipped with new organs of thought, to arise . . .’" (55). Humanity is a transitional animal, not a finished product or productivity. Ultimately natural history consists in "maps of becoming that exceed phenomenal or sensible nature both in the direction of time and in that of the physiology of the senses, Finally, in so doing, we have prepared the ground for the differentiation of the linear from the non-linear uses of the theory of recapitulation that is the ‘epoch-altering’ contribution of Kielmeyer to natural history" ( 55).
Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII
Enough for now... part three coming next...
Note: (The "focii" in the above passage dealing with the cooperation of the four kinds("identified in the Philebus, and which Schelling will characterize as categories" (38) ) - unlimited, limit, bond and cause - characterize the ‘synthesizing causation by which order emerges, qua intelligible, in ‘productive nature'" (39).)
1. Philosophies of Nature After Schelling Iain Hamilton Grant 2006