The Anguish of Nature

Abstract

This paper begins by asking whether a philosophy of nature that takes the organism as its point of departure still possesses critical potential today, at a time when technology itself is becoming increasingly organic – a development that renders the classical dichotomies between physis and techne, and between natural and human life, obsolete. In spite of this development, the article makes a case for the continued relevance of F. W. J. Schelling’s philosophy of nature. Specifically, it shows how Schelling, in his late works, abandons his systematic concept of the organism and his investigations into the “life of nature” in favor of a philosophy that explores the “nature of life.” To elucidate this shift, the article focuses on two central figures in Schelling’s thought: on the one hand, the depiction of “real life” as a river in the essay Clara; on the other hand, Schelling’s differentiation of human life from the rest of nature through the figure of the whirlpool – a pulsating formation that imbues life with an intrinsically restless, unsettled, or anxious character.