Thankless Trouble: Ethical Contemplation of Nature

Abstract

Nature’ and ‘philosophy’ are among the words that come under discussion in the recently published Dictionary of the Untranslatable, but nothing is said of Naturphilosophie.1 And yet, among the many untranslatable words that have entered into the lexicon of modern German thought, none is perhaps more resistant to translation than Naturphilosophie. This is not because the terms from which it derives are obscure; on the contrary, it is perfectly reasonable to translate each of the terms separately, one as ‘nature’ and the other as ‘philosophy,’ but the relation between the words, beyond their conjunction, remains elusive. The aim of this essay is to explore this conjunction. A brief passage from the introduction to the revised (1803) edition of Schelling’s Ideen zur Naturphilosophie [Ideas toward Naturphilosophie], can serve as a précis of the principle on which the construction of nature proceeds: “Philosophy is the science of the absolute, but since the absolute in its eternal activity necessarily comprehends two sides as one, the real and the ideal, so philosophy, considered from the side of form, necessarily has to divide itself in accordance with the two sides, although its essence consists solely in seeing both sides as one in the absolute act of cognition. The ‘