IEP 508: Nature in Romantic and European Thought

AWAYMAVE - The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Week 1. Introduction and Nature as Origin and Difference

I. Introduction to themes of the course

This course provides an introduction to some ways of thinking about nature
within the Romantic and Continental European traditions of philosophy.
'Continental' philosophy is an approach that developed, initially, in late
18th-century Germany out of the work of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. Some
of of the first philosophers to respond to Kant were Romantics, and so there
is a close relationship between Romanticism and Continental philosophy from
the start. More generally, continental philosophy is usually distinguished
from 'analytic' philosophy, the traditionally dominant school of philosophy
within England, Australia and the United States. (Though there are arguments
amongst philosophers about how different these two traditions really are.)
There is a helpful introduction to continental philosophy, in general, in
the following:

Simon Critchley, Continental Philosophy: A very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2000)

Critchley suggests, among other things, that continental philosophy is particularly concerned about the problem of 'nihilism', the increasing meaningless of life within modernity ('modernity' here, as generally, in philosophy, meaning European and Westernised societies in the form they have taken from the 17th century onward). This already connects continental philosophy with the question of nature, since it is arguable that life has become more meaningless in modernity in proportion as nature has lost the meaning and value it formerly had for us as human beings.

(Another introduction to continental philosophy from Germany in particular -
and in fact almost all the thinkers at whom we will be looking are Germans
- is Andrew Bowie, Introduction to German Philosophy (Polity, 2004). This
is more advanced than Critchley's book, but is good on German Romanticism
and its connections with the continental tradition of philosophy.)

Most environmental philosophy (e.g. what you have looked at on the environmental ethics module) is done from within the tradition of analytic philosophy rather than continental. For many continental thinkers analytic thought remains much too close to everyday ways of thinking, and so may itself be unable to help us solve environmental problems, because it may be too close to the very ways of thinking and 'mind-sets' which are part of those problems. Continental philosophy tries to approach nature via broader questions about meaning and value than are normally raised in the analytic tradition (though there is increasing overlap and dialogue between the two traditions).

Another feature of continental philosophy as a tradition is that the authors within it very often refer to one another. They usually try to develop their thinking by referring to and building upon the works of preceding thinkers in the same tradition. Thus, the continental tradition is quite preoccupied with issues of interpretation and textual commentary. This can make it rather impenetrable as a tradition; but it also means that a continuous history of thinking builds up within it, which can be traced.

The concept of nature is not always seen as central to continental thinking. Many courses on continental philosophy, for instance, do not bring the concept of nature to the fore. But there is, in fact, a 'hidden history' of continental thinking about nature. This course tries to reconstruct this history, or parts of it, and to put you in a position to continue this work of 'reconstruction' (should you wish to!).

The primary focus of the course is on close readings of particular texts in which the question of nature is addressed. Many of these texts are difficult, - partly in how they are written, but also in the ideas they present.

You may find this difficulty offputting as you encounter it. It is worth persisting with the texts. It is worth reading them a second time even if you feel, the first time, that you have found them mysterious. Indeed, even if much of them remains mysterious even when you read them again, you may find it surprising that later you can find yourself coming back to ideas the texts mooted which you didn't think you'd understood at all.

One reason why many of these texts are difficult is that they try to question and move beyond the usual ways we think about nature. For many authors in the continental tradition, our everyday attitudes to nature are clouded by unquestioned preconceptions about what nature is and what its value is. These preconceptions may well be at least partly to blame for the environmental destruction and damage that often ensues from our everyday attitudes and ways of behaving. To engender real change in our relation to nature, then, it may be necessary to engage in a real rethinking of our understanding of nature - a rethinking which, necessarily, must be quite difficult.

This means it's worth persisting with the texts, despite their difficulties - it might be that it's only by working through these difficulties that we can reach towards genuinely new ways of thinking, which may make a vital contribution to getting us out of environmental problems.

You might find it helpful here to jot down some initial thoughts about what you take our everyday understandings of nature to consist in. What, do you think, are our familiar ways of thinking about or conceiving of nature? What do you think might be wrong with these conceptions?

Try to write about half a page or more of text, and (ideally) post it to the discussion site.

Later in the course, you could look back at your notes and see whether the authors we will look at have confirmed your initial thoughts about what our ordinary ways of conceiving nature are. Do the continental authors agree with you about what problems there are within these ordinary conceptions?

Or, on the other hand, do you now find that your initial thoughts themselves appear as 'ordinary preconceptions' from the point of view of the continental thinkers?

II. Steven Vogel, 'Nature as Origin and Difference: On Environmental Philosophy and Continental Thought' (1998)

Please now read Vogel's article from Philosophy Today, the first extract in the course reader.

Vogel's essay looks at the question of how continental philosophy - in particular some recent strands of continental philosophy known as 'post-structuralism' - could contribute to environmental thinking. His essay is interesting particularly because because he presents a very definite view of what a 'continental' approach to nature consists in - and he sees this approach as focused on treating nature as a social and historical construction. This is how continental approaches to nature are often understood, particularly in cultural studies and some areas of the social sciences. Although this is, in a sense, the 'popular' view of continental philosophy and nature, it may well be an oversimplification. The rest of this course will give you a chance to see how accurately you think Vogel's picture reflects the various ways of thinking about nature found in the texts we will be looking at.

Vogel distinguishes 3 accounts of nature which he finds within the continental tradition, assesses their strengths and weaknesses, and offers his own view centring on the concept of practice.

(1) 'Nature as Origin'.

The first account of nature is linked to romanticism and vitalism; it is the view of nature as a complex organic whole, in which humans are embedded. On this account, the social world is seen as artificial, in contrast to nature. This puts humans in the strange position of being of being embedded within nature, yet breaking away from it in order to introduce an artificial social world.

Vogel sums this view up:
'"Nature" on this view stands for a stable world that precedes humans, ontologically prior to human activity and to the social structures … within which that activitiy takes place' (p. 170).

Vogel offers some criticisms of this view on p. 171. He says that on this view, humans are not part of nature insofar as their activities are counted as 'artificial'. Yet, if nature gives rise to humans, then it must give rise to their activities and these must themselves be natural (even, e.g., motorways). 'On the other hand, if "unnatural" means "artificial" then all human action turns out to violate nature' (p.171).

(1) Are the problems with this view as serious as Vogel thinks?

(2) Can you see any possible answers to these problems?

(2) Postmodernism and the social construction of 'nature'.

Vogel associates this second position with postmodernism. This position criticises the notion of nature as origin, as something given, by showing that 'nature' is always socially/culturally constructed. There is no real nature on this view, just historical constructions of what counts as nature.

Vogel gives as an example the idea of wilderness - that there is no real wilderness, only the 'idea' of an untouched natural world. There have always, in fact, been human activities constructing nature - 'the human hand is always already on the earth' (p.171) - there is no pre-human time for which we can be nostalgic.

What are the two senses in which 'nature' is socially constructed, according to Vogel?

Vogel raises as a question for this whether it allows us to judge any activities wrong. If they all modify nature, then how can we judge some worse than others?

What is Vogel's reply to this question?

(3) 'Nature as Difference'.

In talking about this conception of nature, Vogel has particularly Heidegger in mind - the Heidegger of his essay The Question Concerning Technology. Here Heidegger regards technology as a way of knowing or 'revealing' the world, but which also conceals because it closes off other possible ways of revealing. Heidegger thinks that an attempt to try and actively 'transform' technology remains within the technological way of thinking (where we use, act on, things to suit our purposes), so our only response to technology can be to await passively a change within it that we cannot induce ourselves.

This third position, Vogel thinks, might seem more congenial to environmentalism than the second one with its stress on the centrality of human activity. On this view, 'nature' stands for 'the otherness of the world ... that which is always left out of any attempt to grasp the world as a whole' (p.172).

(i) Every conceptual framework has exclusions: nature stands for whatever is excluded.

(ii) Every act of technological making is always also a 'non-making', it has an element of failure, limitation - nature 'becomes the name we give to our inability to remake the world exactly the way we want' (p.173).

This calls on us to be modest and ancitipate the unintended consequences of our activities.

What are the main problems that Vogel finds in this view?

Is there more in it than he allows for?

(4) Vogel's own idea of practice as mediating between humans and nature:

Vogel situates his idea in a tradition stemming from Hegel's view that in knowing, we actively constitute the things we know. According to Vogel, nature is constructed literally through physical practices, particularly those by which we physically build the world/environment around us.

However, although the environment is our construct, something we are building, this is not apparent to us - the environment appears given, 'natural'. We need to reappropriate it, re-recognise it as our own construct.

This gives us a criterion for preferring some kinds of practices to others: 'processes of construction that know themselves as such are to be preferred over those that remain systematically deluded about what they are' (p. 176).

What are the good and bad features of this idea?

In what ways does Vogel argue that this practice-focused approach can be fruitful for environmentalism? Is he right, or is the practice-focused approach more difficult to reconcile with environmental concerns than he believes?

Vogel suggests that his idea of practice allows him to hold on to a conception of nature as 'other' to human beings. But is he right about this - can he make enough allowance for the otherness of nature?

General conclusion.

Vogel's essay is interesting partly because it raises a number of problems that will come up again later in the course: (i) how can humans be both natural and cultural? Does it make sense to say that we have become 'cut off' from nature in any way - is this conceivable?

(ii) to what extent is nature 'other' to us as humans?

(iii) is the attempt to transform our current relationship with nature already itself 'technological' - or, more broadly, part of a human-activity-cented mindset that's itself a key part of the problem in our relationship with nature?

(iv) how should we assess our practices? To what extent could we ever 'abstain' from transforming, constructing nature?

These questions will recur (together with others) throughout this course. We won't find any definite answers to them - but we will encounter a variety of different perspectives that raise these questions in different ways and will give you a range of ways of thinking the questions through.

Web notes by Alison Stone updated March 2005