The contemporary stakes of Schelling's non-mechanistic account of nature

The contemporary environmental crisis has intensified discussions on the concept of nature. But what is nature beyond the specific phenomena studied by specialized natural sciences? And are human beings part of the natural world or do they radically differ from it? I take Schelling’s philosophy of nature to address versions of these very questions, especially as regards (a) the unity of nature beyond the phenomena studied by emerging scientific disciplines such as chemistry and biology, and (b) the status of humanity in relation to nature. The project aims to frame Schelling’s philosophy of nature as a highly innovative attempt to solve these problems and, thus, to bring out its contemporary relevance. Counteracting mystical readings of Schelling’s philosophy of nature, the project claims more specifically (1) that he aimed to provide the natural sciences with a unitary conceptual framework; (2) that he did so by developing a theory of matter capable of underpinning the principles of diverging sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology; and (3) that this non-mechanistic conception of nature enabled him to conceive of the distinction between humans and nature as a distinction in degree rather than in kind. While recent scholarship has argued for the relevance of classical German philosophy to current discussions on the environment, no extended study has as yet brought Schelling’s non-mechanistic account of nature to bear on the current environmental crisis.