Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling

In this course

Schelling provides early Romantic-era philosophical machinery for thinking nature as a dynamic, self-productive system governed by opposing forces rather than static forms—a framework the course readings repurpose to theorize vitalism and its material obscurities. His concept of nature as both product and productivity (natura naturans and natura naturata) enables discussions of how life's complexity exceeds human comprehension, particularly in thinking non-animal life forms like fungi that resist easy categorization. He appears as a genealogical anchor for vitalist thought that contemporary theory recycles when confronting the limits of rational systems in grasping organic processes.

Mentioned in 2 readings