Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Life, Organisms, and Human Nature

New Perspectives on Classical German Philosophy

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Editors:
  1. Luca Corti

    1. Philosophy Department and Padua Research Group on Classical German Philosophy, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Johannes-Georg Schülein

    1. Philosophy Department 1 and Research Center for Classical German Philosophy, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    View editor publications

    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Provides the first comprehensive overview of the recent revival of “nature” and relevant concepts within Classical German Philosophy
  • Features contributions by leading international scholars, both established and early career academics
  • Mobilizes innovative methodologies that combine current discussions with historical research for a critical discussion concerning nature

Part of the book series: Studies in German Idealism (SIGI, volume 22)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (19 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Understanding Organic Life Between Philosophy and the Natural Sciences

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
      Download chapter PDF

    2. Organisms and Natural Ends in Kant’s Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment

      • Karen Koch
      Pages 3-20

    3. Kant and Biological Theory

      • Andrew Cooper
      Pages 21-38

    4. Rethinking Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature Through a Process Account of Emergence

      • Andrea Gambarotto, Auguste Nahas
      Pages 39-58

    5. “Inadmissible Application”: Some Notes on Causality and Life in Hegel

      • Thomas Meyer
      Pages 59-77

    6. Concepts with Teeth and Claws. On Species, Essences and Purposes in Hegel’s Organic Physics

      • Edgar Maraguat
      Pages 79-96

    7. Hegel’s Theory of Space-Time (No, Not That Space-Time)

      • Ralph Kaufmann, Christopher Yeomans
      Pages 97-117

  3. Understanding the Human Life-Form Between Nature, Spirit, and Society

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 119-119
      Download chapter PDF

    2. ‘All is Act, Movement, and Life’: Fichte’s Idealism as Immortalism

      • G. Anthony Bruno
      Pages 121-139

    3. “True Life Is Only in Death.” On Rejecting Life and Nature in Romanticism (Fichte, Novalis, Schlegel)

      • Philipp Weber
      Pages 141-157

    4. Schelling on the Nature of Freedom and the Freedom of Nature: The Role of the Naturphilosophie in the Freiheitsschrift

      • Charlotte Alderwick
      Pages 159-176

    5. The State as Second Nature in Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism

      • Kyla Bruff
      Pages 177-196

    6. The Psychical Relation

      • Sebastian Rand
      Pages 197-214

    7. The Physical Body and Its Role in Hegel’s Mature Ethical Theory

      • Thimo Heisenberg
      Pages 215-227

    8. Second Nature and Self-Determination in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit

      • Susanne Herrmann-Sinai
      Pages 229-245

    9. Gattungswesen and Universality: Feuerbach, Marx and German Idealism

      • Christoph Schuringa
      Pages 247-262

  4. Naturalism and the Bounds of Nature

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 263-263
      Download chapter PDF

    2. The Third Antinomy in the Age of Naturalism

      • Mario De Caro
      Pages 265-279

    3. Post-Bonnetian Naturalism

      • Daniel Whistler
      Pages 281-296
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.
In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resourcefor scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally. 

Editors and Affiliations

  • Philosophy Department and Padua Research Group on Classical German Philosophy, University of Padua, Padua, Italy

    Luca Corti

  • Philosophy Department 1 and Research Center for Classical German Philosophy, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

    Johannes-Georg Schülein

About the editors

Luca Corti is Assistant Professor at the University of Padua as well as Marie-Curie Fellow at the University of Padua, the University of Chicago, and the University Paris I Sorbonne. His research focuses on German Idealism (especially Kant and Hegel), philosophy of nature and organism as well as contemporary analytical philosophy. He has published two books and several articles on these topics. He is co-editor of Sellars and The History of Modern Philosophy (Routledge 2018) and Normativity and the Life Sciences: Analytical and Continental Perspectives (HPLS, 2021). He is PI of the German-Italian  DAAD project  “Rethinking Nature”, the Italian National Project (PRIN) “Understanding Natural History: Nature, Evolution and Human Beings” as well as of the DFG research network on “Classical German Anthropologies” .


Johannes-Georg Schülein is Assistant Professor (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) at the Philosophy Department and the ResearchCenter for Classical German Philosophy / Hegel Archive at the University of Bochum, Germany. His research focusses on Classical German Philosophy and its contemporary appeal. He is the author of the book Metaphysik und ihre Kritik bei Hegel und Derrida (Meiner, 2016) and of several articles on Hegel, Kant, Schelling, and Spinoza. He is the managing editor of the international journal Hegel-Studien and PI of the German-Italian research project “Rethinking Nature” as well as of the DFG research network “Classical German Anthropologies”.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Life, Organisms, and Human Nature

  • Book Subtitle: New Perspectives on Classical German Philosophy

  • Editors: Luca Corti, Johannes-Georg Schülein

  • Series Title: Studies in German Idealism

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41558-6

  • Publisher: Springer Cham

  • eBook Packages: Religion and Philosophy, Philosophy and Religion (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-41557-9Published: 10 November 2023

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-41560-9Due: 29 November 2023

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-41558-6Published: 09 November 2023

  • Series ISSN: 1571-4764

  • Series E-ISSN: 2542-9868

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XX, 363

  • Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations, 1 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: German Idealism, Philosophy of Nature

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation