Schelling in the Anthropocene: Thinking Beyond the Annihilation of Nature

Humanity, as a force of nature, seems all too ready to prove itself more cancer than bloom on the body of our global ecosystem. Schelling warned us against “annihilation of nature’ in 1804, while ecologists and climatologists tell of it in their nomenclature for the present age—the Anthropocene. Is it possible for humanity to change course to prevent or mitigate what now looks like an inevitable environmental catastrophe? Efforts to ameliorate the current state of nature and, so too, humanity’s relationship with the rest of nature, traditionally looks to the past with the hope of changing the future. But, as Schelling argued, the human as force of nature does not stand-alone; in the present, we have alternatives—other forces of nature offering resources to correct our current trajectory.

‘Thinking beyond the annihilation of nature’ is a challenge to think beyond – outside - the limits and definitions of modern philosophy since Descartes. If we accept Schelling’s proposition of Mitwissenschaft, and the claims of absolute knowing that follow from it, what happens when we think the consequences of this premise in a systematic manner? How does this re-configure the dualisms of subject and object, self-awareness and reflexivity; ontological paradigms, organic models of integrating mind and matter; emergence, consciousness, and creativity; art and myth as the voice and schema of nature; a secular theodicy that can address the possibility of humanity’s annihilation of nature?

The North American Schelling Society’s third annual conference will explore these themes, broadly construed, against the horizon of possible futures that suggest a way of moving beyond our current quagmire.