Abstract
This chapter compares the philosophies of nature of Schelling, Hegel, and Günderrode. For Schelling, nature is organized by a dynamic opposition between polar forces that have gendered connotations. For Hegel, the interaction between the concept and matter organizes nature, and he again construes the concept and matter in hierarchical and gendered terms. For her part Günderrode puts birth, death, and rebirth at the center of nature, taking a view of the earth which anticipates recent feminist philosophies of natality.
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Notes
- 1.
For classic feminist statements, see Hélène Cixous, “Sorties,” in The Newly Born Woman, with Catherine Clément, trans. Betsy Wing (Manchester: Manchester University Press, [1975] 1986); Luce Irigaray, Speculum of the Other Woman, trans. Gillian C. Gill (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, [1974] 1985); Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1984).
- 2.
In discussing these historical assumptions, I do not use a sex/gender distinction, as this distinction only began to be made in the 1960s.
- 3.
See Lloyd, Man of Reason, chs. 5 and 6.
- 4.
Irigaray, Speculum.
- 5.
Eileen O’Neill, “Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History,” in Philosophy in a Feminist Voice, ed. Janet A. Kourany, 17–62 (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).
- 6.
On women’s contributions to German idealism and Romanticism, see Alison Stone and Giulia Valpione, “Idealism and Romanticism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in the German Tradition, ed. Kristin Gjesdal and Dalia Nassar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022 forthcoming); Laure Cahen-Maurel and Giulia Valpione, ed. Symphilosophie 2: The Women Writers of Philosophical Romanticism (2020), https://symphilosophie.com/symphilosophie-2-2020-eng/.
- 7.
See Alison Assiter, Kierkegaard, Eve and Metaphors of Birth (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015); Alison Stone, “Nature, Freedom and Gender in Schelling,” in Schelling’s Philosophy: Nature, Freedom, and Systematicity, ed. G. Anthony Bruno (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 168–184.
- 8.
Although not entirely, for full unification requires the journey through the stages of mind as well, narrated in the third part of the Encyclopedia, the Philosophy of Mind.
- 9.
See the chapter by Kimberly Hutchings in this volume.
- 10.
On Günderrode’s reading see S. D. Martinson, “‘… aus dem Schiffbruch des irdischen Lebens’: The Literature of Karoline von Günderrode and Early German Romantic and Idealist Philosophy,” German Studies Review 28, no. 2 (2005), 303–326.
- 11.
Creuzer had arranged for the publication of Melete, but he shelved it when Günderrode, tragically, committed suicide in 1806.
- 12.
On Günderrode’s philosophy of plants see the chapter by Elaine Miller in this volume and on Günderrode’s idea of history and temporality see the chapter by Dalia Nassar.
- 13.
For all Günderrode’s notes on these various natural phenomena, see SWuS 2: 359–406.
- 14.
For another account of Günderrode’s differences from Schelling, see Helga Dormann, Die Kunst des inneren Sinns. Mythisierung der inneren und äusseren Natur im Werk Karoline von Günderrodes (Wuerzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2004). Dormann argues that Günderrode differs from Schelling because her approach to nature is Romantic—hence aesthetic, symbolic, and mythological—rather than idealist, i.e., delineating various stages of realisation of the Absolute. I see Günderrode as closer to idealism.
- 15.
Schelling entertained the possibility of future spiritual existence in the afterlife in Clara, but this is from around 1810 so post-dates Günderrode’s work. See Schelling, Clara: Or, On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World, trans. Fiona Steinkamp (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002).
- 16.
Günderrode’s association of struggle and fighting with masculinity is evident in her dramatic writings, which often deal with male military leaders. She felt they trampled lesser individuals underfoot, but her fascination with them remained. See Stone and Valpione, “Romanticism and Idealism,” sec. iv.
- 17.
Günderrode, letter to ‘Gunda’ (Kunigunde) Brentano, 29 August 1801, cited in Christa Wolf, Der Schatten eines Traumes (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1981), 140.
- 18.
No feminist, Hegel took a dim view of the multiply-married Caroline Schlegel-Schelling; see Terry Pinkard, Hegel: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 113, 192–193. Had Hegel known of Günderrode, I suspect that he would have disapproved of her too—not only because he saw intellectual women as an aberration, but also on account of Günderrode’s suicide and her illicit affair with the already-married Creuzer.
- 19.
Many German idealists and romantics were greatly interested in and enthusiastic about the “Orient” and Günderrode was no exception. See, for discussion, Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987), vol. 1, ch. 5; Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
- 20.
See Luce Irigaray, Sexes and Genealogies, trans. Gillian C. Gill (New York: Columbia University Press, [1987] 1993).
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Stone, A. (2022). Hegel, Schelling and Günderrode on Nature. In: Lettow, S., Pulkkinen, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism and Feminist Philosophy. Palgrave Handbooks in German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13123-3_12
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