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(Re)Defining Nature: From Praise to Critique

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Critique of Pure Nature

Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 26))

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Abstract

This chapter provides an analysis of the concept of “nature”, opening the way to a systematic reflection on decisive moments in its evolution over time, ranging from classical philosophy to the crucial changes occurred through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Romanticism and the modern era, and finally considering more recent insights from leading scholars in philosophy, sociology and cultural anthropology, as well as in the semiotic field. While not seeking to provide a comprehensive overview (which would be an impossible goal, especially in such a reduced space), the following pages help illustrate the problematic aspects related to crucial changes in the definition of nature, highlighting the ambivalences and limits of such a concept and especially of its use in contemporary Western cultures.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    However, as Dunshirn remarked, “with the Latin natura, which for its part goes back to the verb nasci (“to be born”), one transfers the basic word physis into a different sphere of association. In this way, the emerging growth (of plants, for instance) is transferred into the realm of being born” (2019: 1)—as Heidegger (1976 [1939]) also highlighted, see infra. For a more detailed discussion on the historical and semantic peculiarities of the Latin term, see in particular Pellicer 1966.

  2. 2.

    With the suffix indicating the realisation of an abstract concept (Benveniste 1948).

  3. 3.

    For the analysis of the various meanings associated with the term in Greek culture, see infra, Sect. 2.2.

  4. 4.

    For further details, see infra, Sect. 2.4.

  5. 5.

    In this respect, it is interesting to recall Noel Castree’s description of the principal meanings of the word “nature” in contemporary Anglophone contexts, which refers to “the non-human world of living and inanimate phenomena” (Castree 2014: 10) precisely by means of the expression “external nature”.

  6. 6.

    Corresponding to the idea of “universal nature” described by Castree (2014).

  7. 7.

    Drawing on Daniel Simberloff’s reflection on the metaphor of the “balance of nature” (Simberloff 2014), Ducarme and Couvet (2020) extended the idea of a too broadly inclusive and often oversimplified expression (i.e. a panchreston, from the Latin panchrēstos, “good for everything, universal”) to “nature” itself.

  8. 8.

    According to Naddaf (2005: 35), what differentiates the use of the term by Presocratics from its Homeric ancestor is precisely the reference to the gods.

  9. 9.

    “Qui fait des choses, a des objectifs et poursuit des valeurs spécifiques”.

  10. 10.

    In fact, while the expression “to love” is frequently used to translate the saying, the Greek verb philein was rather used in the sense of “being accustomed to” by Heraclitus, as well as by Herodotus and other ancient authors, denoting “not a feeling but a natural or habitual tendency, or a process that occurs necessarily or frequently” (Hadot 2004; Engl. Trans. 2006: 7).

  11. 11.

    As Hadot remarked, such attitudes can follow one another, coexist, and even mix with each other, while remaining opposite. For a detailed description of some of their most relevant expressions over time, see in particular Parts V and VI of The Veil of Isis (Hadot 2004).

  12. 12.

    As Casetta (2020) pointed out, it is in this sense, for example, that we speak of “human nature”.

  13. 13.

    As Ducarme and Couvet highlighted, in fact, “civilized men are more ‘natural’ in this point of view, as they live under laws, than ‘barbarian’ peoples, submitted to disorder and then oblivious of their human nature (a man living like a beast is as unnatural as a beast living like a man) (Lenoble, 1969). This is why ‘nature’ is not a synonym of wild, wildness or wilderness” (Ducarme and Couvet 2020: 2).

  14. 14.

    See supra.

  15. 15.

    An idea that, as it will be discussed in detail in Chap. 4, is far from having disappeared.

  16. 16.

    Indeed, wilderness has both a positive and a negative connotation in Biblical texts: while the “Terrestrial Paradise” is said to have been created by God “to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food” (Genesis 2, 9), with no requirement for man other than respecting and protecting it, after the Fall it becomes a “disorderly wilderness”, requiring to “be redeemed thorough cultivation and domestication” (Merchant 2003: 19). For a more detailed analysis of the evolution—and resemantisation—of the concept of wilderness, see in particular Oehlschläger (1991) and Ljungberg (2001).

  17. 17.

    Such an organicist view can be found also in the work of Tommaso Campanella (1620), who insisted precisely on magic in the comprehension of the links between the world constituents.

  18. 18.

    Descartes (1664, Chap. 7), for instance, described it as “matter itself”, explicitly rejecting any association with “some deity or other sort of imaginary power” (Ibidem), while Bacon insisted precisely on the fact that “nothing exists in nature, except individual bodies, exhibiting clear individual effect according to particular laws” (Bacon 1620, II, Aph. 2, 3–4).

  19. 19.

    Merchant also highlighted the link between nature and the female sphere, thus extending these processes to the role and representation of women in society.

  20. 20.

    Ethica, ordine geometrico demonstrate (1661–1675), Korte Verhandeling van God, de Mensch en deszelvs Welstand (1661–1662), and Cogitata metaphysica (1663); all available in English in Curley (1985).

  21. 21.

    Yet, as Descola (2011) pointed out, this model failed to include “the intermediary states, the compromises, the different forms of conciliation” between “the rigorous naturalis[m] of nature naturing and the staunch culturalis[m] of nature natured. Many geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, and philosophers have strived to find a dialectical move that would allow them to sidestep the confrontation between these two dogmatisms” (Descola 2011; Engl. Trans. 2013: 28–29).

  22. 22.

    “È nel carattere stesso della natura, evoluzionisticamente intesa, di dover essere immaginata liberamente, ossia secondo modalità non logiche ma semiotiche”.

  23. 23.

    “Jusqu’à présent …, quelles que soient la forme prises par leurs relations, la nature était pensée comme première, chronologiquement et ontologiquement, par rapport à la culture. La culture venait après la nature, qui en était pour ainsi dire le cadre”.

  24. 24.

    Whose notes were posthumously collected and published in the volume La Nature: Notes, cours du Collège de France (1995).

  25. 25.

    “Un raddoppiamento traduttivo della natura e del naturale, che coinvolge e stravolge in profondità lo statuto della cultura”.

  26. 26.

    “Una natura che ha scordato (volutamente) di essere tale. O per usare un’altra immagine, una figlia che ha ripudiato la propria madre”.

  27. 27.

    “A ‘cultura’ ou o sujeito seriam aqui a forma do universal, a ‘natureza’ ou o objeto a forma do particular”.

  28. 28.

    I.e. English translation of the Italian term “internaturalità”, as rendered by the author himself (see, for instance, Marrone 2018); the form “internaturalism” has also been used, though less frequently, in some discussions (in English) on this topic (see, for instance, Cravero 2013).

  29. 29.

    “Un’evidenza costruita, un artefatto che ha dimenticato il lavoro necessario per produrla, l’esito di una procedura di naturalizzazione”. In this regard, it is interesting to note the analogy with Roland Barthes’ reflections on myth and the processes of naturalisation characterising it (see Barthes 1957 and supra).

  30. 30.

    A particular emphasis on the “discursive value” of nature can also be found in Festi (2012).

  31. 31.

    Intended in the sense described above (Sect. 1.1), and further discussed in particular by Eco (1968, 1976); cf. Stano and Leone (2023).

  32. 32.

    I.e. “the visual representation of the logical articulation of any semantic category [in this case, nature vs. culture]” (Greimas and Courtés 1979; Engl. Trans. 1982: s.v. “square, semiotic”; cf. Greimas 1966).

  33. 33.

    “Gli esiti momentanei ed evanescenti di un’articolazione semiotica a partire da cui qualsiasi sostanza del mondo può essere sussunta, per cui ogni cosa può essere ora natura ora cultura”.

  34. 34.

    See in particular Lotman (1984, 1990).

  35. 35.

    Which also intersects other branches and approaches, such as biosemiotics and zoosemiotics.

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Stano, S. (2023). (Re)Defining Nature: From Praise to Critique. In: Critique of Pure Nature. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 26. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45075-4_2

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