Hölderlin and Human-Nature Relations

Abstract

In this chapter I outline a dilemma. If we resist human/nature dualism by thinking of human beings as embodied and environmentally situated – as natural – then this seems to imply that, as human products, modern environmentally damaging cultures are after all natural. However, claiming that these cultures are alienated from nature seems to return us to belief in human separateness. I explore a solution to this dilemma found in the work of Friedrich Hölderlin. He suggests that nature has divided itself into human subjects and the particular, finite, natural objects of which we are conscious and from which we feel separate. Thus both humanity and natural environments are aspects of nature in an expanded sense, as a self-dividing whole.

For Hölderlin, then, human estrangement from nature – and by extension contemporary environmental crisis – is a product of nature itself. This has the seemingly unhelpful implication that we human beings neither can nor should attempt to prevent this crisis. However, I argue that this quietism is less unhelpful than it might seem. It is motivated by anti-anthropocentrism; it anticipates Heidegger’s scepticism about seeking a technological fix; and it allows for a novel justification of environmentalist practices as ways of preparing for possible change in nature’s way of being.