Problem-historical Nature and its Purposiveness

本研究是对西方哲学传统中“自然”概念问题的考察。它回到了19世纪初康德主义和自然哲学之间的一场重要但未被重视的辩论，并阐述了这场辩论的不确定性与当前哲学的生态转向（实际上与更普遍的全球变暖观点）的相关性。这种假设是双重的：自然的概念一直是（并且仍然是）西方哲学和批判理论的一贯问题；在全球变暖的时代，自然本身（作为生命之网）已经成为一个特殊的历史问题。从对这两个问题的相互联系的分析出发，本项目将继续构建一些方法，以超越（但不忽视）前者的哲学僵局和后者的政治僵局。这一建构将聚焦于一个世俗的、后康德的“信仰”概念，将其作为与自然世界这个特殊对象的适当和必要的关联，全球变暖是自然世界的一个历史转变——一个在殖民和工业资本主义的坏想法的实现中出现并通过实现的转变。那么问题就变成了：我们可以假设什么是好主意；“我们”应该/可以相信什么？答案不仅仅是资本主义的终结，这本身就不是一件简单的事情。

The proposed research is an investigation into the problem of the concept of "nature" in the Western philosophical tradition. It returns to an important but underappreciated debate between Kantianism and Nature Philosophy at the turn of the 19th century and addresses the relevance of this debate's irresolution to the current ecological turn in philosophy (and indeed to the idea of global warming more generally). The supposition is twofold: that the concept of nature has been (and remains) a consistent problem for Western philosophy and Critical Theory; and that nature itself (as the web of life) has become a specifically historical problem in the era of global warming. Proceeding from an analysis of the interconnection of these two problems, this project will go on to construct some means for moving beyond (without ignoring) the philosophical impasse of the former, and the political impasse of the latter. This construction will focus on a secular, post-Kantian concept of "faith" as the proper and necessary correlate to the peculiar object that is the natural world, of which global warming is an historical transformation - one that emerges in and through the actualisation of the bad idea of colonial and industrial capitalisms. The question then becomes:what might we postulate as a good idea; what should/could "we" have faith in? The answer is not simply the end of capitalism, which is itself no simple matter.