(Download PDF) Romantic Empiricism Nature Art and Ecology From Herder To Humboldt Dalia Nassar Full Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) Romantic Empiricism Nature Art and Ecology From Herder To Humboldt Dalia Nassar Full Chapter PDF
(Download PDF) Romantic Empiricism Nature Art and Ecology From Herder To Humboldt Dalia Nassar Full Chapter PDF
https://ebookmass.com/product/thermofluids-from-nature-to-
engineering-ting/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-testimony-of-sense-empiricism-
and-the-essay-from-hume-to-hazlitt-tim-milnes/
https://ebookmass.com/product/border-ecology-art-and-
environmental-crisis-at-the-margins-ila-nicole-sheren/
https://ebookmass.com/product/aristotles-empiricism-marc-gasser-
wingate/
From Art to Marketing: The Relevance of Authenticity to
Contemporary Consumer Culture Marta Massi
https://ebookmass.com/product/from-art-to-marketing-the-
relevance-of-authenticity-to-contemporary-consumer-culture-marta-
massi/
https://ebookmass.com/product/learning-to-look-dispatches-from-
the-art-world-alva-noe/
https://ebookmass.com/product/interdisciplinary-insights-from-
the-plague-of-cyprian-pathology-epidemiology-ecology-and-history-
mark-orsag/
https://ebookmass.com/product/working-from-within-the-nature-and-
development-of-quines-naturalism-sander-verhaegh/
https://ebookmass.com/product/logical-empiricism-as-scientific-
philosophy-alan-richardson/
Romantic Empiricism
Romantic Empiricism
Nature, Art, and Ecology from
Herder to Humboldt
DA L IA NA S S A R
1
3
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190095437.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
For Clara
No one is prepared to grasp that, both in nature and in art,
the sole and supreme process is the creation of form.
J. W. von Goethe
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations xiii
Note on Referencing xvii
Notes 249
Works Cited 287
Index 299
Acknowledgments
There are many people and organizations who have played a crucial role in
the development of this book. I want first to acknowledge the Australian
Research Council, Discovery Project DP160103769 (2016– 2018), the
Humboldt Foundation grant for experienced researchers (2019–2020), and
the Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Council,
Ultimate Peer Review grant (2018).
I also want to acknowledge a number of highly innovative and re-
search initiatives at the University of Sydney, which have allowed me to
deepen and expand my work in unexpected and exciting ways: Sydney
Intellectual History Network, Theories and Conceptions of Life from the
19th Century to the Present, and the Multi-Species Justice research in-
itiative. In this regard, I especially want to thank Danielle Celermajer,
Stephen Gaukroger, Daniela Helbig, Jennifer Milam, Cat Moir, David
Schlosberg, Michelle St. Anne, Dinesh Wadiwel, Thom van Dooren, Anik
Waldow, Christine Winter, and Genevieve Wright. There is no doubt
that this book has been shaped by the workshops, reading groups, and
conversations that I have had with them over the years.
I also wish to thank the many wonderful thinkers from whose work I’ve
learned and whose penetrating feedback has nudged me in new directions:
Iain McCalman, Monica Gagliano, Sebastian Gardner, Moira Gatens,
Craig Holdrege, Nigel Hoffmann, Simon Lumsden, Jennifer Mensch,
Lydia Moland, Paul Redding, Ulrich Schlösser, Niels Weidtmann, and my
friend and coeditor on other projects, Kristin Gjesdal. I want to thank Eric
Watkins and Clinton Tolley and the PhD students in the history of phi-
losophy colloquium at the University of California, San Diego. Their gen-
erous comments on an early version of the manuscript were immense, and
I am grateful for their continued support. And, last—but not least—I want
to thank Margaret Barbour, whose openness and interest have allowed us
to undertake exciting new research together.
xii Acknowledgments
I am also grateful to many friends, with whom I’ve had some of the best
conversations over the past years, especially Enite Giovanelli, Tanja Rall,
Stefan Rall, and Kristin Funke. I want to thank Anselma Murswiek for per-
mission to use her wonderful painting, and my parents, Rosette and Talal
Nassar. I especially want to thank Luke Fischer, my favorite conversation
partner and most incisive editor.
Abbreviations
Immanuel Kant
Friedrich Schiller
I have mostly used the FA edition of Goethe’s work, as it is more easily acces-
sible than the other editions. However, references to Goethe’s On Morphology
(Zur Morphologie) are to MA, because in this edition the works appear chron-
ologically, according to their date of publication, and not (as is the case in
FA), according to the date on which they were written. I have also referenced
LA or WA in instances where a work does not appear in FA.
With regard to titles of works, I provide the English and German titles
in my first reference, while in all following references I provide only the
English title. In the case of Humboldt, however, I do the opposite: I refer to
the German title (with an English translation in parentheses at the first men-
tion), and only use the German title thereafter, unless I am specifically citing
an English translation of Humboldt’s works. This has to do with the fact that
Humboldt played a role in translating his work—whether from French to
German, or from German to English—such that some of the translations
often include passages not in the original, use terms that were not employed
in the original, or offer interpretations that further elucidate ideas expressed
in the original.
Introduction
Finding Romantic Empiricism
Romantic empiricism: two words that are not usually placed side by side,
and that seem to suggest opposing philosophical views and tendencies.
Romanticism is often associated with idealism and taken to imply a turn to
the subject and a focus on the subjective conditions of knowledge. The ro-
mantic approach to nature thus tends to be regarded as a form of subjective
constructivism. Furthermore, romanticism is identified with a strong in-
terest in the arts and aesthetic experience. Empiricism, by contrast, is out-
wardly focused and bottom-up, in its view that all knowledge must begin
with what is seen or experienced. In addition, some forms of empiricism ap-
pear from an idealist perspective to be naive: they underestimate the subject’s
creative role in knowledge, or they do not adequately differentiate between
what is given to the senses and what is known through the understanding.
Finally, contrary to romanticism, empiricism rarely pays attention to the
arts and their epistemic significance. In short: romanticism and empiricism
hardly resemble one another, and to place them side by side is to offer a par-
adox of sorts.
The thesis of this book is that romantic empiricism is not an oxymoron
but refers to a philosophical tradition that deserves renewed attention
today. While the roots of romantic empiricism can be traced back to mid-
eighteenth-century France, the tradition achieved its greatest philosoph-
ical sophistication and rigor in Germany in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Inspired by the questions and concerns articulated
by Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon (1707–1788) and elaborated by Denis
Diderot (1713–1784), thinkers from Johann Gottfried Herder to Alexander
von Humboldt developed a distinctive methodological approach to the study
of nature—an approach that drew significantly on the arts and aesthetic ex-
perience. Through this aesthetic science, the romantic empiricists were able
2 Romantic Empiricism
to deepen and expand their understanding of nature and, as I will show, con-
tribute to the emergence of ecology and ecological thinking more generally.
These thinkers are romantic not only because they were contemporaries
of the Jena romantics, but also, and more significantly, because they de-
veloped an approach to the study of nature in which the arts and aesthetic
experience play a crucial role. They are romantic, in other words, because
they recognized that artistic capacities and devices can transform the way in
which we perceive and think about the world and ourselves within it. They are
empiricist because they emphasize observation and seek to remain with the
phenomena. They are critical of systematic approaches to nature that begin
with an abstract idea or postulate. Instead, they begin with what is seen and
sensed. But they depart from mainstream empiricism in two crucial ways.
On the one hand, like the rationalists, their aim is to arrive at the necessary,
the idea, within the phenomenon. On the other hand, and like the idealists,
they recognize the creative role of the knower.
However, it is important to emphasize that this group of thinkers was not
simply synthesizing various aspects from different philosophical schools or
methodologies. Rather, they developed a coherent approach to the study of
nature, one which does not simply map onto more well-known approaches.
Furthermore, their approach was not only theoretically articulated, but was
also developed through their practice. In fact, their practice often influenced
and transformed their theory. By practice I mean both the study of nature
and their practice as literary critics, artists, appreciators of art, travelers, and
explorers. It would be no exaggeration to describe the romantic empiricists
as thinkers for whom theory and practice were intertwined and deeply
aligned: the one realized in and shaped by the other. Who, then, were the ro-
mantic empiricists?
world and the human place within it.1 This period of critical engagement,
which reached its apex in Germany, remains singular in both its breadth
and its philosophical rigor. It was a time when philosophers, scientists, and
artists worked together to investigate the metaphysical and epistemological
dimensions of the human relation to the natural world and determine their
ethical implications.
While this focus on the study of nature, and the human place within it,
was defining for German philosophies at the turn of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the methodologies they employed were not always aligned and, in
some instances, radically differed. Friedrich Schelling, for instance, sought
to “construct” nature on the basis of a priori principles, arguing (on system-
atic grounds) that human culture develops out of nature.2 This contrasts
with philosophies that questioned the goal of systematicity and the method-
ology of construction, which are perhaps epitomized in Friedrich Schlegel’s
statement that “it is equally deadly for the spirit to have a system and not
to have one” (KFSA 2, 173, no. 53). And it also contrasts with nonspecula-
tive approaches to nature and mind (culture), which emphasize experience
and observation and seek to understand both nature and culture in light of a
larger (historical) context—as in the work of Herder.
The romantic empiricists, as the name suggests, belonged to the latter
group, and the four figures that this book investigates are Kant (1724–1804),
especially his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), Goethe (1749–1832),
Herder (1744–1803), and Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859). The cen-
tral claim of Romantic Empiricism: Nature, Art, and Ecology from Herder to
Humboldt is that these thinkers developed a philosophically sophisticated
empiricist approach to the natural world by working together—sometimes as
rivals, but more often than not as teachers and collaborators. While Herder,
Goethe, and Humboldt clearly belong to the romantic empiricist tradition,
Kant’s place within it is more ambivalent, as I will discuss shortly.
Kant, Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt are widely regarded as major fig-
ures of the late Enlightenment, Weimar classicism, and romanticism.3
While Kant continues to be considered the most important philosopher of
the modern period, over the last few years Herder has received ample at-
tention, leading Marion Heinz to describe the current interest as a “Herder
Renaissance.”4 Similarly, Goethe’s philosophical significance has been re-
cently highlighted—especially by Eckart Förster5—while Andrea Wulf ’s
2015 book on Humboldt is just one example of the works that have drawn
attention to his important philosophical legacy.6
4 Romantic Empiricism
However, these figures are rarely studied side by side and seldom consid-
ered as participating in one philosophical project.7 In fact, the opposite is
usually the case: Kant and Herder are often depicted as rivals,8 while Kant
and Goethe are interpreted as contemporaries who misunderstood one
another’s work.9 Even in the case of Herder and Goethe, who cofounded the
Sturm und Drang movement in the late 1760s, little attention has been paid
to connections in their later writings or the similarities in their approaches
to the natural world.10 In turn, while Humboldt’s link to the others is always
acknowledged, it is seldom comprehensively discussed.11
Why might this be the case? For one, the idea that an empiricist tradi-
tion emerged in the midst of the era of German idealism sounds, at least at
first hearing, odd. Furthermore, although there has been a significant rise
of interest in the philosophies of nature that emerged in Germany around
1800, little work has focused on the methodologies that underpin these philo
sophies. Precisely because we assume that all philosophies in Germany at the
turn of the nineteenth century were idealist in some way, we do not make the
effort to examine their methodologies or consider how their methodologies
may have varied.12
Furthermore, in the history of philosophy, as well as in German studies,
romanticism is typically identified with the Jena romantics—the Schlegel
brothers, their journal, the Athenäum, as well as the regular contributors
to their journal, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich von Hardenberg
(Novalis), Ludwig Tieck, and (sometimes also) Schelling. Thinkers such as
Herder and Goethe—who certainly influenced the romantics13—are usually
regarded as participating in different, sometimes opposed, traditions. This
is above all the case with Goethe, the great representative of Weimar classi-
cism.14 Accordingly, the idea that Goethe—not to mention Kant, Herder, and
Humboldt—was a romantic simply sounds wrong.15
While from one perspective, the identification of romanticism with Jena
romanticism is perfectly acceptable, from another, it is limiting and unneces-
sary. For it implies, first, that romanticism is a historical moment that is long
past and, second, that the ideas that motivated romanticism were only em-
bodied by these few thinkers. Neither claim can withstand scrutiny.
Let us consider Friedrich Schlegel’s famous definition of “the romantic
imperative,” as articulated in Athenäums-Fragment 586. Schlegel writes: “All
nature and science should become art—[and all] art should become nature
and science” (KFSA 16, 134, no. 586). In formulating the romantic impera-
tive, Schlegel was clearly inspired by Herder and Goethe (and perhaps also
Introduction 5
However, even in that work, Kant makes statements that appear to challenge
the view—which I have identified with romantic empiricism—that art has
the power to transform and enrich knowledge. After all, Kant agrees with
Edmund Burke’s distinction between aesthetic pleasure and cognition. Both
argue (for different reasons) that aesthetic pleasure is noncognitive, and thus
cannot contribute to our understanding of nature. To this end, they contend
that as soon as we have cognitive insight into nature (as a botanist does in re-
lation to a plant), the experience of aesthetic pleasure disappears.
Despite Kant’s ambivalence toward romantic empiricism, in the third
Critique he takes a significant step in that direction. In so doing, he
explicates the reasons behind this step as well as the challenges of taking it.
He articulates these challenges in both methodological and epistemolog-
ical terms, homing in on a problem that Buffon had formulated some two
decades earlier.
In 1766, Buffon explained that a key problem facing the student of nature
lies in a dissonance between our cognitive faculties and the processes of na-
ture. While our intellect proceeds linearly—we apprehend one object, then
another, then another, and so on—nature does not. Rather, Buffon writes,
nature “does not take a single step except to go in all directions; in marching
forward, she extends to the sides and above.”17 We see objects as separate and
grasp relations along a linear causal nexus: one thing moves and causes an-
other to move. In nature, however, objects are interrelated, and relations are
manifold and multidirectional. How are we to overcome this epistemological
incommensurability?
Kant rearticulated this difficulty in the third Critique, arguing that the
reason we fail to understand living beings has to do with the character of
our cognitive faculties. The fact that we proceed from one object to the next
means that we can only grasp a certain kind of whole, a whole that is made up
of separate, preexisting parts. A clock is one such whole: the bits and pieces
that make up the clock are produced separately. When they are put together,
we have a clock.
Living beings are not wholes of this sort. Their various parts—the heart,
lungs, veins, and so on—do not emerge separately from one another. Rather,
they emerge in relation to one another and as parts of a living body. This
reveals a certain circularity in the structure of living beings: the parts exist
only through the whole and the whole exists only through the parts. And
this circularity, Kant concludes, makes it impossible for us to properly
grasp them.
8 Romantic Empiricism
In this way Kant (and Buffon before him) explicated how and why our
cognitive tendencies lead us to apprehend the world as composed of separate
objects, whose relations are exclusively linear. He also explicated the kind of
unity that we appear to be incapable of grasping. In so doing, Kant laid out
the epistemological and methodological challenges facing any attempt to
grasp nature as an integrated unity—challenges that the romantic empiricists
sought to overcome.
But Kant did more than simply point to challenges. By placing “beauty and
biology” side by side in the third Critique, he drew a connection between aes-
thetic experience and the study of nature, locating this connection in the re-
flecting form of judgment.18 The implication is that the same form of judging
that we employ in our aesthetic encounter with nature is also at work in our
cognitive encounter with nature. When reflecting judgment turns to under-
standing the natural world, however, it does not result in pleasure (as it does
in aesthetic experience). Still, like the noncognitive (i.e., aesthetic) form of
reflecting judgment, it does not proceed from the a priori concept or prin-
ciple to the observed object. Rather, as Kant puts it, reflecting judgment seeks
to “find the universal for the particular” (AA 20, 211). Its procedure, then,
embodies the bottom-up approach to the study of nature that underlies ro-
mantic empiricism.
Importantly, when applied to the study of nature, reflecting judgment
becomes analogical. This is because it proceeds on the assumption that na-
ture is a work of art, or, as Kant famously puts it, it proceeds by regarding
nature as if it were a work of art. In other words, reflecting judgment (in this
mode) compares nature with art, and in so doing, sees the one in and through
the other, sees nature as art. Only in this way, Kant contends, can we begin to
order the natural world (arrive at a “system” of nature) and grasp the struc-
ture of organized beings.
Underlying Kant’s turn to the analogy between nature and art is the view
that we can discern organization in nature only if we conceive of nature in
terms of forms. After all, the work of comparing requires forms to com-
pare, forms through which we can discern similarities and distinctions, and
thereby draw connections. Furthermore, by regarding organized beings as
forms in the way that artworks are forms (expressions of a coherent unity), we
are able to see them not as outcomes of contingently connected parts, but as
integrated unities, which—like a piece of music—are inseparable from their
various parts (tone, rhythm, tempo, etc.) but which are also irreducible to
these parts (a piece of music is not reducible to any of its tones, for instance).
Introduction 9
The different parts, in turn, are only meaningful within this unity—as parts
of this whole. Accordingly, the analogy with art enables a new way of seeing
nature—a way that aims to overcome the challenges that Kant (and Buffon)
had outlined.
While Kant’s move to develop a methodology based on analogy and form
was hesitant and one that he did not clearly embrace,19 his contemporaries—
schooled in the works of Buffon and others in the French tradition—had
already for some time been concerned with the questions that prompted
Kant’s introduction of reflective judgment: how can we develop a natural
history that takes account of nature’s diversity without overlooking the sig-
nificant relations between various beings? And how can we grasp organiza-
tion within nature?
In the 1770s, Herder came to the same conclusions that Kant would later
reach: it is only via analogy that we can discern unity in diversity, because
it is only by seeing one thing through another that we can see how it is both
like and unlike the other. Herder, however, took his argument on the role of
analogy further, claiming that cognition itself is analogical. Specifically, he
contends that the relationship between our various cognitive faculties (sensi-
bility, imagination, and understanding) is analogical: they not only work to-
gether, but also intimate, anticipate, and approximate one another. His claim
is that it is only if what is given to sensibility implicitly contains the image of
the imagination, and it is only if the image similarly implicitly contains the
concept of the understanding, that we can properly grasp what is before us
and develop a concept that is not separate from the image or the phenom-
enon—a concrete concept as opposed to an empty universal.
Herder designated this concrete concept Hauptform (main form) and
argued that it is only through the Hauptform that we can discern relations
within nature across vast geographical and historical distances. Importantly,
Herder did not regard the Hauptform as a Kantian regulative ideal, because
it is realized in the world—even if never completely—and it is through its
material expressions that we can grasp it. The question then is, how do we
grasp the Hauptform? Herder’s answer, as we will see, was both illuminating
and surprising—and, like Kant’s turn to art and analogy, points to the signifi-
cance of artistic capacities and devices in the study of the natural world.
10 Romantic Empiricism
Like Herder and Kant, Goethe sought to discern unity in nature through
a comparative approach—one that takes account of both similarities and
differences, and that aims to grasp the form of living beings in relation to
their larger context. Underlying Goethe’s interest in the notion of form was
the view that form is neither a static object nor something that can be simply
seen with the physical eyes. Rather, as Goethe came to formulate it, it must
be discerned with the mind’s eye, or what he called “intuitive judgment
[anschauende Urteilskraft].”
Goethe first articulated the idea of intuitive judgment in response to Kant’s
claim in the third Critique that our discursive form of understanding cannot
proceed intuitively. In contrast, Goethe remarked that he had practiced in-
tuitive judgment throughout his work, both in his comparative anatomy and
in his study of plant metamorphosis. It is through intuitive judgment that he
was able to discover the intermaxillary bone, and it is through intuitive judg-
ment that he grasped the internal coherence of the plant. What makes a judg-
ment intuitive, Goethe explains, is its ability to discern how the sequences
within nature are part of one process of formation. In other words, unlike our
usual procedures of knowing, intuitive judgment can see how what appears
as a merely sequential relation is not only sequential, but is also an expres-
sion of other, nonsequential relations. A plant, for instance, does not develop
only sequentially, from seed to fruit (and finally to seed), but also simultane-
ously, and in two senses: its various parts grow at the same time (as the stem
grows, so do the leaves), and the parts emerge in relation to one another. Thus
although the fruit is the last stage of development, all preceding stages are
working toward achieving it. Accordingly, one can say that the fruit is “al-
ready” in the seed, in the flower, in the root, and that the relation between
fruit and flower, fruit and seed, or fruit and root is not purely sequential, but
also nonsequential and nonlinear.
This nonsequential unity can be discerned, Goethe contends, by
observing the forms of the plant’s different parts—the way in which each of
the plant’s parts expresses its place within the whole and thus its relation to
what precedes and what follows it. This is particularly evident in transitional
stages of development, where aspects of the preceding stage are “carried for-
ward” into the following stage, or vice versa, where aspects of the following
stages are anticipated by what preceded them. For instance, the first petals
that appear might be green—recalling the green of the stem leaves—or leaves
can become increasingly complex on some trees, approaching the shape of a
Introduction 11
branch. By assuming the form of what precedes or follows them, these parts
offer clues to the observer, clues for how to look and what to look for.
While in his early works Goethe had simply spoken of observation, fol-
lowing his encounter with philosophy—in particular his reading of Kant and
friendship with Schiller—he developed a nuanced epistemology and meth-
odology, which was based on his distinction between, as he put it, “seeing
and seeing”—that is, the difference between seeing with the physical eye
alone, and seeing with the physical eye and the mind’s eye simultaneously. To
achieve this second form of seeing, however, requires education. More spe-
cifically, and as I will argue, it requires an aesthetic education in both senses
of the term: an education of our aesthetic or perceptual capacities and an
education in the arts. Intuitive judgment can only be achieved through this
education.
This means that we are not born with intuitive judgment. After all, as
Buffon and Kant had noted, our natural tendency is to judge things in a non-
intuitive way—to regard parts or objects as separate and static, and to see
their relations in purely linear terms. Intuitive judgment is thus a task that
stands before us, and it is our responsibility as knowers to educate our cogni-
tive capacities so that they become intuitive. This responsibility, as I argue, is
not only epistemic, but also ethical, in that how we know—the capacities and
devices we invoke in our attempt to investigate a phenomenon—determines
how the phenomenon will appear to us. In turn, the manner in which the
phenomenon appears—whether it is appears as a machine or as a sentient
being—will inform our behaviors and actions toward it.
Among the four figures, Humboldt is the thinker who is most clearly iden-
tifiable as a “scientist.”20 He is perhaps also the thinker who most vehemently
argued for the significance of art and aesthetic experience. He contended,
for instance, that in order to grasp living beings in their context, the student
of nature must learn to regard nature as a landscape painter. Furthermore,
Humboldt devoted part of the second volume of his five-volume Kosmos
(Cosmos) (1845–62) to tracing the development of science in relation to the
arts. In this way, he both preceded recent efforts in the history of science to
demonstrate the significance of the arts (widely construed) for the develop-
ment of natural-scientific disciplines and practices and offered one of the
first integrated histories of knowledge.21 In turn, although among the four
Goethe is the only figure recognized as an artist, Humboldt was, in a signifi-
cant sense, also an artist.
12 Romantic Empiricism
14 Romantic Empiricism
Still, the third Critique might seem like a strange first station in our
story. It was published some five years after the appearance of the first two
volumes of Herder’s Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humanity [Ideen zur
Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit] (1784–1791), and in the same
year as Goethe’s essay Metamorphosis of Plants [Versuch die Metamorphose
der Pflanzen zu erklären]. Furthermore, it is a hesitant text. This wavering is
perhaps most evident in Kant’s claims regarding the scientific status of tele-
ological judgment. On the one hand, he claims that the reality of organized
beings demands that we “subordinate” all mechanism to teleology, and that
teleological judgment is “indispensable” for scientific inquiry (AA 5, 379;
398). On the other hand, he describes teleological judgment as “problem-
atic,” and (just after emphasizing its indispensability) concludes that that we
are under an “obligation” to subordinate teleological judging to judging ac-
cording to mechanical principles (AA 5, 370; 415).
However, it is precisely in this hesitation, in Kant’s small steps forward,
followed by sudden retreats, that both the significance and the radicality
of romantic empiricism becomes evident. For Kant’s hesitation evinces
the challenges facing any attempt to develop a bottom-up account of
nature, which aims to arrive at more than the mere collection of unrelated
data. In the third Critique Kant’s goal was to achieve “interconnected em-
pirical laws,” “interconnected experience,” and an “empirical system of
nature” (AA 20, 204; 217; 215; see also AA 5, 183). Thus, in contrast to
his earlier writings, where the aim was to legislate necessity onto nature,
the third Critique seeks to “find” necessity in nature: discern unity in
the multiplicity, integrity in diversity, coherence in empirical phenomena
(AA 5, 179).
Kant’s hesitations, then, should not throw us off but provide us with illu-
minating insights into the challenges facing the project, and into how it can
potentially succeed. While Kant makes some important headway in this di-
rection, he refuses to take the final step. In his wavering, he stops short of
developing a clear stance regarding the place of organization in nature, and
perhaps more poignantly, of articulating the scientific status of teleological
judging. His contemporaries, by contrast, do take the crucial step of devel-
oping a science inspired and underpinned by the methodologies and insights
of aesthetic forms of judgment. Accordingly, in considering Kant’s relation-
ship to and differences from Herder, Goethe, and Humboldt, we will be
better able to understand how and why they took that final step—and assess
their success in taking it.
Setting the Stage 15
What does the analogy with art imply? It implies, first, intention, purpose,
or idea. A work of art is brought forth with a purpose or idea in mind. This
idea grants it unity. Thus to ask readers to conceive of nature as art is to ask
them to regard nature as if it were unified through an idea or intention.
But this is not all, and, as I will argue, it is not the crucial element in the
analogy between nature and art. For a work of art is a composition. This
means, first, that each of its parts is essential to the whole. We cannot take a
chord out of a symphony and expect that it will be the same symphony. Each
part, in other words, is necessary. And its necessity is connected to its dis-
tinctiveness. We cannot replace one chord with another. Accordingly, each
chord—in its singularity—plays an essential role. This shows that a work of
art involves a certain kind of togetherness of its parts: each, in its distinctive
way, works with all the other parts to bring about the whole.
The work of art is thus the outcome of its distinctive, conjoined, and nec-
essary parts. But the reverse is also true. For although the parts make up the
whole, they do not exist outside of or prior to the whole. A chord in a sym-
phony assumes a distinctive meaning in relation to the (idea of the) whole, as
part of the whole. The same holds for colors or shapes in a painting. Just as the
painting depends on its specific colors, lines, shapes, so also these colors, lines,
and shapes depend on the whole painting. This dependence is both metaphys-
ical and epistemological: the parts assume a specific meaning in light of (the
idea of) the whole; and they can only be understood in relation to the whole.
Following his claim that nature should be regarded as art, Kant goes on to
say that this idea gives us a “maxim by which to observe nature and to hold
its forms together [die Formen der Natur damit zusammen zu halten]” (AA
20, 205). The implication is that by regarding nature as art, the crucial aim is
not so much to see nature as the realization of an intention or purpose, but
rather to hold the forms of nature together. This, after all, is what is required
for grasping a work of art.
When we view a painting, we do not consider the different parts that make
up the whole in isolation (the colors, shapes, lines, brushstrokes, etc.). Rather,
we see them in their relation to one another; we hold them together, and
thereby discern how each part—in its distinctive way—works with the other
parts and contributes to the whole. Similarly, when we listen to a piece of
music, we do not hear one sound, irrespective of what precedes or follows it.
Rather, again, we hold the parts together. The listener hears every part as part
of the whole. Each phrase is heard both in its distinctiveness and in its rela-
tion to the whole. Otherwise, the phrase would be mere noise. Accordingly,
Setting the Stage 19
the listener must hear every phrase as an expression of the whole, which
means that in listening to the particular, one is also listening to the whole—
beholding the whole. Put differently, the listener must hear the whole in every
one of the piece’s phrases. The whole thus emerges in and through the parts,
even though it underpins the parts and their relations. It does not exist be-
yond or outside of them, but only in them and their relations.
The same, Kant suggests, is necessary for grasping nature as a unity. To
discern nature’s unity requires us to consider the different parts of nature not
only as individuals, but also as members of an integrated whole to which they
contribute in distinctive but related ways. It also requires us to see how the
whole (nature) emerges in and through the parts. In other words, it demands
that we regard the different parts of nature as expressions of nature’s unity.
By invoking an analogy between nature and art, then, Kant is asking his
readers to see nature differently—to see nature’s parts as expressions of unity,
and to see this unity as emerging in and expressed through the various parts.
In viewing nature as art, we seek to discern the ways that different beings
exhibit a structural similarity, and how this similarity points to an integrity
in nature. This implies that what we are looking for are not mere parts, so to
speak, but expressions or forms—parts that manifest the whole through their
distinctive form, in the same way that a phrase in a piece of music expresses
and points to the whole work.
This, I suggest, is the crucial element of the analogy between nature and
art in the First Introduction. And while this analogy is not prominent in
the published Introduction, the emphasis on form and structure remains
throughout the Critique of Teleological Judgment. In the opening section
(Section 61), for instance, Kant invokes the “structure [Bau] of a bird” in
order to introduce the reader to teleological judgment. For, he explains, it
is the bird’s structure that cannot be grasped through efficient causality and
mechanical principles. He writes:
if one adduces, e.g., the structure of a bird, the hollowness of its bones,
the placement of its wings for movement and of its tail for steering, etc.,
one says that given the mere nexus effectivus in nature, without the help
of a special kind of causality, namely that of ends (nexus finalis), this is all
in the highest degree contingent [zufällig]: i.e., that nature, considered as
mere mechanism, could have formed itself in a thousand different ways
without hitting precisely upon the unity in accordance with such a rule,
and that it is therefore only outside the concept of nature, not within it,
20 Romantic Empiricism
that one would have even the least ground a priori for hoping to find such
a principle. (AA 5, 360)
Kant’s claim is that from the perspective of efficient causality and mechan-
ical physics, the structure of the bird appears “contingent.” In other words,
from that perspective there is nothing necessary about the different parts
that make up the bird. In the Introduction, Kant had articulated the problem
that the third Critique aims to address in terms of contingency in nature, and
the need to make the contingent appear lawful—i.e., necessary (AA 5, 176).
While there he did not mention efficient causality and mechanism, but fo-
cused on the a priori laws of the understanding, here he is pointing to “certain
things” that appear contingent from the perspective of mechanical physics
and efficient causality.3 Furthermore, while in the Introduction, Kant iden-
tifies contingency with the fact that the a priori laws of the understanding
cannot legislate for every empirical law, here he is specifically speaking of
mechanism and efficient causality. The question is: what is the precise rela-
tionship between the a priori laws of the understanding and mechanism and
efficient causality?
This question has been hotly debated in the literature, and for good
reason. On the one hand, Kant identifies efficient causality and mechanism
with the a priori laws of the understanding at various points in the text.
In Section 70, for instance, he notes that the mechanical principle “is pro-
vided . . . by the mere understanding a priori.” In Section 71, he states that
mechanism follows the order of the “sensible world,” which is furnished
by the transcendental structures of experience (AA 5, 389).4 On the other
hand, mechanism and efficient causality appear to be far more determining,
far more concrete, than the a priori laws of the understanding.5 While this
may be the case, Kant’s claims imply that mechanism and efficient causality
go hand in hand with the a priori laws of the understanding, such that even
if they do tell us a lot more about empirical nature, their foundation is—ul-
timately—a priori.
Nevertheless, even if a priori and empirical laws (i.e., the laws of the un-
derstanding and mechanism and efficient causality, respectively) work hand
in hand, they remain insufficient to explain all aspects of nature, in that they
leave certain parts of nature underdetermined or contingent. This brings us
back to Kant’s claim that the bird’s structure has been left underdetermined,
not simply by the laws of the understanding, but also by efficient causality
Setting the Stage 21
and the mechanical laws of motion. What does this tell us about the meaning
of contingency?
It tells us that it is the structure of the bird that is contingent. In other words,
it points us to the unity between the various parts of the bird—its tail, the
placement of its wings, the hollowness of its bones, and so on—and claims
that, from the perspective of efficient causality and mechanism, this unity is
highly unlikely. From that perspective, the specific parts of the bird and their
relations appear entirely accidental. There is nothing necessary about these
particular parts, or about their relationship. In the place of the specific bone
structure, or the tail, or the wings, something else—entirely different—could
have emerged. Ultimately, then, Kant’s claim is that if we consider the bird’s
structure according to efficient causality and the laws of mechanics, we find
nothing necessary in either these parts, or in their relation and specific com-
bination, i.e., in the whole. They could have been otherwise.
However, to simply state that this combination is highly unlikely does not
tell us much about the bird—its structure, its parts, their various functions
and relations, its health and well-being, its connection to other beings, its
connection to its context, and so on. Thus, while regarding it as “contingent”
may be appropriate from one perspective (that of general mechanics), it is
inappropriate from another perspective: the perspective that seeks to order
and classify nature. If our goal, in other words, is to discern relations between
nature’s parts, see connections between forms, then efficient causality and
mechanism are of no use.
This is precisely where reflecting judgment becomes crucial. By seeing
the bird as a work of art, reflecting judgment considers the bird’s various
parts as expressions of an integrated unity. From this perspective, they ap-
pear interconnected, with each part playing a distinctive role in the bird as
a whole. The hollowness of the bird’s bones, the specific placement of its
wings, its feathers, its size and overall structure, all appear to be variations
on a theme, parts of one whole. In other words, when considered in light of
the whole, the hollowness of the bird’s bones appears to be essential, just like
its wings—both of which clearly go hand in hand. As such, the various parts,
and their placement, no longer appear contingent or arbitrary. Rather, they
appear to be working together to enable the bird to achieve flight. In this
way, reflecting judgment begins to discern a necessity in the parts, to regard
them not as accidental, but as essential, to the bird. (It is as if the bird has
been purposively constructed to achieve the end of flight.)
22 Romantic Empiricism
teleological judgment is rightly drawn into our research into nature, at least
problematically, but only in order to bring it under principles of observa-
tion and research in analogy with causality according to ends, without pre-
suming thereby to explain it. (AA 5, 360)
Setting the Stage 23
there be some common ground in order for us to regard the one as a symbol
of the other? Kant’s answer is yes, but his aim is to draw out a form of sym-
bolic representation that has—thus far—been largely ignored. For, as he
explains, “between a despotic state and a handmill there is . . . no simi-
larity” (AA 5, 352). What he means is that there are no shared material
properties between the two: there is nothing in their material makeup that
should lead us to see the one (the hand mill) as a symbol of the other (the
despotic state).
This property-based use of analogy is, of course, the more widely known
form of analogical reflection, and the one that Kant had discussed in his
lectures on logic. In that context, he describes analogy as a form of a poste-
riori knowledge not unlike induction. Induction proceeds by determining
universal characteristics and categorizing particulars under these universal
concepts. Analogical inference, by contrast, proceeds from particular to total
similarity between two things. While inductive inference is based on the prin-
ciple of universalization such that what belongs to many things of the genus
also belongs to the remaining ones, analogical inference is based on the prin-
ciple of specification: it concerns the attributes or properties of two different
entities. In the “Dohnau Logic” (1780s), he puts it in the following way:
I infer according to analogy thus: when two or more things from a genus
agree with one another in as many marks as we have been able to discover,
I infer that they will also agree with one another in the remaining marks
that I have not been able to discover. . . . I infer, then, from some marks to all
the other ones, that they will also agree in these. (AA 24, 772)
In the “Hechsel Logic,” he provides the example of the earth and moon to
explicate this kind of analogy. They are the same kind of entity (i.e., celestial
bodies), and they share several features (e.g., they have valleys and moun-
tains). On this basis, we can go on to infer that they share additional features,
e.g., the earth has water, so the moon may also have water. Of course, this
analogy turned out to be wrong—and this is why analogical inference must
always stand to be corrected.7
As presented in the lectures on logic, then, analogy involves comparing
the attributes or properties of different entities and, on the basis of shared
properties, making an inference to unknown properties. It is this concep-
tion of analogy that Kant wants to depart from in the third Critique when he
Setting the Stage 25
claims that there is “no similarity” between the despotic state and the hand
mill. The question then is: on what basis can we draw an analogy?
Kant’s claim is that the similarity has to do with the way we reflect on them.
When we reflect on a constitutional monarchy, we proceed from the whole to
the part, and this permits us to appeal to the symbol of an organized being. In
the case of an individually governed monarchy, by contrast, we proceed from
part to whole, and thereby appeal to the mechanical metaphor of a hand mill.
The symbolic relation, then, is connected to our mode of reflection.
This, Kant contends, is also the case for the relation between beauty and
morality. The symbolic relation between them does not rest on shared prop-
erties; rather, it has to do with our manner of reflecting on them. While our
experience of beauty involves harmony between understanding and imag-
ination, our experience of morality involves harmony between reason and
will. On the basis of the harmony in our experience of the two, Kant argues,
we discern a symbolic relation between beauty and morality—such that
beauty is a symbol of morality.8
While this makes some sense, it does not fully account for why we should
reflect on the objects in the same way. After all, there is a reason behind my
proceeding in a particular way, a reason that has to do with a structural simi-
larity between the despotic state and the hand mill, on the one hand, and the
constitutional monarchy and the animate body, on the other. Accordingly,
although they do not share material properties (as the earth and the moon
do), they do share a crucial structural similarity, and it is this similarity that
permits us to reflect on them in a particular way—and thereby draw an
analogy.
What this means is that symbolic presentation must be connected to
the objects and their respective structures—if not to their material proper-
ties.9 On this basis, Kant goes on to write that analogy is a “carrying over
[Übertragung] of reflection on one object of intuition to another, quite dif-
ferent concept, to which perhaps no intuition can ever directly correspond”
(AA 5, 352–53). In other words, analogy involves “carrying over” the rules
of (reflecting on) one object onto another (perhaps nonpresentable) object,
with the goal of presenting the second object. The analogy is thus based on
the rules of reflecting. However, these rules are connected to the (structure
of the) objects. By applying the rules of reflecting on one object onto another
(lesser known, or perhaps nonpresentable) object, we gain (further) insight
into the second object.
26 Romantic Empiricism
Kaga, 474
Kaiser Von Japan (syn. of Emperor of Japan), 443
Kaiser Wilhelm, 474
Kalm, Peter, quoted, 20
Kampeska, 474
Kanawha, 474
Karl Koch’s Königs Pflaume (syn. of Koch Königspflaume), 477
Kazan, 474
Keindl’s Violette Königspflaume (syn. of Royale Violette de
Keindl), 535
Keindt, 475
Keindt’s Frühdamascene (syn. of Keindt), 475
Keindt’s Violette Königspflaume (syn. of Royale Violette de
Keindl), 535
Keith, 475
Keiser (syn. of Hulings), 245
Kelley, 475
Kelbalan, 475
Kelmyro, 475
Kelroba, 475
Kelsaw, 475
Kelsey, 258
Kelsey No. 1 (syn. of Kelmyro), 475
Kelsey No. 2 (syn. of Kelroba), 475
Kelsey No. 3 (syn. of Kelbalan), 475
Kelsey Prune, 475
Kelsey’s Japan (syn. of Kelsey), 258
Kelso, 475
Kenellan, 475
Kennedy Red, 475
Kensington Prune (syn. of Holland), 462
Kent, 475
Kentish Bush (syn. of Kent), 476
Kentish Diamond (syn. of Diamond), 191
Kenyon, 476
Kerr, 259
Kerr, J. W., life of, 349-350;
quoted, 98, 115, 118, 171, 422, 495, 508;
var. orig. by, 349, 418, 446, 492, 501, 559, 562
Kester Green Gage, 476
Kester’s Green Gage (syn. of Kester Green Gage), 476
Kester’s Yellow Gage (syn. of Kester Yellow Gage), 476
Kester Yellow Gage, 476
Keyser, var. orig. by, 245
Keyser’s Plum (syn. of Hulings), 245
Kibitzenei (syn. of Small Reine Claude), 347
Kicab, 476
Kickapoo, 476
Kieth (syn. of Keith), 475
Kilpatrick, E. W., var. orig. by, 485
King, 476
King Damson, 259
King of Damsons (syn. of King Damson), 259
King of Plums (syn. of Golden Drop, 229; of Reine Claude, 327)
King of Plums (syn. of King), 476
Kings Plum (syn. of Royal), 534
Kings Plum of Tours (syn. of Royal Tours), 332
Kingston (syn. of Diamond), 191
Kingston, 476
Kirchhof’s Pflaume (syn. of Capitaine Kirchhof), 414
Kirke, 260
Kirke (syn. of Kirke), 260
Kirke’s; Kirke’s Pflaume; Kirke’s Plum; Kirk’s Plum (syns. of
Kirke), 260
Kirke’s Stoneless (syn. of Stoneless), 353
Kirschpflaume (syn. of Myrobalan), 290
Kladrauer Pflaume (syn. of Large Sugar Prune), 480
Klein Weisse Damassener Pflaume (syn. of Small White
Damson), 544
Kleine Blaue Frühzwetsche, 476
Kleine Blaue Julians Pflaume (syn. of Damson, 186; of Saint
Julien, 335)
Kleine Brisette (syn. of Late Mirabelle), 263
Kleine Dauphine (syn. of Small Reine Claude), 347
Kleine Gelbe Eierpflaume, 476
Kleine gelbe Früh Pflaume (syn. of Early Yellow), 203
Kleine Grüne Reine-Claude (syn. of Small Reine Claude), 347
Kleine Kirschpflaume, 476
Kleine Kirschpflaume (syn. of Myrobalan), 290
Kleine Kirsch Pflaume (syn. of Rote Mirabelle), 533
Kleine Mirabelle (syn. of Mirabelle), 284
Kleine Reine-Claude (syn. of Small Reine Claude), 347
Kleine Rosspauke, 476
Kleine Weisse Damascene (syn. of Small Reine Claude, 347; of
Small White Damson, 544)
Kleine Zucker Zwetsche (syn. of Petite Quetsche Sucrée), 515
Kleinste Mirabelle (syn. of Mirabelle), 284
Klondike, 477
Klondyke (syn. of Klondike), 477
Knevett’s Late Orleans (syn. of Nelson), 503
Kniedsen’s Peach (syn. of Knudson), 477
Knight, var. orig. by, 248, 436, 479
Knight’s Green Drying, Large Drying or Large Green Drying
(syns. of Large Green Drying), 479
Knight’s No. 6 (syn. of Ickworth), 247
Knudson, 477
Knudson, H., var. orig. by, 182, 422, 460, 462, 463, 477, 496
Knudson’s Peach (syn. of Knudson), 477
Koa, 477
Koa’s Imperial (syn. of Koa), 477
Kober, 477
Koch, quoted, 17, 18
Koch’s Gelbe Spät Damascene (syn. of Koch Späte
Damascene), 477
Koch Königspflaume, 477
Koch Späte Damascene, 477
Koch’s Späte Aprikosen; Koch’s Späte Damascene (syns. of
Koch Späte Damascene), 477
Koepher, 477
Koetsche (syn. of German Prune), 219
Kohlenkamp, 477
Kohlenkamp, W., var. orig. by, 477
Kohlen Kamp (syn. of Kohlenkamp), 477
Königin Claudia or Klaudia (syns. of Reine Claude), 327
Königin der Mirabellen (syn. of Reine des Mirabelles), 530
Königin Mutter (syn. of Queen Mother), 522
Königin Victoria (syn. of Victoria), 363
Königin von Tours (syn. of Royal Tours), 332
Königliche Grosse Pflaume; Königliche Pflaume von Tours;
Königs Pflaume; Königspflaume von Tours (syns. of Royal
Tours), 332
Königspflaume (syn. of Early Orleans), 198
Königspflaume (syn. of Royal), 534
Königs Pflaume aus Paris; Königspflaume von Paris (syns. of
Perdrigon Tardif), 515
Königspflaume Frühe (syn. of Royale Hâtive de Liegel), 535
Königs Pflaume von Maugerou (syn. of Maugeron), 492
Königspflaume von Trapp’s (syn. of Trapps Königspflaume), 555
König Zwetsche (syn. of Trauttenberg), 555
Kook, var. orig. by, 432
Kook’s Gelbe Diaprée; Kooks Neue Diapre (syn. of Diaprée
Nouvelle De Kook), 432
Kopp, 477
Korai, 478
K. P. 193 (syn. of Purple-leaved Hybrid), 521
Krasnaya osimaya (syn. of Red Winter), 529
Krasnaya Skorospielkaya (syn. of Early Red), 440
Kreger (syn. of Danish Damson), 428
Kreke (syn. of Damson), 186
Kreuters Zwetsche (syn. of Quetsche de Kreuter), 523
Krieche (syn. of Damson), 186
Krieke (syn. of Gemeiner Gelbe Spilling), 451
Kroh, P. H., var. orig. by, 316
Kroh (syn. of Poole Pride), 315
Kroos-Pruim, 478
Krueger (syn. of Danish Damson), 428
Kruger’s Seedling (syn. of Cruger Scarlet), 424
Kuchen Pflaume (syn. of Frankfort Peach), 447
Kume, 478