Today Professor Wu gave a talk, “The Discovery of Nature,” at the Friday philosophy forum of the Institute of Foreign Philosophy. Although the topic was something Professor Wu has always thought about, and I am already fairly familiar with it, it is quite rare to hear him speak at the Institute of Foreign Philosophy; especially with Liu Zhe, Wu Zengding, and Wu Fei all taking part in the questions, it was extremely interesting to listen to.
Professor Wu mentioned that “the discovery of nature” actually contains two “falls” of the concept of nature: first, nature as “nature, origin”; second, the emergence of “the natural world” as a special domain of beings (as opposed to human beings, spirit, and so on).
Why call such a discovery a “fall”? Obviously, this does not merely refer to two actual historical events; the falls in history must also have some kind of internal logic. Liu Zhe raised this question (he thought that, in Heideggerian style, “fall” might as well be called “forgetting”), and Professor Wu temporarily sidestepped the issue by invoking “the Greek miracle.”
If we want to probe the internal logic of fall or forgetting, we must first investigate what nature in the so-called original sense was before the fall, and then examine the possibilities contained in this original concept of nature, as well as why these possibilities were able to grow and thereby obscure the original meaning. Seen this way, the so-called Greek miracle should be understood as the historical soil in ancient Greece that made certain possibilities of the concept of nature more likely to flourish.
This concept of nature in the original sense is “self-emergence,” self-growth, the meaning of “self-so—” in Chinese.
But what is the difference between “self-emergence” and “a principle of motion and change inherent in itself”? From the perspective of modern people, or rather from the perspective after the concept of “nature” has already undergone its “fall,” these two phrases seem to mean the same thing: if something can grow on its own, is that not simply because its cause lies within itself?
Yet here, the crucial difference is precisely the insertion of the concept of “cause.” We always have to understand and imagine the changes in things through some causal chain; that is exactly what happens after the discovery of nature.
And in “The Mechanization of ‘Force’” I mentioned that the concept of “cause” was originally a legal term: a cause is what is pursued in the trial of a case. Moreover, from the very beginning, the concept of cause was closely tied to the image of a person who applies a push, something like an “external force.”
It was precisely the introduction of this thing that displaced the original concept of nature.
And nature as “self-emergence” is exactly what I recently have been extolling all along—that elusive, romantic, changeable, inexhaustible, self-talking “wild nature.” In other words, the original meaning of “nature” is precisely “anti-normative,” something that cannot be normalized. I think only in this way can we truly transcend Mill’s paradox of naturalism and establish a genuinely coherent environmental ethics—and such ethics is certainly not “normative ethics.” Mill first treated “return to nature” as some sort of normative demand, and then argued that “nature” cannot provide any “norms”; but what if nature was never supposed to provide norms in the first place, and is instead precisely “anti-normative”? What if environmental ethics is precisely about overturning, at the root, the entire modern approach of normative ethics? In environmental ethics, “nature” does not have normative significance, but only limiting significance, like Kant’s “thing-in-itself”; it is precisely in a negative, privative sense that it sets the boundaries of human capacities. “Respecting nature” does not mean respecting some system of norms; it means, rather, reverence for those things that exceed the human.
The key point is that the “self” in nature was originally the “self” of “doing things on one’s own authority”; “self-emergence” means that things pop up “on their own say-so,” uncontrollably, beyond expectation, acting on their own.
But the concept of “origin” completely changed the meaning of “nature”: this wild nature as indeterminacy was precisely transformed into rational nature as something graspable, and we introduced the concept of “cause,” originally an external force in the legal sphere, into our understanding of naturally “self-emerging” things. Here, the first fall of the concept of nature was completed, or rather, the first “anthropomorphization”: nature, this thing that acts on its own, was understood as a doer who acts on its own, a perpetrator. People began to inquire into nature’s “motives.”
The second fall of the concept of nature, that is, the formation of the concept of “natural things” as distinct from “artificial things,” is the second “anthropomorphization,” namely the understanding of natural things through an understanding of technical making (the four causes); but before that, nature had already undergone one anthropomorphization.
In China, this first fall of nature, that is, the first anthropomorphization of nature, is precisely embodied in the phrase “What Heaven commands is called nature.” Professor Wu Fei mentioned that although ancient China did not form the word “nature,” concepts such as “nature/disposition” probably correspond to the “nature” of ancient Greece. I agree with this view as well. So where does the concept of “nature/disposition” come from? It comes from the command of “Heaven.” Here “Heaven” is no longer merely a natural entity that “acts on its own,” but a personified thing that can be grasped as a commander.
This hints at another important condition for such anthropomorphization to occur: language and writing. If Heaven is merely acting on its own there, then even from some anthropomorphic perspective it remains elusive; old Heaven is capricious, and one can only obediently go along with it. But the solidifying power of writing makes it possible for elusive “willfulness” to be grasped as definite and fixed “command.” Since oracle-bone inscriptions, the Chinese have been continuously striving to grasp the unpredictable decree of Heaven. Yet the Chinese effort has never quite matched that of the Greeks, and this is in large part precisely because of the Greeks’ uniquely important invention: vowel alphabetic writing—whose capacity to solidify language was unprecedented.
That is to say, the complete narrative of “the discovery of nature,” or the complete interpretation of “the Greek miracle,” will involve at least three joints in the history of media: city-state life (especially the tradition of courtroom debate), alphabetic writing, and the environment of craft production.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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