Anticipating new materialisms through schelling’s speculative physics

Abstract

Nineteenth-century theories of nature were fiercely debated in philosophical circles. These debates emerged from a wider dispute between advocates of formalist theories of matter such as Kant’s and dynamic theories of matter inspired by Spinoza. The contributions that Friedrich Schelling’s Naturphilosophie has made to this debate have been overlooked. In the Naturphilosophie Schelling advances a framework he calls speculative physics, which argues that the most basic substrate of nature is not matter, but unlimited activity. I outline some of the key features of Schelling’s speculative physics in the context of new materialist philosophies, demonstrating their mutual entanglements. I argue that Schelling provides both conceptual antecedents to new materialisms and a resource upon which new materialisms may draw.