Back to the Darkest of All Things: Philosophical Lessons on the Dynamics of Matter and Ground, from Leibniz to Schelling (2021)
Carlos Zorrilla Piña (Author)
Mitchell, Andrew J. (Advisor)
Emory University
Mitchell, Andrew J.
Physical Details: 437
Language: English
This dissertation follows the evolution of the concepts of matter and metaphysical ground in the work of some of the most important thinkers of the tradition of ontological dynamics which originated in Classical German Philosophy. By ‘ontological dynamics’, what is meant are philosophical investigations whose conception of substance is given under the guise of force, and which therefore attempt to elucidate all existence in terms of the interplay of forces, and of the higher configurations for which these former provide the ground. From its beginning, the appeal to the notion of force in order to explain existence was motivated by the hope that it could provide the theoretical means for bridging the otherwise disparate poles of mind and matter. This would deliver philosophy from the threat of an irreconcilable substance dualism even while it grounded our cognitive approaches to the world around us. But the project of thematizing matter in dynamical terms and of thinking phenomenal appearances as grounded by substantial forces nonetheless led to questions concerning nature’s standing vis–à–vis the subject of knowledge, the status of space and time, the ultimate safeguard of natural regularity, the validity of metaphysical speculation, among others. In exploring this set of issues, the exponents of ontological dynamics on whom this dissertation focuses are Leibniz, Kant, Herder, Baader, and Schelling. In the course of the dissertation, each of these thinkers’ attempts to provide a dynamical conception of matter is closely examined, both for the sake of its own merits, as well as with a view to the incitation for further refinement which it prompted in subsequent thinkers. In this vein, Schelling’s conception is presented as the culmination of a painstaking process to articulate a philosophically sound conception of matter. This is because, banking on the lessons of all the thinkers which preceded him, Schelling for the first time managed to provide an explanation of how, thanks to the relations of its constitutive forces, matter can intrinsically produce the various forms under which it manifests. Through such a substantiation of matter’s capacity for intrinsic formation, Schelling accomplished what none of his predecessors had: to provide a philosophical account in which nature autonomously rises from the lowest possible kinds of existence unto even the summit of consciousness.
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