This blog post examines how Cartesian rationalism defined nature as an external entity, thereby reinforcing an anthropocentric worldview, and explores the significance of this ideology within contemporary environmental crisis discourse.
The contemporary environmental crisis is not only a matter of human survival but also a factor that threatens the humanistic values realized since the modern era. That is, it is a serious problem precisely because it can jeopardize ideologies like democracy and global citizenship—based on the values of freedom, human rights, and equality—by provoking new forms of dictatorship or imperialism under the pretext of ‘survival’. This environmental crisis emerges as a particularly significant theme within discourses surrounding ‘philosophical modernity’. This crisis is rooted in a worldview that fundamentally differentiates nature and humanity. Moreover, since this worldview itself stems from the philosophical revolution of modernity that brought human rational subjectivity to the forefront, it invites criticism that philosophical modernity bears the greatest responsibility within the context of intellectual history. However, philosophical modernity simultaneously possesses virtues that cannot be dismissed, leaving it as a dilemma that cannot be simply accepted or fundamentally rejected. This is because those sublime humanistic values were, above all, established through philosophical modernity, which championed human intellectual and practical autonomy.
It is a common understanding that philosophical modernity is constituted by the process of the rise and completion of Cartesianism. Within this system of thought, which argued the absolute certainty of the rational thinking subject as philosophy’s first principle, nature is defined as the fundamental other to the subject. It is perceived as an inferior existence, understood as a mere material substance devoid of any self-purpose or inner life—that is, as something “extended in length, breadth, and depth.” This hierarchical dualism between humanity and nature became the ideological foundation justifying human domination over nature. Nature, positioned as a mechanistically quantified realm of extension, came to be regarded as a useful storehouse of materials for humanity to use at will.
The universalization of natural scientific experimentation further spurred the emergence of more radical philosophical views of nature. Nature began to be regarded not merely as an object of ‘cognition’ and ‘use,’ but even as an object of ‘production.’ This line of thought—that truth is not discovered but created—emerged particularly typically in Kantianism. That is, just as moral principles are norms of the will, the laws of nature, as objects of the intellect, are also legislated by humans as autonomous subjects. Nature is thus presented merely as crude material, its concrete form of existence determined by the intellectual framework of the human subject of cognition. While the self-purpose of nature is raised as an important theme within this thought, it too is posited solely at the level of humanity’s mental attitude toward the world.
Considering this progression, objective idealism—often called the culmination of philosophical modernity—possesses a stronger rationalist character than any other line of thought. Consequently, it seems highly susceptible to criticism as the ultimate ideology justifying oppressive domination over nature. However, this philosophical current possesses substantial grounds to counter such accusations as stemming from fundamental misunderstanding. Interestingly, this ground lies in the fact that this school of thought elevates the status of ‘reason’—the core principle of philosophical modernity—to its extreme. Objective idealism seeks to justify ideas, specifically the objective truth value of reason, in the literal sense. Crucially, the ‘reason’ discussed here occupies a layer quite distinct from its meaning in earlier modern philosophy. That is, ‘reason’ does not merely denote a specific form or stage of intellectual capacity; it signifies the supreme category and principle possessing an ontological and metaphysical status. As Hegel stated, “Everything is concept, judgment, and inference,” reason holds an absolute status as the ‘condition that precedes everything in the world while simultaneously enabling all things,’ that is, the ‘a priori logical structure or principle of all things in the universe.’ Accordingly, all natural and human history is explained as the phenomenal reality into which this absolute reason is externalized in the dimensions of space and time. That is, nature is the rationality of the mode of existence and change of things according to absolute reason, while humans, as intellectual subjects, are the rationality of the mode of consciousness that thinks, matures, and comes to recognize that reason according to absolute reason. Thus, the two are essentially co-original.
Objective idealism demonstrates that through such highly intensified rationalism, it is possible to seek solutions to the dilemmas of philosophical modernity. It provides an argument that justifies the status of the rational subject while simultaneously guarding against indiscriminate domination of nature. For this reason, even as postmodernism, which fundamentally rejects modernity, gains considerable resonance in contemporary environmental philosophy discourse, the development of a natural philosophy grounded in objective idealism continues to attract significant attention.
