Below are 2  archival images made whilst  I was walking in the Beech Forest on the Kepler Track near  Shallow Bay,  Lake Manapouri in Southland, New Zealand,  circa February 2020. The Kepler Track is around 60km in length  and is situated  between Lake Manapouri and Lake Te Anau.

We stayed several days at Lake Manapouri near the Waiau River. There are some associated photos from walking the Kepler Track in the  Fiordland National Park on an earlier post.  Whilst walking this section of the Kepler Track I was  aware of how the  natural world  is ever changing, does things,  and  it has a history. This perspective gave rise to  the idea of a philosophy of nature (Naturphilosophie) that engages with how we view, and think of,  the natural world. 

 What we  need is a Naturphilosophie that is a rethinking the natural world and humanity’s deep connections with it; one that  critical of, and different to,  the dominant away of the human understanding  of the natural world: eg.,  the Cartesian  conception of a  mechanised nature, the human domination of nature, the commodification of nature by capital,  and  using nature for human consumption.  This  denigration of nature to the status of deadmatter whose only value is one of commodity exchange – a valuation of nature that Schelling claims sets the trajectory for the eventual “annihilation of nature".

Today we find ourselves in the Anthropocene, a new geological age of the world that fits all too well into Schelling’s prophecy, since it is precisely humanity's exploitation of nature to serve its economic interest that has led to our species becoming the most active determiner of the earth’s present and future condition, which as we now know  includes the possibility of our causing the mass extinction of species, including our own. 

In a time of ecological crisis such as ours, we need to rethink this conception of the natural world. Schelling already says in the 1790s that there’s a problem in looking at nature as just an object to be controlled. In this sense, he is one of the first people to think ecologically. and he is an early example of rejecting the mechanistic view of nature. 

His  Naturphilosophie is a  material vitalism that  rescues matter from the category of the inert and mechanical views. He  understands nature not through the inert particle, but through the forces that constitute it.  Schelling's philosophy of nature   views  nature as organic, dynamic with its interconnected play of intensive forces that are in constant opposition to one another, are geared toward excess,  self-organizing,  is  teeming with life, is history and integrates the emergence of human beings into that world. 

Schelling's   non-anthropocentric vision of nature in continual flux -- a  dynamic ground giving rise to human activity -- offers a view of nature in which it suddenly becomes a value in itself as opposed to something to be exploited for human benefit.