Saturated Plasticity: Art and Nature

Abstract

This essay takes up the question of the relationship between art and nature in the middle period of Schelling’s thinking, concentrating primarily on his 1807 Munich address, On the Relationship of the Plastic Arts to Nature. It discusses the theme of saturation, first in terms of its relationship to chemistry and alchemy, and then in terms of the relationship between the forms of both art and Nature and their consummate and indissoluble relationship to the dynamic (plastic) formless and groundless ground of Nature. Resisting the tyranny of the naturalistic fallacy, I argue for the intrinsic value of the living ground of nature, and discuss this life in terms of plasticity, with special reference to the recent work of Catherine Malabou. Finally, I argue that what relates both art and nature is the saturating plasticity of the imagination (what Coleridge, apropos of Schelling, calls esemplasy).