This is a pre-publication version of an article set to appear

in a special issue of the journal Europeana on the

relationship between Europe and ecology.
European Philosophy and the Question of Nature: The
Death of Nature and the Rebirth of Physis
Abstract
Serge Moscovici has argued that the current epoch of
history is defined above all by the natural question: the
question of humanitys relationship to nature. This article
argues that European philosophy is torn between two quite
different responses to this question. The first, expressed
most notably by Bruno Latour, considers that the word and
concept of nature is insurmountably problematic and must
thus be discarded. The second, developed within systems
theory by Edgar Morin and within phenomenology by
Martin
Heidegger,
advocates
a
rediscovery
and
regeneration of the original Pre-Socratic interpretation of
nature as physis. Drawing on and articulating the work of
Morin and Heidegger, this article argues firstly that the
appropriate response to the natural question is to consider
nature as physis qua self-disclosure or self-bringing-intothe-Open, and secondly that the Open must be understood
as an agora a public space consisting of markets,
parliaments, law courts, conferences into which things
may in one way or another be brought. This interpretation
of the Open as agora draws on Hannah Arendt, though it
also despite other fundamental differences overlaps with
the political philosophy of Bruno Latour.
Biography
Henry Dicks is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of
Philosophical Research (IrPhil) of University Jean Moulin
Lyon 3. His research and teaching focus on environmental
philosophy, particularly environmental ethics, political
ecology, eco-phenomenology, and eco-poetics. A member of

the industrial chair, Rationalities, Uses, and Imaginaries of

Water, funded by Lyonnaise des Eaux, and the Intelligence
of Urban Worlds (IMU) project on Biomimetic cities, his
current research applies his work in environmental
philosophy to the fields of water, biomimicry, and urbanism.
Introduction
Writing in 1968, the French philosopher Serge Moscovici
claimed that each century or epoch must answer a different
question. The eighteenth century had to answer the
political question: the question of the best or most
appropriate form of government. The nineteenth century
had to answer the social question: how best to guarantee
the welfare of civil society. And the twentieth century had to
answer the natural question: the question of humanitys
relation to nature. This is not to say, of course, that
Moscovici thought the natural question had never
previously been asked, but simply that he considered that it
is only recently that it has emerged as the essential
question (Moscovici 1977, 5) of an entire epoch. The
current importance of the natural question, Moscovici
further argues, is ultimately a result of the power of science
and technology, which have given us the ability radically to
alter the earth (Moscovici 1977, 6-7). The natural question,
then, goes hand in hand with the emergence of the so-called
ecological crisis, as well as with what many have since
taken to calling the Anthropocene.
This article argues that European philosophy is torn
between two radically different responses to the natural
question. The first finds an apt summary in Timothy
Mortons slogan of ecology without nature (Morton 2009).
The word and concept of nature, Morton and others
argue, are problematic and must thus be discarded, or at
least deconstructed. Indeed, nature is variously accused
of being: too ambiguous or polysemic, always already
technological, a social construct, a fiction, a cover for
injustice, metaphysical, ethnocentric, and so on. After the

deaths of God and Man, it would appear to be Natures turn

to be put to the sword. As Bruno Latour remarks:
When the most frenetic of ecologists cry out in fear:
nature is going to die, they are unaware how right
they are. Thank God, nature is going to die. Yes, the
great Pan is dead! After the death of God and of Man,
nature too must come to an end. (Latour 1999, p.42,
my translation)
It is frequently the case that those who adopt this
first approach to the natural question criticize the standard
subject/object dualism of modernity, but, rather than
replacing this dualism with something different, they seek
instead to explore what Bruno Latour (1991) calls the
Middle Kingdom, that is to say, the intermediary space
between active human subjects and passive natural objects,
which is variously thought to be populated by such entities
as plants, animals, children, the mentally retarded,
technological artefacts, and cyborgs. On a more conceptual
level, this Middle Kingdom can be said to be composed of
what Latour calls quasi-subjects, quasi-objects, and
hybrids. Such non-modernism (Latour 1991) or postmodernism (Callicott 1995) thus maintains the standard
oppositions
of
modern
thinking
(subject/object,
freedom/determinism, etc.), while at the same time showing
that these opposing elements constitute two extreme poles
of a multi-dimensional actor-network (Latour 1991) or
continuum (Callicott 1995), the simplistic, binary
partitioning of whose elements is held responsible for the
characteristic violence towards non-humans characteristic
of modernity (see also Derrida 2006).
The second response to the natural question is also
critical of modernity, but instead of exploring the interstices
of modern subject/object dualism, it seeks to rediscover and
regenerate the thinking about nature undertaken by the
first poets and philosophers of the West. Nature, from this
perspective, first disclosed itself at the dawn of Western

history to the Pre-Socratics as physis, and it is this thinking

of physis that must be regenerated and further explored if
we are to avoid the impending ecological catastrophe. This
second response to the natural question finds its most fully
developed expression in the thought of Edgar Morin and
Martin Heidegger, both of whom, despite their very
different intellectual traditions systems thinking and
phenomenology, respectively , argue in favour of a
rediscovery and regeneration of Pre-Socratic thinking about
physis, understood as self-production (Morin 1977) or
poisis en heauti (Heidegger 1993a).
Two key sayings may be associated with this second
response to the natural question. The first, which is quoted
by both Heidegger (1993a, 333) and Morin (2007, 127), is
Hlderlins famous verse: But where danger is, grows / the
saving power also. On the interpretation of this saying put
forward in the present article, the danger is selfdestruction, that is to say, the danger that Western
civilization which was born when Being or nature unveiled
itself to the ancient Greeks, and which has since, as both
Morin and Heidegger observe (Morin 2011, 114), become
planetary will destroy itself. And the saving power that
this danger harbours is the opposite of self-destruction: the
thinking of Being or nature as physis or self-production. The
second key saying comes from Heidegger, but has been
frequently quoted by Morin: The origin is not behind us, it
is in front of us (Morin 2007, 124; 2011, 115). What this
means is that in order to respond appropriately to the
natural question we must rediscover the Pre-Socratic
thinking of physis in such a way that there may emerge a
new beginning, which, unlike the first beginning, will
stay with and develop the path opened up by the thinking of
Being qua self-production.
*
The first response to the natural question, whose
various permutations include non-modernism, post-

modernism, and deconstruction (in Derridas sense 1), is

currently much more widespread than the second and its
various permutations have been developed in great detail by
a wide variety of thinkers. In view of this, it will not be
possible to examine it in anything like a comprehensive
manner. It will, however, be important to have a reference
point with respect to which the second response may be
compared and contrasted. This reference point will be the
work of Bruno Latour, who has not only widely proclaimed
the death of nature, but is also one of the most prominent
and influential figures of contemporary European thought.
As already noted, the key proponents of the second
response are Martin Heidegger and Edgar Morin.
Importantly, however, since their respective interpretations
of physis arise in the very different philosophical traditions
of
systems
thinking
(Morin)
and
phenomenology
(Heidegger), it will be necessary to spend some time
articulating them. We will thus begin by sketching out the
interpretation of physis presented by Morin in tome 1 of La
Mthode, before drawing on Heidegger to argue that this
interpretation is hindered by a problematic realism and that
physis must instead be understood phenomenologically, that
is, not simply as self-production, but, more broadly, as
self-disclosure or self-bringing into the Open. It will
further be argued that the Open in which natural beings
self-disclose must be understood as an agora: a shared and
indeterminate space of appearance in which beings may,
following their initial disclosure, undergo various forms of
1 The fundamental difference between Heidegger and
Derrida as regards deconstruction is that whereas
Heidegger thinks it is necessary to deconstruct the
interpretations of Being (or nature) which define the various
epochs of metaphysics, so as to uncover and regenerate the
original Pre-Socratic understanding of Being (or nature)
as physis, Derrida thinks that there is no original
understanding of Being (or nature) to which one may get
back.

categorization. This part of our analysis will draw

extensively
on
Hannah
Arendts
phenomenological
interpretation of the Greek polis put forward in The Human
Condition (1998).
The second response to the natural question, which the
present article both defends and develops, can thus be
described as a synthesis and articulation of the Greekinspired thinking of Edgar Morin, Martin Heidegger, and
Hannah Arendt. It stands in stark contrast to the celebration
of the death of nature characteristic of the postmoderns or non-moderns, particularly Bruno Latour.
Nevertheless, the second response does share one key point
in common with Latours thought, for, as we will see, his
republic of things draws on an ancient understanding of
things previously brought to light by Heidegger, and, in so
doing, overlaps in some important respects with our
phenomenological interpretation of the agora.
Bruno Latour: the Death of Nature
Latour sometimes presents his work in relation to the claim
made by or at least associated with French theorists of
the 1960s and 1970s that everything is text (Latour 2001,
278-279). For these theorists, language does not enable us
accurately to represent some sort of independent, external
reality. On the contrary, reality itself is constituted by
shifting structures or systems of signs, with respect to
which there is no outside. Latour traces his partial break
with this paradigm to his research into scientific texts and
laboratory practice. According to Latour, the idea that
everything is text encounters resistance primarily from
natural scientists, who often continue to see language as
to borrow and adapt a phrase from Richard Rorty (1993)
the mirror of nature. Where the text-centred paradigm of
the 1960s and 1970s thus becomes problematic for Latour is
in the case of science. And yet Latour does not defend the
view of language often supposed or presupposed by natural
scientists. On the contrary, he extends the idea of a

structure or system with respect to which there is no

outside such that it includes not just linguistic and other
signs, but also social and political power struggles, and the
various non-human entities studied by natural scientists.
Much of Latours appeal, then, is that he does not force us
to choose between the three main branches of academia:
language and literature, which often tend towards the view
that everything is text; the social sciences, which often
tend towards social constructivism; and the natural
sciences, which often tend towards philosophical naturalism
(Latour 1991, 13-15).2
Another important point to note concerning Latour is
that, rather than appropriating the foundational concepts of
structuralism and systems theory, he prefers to talk of
networks and, more specifically, actor networks, that is
to say, networks composed of various entities all of which
act in various different ways on each other, thus influencing
each others behaviour. From this point of view, the
limitation of the technological concept of the network is
that technological networks transport, communications,
water, etc. are easily construed as passive material objects
constructed by active human subjects. However, were the
student of actor-networks to study the construction of, say, a
water distribution network, Latour thinks she would quickly
discover that even the physical things out of which the
network is constructed are also actors in the sense that they
have effects on the actions of other actors, including the
human actors.
Latour further claims that modernity attempts to categorize
the various different elements of these actor-networks as
either human (or made by humans) or natural (not made or
2 Latour further claims to leave room for philosophy,
understood, following Heidegger, as thinking about Being
(Latour 1991, 88-91). However, as we will see, Latours
philosophy is radically oblivious to Being or nature qua
physis and in that respect remains problematically
restrictive in scope.

acted upon by humans). Every being may thus be

partitioned off onto one side or the other of what Latour
calls the Modern Constitution. At the same time, however,
Latour maintains that the Modern Constitution gives rise to
an endless proliferation of hybrids (1991, 53). His position
thus resembles that of Bill McKibben (2006) who, in The
End of Nature, argues that because of anthropogenic
climate change, the effects of which are now ubiquitous on
earth, there is no longer any such thing as nature where
nature is understood as that which has not been acted on
or influenced in any way by humans. Every being on earth,
it would seem, has now become what Latour calls a
hybrid, something that is at least partly of human making.
However, whereas McKibben laments the end of nature,
Latour is concerned rather with its political consequences.
Nature, Latour thinks, has long been thought to be
accessible only to Science, which is capable of
establishing rigorous facts about it. These facts, Latour
further claims, are often invoked with a view to putting an
end to all political debate and discussion. Scientists (with a
capital S), on this view, are like the philosopher-kings of
Platos cave, who, having discovered the objective truths of
the outside world, may then return to the cave and liberate
those prisoners still tied to the subjective shadows and
illusions of the senses (1999, 23-32). In opposition to this,
Latour proposes that what scientists should bring to
democratic debate are not indisputable matters of fact but
rather debatable matters of concern involving complex
networks of human and non-human actors.
Edgar Morin: Nature as Self-production
The interpretation of nature common to McKibben and
Latour the view of nature as that which has not in any way
(whether intentionally or otherwise) been acted upon by
humans is very different from that of Morin. Drawing
explicitly on the Pre-Socratics, Morin interprets nature as
physis or self-production (Morin 1977, 27, 368).

Production, he further claims, means bringing into being

and/or existence (157). Natural beings, then, are those
beings that bring themselves into existence. To
understand what Morin means by this, let us take a look at
the front cover of tome 1 of La Mthode.

Fig. 1. M. C. Escher, Drawing hands (reproduced on the

front cover of Edgar Morin, La Mthode, Tome 1: La Nature
de la Nature, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977).
What we see here is a work of art by M. C. Escher. It depicts
two hands drawing each other, but at the same time also a
work of art drawing itself. All of this is of course an illusion.
The hands did not draw each other, and the work of art did
not draw itself. The hands and indeed the work itself were
drawn by the artist, Escher. Nevertheless, in the case of
nature qua physis, Morin maintains that beings can and do
produce themselves. The principal example he gives of this
is the vortex, whose various different moments produce

each other in a circular manner, such that the vortex as a

whole may be said to self-produce.
But could it not be objected here that the vortex is
ultimately produced by an influx of energy? With this
objection in mind, let us note that while Escher clearly
required energy to produce his work of art, energy alone
could not have produced it. Creativity or, to use Morins
terminology, poisis was also required. In the case of the
work of art, the form of poisis in question is clearly
allopoiesis: the creation (poisis) by one thing, the artist,
of something other (allo), the work of art. In the case of the
vortex, by contrast, this poisis or creativity does not come
from some maker outside the vortex, but nor does it come
from energy, which provides mere calories for work. The
creativity or poisis is intrinsic to the vortex. The vortex
creates itself or brings itself into existence.
So which beings does Morin think belong to physis
and thus self-produce? Other than vortices, the principal
physical examples of self-producing beings Morin analyses
are stars, which initially produce themselves from out of
vast clouds of mainly hydrogen atoms. Moreover, it is more
or less exclusively in self-producing beings, such as stars,
that new elements or systemic properties may emerge. It is,
for example, in stars that the heavier atomic elements
carbon, nitrogen, oxygen are all created. An important
consequence of this view is that, taken on their own, rocks
or meteors do not belong to nature qua physis, for they are
not self-producing. Rocks and meteors are mere aggregates
of matter, remnants of natural, self-producing beings which
alone are born (nascere), develop, and eventually die.3
3 This distinction in turn allows us to see the limitations of
Latours actor-network theory. For Latour, all entities
rocks, tables, stars, living beings, cities, the biosphere
are ultimately just networks (Latour) of actors. On this view,
there is no significant ontological difference between selfproducing beings, such as stars, and clumps or aggregates
of smaller elements, such as rocks. Likewise, the fact that

Living beings, Morin claims, are likewise self-producing. In

saying this, he adopts a position which is very close to
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1980), who see
the essential characteristic of life as autopoiesis, and
Stuart Kauffman (1995), who sees lifes essential
characteristic as autocatalytic closure. What all these
interpretations of life have in common is their rejection of
the view of life as based on template replication and
typically associated with Neo-Darwinism. In Richard
Dawkinss (1989, 1996) archetypally Neo-Darwinian
speculations on the origin and nature of life, selfish
replicators the ancestors of genes came into existence
before the first single-celled organisms. Their selfishness
consisted in their attempts to replicate themselves as
widely as possible where attempt is but a short-hand for
the phenomenon whereby those molecules that are most
successful in replicating themselves are naturally
selected. From this Neo-Darwinian perspective, life
emerged when these primitive replicators constructed
robot vehicles (Dawkins 1989, v) around themselves,
which in turn increased the replicators likelihood of making
copies of themselves and were thus favoured by natural
selection. At this precise moment, the selfish replicators
became genes, understood as entities which unilaterally
generate a phenotype, itself understood as a cybernetic
machine whose purpose is to satisfy the aims or desires
of the selfish genes (50-52).
Stuart Kauffmans theory of the origin and nature of
life is quite different. He thinks that life emerged not from
macro-molecular replicators, but rather through a deeper
logic he calls autocatalytic closure:
I hold a renegade view: life is not shackled to the
magic of template replication, but based on a deeper
only self-producing beings are creative is also overlooked
and the concept of creation or poisis thus plays little or no
role in Latours overall philosophy.

logic []. Life emerged, I suggest, not simple, but

complex and whole, and has remained complex and
whole ever since not because of a mysterious lan
vital,
but
thanks
to
the
simple
profound
transformation of dead molecules into an organization
by which each molecules formation is catalyzed by
some other molecule in the organization. The secret
of life, the wellspring of reproduction, is not to be
found in the beauty of Watson-Crick pairing, but in
the achievement of collective autocatalytic closure.
(Kauffman 1995, 48)
On Kauffmans view, then, autocatalytic reactions can under
certain circumstances come to constitute closed networks
or autocatalytic sets capable of enduring over extended
periods of time (130). He further argues that at a certain
point in their growth these autocatalytic sets may
spontaneously break in two and thus self-reproduce (66).
The beings that result from this self-reproduction may
thereafter come into competition for existence. This in turn
makes possible the differential survival of those beings
better able both to produce and to reproduce themselves,
and therewith also evolution by natural selection.
Nevertheless, for evolution by natural selection to take
place, Kauffman does not think it is necessary for the beings
in question to possess a genome. New molecules may arise
at random within the autocatalytic set and, if these
molecules catalyse their own formation, they will become an
integral part of the closed autocatalytic network. But such
molecules cannot necessarily be classified as part of the
genotype, as distinct from the phenotype. Within
autocatalytic sets, Kauffman thus claims, there is no
distinction between genotype and phenotype:
Biologists divide cells and organisms into the
genotype (the genetic information) and the phenotype
(the enzymes and other proteins, as well as the
organs and morphology that make up the body). With

autocatalytic sets, there is no separation between

genotype and phenotype. The system serves as its
own genome. (73)
This absence of separation between genotype and
phenotype, between creator and created, is the basic trait of
physis qua self-production. To say that the system serves as
its own genome is to say that it produces itself. In the case
of what Kauffman calls autocatalytic sets (as opposed to
simple vortices), evolution may over time give rise to an
increasing
differentiation
of
the
various
different
components of the being in question, such that we may
come to identify some of these as belonging to the
genotype and others to the phenotype; but such
differentiation always occurs within an entity that comes
into existence and thereafter remains complex and whole
thanks to the basic ontological process that is selfproduction. Conversely, the Neo-Darwinian postulation of a
radical separation between genotype and phenotype implies
an understanding of physis (autopoiesis) by analogy with
tekhn (allopoiesis). In Dawkinss schema, phenotypic
individuals are seen as the technological creations robot
vehicles of self-replicating molecules, and their ultimate
purpose is to enable the selfish replicators to fulfil their
aim or desire of making copies of themselves. Dawkins
may himself be a staunch atheist, but his basic philosophical
framework remains that of a creationist: life, for Dawkins, is
a technological creation brought about by a pre-existing
desire or aim. The principal difference with the

Christian variant of creationism is that blind, selfish

replicators take the place of God.4
Physis qua self-production is not, however, only
characteristic of certain physical and biological entities.
Indeed, Morin thinks that the interactions of living beings
with their environment give rise to ecological instances of
self-production. He further claims that these are often
ignored by the science of ecology. In particular, he thinks
that ecology has privileged the notions of the ecological
cycle (water, nitrogen, etc.) and the food chain (from plants
to herbivores and carnivores), thus overlooking or
downplaying the notion of the trophic cycle, which proceeds
from production (algae, plants), to consumption (animals,
insects), then on to decomposition (fungi, bacteria, etc.),
and finally back to production (Morin 1980, 29). Moreover,
according to Morin, it is this failure to see and act in
accordance with these self-producing ecological loops that
explains
why
contemporary
technology
is
so
environmentally destructive. Driven by what he calls the
logic of the artificial machine and its focus on the linear
accomplishment of isolated programmes or goals,
technology breaks open and disrupts the complex trophic
loops in which one beings waste is another beings food.
Morins general theory of physis (2005, 69) thus ties in
with Barry Commoners criticism of contemporary
technology as having broken out of the circle of life,
putting us instead on a linear, self-destructive course
(Commoner 1971, 299).
4 It is interesting to note that Timothy Mortons view of life
as technological, which he invokes to help justify the
principle of ecology without nature, presupposes precisely
this Neo-Darwinian theory of the origin and nature of life as
a mere vehicle for selfish genes: [e]volution theory
deconstructs life itself. Life is a word for some selfreproducing macro-molecules and their transport systems.
(Morton 2010, 67)

It should now be clear that Morins view of nature as

physis or self-production is radically different from the
modern view of nature, according to which anything not
acted upon in any way by humans is natural. Nature, for
Morin, is not defined negatively as what is not acted upon or
produced by humans, but positively as what produces itself
(see Dicks 2014a, 420-421), where self-production is itself
interpreted as an ontological process: self-bringing into
existence. Moreover, as Morin often remarks, the view of
nature as physis transcends the standard divisions between
the physical, life, and human sciences. Nature qua selfproduction is common to stars, living beings, ecosystems,
and even human societies provided they are capable of
recognizing and acting in accordance with natural
processes of self-production, rather than breaking open
these natural cycles, as is the case regarding the
technological interpretation (and manipulation) of life
characteristic
of
Neo-Darwinian
biology,
and
the
technological rupture of trophic cycles characteristic of
contemporary industry.
Martin Heidegger: Nature as Self-bringing-into-theOpen
Heidegger, it is well-known, was concerned above all with
overcoming humanitys current obliviousness to Being
itself. This overcoming, he thought, would give rise to a
new beginning or perhaps rather another beginning
(Heidegger 1999, 3). Being itself, he further claimed, was
physis (Heidegger 1999, 328; 2000, 15), and it was
something that he thought had been glimpsed briefly by the
Pre-Socratics, but that subsequent Western philosophy had
somehow been unable to stay with and further explore, the
result being that there came instead to prevail a
fundamentally technological way of thinking about Being
common to all subsequent metaphysics, from Platonism and
Christianity to the so-called reversal of metaphysics

characteristic of Marx and Nietzsche (see Zimmerman

1990).
But if Heidegger views Being or Nature as physis,
does that mean that his basic philosophical position is the
same as that of Morin? There can be little doubt that
Heidegger also sees physis as in some sense selfproduction. In Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he
writes: phuein means to let grow, procreate, engender,
produce, primarily to produce its own self (Heidegger
1988, 107). In The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,
he writes: We shall now translate physis more clearly and
closer to the originally intended sense not so much by
growth, but by the self-forming prevailing of beings as a
whole (Heidegger 1995a, 25). And in The Principle of
Reason, he writes: The being of what emerges and comes
to presence on its own is called physis (Heidegger 1991,
63). Furthermore, in his reading of Aristotles Physics, he
argues at length that physis is self-production and, as
such, cannot be understood by analogy with tekhn, for
tekhn implies the existence of an external maker:
In genesis as self-placing, production is entirely the
presencing of the appearance itself without the
importation of outside help whereas such outside
help is what characterizes all making. Whatever
produces itself, i.e., places itself into appearance,
needs no fabrication. [] The renewed attempt to
falsify the essence of physis by way of an analogy
with tekhn fails precisely here from every
conceivable point of view. (Heidegger 1998, 222-223)
There is, however, a major difference between Morin
and Heideggers thinking about physis. This difference,
which is due in large part to the very different philosophical

traditions systems thinking and phenomenology 5 in

which they were working, manifests itself in their
contrasting interpretations of production and poisis. For
Morin, production means bringing into existence.
Moreover, he thinks that it comes in two basic forms:
reproduction (copying) and creation (poisis). An example of
reproduction would be the photocopying of a document. An
example of creation or poisis would be the birth of a star,
for, unlike a photocopy, a star brings itself into existence
without being based on some sort of model or template. For
Heidegger, by contrast, production and poisis mean the
same thing, namely, letting appear, disclosing, or bringing
into the Open. The difference between these contrasting
interpretations of production may become apparent through
consideration of the expression to produce a witness.
When a witness is produced, nothing at all has been
produced in Morins sense of the word: no model has been
copied and no new physical being has come into existence in
the sense of having been created. And yet, something has
been brought forth (poiein) or pro-duced (hervorbringen). For Heidegger, then, to produce in Morins
sense of the word is but one distinct mode of a more
fundamental and general process: disclosing or bringing
into the Open.
These differing interpretations of production have
significant philosophical implications. While Morin does not
spend much time discussing the various competing isms
constitutive of so much philosophical debate, his general
theory of physis would appear to go hand in hand with
philosophical realism. For a star, a living being, or indeed
5 If one allows that structuralism is a branch of systems
thinking, these two philosophical traditions may be
considered the two main branches of twentieth-century
European philosophy. Their respective convergence around
the concept of physis qua self-production or autopoiesis
arguably opens up the possibility of overcoming their
longstanding separation and opposition.

any other self-producing entity to exist, Morin does not

appear to think that there must be some sort of Open
region or space of appearance the law court in our
earlier example of the witness into which the entity in
question must be brought and which is inextricably tied to
humanity. Morin clearly thinks, for example, that the first
stars and the first living beings came into existence billions
of years ago, in which case their existence he even speaks
of their Dasein (Morin 1977, 136) is not tied in any way
to humanity.
But how, then, may we characterize Heideggers
thinking with respect to the most common philosophical
isms? In Being and Time, Heidegger claims that realism is
inadequate, for it presumes that entities can exist
independently of the understanding of the as
characteristic of Dasein (1995b, 251). This rejection of
realism does not imply, however, that Heidegger is an
idealist. Indeed, not only is it clear that Daseins average,
everyday understanding of the as does not take the form
of grasping the Ideas or eternal forms behind things, but the
space in which things appear as this or that is not some
sort of subjective mind or individual consciousness. For
Heidegger, things appear in the world or in the Open,
and this world or Open is a space intrinsically
characterized, amongst other things, by what he calls
being-with (1995b, 153-163). So, whereas modern
philosophy,
with
its
starting
point
in
subjective
consciousness, sees the external world and other persons as
problems requiring justification, Heidegger (1995b, 246252) thinks that what instead requires justification or
rather explanation is the presupposition characteristic of
modern philosophy according to which one must begin with
subjective consciousness (res cogitans) and then try to
justify the existence of other entities (whether res extensa
or res cogitans). It follows that the Open region where
things exist is neither a space independent of humans
(realism), nor a subjective consciousness outside of which
things cannot exist (idealism), but rather a public world

intrinsically characterized by being-with and in which things

may in one way or another get disclosed. This is not to
say, however, that Heidegger espouses a kind of social
constructivism, according to which it is humans or human
society that makes or constructs all that is. For what
Heidegger calls physei-beings to exist requires Dasein,
and therewith also the Open region in which physeibeings self-disclose, but this does not imply that physeibeings are some sort of human or social construct. Indeed,
by their very definition, physei-beings are not brought into
the Open or constructed by man, by society, or even by
Dasein, but rather by themselves.
Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt: The Open qua
Agora
It is possible to articulate Heideggers analysis of the open
region where beings get disclosed whether by themselves,
by other beings, or by some combination of the two with
the phenomenological reading of the Greek polis put
forward by Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition.6
According to Arendt, the Greeks made a radical distinction
between the private (idiom) and the public (koinon). The
public, she further notes, was primary and thus took
precedence over the private in two important senses: first, it
constituted the space of appearance in which things were
in the first instance disclosed; second, it was where all truly
6 Arendt had hoped to dedicate The Human Condition to
Heidegger, writing in correspondence to him: it owes you
just about everything in every regard (Arendt, quoted in
Wolin 2001, 51). This is perhaps an exaggeration, but it
nevertheless suggests the viability of exploring the idea that
The Human Condition constitutes a political adaptation and
interpretation of Heideggers phenomenology. For a detailed
analysis of the philosophical relation between Arendt and
Heidegger, albeit one that is very different from that of the
present article, see Taminiaux (1992).

significant human action took place. In accordance with the

etymology of the word private, Arendt concludes that the
private must be understood in a secondary and restrictive
sense as a sphere of privation (Arendt 1998, 58).
Within the ancient Greek polis, this public sphere or
space of appearance was the agora. According to Lewis
Mumford, the agora is an open space, publicly held and
occupiable for public purposes, but not necessarily
enclosed. (Mumford 1961, 150) These public purposes are
multiple: the agora is the site of market exchange, politics,
legal
proceedings,
philosophical
discussion,
and
7
poeticizing. What everything that appears in the agora has
in common is its openness. When something is brought to
market, it may still belong to the seller, but at the same time
it becomes open to purchase by others. The ownership of
the good is thus put up for decision. A similar principle
applies to the other activities that take place in the agora. It
is in the agora that things become open to political
deliberation, judgment and decision-making. The outcome of
a fair legal trial is likewise open, and as such put up for
judgment and decision. Similarly, both the nature of things
and the nature of Nature (or the essence of Being) likewise
become open to philosophical interpretation, debate,
7 Arendt has occasionally been criticized for a NeoAristotelian celebration of the public sphere of politics and
a denigration of the private sphere of economics,
understood as the management of the household (see Wolin
2001, 64-66). Seeing the space of appearance as an agora
and the agora as a place of both market exchange and
political deliberation constitutes a powerful response to
these criticisms. Indeed, while Arendt herself may arguably
have followed Aristotle in privileging the political in the
narrow sense a move which corresponds to Aristotles
desire to set the agora as marketplace apart from the
agora as political forum (Mumford 1961, 187) our
interpretation of the agora is radically opposed to any NeoAristotelianism of this sort.

judgment, and decision-making. Indeed, it was in philosophy

(and poetry) that Heidegger thought that Being or Nature
qua physis first disclosed itself (2000, 15-16). Lastly, in
poetry, it is the world itself that is brought into the Open or
disclosed, as Heidegger argued in The Origin of the Work
of Art (1993b), and as I have elsewhere argued occurred
for the Greeks in the poetry of Homer (Dicks 2014b), who
sang his poems in the agoras of Greek poleis.
As we have just seen, when beings are brought into
the Open or agora, they themselves become open to
interpretation,
debate,
judgment,
decisions,
misunderstanding, and so on. At the same time, however,
they also become subject to various forms of
categorization (from Gk. cata, meaning against, and
agora, meaning open or public space). Categorization,
in this broad sense, is the withdrawal or dismissal of beings
from the agora in such a way that they become closed off as
this or that: as mine, yours, hers/his/its, ours, yours, or
theirs (via markets or other fora for property attribution); as
collectively to do or not to do (via parliaments); as guilty or
innocent, legal or illegal (via law courts); as correct or
incorrect as proved by rational experiment (science); as
essential or accidental (philosophy); as world-forming or
mundane (poetry). The public space or agora thus comes to
an end when things are no longer open to a diverse plurality
of potential categorizations. As Arendt remarks, the end
of the common world has come when it is seen only under
one aspect and is permitted to present itself in only one
perspective (Arendt 1998, 58). The understanding of Being,
that is to say, the understanding of the as, is thus
ineluctably tied to the Open, for the Open is by definition
the space of appearance where beings may be understood
as this and/or that.
Heidegger, Arendt, and Latour: The Politics of Physis
As earlier noted, our phenomenological interpretation of the
polis has certain things in common with Latours politics of

nature. Moreover, it is interesting to note that Latours

political thinking departs from his usual modern and postmodern frames of reference, drawing instead on
Heideggers observation that things (Res, Ding) were in
the first instance matters of concern for public assemblies
or republics (res publica) (Latour 2004). So, whereas
Science, Latour thinks, is concerned with matters of fact,
that is to say, with things inasmuch as they have been
categorized and thus closed off from debate (temporarily at
least), when the sciences enter democracy in the way Latour
thinks they should they are concerned rather with things,
understood as pro-positions to be debated in a public
assembly and which, following debate, may be subjected to
what he calls institutionalization, a process that results
from what he calls the necessity of closure (lexigence de
clture) (Latour 1999, 159).
This closing off or institutionalization of things
corresponds in many respects to what we have called
categorization. There are, however, several major
differences between Latours politics of nature and our
phenomenological interpretation of the polis. The first
difference concerns the fact that nature, understood as the
realm of all those things that are not made by man
(intentionally or otherwise), is, at least as far as Latours
politics is concerned, only accessible to scientists. Of
course, Latour further claims that nature thus understood
no longer exists, for it is caught up in an actor-network in
which humans play increasingly influential roles, thus acting
on allegedly natural things in such a way that they
become not only hybrids, but also things in the sense of
matters of concern.8 But, even if it is true that the political
role of the sciences (as opposed to Science) is to be
8 For Latour, it is typically because we have acted upon
these formerly natural things, thus hybridizing them, that
they have become matters of concern for us. In the case of
the climate, for example, it is precisely because we are
acting on it that it has become an object of concern for us.

concerned with things qua matters of concern, it would

also appear to be true that these things may only be
brought into the political sphere by scientists. In our much
wider view of the public space of the polis as an agora, by
contrast, things may emerge into the Open by themselves
(physis), by various forms of tekhn, or by some
combination of the two.9
The second difference between our position and that
of Latour concerns his dictum: no reality without
representation (1999, 178). As already noted, Latour
defends a republic or parliament of things in which
scientists represent non-human entities and politicians
represent people. What this means is that any given entity is
not a thing in the sense of a matter of concern unless it
is represented publicly by a capable spokesperson (bon
porte parole) or reliable witness (tmoin fiable) a scientist
in the case of things and a politician in the case of people.
Latour thus defends a dualistic vision of the world,
according to which there are unmediated presences
outside of the public sphere, which in turn get
represented in the public sphere in the form of what he
calls pro-positions (Latour 1999, 124). His thought thus
repeats, in its own slightly idiosyncratic way, the longstanding philosophical dichotomy between entities that are
physically present and representations of those entities that
take the form of propositions and which may be more or less
faithful to the entities in question. This is not to say, of
course, that linguistic propositions are not, for Latour,
ultimately just actors in networks, but rather that network
paths consisting of linguistic propositions may with a
degree of fidelity that is always open to debate translate
9 To be fair, Latours later text, From Realpolitik to
Dingpolitik: or How to Make Things Public (2005), talks
about the necessity of setting up a multitude of agoras, not
just narrowly political ones (parliaments), thus opening up
the possibility for artists, philosophers, entrepreneurs, and
so on, to bring things into the agora.

other network paths, such as those consisting of physical

entities. Within our phenomenological interpretation of the
public sphere as an agora, by contrast, all forms of poisis
are but variations on making present, where presence is
understood as a state of openness or dis-closure. A
farmer who brings his crops to the market makes them
present in the sense of opening them up to public scrutiny
and appropriation by others in the agora. Likewise, when a
scientist, politician, environmental activist, or whoever,
raises public doubts about the pollution resulting from the
farmers cultivation practices, she also makes things
present in the sense of opening them up to public scrutiny
and debate in the agora. It is not the case, therefore, that
language be it that of scientists or politicians represents
in the form of pro-positions things that are present in the
physical world prior to and outside of the sphere of
propositional, linguistic representation. Language does not
re-present things more or less faithfully, but is instead
characterized by what Heidegger calls showing or letting
appear.10 So, whereas Latour is ultimately a realist who
sees humans as late-comers to actor-networks that existed
without us for billions of years, Heidegger thinks that things
only come to exist once they are disclosed in the Open, a
process which, on our view, only occurs when they become
present in the agora11 and may thereafter be closed off or
categorized as such and such, thus withdrawing,
temporarily at any rate, from the Open 12. So, while there is a
certain parallel between Latours interpretation of the
10 As Heidegger explains in The Way to Language: Greek
civilization at its acme experiences the sign on the basis of
showing. From the Hellenistic (and Stoic) period onward, as
the convention becomes sheer stipulation, the sign comes to
be an instrument for designating; by means of such
designation, representation is coordinated and directed
from one object to another. Designation is no longer a
showing in the sense that it lets something appear
(Heidegger 1993d, 401-02).

agora and the one defended in this article, there is also a

major difference. Whereas for Latour the agora is a sphere
of re-presentation, for us it is a sphere of presentation or
letting appear.13
Another key difference concerns the question of
Being or Nature. Latour does of course discuss the
philosophical question par excellence of Being or nature in
11 It may here be objected that such a position entails the
rather peculiar conclusion that nothing existed before the
polis because it is only in the polis that one finds the agora.
In response to this, it is possible to maintain that the Open
has not always taken the form of an agora. For Heidegger,
the original space where Being presented itself even if
only pre-ontologically was the clearing in the woods. So,
rather than see the clearing as a metaphor for human
openness to things, it can instead be seen as the original
Opening where the pre-ontological understanding of Being,
and thus also Dasein, first emerged, and which later takes
the form of an urban agora. This view of the clearing not as
a metaphor, but rather as the original birthplace of Dasein,
and in which Dasein in a sense still dwells, makes possible
an articulation of Heideggers thought with that of Vico
(1948), who explicitly argues that mankind was born in
clearings in the woods.
12 This also holds true for the pre-ontological
understanding of Being discussed in Being and Time. When,
in average, everyday situations, someone understands a
hammer as something-in-order-to bang nails in, this is
only possible because hammers have previously been
brought into the Open most obviously by market-destined
manufacture and categorically accepted as something
that possesses that function. Someone may of course use a
hammer for other purposes, or even see it as something
other than a tool, but that interpretation will remain a mere
idiosyncrasy the mixing (krasis) together (syn) of ones

his published writings, but these writings reveal a radically

closed way of thinking. Nature is, and apparently can only
be, what Latour thinks it was in the Modern Constitution,
that is to say, all those beings that have not been acted upon
or influenced in any way by humans. And, Latour reasons,
since that nature no longer exists, nature in general also no
longer exists.14 The possibility that nature may be
interpreted differently, let alone that it may disclose itself as
physis, is barely considered. 15 On our understanding of
Nature as physis, by contrast, nature is self-disclosure, and,
over the course of human history, it has disclosed itself in
various different ways, including the modern way Latour
seems to think is the only one.16
A final, related difference concerns the question of
hybrids. Latour seems to think that the moment a human
own private traits (idion) unless it is likewise brought into
the Open and given due public consideration in the agora.
Moreover, it is this bringing into the Open or poisis that is
the essential criterion of authenticity, and it is opposed to
both fallenness (unthinkingly accepting the prior
categorizations of das Man) and idiosyncrasy (doing
things differently from das Man without bringing these
differences into the Open in such a way that they can be
openly considered, thus potentially modifying the being-inthe-world of das Man).
13 This is not to deny that things may also be re-presented
in the agora. Someone who re-publishes a text or represents a talk already made in another public setting may
be said to be engaged in re-presentation. This latter
distinction between presentation and re-presentation thus
corresponds in some respects to Edgar Morins distinction
between creation (poisis) and reproduction (copying), the
key difference being, of course, that Morin does not
interpret either form of production in the phenomenological
sense of bringing forth or presenting.

has in some way acted upon a non-human, perhaps only by

accidentally touching it or indirectly raising its temperature
(as in the case of climate change), the non-human entity has
in a sense been denatured, thus becoming a hybrid. If,
however, nature is physis, then acting upon a natural being
does not necessarily denature it. Heidegger at one point
draws on Aristotle to give the example of a doctor who,
14 As already noted, Latours position here is remarkably
close to that of McKibben, who at one point writes: we
have ended the thing that has, at least in modern times,
defined nature for us its separation from human society.
(McKibben 2006, 55) However, while McKibben at least
acknowledges that this idea of nature only applies to
modern times, Latour seems reluctant seriously to
countenance the possibility that this modern interpretation
of nature is not the only one.
15 It could at this point be objected that Latour advocates
what he calls an experimental metaphysics (1999, 182),
according to which a new metaphysics may emerge from the
workings of the political agora. There are, however, three
problems here: (i) whatever this new metaphysics will be, it
must, Latour insists, be something other than a
metaphysics of nature (1999, 182), for nature, he insists,
is dead; ii) the way Latour sets up his agora is not as
neutral and impartial as he seems to think, for it already
makes all sorts of metaphysical suppositions regarding the
nature of nature, of reality, of presence, and so on, hence
also the possibility of Graham Harmans book-length study
of latourian metaphysics (Harman 2009); iii) the book in
which Latour proposes this idea is concerned solely with the
narrowly political dimension of the agora, in which only
politicians and scientists (so not philosophers) have any
apparent right to speak, and in that case it is hard to see
how any explicit metaphysics might emerge from this
parliament of things. Put simply, it is a parliament of

using medical skill, successfully treats himself (1998, 196).

In this instance, Heidegger claims, tekhn co-operates with
physis, such that the doctor once again regains his health
(197). Tekhn, it follows, does not inevitably denature what
Heidegger calls physei-beings, but may on the contrary
let them be (i.e., let them continue producing themselves).
Farming, understood as a form of tekhn, may be
interpreted in much the same way. It is the cooperation of
things, not a parliament of Being.
16 A partial exception to this forgetting of physis
can be found in What if we talked politics a little? (Latour
2003) In this text, Latour argues that ever since Socrates
what the Greeks called autophuos has been constantly
rejected by rationalists of all sorts. Autophuos, he notes,
may be translated as self-begetting (auto-engendrement),
and he further points out that phuos comes from phuo, a
word which he says still resounds in our word physics
(154). According to Latour, autophuos constitutes a
political circle by virtue of which the interests of the
Many (the individual citizens) are more or less faithfully
translated via political representation into that of the One
(the political collective), and then back to the Many through
more or less faithful obedience to the One, and so on,
circularly, for as long as genuine politics continues to exist.
The reason Socrates rejects autophuos, Latour explains, is
that policies which emerge via the circular logic of
autophuos are not grounded in some original principle or
solid foundation from which they may be shown to derive in
a rational, linear manner. For Socrates, any policy that
emerges into the agora via the logic of autophuos is thus
tautological, for instead of being grounded in something
else, as would be required by the principle of reason, it
grounds itself in a circular manner. For Latour, by contrast,
autophuos is not tautological, but the very condition of the
genuine autonomy and freedom of the political collective
(155). Moreover, he maintains that the desire to impose
some sort of rational order on politics, such that policies
derive from some basic principle, rather being part of a
circular process of self-begetting that takes place in the

tekhn with physis that enables the cultivated plants or

animals, as well as the trophic cycles of which they are a
part, to remain healthy. Nevertheless, it is also true that
contemporary agriculture is in the main highly destructive
of nature, for it typically breaks open the self-production of
both living beings and the trophic cycles to which they
belong (via genetic manipulations, synthetic fertilisers and
pesticides, and so on). Tekhn, in these instances, is no
commotion of the agora (155), has caused far worse
monstrosities than those that the rationalists aimed to
avoid.The reason Latours reflections on autophuos
constitute only a partial exception to his overall failure to
think of nature as physis is that he cannot see that the
distinctively political self-engendering he describes is but
one form albeit one unique to humans of physis qua
poisis en heauti. He does not, for example, realize that an
analogous criticism of rationalism can be applied to, say,
living beings. As Heideggers reading of Angelus Silesius
makes clear, when a rose is viewed as belonging to physis it
does not bloom because of some other thing that causes it
to bloom; it blooms because it blooms (Heidegger 1991;
see also Dicks 2011). And yet, as in the case of Latours
autophuos, this is not a tautology, for, as we have already
seen in our discussion of Morin, Maturana, Varela, and
Kauffman, living beings produce themselves in a circular
manner (autopoiesis). To see the origin and nature of life as
a linear process in which selfish genes command the
phenotype to do their bidding in an unmediated and
unilateral manner could thus be said to be analogous at
least in some important respects to thinking that
politicians should simply carry out the orders of the
electorate in an unmediated and unilateral manner. So,
despite recognizing that the characteristically metaphysical
prioritizing of linear, reasoned arguments emerged with
Socrates (and Plato), and despite noting that autophuos
means self-begetting, Latour fails to make the connection
between autophuos and the Pre-Socratic notion of physis
qua poisis en heauti, thus also failing to see that circular
self-bringing forth constitutes an alternative conception of
nature to the one characteristic of the Modern Constitution.

longer co-operating with physis, but rather ignoring and

destroying it. Latour, however, knows almost nothing of
nature qua self-production and, as a result, does not make a
distinction between two ways of relating to nature: cooperating with nature (qua physis) or, alternatively,
supplanting nature (qua physis) both in theory and in
practice with technology. Indeed, for Latour, this
distinction is not relevant, for his modern interpretation of
nature is such that both these ways of relating to nature
would be reduced to the broad category of acting on
nature where nature is understood as that which has not
in any way been touched by humans , thereby producing
socio-natural hybrids. The key problem we currently face,
then, is not so much our failure to recognize hybrids, but
rather the fact that our Modern understanding of nature
prevents us from making a distinction between cooperating
with nature (qua physis) and supplanting and destroying it.
Conclusion
It is at present common to categorize and dismiss nature
as a fiction, a social construct, metaphysical, a cover for
injustice, and much else besides. Perhaps the most
widespread view of nature, however, consists in saying that
it no longer exists, at least not on earth, for we humans are
strangers to nature and in coming into contact with it we
have denatured it, transforming it into a socio-natural
hybrid. Nature, from this point of view, is what has not in
any way been acted upon or influenced by humans. In
opposition to this characteristically modern view of nature,
the present article has endeavoured to articulate and
synthesize the work of two thinkers who attempt to revive
the Pre-Socratic view of nature as physis: Edgar Morin and
Martin Heidegger. According to Morin, physis is selfproduction and it is characteristic of any being that brings
itself into existence, such as stars, living beings, or mature
ecosystems. The principal limitation of Morins position,
however, is that he interprets physis as self-production,

understood in accordance with philosophical realism as a

process that occurs independently of any human-dependent
space of appearance. In contrast to Morins realist
interpretation of physis, Heidegger puts forward a
phenomenological interpretation of physis as self-disclosure
or self-bringing-into-the-Open, where the Open is
inextricably linked to Dasein.
By drawing on the phenomenological analysis of the
Greek polis developed by Hannah Arendt, it is possible to
interpret this Open as an agora or space of public assembly
into which any given thing first emerges as a question or
matter of concern. Nothing exists that has not first emerged
into the Open, thus becoming open to categorization
withdrawal from the agora as this or that. The
understanding of Being characteristic of Dasein is thus tied
inextricably to the Open, for it is only because a being is in
the Open, or has previously appeared in the Open and
thence been categorized, that it may appear as something
or other.
Beings are not, however, the only things that
appear in the Open. Being or nature also appears in the
Open, sometimes disclosing itself metaphysically as a
technological instrument whose purpose is to fulfil some
sort of will whether of God, Man, or Selfish Replicators
and at other times disclosing itself only negatively as that
which has not in any way been acted upon by humans. The
time has come, however, for Being or nature at last to
disclose itself as itself, that is to say, as physis. Moreover,
the ultimate reason that this self-disclosure of Being must
now occur is that our current path, the path of selfdestruction, confronts us with the supreme danger of
nothingness, of the annihilation of Being. 17 To say this does
17 Such a position is in this respect close to the
enlightened catastrophism of Jean-Pierre Dupuy, who in
the final paragraph of Pour un Catastrophisme Eclair
writes: Enlightened catastrophism consists in thinking the
continuation of human experience as resulting from the

not, however, imply that Being is disclosed by something

other than itself. Indeed, despite our talk of reasons,
Beings self-disclosure is not grounded in some other
thing, but rather in what Heidegger calls the no-thing
(das Nichts).18 To say both that Being discloses itself and
that Being is disclosed by the no-thing is thus far from
contradictory. Moreover, if it is true that Being discloses
itself, all that we humans can do is to let Being disclose
itself, rather than put up obstacles to its self-disclosure by
closing our minds, by obstinately conceiving beings only one
way, by becoming so overawed by the powers of science and
technology that we lose our ability to think, 19 or by
categorizing Being or nature as various different things
which it is not (a construct, a fiction, totalitarian,
metaphysical, etc.). At a time when the natural question
the question of humankinds relation to nature has become
the key, existential question of a new epoch of history,
salvation would thus appear to lie in cooperating with Being
negation of a self-destruction (Dupuy 2002, 216, my
translation). Dupuys thinking falls short, however, in not
seeing how from the negation of self-destruction there may
arise a renewed experience of Being as self-production.
18 The idea that the self-disclosure of Being is due to our
having unknowingly embarked on a path of self-destruction
may thus be seen as in some respects a collective, political
analogue to Heideggers analyses of anxiety, being-towardsdeath, and the no-thing put forward in Being and Time
(1995) and What is metaphysics? (1993c). A key
difference, however, is that whereas an individual human
being has a given life expectancy, this is not the case for
Western civilization. Western civilization may be mortal in
the sense that it could die, but when it will die is as yet
uncertain: perhaps it will die relatively soon, maybe even in
the next century or two, or perhaps it will begin again, in
which case it could endure much longer.

or Nature (qua physis), thus letting it be in the sense of

producing and disclosing itself.
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of Chicago Press, 1998

19 Heidegger has controversially maintained that science

does not think (1993e, 373). What he means by this is not
that scientists are completely empty-headed, but rather
that they do not think about Being. This is very much in
keeping, moreover, with Morins claim that the concept of
physis is completely absent from physics (Morin 1977, 94;
102). The limitation of Morins position, however, is that,
since he does not interpret production phenomenologically
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systems they study with respect to their environment, thus
making them exist where existence is understood in
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(Passet 1979 210, my translation) Science, in other words, is
a form of technology: it is a skill or way of knowing
(pistm), in which certain entities (scientists) bring
forth other entities (physical systems) in accordance with
specific epistemological procedures (experimentation,
reasoning, etc.). In the case of self-production, by contrast,
it is the beings themselves that bring themselves into
existence. In producing themselves, stars and living beings
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to exist in the sense of standing out from a background.
But the same could not be said as regards the so-called
systems from which stars or living beings first emerged:
neither a cloud of hydrogen nor a molecular soup
delimits itself from its environment. Any definition of the
boundaries necessary for the existence (standing out
from a background) of these apparently natural systems
is artificial. So, whereas scientists will typically see a star as
arising from a prior system (a material cloud of hydrogen
atoms), which, thanks to work or energy, develops the
emergent property of self-organization (thus taking the form
of a star), the thinker of Being itself qua physis will see the
star as an emergent being: a being that brings itself into
existence. On the one hand, then, we have the classic
technological schema of energy (work) giving form to
matter, and, on the other, the self-bringing forth of a natural
being. It should be clear that the thinking required to
make this distinction is not scientific, but philosophical, in
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