The present article addresses the question of the adequate knowledge of nature in the context of Immanuel Hermann Fichte’s philosophy of nature. After an examination of the position and role that this systematic problem has both in Karl Joël’s book Der Ursprung der Naturphilosophie aus dem Geiste der Mystik and in contemporary research on the Anthropocene, this article offers a depiction of Fichte’s conception of the aposterioric speculative mode of knowledge of nature. Finally, Fichte’s conception of knowledge of nature is brought up for discussion both with Joël’s epistemological thesis and with certain approaches of contemporary research on the Anthropocene. It is shown that Fichte’s philosophy offers a productive perspective to addressing contemporary problems of the Anthropocene.

The “sfumato” is a new notion, both from an artistic and metaphysical viewpoint. Thanks to this concept, Leonardo brings the reflection on the nature of the cosmos to a level of surprising currency, thus overcoming the dichotomy between the human and the natural world (animals, plants, atmosphere, water, and rock formations). At the same time, the distinction between nature and supernatural reality is also questioned: nature is pervaded by the spirit, i.e., the incorporeal force that animates the entire universe, while the sacred turns out to be rooted in an original dimension that escapes any temporal computation. And it is to this union that such magnificent works such as The Virgin of the Rocks, the Mona Lisa, and Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child are inspired. They are pictorial treatises on the philosophy of nature that are inspired to the divine principle, which pervades creation. At the heart of this deep osmosis between natural exploration and the human-divine world is creativity of the artist, in whose works the world is spiritualized and perfected.

Karl Joël’s book “Der Ursprung der Naturphilosophie aus dem Geiste der Mystik” seems at first glance, like almost all of his writings, as if the author was not very keen on an argumentative course. Yet, the text has been very precisely structured. Its four chapters correspond to the four unities: “It is actually a fourfold unity that they all [i.e. the Renaissance thinkers, HS] teach in the sensed unity of life: the unity of man, of the soul with God [1], the unity of God with the world [2] [...], the unity of the world as such [3], and the unity of man with the world [4]”. From the indifference point of feeling, Joël develops mysticism as the source of knowledge on one side and science as its clear verification on the other side. He bases his concept on an understanding of real spirituality as shown in the ensoulment of the cosmos and in the doctrine of metempsychosis.

Der Band widmet sich dem Ansatz des Basler Philosophen Karl Joël, den dieser unter dem Titel „Der Ursprung der Naturphilosophie aus dem Geiste der Mystik“ 1906 vorgelegt hat. Trotz der geänderten Zeitlage lohnt es sich, so die Überzeugung, aus welcher der vorliegende Band entstanden ist, auf die Quellen hinzudeuten, aus denen Joël geschöpft hat. Wie er selbst nach dem Ursprung der Naturphilosophie fragt, so soll in den Beiträgen dieses Bandes nach dem Ursprung seines eigenen Denkens gefragt werden. Nach einer grundsätzlichen Vorstellung seines Ansatzes (Schwaetzer) werden die drei Epochen in den Blick genommen, auf die Joël vor allem rekurriert: Antike (Schneider), die Renaissance (Cuozzo) und Deutscher Idealismus (Hueck) sowie Spätidealismus (Hernández). Abschließend erfolgt ein Blick von der Gegenwart her (Thomas). Im engeren Sinne situiert sich die Fragestellung des vorliegenden Bandes im Bereich einer Naturphilosophie des Anthropozän. Er diskutiert dabei die These, dass Naturphilosophie aus Mystik entspringt, ohne in ihr aufzugehen, dass die erstere aber auch ihren Ursprung nicht verleugnen darf. Joël bietet damit einen gegenwärtige Konzeptionen produktiv hinterfragenden Wissenschaftsbegriff, der zugleich in eine auch das Geistige in Mensch und Kosmos ernst nehmende Anthropologie eingebettet ist.

This article examines the interrelation of contemporary Russian feminist poetry and political activism. Recent protest movements in the post-Soviet space demonstrate that female activists play major roles in all aspects of social transformation. While this had not yet become as clear in the case of Russia, a growing movement of young feminist and queer writers are giving voice to the suppressed through poetry. This article investigates this movement by tracing the development of the feminist network assembled around the internet platform “F-pisʼmo,” which has existed since 2017. Through political activism, festivals, creative writing courses, and the online-publication of poetry, prose, and philosophical essays on gender issues, the organizers and participants in the network engage the subaltern in empowering practices in order to undermine and transform the conservative and patriarchal social order of post-Soviet Russia. Analysis of one of the most powerful and controversial poems of this sort, “Moja vagina” (My vagina) by Galina Rymbu, demonstrates the political impact of feminist poetry in Russia and its link to US-American feminist discourse. It is argued that the method of political activism practiced by Russian feminist poets today can be described as speaking and acting through poetry in the sense of Hannah Arendtʼs political theory of the vita activa.