Chapter Two examines the various discourses of nature in early Romantic-period scientific, philosophical, religious, and poetic texts, showing how these have contributed to the emergence of the biological sciences and of ecological consciousness. Highlighting interchanges between Germany and Britain, it first looks at definitions of nature in both languages, arguing that the term underwent a semantic explosion between 1750 and 1850. Informed by recent ecocritical theory, it then bases itself on an anonymously published 1783 essay co-authored by G.C. Tobler and Goethe to revise the commonplace idea of Romantic nature as something wild, pure and distinct from culture. Drawing on the ideas of Spinoza and Leibniz via Herder and Schelling, the text imagines nature as an active, self-organising process of becoming in which humans participate. This Naturphilosophie informed an ethos of contemplation often cast in opposition to industrial capitalism. The chapter then discusses Romantic language theories and their relation with the non-human world. It closes with an overview of nature’s spiritual dimension in the theology of Schleiermacher and poetry of William Wordsworth, John Clare, and, again, Blake.

Marco Segala argues that the tight seal Schopenhauer wanted to maintain between ordinary experience along with its investigation in the natural sciences on the one hand, and metaphysics on the other, is more porous than Schopenhauer can acknowledge in WWR 1. Segala proposes a rethinking of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of nature, conceiving it less as an “explanation” of science and more as a conceptual space in which metaphysics (Ideas) and science (natural forces) can interact. But ultimately, he argues, Schopenhauer abandoned the Ideas completely as having any role in scientific explanation, supplementing his philosophy of nature with a philosophy of natural science that anticipates modern approaches.