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What I propose here is to dialogue and check the confluences and divergences between McDowell’s relaxed naturalism and Nishida’s historical naturalism, and their strategies to surmount modern philosophy everlasting questions that pivot on a series of dualisms, among which that of reason andnature stands out. In what follows, in the first section, I will clarify some of the reasons why the division betweennature and culture, or reason andnature, or minds and world, represents one of (...) the facets of this modernist “great division”, or, as I rename it, the “dual track” betweennature and humankind. The section includes a succinct exposition on how the “great division” is transferred to East Asian modern philosophy, and, in fact, how it remains in cultural projections of Japan’s native non-division between humans andnature. Later, I use thesecond section to describe and discuss John McDowell’s strategy to escape out of the dilemma between the Myth of the Given and the Myth of Coherentism, through the notion of “secondnature”, recovered from Aristotle’s ethics, as a path to offer a different conception of what is natural, and of human being’snature. Once we understand why McDowell’ssecondnature is his way to reconcile conceptual capacities and humankind animal-being maturation through upbringing -Bildung, formation-, I connect his conceptualization with Nishida’s own vision of whatsecondnature is. In his late philosophical works, Nishida’s central notion is “action-intuition”, an epistemic hyphen that links subject and object, or perceiver and perceived, that opens the way for his discussion of “historical world” as a “media(c)tion” (settlement action); and “historicalnature” considered as a telos-bearing motion that unfolds the “world of force”, the “world of life”, and the “world of living things”, and, lately, “secondnature” as the world of custom. As I will show, Nishida’s “secondnature” is not secondary in relation to a presupposed “first”nature. The world of custom has ontological priority. My final wish is to demonstrate that Nishida’s late statement of “historical-naturalness” -human beings coming into being from the historical world as the mediation of the continuity of discontinuity- offers a way to solve McDowell’s criticized fatal dualism -human life discontinuous with the rest ofnature. And, at the same time, offers new possibilities to overcome the image of reason andnature as opposing spheres, or human estrangement fromnature and from himself. At the end, I open the floor for a rethinking Aristotle and Marx, Nishida and McDowell orientation towards a symbiotic, relaxed or humanized naturalism as a tool to untie modern philosophy dualist conundrum. (shrink)

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Abstract John McDowell argues for minimal empiricism via using the notion ofsecondnature of human beings. I should like to invite him to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology in order to elaborate a more substantial conception ofsecondnature. McDowell seems to think that it is adequate for his more epistemological aim to remind us ofsecondnature as though it were to be taken for granted. But I think, following Plessner, that this (...) right reminder needs a therapeutic elaboration in Kant's sense of propaedeutics. What had been called oursecondnature found itself being questioned in order to limit the range of ways of treating the self we can authorize. (shrink)

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In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “secondnature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second (...) class='Hi'>nature” as a bridgeconcept that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst andsecondnature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition assecondnature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

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La notion de " secondenature " désigne depuis l'âge classique le problème des rapports et des proportions entre l'originel et l'institué dans l'existence humaine collective et individuelle. Mais cette question n'est pas une question anthropologique, sociologique ou psychologique : c'est avant tout une question politique car cette construction institutionnelle est le lieu d'un conflit irréductible. Longtemps revendiquée par les tenants de l'émancipation, elle fait aujourd'hui l'objet d'une appropriation néolibérale qui exige qu'on la repense en termes plus politiques et (...) plus radicaux. (shrink)

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What is the relation between democracy andsecondnature? What, that is, is the relation between a form of government that places a premium on a people shaping their shared destiny and a people who have been shaped by their past inheritance—an assortment of traditions, customs, perspectives, and practices? Does democracy fundamentally seek to escape custom and practice—the oppressive yoke of tradition—or does it, in fact, depend on a cultural inheritance, asecondnature?In many standard accounts, (...) Romanticism frees itself from the encumbrance of tradition and discipline and thereby soars, unshackled, to the lofty heights of subjective expression, unrestrained imagination, and self-creation.1 In this view... (shrink)

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Dewey’s notion ofsecondnature is strictly connected with that of habit. I reconstruct the Hegelian heritage of this model and argue that habit quasecondnature is understood by Dewey as a something which encompasses both the subjective and the objective dimension – individual dispositions and features of the objective natural and social environment.. Secondly, the notion of habit quasecondnature is used by Dewey both in a descriptive and in a critical (...) sense and is as such a dialectical concept which connects ‘impulse’ and ‘habit’, ‘original’ or ‘native’ and ‘acquired’nature, ‘first’ and ‘secondnature’. Thirdly, the ethical model ofsecondnature as habituation and the aesthetic model ofsecondnature as art are for Dewey not opposed to one another, since by distinguishing ‘routine’ and ‘art’ as two modes of habit, he makes space for an expressive and creative notion ofsecondnature. Finally, I argue that the expressive dialectics of habit formation plays a crucial role in Dewey’s critical social philosophy and that first andsecondnature operate as benchmark concepts for his diagnosis of social pathologies. (shrink)

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I am concerned in this paper with McDowell's account of human uniqueness innature in terms of a fundamental difference between humans and animals. I try to show that the concept of that difference is relevant for a Wittgensteinian understanding of the place of rationality innature. I then develop an internal criticism of McDowell's transcendental way of approaching this topic by using Diamond's insights about the importance of the details for a realistic philosophical account of human mindedness. (...) My aim is to show that the difference between humans and animals is constitutive of our understanding of what it means to be humans, but this is not something we can explain in advance of looking at the weave of our life with them. (shrink)

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McDowell’s argument to refuse a scientific approach to human rationality is that lawful explanations are unable to account for our rational agency. However, not every scientific explanation is a lawful one. There is another argument to the the same effect: (a) there are distinct inquiries concerning the space of reasons: causal inquiries and constitutive inquiries; (b) they are independent of each other; (c) science addresses only the first sort of questions; (d) therefore, it has no impact on inquiries concerning constitutive (...) features of the space of reasons. I will argue that (b) is false, and therefore (c) is at best unclear. The idea of asecondnature suggests more unified view of human knowledge, a sort of Hegelian approach. However, for Hegel, the realm of reason encompasses all ofnature, and this is an untenable route towards a full re-enchantment ofnature. We should be open to the consequences to our self-understanding of different inquiries of natural sciences about how oursecondnature emerges and how it unfolds. Once we take account of the different sorts of inquiry in the surroundings of rational agency, we see that we cannot predict in advance how our self-understanding will change as a result of changes in different scientific domains. The concept ofsecondnature gives an appropriate frame to this sort of accommodation. (shrink)

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This book is focused on what stabilizes and unifies oursecondnature, or that which we participants in a culture share in common. The claim is that in the triadic structure of the experience of all persons, trust is the key to the solidarity and stability of oursecondnature.

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In this article I raise a number of issues concerning John McDowell’s widely influential revisionist reading of Kant. These have to do with what I see as his failure – despite ambitious claims in that regard – to overcome the various problematic dualisms that dogged Kant’s thought throughout the three Critiques. Moreover, as I show, they have continued to mark the discourse of those who inherit Kant’s agenda in this or that updated, e.g., ‘linguistified’ form. More specifically, I argue that (...) McDowell’s ‘new’ reading amounts to no more than a series of terminological shifts or substitutions, such that (for instance) the well-known problem with explaining how ‘sensuous intuitions’ can be somehow synthesised with ‘concepts of understanding’ is replaced – scarcely resolved – by an equally opaque and question-begging appeal to Kantian ‘receptivity’ and ‘spontaneity’. My essay goes on to discuss a number of kindred dichotomies, among them that ofnature and ‘secondnature’, all of which can basically be seen as resulting from the normative deficit entailed by McDowell’s particular kind of half-way naturalizing project. I conclude that this project shows insufficient regard to the history of post-Kantian continental thought, in particular the similar problems faced by ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ idealists like Fichte and Schelling. (shrink)

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The concept ofsecondnature plays a central role in McDowell's project of reconciling thought's external constraint with its spontaneity or autonomy: our conceptual capacities are natural in the sense that they are fully integrated into the natural world, but they are asecondnature to us since they are not reducible to elements that are intelligible apart from those conceptual capacities. Rather than offering a theory ofsecondnature and an account of how (...) we acquire one, McDowell suggests that Aristotle's account of ethical character formation as the acquisition of asecondnature serves as a model that can reassure us that thought's autonomy does not threaten its naturalness. However, far from providing such reassurance, the Aristotelian model ofsecondnature actually generates an anxiety about how the acquisition of such autonomous conceptual abilities could be possible. (shrink)

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Hegel’s philosophy of history is fundamentally concerned with how shapes of life collapse and transition into new shapes of life. One of the distinguishing features of Hegel’s concern with how a shape of life falls apart and becomes inadequate is the role that habit plays in the transition. A shape of life is an embodied form of existence for Hegel. The animating concepts of a shape of life are affectively inscribed on subjects through complex cultural processes. This paper examines the (...) argument Hegel puts forward in his Lectures on the Philosophy of World History for why civilizations come to atrophy and examines the decisive role habit plays in this process. The paper concludes with a discussion of the way in which the central role ofsecondnature in historical transitions and norm formation conflicts with Brandom’s account of norm formation in Hegel’s thought. (shrink)

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In this chapter, I consider the relation of the three major spheres of ethical life that Hegel distinguishes – family, civil society, and the state – and analyse their contribution to the constitution of the "secondnature" of objective spirit. Family and civil society are both analyzed by Hegel as ways of taking up and transforming our givennature such that asecond ethicalnature can be produced. Where the family helps bring forth such a (...)secondnature by means of “education” (Erziehung), civil society does so by means of “cultural formation” (Bildung). As I show in sections (I) and (II), these processes are characterised by Hegel as steps of an actualization of freedom insofar they liberate us from our givennature without suppressing it and bring forth asecondnature that gives freedom the consistency of living reality. However, while these processes constitute forms of liberation, they are at the same time forms of social subjection, involving discipline and normalization, the subjection to the will of another, and the adaption to the given necessities of the social world. Therefore, the completion of the process of liberation seems to require a third sphere that allows individuals to relate, collectively and politically, to thesecondnature thus produced. In order for thesecondnature of spirit to be a self-constitutive actualization of freedom, ethical life thus requires a specific political dimension that I turn to in section (III). While this political process is only possible on the basis of the republican infrastructures of family and civil society, it at the same time calls these infrastructures into question. Although Hegel himself does not develop this dimension properly, his conception ofsecondnature points towards the desideratum of a politics ofsecondnature. I will close the discussion of this political dimension in section (IV) by pointing out the general and diagnostic dimensions that such a politics ofsecondnature can help us elaborate. (shrink)

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While the concept of “secondnature” has received remarkable attention in recent years, the discussion has mainly focused on neo-Aristotelian accounts. In this paper, I develop a neglected post-Kantian alternative. Instead of focusing solely on the model of habit, this conception shifts our attention to a different paradigm forsecondnature: the work of art. Following Kant’s account in the third critique, producing a work of art can be understood as the production of an “other (...) class='Hi'>nature”, expressive of freedom. As the post-Kantian tradition from Schiller and Hegel to Marx and Nietzsche suggests, the work of art can thus serve as a model for the kind ofsecondnature we require in order to realize an ethical life. Thus, the production of an ethicalsecondnature is not a matter of mere habituation, but a challenging “art”: it is an aesthetic task, a complex dialectical exercise, and a social practice of objectification. This conception ofsecondnature not only allows us to grasp the relation of freedom andnature more adequately than the dominant neo-Aristotelian conceptions – it also opens up a critical perspective on our contemporary aesthetic self-understanding. (shrink)

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What does it take to be subjectively free in an objectively rational social order? In this book Andreja Novakovic offers a fresh interpretation of Hegel's account of ethical life by focusing on his concept of habit or 'secondnature'. Novakovic addresses two central and difficult issues facing any interpretation of his Philosophy of Right: why Hegel thinks that it is is better to relate unreflectively to the laws of ethical life, and which forms of reflection, especially critical reflection, (...) remain available within ethical life. Her interpretation draws on numerous parts of Hegel's system, particularly on his 'Anthropology' and his Phenomenology of Spirit, and also explores connections between his account and those of other philosophers. Her aim is to argue that Hegel has a compelling conception of the ordinary ethical standpoint which takes seriously both the virtues and the perils of reflection. (shrink)

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This paper argues that children as members of a perennial psychoclass represent one potential vanguard of an emergent shift in Western subjectivity, and that adult–child dialogue, especially in the context of schooling, is a key locus for the epistemological change that implies. I argue from Herbert Marcuse’s prophetic invocation of a “new sensibility,” which is characterized by an increase in instinctual revulsion towards violence, domination and exploitation and, correspondingly, a greater sensitivity to all forms of life. As the embodiment of (...) a form of philosophical “post-animism” or hylozoism, it represents the evolutionary shift that, it could be argued, our species requires for survival at this historical moment. I suggest that the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny—the long formative period of human childhood and the pedomorphic character of humans across the life cycle—makes of the adult-collective of school a primary site for the reconstruction of belief. After exploring child–adult dialogue more broadly as a form of dialectical interaction between what John Dewey called “impulse” and “habit,” I argue for a form, or archetype of schooling first articulated in ancient Greece called skholé, a space that functions, according to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, as a “meeting place,” a “form of gathering and action” dedicated to inquiry, and not to the production of calculated, preordained outcomes—a space removed from the world of production, and characterized by a form of temporality associated with childhood: aion, or “timeless time,” as opposed to kronos, or linear time. Skholé is dedicated to emergence and cultural reconstruction, which follows from an educative relationship between adults and children based on understanding the latter as bearers of the “novel,” and on a faith in the “reorganizing potentialities” of childhood impulse, or interest—that is, on natality as a fundamental principle of cultural evolution. (shrink)

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Hegel's discussion of the concept of “habit” appears at a crucial point in his Encyclopedia system, namely, in the transition from the topic of “nature” to the topic of “spirit” (Geist): it is through habit that the subject both distinguishes itself from its various sensory states as an absolute unity (the I) and, at the same time, preserves those sensory states as the content of sensory consciousness. By calling habit a “secondnature,” Hegel highlights the fact that (...) incipient spirit retains a “moment” of the natural that marks a limitation compared to “pure thought” but that also makes perceptual consciousness possible. This makes Hegel's account analogous in important respects to John McDowell's “naturalism ofsecondnature.” But Hegel's account of habit can be seen as a version of a Kantian synthesis of the productive imagination—and hence presupposes a given material that can become one's own by means of habit. This does not mean that Hegel falls into the Myth of the Given, but it does suggest that an appropriate account ofsecondnature might be committed to something McDowell wants to deny: that nonconceptual states of consciousness play a role (even if not a justificatory role) in perception. (shrink)

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ABSTRACTWhile Hegel’s concept ofsecondnature has now received substantial attention from commentators, relatively little has been said about the place of this concept in the Phenomenology of Spirit. This neglect is understandable, since Hegel does not explicitly use the phrase ‘secondnature’ in this text. Nonetheless, several closely related phrases reveal the centrality of this concept to the Phenomenology’s structure. In this paper, I develop new interpretations of the figures ‘natural consciousness’, ‘natural notion’, and ‘inorganic (...)nature’, in order to elucidate the distinctive concept ofsecondnature at work in the Phenomenology. I will argue that this concept ofsecondnature supplements the ‘official’ version, developed in the Encyclopedia, with an ‘unofficial’ version that prefigures its use in critical theory. At the same time, this reconstruction will allow us to see how the Phenomenology essentially documents spirit’s acquisition of a ‘secondnature’. (shrink)

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The expression ‘secondnature’ can be used in two different ways. The first allows phronēsis to count as the sort of thing asecondnature is. Thesecond speaks ofsecond natures...

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John McDowell argues for minimal empiricism via using the notion ofsecondnature of human beings. I should like to invite him to discuss Helmuth Plessner's Philosophical Anthropology in order to elaborate a more substantial conception ofsecondnature. McDowell seems to think that it is adequate for his more epistemological aim to remind us ofsecondnature as though it were to be taken for granted. But I think, following Plessner, that this right (...) reminder needs a therapeutic elaboration in Kant's sense of propaedeutics. What had been called oursecondnature found itself being questioned in order to limit the range of ways of treating the self we can authorize. (shrink)

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This volume examines thenature/politics relationship anew in the wake of recent critiques of the category of "nature." Its essays draw on contemporary and canonical thinkers to reflect on "secondnature" as a site or paradigm of political contest and intervene into debates about environmentalism, human rights, and more.

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Nature and society are dichotomized in much discussion in critical theory or science, largely because of the want of a satisfactory way to connect or combine the problems and prospects involved. Yet the interconnection is nowhere more apparent than in the idea of the social or cultural, or capitalism assecondnature. This article, developed from the opening lecture for the Thesis Eleven Conference `Landprints Over Boundaries: in Honour of George Seddon', compares Marx and Seddon on (...) class='Hi'>nature andsecondnature, in order to suggest points of contact and traffic between Seddon's project and that of critical theory, not least with reference to problems of place and the peculiarities of the antipodes. How to connect the two? Marx shifts from the anthropological and historical to the more abstract concerns with capital assecondnature; Seddon remains more inquisi-tive, empirical, though comparative and cosmopolitan innature. Reading the two projects together is an interesting exercise in orientation for critical theory today. (shrink)

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This paper offers a reading of key passages in Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit, which can serve as the basis for an argument to discuss the shortcomings of two contemporary readings of Hegel’s notion of ‘secondnature’. It investigates two micro-processes which Hegel discusses within his Philosophy of Spirit, the process of transition from sound to speech and the process of transition from natural will to ethical will. Thereby, the text is able to mark the differences between mere habit, (...)secondnature of an ethical agent, and self-mediated self-determination of spirit.Secondnature is neither a falling back intonature and therefore a limitation of human freedom, nor is it a notion that in itself could explain the process of Bildung as Hegel sees it. Instead,secondnature should be understood within the framework of freedom as practical self-determination which allows spirit to relate to itself as other through its product. (shrink)

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Since the truth is only the whole, no statement or discipline can be true unless we understand how it relates to all other statements and disciplines within one encyclopedic knowledge. This theorem also applies to the perspective from which the exposition of the whole truth can be approached. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, for example, in a sense gathers the entire truth, but its perspective is the specific phenomenological one of experience and Bildung. All partial perspectives taken together, however, understood in (...) the necessity of their unity, form the one and overall perspective—which no longer is a perspective—that constitutes the truth of the truth beyond which nothing exists or can be known. This one and total Idea can be known by us, finite intelligences, only in the unfolding and time-consuming form of a discursive system. It knows itself in the eternity of its self-differentiating and self-temporalizing identity with itself. (shrink)

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The concept ofsecondnature has a long and complex history, having been widely employed by several philosophers and even scientists. In recent times, the most famous thinker who has employed the concept ofsecondnature, and has actually grounded his philosophical program precisely on this notion, is probably John McDowell. However, it is also possible to find some occurrences of the concept ofsecondnature, “zweite Natur”, in Nietzsche’s writings, both published and unpublished. (...) In this contribution I will develop a discussion of this important topic, thenature of the human being, in Nietzsche and McDowell, and attempt to establish a comparison between them on the basis of this concept. It is the guiding idea of this article that McDowell’s “Naturalism ofSecondNature”, though representing one of the most original and indeed ambitious philosophical programs today, actually suffers from some problems in defining the peculiarnature of the human being, and that referring to some of Nietzsche’s ideas on this topic may be of help in order to broaden and strengthen McDowell’s own philosophical perspective. There is almost no reference to Nietzsche in McDowell’s several philosophical works, notwithstanding his great interest in, and his careful attention to, other authors belonging to the tradition of modern German philosophy, and nobody has inquired yet into the potential Nietzsche/McDowell relationship. The paper will trace the development of certain philosophical-anthropological insights from 19th- and 20th-century German thought up to the present age, and provide an original and relevant contribution both to the specific field of Nietzsche studies and to the more general domain of inquiries into contemporary philosophical problems. Comparing the ideas of Nietzsche/ McDowell on the question concerning thenature of the human being relationship is intriguing from a philosophical point of view and may lead to a better understanding of this subject and disclose new perspectives in this field. There is a lot of philosophical insight to be gained in comparing these two figures. (shrink)

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While in neo-Aristotelian conceptions of virtue and Bildung the concept of “secondnature” describes the successful completion of human education, Hegel uses this term in order to analyze the irresolvably ambiguous, even conflictivenature of spirit. Spirit can only realize itself, in creating (1) asecondnature as an order of freedom, by losing itself, in creating (2) asecondnature—an order of externality, ruled by the unconscious automatisms of habit. In the (...) class='Hi'>second meaning of the term, “secondnature” refers to spirit’s inversion of itself: the free enactment of spirit produces an objective, uncontrollable order; "secondnature" is here a critical term. On the other hand, the very same inversion of free positing into objective existence is the moment of the success of ("absolute") spirit. The paper exposes this undecidable ambiguity ofsecondnature and claims that its acceptance and development are the conditions of an adequate understanding of the constitution and forms ofsecondnature. (shrink)

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Examining Henri Bergson's work, philosophy, and the body, this volume explores the history and philosophy of comedy, film, psychoanalysis and the comic performance of the future, creating a theoretical and practice-based framework for the field.

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Discussions of habit in Hegel’s thought usually focus on his subjective spirit since this is where the most extended discussion of this issue takes place. This paper argues that habit is also important for understanding Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. The discussion of habit andsecondnature occur at a critical juncture in the text. This discussion is important for understanding his notion of ethical life and his account of freedom.

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Ce travail opère une relecture de deux textes de jeunesse de Th. W. Adorno dans l’optique d’une réévaluation de leur importance pour son œuvre ultérieure, en particulier pour sa philosophie de l’histoire. Ces deux textes, dans lesquels est défini le concept d’interprétation philosophique de l’histoire, ou Deutung, seront abordés à partir d’une question issue des philosophies de l’histoire classiques du xixe siècle, celle du lien entre cette interprétation philosophique et une expérience commune de l’histoire. Nous montrerons que, loin de pouvoir (...) constituer un programme univoque pour la suite de la philosophie adornienne, ces textes de jeunesse sont au contraire travaillés par une ambiguïté. Fondamentale pour toute la philosophie adornienne de l’histoire, cette ambiguïté prend place entre un fondement méthodologique de la Deutung et la tentative de l’originer au contraire dans une expérience dialectique de la réalité historique. (shrink)

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The central thesis of this article is that the notion ofsecondnature that John McDowell has reanimated has something of ethical and educational importance, thereby possibly extending the borders of the philosophy of education. The argument to this conclusion is the subject of serious consideration and criticism. The aim of this article is therefore to clarify the educational implications of the conception ofsecondnature by responding to the three likely objections: (1) the charge of (...) idealism, (2) the charge of anthropocentrism, and (3) the charge of triviality. Through critical discussions of these criticisms, it is made explicit thatsecondnature, from the outset, illuminates every sphere of the lives of human beings. A lively appreciation of this leads to the conclusion that the issue of how we develop our world of meaning with the conception ofsecondnature should come under the scope of serious philosophical discourse on education. (shrink)

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Multiple authors in cognitive science of religion (CSR) argue that there is something about the human mind that disposes it to form religious beliefs. The dispositions would result from the internal architecture of the mind. In this article, I will argue that this disposition can be explained by various forms of (cultural) learning and not by the internal architecture of the mind. For my argument, I draw on new developments in predictive processing. I argue that CSR theories argue for the (...) naturalness of religious belief in at least three ways; religious beliefs are adaptive; religious beliefs are the product of cognitive biases; and religious beliefs are the product of content biases. I argue that all three ideas can be integrated in a predictive coding framework where religious belief is learned and hence not caused by the internal architecture of the mind. I argue that the framework makes it doubtful that there are modular cognitive mechanisms for religious beliefs and that the human mind has a fixed proneness for religious belief. I also argue that a predictive coding framework can incorporate a larger role for cultural processes and allows for more flexibility. (shrink)

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The concept ofsecondnature promises to provide an explanation of hownature and reason can be reconciled. But the concept is laden with ambiguity. On the one hand,secondnature is understood as that which binds together all cognitive activities. On the other hand,secondnature is conceived of as a kind ofnature that can be changed by cognitive activities. The paper tries to investigate this ambiguity by distinguishing a Kantian (...) conception ofsecondnature from a Hegelian conception. It argues that the idea of a transformation from a being of firstnature into a being ofsecondnature that stands at the heart of the Kantian conception is mistaken. The Hegelian conception demonstrates that the transformation in question takes place withinsecondnature itself. Thus, the Hegelian conception allows us to understand the way in whichsecondnature is not structurally isomorphic with firstnature: It is a process of ongoing selftransformation that is not primarily determined by how the world is, but rather by commitments out of which human beings are bound to the open future. (shrink)

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This paper draws on the account ofsecondnature in Aristotle, Dewey and Hegel to examine the way in which norms become embodied. It discusses the implications of this for both the authority of norms and how they can be changed. Using the example of veganism it argues that changing norms requires more than just good reasons. The appreciation of the role ofsecondnature in culture allows us to: firstly, better conceive the difficulty and resistance (...) of individuals to changing norms because of the material resilience of norms, habits and customs in a culture. Secondly, it argues that the effective adoption of a new norm such as veganism or the behavioral change necessary to respond to climate change, requires not just more good reasons but the creation of material pathways in the culture in which those revised norms can be inhabited. (shrink)

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David Bakhurst's 2011 book ‘The Formation of Reason’ explores the philosophy of John McDowell in general and the Aristotelian notion ofsecondnature more specifically, topics to which philosophers of education have not yet given adequate attention. The book's widespread appeal led to the symposium ‘SecondNature, Bildung and McDowell: David Bakhurst's The Formation of Reason’, which appeared in the first issue of the 50th anniversary volume of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2016. Despite (...) its obvious educational relevance, whether and how Bakhurst's McDowellian line of philosophical argument shapes the domain of educational enquiry or discourse remains up for debate. The rich contributions of Sebastian Rödl, Paul Standish and Jan Derry help us confront this issue. Proceeding with an analysis that is partly explanatory and partly critical of the central aspects of their respective views, I try to show that the basic attraction of the McDowellian/Bakhurstian line of argument concerning educational thinking is that it enables us to address education in the proper context of the natural and the social. In other words, their depiction of a human being as a natural animal in a normative world allows us not to be perturbed either by the natural-scientific conception of the natural or by the social constructivist thinking of the social, both of which have occasionally distorted how education is addressed and therefore impoverished our understanding of education itself. I conclude with a brief word on the significance of continuing and advancing the conversation initiated by the symposium by noting two viable examples of future work. (shrink)

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Both Simone Weil and John McDowell analogize value or meaning to sensations such as colour or heat, and this analogy is a strategy for resisting anti‐realism. However, McDowell's analogy tacitly accepts the very dualism which he is criticizing, while Weil's analogy is both more naïve and more radical than his. Like McDowell, Weil argues that virtuous character is the actualization of asecondnature, but she emphasizes the role of the body in this process. Fully trained, the agent's (...) body is a transparent medium through which she reads circumstances – and through which the circumstances, clearly perceived, express themselves in action. (shrink)

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I argue that Husserl’s concept of position-taking, Stellungnahme, is adequate to understand the idea ofsecondnature as an issue of philosophical anthropology. I claim that the methodological focus must be the living subject that acts and lives among others, and that the notion ofsecondnature must respond to precisely this fundamental active character of subjectivity. The appropriate concept should satisfy two additional desiderata. First, it should be able to develop alongside the biological, psychological, and (...) social individual development.Second, it should be able to underlie the vast diversity of human beings within and across communities. As possible candidates, I contrast position-taking with two types of habit-like concepts: instinct and habitus, on the one hand, and customary habits, on the other. I argue that position-taking represents the active aspect of the subject while the habit-like concepts are passive. A subject’s position-takings and ensuing comportments are tied together by motivations, which evince a certain consistency, and for this reason are expression of the subject’s identity. I conclude by nuancing the relation between Stellungnahme and passivity. Passivity is deemed necessary to action but subservient to it; position-taking is thought to be prior to passivity. (shrink)

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This contribution aims to relate an important topic of the Hegelian philosophy, that ofsecondnature, to the gender question developed by Simone de Beauvoir. The core of the emancipation process described in TheSecond Sex lies in Beauvoir’s revolutionary idea of the artificial character of gender: the latter belongs to the culturally constructed sphere of social norms and not to mere fixednature. In this assumption the French philosopher seems to recover the Hegelian theory of (...)secondnature: Hegel believes that through an individual and social Bildungsprozess, subjects liberate themselves from the immediate level of natural necessity and reach the free horizon of spiritual existence, in which they become self-conscious actors. Beauvoir accepts in her own existentialist view this extra-natural becoming and realizes that also gender participates in it: women are not bynature ‘immanent’ creatures that lack ‘transcendence’. Hegel, however, does not recognize thesecondnature of gender and falls into that same essentialism, denounced by Beauvoir, which relegates the woman to the biological plane, thus excluding her from the dialectic ofsecondnature and self-consciousness. For this reason, Hegel’s understanding of freedom throughsecondnature will initially be introduced, and then, employing this concept against Hegel himself, the path of emancipation from gender essentialism in Beauvoir’s account of biology and culture will be addressed. In thesecond part of the paper it will be shown how gender, in acting as asecondnature, replays the same ambiguity of Hegel’s theory: aresecondnature and gender something that we individuals freely shape or are we victims of an externally imposed necessity just like in firstnature? A dialectical solution will be presented in both thinkers, whose work aims to conciliate spirit andnature beyond any Cartesian dualism. (shrink)

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