Transforming the finite: toward a Jacobi-ian ecological critique of big bang cosmology’s new German romantic philosophy of nature

Abstract

Big bang cosmologists appear to utilize a neo-German romantic philosophy of nature, reinventing in the context of a modern science the critical monism through which Hölderlin, Schelling, Schlegel, and Novalis thought nature or Nature as one whole unity (only partly available to reason) around 1800. Also echoing these thinkers, big bang cosmologists regularly claim (often in their popularized works) to be able to furnish, or at least begin to furnish, a “new mythology” based on reason. Friedrich Jacobi’s critiques of some broad trends in 18th century German thought influenced the first early German romantics in their approaches, but they remained opposed to what had been his main position, which was that any philosophical naturalism carried with it an inevitable nihilism. Extending Jacobi’s critique into the non-theistic frame can provide new avenues for future ecological critiques to be more fully developed of big bang cosmology’s monistic construction of nature and its reiterated proposal of a new mythology based on reason, now under the direction of science, with art playing a role, rather than the reverse.