ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to examine the discourse about different meanings of nature (e.g. whether nature is good or bad or neutral) with the help of a historical case study, namely an analysis of the philosophical reactions to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755. At the beginning of this chapter a brief account of the Lisbon earthquake will be given. Thereafter, the positions taken by three prominent philosophers, namely Voltaire, Kant and Rousseau, with respect to the earthquake and nature in general will be described. Their philosophical statements about nature are then placed in the eighteenth-century context. The weaknesses of the traditional reasoning about nature, which persist in philosophical and/or theological discussions, will also be discussed. And at the end of the chapter proposals concering contemporary approaches of culturalistic philosophy are made in order to evaluate if and how we can overcome the old problems inherent within the discourse about the ‘nature’ of nature.
