ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses nature and the human-nature relation in Hegel's early writings, specifically the texts previously collected by Hermann Nohl as Theologische Jugendschriften and recently reissued in a critical edition with the title Frühe Schriften. The problem of the relation between human and nature that appears in these writings is one of the most significant tropes characterizing the analysis and critique of modernity in Hegel's early work and represents the horizon of lack and deficiency that his entire system attempts to resolve. The chapter highlights how Hegel's notion of nature in these writings is always conceived in the tension between two oppositions: on the one hand, Hegel figures the relation to nature as division; on the other hand, this splitting can be overcome, according to the young Hegel, by viewing nature differently, that is, as living nature. The chapter reads this tension in the context of the question of whether Hegel's philosophy can be interpreted as a form of naturalism. It advances the thesis that Hegel's philosophy can be read as a form of non-naturalistic naturalism, or rather, as a form of naturalism whose core is the notion of life – a concept Hegel understood as capable of overcoming the opposition between nature and freedom.
