ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a Simmelian approach to nature: its main goal is to identify the influences, and the contributions Simmel made relating to the concept of nature or, today, the environment. Although nature is present in many of his works, Simmel only rarely targets nature in itself. This means that we must return to the intellectual context that influenced Simmel’s thinking, in particular to the figures of Kant and Goethe; to the philosophy of life that he developed; and to the early-20th-century readings of his work on nature and matter in the context of social morphology and urban ecology. We will therefore deepen his interpretation of nature, bringing into play the concept of interaction, which allowed Simmel to widen the idea of social relationships to include natural dynamics, while also discussing the autonomy of nature. Although social dynamics are capable of transforming and “culturalising” nature, nature can itself “naturalise” human works, a naturalisation that is certainly limited but which brings about meaning for individuals, thereby updating interactions between nature and society. Reading Simmel therefore resonates, in an original way, with the contemporary debates that remind us that this boundary between nature and society is always changing.
