Prolegomena to Any Future Materialism: A Weak Nature Alone

406 Pages·2019·1.704 MB·English

by  Adrian Johnston

PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE MATERIALISM
Series Editors
Slavoj Žižek
Adrian Johnston
Todd McGowan
diaeresis
P R O L E G O M E N A
T O A N Y F U T U R E
M A T E R I A L I S M
Volume Two: A Weak Nature Alone
Adrian Johnston
Northwestern University Press
Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press
www .nupress .northwestern .edu
Copyright © 2019 by Northwestern University Press.
Published 2019. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Johnston, Adrian, 1974– author.
Title: Prolegomena to any future materialism. Volume two, A weak nature
alone / Adrian Johnston.
Other titles: Weak nature alone | Diaeresis.
Description: Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2019. | Series:
Diaeresis | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017341 | ISBN 9780810140622 (paper text : alk.
paper) | ISBN 9780810140639 (cloth text : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780810140646
(e- book)
Subjects: LCSH: Materialism. | Philosophy of nature. | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich, 1770– 1831. | Marx, Karl, 1818– 1883. | Lacan, Jacques, 1901–
1981. | McDowell, John, 1942–
Classification: LCC B1809.M3 J642 2019 | DDC 146.3— dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017341
For Sabrina—
thanks to whose arrival our world before became incomplete

But Epimetheus was not very wise, and he absentmindedly used
up all the powers and abilities on the nonreasoning animals; he
was left with the human race, completely unequipped. While he
was floundering about at a loss, Prometheus arrived to inspect
the distribution and saw that while the other animals were well
provided with everything, the human race was naked, unshod,
unbedded, and unarmed, and it was already the day on which
all of them, human beings included, were destined to emerge
from the earth into the light.
— Plato
If we attempted to consider without prejudice the equivocal
conduct of Providence relative to mankind and to all sentient
beings, we should find that very far from resembling a tender
and careful mother, it rather resembles those unnatural moth-
ers who, forgetting the unfortunate fruits of their illicit amours,
abandon their children as soon as they are born; and who,
pleased to have conceived them, expose them without mercy to
the caprices of fate.
— Baron d’Holbach
Nature’s hand abandons him, and it is his own business to assert
the humanity which she planned and disclosed in him. As soon,
that is to say, as both the opposite fundamental impulses are ac-
tive in him, they both lose their sanction, and the opposition of
two necessities gives rise to freedom.
— Friedrich Schiller

Contents
Preface
Tales of the Endangered Dead: Historical Essays in an Underground
Current of Naturalism xi
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction
Not- So- Strange Bedfellows: From Hegel and Marx to Lacan
and McDowell 3
Part 1. The Voiding of Weak Nature: The Transcendental
Materialist Kernels of Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature
1 Revivifying Hegel: Breathing New Life into Naturphilosophie 15
2 From Bern to Jena: The Oldest Agenda of Hegelianism 23
3 The Self-S ubversion of Modern Science: Scientific Reason and
the Phenomenology of Spirit 30
4 Real Genesis: From the Natural to the Logical, and Back Again 44
5 The Dialectics of Impotent Nature: Substance and Subject in
the System of the Mature Hegel 52
Part 2. From Scientific Socialism to Socialist Science:
The Dialectics of Nature Then and Now
6 The Specter of Engels: The Obscured History of Marxism’s
Philosophies of Science 73
7 This Is Orthodox Marxism: The Shared Materialist Weltanschauung
of Marx and Engels 85
8 The Three Fathers of Naturdialektik: Engels, Dietzgen, Lenin 96
9 Breaking and Bridging: Althusserian Syntheses of Historical and
Dialectical Materialisms 137
10 Western Marxism’s Self- Critique: Lukács’s Final Ontological Verdict 154