Klaus Held

Phusis and Birth: The Experience of Nature from a Phenomenological Perspective

In the age of highly advanced technology our relationship to the natural environment has
fallen into a deep crisis. This fact should motivate philosophers to reflect upon the original
meaning of nature. The intention of my subsequent considerations is such a reflection.
The Latin word, natura, nature, is the translation of the Greek phsis. This word has been
traditionally regarded as the keyword of early philosophy and science for the ancient Greeks.
We have no reasonable cause to doubt that the first thinkers were natural philosophers, but
we might very well pose the question of what meaning the word, phsis, had for them. This
question is indispensible for any philosophical treatment of the problem of nature, because
all our use of this term is rooted in the primary focus of early thought on phsis. Therefore I
would like to start with this question, posing it phenomenologically.
Phenomenological questioning, for Husserl, means not to consider the thing which con-
stitutes the object of the question as something that subsists in itself, but to consider it in its
correlation with the way in which it appears to us. How the thing, phsis, appeared to the
ancient Greeks cannot be said immediately, though, for their thought is only available to us in
fragments of the original texts, or in the form of later antique reports. We can and must rely
primarily on Aristotles portrayal. He saw himself as an heir of early thought, because his
philosophy in its very fundament - the first philosophy - pointed back to phsis.
First of all, it must be kept in mind that Aristotles conception of phsis is determined by his
distinction between two fundamental regions of changeable entities: Everything that we
encounter in the world, all entities - Greek, and phenomenologically speaking: everything that
appears - can be assigned to these two areas: the tchne nta, that which comes to be and into
appearance through us, our creation, our construction, manufacture, fabrication, organisat-
ion; and the other, the phsei nta, that which is by nature. Phsis and tchne refer in this
juxtaposition to two modes of appearance which differ from one another with respect to the
relation of each appearance to its respective cause: the natural entity comes to appearance
on its own; the cause of its being lies within itself. Everything brought about by man, on the
other hand, has the cause of its being and appearance outside of itself. The cause here lies in
human art, tchne.
This juxtaposition has remained decisive for our understanding of nature even unto the
present, and we consider it trivial. But there is a historical indication that this understanding
of nature is not so unquestionably obvious, as it may seem. In the tradition of early Greek
thought, there is no evidence to support the assumption that the phsis / tchne distinction
determined the horizon of the understanding of phsis. There is every reason to believe that
the word, phsis, had such a broad meaning in the language of early thought that it included
what later was thought as two distinct modes of appearance: appearance-of-itself and
appearance-through-us, appearance through art.
Only when Aristotle pitted phsis and tchne against one another, did the narrower concept of
nature come into use. Before this phsis was the name for the appearance of everything that
we encounter in our changeable world as an entity. A reverberation of this early under-
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standing of phsis is still perceptible in the great poetry of our Western tradition whereever
the word, nature, appears in it. Because phenomenology is concerned with appearance in
general, it must accept from out of this historical background the duty to treat not only the
narrower concept of nature familiar to us, but also phsis in its original, broader meaning.
Phenomenologically, the broader and the constricted meanings of phsis must correlate to
two modes of encountering nature. Thus, the question of that experience in which phsis in
the broader sense first is manifested poses itself.
To answer this question as well, we can at first only hold to Aristotle and his view of early
Greek thought. In accordance with his teacher, Plato, he declares wonder, thaumzein, to be
that experience out of which philosophical-scientific thought arose. Still, not every wonder
gives rise to the genesis of philosophy and science. The phenomenological clarification of the
difference between that wonder which motivates philosophy and non-philosophical wonder
was first provided by Heidegger in his lecture course from Winter Semester 1937/38
(Gesamtausgabe vol. 45): the latter is sparked by the unaccostumed, by that which breaks
through customary experience via some conspicuous anomaly. In philosophical wonder, on
the other hand, something entirely surprising takes place: the customary, which is taken for
granted without question, appears extraordinary.
But what is the epitome of ordinariness? It can only be an ordinariness somehow inherent in
everything ordinary. And just such an ordinariness can in fact be found: Every experiential
situation that I experience implies references to other experiential possibilities. The world, the
dimension for the appearance of any entity whatsoever, is the correlate of the interconnection
of all these references. Our familiarity with the world, understood in this way, is disturbed
repeatedly, because the directions of reference that we have taken prove to be impassable, or
need corrective adjustments. But as Husserl showed in the Ideas I, such disturbances pre-
suppose the normal progression of our conduct, which is carried by the certainty that the
course of being referred on further cannot stop. It is due to this normalcy that the faith in the
worlds further survival is our most elementary custom. The widespread antique conviction of
the eternity of the world was only the philosophical expression of this prephilosophical trust.
Philosophical thaumzein is a peculiar shaking of this trust: the continuing transition to the
ever new appearance of entities experienced in the network of references loses its un-
questioned customariness. Now, the trust in the continuation of the world does not rest on
theoretical knowledge, or proofs, but it animates us in the form of a fundamental mood, in
which our non-philosophical life is steeped. Therefore, the shaking of this trust cannot but
occur emotionally, and this is precisely what thaumzein is. In the mood of normal life we
experience the continuation of appearance as the normal case, whereas any disturbance
appears to us principally as an exception. This relation between the normal case and the
exception is inverted in the shock of thaumzein. What was the exception in the mood of non-
philosophical life, the absence of new appearance, becomes fundamental for the mood of
philosophical wonder; every really occurring appearance is here felt as a surprising event that
grants the unexpectable.
So in philosophical wonder the normal continuation of experience in which entities appear to
us continuously and the world continues to subsist becomes a wonder that stuns us, because it
renews itself again and again. Appearance as the unexpectable occurrence of this self-renewal
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is phsis, as it is experienced in thaumzein, that phsis which spans all changeable entities,
including those made by man. The mooded experience of phsis in this broader sense is quite
another than the experience of nature in its narrower sense. We have this experience within
the horizon of producing works, rga, through a tchne. What phsis means reveals itself to
us here really only indirectly in the form of a restriction of our ability to produce something:
all that appears to us as nature which escapes our bringing about works, because we find it
present as something that precedes our productive activity.
The clearest example of this is the material that we need to produce a work. In any act of
fabrication we must inevitably make do with such material as precedes, and is available for,
our formation. So this experience already implies Aristotles familiar fundamental distinction
between matter, hle, as that which stands available for formation, and form, edos or morph,
as that by virtue of which matter has its shape. In the presence of available material we en-
counter admittedly a Being-of-nature. But because this encounter receives its character
from out of the restriction of Being-through-us already mentioned, phsis is here under-
stood in terms of tchne. This connection can also be seen in the concrete practice of creation.
For we can attempt to produce that material already ourselves which we use for concrete
fabrication. And that material which is used in this creation can itself also be the result of a
previous creation.
This iteration cannot be a regressus in infinitum, because the very concept of hle would thus
lose its meaning; for creation means: forming an already present material. The character of the
givenness of material as it is found present would be lost if there were no first material
whose cause were not human tchne. But even such first material remains understood in
terms of tchne; it is a limit concept only constructible within the horizon of human creations
dependency upon the given, and thus already in Aristotle does the experience of phsis in the
narrower sense pave the way from afar for the modern possibility of making the trans-
formation of any and every givenness into made-ness the end of human praxis.
It is this very possibility which is not at home in the mooded experience of phsis in its
original, broader meaning. In spite of this deep running difference between the two phsis
experiences, there must also be some connection between the two of them; for otherwise it
would not be understandable why Aristotle could claim to be speaking of the same phsis
which provoked the wonder of the early Greek thinkers in his own analysis of phsis in the
narrower sense.
What connects both conceptions of phsis can already be seen in the experience of the
givenness of the material. If the material - at least the first material - is no product of our
activity, then it can only appear to us if we are ready for it in a passive condition; we can only
experience it if the encounter with it happens to us, if it befalls us and affects us. The Greek
word for this experience is pthos. Moods also have the character of affecting, though, i.a. the
mood of thaumzein. Thus the pthos-character provides us with the link between the early
Greek and the poetic experience of nature in the broad sense and the Aristotelian experience
of nature in the narrower sense.
If there is such an inner connection between both experiences of phsis, though, they cannot
be completely independent of one another in their historical development. This can indeed be
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observed in the appropriation of a typically modern form which phsis in the narrower sense
has taken on, and in the fact that it now affects the experience of phsis in its broad sense.
The modern treatment of nature, at least in science, is grounded in phsis in the narrower
sense; for it became possible through the modern development of technology out of the old
European tchne, which rests upon mathematicised natural science. This itself arose out of a
revolutionary transformation of premodern science, which has its roots in late mediaeval
nominalism, and whose character I can only briefly retrace: The Platonic conviction that our
mind is open for the eidetic ordering of the world collapsed, and this collapse effected the
assumption that we can only really understand that of which we know how it could be
produced.
Thus comes the inventive mind of the engineer to power in modern natural science. Through
this mind physics took on a technical character long before the genesis of modern technology,
and this became possible through the thorough mathematising of all physically relevant
matters and laws, as Husserl portrayed it in the Galileo paragraphs of the Crisis-treatise.
Mathematising makes possible technical procedures through which ever more regions of that
which was once given, material found present, can be successfully transformed into a product
of human manufacture.
Due to the spatial and temporal restriction of our possibilities, this cannot mean that someday
any and every pre-given material that we need for some formation could become something
produced by man. But the crucial point is that there is one possibility of which this factical
limitation of our other possibilities does not rob us: we can regard any material principally as
something producible and in this perspective we can make it the telos of our treatment of
everything given in our technical practice to transform everything we find present into some-
thing produced by us. This telos lies in the infinity of a future which we can only constantly
approach, but that does not stop us from carrying out our technical practice as if the telos were
within our reach.
In its essence the telos of the transformation of everything found present into a product is only
a thought out goal, an ideal, because the goal is really unachievable. But in the relentless
striving of modern technology toward this infinitely removed goal, we operate as if it were of
the same sort as those goals which are for us in finite reach. We can describe all the forms of
our conduct in the modern world, in which an ideal telos becomes effective for practice in
such a way as if it were really attainable, to cite loosely Husserls terminology from the
Crisis-treatise, as idealising. Idealisation is the sign of our times.
With the idealisation of productive praxis through the progress of modern technology, the
power and vivacity of the pthos, in which we encounter material as something found present
fades. So the pthos-consciousness source of experience that belongs to the experience of
phsis in the narrower sense runs dry. But this cannot be without consequence, for the ex-
perience out of which the understanding of phsis in the broader sense: the shock of suffering
thaumzein also fades. On the other hand, modern research, even in its newer form, which has
been revolutionarily changed by the dominant spirit of engineering, also inherits the legacy of
antique science, which itself gushed out of philosophical wonder. The universal theoretic
curiosity that grew out of that wonder, and which we originally discover in no other culture
outside of the European culture, can still be observed in the modern scientist.
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The widespread assertion that research in contemporary natural science were only motivated
by the hope of the utility of its technical employment can be best explained by the fact that the
modern natural sciences business of research, with all the inherent costly experiment
apparatuses, are subsidised by political bodies. But this fails to recognise the spirit of research
done passionately and for its own sake, the spirit which drives the scientists themselves. No
utility posited or striven for by man, but only the experience of being overwhelmed by a
pthos can motivate such passion. Still, the antique assertion that philosophy and science are
rooted in wonder loses ever more of its convincing power for the present-day experience of
the appearence of entities in general even among philosophers.
The real reason for this development is the spirit of idealisation. Through it, scientific and
technical progress distances itself further and further from its original source of motivation in
a pthos. Without the connection to this source, progress becomes exclusively dominated by
the tendency of idealisation, and loses every proportion, because the telos of idealisation lies
in the infinite. In a pthos, the finitude of our experience makes itself noticed. The un-
measuredness of progress makes it appear meaningless to many critically minded individuals,
in spite of all the gains in everyday comfort connected with it. But on the other hand there can
be no question of anyone, even among those radical ecologically thinking persons, seriously
wishing to return to the pretechnological stage of humanity. Therefore, the suitable task for
our contemporary age can only consist in the search for a solid ground for orientation in a
meaning-endowing pthos that saves the process of technologising, which continues ever
forward ad infinitum, from expanding into the measureless. I shall call this Anhalt. The
German word, Anhalt, has a double meaning: the word describes a point of reference, and at
the same time something steadfast, with which one can keep from being swept away.
Because we cannot be certain that the experience of philosophical wonder is still alive, we
must remain on the lookout for another measure-providing pthos, but is there an experience
that withstands that loss of meaning through the idealisation which coincides with techno-
logical progress? Hlderlins famous question poses itself ever more urgently: Is there a
measure on Earth? [Gibt es auf Erden ein Ma?] The pthos sought after cannot be
observed in the treatment of material for technical fabrication; for in this region any material
found present, due to idealisation, appears only as something that is principally destined to be
transformed into something else. No appearance-from-self appears able to escape trans-
formation into an appearance-through-us in this region. Everything is drawn into the suction
of idealisation as it progresses into the unending.
Because the treatment of material belongs to tchne-led fabrication, we are directed through it
to the experience of phsis in the narrower sense. Therefore, it is in the area of the experience
of phsis in the broader sense that we must seek a measure-providing pthos on to which we
might hold in order to find an answer to Hlderlins question in our context. In this situation
the concept of nature can show us one possible way. The noun, natura, in Latin is connected
to the verb, nasci, which means, to be born. To be born, for animals, is the occurrence of
their appearance in the world. In order to describe this occurrence, which also happens with
humans, phenomenologically, we must start at the way in which it is experienced in the first
person, by me. The thing that stands out most conspicuously then is something to which
phenomenologists have already called attention repeatedly: I can principally only determine
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that I have already appeared in the world through my birth after the fact. This is to be ex-
plained by the fact that my birth occured without my contribution; it happened to me without
my being asked.
Through the ex post facto character of the experience of finding myself present as already
born, I run up against a givenness which, in difference to that of material, cannot be trans-
formed into a producibility; the natal pre-givenness of my own existence does not have the
character of material. The pthos in which I encounter my having been born as an un-
cancelable pre-givenness, is therefore excluded from the field of tchne, nor does it belong to
the field of nature in the narrower sense. It is, rather, my originary access to phsis in the
broad sense, to the self-renewal of appearance in general. Because of this exemplary
significance of the experience of birth for the understanding of phsis in its original meaning,
it is no accident that the word, natura, which is a lingual reference to birth, became the Latin
translation for phsis.
Phenomenologically speaking, birth is really the clearest paradigmatic case of non-philo-
sophical experience of phsis in the broader sense, the wonder of self-renewing appearance.
Appearance means, if we understand this expression of language and its equivalents in
other Indo-european languages unmetaphorically, that an entity comes forth out of hiddenness
and into the light. That the relentless self-renewing appearance of entities is experienced as a
wonder is explained i.a. by the fact that the self-renewal occurs out of a hiddenness. Precisely
this also characterises birth if we first portray it as it was described in pre-technological
Europe: the human being, who appears on the stage of the world for the first time, has left the
closedness and darkness of the womb. There, it was not only hidden, but also sheltered and
secure, i.e. protected from the dangers to which the newborn baby is exposed in the bright
openness of the world. In German, there is also a lexically visible inner connection between
the words for hiddenness and for sheltered security: Verborgenheit and Geborgenheit.
The extreme transition from the snugness in the womb to the nakedness of the newborn baby
in the openness of the world made labour pains seem understandable and acceptable to the
pretechnological world.
Heidegger called attention to the fact that the normal German word for freedom, Freiheit,
in the old German usage means openness, i.e. Offenheit. The brilliant openness into
which I passed at birth is actually the dimension of my freedom as it comes to real appearance
through action in the world. As Hannah Arendt explained, such freedom consists in the fact
that I have the possibility to deviate from pre-given patterns of conduct, and to begin some-
thing new, thus, in the emphatic sense of this word, to make a start. I owe this possibility to
my having been born; for as often as I am in the position to begin something new, I need
power and inspiration for it, of which I know that I do not owe it to myself. For this the
German language has the telling word Einfall.
In order to begin something truly new, I must rely on an Einfall, i.e. a motive for my action
that falls into me. This falling-in is a pthos like unto the birth at the temporal beginning of
my life, and it also resembles it in that I can only notice the Einfall in question after it has
already occured to me. It also belongs to this ex post facto character that the place from which
the new initiative for my action fell into me, the place of origin of the new, lies for me
irretrievably in darkness. In this sense, all true beginnings are rebirths. They are occurrences
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of freedom, but they point back to the natural event of the first birth. Through this event I was
let out into the dimension of freedom, set free. Precisely by the place from which a newborn
human comes, the womb, remaining hidden, a new ability to begin, the openness of a new
human existence, becomes possible.
My birth as the making possible of my ability to begin, allows me to come into the world as
an I, that, as initiator of new actions, attains a character, through which it is not ex-
changeable for any other I. Only through birth can I become this one and none other, an un-
mistakable someone. Only as a human whom birth has sent into life with certain features
that distinguish me from others do I have the possibility to modify these features. This is why
the ex post facto character of the experience of birth traditionally implied the readiness to
accept the accident by which a person is endowed with his or her own features from birth on.
We humans are not put together out of one part nature and one part free individuality, but
both sides stand in a complementary relation to one another; beginning needs to be released
out of dark hiddenness, and it is only through the opening of the ability to begin that this
release is the birth of a human being.
To the spectrum of the freedom to act belongs also the possibility of producing, the tchne-led
poesis. Due to the development of science to the technologising of poesis, modernity has
brought us production in the region of fabrication, production, that due to the idealisation
of all living circumstances, is led by the telos of transformation of all pre-givenness into pro-
ducibility mentioned earlier. Under the dictation of idealisation, the spirit of production must
also assert itself in the treatment of our having been born. The most elementary pre-givenness,
the original presence found of which I make use in every action, even in technical action, is
my freedom, with which gift I am sent in birth along on the path of life. The spirit of pro-
duction cannot stop at this foremost pre-givenness. Thus the enablement of the ability to
begin becomes technical through idealisation.
Before the 20th century brought us the real technologising of birth, 19th century thought
already gave signals of a readiness for such technologising, when Karl Marx, for example, in
his Paris Manuscripts of 1844 interpreted the conception of children as reproduction of the
human species, and thus as a variation of production. The interpretation of natality as pro-
duction, however, can change nothing of the ex post facto character of my own birth
experience; I cannot precede the occurrence of my own birth. Insofar the pthos-character of
birth, the presence already of my own self cannot be gotten rid of. But I can still attempt, as a
quasi representative, to alter with technical means that occurrence through which the birth of
other humans is prepared. All the aspects traditionally connected with being born mentioned
above are called into question through this technologising of birth.
Already in the pre-technical age there were methods of furthering or preventing others birth.
Technologising birth means first of all that planned manipulation replaces these traditional
practices. Birth control has entered a new age via the pill. The darkness of unknowability in
the fruit of womb is made accessible to sight via x-rays and ultrasound images. The fruit of
womb becomes yet more distinctly visible through in-vitro fertilisation; even before the
beginning of the pregnancy, the openness of a laboratory replaces the sheltering snugness of
the womb. And for an ever longer span of time in the course of the pregnancy this snugness
can be replaced by medical treatment of the early born child. Thus the tendency to make the
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way people are conceived and come to the world ever more independent of maternal birth is
strengthened. Inasmuch as the development of the fruit of womb is restricted to the womb
itself for an ever shorter time, the possibility for its extra-uteral development being given for
an ever longer span of time, the pain of labour loses its meaning more and more. In many
countries, for example, a Caesarean birth is no longer a measure taken in an emergency
situation, but the rule.
The manipulation of an embryos genes in vitro shows us the possibility of human cloning on
the horizon, even if the will or the capability has been hitherto lacking. With human cloning I
would lose the initial endowment of my own self with features that distinguish me from the
others as the initiator of action. But even without clones, the individual features with which a
human will be endowed at birth will be made more and more independent of accident via
genetic manipulations. Serenity vis--vis fate, which determined the fundamental attitude of
those living in the pre-technological age, seems condemned to extinction.
Since Christian faith had succeeded in asserting itself in European thought, and herewith the
absolute respect for human life precisely in its most defenceless forms, pregnancy was looked
upon as an untouchable gift of God, through which it was forbidden for humans to take an
embryos life. Prenatal diagnostics implies the hardly avoidable extreme case that with the
prediction of certain severe, irreparable health defects, such as Downs syndrom for example,
physicians may even recommend the abortion of a pregnancy.
The last mentioned implications of a technologising of birth have a new quality over and
against those previously mentioned, because they do not only concern other people, for whom
I alter the circumstances leading to their birth. If the implications mentioned are accepted
socially, it allows me to draw my own conclusions and act accordingly as an adult. The first is:
there is in principle nothing more to stop me from altering my own features, with which I was
endowed at birth, and which had been hitherto regarded as unchangeable after the fact.
Surgical technology already offers means for such a radical metamorphosis of physical
characteristics, e.g. of sex, and neurotechnology is well on its way to doing the same for
fundamental changes of the psyche.
The second conclusion concerns the prohibition of suicide which was valid through most of
the great tradition. In the factum that I experience my having been born irretrievably after the
fact, the tradition saw a message that my life was given to me by God or by the gods. If a
physician should be allowed to advise the abortion of a pregnancy for reasons of a prenatal
diagnosis, then the individual must also have the right to nullify his or her appearance in the
world, which began with his or her birth.
In all the practices I have just very briefly recalled an unstoppable increase in the techno-
logising of birth can be traced; under the dictation of idealisation, with its telos that lies in the
infinite, there is no limit for the transformation of the occurrence of birth into production. All
concerns which were voiced in the past against the new practices affecting the event of birth,
or which might be expected in the future against the expansion of these practices have been,
and in all likelihood will be, washed away by the stream of development. Many today have
the feeling that there is something unsettling about this development. We can see in this
feeling a mere expression of peoples normal conservatism vis--vis technological progress,
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and conclude that it is philosophically irrelevant. The disquieting feeling can, though, give us
an occasion to reflect: perhaps the actual reason for this feeling lies in the circumstance that,
with the advancing technologising of birth, the uncancellable ex post facto character of the
experience of birth loses its importance for us. With this disconcern, though, we distance
ourselves from that exemplary pthos through which we can at least sense something of
phsis in the broad sense.
When this vague sense fades away, then only the expectation of utility can motivate the pro-
gress of modern natural scientific research and technology. But utility is always utility-for-
someone. Who is the someone served by the utility if we ourselves take the natal occurrence,
that makes possible our own ability to begin, and from which alone it can be that we are who
we are, ever more into our own hands. If we become the object of our own breeding through
the total manipulation of birth, as Aldous Huxley satirically prognosed in his dystopian
magnum opus, Brave New World, then there is no longer any Anhalt from which it could
be read what were useful for us. We need this Anhalt in order to find the measure of which
I spoke earlier.
Talk of such a measure does very well seduce one to a bioethics, which could attempt to
distinguish casuistically between permissible and impermissible manipulations in the
occurrence of birth. To this end, one might appeal to some timelessly valid normative limits
to power to have ones own nature at ones disposal as it should please. But all attempts
whatsoever to deduce such limits argumentatively are doomed to failure. If my previous
reflections have led me to speak of a measure, it was exclusively with respect to the ex post
facto character of our experience of birth as the Anhalt for a possibility of keeping
measured proportion. No bioethical casuistic can be deduced from this Anhalt; for the
experience thereof is emptied of any content in the further technologising of nativity; all
implications of content gradually fall prey to the transformation of the event of birth into
production.
Philosophers can erect casuistic bioethical norms in an attempt to influence legislation in
order that these norms be made politically binding. They might thus in principle follow
Platos demand that philosophers become kings. In the secret additional article of his work,
Perpetual Peace, Kant said it were not desirable that philosophers should become kings, but
that they should very well be heard publicly. If this were to occur, then one of their tasks
today would be to remind legislators of the ex post facto character of their own experience of
birth, and thus also of the original, broader experience of phsis, without bioethical casuistics.
Might we hope that such a spirit of measure may find its way into the legislation of advanced
industrial nations? Or must we not rather fear a tragedy of unmeasured immoderacy for future
humanity?
(English translation: Alan Duncan)