The sublime and the natural revisited hermeneutically

Abstract

The subject of this paper is the examination of a formal indication of the sublime in the context of a hermeneutic philosophy of nature. The main focus is the ontological approach of the living nature as outlined in Martin Heidegger's Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude. The general presuppositions lying at the bottom of biological sciences are taking on account by Heidegger in order to formulate a concept of organism as a modal dynamic of nature which must itself be described as sublime. The living nature can be understood as an edification upon itself and its sublimity points to the human understanding of being, which can not completely share its peculiar openness with the special kinds of intentionality and possibility that belong to the living organisms.