“That special organism which is required here can therefore only be one which is neither merely a plant nor merely an animal organism, and thus stands in opposition to both, and is not so much their synthesis as rather their absolute identity. That such an organism can only be the human one, would have to be proved through all possible moments. However, this, as well as the entire construction of the human organism (not as an organism in general, as is done in physiology, but as a human organism, as a potency-less image of potency-less identity) would be the task of a new science that does not yet exist and should actually be called Anthroposophie, something entirely different from what has been previously called anthropology.”

ChatGPT said:

This passage, likely drawing from early German Idealist or Romantic Naturphilosophie sources—possibly Schelling, Hölderlin, or someone in their orbit—lays out a striking philosophical vision: the human organism is not simply a synthesis of plant and animal life, but the "absolute identity" of their opposition. Moreover, it argues that the study of the human being—not as a general biological organism, but as the site of a unique ontological structure—requires a "new science", which the author proposes should be called Anthroposophie.

Let’s break it down:

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🔹 1. Neither Plant nor Animal, but the Absolute Identity of Both

• In Naturphilosophie, plant and animal are often metaphysical categories:

  • The plant represents a being that is open, rooted, receptive—passive unfolding of life.

  • The animal represents mobility, subjectivity, and desire—a self-moving, individuating life.

• The human organism, then, is not just biologically between these, but ontologically the identity of their contradiction—the point where their tension is held in potency-less equilibrium.

This reflects Hegelian dialectics or Schelling's philosophy of identity: not synthesis of opposites, but identity that transcends their very opposition.

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🔹 2. Potency-less Identity

• The phrase "potency-less image of potency-less identity" is difficult but rich.

  • It seems to imply that the human organism embodies an identity that is no longer striving toward actualization, no longer caught in becoming—a kind of living stillness or suspended polarity.

  • This resonates with Schelling’s late metaphysics, where the human is seen as a kind of image or crystallization of a prior metaphysical tension—no longer unfolding, but manifested as a figure of balance.

  • “Potency-less” might also refer to the fact that the human being represents these forces rather than exercising them directly—it is their reflection, not their pure movement.

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🔹 3. Anthroposophie — A New Science

• This is not what 20th-century thinkers like Rudolf Steiner called Anthroposophy. The author explicitly differentiates it from anthropology and previous versions of “anthroposophy.”

• Instead, this “Anthroposophie” is a science of the human as a metaphysical organism—a study not just of physical anatomy, but of the human being as the site where metaphysical identity becomes visible.

• This science doesn’t yet exist because modern physiology and anthropology reduce the human to generalities (either as one organism among others, or as a cultural construct), rather than grasping the human as the very point where contradiction is made flesh.

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🔹 4. Philosophical Context

This type of thinking appears in:

• Schelling’s “First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature” and “On the World Soul”.

• Franz von Baader, Oken, and others who treated biology as theophany.

• The early Romantic metaphysical anatomists, who viewed the nervous system as the image of reason, and the plant-like aspects of the human as symbolic of intuition or receptivity.

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🔹 Summary

This quote lays out a metaphysical anthropology:

• The human organism is not just living, but symbolic, standing at the crossing of the plant and animal kingdoms.

• It is not a synthesis, but the reconciliation of opposites—a concept central to German Idealism and Romantic Naturphilosophie.

• Studying this requires a new kind of science: not empirical, not just philosophical, but ontological-physiological—called Anthroposophie.

• This science would regard the human not as an object, but as the event of metaphysical identity in material form.

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If you'd like, I can help trace this concept historically (e.g., from Schelling to Steiner), compare it to modern views (e.g., Deleuze, Badiou, Agamben), or recast it in contemporary philosophical or biological language.

You said:

Compare it to Agamben

ChatGPT said:

Comparing this metaphysical-anatomical vision of the human organism to Giorgio Agamben’s thought opens a fascinating dialogue. Both grapple with what it means to be human beyond the biological or anthropological—but they do so through very different methodologies, philosophical commitments, and conceptual moods. Still, they intersect in unexpected ways.

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🔹 THE ORGANISM AS THE SITE OF TENSION

In the Naturphilosophical View (Schelling-esque “Anthroposophie”):

• The human organism is the manifest identity of opposites—plant and animal, passivity and activity, inner and outer, receptivity and motion.

• It is not a synthesis but an absolute identity, the image of potency-less tension.

• The organism is symbolic and ontologically significant—it reveals metaphysical truth.

• This “Anthroposophie” seeks a new science of the human as the site of reconciled contradiction.

In Agamben:

• The human is also a site of tension, but the opposites are different: bios (qualified, political life) and zoē (bare, biological life); language and animality; potentiality and actuality.

• For Agamben, the human arises in the caesura or threshold where these opposites are held apart but also collapsed—what he calls the zone of indistinction.

• Rather than a symbolic identity of opposites, Agamben often shows how the very tension is captured, arrested, or suspended by biopolitical structures (e.g., the camp, the state, law).

• The human becomes the being who can take itself as object, and therefore who can be excluded from itself—“the animal whose life is at stake in its very living.”

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🔹 MODE OF APPROACH

Naturphilosophical Anthroposophie:

• Operates via ontological speculation, grounded in identity philosophy (Schelling, Hegel).

• Seeks a positive image of the human as metaphysical bearer or vessel.

• The human organism is transparent to Being, though it may require a new kind of science to see it.

Agamben:

• Operates via philology, archaeology, and deconstruction, tracing how concepts like "man," "life," "law," and "voice" are constructed through historical operations of inclusion/exclusion.

• His method is negative, showing how the human has been split, divided, and rendered inoperative by metaphysical and political apparatuses.

• The human is opaque to itself—not because it is a mystery to be disclosed, but because it has been separated from its own potentiality.

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🔹 HUMAN AS POTENTIALITY / INOPERATIVITY

Here is one of the strongest points of resonance:

Naturphilosophie (Potency-less identity):

• The human organism as the image of potency-less identity implies non-action, a suspended equilibrium of opposites.

• This is not failure but a kind of ontological stillness, a reconciled image that is rather than becomes.

Agamben (Inoperativity):

• The human being is defined not by what it does but by its capacity to not-act, to render its functions inoperative, to detach itself from its own tasks.

• In The Use of Bodies, Agamben explores the “form-of-life” as a way of living where life and potential are not separated—a being that uses itself without being instrumentalized.

In both, there is a kind of potency-without-act — an ontological suspension. But where the Naturphilosopher sees symbolic peace, Agamben often sees political capture and the need for destituent refusal.

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🔹 THE TASK OF A “NEW SCIENCE”

Naturphilosophical Anthroposophie:

• Calls for a new science of the human—not physiology or anthropology, but a metaphysical-anatomical science.

• This science would disclose what the human really is: the still-point of contradiction, the symbolic body of reconciled opposites.

Agamben:

• Also calls for a new way of thinking the human, but not through new science—through deactivating existing apparatuses (of power, knowledge, metaphysics).

• The human cannot be found, but must be freed from the anthropological machine, which divides man from animal, speech from voice, law from life.

• Agamben’s method is not constructive but destituent: not to build a new image of man, but to render the apparatuses that define man inoperative.

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🔹 RELATION TO BIOPOLITICS

Naturphilosophical vision:

• The human is prior to and outside of political calculation—it is metaphysically grounded and ontologically stable.

• There is no concept of the state or law intruding upon the essence of the human; the threat is epistemological, not political.

Agamben:

• The human is always already caught in biopolitical capture—its life is what power seizes, regulates, includes via exclusion.

• The very attempt to define the human is part of the machine that renders it killable.

• Homo sacer is the figure of life reduced to bare existence—where potency is separated from form-of-life.

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🔹 In Summary

Theme	Naturphilosophie (Anthroposophie)	Agamben
Human as	Absolute identity of plant/animal	Threshold between bios/zoē
Potency	Potency-less image of identity	Inoperativity, impotentiality
Method	Speculative metaphysics	Archaeology, deconstruction
Mood	Affirmative reconciliation	Suspended, destituent refusal
Politics	Largely absent	Central (biopolitics, sovereign power)
Goal	New science to disclose metaphysical human	Deactivation of apparatuses that produce “Man”

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💬 Final Thought

The Naturphilosophical vision you quoted imagines the human as the cosmic still-point in which all opposites are gathered in equilibrium—a positive ontological disclosure. Agamben, in contrast, sees the human as split, suspended, and captured—and seeks a kind of freedom through unworking, not through new images or sciences, but through the deactivation of all operations that define and constrain life.

Still, they share a strange kinship in how they both refuse biological reductionism, both problematize the “human”, and both seek a kind of non-functional humanity—one outside the compulsions of productivity, progress, or mastery.

Would you like a synthesis that blends their perspectives—or a more detailed dive into one of these strands (e.g., Agamben’s "inoperativity" vs Schelling’s “identity”)?