First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature

proceed from the unconditioned; the first investigation of speculative physics is that concerning the unconditioned of natural science.

2.

Since this investigation is conducted in this draft from the highest principles, the following can only be viewed as an elaboration of those investigations.

Since everything of which one can say that it is is of a conditioned nature, only being itself can be the unconditioned. But since individual being, as a conditioned thing, can only be thought of as a specific limitation of productive activity (the sole and ultimate substrate of all reality), being itself is that same productive activity thought in its unconditionality. For natural science, therefore, nature is originally only productivity, and from this as its principle, science must proceed.

Insofar as we know the whole of objects only as the aggregate of being, this whole is for us a mere world, i.e., a mere product. It would certainly be impossible in natural science to rise to a higher concept than that of being if all persistence (which is thought of in the concept of being) were not deceptive and actually a continuous and uniform re-arising.