Abstract

This paper resumes my discussion with Charles Scott concerning the concept of nature. The discussion stems from Scott’s book The Lives of Things, and this paper is prompted by a short text in which Scott elaborates and clarifies certain significant points. The focus of the discussion is on the double sense of nature, that the word can designate, at once, both natural things in their singular happening and the eidetic double, the essence, of such things. The key issue is the way in which the second, eidetic sense folds back over the first, singular sense so as to conceal it.