I have suggested that, given the problems with Irigaray's philosophy of sexual difference, we need to rethink it significantly, so as to argue that the historical suppression of sexual duality has simultaneously suppressed the natural multiplicity of our bodies, while a culture which expressed duality would equally express this multiplicity. To help with this rethinking of Irigaray's ideas, I proposed borrowing from Naturphilosophie, a tradition on which she herself draws. Having seen how she adapts Hölderlin's and Hegel's ideas of nature, we can review how, as a whole, she uses ideas from Naturphilosophie to support and flesh out her belief in natural duality. Through this review, we can start to bring together some alternative elements within this philosophical tradition which can support and flesh out the idea that human bodies are naturally internally multiple as well as sexed.

Irigaray takes up Hölderlin's idea that original nature (physis) divides itself into subjects and objective nature, but she argues that this self-division only spontaneously occurs in men. She explains that this self-division is caused by men's difficulties in separating from their mothers in infancy, given that the experienced sexual difference between (the rhythms of) boys and their mothers exacerbates the difficulties which this separation always involves. Irigaray maintains that men's self-division is manifested in their rejection of nature – both their own and that of women and the surrounding environment – and in their development of a technological, artificial culture.