Update Feb/09

Apparently, this can be solved in a really easy way as Mads Buus suggested in the comments-section. The GNOME desktop environment ships with a tool called gnome-open, which can be used for this:

$ gnome-open .

This opens Nautilus in the current working directory. Note: Don’t forget the dot after the command!

You might also want to look how to make a shortcut for this command, cmp. Mads Buus’ comment below. Thanks again for this much easier solution!

The solution

The solution is basically just a one-line command:

$ echo "'`pwd`'" | xargs nautilus --browser

To make it shorter, we can just put these lines in a script called naut. You can either save the script where you like to or put it in your very own .bin-directory (which I will do here).

$ mkdir ~/.bin
$ echo -e '#!/bin/bash\necho "'\''`pwd`'\''" | xargs nautilus --browser' > ~/.bin/naut
$ chmod +x ~/.bin/naut

Make sure to add the .bin-directory to your PATH variable:

$ echo -e '\n# Private binaries\nexport PATH=$PATH:~/.bin' >> ~/.bashrc

Usage of the naut-command

You can now use the naut-command in your console window (make sure to restart the console window before). Here is a small example:

$ cd "/very/long and complicated/path/to/a/very/important/directory"
$ naut

Et voilà , the Nautilus window will pop up.