Purposiveness: Teleology Between Nature and Mind 9783110321241, 9783110320992

Table of contents :
Contents
INTRODUCTIONLuca Illetterati and Francesca Michelini
Back to the Roots.‘Functions’ and ‘Teleology’ in thePhilosophy of Leibniz*Antonio M. Nunziante
The organism concept:Kant’s methodological turnPredrag Šustar
Kant’s Ontology of OrganismsCord Friebe
Thinking Life.Hegel’s Conceptualization of Living Beingas an Autopoietic Theory of OrganizedSystemsFrancesca Michelini
Unintelligent Purposes.Schopenhauer’s Way over KantianTeleology*∗Nicoletta De Cian
From the Self-preservation of the Individualto Regulation of the Species.Biopolitics and TeleologyTristana Dini
Being-for.Purposes and Functions in Artefactsand Living Beings.Luca Illetterati
Teleology in Natural Organized Systems andin Artefacts.Interdependence of Processes versusExternal DesignGeorg Toepfer
Beyond Teleology?Paolo Costa
Naturalizing Teleology:Towards a Theory of Biological Subjects*∗Andreas Weber – Francisco J. Varela

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Luca Illetterati, Francesca Michelini (Eds.) Purposiveness Teleology Between Nature and Mind

Luca Illetterati, Francesca Michelini (Eds.)

Purposiveness Teleology Between Nature and Mind

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PURPOSIVENESS TELEOLOGY BETWEEN NATURE AND MIND (Eds. Luca Illetterati and Francesca Michelini)

Table of Contents Introduction LUCA ILLETTERATI, FRANCESCA MICHELINI

1

Back to the Roots. ‘Functions’ and ‘Teleology’ in the Philosophy of Leibniz ANTONIO M. NUNZIANTE

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The Organism Concept: Kant’s Methodological Turn PREDRAG ŠUSTAR

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Kant’s Ontology of Organisms CORD FRIEBE

59

Thinking Life. Hegel’s Conceptualization of Living Being as an Autopoietic Theory of Organized Systems FRANCESCA MICHELINI

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Unintelligent Purposes. Schopenhauer’s Way over Kantian Teleology NICOLETTA DE CIAN

97

From the Self-preservation of the Individual to Regulation of the Species. Biopolitics and Teleology TRISTANA DINI

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Being-for. Purposes and Functions in Artefacts and Living Beings LUCA ILLETTERATI

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Teleology in Natural Organized Systems and in Artefacts. Interdependence of Processes versus External Design GEORG TOEPFER

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Beyond Teleology? PAOLO COSTA

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Naturalizing Teleology: Towards a Theory of Biological Subjects ANDREAS WEBER – FRANCISCO J. VARELA

201

Contributors

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INTRODUCTION Luca Illetterati and Francesca Michelini

1. For a long time, teleological discourses have been forbidden in science. Since the rise of modern thought and natural science, final causes have been banished as explanatory tools in natural investigations. It could even be claimed that at the origin of modern science there has been precisely a critique of teleological patterns of explanation (in particular, of the notion of final cause) for natural phenomena, together with the idea of taking efficient cause as the only legitimate account of such phenomena. Such a persuasion has been confirmed by the Darwinian theory of the origin of species by means of natural selection. Darwinism has produced a bankrupt teleology, by excluding it from the sector in which it had retained its residual plausibility: the realm of life. In the standard interpretation, natural selection provides a purely mechanical explanation of organisms, with no supernatural intruders and no reference to purposes. Living phenomena are understood on the basis of an interaction between chance and necessity, without intentional designs transcending the process itself. Biology—and philosophical reflection on biology—have ruled out any demand for teleology within their own field of inquiry. It has been substituted by neologisms, in order to get rid of the embarrassing metaphysical heritage of teleology, particularly its link to the idea of ‘design’. Teleonomy is the term most widely used to point at the presence in nature of a direction towards a non-pre-established goal (as opposed to the outcome of either a design, or a mind external to nature). Teleological concepts have been re-translated in order to be used in scientific contexts. Function is another significant notion in this respect. 2. From this viewpoint, the motivations for rejecting teleology within science are completely legitimate and understandable. Any teleological discourse seems to face decisive objections, forcefully expressed during the modern age by one of the great enemies of final causes: Spinoza. In the appendix of the first book of the Ethics—a masterpiece, in this subject—Spinoza claims that final causes are “human inventions” (Spinoza

INTRODUCTION

2000, 108) or ‘human fictions’. Belief in natural teleology, according to this philosopher, it dervies from a single prejudice: human beings assume that nature acts just as they themselves act, that is, by pursuing goals, and “indeed they think it certain that God himself directs all things towards a certain end, for they say that God has made everything on account of man, and man in order that he might worship God” (Spinoza 2000, 106). Spinoza’s criticism is focused on humans’ self-understanding: humans ignore the causes that make them act in a certain way, yet aware of their concern for their own good, they attribute their behaviour to nature, taken as equally acting for purposes. Since humans come across natural phenomena that appear to contribute to their purposes (eyes are for seeing, sun is for light, etc.), but which are known not to be produced by them, they erroneously infer that such beings have been shaped by “some governor or governors of Nature” (Spinoza 2000, 107), believed to have prepared them for humans’ good. Furthermore, according to Spinoza, teleology subverts the order of nature, by mistaking “wich is really a cause” as the effect, and vice versa, thereby inverting the order of explanation (Spinoza 2000, 108). In the above examples, light reaching living creatures is taken as the cause of the sun, whereas sun actually is the cause of light; similarly, sight is taken as the cause of eyes, not the other way round. Incidentally, according to Spinoza, teleological doctrine annihilates the perfection of God: a God acting for a purpose would necessarily look for something He is missing; He would not, therefore, be a perfect being. 3. Contemporary discussions on teleology recover at least two aspects of the Spinozian criticism: 1. Anthropomorphism: concepts applicable to human actions and products refer to natural beings, the products of natural selection. It stresses that if the idea of purposiveness is legitimate, this can only be within the sphere of human behaviour. Purposiveness cannot be extended to the whole of nature, unless one presupposes that nature itself can be explained the same way as human behaviour. 2. Backward causation problems: that is, the idea that what comes afterwards can act retrospectively to explain and give sense to what hap2

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pened before. Any teleological discourse appears to fall foul of the physical impossibility of taking something temporally posterior as the cause of what comes before it. There is an evident link between the two issues. Teleological explanations appear to be legitimate with respect to human behaviour precisely because goals are anticipated by intentions: this allows the teleological structure to avoid backward causation inconsistencies. It follows that to become legitimate, natural teleology would have to refer to an intention in order to be justified. As soon as one talks of a natural being by referring its goal, one has already put an architect behind that object, and has implicitly assumed that the architect has been acting with recognizable intentions. 4. Within this program, reference to something like a teleology seems to be justifiable only insofar as we assume some being to which intentions are ascribed, but it becomes unacceptable if we subscribe to the idea that a scientific explanation of nature’s way of being must not presuppose any supernatural being to explain its intimate constitution. The research project culminating in this volume began from the epistemological insight that things are not so simple—especially if we assume biological science to be our background. In its explanatory practices, biology continuously appeals to a teleological terminology, in a more or less explicit way. To quote the classical example: it is claimed that the heart is the organ whose task is to pump blood, thereby producing sufficient pressure for blood circulation; this is taken to be what makes a thing a heart. As a matter of fact, this amounts to individuating a natural object, such as the heart, via a strategy that involves a teleological concept. We seem to talk of the heart using just the same strategy we adopt when we talk of a telephone, a pen, or an airplane: we identify telephones, pens, and airplanes, by means of their functions; and the same holds for the heart. However, there is no problem or embarrassment in individuating artifacts via their function, for such a function is anticipated by the designer’s intention (considered, in Spinozian terms, as the efficient cause of the product); the same cannot be said of presupposing a designer of natural beings, without falling under Spinoza’s criticism, or resorting to a supernatural explanation of nature. 3

INTRODUCTION

5. Kant proposes a strategy to justify the application of teleological concepts to natural beings (particularly to biological objects), and thereby to escape the difficulties highlighted by the modern critique of the notion of final cause, while at the same time avoiding a super-naturalistic solution. The Kantian proposal is one of the central themes of the contributions constituting this volume. In brief, the Kantian strategy departs from two seemingly incompatible assumptions (as does most contemporary debate on teleology, concentrating on the notion of function from Hempel to Nagel): 1. Some natural beings display a teleological structure or, at the very least, are constituted in such a way that they cannot but be understood via the function or goal they realize: these natural beings are organisms (and their parts). 2. The recognition of the teleological structure of natural beings appears to go beyond the limits that characterize scientific discourse, and towards theological and metaphysical commitments intolerable for scientific discourse. Such commitments are inferred as follows: if there are goals in nature, one has to postulate something, or someone, originating them, just as artifacts necessarily presuppose the existence of a designer originating their purposiveness. Kant builds his doctrine of teleological judgment by trying to reconcile these seemingly inconsistent assumptions. Such a doctrine grants that some teleological talk is unavoidable in natural explanations, but has to be pursued in such a way that it does not lead beyond the limits of scientific discourse. What makes such a Kantian proposal interesting today is the fact that it represents a position which is aware of the (at least, descriptive) necessity of resorting to models of understanding that rely on the notion of purposiveness or related notions, on the one hand; and, on the other, acknowledges that such a reliance cannot justify a discourse that transcends the limits of science, while at the same time claiming to remain scientifically plausible. It is known that, according to Kant, teleological judgment referring to nature is legitimate only by analogy, as reflecting judgment, as regulative 4

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judgment, that is, in those shapes that do not have any constitutive role for the way of being of the object taken into account. Teleological judgments of natural beings tell us nothing about the constitution and the way of being of the relevant objects; their only role consists in helping us to understand the way of being of that object and, consequently, to guide our research. But Kant has also proposed a rigorous distinction between different teleological patterns that have often been conflated in contemporary debates: external and internal purposiveness. Kant talks about “external” or “relative” teleology with respect to natural things, when these are taken as means, useful in pursuing a goal, not as self-determined things, but things oriented to a target beyond themselves. According to Kant, such a teleological account is completely inadequate for a scientific consideration of nature. By claiming that external purposiveness cannot be taken as the basis of a scientific account of nature, Kant marks his theoretical distance from those forms of cosmic teleology (to use Ernst Mayr’s expression) that are grounded on anthropocentrism, that is, from the forms of teleology which Spinoza criticises. Therefore Kant subscribes to Spinoza’s position. Apart from this concept of teleology, though, Kant recovers and reformulates the notion of “internal purposiveness” in order to understand living organisms, which he calls “organized products of nature”. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment he defines “an organised product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means” (Kant 2000, § 66, 247). Employed in order to explain what cannot be accounted for in purely mechanistic terms, the notion of internal purposiveness—the living being as related to its parts—establishes reversibility and circularity, which depart from the human mode of acting and operating and, more generally, from “linear” teleology linked to project and intention. 6. Central to this book is the idea of ascertaining whether the criticisms of the concept of teleology can undermine the notion entirely, or just partially, challenging only the concept of “external” purposiveness for instance. It is easy to see how the rejection of the notion of teleology has been based on the assumption of this kind of purposiveness now as well as in the past. When one reviews Spinoza’s criticisms, they appear to be directed solely against it. Spinoza’s objection, according to which teleology 5

INTRODUCTION

inverts natural order (light transmitted to living beings becoming the cause of the sun), is a classical arguments against “external” teleology—a teleology, in which one thing in nature serves another as the means to an end (Kant 2000, 293) to quote Kant once again. The various contributions to this volume set out from the common issue of whether, and in which form, it is possible to talk of purposes in nature, without resorting to an account requesting some intentional agent. The legitimacy of such a notion as that of “internal” teleology has been addressed, together with the issue of what the term “internal (or intrinsic)” properly denotes. This volume does not aim to simply rehabilitate a Kantian notion of internal purposiveness, but to demonstrate the necessity of rethinking and revising it, in order to apply it to issues at the heart of current debate. Current philosophy of biology frequently refers to Kant, mainly because of the potentialities of his philosophy of nature, based upon the necessity of resorting to teleological modes of explanation, at least from a descriptive viewpoint, while at the same time recognizing that such a discourse cannot transcend the boundaries of science. This, however, does not entail a mere acceptance of an historically outdated perspective. Therefore, various essays in the volume critically assess the Kantian framework, trying to exhibit its potentialities within the contemporary debate in the philosophy of biology (Sustar), questioning the very legitimacy of the notion of “internal teleology” (Friebe), as well as investigating opportunities for adopting a teleological discourse that avoids the interaction between nature and the subject investigating it (Costa). On the other hand, other essays take the Kantian distinction between internal and external purposiveness as the starting point for an explanation of the ontological difference between “organized products” of nature, and products of human art and technique. These two different teleological patterns are taken as crucial in order to justify the impossibility of assuming a unitary concept of teleology and function: they seem to hold both for the natural and the artefactual realm (Illetterati); and they can differentiate conceptually organic – circular – natural, and human – linear – intentional teleology (Toepfer). None of the essays in this volume assumes the notion uncritically; a rich section is devoted to developing a more historical approach. Historical awa6

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reness can account for the complexity, the ambiguity and the tensions underlying the various positions assumed in current debate. The presuppositions of the notion of internal purposiveness in Leibniz’s early modern thought are discussed (Nunziante), as well as those strategies of thought that try to overcome it, developed within the Kantian framework, such as Hegel’s (Michelini) and Schopenhauer’s (De Cian). Other essays (Dini) rethink the Kantian distinction in a socio-political environment with specific reference to the contemporary debate on bio-politics following Michel Foucault. Integral to this general perspective, this volume also includes a revised and updated version of Andreas Weber and Francisco Varela’s essay (‘Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality’ in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2002, 1: 97-125). This work identifies an anticipation of the autopoiesis of organisms in Kant’s account of living beings; and aims to revise the Kantian strategy, and to approach a new understanding of intrinsic teleology as a truly biological feature, inevitably intertwined with the self-establishment of identity that is the living process. 7. The last decades have seen the tide turning on the theme of teleology. Far from being useless or erroneous, teleological explanations in biology have been taken as more and more plausible, if not indispensable. Papers on this subject have multiplied in reviews of philosophy and biology, and the entry “teleology” has regained space in dictionaries and anthologies inquiring into the conceptual bases of biology. To quote what was claimed in a famous anthology on this subject: teleology seems to have become the most important task of biology (C. Allen, M. Bekoff, G. Lauder 1998, 2). This should not be taken as a sign of either involution or surrender to the “intelligent designer” conception. On the contrary, it is a request coming from science itself. Current progress in evolutionary developmental biology, for instance, do not seem to undermine a kind of internal teleology centered on living organisms. From this viewpoint, this volume embraces the task of rethinking natural purposiveness in accordance with natural science. Therefore it is meant to be an alternative both to the position of those who assume that teleology in biology requires a dimension transcending nature itself, and find in 7

INTRODUCTION

teleological language within biology an argument for the Intelligent Designer; and to the stance of those who aim to eliminate teleology altogether from scientific inquiry, or to reduce it to the only “legitimate” teleology, that is, natural selection mechanisms, precisely because teleology require that transcends nature. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This volume originated in the interaction between two research programs: the research project financed by the University of Padua, “Natural Items and Artifacts: an Historical-Philosophical Analysis”, directed by Luca Illetterati, and the project “The Future of Human Nature“ of the Bruno Kessler Foundation—Center for Religious Studies of Trento, coordinated by Paolo Costa, Tristana Dini, and Francesca Michelini. Besides the members of the research group who have made this work possible, we wish to thank particularly Antonio Autiero for supporting the project from the outset. Thanks also to Marcelo Stamm for his help and encouragement, and to Diana Barnes and Francesco Berto for their competence and ability in revising the texts. A special thanks to Amy CohenVarela and Andreas Weber for their revision of the paper ‘Life after Kant’.

REFERENCES Allen, C., Bekoff, M., Lauder, G. (1998), Nature’s Purposes: Analyses of Function and Design in Biology, Cambridge MA-London: MIT Press. Kant, I. (2000[1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer, E. Matthew trans.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spinoza, B. (2000[1677]), Ethics (G.H.R. Parkinson, trans.), Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press.

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Back to the Roots. ‘Functions’ and ‘Teleology’ in the Philosophy of Leibniz* Antonio M. Nunziante 1. INTRODUCTION

I

t could perhaps be interesting to remember how one of the first references to the term ‘function’ was connected, in its protomodern dawning, to a problem of an ‘identificative’ type. The progressive definition of this concept in the mathematical sphere was a theoretical move that was not devoid of consequences for its application in the ‘natural’ sphere, inasmuch as it offered the possibility of ‘cataloguing’ and ‘distinguishing’ the countless machines that populated nature on the basis of the functions carried out by them. For example, according to Leibniz, which is one of the first and foremost ‘interpreters’ of the concept of function, the spider is a ‘weaving machine’, in the sense that the ‘weaving’ function is considered to identify the particular mechanical device that subtends to it in the same way that a bee is a ‘honey-making machine’ and a squirrel is a ‘jumping machine’ (Corpus hominis, 218).1

*

The following abbreviations are used in the text: A = G.W. Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, ed. Akademie der Wissenschaften, Darmstadt 1923-. Quotation followed by series number, volume number, letter of the tome (where the volume is divided into several tomes) and number of pages. GP = Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, VII voll, ed. C.I. Gerhardt, unveränd. Nachdruck der Ausgabe Berlin 1875-90, Hildesheim 1960-61. Corpus hominis = Corpus hominis et uniuscujusque animalis machina est quaedam, ed. E. Pasini, in E. Pasini, Corpo e funzioni cognitive in Leibniz, Milano 1996, 217-224. De medicinae elementis = De scribendis novis medicinae elementis, ed. E. Pasini, in E. Pasini, Corpo e funzioni cognitive in Leibniz, cit., 212-217. DM = Discours de métaphysique, A VI 4 B, 1529-1588.

BACK TO THE ROOTS

The naïve character of these definitions should neither surprise nor mislead us, in the sense that their primitive aspect hides some theoretical implications that are less obvious than they might at first seem. But for now let us be satisfied with some introductory historical considerations. If one speaks of ‘functions’, ‘teleology’, ‘organisms’, or epistemological models applied to ‘living beings’, the first element that must not be overlooked is the fact that in the history of philosophical and scientific thought some contrasting theoretical positions have been produced (such as those regarding ‘mechanism’, ‘teleology’, ‘vitalism’ ‘organicism’, ‘functionalism’, etc.). These positions have often ended up imprisoning the concepts inside rigid and often mutually incompatible structures. We are dealing, that is to say, with ‘semantic sedimentations’ made up of blurred meanings, lexical contaminations and conceptual assumptions, which have given rise to different theoretical boundaries. Therefore to go back over the stages of this sedimentation process would not only satisfy historical curiosity, but recuperate the original fluidity of these concepts. For example, it might be surprising that the distinction between ‘beings of nature’ and ‘artificial beings’ was originally a question of a division within the concept of ‘machine’, in the sense that nature, in the Cartesian age, was by definition ‘machina mundi’ or, as we find in the youthful writings of Leibniz, ‘horologium Dei’ (A II 1, 22-23 – Schneider 1993). Not only this, but the same appearance of the term ‘organism’ has to do with machines; at times words (or the concepts that they express) have a birth date, and the syntagm ‘organism’ appeared around the turn of the eighteenth century, when ‘organisms’ were beginning to be spoken of in relation to “machines of nature” (Duchesneau 1998; Ishiguro 1998; Nunziante 2002; 2004; Fichant 2003; Cheung 2006; Pasini 2008). Historically therefore, references to ‘living’ substances, as distinct from inanimate or ‘artifi-

1

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NS = Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, aussi bien que de l’union qu’il y a entre l’âme et le corps, GP IV, 477-487. Monad. = Principes de la philosophie ou Monadologie, in G.W. Leibniz, Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison. Principes de la philosophie ou Monadologie, ed. André Robinet, Paris 1954. For a history of the concept of ‘function’ in mathematical thought, see Kline 1972, chapters XVI-XIX.

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cial’ ones more or less began to appear at the same time in which ‘functions’ begun to be applied to machines. Although the great subject of life is not foreign to classical Greek thought (as attested by Aristotle’s reflections on the ‘organic functionality’ of the ‘parts’ of animals in the entire corpus of his so-called ‘biological’ writings), it owes its specificity to the early-modern application of the concept of ‘machine’ to nature. Although we cannot help but smile at some early-modern concerns, such as debates over whether other beings in nature besides man were endowed with ‘souls’ or not, we should not underestimate the theoretical impact of these discussions on the scientific vocabulary we have inherited (in its semantic-conceptual references). The step from the nature-machine to the machine of nature is not as short as it might at first seem; mechanism, teleology and generically ‘functional’ approaches were perceived to be interrelated in the protomodern age, and not only from an epistemological point of view. In Leibniz’s De scribendis novis medicinae elementis (written between 1680 and 1682) we find a definition of animal as a “Hydraulic-Pneumatic-Pyrobolic Machine”, that is, in the terms of another piece of writing from the same period, as a “machine that is not only hydraulic-pneumatic but also in a certain sense pyrotechnic” (De medicinae elementis, 214; Corpus hominis, 222). Rediscovering the close ‘polarity’ in the passing from a horizon of nature seen as ‘machine’ to the idea that certain machines are distinct from others by being ‘alive’ can perhaps help us to better understand how concrete the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ was in the dawn of the scientific age. 2. CORPUSCULAR MATTER VS. SPATIAL MATTER As is well known, one of the most hotly debated issues in the Cartesian age regarded, the question of the physical statute of matter. Galilei’s distinction between primary qualities and secondary qualities played a predominant role in all the innumerable debates about the ‘substantiality’ of the beings that populate the realm of nature. The idea was to explain the properties of physical bodies through considerations of a solely ‘objective’ or ‘objectifiable’ nature such as size, shape and movement. As an almost infinite number of studies have clarified, the question is of a kind of ‘geometrization’

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(or mathematicization) of physics, in the sense that in just this applicative process—according to the same protagonists of the time—lies the key to ‘reformed philosophy’. If we take into consideration the first phases of Leibniz’s scientific education (that is to say, of an author who, for various reasons, managed to conduct an extraordinary network of relationships with the most important public figures of the time), we can reconstruct concretely the outline of the problems shared by most of the so-called novatores of philosophy. The studies carried out in various places on the physical nature of matter were often united by the fact that they were all grounded in Cartesianism, according to which the relationship between ‘space’ and ‘matter’ represented the theoretical basis from which to start to understand the nature of bodies. “Definitio autem corporis est spazio inexistere” (Confessio naturae contra Atheistas, A VI 1, 490). In the youthful phases of his education Leibniz shared this approach, but very early he realized that the simple consideration of spatiality did not take into account other essential properties of bodies, such as ‘resistance’ and ‘cohesion’, or ‘repulsion’ and ‘impenetrability’ (or ‘antitypìa’). Leibniz was not alone in this study: Huygens, Wren, Mariotte, Wallis had all argued intensely over the mechanics of the impact between bodies. And other movements were in a ferment: as well as Hobbes and his studies on conatus or Gassendi and the ‘atomist’ (corpuscular) school especially widespread in the German universities of the seventeenth century there were the studies on the microscopic nature of matter (the so-called ‘micrographi’, Kircher, van Leeuwenhoek, Hartsoeker, Hooke, Borel, Malpighi, Redi, etc.) to vary the picture of abstract Cartesian ‘spatiality’. Both directly and indirectly (but mostly through epistolary exchanges) Leibniz communicated with these authors paying great attention to the experiments conducted in the wake of the alchemic tradition and of the new chemical school (significantly those of Hollandus, van Helmont, Glauber, Tachen, Travagnini and of course ‘doctissimus’ Boyle among others). The interest shown in the reaction and combustion processes of acids and alkali, or in those of fermentation and decomposition highlighted the inadequacy of the Cartesian paradigm and aimed to provide an exact definition of the nature of matter. In this varied and fertile intellectual context Leibniz intensified his own studies on the movement of bodies, and moved from initially cinematic 12

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questions (among other things, connected also with studies in optics, as we will see) towards more markedly dynamic ones.2 The aim was to lead the study of the primary properties of bodies back to the simple analysis of movement, or to reformulate the entire question of the essentia corporis of Descartes in order to show how this last consists not so much in the extension ‘sed in motu’ (or, in the determination of the nature of movement): “omnes mutationes per motum explicari posse” (A II 1, 17-18). Why is it so important to patiently reconstruct the past from these largely incomplete historical references? Because the step from bodies to machines is a short one, and it was from the Cartesian starting point that the image of the body/machine, and the subsequent parallelism established between physiological and mechanical phenomena (hydraulics, optics, etc.), entered decisively into the culture of reformed philosophy.3 Nevertheless between the ‘machines’ of Descartes and those which came to preoccupy Leibniz soon after, there are substantial differences, all within the same 2

3

It is well known that Leibniz was particularly proud of having founded a new science that he called ‘dynamics’. Galilei had already spoken of the ‘book’ of nature and of the ‘mathematical’ character of its writing. In general, the entire era of the ‘reformed philosophy’ (covering the historical period from roughly the second half of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth) represents an age dominated by technics; in the scientific literature of the time, as well as in the practice of the craftsmen’s trades, there is a profusion of lenses, spyglasses, microscopes, lenses both concave and convex (used also in painting), hydraulic machines, clocks, mills, fountains, etc. For our purposes, let us compare, for example, these two passages taken from L’homme of Descartes: “And truly the nerves of the machine that I describe can very well be compared to the tubes of the machines of those fountains; its muscles and tendons to the other various mechanisms and springs that are necessary to make it move; its animal spirits to the water that moves them; the heart is the power source and the cerebral cavities are the reservoirs. The respiration, and other such natural and ordinary actions of this machine, that depend on the course of the spirits, are like the movements of a clock or of a mill that the course of the water can render continuous”. And again “I ask you to consider that all these functions derive naturally, in this machine, from the disposition of its organs alone, neither more nor less than as the movements of a clock or other automaton derive from those of the counterweights and wheels”. See respectively AT, XI, 130-131 and 201-202. On the subject of ‘animal-machines’, or ‘automata’, in the 1600s and 1700s, see Sutter 1988, and Rossi 1962 and 1982.

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‘mechanistic’ paradigm that Leibniz corrodes internally through ever more marked contaminations, despite his initial enthusiastic adherence to the protocol of the novatores. In fact between the abstract spatiality of the Cartesian theme and the dynamic concept of bodies upheld by the mature Leibniz there is assiduous consultation of the most up-to-date scientific literature of the time. For this reason, if we find a definition of corporeity of a purely Cartesian stamp in the youthful writings of Leibniz: “body is all that is contained in a space and vice versa” (A VI 1, 490), with the passing of a decade and of ever more scientific study we can observe a radical overturning of such perspectives so that matter is no longer seen as something homogeneous, but as a structure that is fundamentally dense, rich in internal ‘indefinitae replicationes’, or infinite micro-structured worlds that replicate in miniature the proportions of macroscopically observable phenomena. The result was progressive shifts and contaminations. The concept of ‘conatus’ (which Leibniz took from Hobbes) allowed a progressive identification of matter and movement: “conatus est initium, finis ac medium motus”( A VI 2, 171);4 the contributions of the Micrographi threw open the perspective of “worlds within worlds” to infinity (Hypothesis physica 4

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According to the theory of conatus, matter is woven of innumerable infinitesimal impulses. Defining this concept in the Theoria motus abstracti, Leibniz writes: “the impulse is in fact to movement what the point is to the line and the moment to time” (A VI 2, 185). According to H. Hecht, the concept of conatus undergoes a more internal transformation in Leibniz than in Hobbes, it is explained as the “expression of his new point of view on geometry acquired in the meantime”. “While Hobbes [continues Hecht] means by conatus the smallest imaginable movement of attraction within the smallest space [...], Leibniz on the other hand sees that, with this assumption, beginning and end of the movement would be something not to be further clarified, as they would continue to consist as extended quantities. Its unextended and indivisible elements here offer, however, a solution that permits us to think of the beginning and end of the movement without contradicting the hypothesis of continuity. And in this way also the relationship between body and movement can now be philosophically discussed in new terms. The conatus determines not only the beginning and end of the movement, but at the same time constitutes the penetration and the unification of the constituent particles of bodies”. See Hecht 1988, 1093. On the Leibniz-Hobbes report concerning the concept of conatus, see Beeley 1996, 313-345.

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nova, A VI 2, 241); the irruption of the infinitesimal calculus (thanks also to the knowledge of Huygens, the Bernoulli brothers and Tschirnhaus) allowed the establishment of a functional relationship between otherwise incommensurable terms; and the discovery of the world of the ‘potentiae’ that tinged the surface of corporeity allowed Cartesian mechanics to be reformed into a dynamic viewpoint (Fichant 1994). These are all factors that internally modify the paradigm of ‘machines’ up to the point of making them become (at least in some cases) something animated, or completely living. In effect, before analysing the structure of body-machines more closely, and therefore the theme of the passage from artificial to natural, another parallel early-modern debate deserves attention, namely the question of the souls of beasts. As hinted before, the dense Leibnizian correspondence raises this question; in spite of its apparent obscurity, it was deeply rooted in the culture of the Cartesian age (particularly its theological preoccupations). Descartes’s world is composed of machines without sensitivity, in which only man is really animated: “No-one before Descartes, as far as I know, observed that in animals there is no feeling, if not apparent, no more than there is passion or consciousness of its own action in a clock, in a mirror or in water, which boiling over the fire reaches almost a pain” (A II 1, 111-112). The question is objectively interesting: strictly speaking plants and animals cannot be considered living substances, to the point that the pain felt by a dog beaten with a stick should be considered as the product of a reaction analogous to water boiling in a pot (where the fire seems to produce a kind of ‘pain’ in the water). In fact we are dealing with machines, whose movements and internal reactions should be understood as functions produced by internal gears, like the wheels and springs of a clock. This theory could appear surprising to us, but at the time it was not so at all. In particular, the image of the clock applied to the description of the functioning of the internal organs of animals was extremely common in the literature of the time (Leibniz himself defines nature as a whole as Horologium Dei). Interestingly, Leibniz shared this foundation until a certain phase in his scientific development. The point at which he changed his mind (probably between ’77 and ’79) he went so far as to assert it ‘ridiculous’ to attribute 15

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perception only to humankind. In any case the fog is never entirely cleared away; his mature writings contain some passages which seem to nurture some secret doubts, especially regarding vegetable organisms. Aside from specific doubts (subject matter for specialists), the question can be interpreted as the sign of a radical change in the conception of ‘machines’ in the late 1670s, and soon after in the early 1680s a series of writings reveal the first definitions of ‘life’ applied to machines. 3. MACHINES AND AGGREGATES The concept of order is essential for the definition of ‘machine’. And indeed it is a term characteristic of Leibniz’s thought. ‘Order’ means “mutual relationship of parts” in its first sense (A VI 4 B, 1320); that is also to say: the possibility of instituting ‘connections’ of a causal nature between elements that belong to a determined system of reference.5 In other words, the concept of order is not a derived term, but a primitive concept in the Leibnizian logical-metaphysical vocabulary; the presence of an ‘order’ renders possible the institution of causal connections between the elements that make up a determined system and not vice versa. Leibniz finds examples of order in the progressions of numerial series, or in propositional calculus, but also, as we will see, in certain beings of nature, in other words in all those systems in which there are ‘proportions’ that remain constant in relation to the variation of the elements that make them up. Evidently, the concepts of order, relationship, and, successively, of organization, represent ‘more’ than mathematical or ‘logical’ notions; they express the metaphysical core of Leibniz’s thought. If we want to indicate a mathematical consideration, referring, I hope not altogether extravagantly, to the history of subsequent scientific thought, the choice would fall on a notion such as that of attractor, in the sense that the order of which Leibniz writes behaves like a sort of attractor in relation to the elements that make up a determined system.6 5

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“Nam ex ordine et consequentia fit causa; ex causa enim tanquam natura priore sequitur effectus” (A VI 4 A, 399). It is important to remember the influence of the Platonic-Pythagoric traditions during the phase of his youthful formation, as others have highlighted. To under-

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In any case, the notion of order interreacts profoundly with the Leibnizian concept of matter, because if it is true that the physical structure of bodies consists in “streams of aggregation” that are infinite (in the sense that each body contains infinite numbers of other bodies and so on),7 in some cases these infinite aggregations give rise to proportions that are constant between the parts, or assume ‘stable’ patterns. Leibniz asks many questions about the different degrees of cohesion carried out in these processes of ‘condensation’ of the matter that arrest, at least temporarily, its incessant ‘fluctuation’, and reflects on the fact that some aggregative modalities seem to have a very low level of cohesion, while others have more stable conformations that ‘gravitate’ around a certain order that establishes the incessant flow of the parts. Reasoning in general terms, the matter aggregation factors can be either accidental or intrinsic to the structure of the compound that takes shape. In other words, the aggregates of an accidental type have a consistency that is due in part to reasons of a physical character (for example, the laws of optical reflection in the case of the rainbow), but also in part to the nature of the observer. In fact, according to Leibniz, the rainbow has a consistency that is almost exclusively ‘phenomenal’ (it is a ‘semi-mental’ body), in the sense that the perception of it as a coherent phenomenon, even though it has the base of a physical character (the laws of optics combined with an atmospheric phenomenon) depends upon the eye of the beholder. Naturally, the importance given to the role of the observer as a key factor in distinguishing between phenomena that are only ‘apparent’ and those that are ‘well founded’ represents an element peculiar to the

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stand the metaphysical importance of the concepts of ‘order’, or ‘relation’ or ‘proportion’ in the thought of Leibniz, I quote here a very famous passage from his letter to Magnus Wedderkopf of May ’71: “Regarding the fact that the relationship between 2 and 4 is the same as that between 4 and 8, it is not possible to give any reason, even seeking it in the Divine will. It depends on the essence or idea itself of things. In fact, the essences of things are numbers and contain the same possibility of beings, which is not created by God, who creates rather its existence, in as far as those same possibilities, or the ideas of things, coincide rather with God himself” (A II 1, 186). Bodies in general, says Leibniz, are like pools full of fish, the humours of which are like other pools containing other fish and so on (see A VI 4 B, 1671).

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philosophy of Leibniz and, under a historical profile, it can be considered a theoretical move rich in implications. Examples of accidental aggregates other than the rainbow are woodpiles, flocks of sheep and soldiers in battle array; in other words, those types of ‘reality’ that presuppose an ‘external’ mental unit as an ‘agglutinant’ reference. These are certainly references that could make us smile at their naivety and in any case the idea that aggregative modalities can be understood from a double point of view, physical and phenomenal, and that the second is relatively independent of the first is one of the most fascinating elements of Leibniz’s thought. The nature of a rainbow can and should be explained in terms of ‘primary’ physical considerations (in conformity therefore with the Galileian scientific ideal of ‘objectivity’); nevertheless the phenomenicity of its appearance, or the ‘secondary’ aspect by which a rainbow appears as a ‘rainbow’ only to the eye of the beholder, represents an essential aspect to consider. The two things go together, in the sense that Leibnizian ontology presupposes a basic correspondence between the subjective ‘effects’ of the phenomenon and their physical ‘causes’. Nevertheless a fine line of no return seems to be crossed: the secondary qualities of bodies, or all those apparently extrinsic aspects that go with a determined phenomenon, are not at all neutral in relation to the ‘objective’ consideration of their nature. Let us return later to the implications of these last considerations, for now it seems more useful to probe further the different aggregative modalities of the different bodies present in nature. In fact, if every natural body assumes a form like an aggregate of infinite bodies, it is also true that, at least under the phenomenal profile, there are some aggregates that seem to have stronger forms of ‘unity’ or ‘cohesion’ than woodpiles, rainbows, etc. Naturally, under the general physical profile, it is true that every body can be rightfully considered an ‘aggregate’; it is also indisputable that some aggregates, like dogs, plants and clocks for example, seem to possess properties that distinguish them from those purely accidental units we have discussed thus far. This raises the concept of ‘function’: if the nature of aggregates is such that it can be interpreted as a whole/part relationship, then it is how the different parts of an aggregate relate to the same whole that produces a decisive deviation in the classification of the bodies present in nature. 18

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Leibniz’s idea, at least in its first approximation, is that in some bodies the whole/part relationship lends itself to being deciphered from a functional point of view, in the sense that in such bodies, for example a clock, the mechanical setup of the parts is not simply accidental, as that of a woodpile, but is subordinate to the achievement of a precise function: a clock is a mechanical device for measuring time. Also in this case Leibniz’s idea risks appearing totally banal at first glance; nevertheless it is the application of the concept of ‘function’ to the realm of bodies in nature that allows the concept of aggregation to be expressed in terms which are no longer purely ‘mechanical’ (even though it seems paradoxical to recognize this). Machines are aggregates the configuration of whose parts is such that it allows the compound to carry out an end, a ‘project’, that in some way cannot be reduced to the sum of the juxtaposed parts that make it up, but on the contrary, to use a Leibnizian mathematical term, represents the ‘limit’ of their definition. Leibniz writes that: In every machine it is necessary to consider both its functions, or end, and its mode of operating, which means to say those means by which the author of the machine has reached his goal. So we must beware of imagining a machine that by chance respects the same functions, but not in the same way; in fact the rules to observe of this imaginary machine would be different from the laws of the real machine (De medicinae elementis, 212).

The concept of a ‘machine’ is defined in relation to an end, scope or function; in other words it is expressed as a form order relation (language remains completely indistinct from subsequent categorizations involving these concepts). Clocks, dogs and plants are distinct from rainbows, woodpiles and blocks of marble since the first are ‘machines’, while the second are simply aggregates, or ‘semi-bodies’ whose unity is more or less mental. It is important to underline the relationship between ‘function’ and ‘order’ subsisting in machines, because the institution of this connection prepares the ground for a new articulation, this time entirely within ‘machines’, and predisposes the theoretical ground for the appearance of the term ‘organism’.

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4. ARTIFICIAL VS. LIVING? Before speaking of organisms let us pause a little longer to examine how the whole/part relationship of machines is structured. We said that the machine is a compound in which a relationship of order is in force; but where does this ‘order’ derive from? Introducing the concept of order to the whole/part relationship entails introducing an asymmetry because order cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts; it is not the sum of ‘all’ parts that in itself produces order. On the contrary, it is order as the overall end of the machine that allows the parts to be structured according to a pattern of precise causal (efficient) relationships. The springs of a watch can be of brass or iron and the cogs can have a diameter of a few millimetres or of some centimetres; the same order always corresponds to the variation in the dimensions and materials of the basic elements, which is therefore always the expression of the overall ‘project’ that the machine as a whole carries out. It is the order that ‘attracts’ the parts to itself and not vice versa. Obviously a machine involves the intervention of an ‘author’, planner, or artisan, that is, the intervention of a ‘mind’ or an external subject who somehow imprints his own plan on the matter to make it effectively operative. Therefore both aggregates of an accidental kind (rainbows, woodpiles, etc.) and machines entertain a necessary relationship with external agents, even though once carried out, the projects realized by the latter, enjoy a certain independence and autonomy from the author (therefore they are unlike the purely accidental bodies whose configuration presupposes the reference to an external perceptive apparatus). The central point is that, once it has been established that every machine is defined on the basis of its ‘function’, this is also decisive for the identification of those particular machines (like dogs, plants and men) that seem to be distinct from man-made and, therefore, artificial constructions. The distinction between ‘machines’ and ‘natural machines’, or between ‘artificial’ and ‘living’, is therefore a division within the paradigm of machines, in the sense that it is by starting from the possibility of understanding the whole/part relationship of aggregates from a functional point of view that we discover how to further refine this conceptual model by applying it to plants, animals, etc. Therefore the basic idea is to establish a requisite that distinguishes ‘natural’ from ‘artificial’ machines,

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and to find this requisite within the specific functions carried out by each machine. But what is the specific function proper to those machines which we will now call ‘organisms’? According to Leibniz the general purpose that acts as the common denominator of all those living substances is rooted in a reflexive capacity: natural machines are defined according to their own constant (self) maintenance. Corpus viventis est Machina sese sustentans et sibi similem producens (Genera terminorum. Substantiae: A VI 4 A, 568).8

Therefore the living being is a machine that sustains itself; it is an ‘automaton’, or a device that provides for itself (sponte agens) its own individual maintenance through ‘nutrition’ and for its own conservation as a species through its own ‘propagative capacity’. In other words, in the first instance, the living being is characterized by both the automatic activation of a process of constant ‘energetic’ regeneration (remember, that bodies are aggregates in continual fluctuation and that the gradually dispersed ‘parts’ need to be continually reintegrated), and the disposition to reproduce the form of its own structure in other organisms similar to itself. Therefore, it is “the order of the parts” that is really maintained at a reproductive level and Leibniz insists upon this characteristic to differentiate the ‘natural’ from the ‘artificial’. In De machina animata he writes: A body exactly like the human one can be fabricated by no-one, if not by he who is able to keep the order of the division to the infinite (A VI 4 B, 1801).

The organism is a machine whose fundamental characteristic is that of being structured as a whole whose ‘form’ is maintained relatively invariant in relation to the parts that make it up. This relative ‘invariance’ of the 8

In a Tabula notionum praeparanda, composed by Leibniz between 1685 and 1686, we find the following more precise definition of the living being: “Corpus vivens est Automaton sui perpetuativum ex naturae instituto, itaque includit nutritionem et facultatem propagativam, sed generaliter vivens est Automaton (seu sponte agens) cum principio unitatis, seu substantia automata” (A VI 4 A, 633).

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whole in relation to the parts is the aspect that Leibniz emphasizes most regarding artificial devices; it is as if the organism were able to continually restructure the parts that make it up while retaining the same order. This explains how plants, dogs and living beings in general, have a greater capacity to face potentially dissipative phenomena due to contact with the environment or the rise of internal modifications (such as illness). A ‘natural machine’—writes Leibniz—remains a machine even in its smallest parts, and what is more, remains always the same machine that it was before, only being transformed, through the different folds that it receives; now it stretches, now it shrinks, and when it is thought to be lost it is as if concentrated (GP IV, 481-482).

It is interesting to observe Leibniz’s argumentative efforts to justify the plasticity belonging to living systems in terms compatible with the ‘mechanistic’ premises of his system (and more in general, of his time) and how it returns to a reconsideration in the functional sense of the whole/part relationship. Also, as we have seen, artificial machines are characterized in functional terms, in the sense that the disposition of the gears of a watch is directed towards the carrying out of a predefined function (the regular scansion of time through the activation of uniform movements). Paradoxically these donot seem to be machines ‘enough’ because a minimal variation of their parts is sufficient to compromise the successful execution of their end function. Alternatively Leibniz postulates a kind of compensation between the whole organism and the parts; if in artificial beings the order between the parts is upset, the mutual causal relationships are also modified and both the reference to the whole and the nature of that ‘whole’ of reference is also compromised. For example, if a cog in a clock is worn down to the point that it no longer engages with other cogs, the causal relationship between the parts ceases (the movement is interrupted), the entire device stops working (it is no longer able to produce uniform movements) and the clock itself ceases to be a ‘clock’ (in other words, a machine) and goes back to being simply an aggregate of bodies (or something that is no longer defined in the functional sense).

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By contrast, the organism exhibits a greater capacity to compensate for ‘structural damage’ for the very reason that “it remains a machine even in its smallest parts”. In other words, any ‘macroscopic’ structure (for example, the heart) of an organism is in reality a concentration of infinite microscopic machines that replicate, in miniature, the same causal form of reference as the whole.9 In some way, it is as if organisms were provided with infinite spare parts, in the sense that, when one breaks, another is immediately found. Or rather, it is not the parts themselves that are directly replaceable, but the play of their mutual relationships that is maintained on a level of fundamental invariance. All this pushes Leibniz towards paradoxical conclusions, the most important of which consists in believing that organisms never really die, in the sense that “we must not stay with the notion that the common people can have about death or life, when we possess both analogies and, especially, solid arguments that prove the contrary” (GP II, 124). That is, macroscopically observable phenomena, such as ‘birth’ and ‘death’, can deceive because “things that we think have a beginning and perish only appear and disappear” (NS, 481). These statements are difficult to explain and my primary concern here is to understand the fundamental functions carried out by organisms and why causal relationships of an efficient kind, in the case of natural machines, can be understood as starting from a ‘formal’ model of reference. 5. THE ORGANISM AS A PERCEPTIVE UNIT It was stated above that organisms are directed at their own self-maintenance and that this is the fundamental purpose of life.10 This is true in general terms, in the sense that in natural machines there is no organic function directly aimed at this end. In other words: it is difficult to establish an immediate and direct connection between the single functioning of particular organs and life as such. Certainly, the heart contributes in an essential 9

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Leibniz speaks of infinite ‘machinae invisibiles’ underlying the macroscopically observable machines, see A VI 4 C, 2002. Spinoza was also convinced that the conatus in existentia perseverandi constituted the emblematic cipher of the ‘living being’, (Ethics, III, prop. VII).

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way to the correct functioning of the animal machine and the same can be said of the kidneys or the liver, but other apparently collateral factors (such as the poroseness of the skin that allows transpiration or the fur that allows heat insulation) can rightfully be considered essential for the maintenance of the life of the animal machine. Moreover, Leibniz is very careful in speaking of ‘finality’. He is well aware that on this slippery ground it is easy to mistake fireflies for lanterns.11 The final causality—in physics, in medicine, in anatomy, etc.—has a purely heuristic valence, as confirmed by the example Leibniz cites constantly of the trajectory of rays of light on curved surfaces (with reference to the experiences of Snell and Fermat), in other words it must not intervene ineffectively when coming to the details of functional analysis (DM § 10).12 The method of final causes is ‘easier’ in the sense

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Recourse to considerations of a ‘theological’ nature is possible, and in some cases, as we will see, necessary, but it must always be introduced very carefully to avoid ending up like Galeno, who, as Leibniz observes ironically, was so carried away by admiration during his speech explaining the use of the parts of animals that, while he thought he was explaining them, he was in reality “simply singing hymns in honour of the divinity” (see Tentamen anagogicum, GP VII, 273). On this subject, refer to Duchesneau’s article on heuristic and epistemological implications of finality applied to the Leibnizian studies on optics (the reference is in the essay Unicum opticae, catoptricae et dioptricae principium which appeared in 1682 in Acta eruditorum). As regards the problem of the reflection of rays of light and the study of their trajectory, Duchesneau highlights the different methodological approaches of Descartes and Leibniz. While the first assigns a ‘primacy of intelligibilty’ to the direct linearity of the ray of light, which is shorter and simpler than all other trajectories, and therefore uses a merely quantitative criterion for the measuring and study of the reflection of rays of light, Leibniz assumes the general principle that “rays of light go from one point to another by the easiest way, relative to flat surfaces, which must serve as a rule for others” (see Tentamen Anagogicum, GP VII, p. 273). That is to say, he bases his argument on a theological approach (according to which the ‘easiest’ way is not necessarily the most ‘direct’), that allows him, thanks to the combined techniques of mathematical analysis inspired by infinitesimal calculus, to resolve the problem of the reflection of rays of light on curved surfaces, where the Cartesian criterion of direct linearity on the other hand reveals its inadequacy. In this case Duchesneau underlines the qualitative function carried out in this case by the infinitesimal

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that it can “shorten the times” of scientific discovery, it but cannot replace the efficient causes method, which is ‘deeper’ (as it requires more analysis) and, inevitably, slower (DM § 22). Accepting these methodological premises, (not exactly predictable at the time), Leibniz holds that the self-maintenance of the natural machine is to be considered a ‘function’ of its perceptive activity, in the sense that it is the ‘perception’ itself that permits the organism to stay alive. “Perceptionis gratia sunt organa sensuum; procurandae perceptionis sive actionis gratia sunt organa Motus” (De medicinae elementis, 212).13 Naturally this audacious assertion deserves some supporting considerations. In a parallel passage, Leibniz observes that “sensations are like the stick for a blind person” (GP VI, 499), meaning that the cell of animal life (and probably also vegetable) lies in organisms’ capacity to “orientate themselves” in the world, or to interact with the surrounding environment to find basic information (e.g. signals that allow them to “remove impediments” or to “assimilate convenient things”), which is useful in providing nutriment and so on (De medicinae elementis, 212). Recall that for Leibniz the central point regarding the subject of the souls of beasts was to establish whether or not plants and animals are endowed with ‘perception’. In the sense that, if there is perception in a body, then there is also life (and therefore, presumably, soul), but if this is absent, then the body is to be regarded as inanimate, or mortuum. The question touches one of the nerve centres of Leibnizian thought. Let us synthesize it as follows: the organs of sense and the organs of movement are aimed at ‘perception’ and ‘management’ of perception. The latter allow the organism to stay alive to the point that the entire functioning of the organic apparatus of the animal body cannot be understood if we leave aside this reference to the perceptive sphere. In fact, according to Leibniz, it is the presence of ‘perception’ that allows the organism to be structured as a cohesive ‘whole’ (unum per se), or as a substance, in the sense that the

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calculus, which attains agreement with the architectural criterion of answering to the finality of a choice. For further analysis, see. F. Duchesneau 1996. See also Tentamen anagogicum, in which Leibniz again insists on this theory: GP VII, 273. On vital characters carried out by the perception in relation to the maintenance of the organic machine, see Schneider 1985, 337-338.

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unitary character of natural machines is the expression of their basic perceptive unity. The reference to perceptive activity seems to overturn the list of references so far examined, and in particular that of the whole/part relationship as a fundamental explanatory model for defining machines and organisms. So far we have seen how for Leibniz machines were aggregates to be understood as starting from the functional whole/part relationship, in the sense that the combination of the parts gives rise to an ordered whole that carries out a determined function (e.g. measuring uniform movements in the case of clocks, spinning webs in the case of spiders). But the reference to the perception of natural machines seems to go beyond this theoretical supporting picture, because the perception is not only the ‘end’ of the organism but also the ‘cause’ of its self-maintenance. In other words: a question of reversibility seems to be implied here, one that forces us to reconsider the disposition of the causes. How does the part/whole relationship really work in organisms? On the one hand, it could be held that the parts are combined in an ordered manner working for the self-maintenance of the animal body as a whole. And this seems to be the simplest reading, already carried out in relation to machines. Things are more complicated however, because perception is not only terminus ad quem of the organic body, but also terminus a quo, or the principle which generates the possibility of self-maintenance. According to Leibniz, perception represents a structure that is already in itself ‘ordered’ (“multorum in una expressio” is the most frequently recurring definition in Leibnizian texts), in the sense that it does not derive the motives of its unity from the combination of preceding elements. In other words, in the case of the organism the questions to consider are who plays the role of the ‘whole’ and what the ‘parts’ of reference are. If we think of the organism as a ‘wrapping’, or ‘extended body’, then we can say that its extension represents the ‘whole’ and the single components extended (hands, legs, kidneys, heart, liquids, nerves, tendons) its ‘parts’. And up to here everything runs smoothly, also because, in order to work, the part/whole relationship always presupposes the application of homogeneous terms. But how do things work with the introduction of perception as term of reference for the whole organic body? Can we say that perception is a part of the organism? That sight is part of the body? Or that 26

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hearing is an efficient product of the ears? For Leibniz, this move is not entirely licit; although in fact it is fairly clear that the eyes are part of the body, it is not clear whether we can say the same for the function that they carry out. Perhaps we can, if we consider ‘sight’ (or ‘hearing’) as the result of an efficient causal process that is organically generated (i.e. from that part of the organism meant by ‘body’). From here the way becomes more complicated, because if it is the perceptions that allow the animal to stay alive, then the ‘sight’ means the functioning of the eye and not vice versa. According to Leibniz whoever reflects on the “structure of animals” must “stay away from the expressions of certain self-styled strong spirits, who assert that we see because it happens that we have eyes, and not that the eyes were made for seeing” (DM § 19).14 The point is that all these difficulties rest on a mistaken premise: in fact, organism does not mean ‘body’ but ‘order’. It is not the material extension that defines the organism, but the organizational capacity that renders a body alive. And this capacity takes shape in a completely heterogeneous way in relation to the ‘corporeity’ through which it is expressed, in other words it cannot be based on a part/whole relationship. Organization proceeds from organization and matter proceeds from matter: “The laws of mechanism alone cannot form an animal where nothing is yet organized” (GP VI, 544).15 Although all this may seem paradoxical, this is Leibniz’s path in seeking to justify his arguments via logical definitions. It is reasonable to hold that the organism, under the profile of its logical definability, could be considered a “purely integral term”, or one that does not derive from combinations of other partial elements, but that constitutes a “simple 14

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Controversial referents of these arguments are the representatives of that group of modern philosophers, including Hobbes and Gassendi, which Leibniz considered “too materialistic” by contrast to the position of the Platonic Phaedon—in that famous passage in which Socrates clashes with Anaxagoras (see DM, § 20; and Plato, Phaed., 97b-99c). Regarding the ‘functional’ character of the eye/vision relationship, the source of reference could be represented by Aristotle, who in De partibus animalium provided examples of this very similar to those in the text of Discours (see Arist., De part. animal., 645b 15-23 and 778a 32-34). Leibniz says that he borrows this observation from Ralph Cudworth, a leading figure amongst the Cambridge platonists. Leibniz mantained a long-standing correspondence with Cudworth’s daughter, Lady Masham.

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primitive”, or a whole that does not consist of other parts.16 This can be understood readily if by organism we mean ‘order’, “perceptive unit” or such things. These are the assumptions from which Leibniz deduces consequences of a paradoxical type; e.g., this is the origin of the idea that it is impossible to establish an efficient causal relationship between organic processes of the body and the corresponding and concomitant perceptions (concomitance hypothesis). Perceptive activity and organic processes run parallel; it is not possible to establish an (efficient) causal relationship of a direct type between a determined modification of the organic tissue and the corresponding perception. The two things go together, they accompany each other, they are concomitant, but we cannot establish a one to one relationship such that when the neurophysiological process x happens, the perception y automatically happens (later today, perhaps, we will speak about non-linear dynamics). It can be seen that reference to the sphere of perceptive acts shifts many things and produces many important consequences. In some ways, Leibniz’s path seems marked by an ever-deeper interrogation into those justifications of the ‘cohesion’ of bodies (from aggregates to machines) tending increasingly towards ‘mental’ results. In other words, it seems that while following ever stronger models of unity, at a certain point Leibniz realized that the perceptive model itself somehow constitutes the paradigmatic reference of the notion of ‘unity’.17 The perception (intentionality?) is what renders the animal a participant in the world inasmuch as it forms and delineates the perimeter of the environment he inhabits. In fact, ‘perception’ and ‘world’ represent another pair of synonyms; where there is perception there is world (meaning a perceptive environment of reference) 16

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Consider the indications with regard to this contained in Generales inquisitiones de analysi notionum et veritatum. Here, Leibniz distinguishes between ‘primitive simple’ terms, ‘compound’ terms and ‘derived’ terms (simple or compound) and also between ‘integrals’ which can be ‘compound’ or ‘derived’ or, finally, ‘simple’ (‘purely integral’ terms, that is, those that cannot be further broken down) see A VI 4 A, 739 sgg. On these passages, see Nunziante 2006, 734-736. The concept of ‘unity’ probably represents the major axis of Leibnizian thought. For a clarification of this concept and the distinction between ‘unity’ and ‘union’ (upon which we have drawn extensively here), see Pasini 2006.

Antonio M. Nunziante

and vice versa, to the point that organisms are distinguishable from each other by the different degree of perceptive clarity expressed (with which a corresponding world of forms, proportions, etc. is combined). Over the years, this marked ‘phenomenalistic’ direction led Leibniz progressively towards a first person perspective, or towards a world peopled by ‘I’-substances, which took shape ever more clearly as the single paradigm of reference from which to consider third-person perspectives, or the animal and vegetable worlds and other worlds of an intermediate nature. But there is not the space to probe these considerations further here. 6. CONCLUSIONS In the beginning were the machines. With this slogan we could sum up many of the analyses put forward here concerning Leibniz, and, more generally, the philosophical-scientific culture of early modern thought. The age of Leibniz represents one of ‘indistinction’ between philosophy and science, in the sense that the disciplinaries boundaries were not yet defined, and we could say that Leibnizian theoretical activity feeds on this indistinction. The concepts of ‘purpose’, ‘function’, and ‘end’ lack that precise definition to which the subsequent progress of scientific thought has accustomed us. This seems to be a weakness in his thought, to which a basic metaphysical option corresponds. In fact the indistinct use of these terms is rooted in Leibniz’s conviction that they reveal a strong ontological structure and that therefore they are not only descriptive epistemological models. The concept of ‘function’, for example, does not simply refer to a theoretical analytical device, but inasmuch as mathematics is ‘expressive’ of a ‘real’ dimension of the universe, these functions belong to a wider horizon, in a pervasive teleological dimension in which it is natural that they are at the same time ‘ends’. Therefore the paradigm of ‘life’ arises from the paradigm of ‘machines’ and from the reflection applied to machines. Curiously in the Cartesian age the problem of the definition of the ‘living’ was not a problem simply because nature itself was considered a ‘machine’. It is still more curious to notice how in this age of unbridled mechanicism the first definition of ‘organism’ was proposed by Leibniz himself.

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BACK TO THE ROOTS

The organism itself is a ‘machine’, but it is exactly the reflection carried out on the ‘functions’ of its gears that gradually unsettles the mechanistic paradigm of an entire age. Perhaps, we should not overlook the fact that when one speaks of ‘organisms’ one speaks of a theoretical construction that has its most immediate point of reference in the model of ‘machines’. Nevertheless this is still not sufficient to define ‘life’. Speaking of ‘paradigms’, we can perhaps reflect on the fact that what appears in Leibniz is the contamination between strongly contrasting paradigmatic models. In his thought not only is the Cartesian ideal accompanied by the revolution of the method of the novatores (led by Galilei), but so too is the Aristotelian ‘Greek’ paradigm of ‘forms’, the final causes of Phaedon, the relationships between the ‘number-things’ of Pythagoras, and more generally an entire world view which the dawning scientific revolution tended to evacuate rather than consider scientifically significant. And then the paradigm of the ‘creation’, of God the intelligent ‘designer’, is an inalienable presupposition of his thought. To sum up, from the Cartesian world of the machine-animals to the world as we know it, peopled by organisms, the step is short, but not linear.

REFERENCES Beeley, P. (1996), Kontinuität und Mechanismus. Zur Philosophie des jungen Leibniz in ihrem ideengeschichtlichen Kontext, Studia Leibnitiana, 30 (Supplementa). Carvallo, S. (2004), La controverse entre Stahl et Leibniz sur la vie, l’organisme et le mixtes, Paris: Vrin. Cheung, T. (2006), ‘From the Organism of a Body to the Body of an Organism: Occurence and Meaning of the Word “Organism” from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 39: 319-339. Duchesneau, F. (1996), ‘Le principe de finalité et la science leibnizienne’, Revue philosophique de Louvain, 3: 387-414. Duchesneau F. (1998), Les modèles du vivant de Descartes à Leibniz, Paris: Vrin. Duchesneau F. (2003), ‘Leibniz et les machines de la nature’, Studia Leibnitiana, 35: 1-28. Fichant, M. (1994), Introduction à G.W. Leibniz, La réforme de la dynamique. De corporum concursu et autres textes inédits, Paris: Vrin, 9-65. Hecht, H. (1988), ‘Der Denkeinsatz des jungen Leibniz im Spiegel philosophischer und naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlagenprobleme’‚ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, 36: 1089-1098.

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Ishiguro, H. (1998), ‘Unity without Simplicity: Leibniz on Organisms’, The Monist, 81: 534-552. Kline, M. (1972), Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, New York: Oxford University Press. Nunziante, A.M. (2002), Organismo come Armonia. La genesi del concetto di organismo vivente in G.W. Leibniz, Trento: Pubblicazioni di Verifiche. Nunziante, A.M. (2004), ‘Corpus vivens est automaton sui perpetuativum ex naturae istituto’. Some Remarks on Leibniz’s Distinction between ‘Machina naturalis’ and ‘Organica artificialia’, Studia Leibnitiana, 32: 203-216. Nunziante, A.M. (2006), ‘Monas Dominans like Monas actuatrix. A Case of Unity in Plurality’, Akten des VIII Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress, Einheit in der Vielheit, Hannover, 24 bis 29 Juli 2006, 729-736. Pasini, E. (2006), Kinds of Unity, Modes of Union, Akten des VIII Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress, Einheit in der Vielheit, Hannover, 24 bis 29 Juli 2006, 780787. Pasini, E. (2008), ‘Both Mechanistic and Teleological. The Genesis of Leibniz’s Concept of Organism, with Special Regard to his ‘Du Rapport general du toutes choses’, Forthcoming in the Acts of the ESEMP 2007 Congress in Essen. Rossi, P. (1982), ‘Il tema dell’animale alle origini del meccanicismo moderno’, Miscellanea filosofica 1982: 9-49. Rossi, P. (1982), I filosofi e le macchine. 1400-1700, Milano: Feltrinelli. Schneider, M. (1985), Leibniz über Geist und Maschine’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch, 92: 335-352. Schneider, M. (1993), Das mechanistische Denken in der Kontroverse. Descartes’ Beitrag zum Geist-Maschine-Problem, Studia Leibnitiana, 29 (Supplementa). Smith, J.E. (1998), ‘On the Fate of Composite Substances After 1704’, Studia Leibnitiana, 30.2: 204-210. Sutter, A. (1988), Göttliche Maschinen. Die Automaten für Lebendiges bei Descartes, Leibniz, La Mettrie und Kant, Frankfurt a. M.: Athenäum.

31

The organism concept: Kant’s methodological turn Predrag Šustar 1. INTRODUCTION∗

C

onsider the apparently simple example of a certain species of butterfly. We usually refer to a butterfly in its natural habitat as a correct instantiation of the biological organism concept. Yet, what about the transformation of the butterfly or even other organisms of the same species, within its corresponding life cycle: how should we accommodate that biological fact within our conception of an organism? Despite the abundance of use of the organism concept across biology, it is not easy to clarify its meaning.1 The first step in clarifying the concept of the organism within scientific practice is to equate the organism concept in biology with the notion of a biological individual in the sense of a “functionally integrated whole” (Sober 2000, 155). This then leads to the issue of causal relationships in biology. Now at this point, even if we grant the reasons for this standard philosophical maneuver,2 further questions arise: how can we account more ∗

1

2

I wish to thank Tomislav Bracanović, Zvonimir Čuljak, David Davies, Ravi Gomatan, Sören Häggqvist, Giora Hon, David Hyder, Klaus Mainzer, Nenad Miščević, Samir Okasha, Eric Palmer, Davor Pećnjak, Nenad Smokrović and Timothy Williamson for their comments. Special thanks to Luca Illetterati, for the initial encouragement, and to Philip Kitcher for his sharp and constructive criticism. In approaching the issue of the organism concept, we can also consider a more typical technical use, such as its role within the standard methodology of molecular biology, that is, in the way the notion of model organism is used in exporting experimental results to different biological taxa, and biological areas more generally. According to the standard view of evolutionary theory (see, for e.g. Mayr 1982), organisms are marked as the main targets of selective pressures. This is widely recognized as a controversial issue. For a comprehensive analysis of the related general debate over the units and levels of selection, see Okasha 2007. For the specific features of causal relationships in the basic processes in molecular biology, such as nucleic acids replications, and a protein synthesis, see Šustar

THE ORGANISM CONCEPT

precisely for a class of causal relationships between component parts and whole organisms responding to environmental challenges? Is the ‘functional integration’ of an organism an all-or-nothing affair or, rather, is it coming in degrees?3 Such questions have received varying attention within philosophy. While there is a steady growth of interest in the more recent debates within the philosophy of biology (see R. Wilson 2005; J. Wilson 2000; 1999), the organism concept has been more controversial in the past, specifically at the time of modern philosophy. The most significant reason for this is the fact that it played a central role in the competing research programs of mechanicism and natural teleology.4 However, I will not examine the reasons for such inequalities here; rather I will focus on the issue of diverging kinds of philosophical analyses, and their ability to deal with the organism concept in the biological sciences. There are two main kinds of philosophical analysis: PA1 is an essentialist philosophical analysis of the organism concept, which emphasizes the necessary and sufficient conditions for classifying an object as

3

4

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2007. As we will see in Sections 3 and 4 of this paper, the issue of the specificity of biological causation is particularly important for Kant’s overall account of causation. Thus, to a certain extent it will be clarified in how Kant relates his most general conception of causation, represented in his Second Analogy of Experience, to particular forms of causation, such as one instantiated by the notion of ‘mechanism’, and to an apparently specific form of biological causation. I will try to show that we can get a simpler and a more adequate perspective on biological causation only if we fully acknowledge Kant’s methodological turn in relation to the organism concept. In that respect, the case of bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans is a good illustration. Namely, that bacterium spends a considerable portion of its life cycle with a disintegrated chromosome as a way of adapting to extreme conditions in the environment, such as desiccation and ionizing radiation. However, in less extreme environmental conditions, the shattered genome undergoes a highly precise integration into the functional genome (Zahradka et al. 2006). The present case, together with more extensively referenced cases, for instance the case of slime molds, advances an extremely provocative challenge to philosophical considerations of the organism concept. For more detail on this strand in philosophical analyses of the organism concept, see Zumbach 1984.

Predrag Šustar

specifically biological. The present kind of analysis can be set out more schematically in the following terms: ‘for every object x, x is a biological organism if and only if x satisfies y’, where y is taken to be a defining property or group of properties related to all living things only. The property of the regeneration of a bodily lesion is a standard example in that respect. On the other hand, a methodological philosophical analysis, PA2 emphasizes how the organism concept relates to some of the most important tasks in scientific practice. Here in particular, PA2 focuses on how this concept behaves in explanatory and predictive efforts regarding physiological mechanisms. Kant’s philosophy of science reflects the situation described above faithfully: it swings between the two main kinds of analysis. However, the presence of both PA1 and PA2 in Kant’s overall account of the organism renders it ambiguous. In this paper, I will argue in favor of the supremacy of methodological analysis in Kant’s account. In order to show Kant’s specific version of methodological analysis in the case of the biological organism concept, a close reading of his three distinct determinations of this concept will be put forward. First, I examine the determination of a biological organism as an ‘organized being’ (organisiertes Wesen), in which Kant considers some of the influential biological views of his time. Second, I consider the notion of a ‘natural end’ (Naturzweck) in Section 3. With that notion, Kant provides a transcendental determination of the biological organism concept, but at the same time encounters the so-called contradiction issue.5 Finally, the third determination—the organism concept as a ‘heuristic concept’ (heuristischer Begriff) and/or a ‘guiding thread’ (Leitfaden) relative to biological explanatory and 5

The contradiction issue has been emphasized by recent contributions to Kantian scholarship, primarily McLaughlin 1990, Ginsborg 2001; 2004; 2006 and to a certain extent Allison 1991. The issue refers particularly to the status of Kant’s solution to the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment, i.e., the apparent contradiction between the so-called ‘teleological’ and ‘mechanistic’ accounts of biological organisms. The corresponding interpretative position points out that the contradiction, which originally stems from the notion of natural end, is not eschewed by simple appeals to the maxims of the reflecting power of judgment. In Section 4, I will contrast the aforementioned interpretation by considering the supremacy of PA2 in Kant’s overall account.

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predictive strategies—will be examined. This section will show how Kant’s methodological turn provides a strategy for dealing with the difficulties of the essentialist analysis mentioned above, and furthermore it will assess how Kant understands the role played by the organism concept in the correct functioning of biological research. I will begin with Kant’s explicit reference to some of the most influential scientific ideas and researchers of his time. 2. BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM AS AN ‘ORGANIZED BEING’ The third Critique’s determination of the organism concept more clearly acknowledges its connections with the biological sciences at the time; this is best summarized in the following passage: No one has done more for the proof of this theory of epigenesis as well as the establishment of the proper principles of its application, partly by limiting an excessively presumptuous use of it, than Privy Councilor Blumenbach. He begins all physical explanation of these formations with organized matter (Critique of the Power of Judgment (hereafter CPJ) § 81, 5: 424 (292)).6

Before a more detailed determination of a biological organism in the sense of an ‘organized being’ can be given however, some preliminary remarks are needed to explicate Kant’s above-stated position. First, Kant endorses the epigenetical theory of ontogenetic development, according to which the form of an adult individual organism emerges gradually from unorganized 6

36

Citations from the Critique of the Power of Judgment (‘CPJ’) will be located by section number (§) and volume and page number as in volume V of the so-called Akademie edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlichen Preussischen [now Deutschen] Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-). Citations from the so-called ‘First Introduction’ to the Critique of the Power of Judgment (‘FI’) will be located by volume (XX) and page number from the Akademie edition. The translations are taken from Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews’ edition of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). The pagination of translated editions will be bracketed. References to other works by Kant cite volume and page number of the Akademie edition.

Predrag Šustar

embryonic matter. Here he contrasts a more radical variant of preformation, which claims that the form of an individual organism already exists in the embryonic matter; ontogenetic development is considered simply as an enlargement of the preexisting organic form.7 Although explicitly adhering to epigenesis, Kant tries to steer a middle course between a Wolffian type of epigenesis and more radical preformation, which is labeled in the Critique of the Power of Judgment as the so-called ‘individual preformation’. Contrary to this latter position, the third Critique defends “the system of generic preformation” or preformation ‘virtualiter’, while maintaining the basic claim advanced by the epigenetical theory of embryogenesis nevertheless. Kant’s moderate epigenesis distinguishes itself by providing a more determinate role to the organized matter in directing ontogenetic development.8 Second, the theory of epigenesis obeys the methodological rule which holds that the causal factors relevant to the occurrence and maintenance of biological phenomena must be sought within matter alone. The ‘physicalist’ methodological rule—highlighted in the passage quoted above—is sharply distinguished from the view Kant calls ‘hyperphysicalism’, which pertains to the system of individual preformation. In other words, the system of individual preformation cannot avoid a kind of supernatural intervention in its explanatory account of a remarkable regularity of complex developmental processes. Accordingly, Blumenbach’s ‘physicalist’ methodological prescription is preferred not simply on the basis of produced evidence, but by virtue of its conformity to Kant’s basic epistemic

7

8

The controversy between epigenesis and preformation is long-standing. It has taken many distinct meanings in the history of philosophy, from Aristotle’s version of epigenetical theory to the most recent debate on genetic determinism (see, for e.g. Griffiths 2006). As far as the eighteenth-century debate is concerned, which is analyzed in great detail in Roe 1981, the major opposing parties are represented by C.F. Wolff’s modern experimental version of epigenesis (in that regard, see his groundbreaking dissertation Theoria Generationis of 1759) and, on the preformationist side, Bonnet’s theory and Haller’s more mature contributions. We will see how Kant intervenes in later developments of this controversy. For more detail on the embryological footing of Kant’s epigenesis, see Löw 1980.

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requirements, here specifically, the maxims of the reflective power of judgment.9 In addition, Kant’s middle-ground version of epigenesis accords with his anti-reductionist claims about the right explanatory strategy for embryonic development. Again, what appears to favor such claims is concerned with the notion of biological ‘organized matter’. More specifically, Kant’s sympathy for an anti-reductionist explanatory strategy do not simply refer to the ‘organized matter’s’ “first beginning, on which physics always founders, no matter what chains of causes it tries” (CPJ § 81, 5: 424 (292)), but also to the ways in which it varies and spreads.10 Finally, conceived as a system of ‘generic preformation’, epigenesis favors a moderate physicalist approach to explaining the ontogenetic development of organized matter pertaining to a determined embryonic form. Third, although it is not the main aim of this paper to examine how Kant assimilates the scientific practice of physiology, his explicit and sympathetic interpretation of Blumenbach’s embryology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment—and in their correspondence—helps to clarify Kant’s own perspective on the concept of the organism. Thus, Blumenbach’s insistence on the notion of ‘organized matter’ and its role in directing ontogenetic development is in tune with Kant’s version of epigenesis as a ‘system of generic preformation’. This point is mostly neglected in current literature in favor of the predominant emphasis given to Blumenbach’s notion of Bildungstrieb. As I will try to show in what follows, the notion of ‘organized matter’ provides access to the first determination of the organism concept.11 9

10

11

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In section 4, I will illustrate this point by referring to the case study in physiology, which Kant uses throughout the third Critique. For the latter aspect of Kant’s philosophy of science some of his works dealing with issues in the so-called ‘physical anthropology’ are also relevant; for the purposes of this paper, On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788) is particularly relevant. Even though the notion of organization is more emphasized in J.N. Tetens’ Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung (1777), Kant chooses Blumenbach’s physiology. For the controversy over the importance of Blumenbach’s work on Kant’s philosophy of biology, see Richards 2000. Section 4 will clarify why Kant prefers Blumenbach’s embryological theory through the ‘requirement of subordination’, which structures the relationship between

Predrag Šustar

Having introduced these remarks in order to ensure a fuller understanding of Kant’s determination of the organism concept, we will now proceed with a more formal expression of Kant’s view. The fact that all organisms descend from a certain organized matter, and display organizational complexity, appears to mark the specific character of the living world. As it stands, however Kant’s analysis calls for further clarification, because, quite obviously, there are different types of organization. For instance, the standard examples refer to the organization of matter in crystal forms, that of artifacts, and the particularly peculiar organization of social entities. Is there any other specific property according to which we may distinguish the organization of a biological individual?12 In my view, at this point Kant traces a line of thought which elucidates his understanding of a biological organism as a ‘natural end or purpose’ (Naturzweck). This line of thought starts from the view that the biological organization under consideration is a particular type of ‘disposition’ (Anlage).13 Consider the following situation which draws more schematically on Kant’s analysis of embryology: embryo (Keim) e(s) of species s, which bears preformed ‘organized matter’ m(s) for that species, has the disposition d(m) to develop into a biologically viable organism e*(s) in the range of circum-

12

13

causal-mechanistic and teleological claims in explaining and predicting the behavior of biological phenomena. More to the point, the above question applies specifically to the organization of a biological individual in the sense of its main physiological processes, such as reproduction, growth, and regeneration. Although biological or just remotely biological, Kant reserves a separate analysis for the issue of organization of ecological relations between individuals, and organization of human social entities. In this paper, I will focus on the biological organization in its restricted sense, i.e., the physiological unity of the biological individual. The first and more elaborate connection of these two notions is expounded in Kant’s On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy. For a detailed historical reconstruction of the presence and genesis of that and other related conceptual connections in Kant’s philosophy of biology, see Sloan 2002. In what follows, I will concentrate on how to understand Kant’s conception of disposition in relation to the physiological studies of ontogenetic development.

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stances c(m).14 Although expressing the basic idea—given the limitations of both embryology and philosophy of the biological sciences at the time— the aforementioned formulation captures the role of the main variables in Kant’s preliminary determination of the organism concept. Finally let us see how Kant distinguishes between the class of biological dispositions and that class concerned with the inorganic world, for instance, the solubility of salt crystals in water. Now, the conclusive remark in Kant’s line of thought leading to his central determination of the organism concept—one relying on the notion of a ‘natural end’—introduces the notion of ‘purposiveness’ (Zweckmässigkeit). That notion is introduced in order to emphasize a particular kind of behavior of biological organized matter, in the specific case of the development of an embryo triggered by zygote formation (see Kant 1788, 8: 169). As one might expect, the introduction of such a new notion has fueled a major controversy, both in Kant’s philosophy and in its reception in recent scholarship.15 Before going any further, I will summarize the results obtained thus far. The final formulation of Kant’s preliminary determination of the concept of the organism can be restated as follows: (D1) For every object x, x is an organism if and only if x is a purposively organized object. Even if for the moment we set aside its preliminary character and its vulnerability to an immediate objection concerned generally with functional ascriptions in biology, D1 must face another difficulty first: the determination in question is not specifically restricted to biological entities. In particular, its distinction from the class of objects such as artifacts remains 14

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In order to illustrate the above schematization of Kant’s analysis, we can appeal to the example of the chick embryo, the favorite model organism of eighteenthcentury experimental studies of development (in that respect, see Note 7 again). I will refer to that cluster of problems in Sections 3 and 4. In Section 4.1 in particular, I will examine Ginsborg’s normative interpretation of the notion of ‘purposiveness’, which Kant allegedly endorses in this area of his philosophical system.

Predrag Šustar

blurred. Thus, it is still not determined as a property by virtue of which we can refer specifically to the class of objects (such as ‘organized beings’) in the sense of biological individuals. In my view, the above-mentioned difficulty motivates Kant’s proposal of the central determination of the organism concept, which is based on the notion of a specific causal relationship. It appears that with this notion, Kant ends his argument about specifying a particular type of organization that distinguishes individual objects of the living world. As the remainder of this paper shows, the determination based on Kant’s most recognizable notion in this area of his philosophy, namely, the notion of ‘natural end’ (Naturzweck) will trigger a decisive turn in the way Kant tackles the whole issue. 3. THE BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM AS A ‘NATURAL END’ The line of thought advanced in On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy is most elaborately expressed in the ‘Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment’ of the third Critique. Kant’s resulting determination of the organism concept is summarized in the following passage: But in order to judge something that one cognizes as a product of nature as being at the same time an end, hence a natural end, something more is required if there is not simply to be a contradiction here. I would say provisionally that a thing exists as a natural end if it is cause and effect of itself (although in a twofold sense); for in this there lies a causality the likes of which cannot be connected with the mere concept of a nature without ascribing an end to it, but which in that case also can be conceived without contradiction but cannot be comprehended (CPJ § 64, 5: 370-371 (242-243); italics added).

Before bringing out the corresponding determination, though, some preliminary clarifications are needed. First, the supposed class of causal relationships at issue here is notoriously cryptic, even by Kant’s standards.16 16

A common objection to Kant’s cryptic formula concerns a possible conflict with respect to his general conception of causation expressed in the Second Analogy of Experience. However, as already clarified (see McLaughlin 1990; see also Ginsborg 2004), there is no conflict whatsoever in that respect. Rather, there ap-

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For that reason, Kant takes examples from the central concerns of physiology, such as species reproduction, growth, and regeneration, in order to illustrate more vividly the general conception of the newly introduced class of causal relationships. Consider how Kant interprets the basic phenomena in plant physiology according to the proposed notion of causation: Hence one can regard every twig or leaf of one tree as merely grafted or inoculated into it, hence as a tree existing in itself, which only depends on the other and nourishes itself parasitically. At the same time, the leaves are certainly products of the tree, yet they preserve it in turn, for repeated defoliation would kill it, and its growth depends upon their effect on the stem (CPJ § 64, 5: 371-372 (243-244)).

Although it is not clear how Kant’s notion of biological causation is instantiated in the other examples taken from plant physiology—and from the physiological sciences in general—nevertheless the claim of being cause and effect of itself remains the basic characterization of the biological individual. Second, in order to express the central determination of the organism concept, first we need to disentangle some of Kant’s main claims relating to his biological causal formula. On the one hand, those claims follow from Kant’s earlier works dealing with the notion of purposiveness, as pointed out in Section 2, specifically in physical anthropology. On the other hand, the Analytic of the third Critique establishes a new conceptual relation by positing a particular class of causal relationships for the physiological sciences. In other words, the claim ‘being cause and effect of itself’ now occupies an indeterminate position between the so-called “mere concept of a nature” and a corresponding teleological ascription.17

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pears to be an irresolvable conflict between the so-called ‘mechanistic’ causation and causation concerned with the physiological domain of biological individual as put forward in the quoted passage. I will explicate the main points in that conflict; the corresponding clarification will also provide a more informative view of Kant’s causal formula at issue here. First we should establish the meaning of Kant’s notion of nature in this case. Significant textual evidence favors the reading according to which the ‘mere concept of a nature’ is in fact the notion of a mechanism. Kant’s notion of mechanism, especially in relation to his overall account of scientific explanation,

Predrag Šustar

Now, the following features can further specify the introduced type of biological causation: (i) the reciprocal or mutual causal dependence among organic component-parts of a biological individual and (ii) the causal primacy of the whole in the part-whole relationship.18 The two basic features of the biological causation in question here somehow appear to license an association with the teleological ascription of ‘internal purposiveness’ (innere Zweckmässigkeit). Thus our experience of a biological individual—consider again the quoted example of a tree—constrains our specific cognitive constitution to teleologically interpret the causal claim that organized matter is both cause and effect of itself.19

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will be examined in this paper only in so far as it relates to the explanatory and predictive roles played by the organism concept in physiology. In my view, only jointly with Kant’s quoted example from plant physiology do features i and ii provide a better perspective on the initial expression of biological causal formula. However, the above point requires fine-tuning; for instance, how we should understand the relation between i and ii or what comes between them first. Thus, Ginsborg (2004) thinks that the reciprocity among component-parts has a primacy over feature ii. Now, this solution helps in distinguishing biological organisms from artifacts, especially if we further specify i as a reciprocal causal relationship by which an organic component-part produces and, in turn, is produced by other organic component-part(s) (see Ginsborg 2004, in particular 38-40). On the contrary, springs in a watch do not show that particular causal feature. However, it is not clear from Ginsborg’s point of view that the reciprocal causal production of component-parts in an organism exhibits this causal pattern in the first place. In other words, causal feature i cannot be neatly separated from ii, i.e., the feature that assigns the causal primacy to the whole in governing the reciprocal causal production of organic component-parts. Yet, the present point blurs its distinction from the class of objects such as artifacts [artifacts as a class of objects, or ‘a certain class of objects, namely artifacts’]. We will now see on what grounds Kant attempts to deal with the aforementioned difficulties. However, his determination of the organism concept will further trouble the essentialist analysis PA1. In that respect, in Section 4.1 I will examine how features i and ii can be fitted into a unified explanatory strategy together with causalmechanistic claims about the main physiological processes. The mind-dependent character of Kant’s overall account of teleology is a much larger issue, which cannot be tackled specifically within the scope of this paper. For a more recent interpretation of that issue, see Ginsborg 2006.

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Having sketched the association between that type of biological causation and the teleological principle, we can return to a formulation of Kant’s central determination of the organism concept. For the reasons given above, I will label the type of biological causation, including its features i and ii, as the biological causality of a teleological type ‘Ctb’. Kant believes that there is a special type of biological causation, and entities are organisms if and only if they exhibit this type of causation. More schematically, the determination runs as follows: (D2)

For every object x, x is an organism if and only if x exhibits Ctb.

Now, D2 seems to render complete Kant’s task of distinguishing different types of organization, and determining the distinctive feature of biological ‘organized matter’. In other words, the central determination of the organism concept is conclusive in so far as it captures the basic property of a biological individual: all biological individuals, alone understood as ‘natural ends’, conform to the type of causal relationships Ctb. However, D2 gives rise to the main difficulty within Kant’s overall account of the organism concept, i.e., the previously mentioned contradiction issue. As I will argue in what follows, Kant’s organism concept gets a methodological twist precisely by coming to terms with that issue and by working out a satisfying solution. Before doing so, we should review the contradiction resulting from D2. 3.1. THE CONTRADICTION ISSUE This issue first appears in the form of a contradiction in terms, which concerns the notion of ‘natural end’. As will be shown below, the ‘Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment’ further develops that form of contradiction as the antinomy of the so-called ‘constitutive principles’: (a) the principle of the mechanism of nature; and (o) the principle of biological teleology. In order to examine the issue of contradiction as far as it is concerned with Kant’s turn to the methodological philosophical analysis PA2 of the organism concept however, we need a perspective on the antinomy in question that is attentive to scientific practice. I will try to approach the

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antinomy by referring to the broader context of Kant’s philosophy of the biological sciences.20 The context in question is concerned with the explanatory power of a statement with regard to a certain class of natural phenomena. Thus, the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787) more generally, and the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786) in particular, suggest that only those statements appealing to causal-mechanistic claims can be explanatory.21 The proposed explanatory standard then purports to be binding for all natural phenomena. As already seen, however a sub-class of natural phenomena—physiological processes of biological individuals—is framed by an additional explanatory standard, namely one concerned with teleological ascriptions. Given the simple fact that even biological individuals are ‘products of nature’, it remains to be seen how the aforementioned difficulty of the causal-mechanistic explanatory standard is structured exactly.22

20

21

22

For a summary of more orthodox approaches to the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment, see in particular Allison 1991, and to a certain extent also McLaughlin 1990. Shortly I will point out exactly where my reading of the contradiction issue departs from these approaches and, more importantly for the purposes of this paper, from their respective conclusions. In Section 4.1, I will consider more closely some of the refraction laws from physical optics in relation to Kant’s example taken from the physiological analyses of human visual apparatus in the First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Thus, considering the general framework of the antinomy, contemporary debate on the status of methodological rules in scientific practice appears to be especially appropriate in understanding the changing status of Kant’s mechanism of nature in the antinomy under consideration. For example, the question of ‘what kind of status those rules have with regard to descriptive empirical claims advanced commonly by scientific practice’ is just one of many addressed in the debate (see, for e.g. Laudan 1990). In my view, a promising way to approach Kant’s general strategy in setting up the first part of the solution can be found by insisting on the kind of questions mentioned above. In the remainder of this paper, I will pinpoint the second part of Kant’s corresponding solution, which is concerned with the effectiveness of the solution in dealing with explanatory and predictive tasks in physiology.

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Accordingly, the contradiction in terms initially related to the notion of ‘natural end’ gets its full expression in the well-known form of the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment: (a) “All generation of material things is possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.” (o) “Some generation of such things is not possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.”23 In the following section, we will see how Kant sets out the solution to the above antinomy. As already emphasized, however, this is only one dimension of the issue. It seems that the contradiction in question still persists, even after the above ‘constitutive principles’ (a) and (o) have been changed to the corresponding ‘maxims’ of the reflective power of judgment; to put it bluntly, the same contradiction is represented under a slightly different label. Now, by examining Kant’s final determination of the organism concept, I will argue that Kant’s solution to the above antinomy—as it stands in the ‘Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment’—cannot be accepted as a fully effective attempt to solve the main problem of conceiving biological organisms as ‘natural ends’. In order to see how Kant’s solution really works when facing explanatory and predictive tasks regarding physiological processes, we also need to consider the requirement of subordination, which refers to the relationship between the causal-mechanistic maxim and the teleological one. Bearing in mind this additional requirement, we can then elaborate a satisfactory solution to the issue of contradiction. First we should examine the methodological turn resulting from Kant’s final determination of the organism concept more closely however, as it will clarify the issue in question.

23

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CPJ § 70, 5: 387 (259); italics added. In order to emphasize the relation of contradiction, and for the sake of brevity, I refer to the above statements with the traditional logical symbols ‘a’ and ‘o’ respectively.

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4. THE ORGANISM CONCEPT AS A ‘HEURISTIC CONCEPT’ If we attend strictly to the textual basis of the third Critique, the contradiction disappears by interpreting claims expressed by statements (a) and (o) as claims expressed more properly by the reflective power of judgment. In that way, the corresponding ‘maxims’ (Maxime) (a*) and (o*) are obtained: (a*) “All generation of material things and their forms must be judged (muss beurtheilt werden) as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws.” (o*) “Some products of material nature cannot be judged (können nicht beurtheilt werden) as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes)” (CPJ § 70, 5: 387 (258-259); italics added). On Kant’s account, the above solution has succeeded in showing that we were dealing only with an apparent contradiction, which in fact leaves room for the methodological correctness of both maxims. In turn, the present point classifies the notion of ‘natural end’ as a ‘merely heuristic concept’. Before fully considering the requirement of subordination that the solution under consideration must satisfy, I will try to elucidate the main issue of the biological organism concept. As shown above, determinations D1 and D2 conform to the essentialist philosophical analysis PA1. That reading of Kant’s organism concept however, appears to be called into question by the general strategy for solving the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment. Thus, the issue circumscribed at the beginning of the paper persists: what kind of philosophical analysis ought we to employ in order to deal more adequately with the biological organism concept? In solving that issue, determination D2 of the organism concept must be expressed according to the above results of the antinomy solution. In Kant’s view, a radically modified determination runs as follows: (D2’) For every object x, x is an organism if and only if x is judged as possible in accordance with Ctb.

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Apart from stressing the merely regulative character of the claims expressed by Ctb, D2’; it represents the general transcendental requirement for access to the experience of ‘organized beings’. Kant’s solution to the antinomy however is more demanding. In other words, D2’ lacks the possibility of scientific cognition in the strict sense.24 Thus, in order to do justice to the specifying requirement implied by the antinomy solution, D2’ must be amended by taking into account the claim expressed in maxim (a*). Since both maxims are methodologically correct—they do not necessarily exclude each other in enabling explanations and predictions in biology—the final determination of Kant’s organism concept should be as follows: (D3)

For every object x, x is an organism if and only if x is judged as possible in accordance with Ctb and statements appealing to Ctb provide an explanatory and predictive framework for merely mechanical laws.

The first conjunct in D3 expresses the main cognitive constraint, to which the human mind is specifically committed, as repeatedly stated in the third Critique. The second conjunct pertains even more closely to Kant’s final determination of the organism concept, which, as this paper argues, culminates in how the requirement of subordination can be fulfilled. However, before introducing more details into the requirement of subordination, the results regarding the main issue addressed in this paper should be summarized. D3 puts forward a decisive element in favor of the methodological philosophical analysis PA2 within Kant’s account. In particular, PA2 is 24

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By the locution ‘scientific cognition in the strict sense’, I am referring to Kant’s account of scientific explanation, in particular, to the fact that teleological ascriptions in biology are not by themselves explanatory. Nevertheless, their indirect explanatory role can be expressed by a certain relation to non-teleological statements in natural science, such as the aforementioned ‘mechanical laws’. In Kant’s view, only the latter type of scientific statement can provide a direct explanatory account of corresponding biological phenomena. By explicating the requirement of subordination, I will try to show primarily how the complete explanatory strategy works by unifying in a determined manner both types of statements.

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supported by the second conjunct in D3: the organism concept is not simply concerned with the basic transcendental requirement of Ctb, but with how the corresponding teleological ascriptions take part in the same explanatory strategy with statements conforming to the causal-mechanistic methodological maxim. In other words, Kant adopts a different approach to the whole issue. The character of the biological organism concept is not determined now by a certain group of defining properties according to which we can then differentiate the individual objects of the living world. Rather, it is concerned with its explanatory and predictive import with respect to the causal-mechanistic program in physiology. 4.1. THE REQUIREMENT OF SUBORDINATION VERSUS GINSBORG’S NORMATIVE READING Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how the requirement of subordination mentioned earlier can be satisfied. In addressing that issue, I will refer to Kant’s corresponding example taken from physiological studies of human visual apparatus. The proposed methodological approach will also try to show that Ginsborg’s ‘normative’ reading of the same example has a more plausible alternative.25 Before examining Ginsborg’s normative version of PA1 however, I will consider Kant’s example of “the crystalline lens in the eye”. This is a pertinent example, because it points to the two main questions in philosophical debate on biological teleology: (Q1) in ascribing functional characteristics to biological items, what kinds of restrictions are needed?; and (Q2) how can we account for the explanatory and predictive import of functionascribing statements in biology? In the First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment (FI), we can find the following situation: E.g., by saying that the crystalline lens in the eye has the end of reuniting, by means of a second refraction of the light rays, the rays emanating from 25

In contrasting Ginsborg’s reading, I will examine more closely her paper from 2001 ‘Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes’, given its specific emphasis on the normative footing of the biological organism concept. For a more extensive recent bibliography, see Ginsborg’s papers listed in Note 5.

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one point at one point on the retina, one says only that the representation of an end in the causality of nature is conceived in the production of the eye because such an idea serves as a principle for guiding the investigation of the eye as far as the part that has been mentioned is concerned, with regard to the means that one can think up to promote that effect (FI § IX, 20: 236 (37)).

Now, Ginsborg accommodates the example at issue within her overall normative interpretation of Kant’s notion of ‘natural end’. According to that reading, Kant’s central determination of the organism concept can be most correctly developed along the following lines: “[i]n regarding something as a purpose we take it that there is a certain way it ought to be (or, equivalently, a certain way that it should be, or is meant to be, or is supposed to be). We regard an eye as a purpose because we take it that it ought to be constituted in such a way as to make sight possible: more specifically, that it ought to have a lens which refracts light in such-and-such a way that it ought to adjust to different levels of illumination, and so on” (Ginsborg 2001, 249-250; italics added). Thus, the correct way to understand Kant’s example—deploying a function-ascribing statement ‘the end (Zweck) of the crystalline lens in the eye is to reunite the light rays at a determined point on the retina’—is based on certain “normative standards or constraints” (see Ginsborg 2001, 249). In other words, the behavior of an item x in a corresponding containing system s complies with a normative standard or constraint, which selects only a certain effect as a proper function of x; for instance, in the analyzed case above, that effect is to reunite the light rays at a determined point on the retina. In what follows, I will assess Ginsborg’s normative interpretation of Kant’s overall account of the biological organism concept by appealing to the aforementioned questions (Q1 and Q2). It will be argued that the normative reading fails to answer either of the questions, whereas the methodological reading finds a means of answering the second question in Kant’s requirement of subordination. With regard to the latter question, the final determination D3 plays the main role. On the question about restrictions to which we need to comply

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in ascribing functional characteristics to biological items (Q1), Kant remains substantially silent.26 In spite of the originality of Ginsborg’s reading, and textual evidence drawn from the Critique of the Power of Judgment, it overrates the influence of the normative strand in Kant’s account of the organism concept. By paying attention to the determined unity of Kant’s project in the third Critique, it insists on the continuity between the normative character of the so-called ‘judgments of taste’ and the character of teleological judgments in physiology (see, in particular, Ginsborg 2001, 249; and Ginsborg 1997). By pushing the importance of that continuity too far however, the overall solution to the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment loses its capacity to deal with the difficulty of the notion of ‘natural end’. As already emphasized, Kant’s solution is ultimately about how the requirement of subordination can be satisfied in the face of the complexity of physiological phenomena. On the contrary, as I understand Ginsborg’s normative reading, the continuity with the aesthetic normativity in the first part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment captures an interesting analogy, but does not take into consideration the methodological outcome of the solution to the antinomy of the teleological power of judgment. In order to answer Q2 on the grounds of Kant’s account of the organism concept, we should focus on the requirement of subordination instead. More precisely, we must clarify how both the so-called ‘mechanical laws’ and function-ascribing statements, such as ‘the end of the crystalline lens in the eye is to reunite the light rays at a determined point on the retina’, perform explanatory and predictive tasks in physiology. As far as the mechanical laws in general are concerned, Kant clearly states that only those statements conforming to the methodological maxim of the ‘mechanism of nature’ can have direct explanatory and predictive import. Thus, with regard to the example quoted above, only the refraction laws from physical optics deliver an explanation of how the component-part in question behaves in 26

Although Ginsborg notes Kant’s silence with regard to Q1, my explanation differs from hers. Briefly, we disagree on the influence of evolutionary considerations on the kind of account endorsed by Kant regarding biological teleology. Once I have completed my assessment of Ginsborg’s reading, I will explain the main reason for our disagreement on that question.

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the corresponding containing system. However, as repeatedly highlighted in the third Critique, that point is less problematic than how teleological judgments in physiology satisfy the requirement of subordination. A clue is given in Kant’s characterization of a teleological judgment about organisms as a ‘guiding principle’ or ‘guiding-thread’ (Leitfaden) for the empirical investigation of physiological phenomena through the aforementioned mechanical laws. Nevertheless, that characterization calls for further clarification. First, the way in which a function-ascribing statement actually ‘guides’ the scientific practice of physiology can be clarified by interpreting its role as a certain type of schematic or framework statement. Thus, when we say that ‘the end or function of a component-part x in a physiological system s is to bring about an effect e’, we are simply setting boundaries for the direct causal-mechanistic explanatory and predictive accounts of s and of its corresponding capacity. By unifying various statements conforming to the maxim of the mechanism of nature under the same explanatory and predictive strategy, a function-ascribing statement advanced in physiology satisfies the requirement of subordination. Through the aforementioned clarification, we can unpack Kant’s answer to the kind of situation posed by Q2.27 Second, while the previous clarification has been concerned with the way in which teleological judgments are ‘guiding principles’ in physiology, a further clarification involves the grounds on which we give them this methodological role. Kant’s own clarification of that matter remains constant throughout the critical philosophy: a teleological judgment amounts to the status of a ‘guiding principle’ in physiology, because it represents a corresponding biological object as being causally bound to the containing system as a ‘whole’ (Ganze) (see, e.g., FI § IX, 20: 235-236 (35-36)). Thus, in Kant’s example, the teleological judgment in question amounts to a ‘guiding principle’ by representing the effect produced by the crystalline lens as dependent upon conditions of the containing physiological system as itself pertaining to the individual organism as a whole. Further, both of the above clarifications suggest that, contrary to Ginsborg’s normative reading, the basic orienta27

52

For an elaboration of the same answer within the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, see especially § 78, 5: 414 (282-283).

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tion of Kant’s analysis is towards a fuller deployment of the methodological potential of the organism concept. I will conclude by emphasizing the main features of Kant’s methodological analysis PA2, and by pointing to the absence of a fuller answer to question Q1. 5. CONCLUSION Although it may initially appear that Kant endorses the prevailing essentialist philosophical analysis PA1 of the organism concept in biology, in fact his analysis has a different aim. Instead of an inconclusive search for a set of necessary and sufficient conditions that an object must satisfy in order to be specifically classified as an individual living thing, in the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment Kant most extensively opts for methodological philosophical analysis PA2. Accordingly, PA2 is not focused on the classificatory task by which the organism concept traces the demarcation line between the living and non-living world, but on the tasks of explanation and prediction of primarily physiological phenomena. This paper proposes that precisely this shift in Kant’s philosophical attention is the most valuable aspect of his account. Even though methodological philosophical analysis is already present in Kant’s final determination of the organism concept D3, the analysis in question is more fully deployed through the requirement of the subordination of the Dialectic and Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment. Besides offering a more thoroughly articulated solution to the corresponding antinomy, the requirement of subordination more clearly articulates an explanatory and predictive strategy that can be employed in the physiological sciences. This strategy unifies the methodological import of statements pertaining to both maxims of the reflecting power of judgment, i.e., the maxim of the mechanism of nature, and that of biological teleology. In particular, Kant’s teleological judgments employed by the physiological sciences or, functional ascriptions more generally, serve as ‘guiding-principles’ for different types of so-called ‘merely mechanical laws’. Only the latter have direct explanatory and predictive import with regard to physiological phenomena. As far as the organism concept is concerned specifically, its determinations (D2 and D2’)—based on the notion of biological causation Ctb—make a decisive contribution. It is important to re-emphasize that the basic features of

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this type of causation are not analyzed by Kant with regard to their potential role in distinguishing living things, but through their connection to the direct methodological import of the causal-mechanistic account in physiology. In spite of the rough character of Kant’s PA2, and contrary to Ginsborg’s normative reading, Kant’s account of the organism concept provides adequate resources to answer Q2. However, this is not the case with Q1, i.e., the question about the restrictions we need to employ to make functional ascriptions in biology. Significantly Kant remains silent on this point. The only answer we can extrapolate from the third Critique is related to the “fundamental principle of teleology” (CPJ § 78, 5: 413 (282)). According to this principle, we are constrained by the “constitution of the human understanding” to attribute functional characteristics to the ‘organized matter’ of biological individuals. Examine Kant’s above solution in the following standard situation construed by the philosophical debate on biological teleology: on what grounds do we consider the functional claim that ‘the function of the heart is to pump blood into peripheral organs’ legitimate and the claim that ‘the function of the heart is to produce sound of a determined frequency’ illegitimate? In Ginsborg’s view, we can single out the former as a legitimate functional ascription by highlighting the normative strand in Kant’s account of the biological organism concept. Ginsborg maintains that if the effect produced by an individual heart meets the normative standards for this class of organs of corresponding taxon, then the effect in question is the proper function of the heart. A more troubling point, though, in Ginsborg’s reading is the following: “[t]he question of whether or not we are entitled to apply normative standards to an object is, to all appearances at least, independent of questions about its historical origin” (Ginsborg 2001, 251; italics added). This point is difficult to accept for two reasons. First, referring to a more recent philosophical debate, and in keeping with functional talk in biology, we simply cannot do without some kind of evolutionary account. Thus, an independence or neutrality with regard to evolutionary considerations cripples our ability to deal with the specific situation mentioned above, and to ques-

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tion Q1 more generally.28 The second reason concerns Kant’s overall account of the organism concept. Contrary to Ginsborg’s point, the third Critique persistently repeats the claim that normative standards in biology are always considered to be constrained by a certain source of design. Nevertheless, as already shown, Kant gives a radical methodological twist to the idea of biological design. The present reading renders the idea that we can understand both Kant’s overly prudent retreat into methodological analysis as less remote and the resulting absence of a fuller answer to Q1 as a sensible philosophical choice when adequate scientific support is missing.

REFERENCES: Allison, H.E. (1991), ‘Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment’, Southern Journal of Philosophy 30 (Supplement): 25-42. Cummins, R. (2002), ‘Neo-Teleology’ in A. Ariew, R. Cummins, M. Perlman (eds.), Functions. New Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology and Biology, New York: Oxford University Press, 157-172. Ginsborg, H. (2004), ‘Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 42: 33-65. Ginsborg, H. (2001), ‘Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes’, in E. Watkins (ed.) Kant and the Sciences, New York: Oxford University Press, 231258. Ginsborg, H. (1997), ‘Kant on Aesthetic and Biological Purposiveness’, in A. Reath, B. Herman, C. Korsgaard (eds.), Reclaiming the History of Ethics. Essays for John Rawls, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 329-360. Ginsborg, H. (forthcoming), ‘Kant’s Biological Teleology and Its Philosophical Significance’ in G. Bird (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Kant, Oxford: Blackwell. Griffiths, P.E. (forthcoming), ‘The Fearless Vampire Conservator: Philip Kitcher, Genetic Determinism and the Informational Gene’ in E M. Neumann-Held, Christoph Rehmann-Sutter (eds.), Genes in Development. Rereading the Molecular Paradigm, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kant, I. (1998 [1787/1781]), Critique of Pure Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer and E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 28

For further analyses of that strand in the recent philosophical debate on functions, see Cummins 2002 and Šustar (forthcoming).

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Kant, I. (2000 [1790]*), ‘First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment’ in I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-51. Kant, I. (2002), ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ in I. Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 171-270. Kant, I. (forthcoming [1788]), ‘On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy’, in I. Kant, Anthropology, History and Education, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Laubichler, M.D. (2000), ‘Symposium “The Organism in Philosophical Focus”: An Introduction’, Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S256-S259. Laudan, L. (1990), ‘Normative Naturalism’, Philosophy of Science 57: 44-59. Löw, R. (1980), Philosophie des Lebendigen. Der Begriff des Organischen bei Kant, sein Grund und seine Aktualität, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Mayr, E. (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. McLaughlin, P. (1990), Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Okasha, S. (2007), Evolution and the Levels of Selection, Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Richards, R.J. (2000), ‘Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: A Historical Misunderstanding’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 31: 11-32. Roe, S.A. (1981), Matter, Life, and Generation. Eighteenth-Century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sloan, P.R. (2002), ‘Preforming the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant’s A Priori’, Journal of the History of Philosophy 40: 229-253. Sober, E. (2000), Philosophy of Biology, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Šustar, P. (2007), ‘Crick’s Notion of Genetic Information and the ‘Central Dogma’ of Molecular Biology’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 58: 13-24. Šustar, P. (forthcoming), ‘Neo-Functional Analysis: Phylogenetical Restrictions on Causal Role Functions’, Philosophy of Science. Tetens, J.N. (1979 [1777]), Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, Hildesheim-New York: Olms. Wilson, J.A. (2000), ‘Ontological Butchery: Organism Concepts and Biological Generalizations’, Philosophy of Science 67 (Proceedings): S301-S311. Wilson, J.A. (1999), Biological Individuality. The Identity and Persistence of Living Entities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, R.A. (2005), Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wolff, C.F. (1966 [1759]), Theoria Generationis, Hildesheim: Olms.

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Zahradka, K., Dea S., Bailone A., Sommer S., Averbeck D., Petranovic M., Lindner A. B., Radman M. (2006), ‘Reassembly of Shattered Chromosome in Deinococcus radiodurans’, Nature 443: 569-573. Zumbach, C. (1984), The Transcendent Science. Kant’s Conception of Biological Methodology, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

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Kant’s Ontology of Organisms Cord Friebe 1. INTRODUCTION n Critique of the Teleological Judgment1 Kant develops two different strategies in order to appropriately characterize organisms as particular empirical objects. According to the first, organisms are distinguished by a specific internal causal structure that gives rise to a teleological judgment of organisms (§65). The second strategy is epistemological, and is based on a peculiarity of human understanding, its being discursive rather than intuitive (§77). In the following, the first section analyses the difficulties of Kant’s first strategy in the light of modern theories of causality, and the second section confronts the thought experiment of hopeful monsters and swamp-kinds showing the significance of natural selection not yet anticipated by Kant. Finally, the third section interprets Kant’s second strategy in terms that by pass the difficulties he struck in striving to establish a teleology-free and purely ontological characterization of organisms, which seems to be sustainable in light of contemporary biology.

I

2. CYCLIC CAUSALITY AND TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT According to Kant’s first strategy, developed especially in §65 of the Critique of the Teleological Judgment, organisms are distinguished by a particular causal structure. While causal connection is usually linear, namely “a series (of cause and effect) that is always descending” (5:372, 244), the parts of an organism are “combined into a whole by being reciprocally the cause and effect of their form” (5:373, 245). This causal reciprocity, a cyclic rather than linear connection, characterizes the organism as a “self-organising being” (5:374, 245), that is, as an entity specifically distinguished from pure objects. Kant identifies linear causality with effective causes (nexus effectivus) and cyclic causality with final causes (nexus finalis). In such products 1

Kant (2002). The pagination of the original Akademie-Ausgabe and of translated editions in parentheses.

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of nature every part exists through all the others and is, therefore, thought of “as existing for the sake of the others and on account of the whole” (5:373-374, 245). The whole is the decisive factor of the existence of each part, meaning that it is the purpose of its existence, while in every inorganic composed system the whole depends on its parts and not vice versa. Final causality is opposed to effective causality; these two connections are two incompatible kinds of causality, and since Kant identifies cyclic causality with final causality an organism cannot be thought of without the concept of purpose: its (spatially-internal) causal structure is nothing other than a final-causal structure. Georg Toepfer argues, however, that Kant determines the relation of the parts of an organism not only in the sense that they are reciprocally cause and effect of each other, but furthermore, as a teleological reciprocity.2 According to Toepfer, Bernhard Rang is right that the modern theory of autopoiesis allows a cyclic loop of effective causes,3 but that this is not only a pure nexus effectivus but also a nexus finalis. One and the same structure is both a (cyclic) effective causal structure and a case of teleological mutual dependency. This is possible only if effective causality is not opposed to final causality. Following this line of interpretation, linear and cyclic causality are two incompatible kinds of effective causality, and final causality is distinguished from but compatible with cyclic causality. This raises the question of why final causality is not deemed compatible with linear causality. Only if final causality is not distinguished from cyclic causality, i.e. only if final causality is identical with cyclic causality, is it opposed to linear causality. If it is distinguished from cyclic causality but not opposed to it, final causality is as compatible with linear causality as with cyclic causality. So, if we say that modern causality theory conceives cyclic causality to be a kind of effective causality, then its intimate connec2

3

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“Das Verhältnis der Teile zueinander charakterisiert Kant also nicht nur dadurch, dass er sagt, sie seien wechselseitig voneinander Ursache und Wirkung, sondern er sieht sie auch in einer teleologischen Wechselseitigkeit stehen” (Toepfer 2005, 45). “Eine zyklisch in sich zurückgebogene Kette wirkender Ursachen“ (Rang 1993, 60). Toepfer comments: „Selbstverständlich kann das sein“ (Toepfer 2004, 330, n. 16).

Cord Friebe

tion with final causality is lost. Only because Kant was unable to conceptualise cyclic causality as a form of effective causality, could he argue legitimately that such a reciprocity had to be thought of as a teleological reciprocity. His argument for the necessity of teleological judgment was based on the opposition of final and effective causality.4 Kant should not to be reduced to his remarks in §65. In fact in §70—the presentation of the antinomy of reflective judgment (Antinomie der reflektierenden Urteilskraft)—he points out that teleological judgment is really opposed to the principle of mechanism. And as Peter McLaughlin5 has convincingly argued, the principle of mechanism is not to be identified with the principle of causality that Kant deduces in Critique of Pure Reason. Otherwise, the first maxim—that all production of material things and their forms must be judged to be possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws—could not be counted as a regulative principle of reflective judgment but rather as a constitutive principle of determinant judgment. In this case, an antinomy of reflective judgment would not exist since the two maxims would be on two different levels, and nobody would understand why Kant made such an effort to solve the antinomy. Furthermore, if we identified mechanism with effective causality, then the two objective principles of the determinant judgment—formulated in order to discriminate the antinomy—would remain a mystery. Kant holds the view that reason (Vernunft) “can prove neither the one nor the other of these fundamental principles” (5:387, 259). The first—namely, that “all generation of material things is possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws” (5:387, 259)—Kant would have already proven in Critique of Pure Reason (and refuted the second), if “in accordance with merely mechanical laws” did mean the same as “effective causal”. The whole “dialectic of the teleological judgment” makes sense only if we distinguish between “mechanism” and “causality”. 4

5

But see Toepfer 2004, 330: “Die Teleologie ist hier (in Kant, §65) also nicht der Kausalität entgegengesetzt; sie betrifft vielmehr eine interne Differenzierung in dem Begriff der Kausalität.” This is troublesome since, on the other hand, Toepfer does not identify teleology with cyclic causality because it can be “selbstverständlich“ constructed as a reflective series of effective causes. See McLaughlin 1989, chap. 3.

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McLaughlin has rightly demanded that we must distinguish between the principles of mechanism and causality, but how he characterizes this difference is not convincing. In contrast to the concept of causality that implies a succession in time, the principle of mechanism demands a certain interleave in space.6 A ‘mechanistic explanation’ is, thus, a reduction of the composed whole to properties of its parts independently of the whole. A system (as an object of mechanism) is, therefore, an atomistic whole in contrast to a holistic whole in which the parts may have properties only insofar they are elements of this whole.7 In this case, however, the modern quantum-mechanical treatment of composed systems would not accord with the mechanistic explanation since, in general, a composed whole of quantum-objects has properties that do not supervene on properties of the parts. Only the whole determines which properties the parts might instantiate, and not, vice versa, the parts determine which properties instantiate the whole. If McLaughlin were right, Kant would be obliged to consider quantum-mechanically composed systems as natural purposes since it is impossible to judge them “in accordance with merely mechanical laws”, that is, to reduce their properties to properties of their parts. Surely this is an inaccurate interpretation of what is going on in the world. There is another attempt to draw a distinction between the principles of mechanism and that of causation however, which is consistent with modern physics (I have discussed this elsewhere in more detail).8 This approach emphasises that modern physics holds that the concept of causality not only implies the principle of inertia but also a certain property of the object that is to be caused to do something, namely its charge. While the principle of inertia demands an external cause to produce a certain effect, it is due to its charge that an object is susceptive to the external influence. A magnetic field can only cause a (moving) charged object to deviate, and only a negatively charged object can be caused to deviate in a determined direction. Uncharged particles remain unaffected, and positively charged objects are deviated in the opposite direction, although the magnetic field 6 7 8

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See McLaughlin 1989, 138 s. For the distinction between “atomism” and “holism” see Esfeld 2000, chap.1. See Friebe 2007.

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acts in the same way in all cases. In order to realize causation the object of effect has to make its contribution: “The disposition [i.e. the charge] is a property, in the object, by virtue of which the circumstances c cause the object to do a. The ‘by virtue’ here is what defies explanation” (Quine 1974, 8). But if ‘the virtue’ for a certain event, like switching on a magnetic field, has a determined effect, it is not at all situated in the event itself but just in that object that is supposed to be caused to do something. Thus, if the property ‘by virtue’ of which one event causes another ultimately lies ‘in’ the caused—and not in the causing—event, then animism is not out of the world. For then we displace the deciding factor out of the causing event and into the caused event, like the animist. Then every single case of causation retains a final residue of causa sui. So, the principle of causality — according to which every change is a caused event — is not identical with the principle of mechanism, understood, now, as the principle according to which there are only external causae efficiens. The principle of causality demands not only an external event as a cause but a proper contribution of the caused one, as well. A change is an effect of an external cause only if the changing object itself contributes to that change; in other words, if the external cause is connected with an internal one. In modern physics effective causality—i.e. both linear and cyclic causality—is animistic causality rather than mechanistic causality. On this point, Kant can be interpreted as implying that freeing ourselves from that animism is the function of reflective judgment. Thus we might interpret Kant in §70 of his Critique of the Power of Judgment as looking back to his critical writings and recognizing a dark spot in his deduction of the principle of causality in Critique of Pure Reason. He realizes that as an a priori condition of the possibility of experience this principle does not ensure that the objects of experience are pure—non-animated—objects. On the contrary, since causality is conceived such that change occurs only if the changing object contributes to that change, then every object in motion is in fact an objective subject, that is, an animated entity. In the later Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)9 Kant points out that: “From general metaphysics we take 9

See Kant 2004.

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as the? basis the proposition that every change has a cause, and here it is only to be proved of matter that its change must always have an external cause” (4:543, 83).10 So, the principle of causality implies only that all change has a cause but not that this cause is an external cause. The principle of causality is compatible with the idea of internal causes, that is, with the idea of causae sui. Concerning “matter”, Kant holds that a further proof is necessary to demonstrate that its changes need external causes. For obtaining non-animated pure objects—which is the purpose of §70 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment—reflective judgment is necessary to transform what “is provided to it by the mere understanding a priori” (5:386, 258), namely the principle of causality, into the principle of mechanism: this is the first maxim of the antinomy. “Suggested by particular experiences” (5:386, 258)—that is, in the face of composed systems that exhibit cyclic causal structures—this does not suffice, Kant believes. Also in order to free ourselves from the undesired animism in these particular cases, reflective judgment has to transform animistic causality into final causality: this is the second maxim of the antinomy. Reflective judgment derives animism-free causality from animistic causality, i.e. both linear and cyclic animistic causality. The two kinds of animism-free causality are mechanism and teleology. Thus, mechanism is distinguished from linear causality only insofar as it is the principle of animism-free linear causality. Hence in §65, Kant holds cyclic causality to be identical with final causality insofar as final causality is nothing other than animism-free cyclic causality. Thus the necessity of teleological judgment consists in the necessity of reason (Vernunft) to transcend the animism of the category of causality (Verstandes-Kategorie) which is only possible, in the face of the peculiar cyclic causal structure of particular natural beings, by the concept of purpose. This raises the question of why we cannot obtain animism-free causality in a mechanist way in the case of cyclic causality as we can in the case of linear causality. Why does Kant think that the mechanistic trans10

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“Aus der allgemeinen Metaphysik wird der Satz zum Grunde gelegt, dass alle Veränderung eine Ursache habe; hier soll von der Materie nur bewiesen werden, dass ihre Veränderung jederzeit eine äußere Ursache haben müsse.”

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formation does not suffice in the case of cyclic causal structures? This question remains unanswered, and the problem of teleology remains unsolved. Therefore, in §77, Kant develops a different strategy that ultimately leads to a teleology-free and purely ontological characterization of organisms. Before considering this second strategy, a further argument against the first must be examined. 3. SWAMP-KINDS AND FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION/TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT11 Besides the internal difficulties plaguing Kant’s reasoning, the theory of evolution poses a further challenge to his first strategy. According to the first strategy, the essence of teleological judgment lies in the reciprocity of the causal relations between the constitutive parts of an organism. In this sense, it is very similar to McLaughlin’s analyses of functional explanation:12 McLaughlin and many other philosophers of biology argue that a functional explanation cannot be reduced to a simple determination of causal roles.13 If we say, for example, that hearts have the function of pumping blood, it does not simply mean that hearts cause the circulation of blood. The main argument for this line of reasoning is the attribution of malfunction in a case in which the organ is deficient. For in purely causal terminology, we can only say that the heart causes the circulation of blood in a certain quantitatively describable and measurable way, but we cannot say that the heart pumps blood in a deficient manner. A purely causal explanation lacks a normative dimension; we can only say what the organ actually does but not what the organ is supposed to do. “Deficiency” and “malfunctioning” require the determination of a non-reducible “function”, that is, a normative dimension. For this reason many authors have intro-

11

12 13

In the following, I do not distinguish between “functional explanation” and “teleological judgment” since they are very similar with respect to our purposes. See McLaughlin 2001, especially chap. 8. See, for example, Krohs 2004, who argues against Robert Cummins’ systemanalytical concept of function (chap.3), for its reduction of function attribution to causal roles, and its failure to explain malfunctioning.

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duced a new element that McLaughlin calls the feedback mechanism14 and which is very similar to Kant’s (causal) reciprocity. The feedback mechanism allows the assertion that a heart (an individual token), for example, is there because it pumps blood. Not only does it cause the circulation of blood but it exists because it pumps blood and, therefore, has the function of pumping blood. While McLaughlin’s (and Kant’s) feedback mechanism is intragenerational, many others including Millikan and Neander15 have argued that feedback in this case requires natural selection. According to this so-called “etiological view”, function attributions make sense only within the history of evolution. A first-generational organ or trait that emerges in the history of evolution can be said to possess a certain causal role but to lack a function. If the (next-generational) organism is selected in virtue of this new organ or trait however, it (i.e. the organ or trait) acquires a function. Following Millikan and Neander, it is the mechanism of selection that makes the difference between a mere causal role and a function. In a certain sense, natural selection creates a norm, and allows the attribution of “deficiency” and “malfunction” in deviant cases. If Millikan and Neander are right, Kant’s teleological characterization of organisms would be unsound since cyclic causality between the constitutive parts would be a teleological relation between the parts and the whole only in the next generation. Now, proponents of the intragenerational feedback mechanism have developed a thought experiment in order to refute this etiological view but, as I will show, the thought experiment actually supports the etiological view. First, imagine a macromutation, i.e. an organ or trait that appears all at once in one generation. The owner of such a part is called a (hopeful) monster.16 In such entities, there has not been time enough for an evolutionary feedback mechanism to kick in. Nonetheless, according to the proponents of the anti-etiological view, we would be willing to attribute functions to the monster’s new organs. Second, suppose17 that a cosmic accident causes molecules in random motion to spontaneously coalesce and form an entity 14 15 16 17

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See McLaughlin 2001, chap. 5, chap. 8, and the references there. See Millikan 1984, and Neander 1991. See Gould 1982, 186-193. See Millikan 1984, 93.

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physically indiscernible from a well-known organism like McLaughlin’s dog Lassie. If it is the (proper) function of Lassie’s heart to pump blood, then the heart of the morphologically and anatomically identical swampdog “Massie” has the function of pumping blood, as well. Significantly the thought experiment of (hopeful) monsters and swamp-kinds separates two features which usually coincide, and which might then serve to ground function attributions and teleological judgments (which are similar, in this respect): the actual internal structure of organisms and their histories of origin. The thought experiment shows that the organs of monsters and swamp-kinds contribute to the operation of the whole in the same way as the organs of organisms with evolutionary history. Our concepts of organisms and their organs are neither dependent upon nor linked to natural selection. The theory of evolution is not a theory of the constitution of organisms but of their transformation.18 This is not a sufficient defence of the intragenerational view of feedback however. It is not enough to argue that (hopeful) monsters and swamp-kinds are organisms just as their duplicates with evolutionary history are, and that their organs or traits have identical causal roles. Since function attribution does not exclude causal explanation and it is only an addition to causal explanation, it is not enough to argue that (hopeful) monsters and swamp-kinds operate or ‘function’ in the same way as their physical indiscernibles. In my opinion, the proponent of the intragenerational view shows only that the swamp-dog Massie is an organism but she has to show that the swamp-dog is a dog and also that its blood-pumping organ is a heart. Perhaps our concepts of organisms, organs and traits do not depend on natural selection but this does not mean that our concept of a biological specie and of biological types in general do not depend on natural selection. Whether the individual, called swamp-dog Massie, is an exemplar of the biological specie “dog” or simply an individual physically indiscernible from such an exemplar, is a question hitherto unanswered by the intragenerationals. For example, when Christopher Boorse describes the cosmic accident as follows, “at some point the lion species simply sprang into existence by an unparalleled saltation” (Boorse 1976, 74), he seems unaware of the possible alternative that merely one (or 18

See Toepfer 2005, 44.

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even thousands) individual organism(s) only morphologically and anatomically identical with a lion (lions) sprang into existence. Aware of Millikan’s and Neander’s assertion that “dogs must be born of other dogs, not just like other dogs” (Millikan 1996, 109),19 McLaughlin concludes misleadingly that according to proponents of the etiological view the swampdog is not an organism.20 So, Boorse, McLaughlin, Toepfer and many others identify an individual organism with an exemplar of a biological specie; they take it for granted that if the swamp-dog is not a dog, it is not an organism at all. But, in my opinion, the difference between being an individual organism and being an exemplar of a biological specie implies the crucial difference between a simple causal role and a function attribution, between cyclic causal structure and teleological reciprocity and, consequently, between malfunction and the mere absence of causal efficacy. So, Neander and Millikan imply that while it is logically possible that by a cosmic accident an organism spontaneously emerges out of nonanimate matter, and even that thousands of morphologically and anatomically similar organisms might appear in this way, it is inconceivable that a (new) biological specie or any exemplars of a biological specie could emerge by such an event, since the concept of a biological specie depends on evolutionary history and natural selection. This can be shown if we imagine a swamp-pigeon unable to fly, that is, an organism physically indiscernible from an individual pigeon unable to fly. This latter pigeon born of other pigeons has wings that malfunction; but what characteristics are specific to our swamp-pigeon? It is morphologically and anatomically just like this particular pigeon but this is not the point. If we say that the swamp-pigeon is morphologically and anatomically identical with this particular pigeon, then we compare the swamp-pigeon with this individual. On the other hand, if we say that this individual has wings that malfunction, we compare the particular pigeon with its conspecifics, and the reason for this comparison is not that its fellows are physically alike since, in the relevant sense, they are physically different since they are able to fly. The reason for the comparison with the other pigeons is the fact that these pi19 20

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See also Neander 1996. See McLaughlin 2001, 110 (twice), 112, 163.

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geons are its relatives, hence, that our particular pigeon unable to fly was born to other pigeons. But there is no reason to relate the swamp-pigeon to the other pigeons because it has nothing to do with them. It has something to do with the particular pigeon under consideration since it is physically indiscernible from it, but it is, in the relevant sense, physically different from the other pigeons and that is all its relation to them amounts to. Therefore, there are no grounds to claim that the wings of the swamppigeon malfunction. It seems that our swamp-pigeon is a penguin in a pigeon-dress; this means that it is not an exemplar of a biological specie but an individual organism of its own. Consequently, there are no grounds for the attribution of malfunctions in swamp-kinds and, therefore, no grounds for the attribution of functions. The thought experiment shows that the proponents of the etiological view are right.21 If this is so, not only are the arguments of contemporary philosophers of science like McLaughlin and Toepfer in trouble but so too is Kant’s first strategy. If function attribution and teleological judgment depend on natural selection because the necessary feedback mechanism cannot be only intragenerational, Kant’s characterization of organisms according to a teleological mutual dependency of its constitutive parts is not on the fundamental level. As the thought experiment of swamp-kinds and (hopeful) monsters suggests, we are able to conceive organisms with an internal cyclic causal structure which cannot be interpreted in a teleological way, due to the absence of an evolutionary feedback mechanism. Thus, in addition to Kant’s (internal) difficulties in light of modern causality theory this external argument of the logical possibility of swamp-kinds counts against Kant’s approach in §65. Nevertheless, in §77 Kant develops another strat21

In the same sense we might argue against the approach of Ulrich Krohs who claims that function attribution depends on the concept of a biological design. According to Krohs, organisms are composed entities whose constitutive parts are “type-fixated” (and not “property-determined”) by a Bauplan (without a designer) that is the genome. But if we consider a swamp-kind physically indiscernible from a particular organism with a genetical defect, we can see that swamp-kinds have no genomes (only a chromosome set physically identical with a genome) and, therefore, they lack a Bauplan. See Krohs 2004, especially chap. 4, and Krohs 2005.

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egy that leads to a teleological-free and purely ontological characterization of organisms. 4. INTUITIVE UNDERSTANDING AND TELEOLOGICAL JUDGMENT Kant pursues the second strategy for the necessity of teleological judgment in §77. It is rather epistemological and is based on the idea that human understanding (Verstand) is peculiarly “discursive” rather than “intuitive” and that this commits us to judge organisms as if they were produced by design (see 5:405, 275). As Rang has shown, Kant’s proof fails due to his equivocal use of the concept “parts”.22 If, however, we remove this ambiguity in a way not considered by Rang, this raises the possibility of characterizing the organism purely ontologically without the concept of purpose. Against the background that through sensibility (Sinnlichkeit) only the particular is given, and that understanding (Verstand) grasps the universal, Kant’s proof in §77 is based on the distinction between an analyticuniversal and a synthetic-universal. Our (human) discursive-conceptual understanding grasps only the analytic-universal, while the syntheticuniversal might be conceived by a non-human intuitive understanding (intuitiver Verstand) (see 5:407, 276). The analytic-universal is distinguished from the synthetic-universal insofar as it does not determine the particular and, therefore, the particular cannot be derived from the analytic-universal. It is “contingent in how many different ways distinct things that nevertheless coincide in a common characteristic can be presented to our perception” (5:406, 275). On the other hand, unlike discursive understanding, the particular depends completely upon the synthetic-universal. Intuitive understanding that proceeds from the synthetic (rather than from the analyticuniversal to the particular, and its representation of the whole), does not imply the contingency of the combination of the parts (see 5:407, 276). At this point, “the whole” apparently designates “the organism” whose parts are not contingently combined but exist for the sake of the whole. But if we ask, which “contingency in the combination of the parts” is implied in discursive understanding, we can easily see the ambiguity Rang recognized. It 22

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See Rang 1993, section 5.

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was contingent, in how many ways things sharing a common characteristic can differ, that is, the combination of the properties of an object was contingent. Rang holds that Kant uses the expression “part” in the sense of “property”, on the one hand, and in the sense of (material) “piece”, on the other hand. For this reason Kant’s proof is unsound. Thus according to Rang, the particular in the first sections of §77 is to be understood as an empirical object, and the analytic-universal as a property of that object. At the same time, the synthetic-universal is to be understood as a composed whole, and the particular here as a (material) part of that whole.23 Rang suggests that in order to provide a consistent proof, Kant had to consider the analytic-universal as a (material) piece of the particular as an inorganic whole. Rang has in mind only this way of solving the ambiguity since his interpretation of the synthetic-universal as an organism and of the particular (in that context) as organs are of the same tenor as Kant’s doctrine of natural purposes. It is equally plausible that the analytic-universal is in fact a property (or form) of an object considered as a particular. For one obtains a property of an object analytically, namely by analysing the object’s (nonspatial) internal structure. According to this interpretation, it makes sense to view the particular as independent of the universal but the universal as depending on the particular, since it is only the object (the particular) that has something as its form or property, and not the form or property that has something as its object. So in this case, “having” is an asymmetric relation; a form or property is always something that is had, and thus it is a dependent entity. Hence, Kant’s proof might be revised in yet another way to yield an interesting interpretation of §77. If we hold the analytic-universal to be a property or form, and the particular to be, in this context, the empirical object, and further if we hold that, in the other case, it is contrariwise, it follows that the synthetic-universal is now the form that is no longer a dependent entity but an entity that has something depending on it; and the particular, in this context, is, now, the body as a dependent entity, namely, that entity that is had by the form (and by the organism). At least in the 23

In fact intuitive understanding goes “from the synthetically universal […] to the particular, i.e. from the whole to the parts” (5:407, 276; italics mine).

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case of ourselves, human organisms, it is our soul, mind or consciousness, understood in an Aristotelian way as the form of the body that has a body—since we have bodies—; it is not the body that has a soul, mind or consciousness as its form or property. In this case, the soul, mind or consciousness is “synthetic” since starting from the empirical body we have synthetically transcended this body in order to obtain the form that is the soul. Analysing a body, we could find only its properties. Consciousness is neither a substance nor a property; it has a different ontological status from empirical entities. What seems plausible in the human case, might not be exclusively characteristic of human organisms but common to other organisms as well. In fact, in order to make Kant’s proof in §77 consistent, it is possible that “the whole” is continuously understood as “the persisting entity”, and “parts” as the non-permanent, changing entities. In the first case, the particular would be a ‘whole’—namely, a persisting empirical object—and the analytic-universal would be a ‘part’—namely, such an entity that might change without affecting the identity of the ‘whole’: a property (or, occasionally, some parts, as in the ship of Theseus). In the second case, it remains contrariwise. The synthetic-universal is a ‘whole’—i.e., the persisting form of the body—and the particular here is a ‘part’—i.e., an entity that might change without affecting the identity of the ‘whole’: all material parts in metabolism.24 In this sense, Kant seems to approach today’s teleology-free ontology of organisms.25 An organism persists in the way that its form outlives the continuous change of all its material parts,26 so that in its process of development an organism becomes only what it already is. For essentially an organism neither becomes red as a previously non-red entity—the change of properties like colour affects only its body—nor wet as a previously dry entity—since the change of material parts like water24

25 26

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We could also say that an empirical object has properties, while an organism has a body. Thus a body is something had by an organism, and only in a derivative sense—if we consider a body to be an object—and a body is something that has properties. See, for example, Schark 2005. It seems to be like the case of waterwaves but there the waveform remains a property of the water and thus the dependent entity. See Jonas 1994, 148.

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molecules do not affect the entity as an organism. As an organism, the organism survives all these changes as the entity that it already is. This characterization of an organism does not invoke a natural purpose that is “cause and effect of itself” (5:371, 243), only the ontological relation between the organism’s body and the form.

REFERENCES Boorse, Ch. (1976), ‘Wright on functions’, Philosophical Review 85: 70-86. Esfeld, M. (2000), Holism in Philosophy of Mind and Philosophy of Physics, Dordrecht: Kluwer. Friebe, C. (2007), ‘Das bleibende Rätsel der Kraft’: Du Bois-Reymonds erstes Ignorabimus im Lichte der modernen Physik” in K. Bayertz, M. Gerhard, W. Jaeschke (eds.), Der Ignorabimus-Streit. Naturwissenschaft, Philosophie und Weltanschauung im 19. Jahrhundert, Hamburg: Meiner, 117-131. Gould, St.J. (1982), The Panda’s Thump. More Reflections in Natural History, New York: W.W. Norton. Jonas, H. (1994), Das Prinzip Leben, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer and E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2004), Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (M. Friedman ed. and transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krohs, U. (2004), Eine Theorie biologischer Theorien, Berlin-Heidelberg-NewYork: Springer. Krohs, U. (2005), ‘Biologisches Design’ in U. Krohs, G. Toepfer (eds.), Philosophie der Biologie. Eine Einführung, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 53-70. McLaughlin, P. (1989), Kants Kritik der teleologischen Urteilskraft, Bonn: Bouvier. McLaughlin, P. (2001), What Functions Explain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Millikan, R.G. (1984), Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. New Foundations for Realism, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Millikan, R.G. (1996), ‘On Swampkinds’, Mind and Language 11: 103-117. Neander, K., (1991), ‘Functions as selected effects: the conceptual analyst’s defence’, Philosophy of Science 58, 168-184. Neander, K. (1996), ‘Swampman Meets Swampcow’, Mind and Language 11: 118-129. Quine, W.v.O. (1974), The Roots of Reference, La Salle: Open Court. Rang, B. (1993), ‘Zweckmäßigkeit, Zweckursächlichkeit und Ganzheitlichkeit in der organischen Natur: Zum Problem einer teleologischen Naturauffassung in Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft’, Philosophisches Jahrbuch 100: 39-71.

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Schark, M. (2005), Lebewesen versus Dinge. Eine metaphysische Studie, Berlin-New York: DeGruyter. Toepfer, G. (2004), Zweckbegriff und Organismus. Über die teleologische Beurteilung biologischer Systeme, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.. Toepfer, G. (2005), ‘Teleologie’ in U. Krohs, G. Toepfer (eds.), Philosophie der Biologie. Eine Einführung, Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp, 36-52.

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Thinking Life. Hegel’s Conceptualization of Living Being as an Autopoietic Theory of Organized Systems Francesca Michelini 1. INTRODUCTION: THE REDISCOVERY OF “NEGLECTED TELEOLOGY”

I

n 1845, two young physiologists named Ernst Brücke and Emil du BoisReymonds swore an oath: they pledged to prove that no forces other than physical-chemical ones acted within the organism. It is difficult to imagine a more explicit formulation of a reductionist programme: the problem of life was entirely a problem of physics and chemistry, and, accordingly, the criteria for distinguishing between the living and the non-living could also be formulated purely in those terms. Subsequently Hermann Helmholtz took the pledge also and became the third member of “a sort of conspiracy by ‘organic physicists’ against vitalism” (Swoboda 1978, XXXIV). The old theory of the ‘vital force’, which claimed that it was possible to bind physical-chemical forces together so that they constituted the phenomenon of life (or separate them, giving rise to decomposition), was openly rejected as outmoded, for physiology was ultimately founded on mechanics. As Helmholtz recalled in a subsequent memoir, the “Law of the Conservation of Force” was formulated precisely in order to confute the old hypothesis of ‘vitalism’. In a certain sense, this stance was taken up again during the twentieth century,1 and become even more predominant when science shifted its attention to genetics. Its advent generated the widespread conviction that all 1

“The mechanistic philosophy of the 19th century has persisted into the 20th, with arch-exponents such as Loeb trying to soldier on. His opening of The Mechanistic Conception of Life begins with the burning hope that ‘“life, i.e., the sum of all life phenomena, can be unequivocally explained in physicochemical terms.” (Agutter, Wheatley 1999, 7).

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the biological functions could be explained in terms of genetic structures and mechanisms. In the genetic model, in fact, “the properties of organisms are explained by appeal to the capacities of their parts” and “the parts of organism (replicators) have an explanatory and ontological primacy over the whole” (Walsh 2006, 776). As with the reductionism of the second half the 1800s, so too in this case, it was widely feared that outside the certain boundaries established by this paradigm, research would lapse into antiscientific conceptions which were not inductively justifiable and, in the final analysis, ‘vitalistic’. The merit of the current debate is that it has redirected attention to the main weakness in reductionist explanations: the fact that they are not explanatory but merely descriptive. Reductionism seems unable to specify the processes internal to living beings precisely. In parallel, those who have sought an alternative to a conception of biology that ties living phenomena to the laws of physics and chemistry—and view organisms as simple vehicles in which replicators “travel about” (Dawkins 1982, 82)—have in various respects stressed the peculiarity and irreducibility of the category of living organisms, which, it would seem, has neither space nor an explanatory role to play in contemporary biology (Weber, Varela 2002; Töpefer 2004; Walsh 2006). Although it is indubitable that the laws of physics and chemistry are applicable to organisms—so the argument runs—they do not yield a complete explanation of the phenomenon of life and its autonomy. Not surprisingly, therefore, now returning to the fore are—besides the anti-adaptionist strand of the evolutionist approach— certain currents of thought which, during the 1970s, focused specifically on the category of ‘living organism’. In biology this concerns the autopoietic theories of Maturana and Varela above all; and in philosophy since the rediscovery of phenomenonology, the thought of Hans Jonas. However, this view—which we can generically term “organicist” or “organism-centred”—should not be confused with a return to the much reviled vitalism. Both vitalism and organicism are opposed to the reduction of biology to physics and chemistry. But vitalist approaches maintain that to understand life ‘something further’—an immaterial entity, a force or a field—must be added to the laws of physics and chemistry. Conversely organicist biologists argue that the key to understanding life is comprehension of its self-organization. Interpreting organisms in terms of self76

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organization does not entail the introduction of some ‘additional’ elements; rather, it means conceiving organisms as ‘systems’ or integrated wholes whose properties cannot be related to those of the smaller parts but derive from the relationships among them. In itself, none of the parts of an organism or a living system possesses all of the organism’s essential properties. These properties originate from the ‘organizing relations’ of the parts: that is, from a configuration of ordered relations typical of that particular class of organisms and systems. Only in this sense is it possible to say that the whole has priority over the parts in a living system, yet the whole is not directed by a separate and superior entity as, the entelechy Hans Driesch postulates. Yet this approach should not be interpreted as seeking to deny the validity of the mechanistic explanation. Rather, it is an attempt to escape from the dogmatic dichotomy which holds that there are only either vitalists or mechanicists in the life sciences (Lenoir 1982, IX), and to stress that a ‘third way’ can be pursued. But is this operation possible? And what is a reasonable alternative? This enormous issue has generated a long and heated debate, perhaps one destined never to end. In the current debate, this middle way seems to consist in a return to teleological thinking, a revival of philosophical discussion of ‘natural purpose’. Nevertheless, since the modern scientific revolution the notions of ‘teleology’ and ‘purposiveness’ have constituted a sort of “anathema” for science (Agutter, Wheatley 1999, 3) as in the case of ‘vitalism’ (and almost as if they were inseparable from it!), and “contemporary biology has responded to the problem posed by the natural purposiveness of organisms by the simple expedient of ignoring it” (Walsh 2006, 774). On more careful analysis, one notes that the reasons for this rejection derive from the form of teleology taken as the model, one which is substantially “external”, to simplify a Kantian expression. This is the Christian version of Platonic teleology which, following the Timaeus in particular, maintained that nature is the work of an artificer acting according to a rational purpose. Darwin still had this form of teleology in mind when expressing his doubts on it. He drew it from the natural theology of William Paley, Thomas Malthus and John Herschel. This teleology assumes that: “Animals are structured as they are and behave as they do as a result of being designed for a purpose by a benevolent Creator” (Lennox 1992, 328). 77

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Darwinian evolution theory makes it impossible to reinstate this idea in terms of a purposiveness tied to the ‘project’ and ‘design’ of a mind external to nature itself. In fact the theory of evolution can account for the entire natural system without having to resort to a plan drawn up by a ‘Creator’, as natural theology did. Mutations and the survival of the fittest do not come about in view of a purpose. They are two unwitting mechanisms, completely independent from the intention present in the mind of a ‘designer’. In addition, terms which recall a teleological scheme—like utility, fitness, adaptation, and function—pertain to Darwinism merely as the result of a selection process which is not teleologically directed to an end and whose outcome is the elimination of those unfit for survival (without any sense being attributable to this term). The problem that arises and which characterizes current attempts to recast the question is therefore whether a form of teleology exists which eschews the argument from design, is compatible with the Darwinian theory of natural selection, and at the same time is not simply a scientific reconstruction of teleology, a simple ‘semblance’ thereof—as the ‘embarrassing’ notion of teleonomy appears to be, for instance.2 It is necessary to discover a different form of purposiveness, and specifically the ‘neglected’ form of teleology (Asma 1996, 99)—“internal purposiveness”—so long impeded by the Christian-Platonic doctrine. Early modernity’s critique of final causes did not expressly distinguish between this form of teleology and the external one. Rejection of the latter proceeded pari passu with the implicit rejection of the former. For example, on analyzing the arguments brought against finalism by one of the greatest critics of final causes—Francis Bacon—one is struck by their simplicity. Bacon’s arguments deal only with a few of the elements constituting the scholastic doctrine of finality, and they entirely neglect Aristotelian inter-

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Teleonomy is feasible solely in a universe still understood in wholly mechanistic terms (although different nuances of meaning have been attributed to this notion). For this reason it has been described as a “bogus teleology” (Spaemann 1988, 554) or as the reduction of teleological thought to a “mere methodological fiction” (Weber, Varela in this volume, 201).

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nal finality.3 It was Kant who famously redirected attention to the question in the modern age, after it had long languished in oblivion (interrupted only by Leibniz: see Nunziante in this volume). It is precisely for this reason that Kant, together with Aristotle, furnish the model deployed by those who use the concept of intrinsic teleology— as well as the independent but connected notions of organism, selforganization, and function— to address the issues raised by contemporary biophilosophical research. Their purpose is to develop an alternative both to what can be called ‘strong teleology’ the one hand, and to the strongest forms of reductionism on the other. Those who cite Aristotle stress that his notion of final cause by no means corresponds to the intention or the design of a mind. Nor did Aristotle envisage backward causation, this being one of the factors that most vex the opponents of finalism in nature. Reference to Aristotle is present in most general post-Darwinian reinterpretations of the question of nature, the debate on the functions; and indeed it was so previously in genetics. Kant is recalled for manifold reasons—not least the ‘productive’ tension that he established between the mechanistic explanation of living organisms and the necessity of conceiving them as “natural purposes”—in particular by those who stress the close conceptual connection between internal purposiveness and self-organization. By way of example, according to recent interpretations: “It was Kant who elaborated for the first time the similarity of this intrinsic teleology with a modern understanding of selforganization. For Kant things that organize themselves are in opposition to purposes of nature—called natural purposes” (Weber, Varela 2002, 106); “Kant’s analysis of organisms as natural purposes brought to attention precisely their unique capacities for self-organization” (Steigerwald 2006, 625); “Kant’s problematic may have been largely forgotten by contemporary biology, but it has strong resonances with issues that are only now beginning to attract biologists’ attention—self-organization, the ‘emergent’

3

“Under the influence of Christian theology, this Aristotelian concept of ‘internal teleology’ was radically transformed. Nature came to be viewed as the result of ‘external teleology’: all natural order and all natural processes were the outcome of God’s plan and purpose” (F.J.K. Soontiens 1991, 137).

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properties of organisms, their adaptability, their capacity to regulate their component parts and processes” (Walsh 2006, 772). There is obviously a marked difference between Aristotle’s and Kant’s notions of purposiveness. To simplify greatly, the principal difference between them is that, whereas in the former case we have ontological validity, Kant’s purposiveness derives from the reflective activity of the judgment. According to the perspective assumed, the two features are regarded as either shortcomings or outright merits. It should be acknowledged, however, that the current debate tends assume the ontological validity of finalism and to regard the organism’s purposiveness as a natural phenomenon, and therefore also to construe the Kantian model in these terms . This paper aims to direct attention to a further model of natural purposiveness: the one elaborated by Hegel in the first half of the nineteenth century. This is not so much to encumber an already very complex debate with further historical-philosophical references, as to show the relevance of Hegel’s theory to the topic treated here. In general, the entire philosophy of romantic nature (suffice it to consider Schelling) emphasized the notion of natural purposiveness. Hegel’s endeavour is particularly interesting within this tradition, for he stressed a close continuity between the conceptions elaborated by Aristotle and Kant. By removing their limitations and “unilaterality”, he sought to unify the two concepts of natural purposiveness elaborated by his great masters. According to Hegel, the particular merit of Kant’s notion of “internal purposiveness” was that it revived “the fundamental determination of living existence” grasped by Aristotle: “that it is to be regarded as acting purposively” (Hegel 1970, §360r, 145). In what follows, this paper will analyse the concept of natural purposiveness that Hegel developed from Aristotle and Kant, in order to determine whether it can still serve as a useful conceptual model for the contemporary debate on the possibility of an intrinsic teleology. 2. A RETURN TO HEGEL? Unlike Aristotle and Kant, references to Hegel on this topic are rare in contemporary philosophy of biology.4 This is easily explained. Referring to 4

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There are interesting exceptions, for example Lamb 1980 and Hance 1998.

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Hegel may seem paradoxical, if not absurd, given that the ‘scientific’ critique of the second half of the 1800s seems to have swept away the philosophy of nature definitively, and with it the Hegelian notion of natural purposiveness. For this reason, too, Hegelian philosophy did not significantly influence the subsequent debate in biology, whereas Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment is considered a fundamental turning-point. Indeed, according to some commentators, purposiveness in the German philosophy of nature is not entirely a continuation of Kant’s concept of teleology (Lenoir 1982). According to widespread opinion, Hegel also epitomizes the fact that finalism is not considered in its specific (and therefore also natural) features but dissolved into a vast cosmic finalism. Also highly problematic is Hegel’s attempt to develop a notion of teleology which conjugates Aristotelian and Kantian elements. In fact, as stated above, it is difficult to reconcile Kant’s notion of reflecting judgment with the Aristotelian perspective. Hegel himself criticised Kantian teleology from a more properly ontological point of view largely inspired by Aristotle, at least from the Phenomenology of Mind onwards (Düsing 1990, 148). As a result, his endeavour to revive ‘internal purposiveness’ has been regarded as an attempt not only to re-establish it in constitutive terms (after the Kantian interval when it was simply considered a regulatory maxim), but also to propose it in Aristotelian form. Hence, the difficulties that will arise in the following analysis concern both the plausibility of a unification of Kant and Aristotle, and the manner in which it was performed by Hegel. Section 2 outlines the notion of natural purposiveness developed by Hegel and examines its implications. Then Section 3 establishes whether the Hegelian configuration of natural purposiveness still has legitimacy, and whether it is still a viable model, or one which should be discarded definitively. 3. LIFE AS THE “ACTIVITY OF DEFICIENCY” In the Science of Logic, Hegel’s treatment of the concept of purposiveness should be borne in mind when seeking to understand his philosophy. He begins by paying tribute to Kant: “One of Kant’s great services to philosophy consists in the distinction he has made between relative or external, and internal purposiveness; in the latter he has opened up the Notion of li-

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fe, the Idea” (Hegel 1969, 737). These lines warrant attention: here Hegel describes Kant as the thinker who conceived internal purposiveness as real, connecting it with the more general topic of life.5 Under the heading ‘teleology’ in the Doctrine of the Concept, Hegel only deals with ‘external purposiveness’ (he treats internal purposiveness in the section on ‘life’), illustrating it with a syllogism where the extreme terms cannot be exchanged with each other, and in which the middle term is not interchangeable with the extreme ones. In other words, the middle term introduces a unidirectional connection between the representation of the end and the means of achieving it. Internal purposiveness is an entirely different concept that envisages reversibility. It is what happens within a living organism: according to Kant’s well-known definition in the Critique of the Teleological Judgement (which Hegel reiterated) it is “an organised product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means” (Kant 2000, § 66, 247). Within an organism, each member is an integral part of the whole constituted by the same organism. It is the means for the organism’s subsistence and life, but at the same time it is also its end. To return to the above-mentioned syllogism, the extreme terms are exchanged: not only are the parts a function of the organism, but the organism is a function of its parts. That is to say, the organism is a form of Selbstorganisation in which each part is thinkable “only through all the others” and “for the sake of the others and on account of the whole”, in other words every element produces the others and is reciprocally produced (Kant 2000, § 65, 245). Whilst in a machine or an artifact, a part exists for the sake of the others, but not through them, in an organism, “as an organized and self-organizing being”, a part acquires sense only in its relation with the others and with the whole; at the same time the whole is such only in relation to its parts (see Illetterati in this volume). Contrary to a purely mechanistic vision 5

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It should noted that the expressions external and internal purposiveness are simplifications of a more complex Kantian conception. Within so-called objective purposiveness Kant distinguishes between a formal objective purposiveness and a material, or real, objective purposiveness. In turn, the latter (to which the Critique of the Teleological Judgement is entirely devoted) entails both internal and external purposiveness.

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which holds that the parts have priority over the whole, “an organism is an entity which has to be apprehended in such a way that the parts should presuppose the idea of a whole to be understood, and according to this idea that parts are reciprocally causes of their own production within this whole” (Huneman 2006, 9). Hegel reformulates Kant’s position in statements such as the following: The living being is the syllogism, whose very moments are inwardly systems and syllogisms. But they are active syllogisms, or processes; and within the subjective unity of the living being they are only one process (Hegel 1991 § 217, 292).

Here Hegel’s principal concern is to develop the type of purposiveness which comes into play in Kant’s notion of the living organism; a purposiveness with a meaning other than that of the intentional and external teleology mentioned earlier. Both the idea of the reciprocity of the parts within a whole, and the Kantian definition of Naturzweck, are diametrically opposed to the notion of a mind which plans, and in which external purposiveness is at work. The organism is a whole complete in itself, which is born complete, and which develops and grows in its completeness. No member is added subsequently; rather, as the organism develops, it realizes what it actually is. Implicit in the definition of Naturzweck6 is the assumption that the organism is bound to realize nothing other than itself (as in the case of external purposiveness). The organism is the origin of its own organization: it self-produces. However, precisely this connection between the concept of the organism and natural teleology—in which ‘linear’ purposiveness reverts to itself and an immanent circularity arises—constitutes one of the most problematic and controversial aspects of Kant’s entire theory. It is common knowledge that Kant considered natural purposiveness to be, not an objective principle but a merely regulative one, a subjective maxim of the reflecting power of judgment. Therefore it has a value that is not constitutive but simply heuristic. What exactly this means is contested in

6

“A thing exists as a natural end if it is cause and effect of itself” (Kant 2000, § 64, 243).

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Kantian hermeneutics, where a range of different, if not opposed, interpretations have been put forward. On the one hand some commentators view the principle as a subjective one resulting from the limited ability of our cognitive power to understand these unique natural objects, yet consider it indispensable in the investigation of organisms (Steigerwald 2006, 718). Even if the principle does not have a constitutive value, nevertheless it is a transcendental rule necessary for our knowledge of certain natural objects as organized and selforganizing (Steigerwald 2006, 718). At the opposite extreme other commentators doubt the explanatory power of teleological judgement and therefore regard it as largely useless when considering the self-organization present in nature (Zammito 2006). The principal problem arises from the fact that according to Kant, even though we are unable to think of organized beings as anything but enddirected,7 when we must represent this purposiveness to ourselves, we can only use an analogy with the human mode of operating: to think ‘as if’ beings have been planned is the only way to ground the purposiveness of nature which bears an analogy, however distant, with the purposiveness of the conscious operations of human beings (Kant 2000, § 65, 247). The difficulties that inhere in the reflecting judgement are due to what Kant sees as the human inability to conceive purposiveness independently from intention. This is also the ground for Kant’s rather ambiguous notion of the “technique of nature”. In fact, causality understood as technique cannot account for the process by which organisms are constituted. The term ‘technique’ refers to an operation based on a transitive causality and therefore to an external purposiveness.8 Since “strictly speaking, the organisation of nature is therefore not analogous with any causality that we know” (Kant 2000, § 65, 246), in the end the option Kant chooses is a conscious and intentional purposiveness still ultimately anchored to project and design. He does not find this option entirely satisfactory but it is the 7

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“It is merely a consequence of the particular constitution of our understanding that we represent products of nature as possible only in accordance with another kind of causality than that of the natural laws of matter, namely only in accordance with that of ends and final causes” (Kant 2000, §77, 406). See Chiereghin 1990; Illetterati 2002, 37.

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only way he can avoid the contradictions involved in other forms of purposiveness.9 Nevertheless, stressing the heuristic value of this approach enables us to make the “products and processes of nature far more intelligible than trying to express them purely in terms of mechanical laws” (Mayr 1976, 402).10 Kant had the merit of showing that a merely mechanistic reading of life is not possible, and of emphasising that our intellect must necessarily explain organisms in teleological terms. Nevertheless, he was unable to provide a coherent explanation of the organism.11 It was precisely these fundamental ambiguities in Kant’s thought which attracted Hegel’s criticisms. Hegel sought to radicalize the implications of Kant’s notion of internal purposiveness by making it the inner constitutive law of life. His intention was to continue the “hermeneutics of nature”—to use Huneman’s expression—by radicalizing the already Kantian idea that the human mind must necessarily explain organisms in teleological terms. In Hegel this “necessarily” entails uncoupling the notion of purpose from the reflecting operation of the teleological judgment and rendering it into a “determination of objectivity”. Hegel’s operation was not without its problems and difficulties however, and it has been subject to numerous criticisms. As mentioned above, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the attribution of constitutive character to natural purposiveness was interpreted as the re-establishment of a metaphysical purposiveness: Hegel adopted the point of view of the whole, superseding the abstractness and separation of subjective teleological activity and external objectivity. Indeed, he treated them as two aspects of a single process. Hegel’s superseding of a conscious and intentional purposiveness has been interpreted as an endeavour to rehabilitate a supra 9

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Non-intentional purposiveness and the intentional purposiveness immanent to nature itself –hylozoism (Kant 2000, §§ 72-73). For Mayr, Kant still conceived purpose as analogous with design: “Kant was unable to free himself from the design-designed analogy” (Mayr 1976, 402). “Our immodest conclusion is that Kant, though foreseeing the impossibility of a purely mechanical, Newtonian account of life, nonetheless was wrong in denying the possibility of a coherent explanation of the organism” (Weber, Varela in this volume, 217).

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(or hyper)-intentional notion of purposiveness: that is to say, a purposiveness which, though no longer tied to the realm of conscious thought, is nevertheless still connected to a ‘higher’ sphere, that of the mind. By considering the “formative power”, which Kant had held to be unknowable as intelligible, Hegel re-proposed a form of vitalism. I believe that it is possible to view Hegel’s reinstatement of the constitutive character of natural purposiveness as an attempt to confer dignity on the non-intentional form of purposiveness which Kant had considered a contradiction in terms. By freeing himself from the analogy between end and design that still constituted a Kantian constraint, Hegel separated the notion of purpose from the idea of its representation. This emerges with clarity in the Encyclopedia at the beginning of its section on teleology: In dealing with the purpose, we must not think at once (or merely) of the form in which it occurs in consciousness as a determination that is present in representation (Hegel 1991 § 204r, 280).

Hegel continues: the “readiest” examples of end are therefore need and drive (Hegel 1991, § 204r, 280). It is the more properly instinctive sphere that, according to Hegel, demonstrates best how the unconscious purpose, freed from the constraints of the conscience and intention, has an objective reality. Obviously this does not mean that the connection between the end and its representation does not obtain at the conscious level: but it does mean that the purpose is already present at much lower levels, on a plane which can be termed ‘originative’. It is precisely at this level that Hegel’s revival of Aristotle takes place. In Hegel’s words, Kant resuscitated “the determination of life by Aristotle”. Aristotle’s concept of life already comprised internal purposiveness, and therefore was “infinitely” more advanced than the modern concept of teleology, which only envisaged external purposiveness (Hegel 1991, § 240r, 280). Hegel’s references to Aristotle and particularly to Physics (II, 8) (connecting him to Kant), both in the Encyclopedia and Lessons on the History of Philosophy, serve precisely this purpose: to uncouple the concept of end from that of awareness, but without the latter ceasing to be ef-

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fective. This emerges from the already-cited annotation to § 360 in the Encyclopedia as follows: Instinct is supposed to be shrouded in mystery and difficult to grasp, but the root of this difficulty is merely that purpose can only be grasped as the inner Notion, so that it soon becomes apparent that the relationships by which the mere understanding attempts to explain instinct, are inadequate. The fundamental determination of living existence is that it is to be regarded as acting purposively. This has been grasped by Aristotle, but has been almost forgotten in more recent times. Kant revived the concept in his own way however, with the doctrine of the inner purposiveness of living existence, which implies that this existence is to be regarded as an end in itself. The main sources of the difficulty here, are that the relation implied by purpose is usually imagined to be external and that purpose is generally thought to exist only in a conscious manner. Instinct is purposive activity operating in an unconscious manner (Hegel 1970, § 360r, 145).

In Lessons on the History of Philosophy, Hegel connects this idea of living as Selbstzweck to the Aristotelian idea of self-movement whereby “the natural is what as a principle within it, is active, and through its own activity attains its end”, and writes: In this expression of Aristotle’s we now find the whole of the true profound Notion of life, which must be considered as an end in itself—a self-identity that independently impels itself on, and in its manifestation remains identical with its Notion [...] in the Kantian philosophy we for the first time have that conception once more awakened in us, for organic nature at least; life has there been made an end to itself. In Kant this indeed had only the subjective form which constitutes the essence of the Kantian philosophy, in which it seems as though life were only so determined by reason of our subjective reasoning; but still the whole truth is there contained that the organic creation is self-maintaining (Hegel 1955, 159160)

As evinced by these two passages—particularly the end of the first one: “Instinct is purposive activity operating in a unconscious manner”— need and drive are examples of purposiveness because they manifest the authentic nature of life—which becomes effective in living—as self-maintaining even with ‘loss of itself’. In fact, the movement of scission of self from self 87

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which distinguishes the living being when it opens to the external world through an instinctive urge or need does not consist in a distancing from the self in a process of progressive loss, but rather in maintenance of the self also amid deficiency and want—as Hegel states at the beginning of the second passage in relation to Aristotelian self-movement. But this is not the maintenance of a ‘static’ unity reaffirmed in unchanged form whenever a need or a deficiency is fulfilled: it is a ceaseless process in which the organism turns towards the outside in assimilation of organic nature, in that it is primarily directed to itself in its self-organization (Chiereghin 1990). Therefore it is not simple awareness of a deficiency that distinguishes instinct and need; these are manifest as what Hegel efficaciously termed the “activity of deficiency” [Thaetigkeit des Mangels] (Hegel 1981, 278). In this expression, the accent is not just on ‘deficiency’ but also on ‘activity’: ‘activity of deficiency’ implies that need and deficiency should not be viewed as defective moments to be eliminated in a movement back to a pre-existing unity, almost as if life were simply what is lacking. Rather, life is activity by deficiency. This means that deficiency is a constitutive part of life itself. Therefore it is in negativeness and scission that life unfolds in its fullness and unity. Note, however, that in this movement deficiency and identity constitute an indivisible whole, a single thing. One should not think that there is a first fixed identity to which one returns: life is inextricably bound up with what it lacks. Hence one can only speak of ‘completion’ on the basis of deficiency and of deficiency only on the basis of completion (Illetterati 1996, 64). This activity of making distinctions differentiates living beings from inorganic matter: the living is aware of deficiency qua deficiency:12

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Also Hans Jonas develops a dialectic between deficiency and satisfaction with reference to living beings that can be likened to Hegel’s notion of activity of deficiency: “ But can there be completion and perfection for a living being? It would mean cessation of want, therefore of the being itself, which is the dynamics of want and satisfaction” Jonas 1968, 243) See also The Phenomenon of Life, where Jonas states that “the organic form stands in a dialectical relation of needful freedom to matter” (Jonas1966, 80).

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Only a living existence is aware of deficiency, for it alone in nature is the Notion, which is the unity of itself and its specific antithesis. Where there is a limit, it is a negation, but only for a third term, an external comparative. However, the limit constitutes deficency only in so far as the contradiction which is present in one term to the same extent as it is in the being beyond it, is a such immanent, and is posited within this term. The subject is a term such as this, which is able to contain and support its own contradition; it is this which constitutes its infinitude (Hegel 1970, § 356r, 141).

Let us dwell on the difficult central sentence of this passage, which at first sight may appear more anachronistic, almost ‘scandalous’, in a context of scientific investigation into nature: “However, the limit constitutes deficency only in so far as the contradiction which is present in one term to the same extent as it is in the being beyond it, is a such immanent, and is posited within this term”. According to Hegel, life is imbued with contradiction, its identity is at one with its negation. Something is vital only in so far as it contains contradiction within itself and the ‘strength’ to understand and sustain it. Hegel also refers to this strength as the ‘infinity’ of the living being. The infinity of the subject—in light of this passage—consists, not in its presumed supra-individuality, but in its ability to ‘bear’ the contradiction. This is not something achieved externally to the subject which must be surpassed with an incessant effort in a ‘bad’ process to infinity but something which intimately pervades the subject, so interwoven with it that it distinguishes its very nature. Therefore the notion of natural purposiveness is closely connected with that of the activity of deficiency, which in turn must be set in strict relation to Hegel’s concept of contradiction, this being the element, the ‘root’, which distinguishes the living from the staticity of ‘dead being’. It is no coincidence that when Hegel openly thematized contradiction in the Science of Logic, he made overt reference once again to the instinctive and natural sphere, and to the idea of deficiency: Similarly, internal self-movement proper, instinctive urge in general, […], is nothing else but the fact that something is, in one and the same respect, self-contained and deficient, the negative of itself (Hegel 1969, 440).

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Clearly the expression “in one and the same respect” is used in opposition to Aristotle and his principle of non-contradiction. This invites us to understand need and drive—“the readiest examples of purpose” (Hegel 1991, § 204r, 281)—also as the “readiest” examples of contradiction. In other words, Hegel considers them to embody purposiveness precisely because they embody contradiction. In Encyclopedic Logic, Hegel terms them “the felt contradiction” (Hegel 1991, § 204r, 281).13 This has considerable implications. By taking Aristotelian purposiveness to these extremes, Hegel uncovers something more profound and original in Aristotle’s philosophy than the principle of non-contradiction itself. In the Aristotelian idea of self-movement—as interpreted by Hegel—is a ‘germ’ which revolutionizes the principle of non-contradiction itself, a level where contradiction seems to be more profound than identity itself. Indeed in his treatment of contradiction in the Science of Logic, Hegel warns that should we want to establish an order of precedence between identity and contradiction, the latter would have to be taken as the more profound and characteristic determination of essence. But this applies only if we want to posit an order of priority: identity and contradiction are in reality so intimately bound up with each other that such an order is impossible. 4. INTRINSIC TELEOLOGY AND AUTOPOIESIS On the basis of Hegel’s notion of natural purpose as outlined above, we may now address the questions that have been raised at least partially. Firstly, characteristically Hegel merges the Aristotelian and Kantian theories not by assuming one of the two points of view, but by transforming both. He maintains that the shortcoming of the Kantian perspective is that “the relationship of purpose” is a reflective judgement which considers external objects only “according to a unity”, “as though an intelligence has given this unity for the convenience of our cognitive faculty” (Hegel 1969, 739). Nevertheless, although Hegel aims to restore purposiveness in the constitutive sense of the term—and reprises the Aristotelian idea of the unconscious end—he does not merely reiterate Aristotelian teleology in the 13

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“It is said that contradiction is unthinkable; but the fact is that in the pain of a living being it is even an actual existence” (Hegel 1969, 770).

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modern age. The aspect that he disputes in particular is the crucial relationship between identity and contradiction, with the latter radicalized to such an extent that it represents the essence of living beings, their most proper “activity”. Incidentally, also evident here is the marked difference between Hegel’s conception and the organicist theories of the period, such as that developed by Schelling. Therefore Hegel describes the mode of being and the logical structure of the organism in terms of an autopoietic theory of systems. The investigation into autopoiesis conducted by Maturana and Varela in the early 1970s starts from two assumptions necessary for the understanding of biological phenomenology: that the living system has unitary character, and that the “living unit” is autonomous in nature, an aspect neglected by the theory of evolution with its emphasis on difference (Maturana, Varela 1980, 75). The living system is considered to be a unit, but it is dynamic rather than static: the autopoietic system is characterized by continuous structural changes even in the maintenance of its reticular model of organization. One of the bases of this theory consists in the distinction between organization and structure. Here organization means the set of relationships among the components that define the system as belonging to a particular class: “our problem is the living organisation and therefore our interest will not be in properties of components, but in processes and relations between processes realised through components” (Maturana, Varela 1980, 75). Therefore the structure of the living system is constituted by the real relations among the physical components instead. The organization is what remains unchanged, while the structure allows for constant variations. Consequently an identical organization can be physically embodied in different structures. Therefore autopoiesis—the organization common to all living systems—is a network of production processes where each component participates in the production or transformation of other components of the network so that the entire network constantly produces itself (whence derives the term ‘autopoiesis’, with its meaning of self-production).14 It is 14

Specifying that this is a network of production processes is very important, because it allows the living and the non-living to be differentiated. A crystal has an

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produced by components which it produces itself. In fact in living systems “the product of their operation is their own organisation” (Maturana,Varela 1980, 82). “Being” and “acting” are inseparable in such systems, because the autopoietic organization maintains itself with the same means which constantly regenerate the system being produced and which constitute the system as a unit distinct from the surrounding environment in the domain in which they exist. Therefore according to Maturana and Varela, over time living systems are able to maintain an organized structure capable of regenerating its own unity with respect to the continuous variations in the surrounding environment. They do so by creating their own constituent parts, which in turn contribute to generating the system as a whole. Hence living systems can be defined as ‘closed’ systems. The environment certainly triggers structural changes in the living organism, but this is all that it does: it neither specifies these changes nor directs them. Obviously this does not imply that living systems are isolated, akin to ‘monads with neither doors nor windows’. Since they constantly interact with the environment through the ceaseless exchange of matter and energy, they are indubitably ‘open’. Nevertheless they are closed in an ‘operational’ or organizational sense. Their development does not involve simple adjustment to conditions imposed from outside; rather, it is established by the system itself.15 This brings us to a crucial point. Interaction with the environment neither determines nor establishes the organization: living systems are self-organizing, that is, entirely self-referential. All actions seemingly addressed to the outside are in fact directed to the interior, and they preserve the organization by compen-

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organizing scheme, but it consists of a set of static components and not a network of processes. From this point of view, the classical concept of adaptation is profoundly altered as well. While under the traditional definition the environment was the cause of changes internal to the organism, the autopoietic system selects the environmental characteristics suited to its organization and useful for preserving its identity. There is therefore a dynamic compatibility between the environment and the system which excludes every objectivist criterion of adaptation, also because numerous modifications derive from internal changes rather than from external pressures.

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sating for perturbations provoked by the environment. In other terms, they are autonomous. In ‘Life after Kant’, Varela shifted away from the views he set out in Autopoiesis and Cognition to suggest that autopoiesis can be expressed in terms of an “intrinsic teleology” which “can be seen as an empirical feature of the organism, based on its autonomy and sense-making, rather than only a form of judgement, as Kant had held” (Thompson 2004, 395). If from a philosophical point of view, Varela’s reference in this operation is to the late Kant and Hans Jonas (Weber, Varela in this volume), I have tried to show that it may extend to Hegel as well. As we have seen, Hegel considered life to be a form of self-determination as well, even when it appears to be passively determined from the outside. It is the circularity of a living system’s organization which makes it a unit of interactions, and it must maintain this circularity in order to remain a living system and to preserve its identity through different interactions. The living organism has completeness at every instant of time. In Hegel’s view this completeness also derives from a network of relations among processes that always generate the same unit, which nevertheless is always new, because it is the outcome of incessant transformations. Matter flows continuously through the system, yet it maintains a particular form. It does so autonomously by means of self-organization. For this reason, one may say that Hegel conceived the living organism as a totality enclosed within itself, which must be circumscribed with respect to the external world, and which is in conflict with the latter. It is a system that, through closure, is able to integrate change, to preserve its autonomy, and to change without being destroyed. What in a living organism seems to be maintenance of the given conditions is in fact accomplished through a continuous movement beyond those conditions, beyond the momentary state of affairs. Its continuation progressively takes the form of pure and simple maintenance. In the terms Hans Jonas used to describe biological individuality, the organism “Concerned with its being, engaged in the business of it, it must for the sake of this being let go of it as it is now so as to lay hold of it as it will be” (Jonas 1968, 243). Hence, constitutively and almost paradoxically, change and stability, change and permanence, or—in Hegelian terms—identity and contradiction, are intrinsic to the organism. 93

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Obviously it is no longer possible to utilize the biology on which Hegel based his theory. Nevertheless, natural purposiveness, as he conceived it, imposes the requirement—fortunately widely acknowledged today—of referring to a thoroughly developed notion of organism which does not yet seem to have been satisfactorily incorporated into contemporary biological theory. Only by considering the living organism as a self-producing individual is it possible to formulate a notion of “intrinsic” teleology that is neither a vital force nor an “intrinsic organizational property”, but “an emergent relational one” (Thompson 2004, 392). At the same time, Hegel’s concept extends beyond the issues raised by biology. It is an invitation, still valid today, to dispute, or at least to carefully reconsider, the cleavage between the realm of pure natural science and the neo-Kantian values which became so popular after Hegel (Weber, Varela, 2002, 117).

REFERENCES Agutter P. S., Wheatley D. N. (1999), ‘Foundations of biology: on the problem of ‘purpose’ in biology in relation to our acceptance of the darwinian theory of natural selection’, Foundations of Science 4: 3–23. Allen, C., Bekoff, M., Lauder, G. (1998) (eds.), Nature’s Purposes. Analyses of Function and Design in Biology, Cambridge MA-London: MIT Press. Asma, S.T. (1996), Following Form and Function. A Philosophical Archaeology of Life Science, Evanston (ILL): Northwestern University Press. Chiereghin, F. (1990), ‘Finalità e idea della vita. La recezione hegeliana della teleologia in Kant’, Verifiche 19: 127-229. Dawkins, R. (1982), The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Düsing, K. (1990), ‘Naturteleologie und Metaphysik bei Kant und Hegel’, in H. F. Fulda, R.-P. Horstmann (eds.), Hegel und die Kritik der Urteilskraft, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 139-157. Hance A. (1998), ‘The Art of Nature: Hegel and the Critique of Judgment’, International Journal of Philosophical Studies 6: 37–65. Hegel, G.W.F. (1955[1840-1844]), Hegel’s Lectures on the History of philosophy (E.S Haldane, F.H. Simso transl.),vol. II, New York: Humanities Press. Hegel, G. W. F. (1969[1812-1832]), Science of Logic (A.V. Miller transl.), New York: Humanities Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1970), Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature (M.J. Petry transl.), London: Humanities Press. Hegel, G.W.F. (1981), ‘Zum Mechanismus, Chemismus, Organismus und Erkennen’ in G.W.F. Hegel, Gesammelte Werke, vol. XII, Hamburg: Meiner.

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Hegel, G.W.F. (1991), The Encyclopedia Logic. Part I of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences with the Zusätze (T.E. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, H.S. Harris transl.), Indianapolis-Cambridge: Hackett. Huneman, P. (2006), ‘From the critique of judgment to the hermeneutics of nature: sketching the fate of philosophy of nature after Kant’, Continental Philosophy Review 39: 1-34. Illetterati, L. (1996), Figure del limite. Esperienze e forme della finitezza, Trento: Verifiche. Illetterati, L. (2002), Tra tecnica e natura. Problemi di ontologia del vivente in Heidegger, Padova: Il poligrafo. Jonas, H. (1966), The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology. New York: Harper & Row. Jonas, H. (1968), ‘Biological foundations of individuality’, International Philosophical Quarterly 8: 231-251. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer, E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lamb, D. (1980), Hegel: From Foundation to System, The Hague: Martinus Nijoff. Lennox, J. (1992), ‘Teleology’ in E. Fox Keller, E. Lloyd (eds.), Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 324-333. Lenoir, T. (1982), The Strategy of Life. Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology, Dordrecht: Reidel. Maturana, H. R.,Varela, F. J. (1980), Autopoiesis and Cognition. The Realization of the Living, Dordrecht: D. Reidel. Mayr, E. (1976), ‘Teleological and teleonomic: A new analysis’, in E. Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life, Cambridge-London: Belknap Press, 383-404. Spaemann, R. (1988), ‘Teleologie und Teleonomie’, in D. Henrich, R.-P. Horstmann (eds.), Metaphysik nach Kant?, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 545-556. Steigerwald J., (2006), ‘Kant’s concept of natural purpose and the reflecting power of judgement’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37: 712734. Swoboda, W. (1978), ‘Ernst Brücke als Naturwissenschaftler’ in H. Brücke, W. Hilger, W. Höflechner, W. Swoboda (eds.), Ernst Wilhelm Brücke. Briefe an Emil Du Bois Reymond, vol. 8/1, I, Graz: Universität Graz Press. Thompson, E. (2004), ‘Life and Mind: From autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. A tribute to Francisco Varela’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 3: 381-398. Töpfer, G. (2004), Zweckbegriff und Organismus. Über die teleologiche Beurteilung biologischer Systeme, Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann. Walsh, D.M. (2006), ‘Organisms as natural purposes: The contemporary evolutionary perspective’, Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 37: 771-791.

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Weber, A., Varela, F.J. (2002), ‘Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of individuality’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2: 97125. Zammito, J. (2006), ‘Teleology Then and Now: The Question of Kant’s Relevance for Contemporary Controversies over Function in Biology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37: 748-779.

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Unintelligent Purposes. Schopenhauer’s Way over Kantian Teleology* ∗

Nicoletta De Cian Every being is its own work. (A. Schopenhauer)

1.WHY SCHOPENHAUER?

I

t may seem strange and even inopportune, with regard to teleological matters, to refer to an ‘old-fashioned’, pessimistic philosopher such as Arthur Schopenhauer who, deeply appreciated Kant, yet issued very harsh judgement upon the Critique of Judgment [W, 627-633 (529-534)]. Nevertheless, there are two good reasons to consider him in this context, one historical and the other theoretical. First, the historical reason: on the one hand, as a post-Kantian, Schopenhauer took part directly in the early and fecund process of redetermining natural teleology in a critical and transcendental sense; on the other hand, he was an early critic of the Kantian teleological model. Thus Schopenhauer offers a privileged perspective on some of the problems involved in that process. This historically privileged position provides a second, theoretical reason to reconsider Schopenhauer’s contribution on teleology. His own inquiry into nature is no longer Kantian but not yet Darwinian; it is neither creationist nor evolutionist. He came to a form of teleology released from ∗

Quotations from The World as Will and Representation (‘W’) and On the Will in Nature (‘N’) will be located by page number of P. Deussen edition (Schopenhauer Sämtliche Werke, München: Piper, 1911-1926), vol. 1 and vol. 3 respectively. A corresponding reference to the English editions by E.F.J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969, vol. 1) and K. Hillebrand (London: Georg Bell, 1907) will be given in brackets. Quotations from Metaphysik der Natur (‘MN’), not available in English, will be located by page number of V. Spierling edition (Philosophische Vorlesungen, München-Zürich: Piper, 1984, vol. 2).

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intentional ends, which may be relevant to today’s debate. Of particular interest in this respect is not so much (or not only) his results but the questions he raised. If some of Schopenhauer’s theses on natural phenomena are out-of-date, his remarks on Kantian teleology remain topical and may offer a useful contribution to today’s debate. 2. SCHOPENHAUER’S REMARKS ON KANTIAN TELEOLOGY Although Schopenhauer condemned Kant’s third Critique for its structure and content, yet he openly praised the Critique of Teleological Judgment for its ‘excellent’ suggestions [W, 632-633 (533-534)].1 In particular he admired Kant’s transcendental perspective and how Kant pointed out the limits of a mechanistic approach to nature. However, Schopenhauer did not refrain from advancing some relevant criticisms of Kant’s teleology concerning especially three aspects of it. The first regards its apriority. One of Kant’s undoubted merits is to have brought the inquiry on natural teleology to a transcendental level, but for Schopenhauer this represents only one step on a road that Kant had just started to tread, but which needs to be taken to its end. Every transcendental inquiry risks remaining aprioristic and somehow ‘maimed’, if it is not supported by study grounded upon experience. In particular, once we have set the subjective origin of our teleological explanations, we still have to establish the origin and the purpose of our intellect (i.e., here, of our cognitive faculties in general) and “the place occupied by the intellect in the nexus of nature” [N, 359-360 (296-298)]. The second remark concerns the fact that, for Schopenhauer, Kant, in his treatment of natural teleology, “as elsewhere, [...] has confined himself to the negation [auf die Negative]” [N, 329 (257)].2 Kant’s argument has the great merit of having cut asunder the nervus probandi of the physicotheological proof, the most plausible, potent and insidious proof, in Schopenhauer’s eyes, “but a negation only takes full effect when it has been completed by a correct affirmation” [N, 329 (257)]. Once we have shown 1

2

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On Schopenhauer’s relation to Kant’s Critique of Judgment see Negri 1960; Meyer 1995, 151-166; De Cian 2006. Italics mine.

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that nature is not the result of an intelligent designer, we should go further, both from an ontological and an epistemological point of view to ask how it has been made, and what we can say (or know) about it. The third remark is strictly connected to the second. Even if Kant had shattered ‘to atoms’ the most cogent theological argumentation “like a glass thrown at a wall”, this is not enough for Schopenhauer, who appears to believe that it may still be ‘insidious’. In order to complete Kant’s work, “as [it] is only consistent and honest”, it is necessary to ‘entirely do away’ with what remains of all speculative theology and all rational psychology [N, 276 (198)]. The basic criticism that Schopenhauer seems to advance against Kantian teleology is therefore that of being an ‘interrupted track’: a good track, but one that needs to be developed in a number of different directions, resting on new, ‘bolder’ questions [N, 276 (198)]. In the light of these questions, let us briefly recall Schopenhauer’s conception of nature and of natural teleology. 3. NATURE AS ‘WILL’ It is well known that Schopenhauer’s perspective on nature is stridently metaphysical. This is so much true, that he considers the expression ‘metaphysics of nature’ to be tautological (MN, 55). Yet, he claims that it is not only possible, but necessary, to leave aside this metaphysical level of consideration as well, in order to compare its results with those of the natural sciences and to avoid a philosophical system that ‘soars’ above reality and experience, without descending “to the firm ground of actuality (Wirklichkeit)” [N, 294 (216)]. Indeed between the metaphysician and the physicist (or the scientist, as we would say today) there should be the same relationship as that between two miners, who, in the bowels of the earth, “having started from two points far apart and worked for some time in subterranean darkness, trusting exclusively to compass and spirit-level, suddenly to their great joy catch the sound of each other’s hammers” [N, 297 (219)]. This is exactly what Schopenhauer intends to achieve in On the will in nature, first published in 1835. In this treatise he demonstrates how the empirical sciences ‘corroborate’ his philosophical system, in order to offer a sort of ‘physical-anatomical’ explanation of the natural processes de-

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scribed in metaphysical terms in his main works and lectures. But it can also be read as an answer to his first criticism of Kant, since Schopenhauer takes the road of ‘empirico-physiological’ considerations in order to arrive “at the point whence his [Kant’s] transcendental-critical view starts” [N, 358-359 (296)]. Now as Schopenhauer states in his metaphysical works, the comparison with the natural sciences reveals that everything existing in nature results from the unfolding of a unique, universal ‘will’. Yet this ‘will’ has nothing to do with any ‘intention’, since it does not imply any deliberate or conscious process. Therefore it is not to be confused with something similar to the capacity to pursue arbitrary acts, according to an intellect or a sort of ‘rational soul’, as it was for most of the previous philosophical tradition. Rather, the will to which Schopenhauer refers is an impulse, what he calls a ‘Streben’, in other words a pure, blind, endless striving [tending], without an ultimate purpose, and with no other end but that of perpetuating itself. It is that sort of unconscious and original energy (Urkraft) [N, 407 (357)], of endogenous, essential force, which moves all natural beings: not only men and animals, but also plants and even inanimate beings.3 Within nature there is no inert matter indeed [N, 345 (278-279)]. So between the motives, that determine the actions of men and animals, the stimuli, that steer plants, and the simple natural forces (such as gravitation, electricity, magnetism), which govern the inorganic domain, for Schopenhauer there is no qualitative distinction, rather a difference of degree. Motives, stimuli and forces are expressions of the same ‘will’, which is the “primary agens in the inward machinery” of every natural being, from the stone or the magnet up to the man (both in normal and in ‘pathological’ conditions) [N, 320 (247)]. Of this original ‘agent’ Schopenhauer finds (or claims to find) scientific evidence in the results of some of the most important physiologists of his time, such as Johann Friedrich Meckel and Carl Friedrich Burdach [N, 320-321 (247-249)]. Schopenhauer underlines how Meckel demonstrated that the dynamics of very different natural processes, such as vegetative li3

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fe, embryogenesis, assimilation of nourishment, vegetative life and even magnetic attraction, have an identical structure (Meckel 1819, 195-198). He mentions how Burdach identified a unique primal ‘force’, that he called ‘self-love’, on the basis of everything existing in nature (Burdach 18261840, 388) and that would coincided, according to Schopenhauer, with the ‘will-to-live’. He even takes into consideration the results of zoologists, anatomist-pathologists, and astronomers, such as Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Richard Owen, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, Georges Cuvier, John Herschel and others. In Schopenhauer’s eyes, they all demonstrate the presence of this primary agent in every single being within the three natural reigns—animal, vegetal and inorganic—as shown in the three main sections of his treatise, dedicated respectively to ‘Comparative Anatomy’, ‘Physiology of Plants’ and ‘Physical Astronomy’. If the thesis that the will is a primum mobile [N, 301 (224)] is true even for inanimate beings, it is more so for organisms, whose primal and original element is their tendency to live in a particular way, and their own structure grows according to their tendencies and appetites, that is to say, exactly according to their ‘will’. In this sense, Schopenhauer could be described as a ‘functionalist’, since, referring to Aristotle, he claims that functions (which are direct expressions of the will) bring about organs and their structural organization, not vice versa [N, 332-333 (261-262)]. Yet, among the considerations that Schopenhauer draws from this, there is also the statement that even the intellect is a product of the will. As any other organ, the intellect is no more than a secondary, accidental and derived product, a by-product of the more original, universal and unconscious will: an instrument that the will arranges by itself for the preservation of the individual and of the species [N, 338-340 (269-271) and 369 (309)]. Indeed, the nervous system and the brain developed only as a consequence of the enhancing of animals’ requirements [N, 358 (295)]. Therefore Schopenhauer can affirm that the intellect is “the organic function of a single part, a product of life” [N, 320 (247)] and that the will is not a ‘function’ of knowledge, but the other way round: borrowing a metaphor from chemistry, he describes the will as “the radical of soul” [N, 311-312 (236-237)].

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How this might be linked to Schopenhauer’s perspective, which is still anchored to the fixist tradition yet open to Lamarckian ‘proto-evolutionist’ ideas, is not so clear and this constitutes somewhat of a problem.4 Nevertheless this is salient in light of our first question. To say that the teleological explanation of nature depends on the transcendental structures of our intellect (or of the reflecting judgment, in Kantian terms) and has therefore a mere subjective validity, is important but, for Schopenhauer, it is not decisive: we still need to consider why our intellect actually works this way. By tracing our knowledge’s ‘mechanisms’ back to a primal and unconscious will, which is a direct emanation of our instinct to survive, Schopenhauer means to drive the Kantian teleological model beyond this purely subjective front and open it to a new horizon, that does not dismiss the sense of the former (Kantian one), but that intends, if anything, to integrate it by strengthening its ontological roots and developing its epistemological value. 4. SCHOPENHAUER’S MODEL OF NATURAL TELEOLOGY This integration is traceable in the peculiar form of teleology that characterizes—partly openly and partly implicitly—Schopenhauerian philosophy of nature.5 To recognize in the will, thus conceived, the deep and common matrix of the whole nature means to recognize an essentially ‘tensional’ structure in nature: everything in nature ‘tends-to’ something. “Every individual act has a purpose or end” [W, 233 (165)], writes Schopenhauer. And since everything in nature is will, we draw from that that all, in nature, has an end. Therefore it seems reasonable to maintain that for Schopenhauer nature has a teleological order, and that this order is not only pervasive, but 4

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Soon after his death, Schopenhauer was considered to be a forerunner of Darwinism (see for instance Asher 1871 and then Lovejoy 1911) and the topicality of his ‘evolutionism’ has been further emphasized in recent times (Vandenrath 1973; 1976). Yet the problems of these positions are highlighted by Vecchiotti (1988, especially 36-37), who warns against easy comparisons, both from an historical and a theoretical point of view. On Schopenhauer’s natural teleology see Keutel 1897, Cacciola 1993, Rodríguez Gonzales 1994 and Ferrand 2000.

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even constitutive of the whole nature, both at the level of single beings or species and at the level of the relationship among species. Actually, according to Schopenhauer, the natural sciences testify to the existence of such an order, and this leads him to discount the possibility that it might be the result of a casual interaction of forces, and to assume rather that it indicates the presence of a ‘will’. This is visible in different fields. Schopenhauer reports plenty of cases. For instance, comparative anatomy attests to how “the universal fitness for their ends (Zweckmäßigkeit)” of “all the parts of the organism [...] without exception, proclaim too distinctly for it ever to have been seriously questioned, that here no forces of nature acting by chance and without plan have been at work, but a will” [N, 327-328 (255)]. The physiology of plants suggests that the direction of plants’ growth is determined and systematically modified by light, as if pursuant to a prearranged plan [N, 356 (293)]. Physics shows that even the fall of heavy bodies, such as “a torrent dashing headlong over rocks”, cannot rise “without an exertion of strength”, and this exertion of strength is not conceivable without will [N, 368 (308)]. Yet this conception of will does not imply an intelligent, external designer. According to Schopenhauer, scientists and philosophers err by following common sense, which makes them unable to conceive a will released by a guiding intelligence. “Therefore the will, of which unmistakable traces had been found, was not sought for where these were discovered, but was removed to the outside”, so that the beings “became the product of a will foreign” to them, guided by knowledge, a kind of knowledge that must have preceded their existence and worked (acted) according to its own purposes [N, 328 (256)]. For Schopenhauer, this is exactly “the basis of the train of thought on which the Physico-theological proof is founded” [N, 327 (255)], as well as what he wants to unhinge. In order to do this, Schopenhauer points out that: (1) the will is not guided by knowledge, because, as we have seen, knowledge is an accessorial by-product of will (“it is not an intellect which has brought forth Nature; it is, on the contrary, Nature which

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has brought forth the intellect”) [N, 330 (258)].6 Even when the will seems to be directed by knowledge, it is the other way round: man does not will what he knows, rather, he knows what he wants; (2) the principle (primum mobile) of natural proceedings is thus fundamentally unintelligent and not exterior, but interior to beings (“the world is not made with the help of knowledge, consequently also not from the outside, but from the inside”) [N, 329 (257-258)]. Moving from these coordinates, and in keeping with the above-mentioned characteristics of the will, Schopenhauer sets up a particular form of natural teleology. (a) First, such a teleology is based on the concept of unintelligent (i.e. unconscious or unintentional) purposiveness: on what could be called a ‘tending’ without ‘intending’. Since the will is originally unintelligent, in order to understand its innermost way of proceeding we need to consider above all those, among its manifestations, that are not ‘perturbed’ by knowledge. This is the case with animals’ instinctual behavior, for instance, especially that of insects, such as spiders or the like, which sometimes act in response to a precise purposiveness before actually knowing why they do so [N, 337-338 (268-269)]. On the contrary, we cannot understand it, if we try to do so by means of a comparison with our works, since it cannot be compared to any human act (or product) realized by the light of knowledge [N, 345-346 (276-280)]. (b) Second, the end that every natural being pursues is essentially an intrinsic end, that coincides with the ingrained tendency to preserve and perpetuate itself, in a sense similar to the adaptive one, though not presuming an evolution of species of the Darwinian type: “every being—Schopenhauer repeats—is its own work” [N, 346 (280)]. (c) Third, purposiveness is proper to all natural beings, animated or not. Certainly, mechanical causality cannot explain every kind of process in nature, but this is not only valid for organic processes. Even in the fields of chemistry, electricity, magnetism and crystallization, we 6

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need to appeal to non-mechanical laws. Paraphrasing the famous Kantian motto of the blade of grass, Schopenhauer writes that the laws of pure mechanism do not enable us to explain “even the solution of a salt in water” [W, 633 (435)]. Therefore there are not just two, but several kinds of causality (mechanical, chemical, physical, by stimuli or by motives, and so on). Yet they differ but in degree and can all be traced back to the will [N, 372-379 (313-321)]. Indeed the will is the unique principle of movement and organization within nature, always internal to beings: “everywhere there is causality, there is will” [N, 378 (320)]. Even from an epistemological point of view, the will is a ‘radical’: it is what “remains over after all causal explanation as an insoluble residue” [N, 378 (320)]. Thus the will, and therefore the principle of natural purposiveness, can be also said to be a principle preceding, and not ‘reducible’ to, the principle of life (Vecchiotti 1988, XXXV). (d) Finally, according to Schopenhauer, insofar as the structure of the will excludes the idea that nature could originate in the mind of an intelligent designer, it also excludes the idea that it has a final end. The fact that every event in nature seems to be goal-directed does not support the hypothesis for the existence of an ultimate purpose, to which the whole of nature proceeds: if “every individual act has a purpose or end; willing as a whole has no end in view” [W, 196 (165)]. The will’s proceeding is indeed essentially endless, and to ask which is the ultimate end of natural proceeding is a nonsensical [W, 194-195 (163164) and MN, 209-210].7 Therefore Schopenhauer establishes a model of natural teleology that is fundamentally impulsive and instinctual: based on the conception of an unintelligent, immanent to all beings, and endless purposiveness. Such a model has not only a heuristic value, but finds a metaphysical justification in the peculiar concept of ‘will’ that grounds it. If “all the parts of nature ac7

Nor can the fact that Schopenhauer conceives nature as a pyramid, with man at its top (remaining thus adherent to tradition) constitute a purpose in itself, but again it is only a medium for the will to grant itself (and the whole natural world) the possibility of surviving and perpetuating itself [W, 182 (153)].

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commodate themselves to one another”, asserts Schopenhauer, this is because “it is one will that appears in them all” [W, 191 (160); also in MN, 205]: “it is only one and the same flame” glowing inside them [W, 182 (153)]. This is how Schopenhauer intends to let the Kantian ‘negative’ “take full effect”, completing it with something ‘positive’: the world, that “is not made with the help of knowledge, consequently also not from the outside”, is the result of the unfolding of a blind will, moving every being from the inside; so “the explanation of all teleological facts is to be found in the will of the being itself in which they are observed” [N, 330 (257-258)]. This is the second double ‘track’ on which Schopenhauer claims to have exceeded Kant: on the one hand, he explicitly affirms that the unifying principle of natural processes (or laws), just hypothesized by Kant in the Critique of Judgment as precluded to man, is actually accessible and is precisely the ‘will’ [W, 633 (534)]; on the other hand, he suggests that teleological explanations have not only a regulative value, since they do say something (even if not exhaustively) about the innermost constitution of beings. Finally, Schopenhauer’s perspective on natural teleology provides the key to answering our third question. If we want to really neutralize the last, insidious residue of the physico-theological proof, it is not sufficient to cut the connections it establishes: we need to overturn it beginning with its fundamentals. This is what Schopenhauer claims to have done by turning the relationship between intellect and will upside down and dealing with the brain as a biological, unconscious function of the will. For him, having shown that the will is the ‘primarily real’, is the ‘Archimedean point’ on which one must play in order to ‘entirely do away’ with the last residual of the proof [N, 360 (298)]. 5. BEYOND KANT? OPEN PERSPECTIVES Therefore it seems clear that Schopenhauer’s ‘completion’ of Kant’s natural teleology produces, rather, a deep transformation of it. Such a transformation takes place through passages which are not always linear. Nevertheless Schopenhauer’s criticism of Kantian teleology may be relevant to today’s debate.

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In the first instance, this dismissal of a purely aprioristic approach to nature could offer a general methodological call to overcome the widespread prejudice that philosophy and natural sciences are able to proceed successfully apart from one another, a view often maintained by philosophy and natural sciences alike. Schopenhauer not only presses for a strict and continual comparison between philosophy and the results of natural sciences, but he suggests, with his metaphor of the two miners, that the philosopher and the scientist should each dig where the other cannot, in order to uncover the whole ‘core’ of natural matter. Philosophy should not fly on metaphysics’ wings without setting foot on the ground and without facing the ‘hard soil’ of natural sciences. And the sciences should not claim a neutrality and objectivity that they lack. Actually, that they are neither neutral, nor objective, is evident from the language employed in their explanations which is often saturated in teleological expressions, not noticed as such, yet fraught with theoretical implications. Then in the wake of Schopenhauer’s reflections we could ask what the biological, adaptive role of the intellect in a Kantian-transcendental approach to natural teleology is (assuming that it has one). Schopenhauer was accused of having instituted a vicious circle between nature and intellect and of assuming at the same time that the intellect is a by-product of nature and nature a representation of intellect.8 Yet he seems to have been conscious of the problem, and at least to have asked himself about it in On the will in nature.9 How does this relate to today’s reflection on the subject? The current debate (Allen, Bekoff, Lauder 1998) is predominantly characterized by two perspectives: one that traces the attribution of functions and purposes of natural beings back to the intention of the subject (Kitcher 1983, Dennet 1996) 8

9

It is the so called ‘zellerian circle’ or ‘paradox’, named after the first critic who raised this objection (Zeller 1873). Keutel (1897, 28) recalls it with respect to Schopenhauer’s teleology. For the same reason, we do not agree with the interpretation, promoted in certain Schopenhauerian literature, that there is a ‘physiologist turn’ in Schopenhauer’s late thought (for a brief overview, see Kroll 2003). Schopenhauer’s search for an integrated approach to nature, simultaneously metaphysical and physiological, yet giving different emphases to each, is evident from his early studies at Göttingen University (1809-11).

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and another, especially in the philosophy of biology, that bases the attribution of functions on the evolutionary past of beings (Wright 1973; Millikan 1989; Neander 1991). But can the transcendentalist and etiological-evolutionist perspectives be entirely separate from one another, within a valid approach to natural teleology? And, if not, how can they come together? As for the second remark, that to get over the conception of natural teleology as a mere via negationis for deconstructing the physico-theological proof, we have seen how Schopenhauer radicalizes it on various levels. On the one hand, he prefigures the possible efficacy of the teleological approach—released from intentionality—even outside the field of the life sciences. On the other hand, especially within this field, he highlights the necessity of surmounting the simple ascertainment of the validity of an unintentional approach to natural teleology, and, once he has excluded the ‘designer’ hypothesis, to search for its ‘positive’ ontological roots. Thus, he justifies the instinct of survival metaphysically. Does this happen today? It has been noticed that the etiological-evolutionist perspectives are inclined to take the concept of organism as an undisputed assumption, to be neither explained nor justified according to its way of being (Toepfer 2005). In this respect, Schopenhauer seems to suggest that once we have traced the organism’s structure and behaviour back to the instinct of survival, we should ask, again, why does this basic instinct come up? And from whence? Schopenhauer’s approach towards a decisive ‘ontologization’ of natural teleology is not devoid of epistemological problems. Although, as we have seen, he seems to press for the recognition of the constitutive value of teleological explanations, he does not explicitly keep at bay the Kantian call to a merely regulative use of them. So, for instance, when Schopenhauer wants to explain the Kantian doctrine, according to which purposiveness “is brought into Nature by our own understanding”, he compares the status of teleological explanations to that of the decimal system, which, for Kant, as a mathematical construction has a constitutive, rather than a regulative value for our knowledge.10 Far from solving the ambiguities implied in the 10

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Kantian definition of the merely regulative value of teleological judgment, this kind of overlap, combined with the physiological-metaphysical interpretation of Kant’s natural teleology, seems to make them more evident. How do we escape this problem, then? Once we have recognized the ontological foundations of teleological explanations, how are we to maintain their regulative status? On what bases can we define their specificity and irreducibility to other kinds of explanations? Finally, regarding the attempt to complete Kant’s work to save natural teleology from the risk of possible theological ‘drifts’, even if Schopenhauer’s solution is not completely persuasive, at least it indicates the core of the problem. By overturning the normal order of relations between nature and intellect, he seems to point out that the principal peril to be overcome in this respect is to repropose (perhaps under false pretences) the deliberative model of explanation even for the spontaneous and unintentional processes of nature. In order to avoid this, he claims stridently that if there is a teleology in nature, it derives from a matrix not only interior to beings but also anterior to any intelligence. This raises the question of whether the current, so called ‘naturalistic’ teleologies have actually succeeded in leaving the deliberative-intentional model behind, or whether it is still tacitly operating within them. Probably, Schopenhauer himself did not completely succeed, but his conception of ‘purposes’ and ‘functions’, as proper, yet not ultimate, determinations of natural beings, may represent an effective call to search for a more primitive root, one which is able to justify their presence in our experience of nature. A search aware of the fact that if every process in nature has an end, then the question about the end of the whole nature is not to be solved, since it makes no sense.

‘miracle’ ourselves, with our intellect, as happens when we claim that we have ‘discovered’ the properties of the decimal system, which are actually products of our intellect [N, 346 (279-280)].

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REFERENCES Allen, C, Bekoff M, Lauder G. (eds.) (1998), Nature’s purposes. Analyses of Function and Design in Biology, Cambridge (MA)-London: MIT Press. Asher, D. (1871), ‘Schopenhauer and Darwinism’, Journal of Anthropology 1: 312-332. Burdach, K.F. (1826-40), Die Physiologie als Erfahrungswissenschaft, vol. I, Leipzig: L. Voss. Cacciola, M.L. (1993), ‘The Question of Finalism in Schopenhauer’s Philosophy’, Discurso 20: 77-97. De Cian, N. (2006), ‘L’interpretazione schopenhaueriana della Critica del Giudizio di Kant: costruzione “barocca” o opera “di primo rango”?’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 4 (Supplement): 77-85. De Cian, N., Segala M. (2002), ‘What is Will?’, Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 83: 13-42. Dennett, D.C. (1996), Kinds of Minds, New York: Harper Collins. Ferrand, J-P. (2000), ‘Téléologie schopenhauerienne et athéisme’ in Olivier Bloch (ed.), Philosophie de la nature, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 309-317. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer and E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keutel, O. (1897), Über die Zweckmäßigkeit in der Natur bei Schopenhauer, Leipzig: Zechel. Kitcher, P. (1983), ‘Function and design’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 18: 379-397. Kroll, S. (2003), Arthur Schopenhauer. Physiologisierung der Erkenntnistheorie, München: Grin Verlag [ebook]. Lovejoy, A.O. (1911), ‘Schopenhauer as an evolutionist’, The Monist 21: 195-222; repr. in B. Glass, O. Temkin, W. L. Straus Jr., (eds.) (1959), Forerunners of Darwin 1745-1859, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 415-437. Meckel, J.F. (1819), (ed.), Deutsches Archiv für die Physiologie, vol. V, Halle-Berlin: Hallische Waisenhaus. Meyer, W. (1995), Das Kantbild Schopenhauers, Frankfurt a. M.–Berlin–Bern–New York–Paris–Wien: Peter Lang. Millikan, R.G. (1989), ‘In defence of proper functions’, Philosophy of Science 56: 288-302. Neander, K. (1991), ‘Functions as selected effects the conceptual analyst’s defence’, Philosophy of Science 58: 168-184. Negri, A. (1960), ‘Arturo Schopenhauer e la kantiana Kritik der Urtheilskraft’, Il Protagora 2: 37-65. Rodríguez G., Mariano L. (1994), ‘Metafísica de la finalidad natural: Su metamorfosis en la línea Kant-Schopenhauer-Nietzsche’, Pensamiento 50: 435-455. Schopenhauer, A. (1907 [1835]), On the will in nature (K. Hillebrand transl.), London: Georg Bell. Schopenhauer, A. (1984 [1819-20]), Metaphysik der Natur, in A. Schopenhauer, Philosophische Vorlesungen (V. Spierling ed.), vol. II, München-Zürich: Piper.

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Schopenhauer, A. (1969 [1819]), The world as will and representation (E.F.J. Payne trans.), vol. I, New York: Dover. Toepfer, G. (2005), ‘Teleologie’ in U. Krohs, G. Toepfer (eds.), Philosophie der Biologie. Eine Einführung, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 36-52. Vandenrath, J. (1973), ‘Evolution und Erkenntnis’, Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch 54: 19-30. Vandenrath, J. (1976), ‘Schopenhauer und die Evolutionslehre’, SchopenhauerJahrbuch 57: 40-57. Volpicelli, I. (1988), A. Schopenhauer: La natura vivente e le sue forme, Settimo Milanese: Marzorati Editore. Wright, L. (1973), ‘Functions’, The Philosophical Review 82: 139-168. Zeller, E. (1873), Geschichte der deutschen Philosophie seit Leibniz, München: R. Oldenbourg.

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From the Self-preservation of the Individual to Regulation of the Species. Biopolitics and Teleology Tristana Dini 1. INTRODUCTION

I

t may seem predictable to deal with the theme of teleology in regard to politics, a sphere considered entirely human and therefore, like the moral sphere, traditionally subject to the dominion of moral goals. Yet the debate on teleology is just as open at the level of political theory as it is at the level of science. For throughout the twentieth century, the relationship between means and ends—the constant concern of political thought—was subject to close criticism by teleology or attempts to revive it. Suffice it to consider Walter Benjamin’s concept of ‘pure means’ (which he took from Giorgio Agamben’s book tellingly entitled Means without End), or Leo Strauss’s critique of modern political thought as pure calculative rationality unable to draw on the sphere of values. Instead, in what follows I seek to frame the question of finalism in terms of the particular point of intersection between politics and life that has arisen since modernity. In the recent debate on bio-politics,1 in fact, the category of ‘ends’ has become an indistinct zone between biology and politics where man is now understood as ‘living’ in the political sphere as well. Yet in principle the latter is founded instead on the specific distinction between the human and the biological, at least in the Western tradition. Whilst for millennia—this being the Foucauldian thesis at the base of the debate on bio-politics—man was what Aristotle described as “a living animal with the additional capacity for a political existence”, modern man 1

The term ‘biopolitics’, used by Foucault in the 1970s (it first appeared in a lecture given at Rio in 1974), was taken up again in the 1990s by Italian political philosophers, arousing a worldwide debate. See G. Agamben 1998; R. Esposito 2004; A. Negri, M. Hardt 2000.

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is instead “an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question” (Foucault 1978, 143). The classical political paradigm was founded upon exclusion of the zoé—the bare life that man has in common with animals and binds him to the domain of necessity and the need to survive—while the space of politics was reserved for the bios, the specifically human form of life. Since modernity, a displacement has occurred in the political sphere whereby biological life has become the locus of political dominion, according to a process which has considerably intensified since the eighteenth century. In this regard, Foucault’s thesis can be related to Hannah Arendt’s contention that the rise of the modern conservatio vitae with respect to the Greek interest in the common world generated a process of depoliticization which culminated when work for the satisfaction of material needs became the predominant form of human action. Foucault’s analysis of biopolitics and Arendt’s diagnosis of modern depoliticization centre on the theme of the progressive demise of the distinction between politics and biological life. Whilst for Foucault modern man is an animal whose politics places his existence as a living being in question, for Arendt “through society it is the life process itself which in one form or another has been channeled into the public realm” (Arendt 1958, 45). But among the numerous points which differentiate Foucault’s position from Arendt’s—besides the fact that Arendt would have found the expression ‘bio-politics’ nonsensical, given her belief that politics is always distant from biological life— there is Foucault’s concern with the emergence of biological knowledge as the essential basis for what, from the mid-1970s onwards, he would call ‘bio-power’. Hence, Foucault addresses the question of teleology in explicitly negative terms, doing so by extending the critique against finalism to the methodology of the traditionally human disciplines like history. Yet, by heeding the suggestion implicit in this book as a whole, one may go beyond these criticisms to note that the notion of ‘internal teleology’ (introduced by Kant and recently taken up once again in biology and the bio-philosophical debate) and that of bio-politics intersect. If ‘internal teleology’ is taken to mean broadly some sort of becoming immanent of the external end, a form of self-organization that arranges the inner parts of a whole into a mutual relationship of means and ends to produce a form of dynamic identity (au114

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topoiesis), then one finds numerous points in common between them. If the inner end is taken to be a principle, not necessarily conscious and rational, which underpins the constitution of subjectivity, then one can conduct a crosswise interpretation of the biological-epistemological and the contemporary political discourses. In this respect, the end is a conceptual tool which Foucault uses constantly to account for a new form of power (namely bio-power) ‘finalized’ in the preservation, proliferation and regulation of the species. The end thus coincides with the object of this new form of power (the population, the human species as a whole), but also with the structural principle, or the fundamental instinct on which such power draws, at the levels of both the single individual and the population or the human species in general. Of central importance here is the instinct of self-preservation as both the goal and engine of modern politics, but also the shift within bio-politics from preservation of the individual to that of the entire species. Moreover, biopolitics seems to centre on a dimension lying beyond mere preservation. It relies rather on the structure of desire, whose nature as constant aspiration and tension towards something appears incomprehensible outside a finalistic framework. Thus bio-politics is no longer based on the instinct for self-preservation connected above all with the fear of death. Rather, it is based on the desire for life, on the idea of its reproduction, of well-being and the improved health of the species, and also on risk, the incentivising and regulatory management of aleatory elements. Unlike devices based on the ‘law’ or discipline, the ‘security device’ does not intervene from outside to fix and normalize everything; on the contrary, it leaves space for the actual reality of events, seeking to “regulate from within the element of reality” (Foucault 2007, 47). There is also a close analogy between the biological discourse on internal purposiveness and the notion of ‘liberal governmentality’, one that arises from the transition between the state as an external regulatory body to the market as an agent of internal regulation and a locus of veridiction founded on individual utility and interest. The unconscious action of individuals pursuing their self-interest creates an equilibrium—overall regulation among individual forces—which acquires sense only within the ‘whole’ represented by the market. In this regard, the idea of a liberal ‘rationality’ as an organization immanent to reality, based on the calculation of 115

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means and ends, of the costs and benefits of any phenomenon affecting the population, seems incomprehensible without the paradigm of the inner end. Likewise, the type of subjectivity proper to homo œconomicus described by political economy and utilitarian philosophies, centred as it is on interest and instinct, inevitably relates to an unconscious inner end. After the critical genealogy of the ‘subject of desire’, the subject that biopolitics inherited from the ‘Christian pastorate’, understood in its connection with the ‘device of sexuality’ (in which Foucault discerns the point of merger between anatomo-politics and bio-politics, between individualizing and massifying power), the last period of Foucault’s reflection is characterized by a search for a new type of ethics. This is an ethics founded upon an ‘aesthetics of existence’ centred on the creative relationship ‘of self to self’ which is extraneous to all transcendent orders and to the biopolitical order which forces the individual to assume a preordained code of moral behaviour and a given identity. In general, therefore, it seems possible to interpret the shift from sovereign power to bio-power, like that from the notion of external end to that of inner end, as an effect of an overall shift from a level of transcendence to one of immanence and ‘finitude’. With the expression ‘bio-politics’, in fact, Foucault denotes the transition during modernity from sovereign power tied to the transcendent juridical dimension of the law, to a ubiquitous and productive power tied to the ‘norm’, which is not external to the sphere of the living but intrinsic and immanent to it. Thus, Foucault maintains, power abandoned its privileged bond to negativity and death—peculiarly to sovereignty—and devoted itself to life, to its intensification and proliferation, to its control and positive regulation. “One might say”, Foucault writes in The History of Sexuality, “that the ancient right to take life or let live was replaced by a power to foster life or disallow it to the point of death” (Foucault 1979, 138). Bio-power is thus depicted as a form of secularization of ‘pastoral power’: from a certain moment onwards, “it was no longer a question of leading people to their salvation in the next world, but rather ensuring it in this world. In this context, the word salvation takes on different meanings: health, well-being (that is, sufficient wealth, standard of living), security, protection against accidents. A series of ‘worldly’ aims took the place of the religious aims of the traditional pastorate” (Foucault 1982, 215). 116

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2. TELEOLOGY When Foucault uses the term ‘teleology’, generally he does so with a critical overtone. Hence Foucault’s position, like Friedrich Nietzsche’s antiteleologism, belongs among those forms of materialism which radicalize modern science’s critique of finalism by extending it from the solely natural sphere to the anthropological one. Accordingly, in On the archaeology of the sciences Foucault followed Bachelard and Canguilhem by stressing the incidence of interruptions in the course of history and the importance of the notion of ‘discontinuity’. He argued for the need to dispense with a set of notions connected with the postulate of continuity that comprised, besides those of tradition, influence and development, also those of “teleology or evolution toward a normative stage”. The historian’s task is to recover a “population of dispersed events”, to furnish a “pure description of the facts of discourse” understood as “a grouping that is always finite and limited at any moment to the linguistic sequences that have been formulated” (Foucault 1998, 281). To be restored to the utterance was its “singleness of event” (Foucault 1998, 282) so that account could be made of its historical irruption, utterances being always events that neither language nor sense could entirely exhaust. The endeavour is to narrate the history of the “perpetual difference” (Foucault 1998, 290), to construct a history of ideas as a “set of the specific and descriptive forms of non-identity” (Foucault 1998, 287). Thus Foucault intends to free history from the three metaphors which obstruct it: the evolutionist metaphor that imposes the distinction between regressive and adaptive; the biological metaphor that separates the inert from the living; and the dynamic metaphor that opposes movement and immobility. In Return to History, Foucault again insists on the “old biological metaphor of life and evolution” (Foucault 1998, 422) which brings to historical knowledge a twofold benefit: epistemological (giving history the semblance of a science), and ideological (metaphorizing history through the forms of life to guarantee that human societies are not exposed to the risk of revolution but only undergo the slow accumulation of infinitesimal mutations). Foucault stresses that structuralism and historical research must let the discontinuity of events and the transformations of society emerge. In his shift to ‘genealogy’, his anti-teleological stance appears in even more

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complete form in reference to Nietzsche. In Nietzsche, Genealogy, History the historian’s task is to retrieve the singularity of events from any “monotonous finality”, without tracing the slow curve of an evolution. Genealogy is opposed to the meta-historical construal of ideal meanings and “indefinite teleologies”; it is opposed to a search for the “origin”: “what is found at the historical beginning of things is not the inviolable identity of their origin; it is the dissension of other things. It is disparity” (Foucault 1977, 142). In opposition to the classical notion of ‘origin’ (Ursprung), Foucault directs the genealogical approach to the other meanings with which this term appears in Nietzsche: provenance (Herkunft) and emergence (Entstehung). Far from being “a category of resemblance”, provenance (Herkunft) “permits the dissociation of the self, its recognition and displacement as an empty synthesis, in liberating a profusion of lost events” (Foucault 1977, 145-146). The genealogist is not concerned with the “evolution of a species”, with the “destiny of a people”, but with what has happened in its “dispersion”. The genealogist does not seek the truth and the essence, but rather the “exteriority of accidents”. The search for provenance does not merge but disrupts what was perceived as immovable; it fragments what was thought to be united. In this sense provenance has to do with the body, “the inscribed surface of events”, the “locus of a dissociated Self”. Emergence (Entstehung) instead relates to the “hazardous play of dominations”; it is always produced in a “particular stage of forces”. Through emergence, genealogy shows the interplay of forces, the way in which they combat each other, their struggle against adverse circumstances or their attempt— dividing against themselves—to escape degeneration and regain vigour starting from their weakening itself. History will be “effective” to the extent that it introduces the discontinuous into our being, divides our feelings, dramatizes our instincts, leaving nothing that has the reassuring stability of life or nature, “will not permit itself to be transported by a voiceless obstinacy toward a millenial ending” (Foucault 1977, 154). Contrary to every “teleological movement or natural process”, effective history has the event arise again from what is unique to it. The forces at work in history obey neither “a destiny [nor] regulative mechanisms, but respond to haphazard conflicts” (Foucault 1977, 154). The world of effective history knows only one kingdom, “without providence or final cause”, where there 118

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is only “the iron hand of necessity shaking the dice-box of chance” (Nietzsche 2007, 130). One must understand chance not as a simple drawing of lots, but as “raising the stakes in every attempt to master chance through the will to power, and giving rise to the risk of an even greater chance” (Foucault 1977, 155). The explicit reference to Nietzsche, the enemy of teleology and of the idea of ‘chance’, seems to settle the question of finality from the outset. But in reality these criticisms of teleology refer above all to a type of ‘external finality’ tied to a conscious and deliberate project, the goal of an evolutionary process, the direction towards a normative stage. They are not directed against an idea of inner finality, as a form of self-organization which does not start from a certain origin but from dynamic forms of continuous reorganization upon reception of external stimuli. In fact Nietzsche’s antiteleologism is susceptible to numerous interpretations. One might say that his critique is only concerned with external finalism and draws a parallel between ‘inner finality’ and the notion of ‘self-regulation’ (Selbstregulierung), which Nietzsche took from Wilhelm Roux to account for the organism’s capacity for inner reorganization. According to this principle, the organism is able to assimilate or reject what originates from the outside, and individuals are able to create forms out of themselves. We will see how the idea of the desire for power contributed to Foucault’s notion of biopower as a positive and productive power not founded on the instinct of self-preservation. Likewise, behind Foucault’s idea of the ‘aesthetics of existence’ we shall see Nietzsche’s idea of giving style to one’s character. 3. LIFE It is first necessary to specify Foucault’s position on biological knowledge, for he invariably treats biology from a historical-epistemological perspective. What interests him is how knowledge emerges, how the rationality of the science takes shape by opening up new horizons and devising new practices. Following Nietzsche, Foucault considers knowledge to be, not the natural prolongation of the human disposition for happiness, but a struggle among instincts, urges and desire for power. At stake in this struggle is the distinction between truth and falsehood, and the outcome is an indissoluble nexus between knowledge and power.

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A further specification is required concerning Foucault’s view of epistemology. Foucault’s can be called an epistemology without a subject, or beyond the subject, as a means towards a historical ontology. It may be said that Foucault drew on Nietzsche to reactivate the more radically critical aspects of Kantian thought in order to remove all anthropological sense from the concept of the transcendental, and to assert a radical historicism of the conditions of experience and knowledge.2 All of Foucault’s thought can be read in these terms: from the archaeological method based on the notions of the “historical a priori”—a “purely empirical figure” (Foucault 2002, 144) that does not explain the genesis of universal forms but shows how they concretely find places of emergence in history—and “episteme”—which defines the “epistemological field” in which the single forms of knowledge “grounds its positivity and thereby manifests a history which is not that of its growing perfection, but rather that of its conditions of possibility” (Foucault 2001a, XXIII-XXIV)—to the project of his later writings to construct a “historical ontology of ourselves” and a “history of truth” as an analysis of “games of truth”, “the interplay of truth and falsehood through which being is constituted historically as experience, that is, as something that can and must be thought” (Foucault 1984, 12). If one takes full account of the knowledge-power nexus, the question of biopolitics can only be addressed in terms of the emergence of biological knowledge. Only thus is it possible to fully understand Foucault’s endeavour to go beyond the classical political paradigm. Contrary to Agamben’s interpretation,3 in fact, Foucault conceives biopolitics as an age in which ‘life’ is called into question, not in the domain of law and sovereignty, but 2 3

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For a straightforward philosophical reading of Foucault’s inquiry see B. Han 1998. In Homo sacer Agamben traces biopolitics and sovereignty back to the same inaugural moment of Western politics: every political organization (including biopolitical ones) from archaic until the postmodern variants of the State-form, rests on exclusion, including the ‘naked life’ not politically determined and therefore eliminable, worthless. What characterizes modern politics is not, therefore, the inclusion of the zoé in the polis, in itself ancient, nor the fact that life as such becomes an eminent object of calculus and forecast by state power, but rather the fact that the space of naked life, situated originally at the margin of the order, has progressively come to coincide with the political space, and exclusion and inclusion, outside and inside, bios and zoé, enter a zone of irreducible indistinction.

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in that of the norm and knowledge. It is necessary to preserve the ambiguity of the notion of bio-politics, its location within the indistinct zone between biology and politics, to fully understand Foucault’s attempt to conceive subjectivity and power beyond the classical political-juridical paradigm of sovereignty, and to grasp how it arises at the crossroads of ‘truth games’, bodies of knowledge, practices, institutions, and power relations. According to Foucault, three biological notions have opened up new horizons, completely recasting the epistemological field envisaged by the natural sciences in the classical age, and ushering in a new age of politics: these are the notions of life, population and species. Foucault’s concern with the organization of the scientific and social treatment of ‘life’, which preoccupied him until his reflections on bio-politics of the 1970s, is already evident in iThe Birth of the Clinic. Here the transformations of clinical science are regarded as decisive moments in the modern selfunderstanding of human beings as subjects and their constitution as individuals precisely to the extent that biological life becomes the object of a specific form of knowledge. In Foucault’s archaeological reconstruction, the development of clinical science laid the epistemological foundations on which any subsequent discourse on ‘man’ had to be based. The prestige of the life sciences in the nineteenth century, man’s role as a model for the sciences, “is linked originally not with the comprehensive, transferable character of biological concepts, but, rather, with the fact that these concepts were arranged in a space whose profound structure responded to the healthy/morbid opposition” (Foucault 2003a, 41). This experience arose from pathological anatomy, where the fact that the discourse on life was articulated on the basis of death had decisive importance, so that the first scientific discourse concerning the individual developed by our culture “had to pass through this stage of death” (Foucault 2003a, 243). At the beginning of the nineteenth century the birth of the modern clinic produced the way in which man perceives his ‘finitude’ by affirming life through analysis of death. In the architecture of Order of Things, humans are constructed as objects and subjects of knowledge through the notions of Life, Language, and Work, respectively the knowledge objects of biology, linguistics, and political economy. ‘Life’ is the discriminant between the episteme of the classical age and that of the modern age; it is what marks the “threshold of bio121

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logical modernity”. Foucault identifies the conditions that made evolutionism possible in Cuvier’s comparative anatomy: the shift in the classification of living beings from a taxonomic order to a biological one was due to comparative anatomy and not, as in the traditional interpretation, to Lamarckism. In fact whilst for Lamarck, transformations always come about amid the ontological continuity of beings, instead, by gainsaying the ontological continuity of beings, Cuvier’s comparative anatomy distributed them in a discontinuous space and thus made their individuality emerge. The idea of a discontinuity in the series of living beings, the idea that the species is not a given but a construct, and that the only reality is individuals and their variation, created the epistemological preconditions for Charles Darwin’s conception of the evolution of the species. Subsequently, in a course on bio-politics entitled Security, Territory, Population, Foucault returned to the topic by identifying, no longer ‘man’ or ‘life’ but the notion of ‘population’ as the “operator of transformations” enabling the passage from natural history to biology, from the analysis of wealth to political economy, from general grammar to historical philology. In the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, a series of transformations produced the change from the identification of the classificatory features proper to the taxonomic order of the natural sciences to the inner analysis of the organism, and thence from the organism with its anatomo-functional coherence to its constitutive or regulatory relationships with the lifeenvironment. Finally with the passage from Cuvier to Darwin, the lifeenvironment and its constitutive relationship with the organism gave way to the population, which Darwin demonstrated to be the element through which the environment produced its effects on the organism. Therefore biopolitics pertained to the new epistemological field opened up by biology, and it dealt with the population as a problem “at once scientific and political, as a biological problem, and as a power’s problem” (Foucault 2003b, 245). 4. THE HUMAN SPECIES Contrary to the Greek conception of politics as distinct from the biological dimension, the modern political tradition sets the issue of the preservation of life at the core of politics. In the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes defines the law of nature as “the liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he

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will himself, for the preservation of his own nature; that is to say of his own life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own judgement, and reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto” (Hobbes 1839, 116). As with the law of nature this coincides with “a precept or general rule, found out by reason, by which a man is forbidden to do that, which is distructive of his life, or taketh away the means of preserving the same; and to omit that, by which he thinketh it may be best preserved” (Hobbes 1839, 117).4 But the initial instinct of self-preservation is bound to fail due to the other natural impulse that accompanies and contradicts it: the inexhaustible acquisitive desire that seemingly condemns men to generalized conflict. In order to avert the war of all against all in the state of nature, the State was born on the basis of a pact which simultaneously instituted sovereign power and the people. This was a voluntary restriction set upon the people’s action by apparently divided contracting subjects. In order to preserve their lives, they were obliged to create a power that transcended them and exercised the right to life or death over them. But modern politics is not based on the principle of preservation alone. Hobbes himself wrote “by health must not be understood the preservation of life in whatsoever condition, but a life that is as far as possible happy” (Hobbes 1966, 147) and in the Leviathan he specified that “by safety here, is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger, or hurt to the commonwealth, shall acquire to himself” (Hobbes 1839, 322). Nevertheless, in Hobbes the instinct for self-preservation is the fundamental principle of politics, representing the condition and ultimate referent for the negative character of power, whose principal function is to say ‘no’ to desire. Some commentators have argued that Foucault’s conception of biopolitics continues the modern political tradition which views the instinct for self-preservation as the basis of politics. Yet it seems necessary to reemphasise the distinction between biopolitics and sovereignty to which Fou-

4

On the immunitarian logic engendered by the principle of preservation within the sovereign paradigm see R. Esposito, Immunitas e Bios.

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cault refers constantly.5 The distinction centres on two points in particular. First, biopower is not primarily directed against the individual, but against the population and the human species. Second, bio-power is a positive power based neither on the fear of death, nor the instinct for selfpreservation, but on desire and interest. Both these aspects, which distinguish Foucault’s notion of biopolitics from modern sovereignty, can be clarified in light of the influence of certain Nietzschean notions on his thought. In this regard it is first necessary to link the idea of biopolitics as government of the human species with what Nietzsche wrote concerning “grand politics”: “grand politics affirms physiology over all other problems—it wants to rear humanity as a whole, it measures the rank of races, peoples, individuals according to […] the guarantee of life that it brings within itself” (Nietzsche 1972, 451).6 The principle concern of biopower is not the individual but breeding the species through the government of populations (on the basis of the scientific knowledge furnished by biology and demography). According to Foucault, since the seventeenth or eighteenth century power has progressively appropriated life through processes whereby political power becomes power over life in two main forms: the “anatomy-politics” of the human body (which socializes and individualizes bodies) and the “biopolitics” of the population (which seeks to control the population and the species). Therefore there are two main forms of power over life, and two objects of biopolitics: the body and the species. The first of these ‘poles’ “seems centred on the body as a machine”, while the second, formed subsequently in the mid-eighteenth century, centred on the “species body, the body imbued with mechanics of life and serving as the basis of the biological processes: propagation, births and mortality, the level of health, life expectancy and longevity, with all the conditions that can cause these to vary. Their supervision was effected through an entire series 5

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It is true that Foucault himself repeatedly stated that one cannot speak of a succession from sovereignty, disciplinary system to biopower, and that the three elements coexist during the same epoch. He constantly stressed their substantial differences and decisive discontinuities. Therefore one should take account of the “dominant” one, which in the contemporary age is biopower. Translation of mine.

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of interventions and regulatory controls: a biopolitics of population” (Foucault 1979, 139). Management of the ‘natural life’ conditions of people has been expressly posited since the 1700’s onwards as the decisive issue of politics, in the stead of the traditional goals of power qua sovereign power. Policies concerning the population’s health, nourishment, security and welfare have taken the place of those connected with the maintenanceextension of the territory and the problems of dynastic continuity and the administration of justice. Biopolitics is concerned with the multitude, but this is a multitude constituted not by bodies but by a “global mass that is affected by overall processes characteristic of birth, death, production, illness” (Foucault 2003b, 242-243). Hence biopolitics is directed at man-as-species. It is not directed at the individual in particular but acts “using overall mechanism and acting in such a way as to achieve overall states of equilibration or regularity” (Foucault 2003b, 246). The problem becomes that of organizing life, the biological processes of man-as-species, and of ensuring “that they are not disciplined, but regulated” (Foucault 2003b, 247). Besides being a power directed at the management of the species, and only secondarily of individuals, compared with the modern paradigm of sovereignty biopower exhibits a productive, non-repressive character uncoupled to the law. Instead the action of biopower relies on the positive elements of interest and desire, not on the mere instinct for selfpreservation. Once again, in order to give account of the ‘productive’ nature of this power, it is useful to refer to the priority given by Nietzsche to the expansion of power over the instinct of preservation: “Physiologists schould think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength-life as such is will to power: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it” (Nietzsche 2001b, 14). Whilst sovereignty is based on the power to inflict death, on the fear of losing life, biopolitics is founded upon the right of the “social body to ensure, maintain, or develop its life” (Foucault 1979, 136). This is no longer a power founded on the “deduction” (prélèvement) of forces, a power intent on blocking, bending or destroying them, but a power which insists on the production of forces, on their growth and regulation. Some commentators have seen a contradiction between a power aimed at the management of life and the huge carnage of the twentieth century (Foucault himself talked 125

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of “thanatopolitics” in this regard).7 Nevertheless, here too, the deathmaking arises in the very different context of sovereign power. In the age of biopower, the murderous function founded upon the fragmentation of the biological continuum on the basis of race (which distinguishes between those worthy of life and those not) intensifies and improves life. The instinct of self-preservation is sacrificed for an increase in, or enhancement of, life. Between my life and the death of others racism establishes neither a military or war-like relationship, nor a political one, but an exclusively biological one: “racism justifies the death-function in the economy of biopower by appealing to the principle that the death of others makes one biologically stronger insofar as one is a member of a race or a population, insofar as one is an element in a unitary living plurality” (Foucault 2003b, 258). It is within this framework that Foucault also sets the decisive role performed by evolutionism in general (not so much the theory of Darwin as the ensemble of its notions: the hierarchy of the species on the evolutionary tree, the struggle for survival among species, and the selection of the fittest) whenever there has been conflict, murder, struggle, or whenever it has been necessary to fracture the biological continuum invested by biopower. One may say that when Darwinian evolutionism has been interpreted as an external finalism, of a tension towards improvement of the species, it has lent itself to iniquitous political use. Nevertheless, Foucault is well aware that the Darwinian theory cannot be fully inscribed within a frame of this kind, and that it discloses a radical genealogical perspective instead because it introduces discontinuity and history into biology, and 7

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On the profound contradiction that transforms biopolitical power, intent on protecting life, into an instrument of death, and on the relationship between biopolitics and sovereignty, see G. Agamben 1998. To explain the contradiction, R. Esposito 2004 proposes the immunitarian paradigm as a unique set and internal articulation of life and politics expressing the “intrinsically antonymic way in which life preserves itself through power”. On the persistence of sovereignty in the age of governmentality see J. Butler 2006, 50-100. Recently W. Brown has argued that sovereignty “is migrating from the nation State to the unrelieved domination of capital on the one hand and god-sanctioned political violence on the other. Both are indifferent to and/or tacticalize domestic and international law, both spurn juridical norms, both recuperate the promise of sovereignty: e pluribus unum ” (W. Brown 2006, 3).

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creates a dimension that Foucault does not hesitate to call “biohistory” (Foucault 1979, 143). It is Darwin, indeed, who has made us aware that “life evolved, that the evolution of living species is determined, to a certain degree, by accidents which might be of historical nature” (Foucault 2004a, 11). Foucault countered the interpretation of evolutionism in terms of external finalism in a review of a book by Ruffié where he argued for a biohistory “that is no longer the unitary and mythological history of the human species over time” and a biopolitics “which is not that of divisions, preservations and hierarchies but that of communication and polymorphism” (Foucault 2001b, 95-97). Let us return to the positive character of power, whose basis is no longer the instinct for self-preservation but desire. The first population theorists of the eighteenth century realized that the population was based on the “invariant” of “desire”, and that production of the collective interest took place “through the game of desire”. With the idea of managing populations according to the naturalness of their desire, and therefore the spontaneous production of the collective interest through desire, a conception opposed to both the ethical-legal one of government and the exercise of sovereignty arose. Desire became the basis of all the individual’s actions but it no longer gave rise to widespread conflict, as in Hobbes. Instead, abandoned to its game, desire produced the population’s general interest. “Desire is the pursuit of the individual’s interest. In his desire the individual may well be deceived regarding his personal interest, but there is something that does not deceive, which is that the spontaneous, or at any rate both spontaneous and regulated play of desire will in fact allow the production of an interest, of something favorable for the population. The production of the collective interest through the play of desire is what distinguishes the naturalness of population and the possible artificiality of the means one adopts to manage it” (Foucault 2007, 73). Thus delineated is a conception antithetical to the ethical-legal one of government and the exercise of sovereignty: if the sovereign is he who says ‘no’ to an individual’s desire, in the ethical-political thought of the physiocrats the problem becomes how to say ‘yes’ to desire. The matrix of utilitarian philosophy does not reside in the curbing of lust or self-love, but on the contrary in encouraging this self-love and desire so as to produce benefits for all. On observing and quantifying the phenomena tied to the population and its desire, in fact one discovers regularity: “the 127

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population is a set of elements in which we can note constants and regularities even in accidents, in which we can identify the universal of desire regularly producing the benefit of all, and with regard to which we can identify a number of modifiable variables on which it depends” (Foucault 2007, 74). The population is entirely different from a collection of subjects diversified by statute, location, goods, positions, and offices. Instead it is a set of elements which are rooted in the general regime of living beings, on the one hand, and furnish terrain for carefully calculated changes dictated by the authorities, on the other. But the “dimension in which population is immersed amongst the other living beings appears and is sanctioned when, for the first time, men are no longer called ‘mankind (le genre humaine)’ and begin to be called ‘the human species (l’espèce humaine)’. With the emergence of mankind as a species, whithin a field of the definition of all living species, we can say that man appears in the first form of his integration within biology” (Foucault 2007, 75). 5. THE INVISIBLE HAND In a course on the Birth of Biopolitics devoted to the analysis of liberal governmentality, Foucault emphasised the epochal importance of the theory of the subject proposed by English empiricism. In particular he referred to John Locke and David Hume, to whom he traced the notion of interest as a principle of individual choice, irreducible and atomistic, unconditionally tied to the subject. The distinction between the “subject of interest” and the “subject by law” further clarifies the distinction between the subject of sovereignty and the subject of biopolitics. While at a certain level the subject of law agrees to relinquish himself, to split, and to be the holder of a certain number of natural and immediate rights, and on another level that subject accepts the principle of abdicating them, instead the “subject of interest” displays a “selfish and immediately multiplying” dynamic devoid of transcendence in which the will of each individual spontaneously, almost unintentionally, coincides with the will and the interest of others. Foucault treats the distinction between market and contract in the same frame of reference. Whereas the “principle of law” balanced raison d’état with a principle of extrinsic regulation, liberal governmentality is based on a model of intrinsic self-regulation. Thus the economic question is addressed

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in the field of government practice and in the function of real effects, not of what can be established by law. It is founded on factual verification of such effects: the government’s sole criterion will be the success of particular practices, rather than their legitimacy. Utilitarian philosophy reduces the relationship between means and ends, between costs and benefits, to analysis and calculus, thereby establishing a close correlation between a utilitarian finality and an organizational and calculative rationality. Therefore the object of economic analysis is “all end-directed behaviours that involve, broadly speaking, a strategic choice of means, of ways, and instruments: in short, the object of economic analysis will be every form of rational behaviour” (Foucault 2004b, 272-273). Since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the exercise of power has not been regulated by wisdom, but by ‘calculus’, meaning calculation of the forces, relations, assets, and factors of power, “which amounts to saying that the government will not be regulated according to the truth, but on the basis of rationality” (Foucault 2004b, 316). Homo œconomicus is situated in an indefinite field of immanence which, on the one hand, ties him, through dependence, to a whole series of accidents, and, on the other, connects him, through production, to the profit of others. The convergence of interests is thus doubled and covers the indefinite diversity of accidents: “a sort of bizarre mechanism whereby homo œconomicus is made to work as the subject of individual interest within a totality that escapes him but which, nevertheless, founds the rationality of his selfish choices” (Foucault 2004b, 282). On the basis of the transient nature of the harmonic relationship between the parts (individuals) and the nontotalizable multitude (the market), Foucault interprets Adam Smith’s famous sentence in the Wealth of Nations on the subject of interest “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention” (Smith 1976, 456). Smith’s idea of the ‘invisible hand’ is unrelated to a providential, theological logic; on the contrary, it asserts the absence or impossibility of an economic sovereign, and at the same time discredits the political sovereign. Economic rationality is founded upon the unknowability of the process as a whole, and the economic world is inherently opaque and not totalizable yet susceptible to organization. According to Foucault, economics is an “atheist” and “Godless” discipline “without totality”. It demonstrates not only the uselessness, but also the impossibility, of a sovereign point of view, i.e. one concerning the totality of the state that must be governed. 129

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If the “bizarre mechanism” that organizes unconscious individual interests in non-totalizable harmony can be viewed more as a mechanism than as a form of immanent self-organization, then the theory of homo œconomicus as “entrepreneur of himself” radicalizes the individual’s autopoietic mechanism. According to Gary Becker’s theory of human capital, homo œconomicus constitutes his own capital. He is the producer of himself and the source of his income, and the consumer is a producer in that he produces his own satisfaction. Foucault stresses that human capital, formed as it is of innate and acquired properties, becomes the principal object of intervention by neo-liberal governmentality. Through genetic investments (in innate capital) or educational ones (in acquirable capital), it is possible to intervene through human capital in the entire economic sphere—given that technological innovation, too, is only a product of human capital. With neo-liberalism, the economic form of the market is extended to the entire social order, and the market becomes the ‘grid of intelligibility’ of every form of behaviour, even non-economic behaviour like the mother-child relationship, which is interpreted in terms of investment, capital cost, profit from invested capital, economic and psychological profit (the greater the time, care, affect and attention devoted by the mother to the child, the greater the latter’s future wage will be). The self, susceptible to enterprise and modification by the individual, seems to stand free at the centre of its own organization. In reality biopower is rooted in the core of the subjectivation process, by now the crux of biopolitical intervention. This explains what induced Foucault to concentrate his inquiry on the constitution of subjectivity in his late writing, declaring “it is not power, but the subject, which is the general theme of my research” (Foucault 1982, 209). 6. SELF-FINALIZATION OF THE SELF-TO-SELF RELATIONSHIP Thus far it has been stressed that biopolitics does not act on single individuals but on the species. However, Foucault identifies a surface of tangency between anatomopolitics and biopolitics: sexuality, the prime locus of expression for the ‘subject of desire’ Through its effects of procreation, sexuality is inscribed in broad biological processes that do not concern the body of the individual, but rather the manifold unity constituted by the po-

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pulation: sexuality is situated precisely at the point where body and population intersect. In order to understand how modern individuals have been able to experience themselves as the subjects of ‘sexuality’, Foucault undertakes a genealogy of the “subject of desire”. His interrogation of the relationship between subjectivation and desire (knowledge-power-pleasure) investigates the indissoluble connection between subjectivity and power and seeks to determine whether forms of uncompelled subjectivation are possible. The genealogy of the subject of desire starts from the difference between “modern sexual science” and Greco-Roman ars erotica. For the Greek and Romans, morality was not regulated by a code of prescriptions but was instead a “self-practice” performed with the objective of giving form to one’s life, turning it into the matter of stylization, acting on the effect of pleasures without reference to distinctions of lawfulness. Instead, modern knowledge, in keeping with Christianity (which has unified the structures of desire into a single form of causality, the flesh, subjecting it to moral codification and the pastoral direction of souls) has turned sex into a biological object, subject to a series of moral prescriptions. “The arts of existence” consisted in “reasoned and voluntary practices” through which men established canons of behaviour, seeking to change themselves in their individual existence so that their lives expressed certain aesthetic values responding to particular criteria of style. These “existential arts” or “self-techniques” progressively lost their importance and autonomy as Christianity integrated them into the exercise of pastoral power and, later, into educational, medical or psychological practices. By discussing ancient ethics, Foucault certainly does not intend to restore a model pertaining to another historical age. On the contrary, his intention is to highlight the fact that in the course of history it has been possible to conceive subjectivity differently from today and thus “free thought from what it thinks silently and let it think in a different way” (Foucault 1984, 14). In fact there is a strong historical symmetry between the contemporary situation and the Hellenist world: if the Greeks were concerned to establish a type of ethics that was an “aesthetics of existence”, today there is also a need for a non-prescriptive ethics neither founded upon universal laws nor tied to general theoretical programmes, nor conceived in terms of an external finalism, whether historical, religious or evolutionist. This is 131

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not a matter of going back in time to ancient Greece. Nevertheless, if we compare that type of ethical experience which involved a very close connection between pleasure and desire with our “experience now, where everybody—the philosopher and the psychoanalyst—explains that what is important is desire, and pleasure is nothing at all, we can wonder whether this disconnection wasn’t a historical event, one which was not at all necessary, not linked to human nature, or to any anthropological necessity” (Foucault 1987, 347). To the desire which perhaps represents another form of transcendence, of tension toward a goal external to the self, Foucault contrasts bodies, actions and pleasures. The importance of looking to Greek ethics resides entirely in a form of ethics that concerned itself, not with the authenticity of the self, the obsessive search for the true self, the secret self to be confessed, but with a self-creativity: “we have to create ourselves as a work of art” (Foucault 1987, 351). The historical symmetry between our age and antiquity is even more apparent if we consider the form of self-care that developed in neoclassical culture at the apogee of the imperial golden age: unlike Platonic culture, this no longer had the self as its object and the city as its end. Rather, the self “as the object one cares for, the thing one should be concerned about, and also, crucially, as the end one has in view when one cares for the self [...] the reflexive form structures not only the relationship to the object—caring about the self as object—but also the relationship to the objective and the end”, and hence a real “self-finalization of the relationship to the self” (Foucault 2005, 84). It seems impossible not to think again of the Nietzschean notion of will to power, of will as an end in itself but one able to organize itself and to constitute itself on the basis of the dominion of the “lesser forces”. The transcription to the ethical-aesthetic plane of the notion of the organism’s self-regulation is expressed in an aphorism in the Gay Science: “to give style’ to one’s character—a great and rare art. It is practised by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye” (Nietzsche 2001a, 167).

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REFERENCES Agamben, G. (2000), Means Without End. Notes on Politics, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Agamben, G. (1998), Homo sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Arendt, H. (1958), The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brown, W. (2006), Sovereignty and The Return of the Repressed, available at www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/kadish/workshop_ 2006/brown.pdf. Butler, J. (2006), Precarious Life. The Power of Mourning and Violence, New York: Verso. Esposito, R. (2004), Bios. Biopolitica e filosofia, Torino: Einaudi. Foucault, M. (1977), ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in D. F. Bouchard (ed.), Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 139-164. Foucault, M. (1979), The History of Sexuality, vol. I (R. Hurley transl.), London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1982), ‘The Subject and Power’ in H. L. Dreyfus, P. Rabinow (eds.), Michel Foucault. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Brighton: Harvester Press, 208-229. Foucault, M. (1984), Histoire de la Sexualité, vol. II: l’Usage des plaisirs, Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (1987), The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Foucault, M. (1998), ‘Return to History’ (R. Hurley transl.), in M. Focault, Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology, New York: New Press, 393-418. Foucault, M. (2001a), Order of Things. An Archeology of the Human Sciences (A. M. Sheridan transl.), London & New York: Routledge. Foucault, M., (2001b) Dits et écrits (1954-1988) (D. Defert, F. Ewald eds.), vol. II, Paris: Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2002), The Archeology of Knowledge (A. M. Sheridan transl.), LondonNew York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (2003a), The Birth of the Clinic (A. M. Sheridan transl.), London-New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (2003b), ‘Society must be defended’. Lectures at the College de France, 1975-1976 (D. Macey transl.), New York: Picador. Foucault, M. (2004a), ‘The Crisis of Medicine or the Crisis of Antimedicine?’ (E. C. Knowlton, W. J. King, C. O’Farrell transl.), Foucault Studies, 1: 5-19. Foucault, M. (2004b), Naissance de la biopolitique. Cours au Collège de France (1978-79), Paris, Gallimard. Foucault, M. (2005), The Hermeneutics of the Subject. Lectures at the Collège de France (G. Burchell transl.), New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Foucault, M. (2007), Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the College de France 1977-78 (G. Burchell transl.), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Han, B. (1998), L’ontologie manquée de Michel Foucault, Grenoble: Millon. Hobbes, T. (1966 [1651]), De cive, in T. Hobbes, Opera philosophica, vol. II, Aalen: Scientia. Hobbes, T. (1839 [1660]), The English Works, vol. III: Leviathan, London: John Bohn. Negri T., Hardt, M. (2000), Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1972), Nietzsche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, vol. VII/3, Berlin: De Gruyter. Nietzsche, F. (2001a [1882]), The Gay Science (J. Nauckhoff, A. Del Caro transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2001b [1886]), Beyond Good and Evil (J. Norman transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (2007 [1873]), The Dawn of Day (J. M. Kennedy transl.), New York: Dover. Smith, A. (1976 [1776]), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. I, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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Being-for. Purposes and Functions in Artefacts and Living Beings. Luca Illetterati 1. INTRODUCTION

I

n everyday discourse, we talk about purposes and functions in quite different contexts: for instance, we refer to the functions of social institutions as well as to those of artefacts and of biological entities. The problem to be discussed here is whether such notions as purpose and function can be conceived independently of the domains and regional ontologies to which they are applied. Or whether the different scopes within which such notions perform an explicative role (sometimes, an identifying task with respect to certain objects) entail different ways of thinking about the beingfor they express. We can claim of a pen, for instance, that its function is to make writing possible; that a local police officer’s function is to keep urban traffic under control; and that the heart’s function is to pump blood, thus producing sufficient pressure to allow for the circulation of the blood. The question is: Are we referring to a unique notion of function in the three aforementioned situations, since in each case the being-for of these different entities is at issue? or: does the specificity of the fields and of the ontological regions to which we are referring entail a difference in our understanding of the aim or function of these different objects, and therefore, of the being-for pertaining to each of them? 2. THE QUESTION IN THE CURRENT PHILOSOPHICAL DEBATE ON FUNCTIONS Most of those who debate functions nowadays seem to agree that the notion of function is a univocal one, applicable to different areas, albeit via quite different approaches. According to this position, the logical structure of function does not depend on its spheres of application. On the one hand, it is quite obvious that, when we talk of such artefacts as the pen, of such social roles as that of the local police officer, or of such biological entities as the heart, we are speaking of different objects. On the other hand, these

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objects would share a common functional characterization, with respect to which (and obviously, only from this viewpoint) they appear as entities possessing the same modality of being: the pen, the local police officer, and the heart, are recognized as such because they are all identified as being a being-for in the first place, and this is something determined with respect to the purpose of its action, or the function it performs. In this sense, taking an aetiological approach to the issue of function— one that aims to provide a causal explanation of function as a past effect selected by the historical, evolutionary process—L. Wright proposes a unitary definition of function, holding both for natural beings and for artefacts (Wright 1973). According to Wright, this does not mean that there are no differences between a natural being and an artefact; rather his proposed notion of function is not affected by the features of the different classes of entities to which it is ascribed. Within this approach, the definition R.G. Millikan gives of proper function is that in order for an object A to have a function F as its proper function, it is necessary that: (1) A be originated as a reproduction (a copy, or a copy of a copy, etc.) of preceding items which, partly because of their possessing the properties which are transmitted, have performed function F in the past; and (2) A exists because (a historical and causal ‘because’) such items have performed F (Millikan 1984, 1989). Such a definition refers indistinctively to social and biological entities as well as to artefacts. The same can be observed of the dispositional perspective à la Cummins, an approach typically contrasted with the aetiological one. For this model to ascribe a function to something is to ascribe a capacity to it which is singled out by its role in an analysis of some capacity of the system which contains that thing. The aetiological approach aims to explain the presence of the function on the basis of the causal history of the item to which it is ascribed. In this case, on the contrary, the focus is on the effects of the functionally characterized item on the overall action of the system (Cummins 1975). Within Cummins’ treatment functional ascription always takes place with respect to a system with no further characterization. Despite Cummins’ radical departure from the aetiological approach, his treatment also dismisses, somehow a priori, the artefactual, social or biological constitution of the relevant system. One may even claim that Cummins’ model appears to be less problematic than the one Wright and Millikan propose, where reference to the selective history spells trouble—intuitively at least—in the artefact case. 136

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D. Dennett’s notion that function (whether of an artefact, or of an organism) entails a ‘design stance’ is, at least for the aspects discussed here, even more radical. This concept involves the idea that functionally characterized objects have been conceived and planned. Evidently, such a reference to design does not necessarily involve intentionality, for according to Dennett, in the case of natural beings we are facing an unintentional design tracable to the evolutionary forces of nature (Dennett 1996). Interestingly, apart from the fact that in the case of artefacts the agent operates purposefully whereas natural design is unintentional, the explanation underpinning this understanding of both the way of being of artefacts, and the natural way of being, seem to be the same. A. Plantinga’s approach does not distinguish the notion of function according to the different domains to which it is applied, but also, in some sense, it bases its argumentative force precisely on linking the characteristic functions of artefacts to those of natural beings. According to Plantinga, the existence of functions in nature is proof of the existence of an intelligent designer: since only a designer could justify the presence of such functions, for the artefact case shows that these are products or consequences of intentions, therefore of a designer’s projects. Just as a functionally characterized artefact corresponds to a design plan, so too are organisms and their parts the products of specific design, insofar as they are functionally characterized. Therefore it is possible to attribute proper functions to natural beings, only if they perform such functions by conforming to how they have been planned by the designer (Plantinga 1993). Plantinga’s position may be simplified as follows: 1. 2. 3.

If one grants that actually there are proper functions of natural beings then, proper functions exist only as the products of intentional activity—therefore, of a designer, it is necessary to admit, as for the functions of an artefact, some form of intelligence behind natural functions, to account for their existence.

Now, most positions within the current debate on functions follow a naturalistic stance by trying to account for functions and the teleological features they entail without referring to an intentional model necessarily leading to such a position as the one advocated by Plantinga. However, the notion of function at issue in the different naturalistic explanations—be it the 137

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aetiological position of Wright, Millikan or K. Neander, or Dennett’s design stance and P. Kitcher’s design theory for functions (also see Kitcher 1993)—is indifferently applied to both the domain of artefacts and biological entities in all cases.1 1

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For a classification of the positions within the contemporary debate on teleology and functions performed by dividing them into extra-naturalistic, naturalistic and quasi-naturalistic categories, see Perlman 2004. He subdivides the so-called nonnaturalistic position into two versions or subclasses: the metaphysical nonnaturalism and the religious non-naturalism. In the first case—which originates from a platonic model—everything aims at perfection: a transcendent idea with respect to that thing, and the model of the thing itself. In the second case, the existence of a purpose in nature is not assumed as something requiring explanation; rather as a sort of datum which should lead to the admission of a supreme being as the origin of purposes and functions in nature. In opposition to these nonnaturalistic conceptions (undoubtedly a minority, and disregarded by some), Perlman shows how most contemporary theories are characterized by a naturalistic approach. This kind of approach is determinable by the attempt to explain the employment of such notions as purpose and function with no appeal to principles transcending nature. However, within this kind of approach we find very different positions. In particular, it is possible to distinguish: 1) a reductionist tendency, holding that it is possible to translate teleological speech into nonteleological speech without losing any information produced in the former; 2) a radicalization of the reductive naturalism Perlman calls eliminativism, which considers teleology not only as being reducible to any mechanisms, but as simply an illusion; 3) a non-reductionist tendency which tries to save the possibility of teleological speech by claiming that it will be never completely translatable into a non-teleological speech involving reference to neither transcendent metaphysical principles, nor alternative models of causality. Between non-naturalistic and naturalistic positions Perlman inserts an approach he calls quasi-Naturalistic, which he identifies with the Aristotelian theory of biological functions and with the so-called emergentist positions. According to this approach, even if functions are somehow reducible to the physical properties of an object, this does not mean, as reductionists claim, that functions are not real but ‘emergent’ properties supervening the relations between the physical properties of the object. Actually, calling these positions ‘quasi-naturalistic’ appears to be a means of underlining the ambiguity that could be their main feature. Perhaps one had better not consider these positions as naturalistic at all, but in a strong antireductionist sense; i.e., as positions which try to conceptualize functions as real properties without considering them as physical properties, and without making reference to a transcendent entity to justify their presence as real. For other attempts to provide taxonomies in the modern debate on functions see Wouters 2005.

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3. A COMMON PRESUPPOSITION OF THE DIFFERENT POSITIONS? Now, such reliance on a unique notion of function for both the artefactual and natural case is apparently based on the precise assumption that: functions are the products of an activity which is extrinsic with respect to the object to which it is ascribed. In other words, functions refer to something external to the functionally characterized entity—be it the activity of an intentional agent, or selective history, or the unintentional design of the evolutionary forces of nature. To put it another way, both the aetiological and the design stance explanation attribute to history, and to the design produced by selective processes, the same role given to intention in the explanation of purposeful actions. Lacking such an antecedent element, any discourse on purposes and functions faces the classical problems of backward causation, with something coming later (the goal) causing something coming earlier (the functionally characterized object). 4. THE PREDOMINANCE OF THE ARTEFACT MODEL It is well known that reference to intention, taken as the causal element in the form of the mental anticipation of the goal, apparently solves the problems in attributing purposes, for instance, to artefacts. Therefore it may be claimed that what allows us to say that the ontological status of the pen is linked to its function is the fact that if we identify a pen as such via its function, then the pen is taken to have been produced in order to achieve a certain goal; we find in the pen an intention (preceding the object) which is not in the object as such, but has its place in the designer and producer of the object, and in those who recognize in it the designer’s intention. Also in the case of natural entities, there are three ways to avoid backward causation problems: first, one may think of them as related to a designer capable of accounting for their functional characterization. Otherwise, if one wants to avoid such a line, one may find an antecedent element to causally explain the functional characterization of the entity. Finally, one may discard the problem by bringing functional ascription back to the mere analysis performed by a subject on a certain system. The aforementioned naturalistic explanations of function attempt to conceive natural being without admitting an intentional agent external to nature as the causal factor capable of accounting for the function itself. The 139

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mandatory antecedent is radically different, in that it transcends neither the naturalistic element, the past history of an entity, nor the design determined by the selective processes. However, it has the same causal role of intention in the explanation of the function of artefacts or goal-oriented actions. In this sense, one may claim that naturalistic explanations of functions share a feature with supernaturalistic ones, concerning the fundamental structure of the notion of function: the idea that organic functions can be explained the same way as artefactual ones: by resorting to an external causal factor. Both the aforementioned naturalistic readings, and Plantinga’s ‘nonnaturalistic’ position (due to its strong theological and metaphysical commitment) share what has been called an artefact model of nature (Lewens 2004, 2) which takes nature to be the product of either an intentionally oriented designer, or something acting as a designer, albeit unintentionally. Despite the claims of Plantinga (and those philosophers and theologians who exploit the teleological argument for the existence of God as an explanation of world regularities), the artefact model of nature can be taken as a mere methodological attitude—therefore, as a heuristic strategy. This way, one could avoid the classical charges of anthropomorphism advanced, for instance, by Spinoza and Hume, against such a way of understanding nature. The assumption of the artefactual model—that is, of the explanatory structure underlying the hermeneutics of artefacts—as the methodological model of natural inquiry, however, is not neutral with respect to the way of being of nature itself, unless we believe that such a model merely illuminates a construction of the interpreting subject, with no link to the actuality of what is interpreted. Therefore, either we think that assuming the hermeneutics of artefacts as the paradigmatic way to understand nature somehow reflects the way of being of nature itself (which nevertheless entails that nature is actually taken as resulting from a productive or constructive process analogous to the one underlying the production of a technical item); or, if we want to avoid reaching such a conclusion, we have to admit that the results conveyed by the assumption of such a model are nothing but mere subjective constructions, having nothing to do with the way of being of the reality one is investigating. Consequently one of the implicit difficulties in indistinctly assuming a unique notion of function both for artefacts and for biological entities, emerges at this level: if, on the one hand, the being-for of artefacts appears 140

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to be reducible to an intentional element constituting their causal features, on the other hand, the being-for of biological entities is explained by finding in them either an intention (which has to be a transcendent intelligence’s, so that the argument is moved to a level which entails a peculiar theological and metaphysical commitment), or something that should act as an intention, without being intention. 5. IN DEFENCE OF A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN NATURAL TELEOLOGY AND THE TELEOLOGY OF ARTEFACTS The characteristic being-for of artefacts, contrary to mainstream theories, is based upon a structure which is irreducible to that underlying the being-for of the organs of living beings. Our primary conviction is that only by clarifying such a difference can one avoid the assimilation of the way of being of living beings to that of artefacts (as happens when artefacts are thought of as peculiar, as Plantinga’s divine artefacts are for example), and also the consequences of a framework within which living beings are viewed metaphorically as if they were artefacts, in order to escape from the radical consequences of a strongly theological and metaphysical commitment, despite the awareness that they cannot be such in the same sense as those whose origin is recognized in intentions. In order to conceptualize the difference between the artefactual notion of function and one appropriate for the way of being of living beings, we shall rely on the distinction between internal and external purposiveness Kant proposes in the Critique of the Power of Judgement. This recovery will clarify some inherent tensions within the Kantian transcendental framework, and these tensions will assume paradigmatic value with respect to the issue of thinking about the functions and purposes of artefacts and living beings differently. As we shall try to show, on the one hand the Kantian distinction between internal and external purposiveness allows for the adoption of two different models of functional attribution with respect to artefacts and living beings; on the other hand, the purely regulative value Kant assigns to purposiveness with respect to the inquiry into the natural world seems to be justified on the basis of a teleological model related to artefacts as the unique and real model within which purposiveness reveals

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some proper features of the mode of being of the functionally characterized object.2 In this sense, we will try to establish the feasibility of overcoming the transcendental perspective’s tendency to assign a merely regulative role to natural purposiveness, in order to begin to recognize the constitutive role of purposiveness in nature, without having to justify it via supernatural entities. 6. ORGAN AND INSTRUMENT Let us return to the artefact model of nature or, more precisely, to the fact that when we talk of organisms, and of organic parts from the viewpoint of the whole they constitute, avoiding what Lewens calls the phenomenon of artefact talk in biology seems impossible. In many respects the idea of an artefact model of nature, or of an artefact model in the consideration of the living world, seems to be entrenched in ordinary language. Actually when we talk of living beings, we take them to be organisms, that is, organized structures unifying a multiplicity of organs or instruments whose task consists in performing determinate functions. In the Critique of the Power of Judgement, Kant explains the concept of organ by reference to that of instrument. Since for Kant an organism is an organized and self-organizing being, where “each part is conceived as it exists only through all the others” and “for the sake of the others and on account of the whole”. Therefore each part of an organism must be considered as an instrument (Werkzeug) “that produces the other parts (consequently each produces the others reciprocally)” [Critique of the Power of Judgment (hereafter: CPJ) 373-374 (245)].3 2

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Within our discourse, which aims to distinguish the artefactual way of being from that of biological entities, we shall not take into account such artefacts as artworks since their ontological status is not reducible to a general ontology of artefacts; on the contrary, it should be taken—again, following Kant—as lying on the boundary between the ontology of artefacts and that of living beings. Citations from the Critique of the Power of Judgment (‘CPJ’) will be located by page number as in volume V of the so-called Akademie edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlichen Preussischen [now Deutschen] Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-). Citations from the so-called ‘First Introduction’ to the Critique of the Power of Judgment (‘FI’)

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According to Kant, an organ is a highly peculiar tool. Unlike the instruments mentioned within the artefactual approach, organs do not refer to something external as the source of their subsisting: they are organs, precisely because they produce themselves and the other parts that also perform an instrumental function within the living organism—and here ‘organism’ cannot mean anything of organs. Kant underlines this peculiarity when he claims that the self-productive capacity of the organism’s organ “cannot be the case in any instrument of art” [CPJ, 373-374 (245)]. This claim is extremely significant within the general Kantian strategy. If one affirms that an organism is nothing but a bunch of instruments, Kant’s aim to identify the features that distinguish the way of being of organisms from that of mechanisms, and make it irreducible to the way of being of artefacts would be obscured. However (and this is one of the many tensions characterizing the Kantian point of view), the very notion of the organ explained as an instrument, like the characterization of natural beings as ‘products of nature’, seem to point (even beyond Kant’s intentions) to the sphere of man’s produce or technical products, the world of artefacta, that is, precisely to the domain Kant invokes by distinction to living organisms. Therefore when we try to grasp the notion of organism in its constitutive elements, it refers us to words, concepts, and to a categorical apparatus, all of which seem to obtain their meaning from the typical conceptualization of the world of artefacts. Consequently this seems to produce the phenomenon of artefact talk in biology, which in turn appears to presuppose an implicit (if not unconscious) assumption of an explanatory model entailing reference to intentions, or to something like intentions.4 In fact,

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will be located by volume (XX) and page number from the Akademie edition. Citation from Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences (MFNS) will be located by volume (IV) and page number from the Akademie edition. The translations are taken from Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews’ edition of the Critique of the Power of Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and the Gary Hatfield, Michael Friedman, Henry Allison and Peter Heath edition (Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). The pagination of translated editions will be bracketed. The idea of an unconscious metaphysics underlying the development of natural sciences is also Kantian. In Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences Kant makes the well-known claim that each natural science necessarily entails a metaphysics of nature. Now, whereas natural science is the inquiry into an object of

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instruments are something useful for; their general ontological determination consists in their being something for. Precisely because they obtain their meaning from their being something for and therefore from their being useful in order to, instruments appear to share the status of technical products: something made (thought, designed or built) for something else. Products are objects deriving from a process of production, that is, not only from a building process, but also from a level determining (a design) since what the product is made for is prior to the cause and is its reason for being or existence. Products are produced for, designed and built in order to. 7. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ORGAN AND INSTRUMENT Taking organs to be instruments seems to lead us to derive a series of consequences from the concept of organ, ones which are apparently difficult to preserve, and this in turn leads us to the artefactual perspective. For this reason we should consider whether we are positively allowed to say that the organs of an organism are not instruments, and in what sense the beingfor underlying the structure of instruments as technical products can be distinguished from the being-for of the organs of an organism. A possible strategy for distinguishing these two forms of being-for is to identify what the being-for of the organ is directed to, and the aims of the being-for of the instrument.5

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experience within nature, the metaphysics of nature has to do with the notion of nature in general—that is, with the conditions and presuppositions by means of which natural sciences are capable of studying nature itself as something given. Natural science usually rejects the idea that its inquiry may have metaphysical by-products; but according to Kant this does not mean that it can dispense with metaphysics. Rather, it means that science exploits metaphysics unconsciously: “all natural philosophers, […], made use of metaphysical principles (albeit unconsciously), even if they they themselves solemnly guarded against all claims of metaphysics upon their science” [MFNS, 472 (187)]. In this section, we shall follow Martin Heidegger, who took up the issue in a course entitled The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, given in 1929-30. It is devoted largely to the attempt to unfold the fundamental ontological differences between the organic, inorganic, and human, via analysis of the different ways in which these three modes of being relate to the world. Hence it follows the discussion of the three famous Heideggerian theses:

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The first feature to emerge from such a comparison is that: although the being-for of the organ and the instrument are both translatable into an activity oriented towards some entity, it is the kind of relation towards such an entity that makes the difference. If, on the one hand, the instrument appears to be self-subsistent, not being a part of what makes use of it, on the other hand, the organ of the organism seems to be incapable of selfsubsistence, being tied to the organism of which it is a part. Unlike instruments, organs are always included in the subject to which their being-for is directed, so much so that beyond such relations the organ is no longer itself. That a given organ can be transplanted from one organism to another is irrelevant with respect to the connotation of organs as things which, unlike instruments, are what they are only by virtue of being included in what uses them. Even in transplants, it is the incorporation itself that makes a transplanted object an organ. An organ is what it is only insofar as it remains within the organic structure; outside of the organized structure the object, which finds its characterization in the specific being-for affecting it, is no longer an organ, because it lacks the being-for which individuates it as a particular organ. 8. CAPACITY AND BEING READY-MADE Heidegger attempts to positively characterize the difference between the aims of the being-for of the organ and that of the instrument, by using two words that underline, both the impossibility of an organ subsisting outside of the structure constituting its own condition of possibility, and, the possibility of the instrument subsisting independently of its support. Accordingly, whereas the being-for of instruments is made explicit in what can be defined as their Fertigkeit—their being ready-made for something—the being-for of organs entails a Fähigkeit, or a capacity which does not belong in the organ as such, but in the system within which the organ is embedded (Heidegger 2001). Heidegger’s terminological distinction is worth consideration, for it appears to express the different ontological structure of entities characterized by Fertigkeit (that is, instruments as artefactual products), with respect to a) the stone is worldless; b) the animal is poor in world; and c) man is worldforming.

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those characterized by Fähigkeit (that is, the organs of an organism: entities whose existence depends on their being included in that system of connections—an organism—which itself exists only because of the organs constituting it). According to Heidegger, the term Fertigkeit points to the instrument’s being ready-made for some function—a function that, in order to be activated, requires an external subject actually turning it on, so to speak. By using such a term, Fertigkeit, and by playing with its connection to the adjective fertig—indicating in German the ready-made nature of something in the sense of its being finite, completed and concluded— Heidegger underscores the ontological status of artefactual instruments. They are precisely products: things whose being depends on a plan, a process of construction in which some project is executed, a project that has pre-determined the object’s function. Such a function will only become concretely active however, when the building plan of the object and the process of its production have come to an end, and therefore it must be concluded (fertig sein) in order to be at someone’s disposal. In this sense, the being-for of the instrument is always subject-oriented, and the subject to which it is oriented is structurally distinct from the instrument itself. On the contrary, the being-for of an organ is directed towards the system itself, its circular structure is at once the product of the reciprocal action of the organs, and the condition of possibility of its being as organs. 9. ORGANS AND INSTRUMENTS AS PARTS OF A SYSTEM Therefore organs and instruments relate differently to what their being-for is directed at. Organs make their being-for explicit only with respect to an environment, which is also the condition of possibility of their being organs, of their being those determinate being(s)-for. At the same time, the environment itself (the organism), being the condition of possibility of the explication of the organ’s action, has in organs and in their mutual connections the condition of possibility of its own existence, so much so that it is possible to claim that organs are constitutive of the system in which they act. Lacking the activity of some of its organs, the system itself undergoes changes that can be decisive with respect to its survival. There is no such relationship in the connection between an instrument and those who use it. There the instrument is, only insofar as someone uses 146

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it (a microphone actually is a microphone only insofar as someone uses it for the function for which it was built); however, there is no apparent relationship of reciprocal entailment between an instrument and those who use it concerning the respective existences (their enduring being). Thus, whereas an organ has a constitutive function with respect to the subsistence of the system in which it is embedded, and the system itself is a condition of possibility of the organ, the same thing cannot be claimed of the relation between instruments and those who use them. In this sense, the being-for underlying the way of being of organs, and the being-for underlying the way of being of instruments, reflect different ontological structures for these kinds of entities. They are both functionally characterized, but in such a shape that the former’s way of being cannot be superimposed upon the latter’s. 10. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PURPOSIVENESS Kant separates the being-for of an organ, which depends on a reciprocal relation with the subject to which its being-for is directed (so that its beingfor has a constitutive role with respect to the possibility of the existence of that subject), from the being-for of the instrument, which derives from an external subject, towards which it plays no constitutive role, via the distinction between a) internal and b) relative or external purposiveness. Kant opens the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgement with a well-known distinction between these two ways of understanding purposiveness, which he discusses in relation to nature: external and internal purposiveness or, a relative purposiveness of nature and “an internal purposiveness of the natural being”. Relative purposiveness takes place when an entity or a natural event appears to be oriented towards something else’s utility.6 This is external purposiveness, since the possibility of a goal refers to something else, distinct and external with respect to the being to which the purpose is ascribed.7 In 6

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More precisely, according to Kant, relative purposiveness can be called usefulness (Nutzbarkeit) when referred to human beings, and advantageousness (Zutraeglichkeit) when referred to any other creature. “By external purposiveness I mean that in which one thing in nature serves another as the means to an end” [CPJ, 425 (293)].

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Kantian terms, purposiveness in this case, is “contingent in the thing itself to which it is ascribed” (here Kant refers to natural beings, for example, a vegetable providing sustenance to an animal is therefore a target with respect to the subsistence of the animal) [CPJ, 368 (240)]. For Kant, such purposiveness (the external kind) cannot perform an explanatory role to aid the scientific consideration of the natural world. On the contrary, its clarification allows Kant to part from the anthropocentric teleology criticized by Spinoza or Hume, or from cosmic teleology, making the kind of progression towards perfection Ernst Mayr describes (Mayr 1982).8 Internal purposiveness, to which Kant attributes an explicative capacity in our consideration of nature, takes place when a single thing is simultaneously “cause and effect of itself” [CPJ, 370 (243)]; when, that is, an object’s goal is linked to the nature of the object: what it aims at is nothing separated from it, but the realization of what it is. In this case, something’s being a goal does not depend on anything else (that is, not on another separate, independent entity); it is connected to the thing’s way of being. According to Kant, a natural product exists as a natural end (als Naturzweck), only “if it is cause and effect of itself”; the products of nature that manifest this characteristic, and can therefore be considered as natural ends, are living beings. According to Kant, a living being can be both cause and effect of itself in at least three senses: (a) first, with respect to the species, in the sense that an organism, by producing another, “continuously preserves itself, as species” [CPJ, 371 (243)]: it is, therefore, both a cause and an effect of the survival of the species; (b) second, with respect to the individual, in the sense of growth (Wachstum), that “is to be taken in such a way that it is entirely dis8

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It is clear, then, that this distinction is absolutely fundamental for Kant: it is the sole means by which the Kantian retrieval of purposiveness apparently escapes the general critique of teleology underlying the birth of modern science. The discourse on natural purposes is taken to be the by-product of an anthropomorphic view of the world, so that the latter is interpreted just as men interpret their products. This criticism strikes at the teleological consideration of nature based upon external purposiveness.

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tinct from any other increase in magnitude in accordance with mechanical law [Größenzunahme nach mechanischen Gesetzen]”; instead it is a form of generative production or generation (Zeugung) necessary to the development of all organisms (being thus cause of itself) “by means of material which, as far as its composition is concerned, is its own product” [CPJ, 371 (243)] and therefore, an effect of itself;9 (c) third, in the sense that the preservation (Erhaltung) of each part “is reciprocally dependent on the preservation of the others” [CPJ, 371 (243)], so that the parts are essential to the whole, and the whole is essential to the parts: for instance, Kant says that leaves “are certainly products of the tree” (therefore, its effects), “yet they preserve it in turn” [CPJ, 372 (244)] and are therefore causes.10 Such features—the ways in which organisms’s being manifests both cause and effect of themselves—determine the characteristic way of being of living things and, consequently, are also the aspects which distinguish the ontological structure of natural beings from that of mechanical products as conduits for skill. In fact, a machine—taken as the paradigmatic technically and artificially structured and organized product—cannot produce another machine via the self-organization of its matter, just as it cannot, by itself, replace its own parts or modify its arrangement spontaneously. More importantly: whereas a machine can be the instrument for the movement of other like 9

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“For although as far as the components that it receives from nature outside of itself are concerned, it must be regarded as only an educt, nevertheless in the separation and new composition of this raw material there is to be found an originality of the capacity for separation and formation [Scheidungs- und Bildungsvermögen] in this sort of natural being that remains infinitely remote from all art [Kunst] when it attempts to reconstitute such a product of the vegetable kingdom from the elements that it obtains by its decomposition or from the material that nature provides for its nourishment” [CPJ, 371 (243)]. This is a very interesting point within Kant’s argument: the capacity of being both cause and effect of itself in the last sense is at the basis of the extraordinary capacity (owned only by living beings, and distinguishing them even from the most complex artefacts) of fixing possible deficiencies via a transformation of the functions of single parts in order to preserve the whole organism. This capacity can lead to the development of completely novel forms of life, and also to quite odd creatures: see CPJ, 372 (244).

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machines, but never the efficient cause of their production, each part of an organism has to be thought of “as an organ that produces the other parts”, so that each part produces the others reciprocally [CPJ, 374 (245)]. In other words, whereas in a mechanism “one part is certainly present for the sake of the other but not because of it” [CPJ, 374 (246)], in an organism “as an organized and self-organized being”, each part can be considered “only through all the others” and “for the sake of the others and on account of the whole” [CPJ, 373-374 (245)]. The parts of organisms are what they are only in their relationships with other parts within the whole and, at the same time, the whole is what it is only in its connection with the parts. 11. THE (UNKNOWABLE) PRINCIPLE OF THE SELFORGANIZATION According to Kant, organized products of nature, such as living organisms, resist mechanical explanations, not because such explanations cannot clarify how parts and organs work, but because they cannot account for the specific connection between the parts and the whole characterizing natural beings. Mechanical explanations, despite being—as we shall soon see—the only explanations Kant holds as deserving to be called scientific cannot account for what appears essential and typical in the way of being of natural entities: the principle of organization. On the contrary, since the selforganization of living beings—that ‘formative power’ owned only by products organized by nature—is for Kant an ‘inscrutable property’ [CPJ, 375 (246)], such a structure not only allows, but requires a finalistic principle from our cognitive faculties. This justifies those interpretations which resort to finalism when they interpret this not as Kant’s attempt to provide an autonomous scientific foundation to the science of living being, but evidence of his attitude of “epistemological ‘deflation’” with respect to ‘biomedical’ sciences (Zammito, 2006). We should be aware that such a principle—the concept of a thing as in itself a natural end—should not be considered as a constitutive notion of determining judgment: it is only “a regulative concept for the reflecting power of judgement”. In other words it is a concept employed “for guiding research into objects of this kind” [CPJ 375 8247)], without aiming to make the intimate constitution of such objects explicit.

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12. ORGANISMS AND ARTEFACTS In the Critic of the Power of Judgment, Kant uses the difference between internal and external purposiveness to sho both the pointlessness scientific accounts of nature, of teleological principles based upon external purposiveness (as they occur within the various forms of anthropocentric and cosmic teleology), and, the possibility of resorting to a teleology based upon intrinsic purposiveness in the consideration of organized products of nature, albeit mainly with a regulative and heuristic function. Kant also posits a difference between natural and technical products on the grounds of how they can be seen as organized structures. Whereas the structure of natural beings is self-organized and self-organizing, the organizing principle of artefacts is always external to the products themselves. Similarly, whereas the living product of nature is characterized by a self-realizing activity (which is why we are allowed to talk of internal purposiveness), artefacts always point at something external, by finding their target (which identifies them as what they are) in something different from themselves; thus they are characterized by an external purposiveness. Such a fundamental difference between the organized products of nature, characterized by self-absorbed processes and activities aiming at their own self-subsistence, and technical products whose goal lies outside of them, can be made evident via the notion of metabolism, for instance (Jonas 1966). If metabolic process shows only the dependence of an entity on a source of energy which allows it to endure through time (thus not marking a difference between living beings and artefacts), metabolism within organisms is not limited to this: it consists in an interdependence between the exploitation of energies and their preservation, between the growth, the development, and the conservation of the living body. Such interdependence distinguishes organisms from artefacts, and more specifically, biological from (so-called) artificial life (Boden 1999). Metabolism allows an organism to feed itself by taking the required energy from external sources, and consists in the continuous process of restoration of matter within the organism itself. In order to endure as a living being, any living being, independent of its size and its degree of complexity, must demolish and rebuild its constitutive ‘materials’ via metabolic activities of assimilation, transformation and elimination. In other words, the way of being of living entities entails their continuous transformation in a self-directed process in which organisms act on 151

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themselves—and towards the environment—with the aim of enduring as processes, or being what they already are. Therefore the metabolism of living beings is not the same as the activity of capturing energy performed by a machine. Fuel does make a machine work but metabolism isn’t just this. Through metabolism, organisms show themselves more as a system which is perpetually the result of the very same process it institutes within itself as well as with its surroundings. A living being is the product of a process by which organisms ‘build’ themselves, not only by feeding their constitutive parts, but also renewing and substituting them by and for themselves. 13. THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE ANALOGIES BETWEEN MACHINES AND LIVING BEINGS The distinction Kant proposes between internal and external purposiveness, ostensibly confounds a superposition between natural and artificial products. The being-for of artefacts is always related to an external, independent entity, and this displays a logic of the being-for which cannot be identified with the one to whom the being-for is directed, as a matter of fact, towards the being-for itself. For this reason, Kant stresses all the difficulties of comparing living beings and the way of being of artefacts (even analogically), as follows: One says far too little about nature and its capacity in organized products if one calls this an analogue of art [Analogon der Kunst] [CPJ, 374 (246)].11

According to Kant, when we compare the way of being of the organized products of nature with arts and techniques, we have already transformed living beings from self-organizing products into entities related to a designer, a rational being separated from these products, and provided them 11

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In the initial paragraphs of the Introduction, Kant distinguishes the principle of natural purposiveness from that of practical purposiveness, be it the properly technical one (‘of human art’, as he claims), or the one related to human action (moral). However, in the very same context he acknowledges that even though the principle of natural purposiveness cannot be taken as identical to practical and technical purposiveness, natural purposiveness is “certainly conceived of in terms of an analogy of that” [CPJ, 181 (68)].

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with their characteristic internal structure. To think of the organized products of nature as analogous to artefacts would mean to overlook their specific ontological status, that is, what makes them distinct as self-organizing beings which are both cause and effect of themselves, and consequently contain their own end. We may approach an understanding of this self-structuring, selfproducing capacity of natural beings (which remains largely unknowable) by calling it, as Kant does, an analogue of life (Analogon des Lebens). Probing the consequences of the possible analogy, Kant adds that: one must either endow matter as mere matter with a property (hylozoism) that contradicts its essence, or else associate with it an alien principle standing in communion [in Gemeischaft] with it (a soul) [CPJ, 374-375 (246)].

Both ways lead to a dead end: in the first case, we presuppose what we aim to explain, that is, organized matter (and this is the contradiction immanent in any form of vitalism); in the second case, we take the soul to be the artist (Künstlerin) of such a construction, thereby subtracting it from nature. Strictly speaking (genau zu reden), Kant claims, “the organization of nature is therefore not analogous with any causality that we know” [CPJ, 375 (246)]. The analogy with art can work insofar as we refer to the ‘aesthetical’ consideration of nature, for the beauty of nature is ascribed to objects “only in relation to reflection on their outer intuition”; but the inner natural perfection (innere Naturvollkommenheit) characterizing what Kant calls natural ends, which are the organized beings of nature, cannot be reduced to any known analogy [CPJ, 375 (247)]. 14. THE REGULATIVE FUNCTION OF THE NOTION OF PURPOSIVENESS IN NATURE Kant considers the principle of internal finalism essential to understanding the way of being of living beings, yet not constitutive of living beings themselves. It is a regulative principle governing our inquiry, that is, guiding and orienting our approach to living beings. Although this principle allows us to speak of living beings’ functions and purposes, it does not allow us to ascribe functions and purposes to them, as constitutive of their way of being. This is a basic point: the claim, that the self-producing structure of living beings—if thoroughly conceptualized—is irreducible to any kind of 153

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causality known to us, forces Kant to take the notion of natural purpose as merely regulative, never constitutive. For Kant, the teleological principle has a regulative and heuristic value linked to the reflexive judgment, never a constitutive value linked to the determining judgment. However, this holds for the application of the notion of purpose to the natural world. In some contexts, the notion of purpose does have a determining, therefore constitutive, value, with respect to knowledge of an object. When we want to understand the cause of the construction of an object, we cannot but consider purposiveness. Moreover, in the case of technical products, purposiveness assumes a decisive value. Only by beginning from the purposes of the designer can one fully understand the features of her product [FI, 251 (50)]. Technical products arise from a project, therefore, from a subject’s intention, and are realized via a process of construction which brings to completion the subject’s intention and project. In this sense, such intention—the purpose the product has for the subject—assumes a constitutive value for the product itself. Nevertheless, the fact that purposiveness can have a constitutive value with respect to the object to which it is ascribed depends on the fact that such purposiveness (an external one) is somehow explicable according to one-directional efficient causality. Purposiveness can have a constitutive value for artefacts, because of its being explicable according to efficient causality via the recognition of the designer’s intention. For Kant, to attribute a constitutive role to purposiveness in nature, necessarily leads to the idea of a designer. Such purposiveness derives meaning from the designer, and nature is explained by resorting to something external to it: in other words, by recourse to a principle which appears to be transcendent with respect to nature. According to Kant, then, the impossibility of conceving purposiveness without reference to intention provides further justification for the impossibility of attributing any constitutive value whatsoever to natural purposiveness, and thereby for the necessity of taking it only as a maxim of the reflexive judgment with no constitutive value with respect to living nature. This is an aspect on which the Critic of the Power of Judgment never deflects (Chiereghin 1990). To paraphrase, Kant’s point is that despite the fact that organized products of nature exhibit ends and purposes (Kant sometimes claims that the purpose is evident in these products), we can never grasp the intention 154

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that makes them develop according to that purpose, unless we assume an architectonic intellect as given, and if we do so we lose ourselves in the transcendent. Whereas technical products always presuppose the intentionality of a subject constructing and executing the project, purposiveness within nature appears spontaneous, that is lacking the fundamental intentionality necessary in order to assign a constitutive role to purposiveness within technical causation. Despite the fact that purposes do seem to emerge in nature, according to Kant there is no way to prove that such purposes are also intentions. If no intention is identified, then we cannot properly talk of purposes. 15. SOME PROBLEMS ARISING THE KANTIAN POSITION In this sense, Kant’s position appears to be radically and problematically ambiguous. On the one hand, he seems to view the way of being of living things as irreducible to that of artefacts: this depends on both the distinction between internal and external purposiveness, and the idea that organized products of nature are characterized by an internal purposiveness making them inaccessible with respect to a mechanical explicative pattern based on efficient causality. On the other hand, Kant only allows a regulative and heuristic reading of the principle of internal purposiveness; therefore, only external purposiveness has real explicative significance with respect to the way of being of the object. Such a purposiveness is explicable through a linear causal pattern which allows us to speak without problems (without falling into the contradiction of the backward causation) of final causes with respect to the way of being of the artefatcs. Kant’s grounding assumption is that final causality only operates within technical and productive activity. This seems to sustain the impossibility of attributing a constitutive value to the principle of purposiveness in nature. The point is made via the claim that such attribution would somehow entail the admission of an architect, or a producer, as the only way to make sense of the constitutive value of purposiveness. Kant aims to sharply distinguish between the way of being of the organized products of nature, and that of artefacts. However, this effort flies in the face of the fact that, if the fundamental ontological structure of organized products of nature is given by the notion of purpose, such a concept 155

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seems to be only comprehensible within the framework of technical behaviour, and therefore, by reference to artefacts. It is very likely that the notion of purposiveness in nature is variously intermingled, in Kant, with that of technique in nature. Kant allows the notion of technique in nature to surface at various points: generally speaking, we may claim that this concept points to the teleological procedure of nature—its proceeding according to purposes, so that, for instance, “we would call the procedure (the causality) of nature a technique, on account of the similarity to end that we find in its products” [CPJ, 390 (262)]. Therefore the technical expression of nature encourages a process “where objects of nature are sometimes merely judged as if their possibility were grounded in art” [FI, 200 (7)]. Natural beings can be described as if their possibility were based upon art, and therefore technique. This allows Kant to introduce an interesting distinction—also important for theories developed in the Twentieth Century—between natural products taken as aggregates, and natural products taken as systems, as Kant calls them. The process by which aggregates are formed is purely mechanical, and therefore, it is understandable by means of the nexus effectivus. By contrast, systems embody processes that cannot be explained in a purely mechanical fashion: with regard to its products as aggregates, nature proceeds mechanically, as mere nature; but with regard to its products as systems, e.g. crystal formations, various shapes of flowers, or the inner structure of plants and animals, it proceeds technically, i.e., as at the same time an art [FI, 217 (20)].12

This generates the following problems:

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The subsequently developed theory to which we refer is the so-called theory of systems. It has been built up from its beginnings within biological sciences, especially in the work of L. von Bertalanffy, despite aiming in its successive developments at a sort of integration between the methods of natural and social sciences. Now, it is true that one can define a system as a different scientific paradigm geared to describe the laws of a ‘totality’ in opposition to classical science machinery and to one-directional causality (Bertallanfy 1968). However, it is difficult to avoid seeing a Kantian slant in such definitions, not necessarily entailing adherence to the whole Kantian framework.

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(a) On the one hand, Kantian reflection on the way of being of living beings seems to aim to demonstrate the impossibility of understanding life through an explicative framework based upon a mechanical kind of causation, the impossibility, therefore, of conceiving the whole of nature via a mechanical approach (at least with respect to our cognitive capacities), as one can understand the way of being of a mechanical device. (b) On the other hand, insofar as Kant conceptualizes the functioning of nature within its organized products as a technique in nature, he seems to think of it in terms of production: the operational mode in which something like a machine, or a technical product, is intelligible—something to which living beings cannot be reduced.13 16. BEYOND KANT Assuming the concept of purposiveness as an epistemic principle with an essentially regulative value with respect to the inquiry of natural science, therefore denying it any ontological import, the Kantian position is inherently connected to the supposition, uncritically assumed by Kant himself, that the notion of purpose is inseparable from that of intention. Apart from this assumption (apart, that is, from the connection between purpose and intention), the Kantian description of organized beings of nature, as beings in which each part is reciprocally an instrument and an end, describes the way of being of those natural beings that are organized as systems whose parts obtain their identity only within causal interconnections. In this framework, what plays the cause also plays the (an) effect: the system’s being structured in parts actually is both cause and effect of itself, to use Kantian terminology outside of the regulative meaning he is forced to assign it within the presupposed inseparability of purpose and intention.

13

The expression ‘technique of nature’ plays a fundamental role in FI; its role is drastically reduced in the Introduction Kant published. This might indicate Kant’s awareness of the problems faced by the corresponding concept, however, the expression remains in the published version and the the plane to which it refers is also manifestly preserved.

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According to Kant, a real causal connection is made of an alwaysdescending chain of causes and effects, so that an effect can never be a cause of its own cause. Actually, Kant admits that there is a causal pattern which, on first assessment, escapes this model, and which entails “both an ascending and a descending dependency”, in which, that is, what is referred to as an effect deserves, by ‘ascending’, to be called a cause of its effect. This is the causal pattern that can be found in practical and productive contexts: specifically, within technical and productive actions, where the effect or purpose, produces (that is, causes) the action of what in turn constitutes the cause of that effect. If I build a chair in order to sit on it, what I reach at the end of the construction process is the possibility of sitting down, but this is also the cause of the process producing it, that is, of its own cause. This is not a problem because what comes later, the effect, is mentally predicted by the intention of the designer, thereby overcoming the various troubles of backward causation. In relation to natural beings, Kant claims that there is no question of presupposing a mental prediction of the purposes, unless we transcend our cognitive limits. Since this cannot be achieved, the ascription of purposes can only be a way for the subject to think of the object, but not something constitutive of the object itself. Far from showing the ineffectiveness of a constitutive usage of the notion of purpose, this shows how Kant thinks of the purposiveness of natural beings by assuming model the kind of purposiveness which is typical of artefacts and technical products as the basic. Paradoxically he concludes that we cannot know the way of being of organized natural beings, which are irreducible to the way of being of artefacts, precisely because they are not artefacts. Suppose, on the contrary, that natural purposiveness is not considered following the kind of purposiveness which belongs to artefacts: then that pattern of organization which involves a both descending and ascending causal series may be taken as typical of all those systems whose constitutive parts can provide some feedback to themselves and to the whole of which they are parts, in such a way that the relations among the parts within the system, and between the parts and the whole, facilitate talk of that system as both cause and effect of itself (McLaughlin 2001). In fact we can claim that organ A is self-produced when its activity is related backwards to its own subsistence, that is, when the specific activity of that organ is a condition of possibility of the subsistence of an organ B, whose 158

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activity in turn is a condition of possibility for A. Thus A is not just a cause of B as it can subsist only via the action of B. In addition, a formally identical causal structure can be found in artefacts: productive activity K is not simply the cause of purpose P, for K is itself activated by the presence of P. However, the machinery upon which such a structure is based differs substantially in the two cases. If, as noted above, the causal structure of artefacts is based upon the mental forecast of the goal—which brings it back to the simple structure of descending causality—then the machinery underlying organic structure is a mechanism comprising back-and-forth actions which make it irreducible to simple linear causation. This feedback mechanism distinguishes the being-for of artefacts, which are always destined to be something different from themselves, and the being-for of organisms, which are self-contained: the organs that make them exist perform their function in such a way as their performance feeds back into their future performance in the same system (see Toepfer in this volume). In this sense, if one can assume that what Kant calls external purposiveness is the structure capable of explaining the proper function of artefacts, since in this case it always depends on the intention of the agent or the user, then what Kant calls internal purposiveness can be seen as the structure capable of explaining the functionality of organs within an organism (therefore, the way of being of organisms, as distinct from the ontology of artefacts). However, internal purposiveness reveals this structure only when it is taken as radically distinct from external purposiveness, that is, as the being-for of a system whose organs act backwards on their own activity, thereby allowing other organs to subsist with the whole of which the organs are parts. 17. CONCLUSIONS The above analysis exposes the difficulties and consequences faced by the assumption that the being-for underlying the way of being of artefacts is the same as the being-for of such natural beings as the organs of an organism. Specifically, the way of being of artefacts necessarily entails an external, autonomous subject giving sense to the artefact’s being goal-directed; it cannot be conflated with the way of being of natural beings, since onto159

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logically speaking the latter is constitutively different from any product having its organizational principle outside itself. In this sense, it is possible to say that there is a radical difference between the functions and purposes of an artefact and those of a living being (or of parts of a living being). The proposed Kantian distinction between internal and external pruposiveness allows us to determine this difference: external purposiveness can be taken as the structure accounting for the being-for of artefacts, and yet, internal purposiveness should be assumed to be the structure capable of explaining that organized natural systems (living beings) in which the relationship between the parts within the whole, and between the parts and the whole, is a circular inter-dependence in which all parts—in Kantian terms—are simultaneously means and goals with respect to the other parts and the whole. Finally, it has been shown how the assumption of internal purposiveness as a structure accounting for the systematic organization of living beings requires us to move beyond Kant’s transcendental framework. Kant’s framework ties the notion of purpose to that of a designer’s intention (which allows for a constitutive role of the notion of purpose with respect to the object to which the purpose is ascribed), and thereby reduces internal purposiveness to a mere metaphor (Wouters 2005). Although they are taken as radically different from artefacts, living beings are nevertheless considered as if they were artefacts or technical products. This makes the specific way of being of living beings (which is what makes them irreducible to artefacts) unintelligible. The thesis that internal purposiveness has to be considered as a specific feature of living beings entails the assumption that it is impossible to think it on the ground of the model of purposiveness which is typical of artefacts and technical products. In other words, such an assumption implies the necessity of thinking a model of purposiveness without reference to intentions or something like intentions. Although thinking of living beings as circular systems, with reciprocally inter-dependent parts and parts depending on the whole, requires the overcoming of the linear causal model underlying technical and productive procedures, it implies neither vitalism (which on the contrary can be considered as a reduction of internal to external purposiveness, so that there must be some principle originating the organization of living beings), nor assumed alternative causal models. The circular inter-dependence charac160

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terizing such systems does not imply the impossibility of a linear reading of causal connections, only an expansion of the concept of cause: such connections should be considered within the unitary system as having different directions, depending on whether we want to explain a given process within the system, or the relationship between such a process and the totality of the processes constituting the system.

REFERENCES Bertallanfy, L.v. (1968), General Systems Theory. Foundations, Development Applications, New York, NY: Braziller. Boden, M.A. (1999), ‘Is Metabolism Necessary’, British Journal of the Philosophy of Science, 50: 231-248. Chiereghin, F. (1990), ‘Finalità e idea della vita: La recezione hegeliana della teleologia di Kant’, Verifiche, 19: 127-229. Dennett, D.C. (1996), Kinds of Minds, New York: Harper Collins Publishers. Cummins, R. (1975), ‘Functional analysis’, The Journal of Philosophy, 72: 741-765. Heidegger, M. (2001), The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, (W. McNeill, N.Walzer transl.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Jonas, H. (1966), The Phenomenon of Life, New York: Harper & Row. Kant, I. (2002) ‘Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science’ in I. Kant, Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 171-270. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer, E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]*), ‘First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment’ in I. Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 3-51. Kitcher, P. (1983), ‘Function and design’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 37: 379-397. Lewens, T. (2004), Organisms and Artefacts. Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Cambridge (MA)-London: MIT Press. Mayr, E. (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought. Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. McLaughlin, P. (2001), What Functions Explain, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Millikan, R.G. (1984), Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Millikan, R.G. (1989), ‘In defense of proper functions’, Philosophy of Science, 56: 288-302. Neander, K. (1991), ‘Functions as selected effects: the conceptual analyst’s defence’, Philosophy of Science, 58: 168-184. Perlman, M. (2004), ‘The modern philosophical resurrection of teleology’, The Monist, 87: 3-51.

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Plantinga, A. (1993), Warrant and Proper Function, New York-Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, L. (1973), ‘Functions’, The Philosophical Review, 82: 139-168. Toepfer, G. (2004), Zweckbegriff und Organismus. Über die teleologische Beurteilung biologischer Systeme, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Zammito, J.H. (2006), ‘Teleology then and now: the question of Kant’s relevance for contemporary controversies over function in biology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 37: 748-770.

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Teleology in Natural Organized Systems and in Artefacts. Interdependence of Processes versus External Design Georg Toepfer 1. INTRODUCTION

T

eleology has many faces. Traditionally, there is a close connection between teleological reasoning and intentionality of actions: aims and purposes are understood as the mental states of acting individuals. Since its introduction in 1728 by Christian Wolff however, the concept of teleology has always had its place in the philosophy of nature as well. In this paper, I propose a methodological understanding of teleology that grounds biology as a special natural science. I demonstrate the close connection between teleological reasoning and conceptualizing organized systems or organisms. The role of teleology discussed here will specify organisms as a particular class of causal networks, namely systems of interdependent causal processes. Thus, teleological reasoning will be presented as an integral part of natural science, as a legitimate approach for the description and analysis of natural systems. I will defend a notion of teleology that is conceptually independent of intentionality or purposeful behaviour. Teleology in this sense does not necessarily involve the mental anticipation of future events. Following this line of reasoning, natural teleology is distinguished from mental intentionality. As the functionality of an artefact is closely connected to the intention of its designer or user, I will also argue for a clear conceptual separation between organic teleology and that of artefacts. While one is internal, the other is external to the object. In conclusion, there cannot be a single theoretical model for the explication of organic functions and the functions of artefacts.

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2. INTERDEPENDENCE, CYCLICITY, AND TELEOLOGY The main thesis, I defend, is that teleology, i.e. conceptualizing objects or processes by focussing on their effects or ends, plays a fundamental role in the constitution of organic systems in nature and for biology as the autonomous science of these objects. Teleology conceptualizes organic entities as structured systems consisting of mutually dependent parts that form a causally unified entity through their interaction. The main goal of teleological reasoning is the identification and description of such systems. Fig. 1. A simple diagram for the representation of a system In its most straightforward form the pattern of interdependent processes of a system of interdependent parts is a simple causal cycle of processes, as shown in figure 1.1 The arrows and dots in this diagram represent a cycle of causally interrelated and interdependent processes. In a system of this kind it is possible to say that the parts and processes mutually depend on each other. They stand in mutual relations of cause and effect; together they constitute a causal unity and a whole system through their interaction. In a system thus described the effect of every component feeds back on its own activity, i.e. some of the causes and effects of each component are part of the system. None of the parts can be described as purely a cause or effect. There is a long tradition of defining organisms as such systems. The Dutch physician Hermann Boerhaave’s short but infrequently cited definition of 1727 follows: “Erat corpus Organicum ex diversis planè partibus compositum [...] & sic harum partium actiones ab invicem dependent” (Boerhaave 1727, 3 [Prooemium]). According to Boerhaave, an organized body is composed of several parts and it forms a unity in which the activi1

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I call these systems cyclical systems rather than circular systems because I want to refer to systems as causal processes rather than geometrical figures, but many authors use circular also in the causal sense, for example: “circular organization is the living organization” (Maturana 1970, 5); for the use in ecology see e.g. Hutchinson 1948.

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ties of the parts mutually depend upon each other. The central formulation, “ab invicem dependent”, reappears in many later definitions including that given in Kant’s influential Critique of Power of Judgement (1790/93, 374). Kant probably knew Boerhaave’s works, because some of Boerhaave’s students were teaching in Königsberg during Kant’s time (Löw 1980, 87). Elaborating on Boerhaave’s definition of an organized body, Kant draws a close connection between teleology in natural science and the analysis of systems of interdependent parts. Following Kant, teleology plays a central role in biology because biology’s basic objects are systems of interdependent components. This connection between teleology and interdependence can be clarified as follows: teleological reasoning schematizes causal processes by starting from the end state of each process. The end state, outcome or effect, of a process represents the focus of teleological thinking. This focus on effects is particularly relevant in systems of interdependent parts because in these systems the end of one process is important for the performance of the other processes. Also the end state of one process initiates the next process. And this next process then leads to an outcome that permits a third process to start. In systems of interdependent processes this causal cascade follows a cyclical path, such that the outcome of each process finally feeds back to the initiation of that same process. Of course, this talk of feedback presupposes a conception of processes not as tokens, i.e. as singular events in space and time, but as types, i.e. as events of a special class. As tokens the processes are unique in space and time and can be connected in a series only; they cannot form a causal cycle at all. This means that to speak of cycles of processes presupposes an ontological conception of processes as types. For example, the process of pumping blood by the heart feeds back on itself because this pumping also supports other organs in a body by providing them with nutrients; and as the other organs in turn protect or maintain the activity of the heart a cyclical structure is involved. Thus the outcome of cardiac activity can be said to feed back on itself. And, it is the beating as a type of activity that is maintained in this feedback loop, rather than any special beating event. There are many examples of organic activities that feed back on their own performance. They are all part of sequences of organic activities that 165

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together form a causal cycle. One very simple example is the sequence of taking up food (ingestion), processing food (digestion), dispersing nutrients (circulation) and searching for new food (locomotion). These four basic organic processes support each other in such a way that the outcome of each, facilitates the next process: the intake of food allows its digestion; the digestion of the food produces nutrients that can be dispersed in the body by a circulatory system; this circulation supplies the motor organs that generate movements of the system which in turn allow a new intake of food; and the cycle starts again. As this simple cycle of activities shows, teleological reasoning, i.e. systematic focus on outcomes, can be justified in the analysis of causal process cycles because the outcome of any process in these cycles is just that aspect of the process that is most relevant for the other processes and for the system as a whole. In this case—as in many others in biology—the processes are even named according to their end state: food intake is the process of successfully ingesting matter; digestion is its processing; circulation its dispersion; and food search is directed towards the new intake of matter. Following this reasoning, the teleological conceptualization of each process depends on the integration of the process into the cyclical causal system, because only the cyclicity justifies the focus on the outcomes of the processes, i.e. describing the processes by beginning with the end state towards which the processes lead. The close conceptual connection between cyclicity and teleological reasoning poses one problem: in modern science the use of teleological language is restricted to the description of parts of biological systems, i.e. parts of organisms (and ecosystems), but organisms (and ecosystems) are not the only entities that form cyclical causal systems. Many other physical and chemical systems beyond biology also exhibit this causal pattern. Therefore the question is why teleological reasoning doesnot play a role in the description of these extra-biological systems of interdependent parts?

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3.

CYCLICAL CAUSAL SYSTEMS AND THEIR TYPES

In general the structure of cyclical causal systems can be characterized as follows: A cyclical causal system is a complex of bodies, states or processes ordered in such a pattern that the effect of one component is necessary for the activity of the other components, and in turn the other components are necessary for the activity of the first. In these systems there is a feedback of one component on its own activity via the other components. To illustrate this concept of cyclical causal system, I will present four different types of such systems in order of their increasing complexity. The simplest systems in this series are oscillating chemical reactions that cause macroscopic patterns like the periodic change of colour in a solution. One of the best known reactions of this kind is the BeloussovZhabotinsky-Reaction. 3.1. CHEMICAL SELF-ORGANIZATION: THE BELOUSOV-ZHABOTINSKY-REACTION The chemical mechanism of the reaction is well known. In this context the important point is that the Cerium atoms, representing an essential component in the reaction, pass through a cyclical transformation of their valency. The principle mechanism of the cycle consists in a mutual catalysis: the atoms of cerium in one state are catalysts for the reaction that produces atoms in the other state. This cyclical transformation can be seen in a periodic change of colour in the solution. This cyclical transformation can be called a mutual production of entities in which the system in its entirety represents a pattern of selforganization, and this is actually the established terminology in chemistry: these entities are called chemical systems of self-organization (Kuhnert, Niedersen 1987). In thermodynamics these chemical reactions are described in more detail as open systems far from equilibrium, similar to living organisms.

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Fig. 2. Cyclical transformation of atoms in the BelousovZhabotinsky-Reaction (Zhabotinsky 1964, 330)

3.2 NETWORK OF CATALYTIC REACTIONS A different and more complex type of cyclical causal system consists in autocatalytic networks, i.e. networks of reactions that produce new substances. These networks can be called autopoietic because their activity results in the production of those entities that make up the network. A chemical model of these systems was developed by Stuart Kauffman (1995; 2000) as follows:

Fig. 3. A network of catalytic reactions (Kauffman 2000, 46)

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In this network of catalytic reactions the continuous lines represent the steps of synthesis, and the broken lines the influence of catalysts for every step of synthesis. The network is more or less closed in the sense that every reactand is simultaneously a catalyst and product of a reaction. Expressed in another way, every reactand is both the means and end of a reaction. 3.3 THE “CHEMOTON” The “chemoton” is a model for an organization with three subsystems: a metabolic one, a membrane forming one, and one responsible for the reproduction of the whole system. The three fundamental biological functions of metabolism, of wrapping or enveloping the organized system and of reproduction are represented in this model system. The model consists in cycles of transformations of chemical compounds. They are described as three self-producing systems coupled together stochiometrically (in fig. 4: the metabolic cycle A→2A, the template polycondensation process (replication) pVn→2pVn, and the membrane formation Tm→2Tm). So, here again causal cyclicity forms an essential element of the system.

Fig. 4. The “chemoton”, a model for an organism (Gánti 2000, 4; first described by Gánti in 1971)

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3.4 AN ORGANISM AS BIOCHEMICAL NETWORK Finally, chemical cycles play a central role in the metabolism of real organisms. The ordered and cyclical transformation of chemical compounds in an organism results in a functional unity, that is a unity consisting of the mutual influences of substances and processes. A fraction of these processes is illustrated in figure 5.

Fig. 5. Schema of central reactions in the metabolism of eukaryotic cells (Alberts et. al. 1983, 83)

Surveying these four kinds of cyclical causal systems, one is forced to ask how it is possible to distinguish between them in a manner that justifies functional talk in the case of one system and not another. All four systems include elements of mutuality, in the form of an interaction or mutual production of parts. With this feature in mind, all four could be called organisms or, in Kant’s terms, natural purposes. Every part 170

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of these systems was produced under the influence of other parts and acts simultaneously as a causal component in the production of these other parts. On this basis, functional language is applied to describe the systems involved in any of the four cases, although this is not scientific practice. Teleological or functional talk is closely connected to biology only. Only in biology does functional language provide a regular basis for the individuation of entities. In biology, parts or processes are frequently named according to their effect, or the role they play in a system. This epistemic functionalism is fundamental because biology—in contrast to physics or chemistry—exclusively deals with systems of mutually dependent parts. In some cases, physics and chemistry also deal with systems of this kind, like the Belousov-Zhabotinsky-Reaction, but these are exceptions. Thus, biology is distinguished from physics and chemistry by its methodological basis with respect to teleology. Within the sciences, functionalism, especially the functional identification of parts in a system, is a methodological approach specific to biology. In concluding this section, it seems that there is a real continuity between chemical or physical systems and biological ones. This continuity is not represented in an epistemic continuity, because normally we make a discrete distinction between chemical and biological systems. This conceptual break can be reconstructed by pointing to functionalistic conceptualization in biology. Obviously, conceptualizing parts of a system by reference to their effects is adequate and fruitful to a greater or lesser degree. On the one hand, it is always possible to describe an organism as a mixture of chemical reactions, and on the other hand, it is also possible to describe some chemical reactions as organized and self-organized systems that include some recurrent processes leading towards ends that could be conceptualized as functions. Therefore, to some extent, it is an epistemic decision to look at a system in one way or the other. 4. FUNCTIONALISM AS THE FUNDAMENTAL METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH OF BIOLOGY The biological determination of an entity includes its integration into a system of interdependent components or its identification with such a system.

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In contrast to physicists and chemists biologists always deal with systems of this kind. The integration assigns a causal role to a part that defines its identity conditions. In many cases, the individuation of a part is based on its causal role or function in a system. Therefore functionalism is deeply rooted in the descriptive language of biology. This individuation of parts by their integration into a system does not take place in the case of the cyclical systems described in chemistry. The components in these systems are determined by their chemical structure alone. The atoms of Cerium in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky-Reaction for example are completely characterized by their chemical structure. Chemically, they are individuated by their configuration. They are determined by intrinsic properties. Beyond that, they are not identified on the basis of relational properties in reference to other parts, i.e. as organs of the system. Although this would be possible and legitimate, since the parts are elements of a cyclical causal system. This means that in chemistry functional language does not play the same role it has in biology. Chemistry does not deal systematically—or essentially—with systems of interdependent parts. In chemistry, it does not make sense to name a part or a process with reference to its causal role because this role is not constant. The atoms of Cerium in the BelousovZhabotinsky-Reaction for example do not always perform the role of catalyzing reactions that lead to their transformation. By contrast, as a biological entity, a heart always plays the role of pumping the blood because it is identified by just this role. The same applies to the complex chemical substances of a living system, e.g. haemoglobin. In so far as these chemical compounds are not just chemical but biological entities, their role in the body represents a part of their identity conditions. For that reason, functional individuation is fundamental for biological entities. It is fundamental in so far as most biological objects do not even exist as definite entities apart from the functional perspective. This is most obvious for behavioural categories: feeding behaviour, protective behaviour or parental care are categories that identify processes by the functions they serve (McLaughlin 2001, 227). The activities involved in the behaviour of getting food for example can be diverse and include many different mechanisms, i.e. without having a common (intrinsic) physical property

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that unites them as a single class. This unification to a consistent conceptual class takes place with respect to the function they serve. The same is true for many organs. For example, the heart is defined with regard to its physiological role, and this is independent of any morphological or genealogical reference. Therefore, it should be maintained that dysfunctional hearts cannot exist. An object that does not function as a heart is not actually a heart. Unfortunately this functional identification of entities is not true for every organ. Biological language is not consistent here. Many entities in biology are not functionally individuated, for example the liver. By contrast to the ‘heart’, the ‘liver’ is basically not a physiological concept, but an anatomical one. The liver has a particular form and situation in the body, but multiple functions. From a purely functionalistic point of view, it would be appropriate to reason that the liver is not a biological object, but a physical or at most morphological one, because it is identified as a structural and not a functional entity. Typically, the functions attributed to parts and processes in biology are restricted to a certain hierarchical system of functions. In a simple diagram the highest functions can be represented in the form of a closed network (cf. Fig. 6).

Fig. 6. A simple diagram for the closed network of biological functions

The functions of development, individual conservation (or “self-preservation”) and reproduction take a central position in this chart. Following Aristotle (HA 589a4-9), these three, especially the latter two, are regarded as central functional points of reference towards which all other biological functions are directed. It seems to be important for functionalism in biology that functions can be ordered in a hierarchical system with only very few functions at the top, 173

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and these being always the same. Together, they form a closed system of uppermost functions. The limits of biology could even be specified by this restriction: any process that could not be explained by reference to these functions is situated methodologically outside biology. Following this line of reasoning, behaviour that is not systematically directed towards selfreproduction, like some human actions for example, cannot be judged as biological. Evidently this approach to biological teleology is related to Robert Cummins’ (1975) causal role approach. According to Cummins, functions are essentially component elements of a system; they are roles played by the parts of the system. The account proposed here is also accords with Cummins’ critique of an evolutionary based function-account: functions or purposes can be attributed in a system without entailing evolutionary or genealogical analyses. Nevertheless unlike Cummins, I understand functions as not having a definite place in any complex system that can be decomposed in subsystems but only in those systems that I call cyclical causal systems, i.e. systems consisting of processes that have an outcome that feeds back on their own execution. Therefore, I think that it is possible to say that a function bearer is present in a system because it performs its function. Here my understanding of functions corresponds with that of Larry Wright (1973). But my interpretation of Wright’s account does not support an evolutionary-selectionistic understanding of function (Neander 1991), rather I support its analysis as an intra-organismic feedback (McLaughlin 2001): a function bearer is present in a system because its performance feeds back on its future performance in this same system. 5. ORGANIC FUNCTIONS AND FUNCTIONS OF ARTEFACTS Obviously, this understanding of organic teleology disconnects the biological use of the term from its application in the analysis of artefacts. Whereas in biology, teleology is fundamentally a relation of interdependent processes as components of a system, the teleology of artefacts can be entirely external to the object. Causal circularity and operational closure in the former can be contrasted with unilateral dependence and directionality in use value in the latter.

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In the first case teleological reasoning is connected to the existence of a pattern of causal processes, in the sense I have explicated above. In the second case—the functions of artefacts—the teleological aspect is not necessarily part of the causal structure of the entity. Artefacts can be functional objects without any internal causal dynamics. To give a very simple example: a stick made into a weapon for defence is in itself a purely static, inactive object. Of course, the stick could be treated analogously with organs as a product of an organism that feeds back on the organic purposes of the organism, like self-preservation or reproduction. Interpreted as a means for defence this understanding seems obvious. It appears that most artefacts made by animals are a kind of extrasomatic organ. This is most obvious in the case of webs made by spiders: these artefacts are synthesized from molecular precursors in the body of the spider; with respect to their matter, therefore, they are part of the metabolism of spiders. In addition, it is clear that functionally they feed back on the biological goals of spiders: they are a means of getting food and thus of producing more nets. They contribute to their own reproduction, which means they are integrated into a causal cycle of production. In other words, they form part of the extended phenotype of the organism. On the basis of this integration into a causal cycle, biological or organic artefacts are conceptually distinct from human artefacts, or more generally, intentional artefacts. Intentional artefacts need not be organs. It is not a necessary identity condition of an intentional artefact that it feeds back on its maker. Basically ‘artefact’ is an etiological concept, in which a certain type of history, a design history, is specified. By contrast to an organ, an artefact need not be integrated into a system as a component. An artefact could be defined simply as an intentionally formed object; so, to speak of artefacts presupposes intentionality, or mental systems that can plan actions. What an artefact is is sufficiently determined by the way it was produced. Artefacts need not be used or applied at all. Furthermore, if they are used, their design function, i.e. the function for which they were made, can differ considerably from their use function. As intentionally-made objects, artefacts do not necessarily feed back on their maker, and therefore they are not necessarily directed towards biological functions. But, the human production of artefacts can be explained 175

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teleologically according to the intentionality and mental anticipation of future states that guide the designer’s action. So, teleology of artefacts depends on teleology of action. In contrast to organic teleology, this form of teleology must be characterized by a description of processes on two levels: that of mental events, for example the intention to make a stick, and of manipulative actions, for example, the act of actually cutting the branch of a tree. This two-levelled description represents the directional aspect of intentionality. In the teleological account of action the act is geared towards a mentally anticipated state. The teleological aspect of intentional actions does not depend on the question of whether the action or its product, the artefact, feeds back on the organism in one way or another. Intentional actions can be conceptualized as isolated phenomena without losing their teleological aspect. Their teleological aspect is entailed in the mental anticipation of the goal, not because this goal stands in a systematic relationship to other, higher goals. Whether or not the goals are unique, isolated, consistent with other goals or feed back on the organism is simply irrelevant for the teleology of intentional actions. Rather they can be specified as goals just because they can be described as being mentally anticipated. This conception of intentional teleology is utterly different from organic teleology, which can be expressed in causal terms without use of intentional language. Both intentional and organic teleology are legitimate forms of teleological reasoning, albeit grounded in very different patterns. Mental anticipation and causal cyclicity constitute two independent sources of teleological thinking as follows: Teleological description of intentional actions focuses upon the mental anticipation of future events. The act is not necessarily a component of a system of interdependent actions. Teleological description of organic functions stresses the integration of a process into a cyclical causal system, i.e. into a system of interdependent processes. Mental anticipation and integration into a system of interdependent processes are two distinct reasons for describing processes by focussing on outcomes. The one designates an action directed towards an anticipated end state, and the other processes are part of cyclical causal systems.

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The following diagrams illustrate this difference. The first is a simple graphical model for intentional action which Nicolai Hartmann proposed for the analysis of intentional teleology (fig. 7).

Fig. 7. A graphical model for intentional teleology (Hartmann 1951, 69)

According to Hartmann, the teleology of intentionality consists in a threestep process: first, the setting of a purpose in the consciousness of the intentional agent as an act which anticipates states in the future (“Zwecksetzung”); second, the conscious selection of the means for achieving the goal state (“Selektion der Mittel”); and third, a realisation of the goal state by running through the chain of means of arriving at the final state (“Realisation”). This model of purposeful action provides a good explanation for the supposed backward causation in teleological actions. Backward causation takes place on the mental level: the mental anticipation of the goal state determines the real causal action. Crucially in this model the first step entails the free anticipation of a goal. As just pointed out, goal-directed mental attitudes and intentions are not necessarily included in organic relationships of mutual dependency. The goal-directed action can stand isolated from other goals; its teleological character is situated in itself, grounded in its aspect of mental anticipation. The other form of teleology, organic teleology in biology, can be represented by the following diagram of a cyclical causal system (fig. 8).

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Fig. 8. Functions as relations in cyclical causal systems (Schlosser 1998, 313)

This diagram represents states of a system that are causally necessary for each other. One state would not be achieved without the influence of others, and vice versa. Thus a function can be determined as an influence of a state X that is causally necessary for another state F, which in turn is causally necessary for the state X. Thus, in this model we have the type of feedback typical to organic teleology as opposed to intentional teleology. Based on this distinction, a cross-classification of four types of function bearers can be developed (tab. 1).

Intentionality “Design-Function”: Planned by a Cognitive System

Feedback “FeedbackFunction”: Reproducing its own kind

Feedback

No necessary Feedback

Designed

Not Designed

Organic Artefacts e.g. Constructions of Organisms

Organs e.g. Parts of Organisms

Cultural Artefacts e.g. Human Art

Resources e.g. Air for Breathing

Tab. 1. A cross-classification of four types of function bearers

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This cross-classification combines two criteria: the dimension of intentionality, i.e. the question of whether or not the function bearer was planned and designed by a cognitive agent; and the dimension of feedback, entailing the two alternative states of the existence or absence of such a feedback mechanism, i.e. the criterion of whether the execution of the function results in its own reproduction or not. Thus in the four middle fields of this table we identify: first, organic artefacts, e.g. the constructions of organisms (such as spiders’ webs or birds’ nests) as functional entities that were designed and that reproduce their own kind as organs do: they are integral to the self-reproducing system of an organism. In the second field we have organs as parts of organisms that are not intentionally made by a cognitive system but are reproduced by their own activity, for example a heart that feeds back on its own activity by performing its function. In the third field we have entities that I call cultural artefacts, i.e. intentionally made objects that do not necessarily reproduce their own kind. And finally in the fourth field we have resources, i.e. functional objects in the environment that are useful but not reproduced by the action of their consumption. 6. CONCLUSION In biology, teleological thinking is connected to the identification and individuation of organisms. Only on the basis of the functional perspective does the organism exist as a determinate entity that persists through changes of form and matter. The closure of operations is the characteristic element in organisms that grounds the understanding of functions as components of a cyclical causal system, i.e. a system that consists of interdependent parts. Ascribing a function to a part implies the integration of the part into the cyclical system. In biology, functions are conceptualized as outcomes of processes that are always integrated in a network of other organic processes. Therefore the feedback of an action represents an essential element of organic functions. By contrast, intentional teleology is not characterized by actions which have consequences that necessarily feed back on their own execution. This means that there is a very different foundation for teleology in biology and in mental action. In biology, processes are judged teleologically because

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they are components of an integrated causal system that consists of mutually dependent parts. By contrast, intentional acts can stand as isolated processes. Their teleology does not depend on a cyclical system but on the description of a phenomenon on both the level of mental plans anticipating future states, and the realization of these plans by causal actions. This twolevel description allows the directional aspect of the teleology of action that is not realized in the cyclicity of organic teleology. Thus, the model of intentional teleology is not helpful for the understanding of organic teleology. Trying to understand natural teleology on the basis of the teleology of the intentional action model misses the central point of organic teleology, which consists, in the mutual dependence of causal processes that together form an organized system.

REFERENCES Alberts, B. et al. (1983), Molecular Biology of the Cell, New York: Garland. Aristotle (HA), De historia animalium, 3 vols., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1965-91. Boerhaave, H. (1727), Historia plantarum, 2 vols., Romæ : Gonzaga. Cummins, R. (1975), ‘Functional analysis’, Journal of Philosophy 72: 741-765. Gánti, T. (2003 [2000]), ‘Levels of life and death’ in T. Gánti (ed.), The Principles of Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-10. Hartmann, N. (1951), Teleologisches Denken. Berlin: de Gruyter. Hutchinson, G.E. (1948), ‘Circular causal systems in ecology’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 50: 221-246. Kant, I. (1790/93), Kritik der Urtheilskraft in Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ed.). Kant’s gesammelte Schriften, vol. V. Berlin: Reimer 1913, 165-485. Kauffman, S.A. (1995), At Home in the Universe. Search for Laws of SelfOrganization and Complexity, New York: Oxford University Press. Kauffman, S.A. (2000), Investigations, New York: Oxford University Press. Kuhnert, L., Niedersen, U. (eds.) (1987), Selbstorganisation chemischer Strukturen, Leipzig: Geest & Portig. Löw, R. (1980), Philosophie des Lebendigen. Der Begriff des Organischen bei Kant, sein Grund und seine Aktualität, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp. Maturana, H.R. (1970), ‘Neurophysiology of cognition’ in P. Garvin (ed.), Cognition. A Multiple View, New York: Spartan Books, 3-23. McLaughlin, P. (2001), What Functions Explain. Functional Explanation and SelfReproducing Systems, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Neander, K. (1991), ‘The teleological notion of function’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 69: 454-468. Schlosser, G. (1998), ‘Self-re-production and functionality: A systems-theoretical approach to teleological explanation’, Synthese 116: 303-354. Wright, L. (1973), ‘Functions’, Philosophical Review 82: 139-168. Zhabotinskii, A.M. (1964), ‘Periodic course of oxidation of malonic acid in solution (investigation of the kinetics of the reaction of Belousov)’, Biophysics 9: 329-335.

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Beyond Teleology? Paolo Costa I cannot help thinking horses admire a wide prospect (C. Darwin, Notebook M, 108)

1. INTRODUCTION

M

ost people consider teleology and the explanation of the apparent purposiveness of natural processes, organic activity, animal behaviour and so on, to be a philosophically unmanageable subject. They cannot be blamed for that. The issue is so fraught with conceptual snares, and the range of possible misunderstandings is so wide that a desire to keep as far away as possible from these apparently unsolvable questions seems, if not justified, at least understandable. Yet, few topics can provide a comparably clarifying perspective on the aporias, blind spots and bad habits of modern philosophy. In the following pages, I will examine some of the historical and theoretical causes of the current stalemate. Above all, I would like to understand whether post-Galilean science’s hostility towards final causes, and its ambition, quoting a contemporary harsh critic of teleological explanations, “to dispense altogether with that metaphysical delusion” (Ghiselin 1994, 489) still make sense. 2. WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH TELEOLOGY? The sheer hugeness and multidimensionality of the subject-matter is the first thing to be dealt with when discussing teleology. It is not surprising, then, that traditionally debates on finality have been studded with misunderstandings of all sorts, sometimes even glaring ones. Usually, it is not even clear whether the opponents are talking about the same thing. A striking historical example of talking at cross-purposes is provided by the several, and sometimes diametrically opposed, views on teleology that emerged from the Darwinian circle after the publication of The Origin of Species. As T.H. Huxley (1864, 82) aptly observed: “It is singular how differently one and the same book will impress different minds. That which struck the present writer most forcibly on his first perusal of the Origin of

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Species was the conviction that Teleology, as commonly understood, had received its deathblow at Mr Darwin’s hands”. But, as is widely known, another renowned member of the Darwinian circle, Asa Gray, developed a wholly divergent view on the matter and saw in Darwin’s theory the seeds of a long-awaited reconciliation between teleology and morphology (Gray 1876; Beatty 1990; Ruse 2003, chap. 7; see also Ayala 1970, 30). The misunderstanding is not surprising in light of the obscurity of the subject and its countless implications. The most important among them concerns the relationship between mind (or knowledge) and nature (or reality). In many of its metamorphoses, the world around us displays a steady, ordered, accomplished semblance, which has exerted a powerful pull on men’s mind for centuries. Since the dawn of time, the regularity of natural cycles has served as a background for human activities, and crucial aspects of the social and religious life of all civilizations have been based on it. It is no accident that the movement of heavenly bodies and the cycle of seasons have dictated the rhythm of men’s and animals’ daily life throughout history. Accordingly, some of the most influential images of the cosmos and, by analogy, the micro-cosmos have stemmed from meditations upon nature’s secret order and perfect organization. Even modern science, in spite of its well-known distrust of teleological explanations, has based its own inquiry into the laws governing the physical world upon a belief in the existence of an intelligible natural order.1 Nonetheless there has never been consensus on how this order should be interpreted. The old argument from design (dating back at least to Plato) translated a consoling insight into the rigorous and impersonal philosophical idiom, claiming that evidence of a formative intelligent principle—a mind or a nous—can be gathered from the regularity of natural processes. Such is the opinion voiced by Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo: “I heard some1

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To quote T.H. Huxley (1887, 500): “The one act of faith in the convert to science, is the confession of the universality of order and of the absolute validity in all times and under all circumstances, of the law of causation. This confession is an act of faith, because, by the nature of the case, the truth of such propositions is not susceptible of proof. But such faith is not blind, but reasonable; because it is invariably confirmed by experience, and constitutes the sole trustworthy foundation for all action”.

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one who had a book of Anaxagoras, as he said, out of which he read that mind [nous] was the disposer and cause of all, and I was quite delighted at the notion of this, which appeared admirable, and I said to myself: if this is the case, it means that mind producing order sets everything in order and arranges each individual thing in the way it is best for it” (97c; see also O’Hear 2002, chap. 1). According to this view, explaining a natural phenomenon amounts to understanding its origin and end or, in other terms, its raison d’être, both physical and moral. In the wake of Plato, Aristotle understood, perhaps better than anyone else, that the key for solving the riddle of the seeming measure (logos) of the universe had to be sought in the mirroring and interplay between the knower and the known (Grene 1974). Since then, our intellectual tradition has witnessed the growth of a complicated and somewhat inextricable web of concepts—such as mind, intelligence, order, organization, wholeness and finality—which continues to be a crucial junction or, depending on the standpoint, an outstanding hindrance to an appropriate understanding of reality even today. We are confronted, here, with a non-transparent constellation of ideas. Being basic, they are difficult to define and, furthermore, tend to refer incessantly to each other. Since the conceptual web spreads out thickly over our experienced world, the mind ends up constantly meeting itself in a crisscross of reverberations, out of which a suave sense of familiarity or, to borrow the standard Aristotelian term, “wonder” emerges. Mental acts are, after all, almost always intentional acts, whose content operates on them as an inseparable final cause. As Marjorie Grene once wrote, “knowing is essentially temporal activity, directed temporal activity, drawn by the future pull of what we seek to understand. Knowing […] is essentially learning; and learning is a telic phenomenon, in which the end in sight, even only guessed at, draws us toward a solution”.2 The mind dwells or, at least, gives the impression of dwelling in the world as in its own home. It is not surprising, 2

Grene 1974, 244. On the morphological consonance between knowledge and reality see Short 2002, 327, and Grene 1990, 239: “Types, kinds, sorts are bound to crop up somewhere, [or] else we not only could not speak about nature; there would not be a nature to speak about. As Plato put it, it is the intermingling of forms that makes discourse possible for us (Soph., 259e). Unless reality contains some order, in other words, we can find no order in it”.

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then, that philosophers have traditionally shown a resilient penchant for final causes, as Ernst Mayr (1991, 66; 2004, 43) noted regretfully. Such a circularity, of course, runs the risk of casting a sort of spell on our reasoning, whose natural upshot is the belief in an imposing and cumbersome ontic Logos, in the inherent rationality of the real. In order to avoid the dangers of this intellectual enchantment, modern scientific and philosophical culture has struggled to sharply separate world and mind, understanding the first as an inert reality, utterly devoid of meaning, intention and will, while conceiving the second as a subjective property of a conscience that towers over an alien object in order to intellectually and practically control it. Thereafter, mind can stop mirroring itself in the world as in a fellow creature. So, after ceasing to experience a sense of familiarity before it, mind can begin to objectify it, represent it with detachment, turning the mathematically regular relations among the phenomena into an exact, non-immediate language. Thus, physical reality is disconnected from the conceptual world with an abstractive procedure that should rule out or, at least, hinder too hasty a mirroring between mind and nature. The most prominent and lasting consequence of this intellectual revolution is the segregation of the idea of purposiveness into the subjective dimension of the “mental”. Now, it no longer makes any sense to look for purposes in nature. Purpose can only be a deliberate goal, i.e. an aim that a rational being can envision and seek to achieve, or an ideal objective that is pursued with some degree of intentionality. In other words, purpose acts as a strange sort of causality: it moves in so far as it is a reason (i.e. a motive, a “movent”) for a certain behaviour. Purpose provides one with a reason to exercise one’s own (efficient) causal powers in order to achieve the aim; it is an ideal entity, for example a represented state of reality, that points the action which should realize it in the right direction (Hauskeller 2005, 70). The connection between purposiveness and mind seems fairly obvious from every point of view. It is less clear, though, that mind should necessarily be restricted to an individual’s head and that external reality should not partake of anything mental (i.e., should not contain any purpose or end). This was far from obvious to Plato and Aristotle, or to Thomas Aquinas, but it became something of a truism after being sanctioned by modern science and philosophy. Why did it happen? One of the reasons that this idea became a modern platitude lies in the desire to free physical processes 186

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from the intrusion of those kinds of causality that Kant called “intentional” (absichtlich wirkende o nach Absichten wirkende Ursache; Kant 2000, 234, 245, 267) and Darwin stigmatised as “special” creation. It was a crucial step in the process that led to a view of nature as an anonymous and inert system of lawlike regularities of which all aspects could be scientifically investigated. The fact is that we (including our heads and most of what can be found inside them) belong to nature ourselves, in addition several features of external reality suggest an analogy with our intentionality, with our goaldirectedness. After all, nature is restless, subject to an endless process of change and becoming. One has only to think of physical phenomenona such as gravitational pull and magnetism, or chemical reactions and matter dynamism (not to mention living organisms and the mysteriously coordinated vital functions of different organs). There are clear traces in nature of a “striving” that is reminiscent of human goal-directedness. Socrates was surely driven by thoughts of this kind when he deemed illogical the denial of the existence of a rational and intelligent cosmic order. Since the Scientific Revolution, however, it has become more and more difficult to let oneself be influenced by this kind of analogy. On the one hand, our understanding of mind and reason underwent a radical change (they were confined to individuals’ heads). On the other hand, the new method of enquiry, based on the breaking up of natural events into their simplest elements, empirical check, and mathematical formulation, made it much more difficult to perceive their dynamic and living quality. The belief in order did not disappear—not at all—but the new order started to look exceedingly static and inert. Since Galileo, Descartes and Spinoza, modern scientific and philosophical culture has never ceased to deplore the explanatory sterility of final causes, which were notoriously portrayed by Francis Bacon as “barren virgins”, unable to bestow those fruits that science pursues with humility and perseverance.3 Since then, vacuous allusions to natural “virtues” have been repeatedly and ruthlessly lampooned 3

Sainte-Beuve expressed the idea incisively: “the standpoint of final causes is never fruitful for science. It entirely belongs to poetry, ethics, religion; it can be at most the scientist’s moment of prayer, afterwards he needs to get back to investigation and testing” (quoted in Gilson 1971, 213).

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by playwrights and novelists parodying late-scholastic medical culture. Three elements are especially intolerable to the new scientific mentality: (1) the postulating of something as a backward causation; the view, in other words, that a future state of affairs can causally affect the events leading to that state; (2) the anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism of final causes, which means human capacities are characteristically projected onto nature on the one hand, and, on the other, room is made for a comforting, naively anthropocentric notion of purposiveness—a finalism, which Kant called “external”, where every natural process is explained in terms of the well-being of the human race (the alleged Endzweck of nature); and (3) the need to resort to occult qualities which are not amenable to empirical investigation (Lennox 1992, 331). 3. KANT’S DOUBLE BIND This is the intellectual background against which modern debates on teleology took shape, an outstandingly resilient shape, actually. With the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant left a striking testimony of the mental contortions to which any attempt to think about the varieties of apparent natural finality in the organic world within the modern epistemological framework is indebted (Zammito 2006; Taylor 1967, 517-518; 2005, 2630, 40-43). Evidently, what is disturbing in life’s tendency toward selforganization is the analogy with human mind and intentionality.4 What goes against the grain is the thought that a sort of creative “effort” or “selective” tendency can be ascribed to living matter; that a mysterious form of inwardness is detectable within it. That surely goes against the Newtonian view of physical reality as an aggregate of inert corpuscles that are related by purely external and contingent causal links (Walsh 2006, 781-782; Michelini 2008, in this volume). From this standpoint, vitalism— postulating as it does an odd “force” as an exclusive monopoly of organic 4

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By “life’s tendency toward self-organization”, I mean the organism’s ability to “act self-generatedly” (Binswanger 1992, 86), to activate oneself and plasticly coordinate several resources in view of an aim or end-state that looks important, significant, if not crucial for the very identity, the “self”, which is the ultimate referent of such initiatives or goal-oriented acts.

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matter—must look like a hopeless alternative, since it represents a drawback in light of the disenchanting and homogenizing task carried out by modern natural science. On the whole, when confronted with modern musings on teleology, one gets the impression of being plunged—to borrow a distinctive Darwinian expression—into a “muddle”, one of those intellectual riddles which Ludwig Wittgenstein famously and shrewdly described as “mental cramps”. Notwithstanding all the noble efforts made by its participants, even the effervescent debate on function, which has been going on for some decades now, has recently come to a standstill. It is as though the conceptual clarification and articulation has reached such a degree of subtlety that it has become almost impossible to prove that one person is wrong and another right (Allen, Bekoff, Lauder 1998). In this connection, John Zammito (2006, 750) aptly described the situation as a “truce of exhaustion, not a truth of conviction”. Analyses of this kind of “thought jam” are often useful, if not crucial, to uncover the tacit assumptions which steer the most basic and endless philosophical disputes and predetermine their possible outcomes. More specifically, it is not wrong to interpret the perplexities which usually surround discussions of the existence of nature’s purposes as the paralysing effect of a sort of “double bind”. What kind of binds? It is easy to say. On the one hand, at least initially scientific investigation and explanation go hand in hand with common sense and its propensity to square the circle in our world experience (Taylor 1970, 49-54). Thus, even in studies of teleological phenomenona, scientific enquiry begins with a need to make sense of empirical observations which testify to the existence of natural processes that display a selectivity, a plasticity, an organization, in a word, a “wisdom”, which evokes the idea of a goaldirectedness. Aristotle endowed this phenomenological “given” with an influential philosophical dress and supplied the debate with a theoretical framework that was bound to be common knowledge for centuries (Nussbaum 1985; Gotthelf 1987; 1997). In a nutshell, according to Aristotle, some natural events are wholly explainable only when what-for (or, better, for-the-sake-of-what) questions can be answered. That is to say, we need to resort to what, perhaps inappropriately, went down in history as final cau189

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ses and which probably would be better described—more ordinarily, though not less controversially—as a “holistic causality” (Zammito 2006, 752-754; Grene 1995, 106). A teleological event, then, becomes fully comprehensible only in light of a broader framework that necessarily includes a reference to a terminus ad quem which is the raison d’être itself of the explanandum.5 In this sense, there is no substantial difference between a purposive behaviour, a goal-directed metabolic process and a social practice or skill. In order to understand all these phenomena, we need to put them into an explanatory background or “field” (Merleau-Ponty 1942, 139147), which also serves as their identifying condition.6 What must be underscored, however, is that this context of explanation or identification cannot consist in a homogeneous background of extrinsic relations, in so far as it turns on the horizon of meaning (or interest, value, import) of the teleological system itself. The field is characterized, in other words, by an immanent “intelligibility” (Merleau-Ponty 1942, 140) or “normativity” (Zammito 2006, 753, 760). The first bind, therefore, lies in an “empirical” commitment. The teleological dimension of experience cannot be easily explained away or broken up into independent fragments without a net loss both in the breadth and subtlety of our scientific understanding of reality. There is another bind— both methodological and ontological—that pushes in the opposite direction. It stems from the explanatory triumphs of modern science which, as is well known, emerged from a sort of “anti-Aristotelian purge” which continues to exercise a powerful influence on the contemporary scientific imaginary. For the attractive power of the historical example of Galileo’s and Newton’s victory over Aristotle’s teleological physics is still strong (Taylor 1970, 60), and its moral can be summed up as: “There are no purposes in nature, only causes” (Walsh 2000, 136).

5

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In Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium (706b13) the end is described as a peras (limit) or to hou heneka (the thing for-the-sake-of-which); see Nussbaum 1984, 39. Think, for example, of how Habermas (1985-1987) sees understanding as the inherent telos (viz. the point, logos, or constitutive rule) of human speech. Regarding the distinction/correlation between purpose and end, see Slade 1997.

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Kant best exemplifies the paralysing force of this double bind. For, on the one hand, he was sure that an explanation must be mechanistic in order to be scientific. That is, it has to identify, case-by-case (singulatim), the materially determinant antecedent of the investigated natural event. On the other hand, however, Kant knew that an organism could not even be thought of without appealing to the circular causality of a teleological order (Walsh 2006, 773-774). So, confronted with this antinomy, he only managed to make up an epistemological way-out and he came to understand life’s finalism as the “reflection” of mind on/in nature. Moving about the realm of “als ob”, the reader of the Critique of the Power of Judgment is encouraged to seek the fading traces of the kingdom of ends even in the exceptionless domain of natural laws. Ideally, the analogy between purposes and ends is the ladder that should allow one access to a wider sphere of meanings than those which are disclosed by a strictly scientific understanding of reality. Regarding this, “spontaneity” serves as the main conceptual bridge or link between mind (reason) and nature (organism), although, as such, it continues to appear as the “mystery of mystery” within a closely Newtonian theoretical framework. For this reason Kant’s solution remains essentially “unstable” (Weber, Varela 2002, 99). For it must admit the existence of something paradoxical such as “an experience incapable of explanation” (Zammito 2006, 759). But to what extent can we turn a historically specific instance of a radical conceptual overthrow into a universal rule of good scientific practice? Do we really need to be Newtonian to aspire to a minimal degree of scientificity? 4. MAKING SENSE OF LIFE It has become almost a commonplace to describe Kant as a thinker who was first of all interested in making sense of Newton (Beatty 1990, 115). In this sense, it can be claimed that he took on the ontological commitments of early-modern physics, turning them into the pillars of a transcendental understanding of human reason. His defence strategy against the hegemonic claims of the new method of scientific investigation chiefly pointed toward a definition of the boundaries and areas of jurisdiction of the different forms of rationality. As a result, however, the tribunal of reason assigned the natural sciences a monopoly right to positive knowledge on the

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basis, furthermore, of a strictly unitary, if not monolithic, model of explanation of reality. The historical fortune of Kant’s compromise largely depended, of course, on the depth and lucidity of his diagnosis of the intellectual predicament that grew out of the victory of the early-modern pattern of scientificity. Ironically, Kant’s strategy was bound to clash with the naïve or direct realism which was shared by the scientists of his own as of any age. More specifically, it collided with the ambitions of life-science pioneers, who could not indulge overmuch in his subtle methodological scruples. Given that this is the case, what gives Kant’s outflanking manoeuvre such persuasive power? My strong hunch is that Kant’s strategy has drawn much of its own persuasiveness from the assimilation of something like the line of reasoning which John Mackie (1977, 38-42) aptly called argument from queerness. The argument is very simple. It merely calls attention to the fact that, if ontologically queer things such as objective values (or obligations, purposes, etc.) existed, “then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe. Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else” (Mackie 1977, 38). More specifically, it is hard to imagine how they could exert any kind of causal power and interact with other natural beings. In other words, according to Mackie’s line of reasoning, the metaphysical costs of resorting to purposes in the explanation of natural processes are unbearable, and unnecessary. Scientifically investigated nature can be depressing, cruel or meaningless, but it cannot be queer. Since purposes and goals cannot exist in the “real” world, and yet they constantly crop up in ordinary human experience, they must be reinterpreted—in a theoretically disenchanted fashion—as a projection of the human mind upon outward reality, or as a clever and (hopefully) useful theoretical device (Ratcliffe 2000). Thus, an ontological conundrum can be quietly turned into an empirical problem (for the psychology of knowledge or moral psychology), providing scientists with another interesting research field. In a sense, the argument from queerness cannot be confuted. Of course, attributing the property of ontological queerness to a segment of our ex192

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perience only makes sense in light of a far wider horizon of claims, beliefs and assumptions, which are for the most part implicit (Wiggins 2002, 2-7). And this kind of tacit background cannot be directly confuted. At most, we can loosen its grasp on our theoretical imagination by offering alternative, and possibly more plausible, accounts of our ordinary world experience. In particular, as far as teleology is concerned, this requires the working out of a theoretical background that may help to overcome “the real source of scepticism [about it]”, that is to say “our seeming inability to imagine how any putative goal, how any mere possibility [can] explain anything at all” (Short 1983, 312; see also Walsh 2006, 789). Such a goal can be summed up in a phrase that sounds like a slogan: “teleology without mystery” (Short 1983, 311). A teleology without mystery—an “ordinary” teleology—is but a naturalized teleology, stripped of any theological or metaphysical aura. The project of translating or simply eliminating any appeal to teleology from scientific explanations probably reached its apex in the 1950’s with the growth and subsequent sweeping crisis of Behaviourism (Taylor 1964). This crisis coincided with the flourishing of biological studies (among other things), whose conceptual repertory is traditionally resonant with references to goals and functions (Ayala 1970). In many ways, the period following the end of the Neopositivist dream of a unified science can be seen as a time of refamiliarization with nature’s teleological dimension, and of routinization, trivialization, naturalization of its meaning, beyond any naïve anthropomorphism or aspiration to an immediate mirror relationship with nature and its designs (Nagel 1977). Certainly, we have plenty of examples of empirical or “naturalized” varieties of teleology in contemporary debates on functions or goal-directed systems. The notion of a “proper function”, as a type of activity (performed by an organ or an organism) which was selected in evolutionary (modern) history for its adaptive value, and the idea of the goal-directedness of a cybernetic system (or of a teleonomic process guided by a built-in program) are the two chief models for conceptualizing organic finality within a naturalistic framework (Bedau 1991; Mayr 1988). Neither one, however, succeeds in accounting for teleology as an original or intrinsic phenomenon nor entails any substantive change in the theoretical framework which emerged from the Scientific Revolution and was underpinned by a substan193

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tially empiricist metaphysical frame. That is all very well, but what is the use of making room for a less convoluted concept of natural finality? Undoubtably, this is a difficult question to answer. Nonetheless, what should have emerged from our earlier historical analysis is that the most urgent amendment lies precisely in a change of perspective that would allow us to make the best of our familiarity with life, starting from the acknowledgment that investigating life consists not only in gathering objective pieces of knowledge, but also in a recognition process. It is no accident that, as Hans Jonas once put it, “life can only be known by life” (quoted in Weber, Varela in this volume, 208). If the search for an indisputable formula that would enable us to objectively distinguish between living and non-living entities seems vain, it does not mean, however, that the distinction is based on a meaningless difference. It is simply bound to fade away once it is observed or focussed from a “nowhere” standpoint. The same is also true for teleology: it can only be fittingly discussed and investigated by a “hermeneutics of the living” or by an “organic phenomenology” (Weber, Varela 2002, 116, 119). It is not enough, then, to amend the youthful errors of modern scientific culture by ceasing to see goal-orientedness or selective, holistic or recursive causality as something more mysterious than any other natural process that we are unable to explain in detail, as yet. Beyond that, there are deeper reasons to deem not only unfounded, but even harmful, the historically conditioned reflex that continues to lead many scientists or philosophers of science to look suspiciously at teleological explanations. It is not only that purposes and goals are anything but “naturally queer”, but that a metaphysically more relaxed view of finality is probably an essential precondition for broadening and refining our understanding of many cellular mechanisms and just as many higher vital functions. In short, to lessen the influence of the argument from queerness upon our theoretical imagination and our research strategies, we need to act upon that tacit background which, throughout the Modern Age, has helped to make our view of nature inhospitable to purposes and ends by removing any reference to spontaneity, meaning and normativity from our scientific horizon. Against this mechanistic prejudice, it is important to stress again and again that teleological categories play a vital role not only in clarifying, but also in identifying the phenomenon of life. Zweckmäßigkeit continues to be 194

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an essential requirement for identifying the living, even though it does not provide us with an objective identification standard, only with a hermeneutical principle that guides our questioning of the phenomenon. We do not understand what being alive means from the outside, only from the inside, in so far as we directly experience what it is like to be engaged in an uncertain process of autopoiesis and face what a life-capability really is from the boundary standpoint of the living body. Since we are accustomed to life, we can recognize other living beings easily enough and identify them as “selves”, i.e. as functional wholes which have a precarious form of independent identity (individuality). In this sense, we can confidently say that a full understanding of life can only be gained perspectively. The emphasis on the oriented, unbalanced, even outstretched quality of living processes highlights the (at first sight) opaque tie between life and value (Binswanger 1992; Bedau 1992; Weber, Varela in this volume 213216). For the goals, ends and purposes, with which organisms’ lives are studded, are never a matter of indifference for those who pursue them and, in this restricted sense, can also be described as final causes (Ayala 1970, 45). The identity of living beings always flourishes in a condition of dynamic balance which discloses both the centred and de-centred condition of the organic (Plessner 1975), as well as the precariousness of the relationship of living organisms within the physical environment from which they emerge and draw the resources necessary to survive and thrive (Weber, Varela in this volume, 214). In fact, the irreducibly phenomenological nature of our understanding of the living may help to render less disturbing the uncertainties that often distinguish frontier research in biology. As Mark Bedau (1992, 272-273) rightly notes: The beneficiary principle leaves obscure many cases on the borderline between those kinds of things that can be beneficiaries and those kinds that cannot. Is self-reproduction good for a virus, for example, or for DNA-like polymers simmering in a chemical soup? Is growth good for crystals? Many of us are unsure how to answer such questions. Because of this unclarity about what things can be beneficiaries, one might judge the value analysis to be incomplete or unhelpful. For example, using the value analysis, it is difficult to tell whether there could be teleology in borderline cases like viruses and crystals. I would be delighted, of course, to have a

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criterion of good that settled such controversies, but it is excessive to demand that the value analysis provide such criteria. Even without them, the value analysis is interesting and helpful. In fact, one kind of evidence in favour of the value analysis is that we are unsure whether teleological notions apply in roughly the same cases as those in which we are unsure whether value notions apply. […] It is worth remembering that one should expect vague terms to have vague analyses. An analysis of a vague term can be illuminating if it localizes the vagueness so that we can see what causes it and thus see why hard cases are hard. According to the value analysis, the vagueness in teleology is due (at least in part) to vagueness concerning good, and the difficulty of telling what is good for what is one reason why there are borderline cases of teleology.

Just as a reasonable ethical contextualism should not lead us to cast doubts over the existence of a “common core of morality” and of more or less plausible answers to our moral disagreements (Wiggins 2005, 19-20), so a suitable pattern of biological explanation must recognize how to distinguish and capitalize on the different explanatory levels that we resort to when we investigate a multi-faceted phenomenon such as life. There is no a priori argument, after all, that can induce us to deny an explanatory role to the background within which the regularity of chemical-physical mechanisms operates, making organisms’ situated freedom possible (Weber, Varela in this volume, 215). Only a distorted view of the scientific “rule of law”—one warped by an excessive faith in the explanatory powers of the mechanistic paradigm—can explain the widespread blindness to the importance of intentionality for understanding living things (Walsh 2006, 784-785, 789; Taylor 1971, 463-465).

REFERENCES Allen, C., Bekoff, M., Lauder, G. (eds.) (1998), Nature’s Purposes. Analysis of Function and Design in Biology, Cambridge (MA)-London: MIT Press. Ayala, F.J. (1970), ‘Teleological Explanations in Evolutionary Biology’, Philosophy of Science 37: 1-15; repr. in Allen, Bekoff, Lauder (1998), 29-49. Beatty, J. (1990), ‘Teleology and the Relationship between Biology and the Physical Sciences in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’ in F. Durham, R. D. Purrington (eds.), Some Truer Method. Reflections on the Heritage of Newton, New York: Columbia University Press, 113-144.

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Bedau, M. (1991), ‘Can Biological Teleology Be Naturalized?’, The Journal of Philosophy 88: 647-657. Bedau, M. (1992), ‘Where’s the Good in Teleology?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 781-805; repr. in Allen, Bekoff, Lauder (1998), 261-291. Binswanger, H. (1992), ‘Life-Based Teleology and the Foundations of Ethics’, The Monist 75: 84-103. Ghiselin, M.T. (1994), ‘Darwin’s Language May Seem Teleological, but His Thinking is Another Matter’, Biology and Philosophy 9: 489-492. Gilson, E. (1971), D’Aristote à Darwin et retour. Essais sur quelques constantes de la biophilosophie, Paris: Vrin. Gotthelf, A. (1987), ‘Aristotle’s Conception of Final Causality’ in A. Gotthelf, J.G. Lennox (eds.), Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 204-242. Gotthelf, A. (1997), ‘Understanding Aristotle’s Teleology’ in R.F. Hassing (ed.), Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 71-82. Gray, A. (1876), Darwiniana. Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism, New York: D. Appleton & Co. Grene, M. (1974), The Knower and the Known, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2nd ed. Grene, M. (1990), ‘Evolution Typology and Population Thinking’, American Philosophical Quarterly 27: 237-244. Grene, M. (1995), A Philosophical Testament, Chicago, IL: Open Court. Habermas, J. (1985-1987), The Theory of Communicative Action, 2 vols., Boston: Beacon Press. Hauskeller, M. (2005), ‘Telos: The Revival of an Aristotelian Concept in Present Day Ethics’, Inquiry 48: 62-75. Huxley, T.H. (1893 [1864]), ‘Criticisms on The Origin of Species’ in T.H. Huxley, Darwiniana, London: Macmillan. Huxley, T.H. (2006 [1887]), ‘On the Reception of The Origin of Species’ in F. Darwin (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Charleston, SC: BiblioBazaar. Kant, I. (2000 [1790]), Critique of the Power of Judgment (P. Guyer and E. Matthews transl.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lennox, J.G. (1992), ‘Teleology’ in E. Fox Keller, E.A. Lloyd (eds.), Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 324-333. Lennox, J.G. (1993), ‘Darwin Was a Teleologist’, Biology and Philosophy 8: 409-421. Lennox, J.G. (1994), ‘Teleology by Another Name: A Reply to Ghiselin’, Biology and Philosophy 9: 493-495. Mackie, J. (1977), Ethics. Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Mayr, E. (1988), ‘The Multiple Meanings of Teleological’ in E. Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology. Observations of an Evolutionist, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 38-66.

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Mayr, E. (1991), One Long Argument. Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mayr, E. (2004), What Makes Biology Unique?, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1942), La structure du comportement, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Nagel, E. (1977), ‘Teleology Revisited’, Journal of Philosophy 76: 261-301; repr. in Allen, Bekoff, Lauder (1998), 197-240. Nussbaum M. (1984), Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2nd ed. O’Hear, A. (2002), Beyond Evolution. Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. Plessner, H. (1975), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Ratcliffe, M. (2000), ‘The Function of Function’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31: 113-133. Ruse, M. (2000), ‘Teleology: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow?’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31: 213-232. Ruse, M. (2003), Darwin and Design. Does Evolution have a Purpose?, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Short, T.L. (1983), ‘Teleology in Nature’, American Philosophical Quarterly 20: 311-320. Short, T.L. (2002), ‘Darwin’s Concept of Final Cause: Neither New nor Trivial’, Biology and Philosophy 17: 323-340. Slade, F. (1997), ‘Ends and Purposes’ in R.F. Hassing (ed.), Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs, Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 83-85. Taylor, C. (1964), The Explanation of Behaviour, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, C. (1967), ‘Psychological Behaviorism’ in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, New York: MacMillan & Co., 516-520. Taylor, C. (1970), ‘The Explanation of Purposive Behaviour’ in R. Borger, F. Cioffi (eds.), Explanation in the Behavioural Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 49-79. Taylor, C. (1971), Conditions for a Mechanistic Theory of Behaviour in A.G. Karczmar, J.C. Eccles (eds.), Brain and Human Behavior, New York-Berlin: Springer, 449-465. Taylor, C. (2005), ‘Merleau-Ponty and the Epistemological Picture’ in T. Carman, M.B.N. Hansen (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Merleau-Ponty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 26-49. Walsh, D.M. (2000), ‘Chasing Shadows: Natural Selection and Adaptation’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 31: 135-153

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Walsh, D.M. (2006), ‘Organisms as Natural Purposes: The Contemporary Evolutionary Perspective’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37: 771-791. Weber, A., Varela, F.J (2002), ‘Life after Kant: Natural Purposes and the Autopoietic Foundations of Biological Individuality’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 97-125. Wiggins, D. (2005), ‘Objectivity in Ethics: Two Difficulties, Two Responses’, Ratio 18: 1-26. Zammito, J. (2006), ‘Teleology Then and Now: The Question of Kant’s Relevance for Contemporary Controversies over Function in Biology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37: 748-779.

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Naturalizing Teleology: Towards a Theory of Biological Subjects*∗ Andreas Weber – Francisco J. Varela A clash of doctrines is not a disaster, it is an opportunity. (A.N. Whitehead)

1. THE KANTIAN HERITAGE

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his essay is an attempt to re-evaluate a central issue in the philosophy of biology: the topic of natural purposes or teleology. We think that a meaningful description of the organism is only possible by taking teleology seriously: by accepting that organisms are subjects having purposes according to values encountered in the process of living. In this chapter we propose to reintroduce value and subjectivity as indispensable organic phenomena. We ground this argument on a theory of the organism as the dynamics of establishing an identity and as a process of creating a materially embodied, individual perspective. We think that, after two centuries, we can move beyond the position Kant set out for teleology in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, and provide a fresh understanding of natural purpose and living individuality. It has become a commonplace in modern biology to shun teleological thinking or to reduce it to a mere methodological fiction, then known as teleonomy (Pittendrigh 1958). The overwhelming preference is to explain biological facts as the statistical results of natural selection which post factum give the semblance of goal-directedness (Dawkins 1987). Purposedirected structures or events are only allowed in an ‘as-if’ mode; a teleological explanation can always be substituted by a (teleonomic) factual description (Nagel 1977). Nevertheless, talk about purpose or function, even though regarded as ‘as if’ descriptions, is pervasive and persistent in biol∗

This text is a revised and abbreviated version of the original 2002 article, ‘Life after Kant: Natural purposes and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1: 97-125. Special thanks to Amy Cohen-Varela for substantial help and encouragement.

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ogy. Solving this paradox is central to the understanding of biological science. Still, “nature’s purpose is arguably the most important foundational issue in the philosophy of biology” (Allen, Bekoff, Lauder 1998, 2). The answer to the question of the proper status of teleology will determine the character of our theory of animate nature. Any discussion of teleology in science or western thinking altogether is inescapably grounded on the prodigious foundation provided by Immanuel Kant. For Kant, the organism could not be understood in purely mechanistic terms. Kant was a proponent of Newtonian physics, and yet he clearly retained another kind of thinking for the organism: life was to be conceived in terms of natural purposes. This did not imply a jettisoning of mechanistic terms: Kant thought that judgement was simply not humanly possible. He neither ruled out mechanism, nor did he declare it to be “the real reality” beneath the phenomenon. He was simply pessimistic about the possibility that organic life could be explained in mechanistic terms. Hence he did not believe in the possibility that “a Newton of the Grassblade” could deliver both a reductionist and complete account of the organic world (Cornell 1986, 408). It is well known that Kant’s stance on some essential issues is multifaceted and often ambivalent, and may depend on the chosen quotations (Löw 1980, 127). This is partly why there have been so many interpretations of his work, giving rise to various schools. In Germany the romantic Naturphilosophie, the strictly physicalist program of Helmholtz and others have claimed Kant as their philosophical origin (Spaemann, Löw 1981, 124). Ironically, Kant has provided inspiration to conceptual adversaries who each tried to accomplish what Kant himself had thought to be an impossible task: to give an objective account of the organic world. All his life Kant was haunted by the question of how the transcendental subject is able to experience and scientifically describe the external world. He tried a number of different solutions in order to elucidate this crucial issue. Kantian philosophy is not a hieratic monument but rather a work in progress, starting from his first major work, Theorie des Himmels, and ending with his remarks in the Opus Posthumum. Initially Kant was convinced that all processes in nature could be explained in terms of mechanical causality. A science of nature could only be so named “in case of the fundamental natural laws therein are cognized a priori, and are not mere laws of 202

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experience” [Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences (hereafter MFNS), 468 (184)].1 Thus the corresponding idea of an objective nature is a system of purely mathematical relationships. Therefore, as a science, biology is only valid insofar as it is reducible to strictly causal laws. Nevertheless, as Kant knew, reductionism had a weak point: not everything falls under the apriori principles of pure reason. This fact apparently bothered Kant more than many of his followers, who did not go beyond the theoretical frame of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. For Kant it was especially the empirical and not apriori character of biology that posed a problem, for “its first principles must ultimately be found in experience. It must assume that certain bodies are organized and the particular form of their organization must be taken as given in experience” (Lenoir 1982, 29). The problem consists in the fact that the “empirical manifold” of organic nature apparently cannot be founded on a priori knowledge. As the faculty of reason is only able to construct theories in the a priori mode, biology cannot be constructed, it must necessarily transcend the capacity of pure reason (Lenoir 1982, 26). To deal with this empirical manifold Kant explored a faculty of reason to which he had not paid much attention hitherto: that of judgement (Zumbach 1984, 89). In order to reconcile the faculty of judgement with the laws of nature given apriori, Kant introduced an ad hoc correspondence between world and reason by “happy accident” [CPJ 184 (71)].

1

Citations from Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Sciences (‘MFNS’) will be located by volume IV and page number of the so-called Akademie edition, Kants gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlichen Preussischen [now Deutschen] Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1902-). Citations from the Critique of the Power of Judgment (‘CPJ’) will be located by page number as in volume V of the Akademie edition. Citations from the Opus Posthumum (‘OP’) will be located by page number as in volume XXII of the Akademie edition. The translations of MFNS are taken from the Gary Hatfield, Michael Friedman, Henry Allison and Peter Heath’s edition (Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); the translations of CPJ are taken from Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews’ edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and the translations of OP are taken from Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen’s edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). The pagination of translated editions will be bracketed.

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This accidental correspondence was given the status of an apriori principle in order to maintain the coherence of his transcendental system. (1) The commanding feature of the faculty of judgement was that it viewed nature as teleological. Nature has to be considered as if it has purposiveness (see Merleau-Ponty 1994, 43 ff): “a thing exists as natural end if it is cause and effect of itself (although in a twofold sense)” [CPJ, 370 (243)]. The interrelation of means and goals describes a circular situation: parts of an organism exist through the existence of the whole and the whole is responsible for the parts. This processual, dynamical aspect is already implicit when Kant says: In such a product of nature each part is conceived as if it exists only through all the others, thus as if existing for the sake of the others and on account of the whole, i.e., as an instrument (organ) […] rather it must be though of as an organ that produces the other parts (consequently each produces the others reciprocally) […] only then and on that account can such a product, as an organized and self-organizing being, be called a natural end (CPJ, 373 [245]).

For Kant, all relations of cause and effect are also relations of means and purpose. Being a natural purpose, as an interrelated totality of means and goals, is strictly intrinsic to the organism. In fact it is the only way we can view it, and it is also the way we normally, prima facie and intuitively, view the living. Therefore organisms do not work as artifacts do: artifacts always point to a purpose for which they are made or used, whereas organisms are purposes in the sense that their goal is the continuation of their existence by on-going self-organization. The teleology we observe in natural purposes is not necessarily the mode in which they exist but it is inherent to our way of viewing them. Kant’s perspective on organisms is transcendental: contrarily to the teleonomy interpretation (regard organisms as goal-oriented as a heuristic until we find the adequate causal explanation), Kant leaves no doubt that ultimately human minds will always be forced to explain organisms in teleological terms: certain products of nature, as far as their possibility is concerned, must, given the particular constitution of our understanding, be considered by us

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as intentional and generated as ends, yet without thereby demanding that there actually is a particular cause that the representation of an end as its determining ground [CPJ, 405-6 (275)].

(2) This is due to the fact that in the empirical domain for each particular we must use the faculty of reflective judgement to establish the general law (or maxim) under which it is subsumed [CPJ, 385 (257)]. Kant acts as an antireductionist and as an antivitalist at once: he is an ontological reductionist, but an epistemological anti-reductionist, or a “transcendental agnosticist”, as Reinhard Löw has it (Löw 1980, 163). Even though we must explain teleological features in terms of cause and effect, we must be aware of the “the necessary subordination of the principle of mechanism to the teleological principle” [CPJ, 417 (286)]. Certain products of nature force us to reflect on a term that is not given to us, and this suggests that the principle of purpose pertains to the things themselves (Spaemann, Löw 1981, 137). In fact the problem of the relationship between causality and teleology is a masked attempt to solve the question of how we can reconcile subjective experience with the external world; thus, it is in direct relation to the mind-body problem. In effect, Kant’s whole philosophy can be viewed as an attempt to overcome this gap (Merleau-Ponty 1994, 40). Today, the same underlying question—of whether organic systems should be understood as basically inorganic machines plus human teleonomic interpretation or as genuinely goal directed—resurfaces in self-organization theory: is a selforganizing system ontologically exhibiting its features, or does the observer add his perspective to an otherwise completely neutral behavior? For Kant, this question was never answered definitively. The Critique of the Power of Judgment offers a compromise: as an intellectus ectypus working with discursive reason, our mind cannot see reality as such. Therefore it must rely on two entirely different principles to describe organic forms [CPJ, 407 (276-277)]. Only an intellectus archetypus knowing the world intuitively and not discursively could theoretically reconcile the two maxims. Kant thought it impossible that a new Newton of Biology would arise, and account even for a ”blade of grass” without the principle of purposiveness (Cornell 1986, 405). Charles Darwin has often been claimed as this

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new Newton of the Grassblade, thus invalidating Kant’s famous dictum. In a strictly literal way this is not false: the theory of evolution is Newtonian in its character and does attempt to account for design. It seems, however, that Kant was right in denying the Newtonian, mechanical character of the living. Biological thinking had to re-discover the autonomy and selforganization of organism and their importance for evolution, so that consequently the Newtonian dominance could be challenged to allow room for the organism’s creativity (Varela, Thompson, Rosch 1991). Kant’s awareness of not having finished his theory of the organism is obvious in his last philosophical writings, the Opus Posthumum, where he inverts the work undertaken in the Critique of Pure Reason. Without invalidating the apriori categories that had been the possibility of all knowledge, Kant finds an entirely new foundation for them: the lived body. The moving forces of matter—the prime subject of natural science—are no longer deduced from or “dictated” by the apriori categories of reason but are themselves a basic experience underlying all apriori categories: The moving forces of matter are what the moving subject itself does with his body to [other] bodies. The reactions corresponding to these forces are contained in the simple acts by which we perceive the bodies themselves [OP, 326 (110)]

Hence the apriori categories are an experience of embodied existence. From this viewpoint the body has taken the place of the apriori of all experience: Only because the subject [is conscious] to itself of his moving forces (agitating them) and (…) of perceiving a reaction of equal strength (a relation which is known a priori, independently of experience) are the counteracting forces of matter anticipated and its properties established [OP, 506 (148)].

With this argument Kant gives teleology an apriori foundation in the subject experiencing itself purposefully as itself and also as connected to the world.

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2. THE SELF-PRODUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY Today the Kantian heritage may be extended thanks to developments in two major areas. First, there has been important progress in our understanding of self-organization, which approaches a causal explanation, but introduces a new mode of analysis that includes the minimal form of living as an autopoietic process. Second, we can extend the range of human understanding as an embodied being through fuller investigation of the lived body in a phenomenological sense in the post-Kantian developments in phenomenology especially in the work of Hans Jonas. These two points combined give us the depth to naturalize teleology. Only combined will these two points provide us with the means to move beyond and improve upon Kant’s monumental work. Jonas starts his organic philosophy with a thought which parallels Kant’s prototype argument of the bodily foundation of all concepts in the Opus Posthumum. For Jonas “the living body is the archetype of the concrete, and, in so far it is my body, it is, in its immediacy of interior and exterior perspective in one, the only fully given concretum of experience at all” (Jonas 1973, 39). It is actually the experience of our teleology—our wish to exist as a subject, not our imputation of purposes to objects—that makes teleology become a real rather than an intellectual principle. Thus causality, as we perceive it, as sentient beings, may be subsumed under the more general principle of life. If teleology is the way organisms are working, and if the categories of apperception are defined by the way an organism works, then the category of causality follows from the teleology of the living—rather than vice versa: Causality is not so much an apriori foundation of experience but rather it is itself a basic experience. It is known by the effort I have to make in coping with the resistance of world-matter during my activity and in resisting the pressure of this world-matter (Jonas 1973, 38).

Kant’s philosophy of the living was a philosophy about a scientific theory of the organism. Jonas turns this on its head in quintessential phenomenological style: before being scientists we are first living beings, and as such we have the evidence of our intrinsic teleology in us. And, in observing other creatures struggling to continue their existence—starting from simple 207

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bacteria that actively swim away from a chemical repellent—by our own evidence, we can understand teleology as the governing force of the realm of the living. Theories about life can only be conceived from the fragile and concerned perspective of the living itself: “life can only be known by life” (Jonas 1966, 91). Helmuth Plessner, another important protagonist of philosophical biology, takes a parallel view in his 1928 landmark book Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (Plessner 1975). This inversion of terms is full of consequences as it directly embraces the human existential level as part of life, as well as in the presence of death. The movement that defines an intrinsic goal is given in our daily experience as the “Yes!” to our continued existence being the mother-value of all values. Our experience is actually embodied. Refusing this argument is logically impossible for a living being. The view parallels the central figure of Apel’s “transcendental pragmatics” as well as the ethic of Jürgen Habermas, on an embodied level. Our teleological reality cannot be denied without equally denying our own status as sentient beings who have the right to pursue an undisturbed life. Thus, it is not our own constitution as subjects of reason—as Kant saw it for most of his life—that grounds the pathways of analytical and synthetical judgments and consequently determines which object domain we must perceive to be teleological. Rather, the ground of our existence is originally teleological and as such, brings forth meaning and categories in its ongoing coupling with the world. Our reason and our existence as subjects are embodied. Teleology is not only a necessary way to think the living. The “teleological circle” is the fundamental (or constitutive) mode in which organic beings live. This is what Kant glimpsed at the end of his work. This view, that Apel has called the “apriori of the lived body” (Leibapriori) (Apel 1963), has taken 150 years to resurface in a new turn of philosophy of biology evident in the work of Jonas (taken as emblematic here), A. Portmann, R. Spaemann and Th. von Uexküll (following his father Jakob von Uexküll). The themes we have evoked on the basis of Jonas’ writings are surprisingly convergent with these authors, constituting a coherent line of thought in their renewal of the issue of biological self-hood (or ipseity). Each of these authors formulates a similar central point, in different ways however. Jakob von Uexküll understands the living as a subject (where Jo208

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nas prefers self-identity). Adolf Portman often uses the notion of “interiority”. Robert Spaeman uses the notion of ipseity (Selbstsein). All these formulations are comparable in that they attempt to capture the fact that life and the organism are active agents (and not merely reactive). We will not dwell further on the thought of each of these authors specifically, such a study remains to be conducted (Destrée, Dewitte 1996). We may add to these converging ideas those originating from the emerging science of Biosemiotics that takes seriously not only the teleological, but also the crypto-semiotical discourse of adaptionism (in speaking of codes and information) by referring to the organism as a subject in its Umwelt (Hoffmeyer 1996; Kull 1999; Weber 2001, 2003, 2007). The central task around which these approaches circle is to examine empirically how an organism can realize its living. Jonas took the apparently simple fact of metabolism and then placed it at the core of the organism’s ontology. This is where his analysis converges with the autopoietic approach whose sources are in current experimental biology. From our point of view, this convergence permits us to take a decisive step towards giving an account of the organism that is also relevant for human life. There are two essential moves to this turn. First, to put the autonomy of the living at the center, instead of obscuring its role, as has been the case for modern biology (Varela 1997, 73). Second, to trace the core properties of the organisms to their minimal form. This entails a retrospective analysis of biological evolution, from complex multicellular, vertebrate organisms (such as ourselves) to the simplest living forms, that is single cells or unicellular organisms. This second move is crucial because, as phenomenologists since Merleau-Ponty have repeatedly observed, a phenomenological analysis of the organism entails a shift from conceptual categories to the roots of life itself. But this repeated invocation concerning ‘life’ has been left mostly unexamined. The organism is identified with life, and thus with the sphere of perception-action that dominates the understanding of Leib (Barbaras 1999). Jonas is unique in demanding that the analysis be carried to the minimal form of life, to its very origins, where it unites with the perspective of the autopoietic account. It is from this understanding of life in the minimal sense that the qualities of autonomy and purpose can be appreciated most fully in the multicellular organism endowed with a nervous system. 209

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For Jonas an organismic “wholeness is self-integrating in active realization, [its] form is not the result but cause of the dynamic arrangements of matter, and hence the process at the same time is the form” (Jonas 1992, 21). By this central aspect of its functioning metabolism can very well be considered as the defining quality of life: every living being has it, no nonliving has it (Jonas 1973). Consequently, we discover the elusive notion of the “constitution of an identity” as the governing principle of autonomy. Metabolism keeps organisms materially in a steady flux: at no time is their substance one and the same yet they constantly maintain their identity. This unchanged identity is achieved by means of the underlying exchange: In this strange process of being for an observer the particles of matter that make up the organism in each moment are only temporary and passing contents. Their identity does not converge with the identity of the whole through which they pass. But it is exactly by the passing of alien matter as part of itself that the whole maintains its spatial system, the living form. From a material point of view it is never the same, although it keeps its identity exactly by not keeping the same matter. If it ever will be the same as the sum of its matter it has ceased to live (Jonas 1973, 120).

Thus the key distinguishing aspect of the living can be stated as follows: 1) it exchanges its matter and acts thereby from a subject pole partially independent of the underlying matter; 2) as precarious existence it is always threatened by non-existence, so its concern (Sorge) is the need to avoid perishing; in order to do this, it is again completely dependent on matter whose characteristics are the very reason for its concern; 3) even the simplest forms of life have a subjective perspective as a result of existential need; 4) therefore life as such will always be captured in the antinomies of “freedom and necessity, autonomy and dependence, I and world, relatedness and isolation, creativity and mortality” (Jonas 1973, 4). At the center of Jonas’ description stands the fact that organisms materially create themselves, a notion entirely parallel with the definition of autopoi-

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esis proposed at about the same time Jonas formulated a comprehensive concept of his ideas: Our first observation is that Organisms are things whose existence is their own achievement. That means that they only exist because of what they are doing … Therefore the statement, that the existence of organisms is their own achievement simply means: their activity as such is their being (Jonas 1992, 82).

This entails that teleology is a primordial tendency of matter manifesting in the form of organisms. As an embodiment of intrinsic teleology an organism is, in a strong sense, a “natural purpose”. 3. AUTONOMY AND TELEOLOGY The only tool Jonas was missing for a convincing naturalization of Kant was an empirical theory of self-organization and self-production. When Jonas formulated his theories, an early form of self-organization ideas had been advanced. The tendency Jonas was stipulating for matter in his day was philosophically much more daring and speculative than it appears today. He argued that matter had the natural tendency to display the crazy caprice of the living (Jonas 1973). After decades of research this is better understood: the emergent causality of the reciprocal passages between the local elements and the global emergent identity are not a caprice, but inscribed and endogenous to nature itself, a tendency rather than an irregularity. Maturana and Varela formulated this minimal autonomy as a circular process of self-production where the cellular metabolism and the surface membrane it produces are the key terms. Thus an autopoietic system—the minimal living organization—is one that continuously produces the components that specify it, while at the same time realizing it (the system) as a concrete unity in space and time, which makes the network of the production of components possible. An autopoietic system is organized (defined as unity) as a network of processes of production (synthesis and destruction) of components such that these components:

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(i) continuously regenerate the network that is producing them; (ii) and constitute the system as a distinguishable unity in the domain in which they exist (Varela 1997, 75). In its original formulation as well as in the subsequent literature it has been customary to see the central concept of autopoiesis as just one more selforganizing mechanism (which undoubtedly it is), and even to conflate it with dissipative structure or autocatalytic cycles, or mere open systems. Yet these latter ideas remain within the perimeter of a physicalist view of nature and understand the developments they describe as necessary extensions of classical physics. There is an essential difference between these views and autopoiesis: autopoiesis proposes an understanding of the radical transition to the existence of an individual, a relation of an organism with it-self, and the origin of “concern” based on its ongoing self-produced identity. One could envisage the metabolism-membrane circularity entirely from the outside (as most biochemists do). This is not to deny that there is, at the same time, the instauration of a point of view provided by the selfconstruction. Due to this phenomenologically open horizon Jonas holds that even advanced cybernetic theories of regulation do not extend far enough to describe the organism in an unbiased teleological, not teleonomical way (Jonas 1973, 185). Thus autopoeisis is a singularity among self-organizing concepts. On the one hand, it is close to strictly empirical grounds, and yet on the other, it provides the decisive entry point into the origin of individuality and identity, connecting it with the lived human body and experience, in the phenomenological realm. These are the connections that Jonas addresses with so much force, and that make the two lines of thought (identified above) not only contemporaneous but fully complementary. Both seek a hermeneutics of the living, that is, to understand from the inside the purpose and sense of the living. Therefore autopoietic biology—the view that organisms are not only self-regulating but built from cells that materially establish themselves— provides an open link to empirical biology and thus to a re-understanding of teleology as intrinsic or endogenous. Self-production is already and inevitably a self-affirmation that shows the organism to be involved in the fundamental purpose of maintaining its identity. 212

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We have to realize that an individual that finds itself produced by itself is ipso facto a locus of sensation and agency, a living impulse always in relation with its world. There cannot be individuality isolated and folded into itself. There can only be individuality that copes, relates and couples with the surroundings, and inescapably provides its own world of sense. Empirical developmental genetics are starting to discover the subjectivity of autopoietic units which build up the living body. Kirschner and Gerhart describe the growth of embryonic developmental cores in terms of a biology of subjects or biosemiotics. Developmental pathways are coupled by “weak linkage”, a term that designates the lack of causal connection between a certain genetic constellation and the developmental outcome for instance. The autopoietic units react to the stimuli that they encounter from their somatic environment by “interpretation” (Kirschner, Gerhart 2005, 187). This process has been called “permissive signalling” (Kirschner, Gerhart 2005, 127). Embryonic developmental cores are autonomous to a certain degree, despite being limited by the necessity of bodily integration. Other authors describe similar results (Dassow, Odell 2002). We can clearly observe, that hands-on empirical research is no longer forced to describe its latest discoveries in the terminology of objective Newtonian physics, cause and effect alone, but frames its results in the language of meaning and value, so long reserved for the sciences of subjectivity, the humanities. The emerging paradigm is subject-centered while at the same time focused upon the laws of materially embodied entities. By putting at the center the autonomy of even the minimal cellular organism we inevitably find an intrinsic teleology. According to its selfconstitution, the organic coupling and change must always be directed at maintaining the process of self-realization. An autopoietic system is necessarily self-referential: its actions consist in establishing the dynamic processes of keeping alive. Outside stimuli only enter the sphere of relevance of such a unit in function of their existential meaning in relation to the process of self-establishment. They acquire a valence that is dual at its basis: attraction or rejection, approach or escape. Form, then, is not just an abstract goal schematized by a genetic program, but a material task to fulfill from moment to moment. The genetic program influences form, but only in so far as it is interpreted by the soma according to the actual needs of self-maintenance. Without the individuality of the living body the program 213

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is nothing. This fact runs totally counter to Dawkins’ conception that bodies are machines acting teleonomically in order to realize their underlying program and to maintain it; this conception of bodies illustrates an idealistic principle of reason creating artifacts. Conversely, if we follow the autopoiesis-Jonas inversion, if we accept autopoiesis as embodied teleology, we reintroduce the subject into biology. This logic radically reduces the separation of pure natural science from the reign of values. By defining itself and thereby creating the domains of self and world, the organism opens a perspective which changes the world from a neutral place to an Umwelt that always means something in relation to the organism. Organisms transcend the neutrality of pure physics and create their domain of concern. This condition is unique to autopoietic systems. The organism has to remain in the field of physico-chemical laws in order to maintain a “coupling” with the underlying energetical structures. At the same time, the organism does not follow a linear causality as it creates its behavior by its own regulation. So the environment provides the basis for the organism’s behavior precisely by establishing a continuous challenge to it: The difference between environment and world is the surplus of signification which haunts the understanding of living and of cognition, and which is at the root of how the self becomes one [...]. There is no food significance in sucrose except when a bacterium swims upgradient and its metabolism uses the molecule in a way that allows its identity to continue. This surplus is obviously not indifferent to the regularities and texture (i.e. the ‘laws’) that operate in the environment, that sucrose can create a gradient and traverse a cell membrane, and so on. On the contrary, the system’s world is built on these regularities, which is what ensures that it can maintain its coupling at all times (Varela 1991, 86).

Only a small part of all dynamics in the environment enter the domain of relevance of the organism as perturbations. All non-perturbative interactions are exterior to the experience of the system. Only a stimulus which influences the steady state of the organisms is real—just because it has such an influence. It follows for the organism that every influential contact with the world has an existential value, prefiguring in a prototypal form the qualities the world unfolds. The perspective of a challenged and self214

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affirming organism lays a new grid over the world: a ubiquitous scale of value. To have world for an organism thus first and foremost means to have value. It brings forth this value—the goal of its intrinsic teleology— by the process of its ongoing identity-making: The fundamental point of departure is that life says ‘Yes!’ to itself. In wishing itself to continue it declares itself as a value [...]. May we thus say that mortality is the narrow door through which value—the thing addressed by ‘yes’—entered the otherwise indifferent universe? (Jonas 1992, 87).

The primordial structure of value then manifests in what can be now be called the subjective dimension even for the simplest organisms. Only in the light of the “desire” of the living does the world gain structure and gestalt, and those are only understandable in the light of these existential needs. A world without organisms would be a world without meaning; and it is in life’s incessant need, that a subjective perspective is established in the world. Subjectivity is the absolute interest an organism takes in its continued existence. This dimension is the biological degree zero. It is also the direct junction of our experience with the rest of creation. To unfold its intrinsic teleology, an organism needs the incessant input and unhindered supply of its material building blocks. Once again, this necessity is governed by a principle of autonomy, or freedom, as Jonas says: the fact, that a living system is able to become an ontological center, that it is able to organize itself into a form that is not explainable by the features of the underlying matter (the pure necessity) alone. This autonomy then is nothing other than true teleological behavior. Organic teleology results from the persistent gap between the realization of the living and its underlying matter. Since form is an ongoing process happening purposively to matter and is not matter’s entropically “natural” state, there is always the possibility, and final certainty, of death. Jonas emphasizes this existential situation: the teleological, circular, self-referential movement of the living. To live means to say yes to oneself emphatically as the basic movement of existence, because existence is always existence of form from and against pure matter. To speak of freedom or autonomy thus directly links the biological sphere to a teleological account of ontology. On a material, concrete level

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we can observe in the organism the flip side of a mechanical causality which, in fine, is the final causality that is the basic process of life itself, the establishment of an identity. This happens neither by revising physical laws for particle-interactions in applying them in a special way to organisms, nor by imposing an extra-mechanical entelechy. Rather it is the “subject-pole” that is the organism in its autonomy, which changes linear causality by structuring matter in the process of self-realization to maintain itself as this process. 4. LIFE AFTER KANT: AN IMMODEST CONCLUSION It is amazing that Kant provided a visionary account for self-organization that anticipates the definiton of autopoiesis almost literally, yet within the bounds of a transcendental analysis. Jonas also offers an autopoietic criterion for defining life, which is metabolism, if unfolded into its full scope of phenomenological consequences. Given that autopoiesis emerged within science to address the same concerns, the interpretative circle becomes complete, extending the Kantian lineage into new insights concerning natural purposes. If we follow the conclusions from autopoietic biology, immediately we find absolute self-interest emerging as a kind of intrinsic or endogenous ontological teleology. In this respect autopoiesis is the necessary empirical ground for Jonas’ theory of value. Together both theories provide an empirical background for the Leibapriori found in the late works of Kant, and together they can resolve the paradoxes about organic purposefulness in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. Teleology, understood as intrinsic teleology, turns out to be an empirical feature of the organism, its sine qua non condition. It is objective not in an absolute sense, but only insofar as an organism is a center that organizes matter into a living being and its Umwelt, hence enacting on this stage the original split of the subject and its world and their dialectical interrelatedness. Here we rediscover what Kant meant by intellectus archetypus, the reason that understands biological realities directly. After his lifelong reflections, and with only the exception of his Opus Posthumum, Kant thought this understanding impossible for a human subject. But we are not only human, we are organic subjects in a broader sense. Could not our perspec-

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tive as animate matter enable us to see with the eyes of an intellectus archetypus? We can describe the living through our embodied intellect. This embodiment furnishes us with primary evidence (as Jonas is inclined to say), an intuition given us by the right of our factual membership in the organic world. We have access to it, partaking in the structures and cognitive concepts biology provides. Our immodest conclusion is that although Kant foresaw the impossibility of a purely mechanical, Newtonian account of life, nonetheless he was wrong in denying the possibility of a coherent explanation of organism. This “Newton of the Grassblade” is surely not Darwin, who offered a Newtonian theory for biological form. The fuller understanding of the organism needs a different approach. The real “Newton of the Grassblade” is not to be an individual person, but a historical convergence of solidary strands of philosophical and biological thinking. This disseminated Newton, whose shape we have outlined throughout these pages, offers precisely the required Copernican turn: an objective account of biological individuality that comes full circle to unite with the constitution of a subject. We conclude that it is possible to go beyond Kant in an account of life and purpose, but only after almost two centuries and radically new developments in both science and philosophical research. Truly we stand on the shoulders of a giant.

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Paolo Costa is a Senior Researcher at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (Trent). He has studied at the Universities of Milan, Parma, and Toronto. He is the author of two books: Verso un’ontologia dell’umano. Antropologia filosofica e filosofia politica in Charles Taylor (2001) and Un’idea di umanità. Etica e natura dopo Darwin (2007). He is currently working on the topic of the future of human nature. Nicoletta De Cian (PhD in Philosophy from Venice University) is a research fellow in the Philosophy Department at Padua University. She works on German classical philosophy, especially on Kant and Schopenhauer. She is author of a book on Schopenhauer’s early production (Redenzione, colpa, salvezza. All’origine della filosofia di Schopenhauer, 2002) and of articles on the same topic. She is member of the committee of the Hyperschopenhauer project for a digital edition of Schopenhauer’s works and manuscripts. Currently, she is editing Schopenhauer’s notebook of G.E. Schulze’s lessons in Metaphysics. Tristana Dini studied for her PhD in philosophy at the Universities of Naples, Messina and Bochum. She has published a book about Jacobi’s History of Philosophy (Il “filo storico” della verità. La storia della filosofia secondo Frederich Henrich Jacobi, 2005), and several articles about the relationship between religion and politics in the age of German Idealism. Since 2004 she has worked at Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento where she researches Biopolitics and Gender theories. Her recent publications are on this topic. Cord Friebe (PhD in philosophy) is currently Assistant Professor at the Philosophy Department of Bonn University with the Research Project “Time and Existence in Special Relativity and in Kant”, supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). His research and teaching areas are 1) philosophy of physics and Kantian philosophy; and 2) philosophy of biology and psychoanalyses. His main publications are: “Kant und die Spezielle Relativitätstheorie” (Kant-Studien 1/2008, 30-45), and Theorie des Unbewussten (2005).

Luca Illetterati is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Padua. The main theme of his research is the relationship between philosophy and science of nature in the philosophical tradition. He works on the philosophical debate over the notion of the organism with special regard to German classical philosophy from Kant to Heidegger. He is the co-editor of books about Hegel, Hemsterhuis, Heidegger and the author of some volumes including: Natura e Ragione. Sullo sviluppo dell’idea di natura in Hegel (1995); Figure del limite. Forme ed esperienze della finitezza (1996); and Fra tecnica e natura. Problemi di ontologia del vivente in Heidegger (2002). Francesca Michelini studied for her PhD in philosophy at the Universities of Genoa and Munich. She is the author of Sostanza e assoluto. La funzione di Spinoza nella Scienza della logica di Hegel (2004) and of several publications on German Idealism. She currently works at the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Trento on the topic of philosophy of biology (natural teleology and living beings). She co-edited (with Paolo Costa) the collection Natura senza fine. Il naturalismo moderno e le sue forme (2006). Antonio M. Nunziante has been a lecturer in Theoretical Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy in the University of Padua since 2005. He is the author of a volume concerning the development of the concept of organism in G.W. Leibniz (Organismo come Armonia. La genesi del concetto di organismo W. Leibniz, 2002) and of several articles and essays on the same topic. Since 2004 he has been on the managing committee of the European Society of Early Modern Thought. His research takes two directions: 1) the natural philosophy of Leibniz; and b) the concept of “function” in the contemporary cognitive debate and the issue of “visual perception” (in connection with the neurosciences). Predrag Šustar (BS in Molecular Biology; BA and PhD in Philosophy) Assistant Professor at the University of Rijeka (Croatia), 2003; Postdoctoral Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Columbia University of New York, 2006-7. He is a member of several Croatian and international philosophical associations. His recent publications include: Il problema delle leggi biologiche (2005), ‘Crick’s Notion of Genetic Information and the “Central Dogma” 222

of Molecular Biology’, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science (2007), ‘Neo-Functional Analysis: Phylogenetical Restrictions on Causal Role Functions’, Philosophy of Science (forthcoming). Research and teaching areas: Philosophy of the biological and biomedical sciences, General Philosophy of science, Philosophical Anthropology, and the History of Modern Philosophy Georg Toepfer studied biology and philosophy in Würzburg, Buenos Aires and Hamburg. His dissertation in philosophy was about the methodological role of teleological reasoning in biology (Zweckbegriff und Organismus, 2004). He is the author of several articles on philosophy of biology and co-editor of a German introduction to this field (Philosophie der Biologie, 2005). Currently, Georg Toepfer is the academic administrator of the Collaborative Research Centre “Transformations of Antiquity” at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Francisco J. Varela was Directeur de Recherche at the French CNRS in Paris. The Chile-born neurobiologist and philosopher is one of the founders of Biological Constructivism and Autopoiesis theory together with Humberto R. Maturana. Later he developed the theory of “Enactivism” or mutual embodiment. He developed the first-person-perspective in neurobiology and has applied phenomenological insights to brain research. Varela has also widely researched on the relationship between biology and ethics, and the similarities between enactive positions and the Buddhist tradition. Andreas Weber Andreas Weber is a science writer and book author based in Berlin, Germany. He holds a diploma in marine biology and a PhD in cultural studies. His long standing interest is in how human feeling, subjectivity and aesthetics are related to basic biological realities. He proposes a “Poetics of Nature” to overcome the mind-body gap and the assumption that the biosphere is dead matter. He is the author of Natur als Bedeutung. Versuch einer semiotischen Theorie des Lebendigen (2003), and Alles fühlt. Mensch, Natur und die Revolution der Lebenswissenschaften (2007).

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