Life, Concept and Purpose: The Organism as a Connection in Kant’s Critical Philosophy and Georges Canguilhem’s Historical Epistemology

Abstract

AbstractThe focus on the concept of organism, considered as a totality, is a common feature both in the work of Georges Canguilhem and Immanuel Kant. Given Canguilhem’s strong Kantian training, in this text I try to locate the similarities and differences between the two authors. In the first part, I show the close connection between concept, life and knowledge in Canguilhem’s philosophy. I then try to demonstrate that, for both authors, knowledge is formed from vital force, and consequently from the organism. In part two, I analyze Kant’s idea of the organism from his pre-critical works up until the Opus Postumum. Here, Kant considers the fundamental connection between organism and conceptual knowledge. In the Opus Postumum, for the first time, the organism is presented as the condition of possibility of knowledge; as a material a priori. In the last section, once I have discussed the Kantian tradition Canguilhem was part of, I will explore his reception of the Kantian idea of the organism and the development that he proposes of the idea of organic totality after the discovery of DNA.KeywordsOrganismPurposeKantCanguilhemBiologyLifeConceptKnowledge