Hegel on the Normativity of Animal Life

Mills, Nicolás García

doi:10.1017/hgl.2020.15

Cited by 3 publications

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“…It should be noted that these authors differ both in what they identify as the main challenge that Hegel responds to and in their reconstructions of Hegel's response. In this paper, I do not attempt to settle this disagreement, though.3 SeeCooper (2020) andMaraguat (2020).4 SeeRand (2013),Alznauer (2016),Mills (2020).5 As will become clear shortly, I take Hegel to make a philosophically significant distinction between the logical concept of life and the concept of the natural organism. The logical concept of life has systematic significance for Hegel beyond its bearing on the concept of the natural organism.…”

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Logical and natural life in Hegel

Kabeshkin

2021

European J of Philosophy

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In this article, I discuss the specific ways in which Hegel's account of life and organisms advances upon Kant's account of natural purposes in the third Critique. First of all, I argue that it is essential for Hegel's account that it contains two levels. The first level is that of logical life, the discussion of which does not depend on any empirical knowledge of natural organisms. I provide my reconstruction of this logical account of life that answers to the objection made by a number of Hegel scholars to the effect that Hegel does in fact rely on empirical knowledge at this place in the logic.The second level is that of natural organisms themselves. I argue that it is with the help of this separation of the logical and natural levels, as well as his doctrine of the impotence of nature, that Hegel, unlike Kant, (a) is able to claim that not everything in natural organisms is purposive, and (b) provide a philosophical, and not merely empirical, account of the distinction between plants and animals. In both of these respects, Hegel's position can be seen as a welcome advance over Kant.

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confidence: 99%

Logical and natural life in Hegel

Kabeshkin

2021

European J of Philosophy

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“…This part of Hegel's account of the organisational level of normativity is not, as some commentators argue, "historical" (Mills 2020). It is also more fundamental than various other forms of normative activity in the organism (Pinkard 2012;Ikäheimo 2021) 21 .…”

Section: Hegel and The Organisational Account Of The Organismmentioning

confidence: 99%

The ‘Is’ and the ‘Ought’ of the Animal Organism: Hegel’s Account of Biological Normativity

Corti

2022

HPLS

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This paper investigates Hegel’s account of the animal organism as it is presented in the Philosophy of Nature, with a special focus on its normative implications. I argue that the notion of “organisation” is fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity. The paper starts by showing how a Hegelian approach takes up the scientific image of organism and assigns a basic explanatory role to the notion of “organisation” in its understanding living beings. Moving from this premise, the paper turns to the group of accounts in contemporary theoretical biology known as “organisational accounts” (OA), which offer a widely debated strategy for naturalizing teleology and normativity in organisms. As recent scholarship recognizes, these accounts explicitly rely on insights from Kant and Post-Kantianism. I make the historical and conceptual argument that Hegel’s view of the organism shares several basic commitments with OAs, especially regarding the notion of “organisational closure”. I assess the account of normativity that such accounts advance and its implications for how we approach Hegel. Finally, I argue that the notion of “organisation” is more fundamental to Hegel’s theory of animal normativity than the Aristotelian notion of “Gattung” or “species”, which by contrast appears derivative – at least in the Philosophy of Nature and the Lectures – and does not play the central role in his account maintained by some scholars.

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Spirit's Embeddedness in Nature: Hegel's Decentring of Self-Legislation

Ikäheimo¹

2021

Hegel Bulletin

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A recently widely accepted view has it that the nature-spirit distinction in Hegel is to be understood as a distinction between a space or realm that is not normative, or does not involve norms, and one that is or does. Notwithstanding the merits of this view, it has tended to create a separation between nature and spirit which is both philosophically troubling and difficult to reconcile with the picture of Hegel as the arch enemy of abstract or unreconciled dualisms. In this paper I aim to show that the defining phenomenon for this view—collective self-government by norms—is on Hegel's account both dependent on living nature that involves normativity broadly conceived all the way down and also subject to the ultimate normative or evaluative principle of Hegel's Philosophy of Spirit—concrete freedom—the essence of spirit according to him. This is to say that for Hegel the normativity of collectively administered norms is neither the most basic nor the highest form of normativity.

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Hegel on the Normativity of Animal Life

Cited by 3 publications

References 14 publications

Logical and natural life in Hegel

Logical and natural life in Hegel

The ‘Is’ and the ‘Ought’ of the Animal Organism: Hegel’s Account of Biological Normativity

Spirit's Embeddedness in Nature: Hegel's Decentring of Self-Legislation

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