Hegel's Philosophy of Biology? A Programmatic Overview

Abstract

This paper presents what we call ‘Hegel's philosophy of biology’ to a target audience of both Hegel scholars and philosophers of biology. It also serves to introduce a special issue of the Hegel Bulletin entirely dedicated to a first mapping of this yet to be explored domain of Hegel studies. We submit that Hegel's philosophy of biology can be understood as a radicalization of the Kantian approach to organisms, and as prefiguring current philosophy of biology in important ways, especially with regard to the nature of biological organization, the role of teleology in biological explanation, and the relation between life and cognition.

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

“… 4 See the special issue ‘Nature in Spirit’ of Critical Horizons (2012, 13:2), Pinkard (2012), Testa (2013), Lumsden (2013), Padui (2013), Peters (2016), Alznauer (2016), Khurana (2017), Ng (2020), Gambarotto & Illetterati (2020), Ferrini (forthcoming), to mention just some recent examples. On the Sellarsian influence in reading Hegel, see Corti (2018).…”

“…See note 22, and Alznauer's (2016: 204) explanation of the difference between damage and need. On the essential role of feeling of lack in animal life, see Gambarotto & Illetterati (2020: 13–14).…”

Sympoietic Art Practice in Co-expressive Re-worlding with Hegel’s “Vegetal Subject”

“…Stone concludes her re-reading of Hegel as follows: "We can, and should, rediscover Hegel as a thinker who seeks to recognize agency, rationality, and intrinsic value in nature, and who therefore has a significant contribution to make to the contemporary task of reappraising the metaphysical and ethical status of the natural world" (2005, 170). In the years since Stone came to this conclusion, pro-Hegelian scholarship (Gambarotto & Illetterati, 2020) continues to defend the Philosophy of Nature, arguing, for example, that a deeper understanding of his metaphysics reveals a potentially plant-friendlier Hegel. Marder also points out that Hegel does not claim that plants are devoid of selfhood, but concedes a limited selfhood even to plants (2013,70).…”

“…N. Findlay's Introduction to the Miller translation(Hegel, 1970a, v-vii), and M. J. Petry's more extensive introduction and notes to his three-volume translation(Hegel, 1970c) were landmarks at the time.7 These more recent edited books also argue that Hegel was fully aware of the science of his day but, in fact, his own work represents a philosophy of nature rather than an attempt at empirical science. A recent literature review and discussion of Hegel's views on nature is provided byGambarotto & Illetterati (2020).8 The Miller translation reads: "Consequently the process whereby the plant differentiates itself into distinct parts and sustains itself, is one in which it comes forth from itself and falls apart into a number of individuals, …" [italics added].160 Sympoietic Art Practice in Co-expressive Re-worlding withHegel's "Vegetal Subject"…”

Enactivism and the Hegelian Stance on Intrinsic Purposiveness

“…By relying on this distinction, the theory of autonomy argues that references to teleological notions are not just heuristic shortcuts and that, instead, biology and cognitive science should integrate a naturalized account of intrinsic purposiveness into their theoretical framework. A convergence between the Hegelian stance and the theory of autonomy with respect to their understanding of intrinsic purposiveness has been increasingly emphasized in the literature (Michelini, 2012;Michelini et al, 2018;Gambarotto & Illetterati, 2020). In fact, some recent contributions portray Hegel as endorsing an account of biological functions consistent with the "organizational" account stemming from the theory of autonomy (Cooper, 2020;Maraguat, 2020).…”