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By reappraising the biological theory of vitalism, Canguilhem attempted to give pride of place to the idea that acquiring knowledge about living beings is an activity of living beings. Canguilhem’s legacy is exactly this: rationality is rooted in life, not the other way around. And yet, in “Le concept et la vie” (from 1966) and “De la science et de la contre-science” (from 1971), Canguilhem seems to tell another story about the complex intertwinement of life and rationality. Not only are we condemned to enter the realm of rationality (i.e., to take part in logical activities such as forming concepts and judgments about the world and about our own condition) because we have needs and desires as living beings, but we also have needs and desires as living beings that depend on the fact we are always already caught up in the dynamics of rationality, i.e., always already logically active. At this point, Canguilhem’s thinking comes closer than ever to a Kantian, transcendental point of view on rationality. Paradoxically, the inscription of human rationality in organic life brings with it the idea of a subject, divided between two inverse but correlated realms in which it cannot but participate: the singular realm of sensibility and the general realm of logic.

This edited volume presents papers on this alternative philosophy of biology that could be called “continental philosophy of biology,” and the variety of positions and solutions that it has spawned. In doing so, it contributes to debates in the history and philosophy of science and the history of philosophy of science, as well as to the craving for ‘history’ and/or ‘theory’ in the theoretical biological disciplines. In addition, however, it also provides inspiration for a broader image of philosophy of biology, in which these traditional issues may have a place. The volume devotes specific attention to the work of Georges Canguilhem, which is central to this alternative tradition of “continental philosophy of biology”. This is the first collection on Georges Canguilhem and the Continental tradition in philosophy of biology. The book should be of interest to philosophers of biology, continental philosophers, historians of biology and those interested in broader traditions in philosophy of science.

In this Introduction we lay out the context of a ‘Continental philosophy of biology’ and suggest why Georges Canguilhem’s place in such a philosophy is important. There is not one single program for Continental philosophy of biology, but Canguilhem’s vision, which he referred to at one stage as ‘biological philosophy’, is a significant one, located in between the classic holism-reductionism tensions, significantly overlapping with philosophy of medicine, philosophy of technology and other themes moving away from the more common existential and phenomenological motifs of post-war European thought. Chapters examine (among other themes) his relation to Lebensphilosophie, to authors such as Kant, Nietzsche and Marjorie Grene, and to current theoretical biology

Dit artikel beoogt twee vragen op te nemen. Ten eerste: wat zegt Freud in De Droomduiding over de wens? Met andere woorden, wat is zijn definitie van een wens? Ten tweede: wat zegt Freud in De Droomduiding over de wensvervulling? In aansluiting hiermee zal de vraag van de bevrediging, en dan in het bijzonder van de behoeftebevrediging, aan de orde worden gesteld, in connectie met de conceptie van het psychisch apparaat in De Droomduiding. Cruciaal in deze bevraging is of het psychisch apparaat voor Freud, op het moment van De Droomduiding, beantwoordt aan een logica waarbij een bepaald homeostatisch evenwicht in functie van behoeftebevrediging wordt nagestreefd, dan wel aan een logica die net niet dit evenwicht tot maatstaf neemt, maar daarentegen de gedachte open zet dat het psychisch apparaat ultiem niet georganiseerd werd én functioneert vanuit een homeostatisch principe.

In this paper, we propose an alternative reading of Kant's Towards Perpetual Peace that stresses the ideological moment of his cosmopolitan and perpetual peace project. On the basis of our reading, we conclude that i) according to Kant every humanitarian and/or cosmopolitan discourse needs a grand narrative (ideology) for convincing and mobilizing people, and ii) contemporary cosmopolitan and humanitarian discourses lack precisely this grand narrative and, consequently, the convincing power every political project requires according to Kant.

Ik ontwikkel het concept van historische epistemologie op twee manieren. Vooreerst sta ik stil bij wat een concept kan heten en wat het kan betekenen om een epistemologie of een wetenschapsfilosofie conceptueel te noemen.Ten tweede stel ik ik de vraag van de temporaliteit die speelt om en rond het conceptuele. Het is misschien niet meteen zo duidelijk wat het betekent om te stellen dat een historische epistemologie allereerst gericht is op het ‘begrijpelijk maken’ van concepten door ze historisch te contextualiseren. Het lijkt wel alsof concepten afgesloten pakketjes zijn die men vanuit een enigszins afstandelijke methodologie in de tijd kan bestuderen. Ik betwist dat dit de meest adequate manier is om over de wetenschappelijke kennisvorm en haar ontwikkelingen na te denken. Ik betwist dat dit de meest adequate manier is om na te denken over wat in onze westerse traditie concepten zijn, en om te vatten wat er gebeurt wanneer we die proberen in woorden uit te drukken.

Starting from Denis Noble's criticism on the modern synthesis, this article argues that (i) the author's presentation of the modern synthesis focusses too one-sidedly on the phenomenal characteristics of the living, whereby it is made easily suitable to his criticisms, but risks to remain trapped in a territory-struggle; (ii) this criticism lacks an explicit focus on logical matters, and more in particular on the synthetic principles required to situate the relevancy or irrelevancy of phenomenal characteristics beyond territory-struggles. A brief sketch of how the principle of teleology calls for reflexivity allows us to reveal the tension in Noble's account between, on the one hand, the way in which he stresses the importance of metaphors and language, and, on the other hand, the way in which he invokes empirical arguments to assess the illusory character of certain metaphors.

This chapter discusses the Lacanian viewpoint on psychoanalysis serves as the main background. It explores the Lacanian background further implies that the subject, then, is “what is represented by a signifier for another signifier”. The signifier is, in the first place, consistent with S. Freud’s model, in itself a thing, which only secondarily acquires its linguistic dimension in relation to something it may denote. A common characteristic of Freud’s word presentation, Jacques Lacan’s signifier and A. Damasio’s lexical unit is that they are phonologically encoded. Metaphorization is an operation whereby a meaning of a signifier is put into an unusual lexical position which then enforces the reading of the signifier: in essence, then, it is secondary processes getting hold of primary process language associativity. The metaphors truly formalize the logical dynamics of how primary and secondary processes interact for targeted action.