University of Padua, Piazza Capitaniato 3, 35139, Padova, Italy.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2022 Apr 29;44(2):17. doi: 10.1007/s40656-022-00498-8.
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.
本文考察了黑格尔在《自然哲学》中对动物有机体的论述，特别关注其规范含义。我认为，“组织”的概念是黑格尔动物规范性理论的基础。本文首先展示了一种黑格尔的方法如何接受生物体的科学形象，并在理解生命时赋予“组织”概念基本的解释作用。基于这一前提，本文转向当代理论生物学中被称为“组织学解释”（OA）的一组解释，这些解释为生物体的目的论和规范性提供了一种广泛争论的自然化策略。正如最近的学术研究所认识到的，这些解释明确依赖于康德和后康德主义的观点。我提出了历史和概念上的论点，即黑格尔的有机体观点与 OA 有几个基本的承诺，特别是在“组织封闭”的概念上。我评估了这些解释所提出的规范性解释及其对我们如何接近黑格尔的影响。最后，我认为，“组织”的概念在黑格尔的动物规范性理论中比亚里士多德的“属”或“物种”的概念更为基础，相比之下，后一种概念在《自然哲学》和讲座中至少是派生的，并没有像一些学者所认为的那样在他的解释中发挥核心作用。
