Philippe Huneman, "When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism" (Routledge, 2026)

About this episode

Philippe Huneman discusses Kant's contributions to the concept of the organism in modern biology.

Central to modern biology and the study of life is the concept of the organism—roughly, a body with interconnected parts that make specific contributions to the development and functioning of the whole. There are competing organism concepts even today, but the 18th century was a critical period in which thinkers gradually shed prior ideas of life in terms of a body with a principle of spontaneous motion, a body as a mere physical mechanism, or a body infused with vital spirits. In When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian approaches to the concept of organism (Routledge, 2026), Philippe Huneman combines extensive scholarship in the history and philosophy of biology with Kantian critical philosophy and metaphysics to trace Kant’s contributions to the emerging organism concept. Huneman discusses the Critique of the Power of Judgment and other writings in which Kant developed a view of organisms as natural purposes and in which part-whole reasoning by the faculty of judgment is a condition of the possibility of thinking of organisms at all. Huneman, who is director of research at the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at CNRS and University of Paris 1 –…

People in this episode

Guest: Philippe Huneman

Topics covered

• biology
• philosophy
• Kantian thought
• organism concept
• history of biology

Keywords

• organism
• Kant
• biology
• philosophy
• natural purposes
• part-whole reasoning
• history of science

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, CNRS, University of Paris 1 – Pantheon-Sorbonne

Books & works: When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism, Critique of the Power of Judgment

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