CONTRIBUTI / Gregorio Demarchi
Schelling and Canguilhem. Introduction to a Dialogue
The article undertakes to compare Schelling’s and Canguilhem’s views on the relationship between life, laws of nature and mechanism. By their common reference to the debates between mechanists and vitalists that shaped the life sciences in the 18th century, a historical background emerges, which is sketched in the first part of the article. In the second part, a comparison is made between Schelling’s conception of the ‘lawless lawfulness’ of the living and Xavier Bichat’s vitalism, which emphasizes the irregularity of the vital manifestations. Against the background of this comparison, the third part of the article then shows that both Schelling’s ‘philosophy of the organic’ and Canguilhem’s vitalism represent a radicalization of Bichat’s approach. Both authors do not see the normative autonomy of the living as an exception in a world otherwise integrally regimented by mechanical laws of nature, but as the very condition of possibility of mechanism. The conclusion shows how topical these conceptions are in the context of contemporary debates in the philosophy of biology.
