Abstract

The article addresses the old question of vitalism, starting with a very concrete and recent example: the successful laboratory production of the polio virus. Following this, the author recalls two types of arguments on the nature of living being: those of Leibniz and those of Claude Bernard. If, according to the biologists who produced the virus themselves, life’s unique trait is self-replication, what should one make of the dominant position in philosophy of biology today, which denies any argument based on the substantial attribution of properties to living being? The essay concludes by suggesting a new way of acknowledging the specificity of life without turning it into a metaphysical property; a way which emphasizes the import of the philosophy of biology itself