U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 1 Chapter 12 2 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? 3 Goldstein, Canguilhem and the Project 4 of Biophilosophy 5 Charles T. Wolfe 6 Nous n'avons pas l'outrecuidance de prétendre rénover la 7 médecine en lui incorporant une métaphysique 8 Canguilhem (1972, p. 9). 9 10 11 la vie déconcerte la logique 12 Canguilhem (1977, p. 1) 13 14 1 Introduction 15 In what follows I reflect on the possible contribution of Georges Canguilhem 16 (1904–1995) to a discourse in the philosophy of the life sciences which would not 17 be content to locate itself squarely within either of two classic and enduring 18 orthodoxies: reductionism or holism. Granted, these two extremes often coexist, if 19 not very happily, and the different subdisciplines approach them in a very different 20 way. As Gayon has noted (Gayon 2010), the philosophy of biology as a profes21 sional discipline, which primarily focuses on a kind of specialized conceptual 22 analysis aiming at clarifying the implications and consequences of biological claims 23 in mainstream science, has kept a safe distance from what it perceives as "vitalism" 24 throughout its existence as an Anglophone genre. This is less true of the philosophy 25 of medicine, inasmuch as it focuses more on "whole person" analyses, subjectivity, 26 qualitative dimensions of suffering and well-being, and so on (see Giroux (2010) 27 for a useful contrast between Canguilhem and analytic philosophy of medicine). C.T. Wolfe (&) Sarton Centre for History of Science, Department of Philosophy and Moral Science, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium e-mail: charles.wolfe@ugent.be Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 197/212 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 D. Meacham (ed.), Medicine and Society, New Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, Philosophy and Medicine 120, DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-9870-9_12 197 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 28 Canguilhem was a prominent figure in these disciplines, particularly in the rather 29 short-lived intellectual formation known as "biophilosophy" (along with Raymond 30 Ruyer and Gilbert Simondon; Ruyer's early works are contemporary with 31 Canguilhem's, in the 1940s, while Simondon shares with Canguilhem a 'heyday' in 32 the 1960s). The latter precisely was the project to understand Life, living beings, the 33 concept of organism, and so on, in terms not exclusively dictated either by 34 mechanistic science or by the philosophical fellow-travellers of such science. The 35 question of whether such a project is necessarily "vitalistic" or "biochauvinist" [to 36 use a recent coinage by the biological theorist and embodied-cognition researcher 37 Ezequiel Di Paolo, in Di Paolo (2009)], and of course, what these terms mean in the 38 present context, shall be part of my concern in this essay. 39 Canguilhem sometimes described himself as a vitalist-playfully, but perhaps not 40 ironically (Canguilhem 1965 and 1977, Preface), and one should not forget that in the 41 decades he did so, particularly the 1950s–1960s, it was at the very least provocative 42 (Geroulanos 2009); there was after all no scholarship either on eighteenth-century 43 vitalism (like that of the Montpellier School) or on early nineteenth-century German 44 biology (like Blumenbach's embryology), nor of course was there such a thing as 45 "theory" and its invocations of vitalism (such as Bennett 2010b). Canguilhem 46 returned to the theme several times, and of course in a broader sense if we reflect on 47 some of the core arguments of his classic, The Normal and the Pathological, we find 48 an implicit presupposition that normativity is a power or capacity proper to living 49 beings. This may not be full-blown "vitalism" [whatever that is; seeWolfe (2011a, b); 50 Normandin and Wolfe (2013)], but it is an insistence that there is something unique 51 about living entities that makes them creators of a certain world which they inhabit. 52 This should not be taken so much in the sense of classical idealism, for which 53 "nothing whatsoever can have a positive relation to the living being if the latter is 54 not in its own self the possibility of this relation, i.e. if the relation is not determined 55 by the Notion and hence not directly immanent in the subject" (Hegel 1817/1970, 56 § 359R, p. 385); it is closer for instance to von Uexküll's sense of Umwelt, 57 according to which "[e]very subject spins out, like the spider's threads, its relations 58 to certain qualities of things and weaves them into a solid web, which carries its 59 existence" (von Uexküll 2010, p. 53). But we can also detect in this idea of living 60 beings as creators, some Nietzschean overtones or arrière-pensées [and of course 61 Foucault pointed to this aspect in his mentor's work, emphasizing that "forming 62 concepts is a way of living, not of killing life, of living in complete mobility and not 63 immobilizing life" (Foucault 1985/1989, p. 21)]: the idea that values, norms and 64 other higher-level constructs are in fact products of our vital instincts. For 65 Canguilhem, who was interested in such illustrations of the unpredictability of life 66 as monsters: 67 Man is only truly healthy when he is capable of multiple norms, when he is more than 68 normal. The measure of health is a certain capacity to overcome organic crises in order to 198 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 198/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 69 establish a new physiological order, different from the initial order. In all seriousness, health 70 is the ability [le luxe] to fall ill and then get over it. On the contrary, illness is the reduction 71 of the power to overcome other illnesses.1 72 Closer to the present topic, we can also recognize in this idea the influence of 73 Kurt Goldstein, who elaborated, in his lengthy and difficult work on "the structure 74 of the organism" (Goldstein 1934/1995), a conception of organisms as interpretive 75 and indeed meaning-creating beings; beings for whom being alive, acting, is, aside 76 from other metabolic processes, also a process of the production of meaning. Or, in 77 a more recent restatement of the same core idea: "organisms are subjects having 78 purposes according to values encountered in the making of their living" (Weber and 79 Varela 2002, p. 102). Differently put, the kind of vitalism at work in Goldstein and 80 Canguilhem is explicitly not like the vitalism of those people who contemplate little 81 squiggly bundles of life (from Trembley's polyp to Driesch's sea urchin blasto82 meres, via Réaumur's frogs which he made to wear little taffetas shorts to catch 83 their sperm) and then assert that they have witnessed the difference between Life 84 and non-Life: "A vitalist, I would suggest, is someone who is led to reflect on the 85 nature of life more because of the contemplation of an egg than because she has 86 handled a hoist or a bellows" (Canguilhem 1965a, p. 88). Rather, it is a vitalism of 87 meaning and projection. 88 Yet Canguilhem (unlike, say, Hans Jonas) is genuinely concerned with the 89 nature of biological life, not with some secret way of defending human uniqueness 90 over and against the rest of the physical universe. In his major collection of essays 91 on the topic, The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas opposes the world of conscious 92 organisms to the "dead" world of mechanical Nature and insists that "the point of 93 life itself" is "its self-centered individuality," which he insists must be an "onto94 logical concept" (Jonas 1966, p. 79); from the outset, he explains that he is inter95 ested in biological processes such as metabolism in as much as they are ultimately 96 indicative of "freedom" (3; see also Kass 1995).2 Indeed, vitalism has often served 97 as a mask or indicator of humanism, itself often with theological foundations. That 98 is, claims of an oppositional or differential sort, in which "Life," "organism," "the 99 animal" or "the living body" are opposed, often in foundation a list ontological 100 terms, to "physical nature," "mechanical nature," "mechanistic materialism," "the 101 world as machine" and so on, like Carolyn Merchant's Death of Nature (Merchant 102 (1980); see Sutton and Tribble (2011) for an inspiring critique) often in the end 103 have an anthropocentric motivation such as defending freedom, as in Jonas' case 104 above, or those thinkers for whom materialism and scientific analysis are suitable 1"Le normal et le pathologique," (Canguilhem 1965b, p. 167). See also Canguilhem (1972, pp. 77, 155). 2I am not suggesting that Jonas was a panpsychist, but rather that what interests him is not Nature per se, but conscious, self-maintaining organisms as such-and then, by extension, a system which enables such organisms to exist (thanks to Darian Meacham for demanding this clarification). A philosopher familiar with Hegel might recognize here a form of the philosophy of nature in which organisms are relevant inasmuch as they are (weak, or provisional) forms of subjectivity, and ultimately of Spirit. It does not seem as if Jonas would have appreciated this similarity, but such concerns lie outside the remit of the present essay. 12 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? ... 199 Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 199/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 105 for "the material universe" but "yield disastrous results when applied to the inner, 106 subjective world of human nature, human thought, and human emotions" (Hill 107 1968, p. 90). In contrast, Canguilhem was a naturalist, to use a term of art popular 108 from the last decades: he approvingly quotes Spinoza asserting that we are parts of 109 Nature and nothing more: we, as humans, or rational agents, or possessors of a 110 pineal gland, do not form an imperium in imperio (Canguilhem 1965a, p. 95). 111 But my question here is, in what way does Canguilhem argue, biochauvinistically, 112 for living bodies being special? One of the curious features of Goldstein's account we 113 find again in Canguilhem's unique way of engaging with "organisms" and the 114 question of their uniqueness: the way in which he wavers or moves back and forth 115 between a cautious, epistemological position (reminiscent of the Kantian regulative 116 ideal in the thirdCritique) in which organisms are real and special because of the way 117 we cognitively constitute them, and a bold, ontological position in which organisms 118 are real because of basic, intrinsic features which are just there. I shall not go into the 119 details of Goldstein's account, which sounds more Heideggerian than anything else 120 -for example, the claim in his "Concluding Remarks" that "the organism is a being 121 enduring in time," curiously enough "in eternal time, for it does not commence with 122 procreation, certainly not with birth, and does not end with death"-although to be 123 fair these "existential" motifs crop up in Canguilhem too (Goldstein 1934/1995, 124 p. 387).3 But if we set that aside, Goldstein definitely contributed a new kind of 125 approach which was, of course, holistic and organismic while nevertheless operating 126 at a primarily heuristic, non-ontological level. As he says, "The Organism consists 127 mainly of a detailed description of the new method, the so-called holistic, organismic 128 approach. [...] We were confronted then with a difficult problem of epistemology. 129 The primary aim of my book is to describe this methodological procedure in detail, 130 by means of numerous observations" (Goldstein 1934/1995, p. 18). 131 However, this convenient distinction between the epistemological (projective, 132 constitutive) vision of biological entities and the ontological vision (strong vitalist, 133 "rational metaphysics" as Kant might have said), is somewhat muddied when 134 Canguilhem introduces a further vitalist twist: that it might be an objective 135 ("ontological") feature of living beings (i) that they are interpretive beings, à la 136 Goldstein, and especially (ii) that they need to consider other entities as themselves 137 organismic, purposive, vital (Canguilhem 1965a). There is also an existentialist 138 parfum in Canguilhem's reflections (a further twist on the ontological dimension in 139 [i]), when he describes this interpretive stance as essentially a kind of fundamental 140 existential attitude.4 One finds the properly biological or biomedical version of this 141 "existentialism" in The Normal and the Pathological, with statements such as "the 3Interestingly, in one of his last papers, Goldstein pointed to the differences between his point of view and that of existential psychiatry: "I agree with the existentialist concept insofar as I also deny that biological phenomena, particularly human existence, can be understood by application of the method of natural science. But I differ as to the meaning of the term 'existence'. It means for me an epistemological concept based on phenomenological observations, which enables us to describe normal and pathological behavior and to give e definite orientation for therapy. It is a kind of philosophical anthropology" (Goldstein 1959, pp. 11–12). 200 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 200/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 142 life of a living being [...] only recognizes the categories of health and illness on the 143 level of experience, which is first of all an épreuve in the affective sense of the term 144 -not on the level of science" (Canguilhem 1972, p. 131). We should notice here 145 the appeal to a founding, subjective, dimension, although it is not clear if this 146 should be treated as an ontologically specific region or not. That is, Canguilhem is 147 neither listing "objective features" of living beings, like homeostasis, and claiming 148 that they are "definitory," nor, conversely, is he opting for a fully subjectivist 149 position, where "to live" is understand on the model of, or as interrelated with, "to 150 know" as the property of a knowing subject. Is he closer to a Hegelian perspective, 151 in which the organism is already a form of subjectivity? Again, this is not the place 152 to decide such matters. 153 If we try to understand Canguilhem in relation to recent theoretical biology 154 (including the "organizational" theories of A. Moreno et al., see Bechtel (2007), 155 Mossio andMoreno (2010), Moreno and Mossio, 2015), using as a guiding question, 156 "are organisms unique in the physical world? If so, why?", we arrive at a curious 157 situation, in which he seems to be both more and less committed to the uniqueness of 158 embodied, biomedical entities than other theoreticians. On the one hand, Canguilhem 159 appears more cautious, and less crypto-dualistic than some prominent recent figures 160 like Varela, who tend to fall into the category mistake of seeking to prove the 161 uniqueness of the biological by providing some empirical criteria-a "laundry list," 162 as it were, which frequently invokes Bernard's milieu intérieur, Cannon's notion of 163 homeostasis, and more recently the work of Ganti, Luisi et al. on self-organization 164 and autocatalytic processes (and organizational closure).5 This is particularly odd 165 when some of these figures invoke the authority of Kant in the Third Critique [as has 166 become very common in this strand of theoretical biology, e.g. Weber and Varela 167 (2002); Perret (2012); Simeonov et al. (2012)]. To put it bluntly, to provide an 168 empirical set of criteria for why living beings are special and to claim that this fills in a 169 Kantian framework, is not a good idea if this framework explicitly rejects the idea of 170 giving empirical definitions of organism, inasmuch as Kant's organism concept is 171 explicitly built around his notion of regulative ideal (Kant 1790/1987, § 73, 276; 172 Wolfe 2010). For Kant, organism is a "reflective" construct rather than a "consti173 tutive" feature of reality, and reflective judgments are "incapable of justifying any 174 objective assertions" (Kant 1790/1987, § 67, 259; § 73, 277). 175 Kurt Goldstein and Canguilhem were, I think, on to something when they 176 insisted that rather than say what is unique about the biological, we look to the 177 observer: to be an organism is to have a point of view on organisms; one which 178 produces intelligibility, which reveals organisms as meaning-producing beings (see, 4For more on the young Canguilhem as a humanist existentialist, a reader of Alain, prior to his turn to vitalism, see the precise analysis in Bianco (2013). 5For a rare acknowledgment of this problem, see Di Paolo (2009), where he criticizes Varela for "a hazy view of living systems as being defined by a list of properties (growth, reproduction, responsiveness" (p. 14). A nice extension of this point is in Machery (2012) (see especially his critical evaluation of those he calls "life definitionists," who "have constantly mixed folk intuitions with scientific considerations," p. 161). 12 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? ... 201 Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 201/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 179 Starobinski (1956, p. 5) who comments that "comprendre nous met en présence 180 d'une totalité signifiante"6). Notice that this approach valorizes a constructivist 181 dimension in the definition of life and the relevant individual and is not unlike the 182 World Health Organization's notorious definition of health, which is broad enough 183 to include all senses of well-being: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental 184 and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."7 That is, 185 there may be biological "facts" or "invariants," but we are makers of our worlds. As 186 to who this "we" might be-humans, higher mammals, all living creatures?- 187 Canguilhem is never very clear how restrictive this concept is: like von Uexküll's 188 Umwelt, could it apply to ticks and woodlice? He sometimes grants that "even for 189 an amoeba, living means preference and exclusion," using the same phrase later in 190 the book: "the life of a living entity, even an amoeba, only acknowledges the 191 categories of health and sickness on the level of experience" (Canguilhem 1972, 192 pp. 84, 131, emphasis mine). But most of the time he is interested in humans as 193 subjective, embodied agents-the objects of medical science, caught between 194 biological and social norms. And this is why I suggest that he can be called a 195 humanist. 196 But on the other hand, this is not the final answer, or the argument-stopper: as I 197 mentioned above, Canguilhem is also more biocentric or biochauvinistic than many 198 of his contemporaries. This appears more clearly if we contrast Canguilhem with 199 the fairly "disembodied" character of much of recent theoretical biology: in con200 trast, he wants to be a kind of vitalist. To be sure, Canguilhem is not the sort of 201 thinker who seeks to discover "organismic laws" (like Elsasser 1961), lays out a 202 laundry list of ontologically unique features, or most crudely, propounds a meta203 physics of entelechies, like Hans Driesch, who converted his Chair in biology into 204 one in philosophy in order to reinvent a jejune Aristotelianism based on his earlier 205 experimental work in Entwicklungsmechanik (which Erik Peterson has described, 206 fittingly, as 'bioexceptionalism' (Peterson 2012, 2013): an empire within an empire 207 or "kingdom within a kingdom," as it were): a metaphysics of the sea urchin. 208 To be more precise, Driesch, who came out of the school of Wilhelm Roux's 209 Entwicklungsmechanik (or study of the mechanisms of the developmental process), 210 performed successful, and much-discussed experiments with sea urchin eggs, 211 halving the two blastomeres (daughter cells) of the egg and successfully producing 212 two whole embryos and larvae, complete in every respect. This total equality of the 213 halved eggs he termed their "totipotency," and the cells derived from the egg he 214 termed a harmonious equipotential system (Driesch 1914, p. 209). Faced with the 215 evidence that there was no physical structure we can find in the sea urchin embryo 6Starobinski (1956, p. 5); the extent to which this includes non-human animals is open to discussion. 7Preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19–22 June 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948. The definition has not been amended since 1948. 202 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 202/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 216 which is responsible for the "regulative" or "equipotential," force, he felt obliged to 217 posit a vital force, the entelechy.8 Tellingly, Driesch became so absorbed with this 218 feature that he gave up experimental work to teach philosophy at the University of 219 Leipzig, developing a form of vitalism, as he called it, focusing on the idea that 220 entelechies exist in all living organisms. The choice of term was deliberate, for he 221 believed one had to revive a vitalist thinking which had lain dormant since Aristotle 222 (the Montpellier school does not appear in his historical surveys). Canguilhem 223 comments on Driesch's "shift" from science to metaphysics as follows: 224 The vitalist biologist who turns philosopher of biology thinks he brings a certain capital 225 with him to philosophy, but in reality he brings to it only a land-income [rentes], which 226 continually decreases in the market of scientific values – for the simple reason that research, 227 in which he no longer participates, continues to move forward. Such is the case with 228 Driesch's abandonment of scientific research for philosophical speculation and even 229 teaching. What we have here is an unpremeditated abuse of confidence. The prestige of 230 scientific work stems above all from its internal dynamism. The former scientist sees 231 himself deprived of tills prestige in the eyes of active scientists. He believes he will preserve 232 it among the philosophers. This must not be so. Philosophy, being an autonomous enter233 prise of reflection, does not honor any prestige at all, not even that of the scientist, or – even 234 more rightly – that of the ex-scientist (Canguilhem 1965a, p. 94; I have used the translation 235 in Canguilhem 2008a, pp. 68–69). 236 Canguilhem is not a metaphysician of entelechies, then; nor is he a quasi237 religious defender of the sovereignty of organic life like Hans Jonas or his more 238 simplistic disciple Leon Kass (Kass 1995); nor a defender of philosophical 239 anthropology like Helmuth Plessner (here I refer back to my comment regarding the 240 hidden or overt foundationalism in such forms of vitalism). In some respects, 241 particularly in his 1966 essay "Le concept et la vie," which begins with a long 242 reflection on Aristotle, he seems closer to Marjorie Grene and her attempt to return 243 to Aristotelian teleology [Grene (1968, 1974); Grene herself wrote favorably about 244 Canguilhem, see, Grene (2000)]. Unlike many of these thinkers, as well as phe245 nomenologists of embodiment, Canguilhem has no appeal to a Romantic subjec246 tivity, e.g. in the sense described (critically) by Jean-Marie Schaeffer: "In 247 phenomenology, the understanding of embodiment (corporéité) is part of an 248 approach that continues to accept the epistemic privilege of consciousness's self249 investigation as axiomatic" or (affirmatively) by the enactivist theorist Evan 250 Thompson: "Life realizes a kind of interiority, the interiority of selfhood and sense251 making."9 In explicit contrast to Varela and most of the above-mentioned thinkers 252 (with the exception of Grene), Canguilhem does not have any problems with 253 Darwinian evolution (Canguilhem 1972, p. 90; Méthot 2013), and indeed is not 254 engaged in the project of "refounding," "regrounding" or otherwise reinventing a 8I note that Bergson (who was sometimes wrongly associated with Driesch under the banner of vitalism in the early twentieth century) attacked this claim of a life-force in all living organisms explicitly. Bergson asked: where is this force? at what level? He expressed doubts that nature could be interpreted strictly in terms of this internal "finality" (Wolsky and Wolsky 1992, p. 156f). 9Schaeffer (2007, p. 118), Thompson (2007, p. 238). Thompson often refers to "sense-making" as a distinctive feature of enaction, in autopoietic systems (e.g. p. 139). 12 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? ... 203 Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 203/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 255 new program for science. There are occasional, late exceptions which display a 256 more reactive attitude towards the march of science, such as his remarks against 257 some of psychology, cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience in the essay "Le 258 Cerveau et la Pensée" (Canguilhem 1980/1992), which themselves extend criti259 cisms already articulated in (Canguilhem 1958/2002c). But is he still a "biochau260 vinist," claiming that there is a special "biological space and time"? 261 All of this is really quite "dialectical," in the sense of being slippery, and almost 262 circular-but in a productive sense. Namely, when a prominent figure like Andy 263 Clark, who pushed cognitive science to take embodiment much more seriously in a 264 variety of publications at least since Being There (Clark 1997), has to warn about 265 the mysticism of "pressing the flesh" (Clark 2008), he is effectively stepping back 266 from twenty years' worth of emphasis on what is unique about embodiment. When 267 Di Paolo warns against the naïveté of "biochauvinism," ten pages later he speaks 268 approvingly of another theorist (Michael Wheeler)'s concept of "vital materiality" 269 (Di Paolo (2009, p. 20), referring to Wheeler (2010), the paper had been available 270 for some years). Wheeler had used this term in opposition to what he calls im271 plementational materiality. Vital materiality is meant to convey the sense of the 272 necessarily biological features of certain types of organization. 273 Similarly, just when Canguilhem has finished warning the reader about the 274 intellectual dangers inherent in positing that living beings are like an empire within 275 an empire (imperium in imperio, Canguilhem 1965a, p. 95), he will then assert-as 276 he does at length in "Le concept et la vie," that it is Life itself-written with a very 277 capital L, that determines livings beings to act in these interpretive, purposive, 278 normative, vital ways. Life "disconcerts logic" (Canguilhem 1977, p. 1). In a lecture 279 in the problem of regulations in the organism and society, he says that: 280 An organism is an entirely exceptional mode of being, because there is no real difference, 281 properly speaking, between its existence and the rule or norm of its existence. From the 282 time an organism exists, is alive, that organism is "possible," i.e., it fulfills the ideal of an 283 organism; the norm or rule of its being [existence] is given by its existence itself. 284 (Canguilhem 2002b, pp. 106–107) 285 An "entirely exceptional mode of being" sounds like ontological specificity. 286 He states what I loosely called the dialectical slipperiness of the relation between 287 Life itself and the thinker's vitalism (a claim about ontology or about stances?) 288 more sharply in The Normal and the Pathological itself: "It is life itself, in its 289 differentiation between its propulsive behavior and its repulsive behavior, which 290 introduces the categories of health and illness into human consciousness. These 291 categories are biologically technical and subjective, not biologically scientific and 292 objective" (Canguilhem 1972, p. 150). Notice here the subjectivism-the appeal to 293 a foundational subjectivity-which I had earlier connected to a particularly anti294 naturalistic trend in phenomenology, and the more recent theory known as enac295 tivism, associated with Varela in particular, which often asserts that life is lived 296 "outside of the physical": "Life is not physical in the standard materialist sense of 297 purely external structure and function [...] [w]e accordingly need an expanded 298 notion of the physical to account for the organism or living being" (Thompson 204 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 204/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 299 2007, p. 238). Indeed, Canguilhem himself, sounding less careful than usual, will 300 sometimes say that "[i]n short, it is impossible for the objectivity of medical 301 knowledge to cancel out (annuler) the subjectivity of the lived experience of the 302 patient" (Canguilhem 1978/2002a, p. 409; this essay was added to the later edition 303 of this book). Yet the subjectivity at issue is, to be fair, never disembodied, never 304 some pure ego contemplating the reality of the flesh like a sailor in a ship.10 Where 305 Canguilhem differs sharply from the phenomenology of embodiment is that the 306 latter is permanently tempted by a foundationalist distinction between Leib as 307 interiority and Körper as exteriority (as Schaeffer notes in the passage cited above). 308 From Merleau-Ponty to Varela and Thompson, such thinkers maintain that the lived 309 body (which really is the body in their discourse) exists at least in part "outside of 310 physical space" (Merleau-Ponty 1963, p. 209). Thus the living body-indeed, any 311 organism-"is an individual in a sense which is not that of modern physics" (154). 312 Now, Canguilhem is in his own way, a thinker of embodiment, which I have 313 noted in contrasting his view with both Driesch's (neo-)vitalism and Jonas's 314 metaphysics of organism. But he has no need for these additional commitments to a 315 "non-physical" dimension of Life. Indeed, I don't think Canguilhem, the medical 316 doctor, would ever go as far as Deleuze and speak of a vitalism of the inorganic, a 317 "powerful non-organic life,"11 or, as contemporary theorists might, of "a vitality 318 intrinsic to materiality as such," wherein the author recommends "detach[ing] 319 materiality from the figures of passive, mechanistic, or divinely infused substance" 320 (Bennett 2010a, p. xiii). Life is too central for him-not life-forces or entelechies, 321 not cosmic or impersonal life, but the life of embodied agents. Similarly, the 322 particularly medical emphasis in his vitalism (manifest in his focus on Bichat and 323 related figures), which can be conveyed in the basic claim that all living beings die 324 and get sick, with the implied, irreducibly axiological dimension, distinguishes it 325 from forms of vitalism predicated on embryology and its mysteries: "the patient is a 326 Subject" (with a capital Canguilhem 1978/2002a, p. 409; for more on Canguilhem 327 on values and subjectivity, see Sholl, ms.). That is, a philosophical reflection on 328 health and sickness, on the "normativity" of the organism and its experience 329 (Goldstein-Canguilhem) is at some distance from a reflection on the egg, its 330 potential and the metaphysics one can derive from it. Of course, not all scientific 331 and theoretical reflections on the uniqueness of developmental systems need to 332 appeal to a metaphysical uniqueness of life, even at their most holistic, organismic 10The image that the (immaterial) soul is in the (material) body like a sailor in a ship is something that Aristotle considers (De Anima II, i, 413a5) and that Descartes in the Sixth Meditation rejects, without mentioning Aristotle, and sounding for all the world like a phenomenologist: "Nature ... teaches me, by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit" (AT IX, 64 / CSM II, 56). 11See, Deleuze (1993, p. 164): "La vitalité non-organique est le rapport du corps à des forces ou puissances imperceptibles qui s'en emparent ou dont il s'empare," and Deleuze and Guattari (1991, p. 172). In Francis Bacon, Logique de la sensation, the phrase "la vitalité non organique d'un corps sans organe" is partly credited to Wörringer and opposed to the phenomenological unity of the body (Deleuze 1981/2002, p. 31). 12 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? ... 205 Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 205/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 333 moments (Oyama 2010), and similarly, there is nothing inherently false about 334 focusing on the unique features of biological systems, whether of the homeostatic 335 sort (Bernard, Cannon, Luisi, Turner), the developmental (Oyama) or of the eco336 logically systemic sort (Odling-Smee).12 337 Conversely, and despite their shared affinity for Goldstein, it is more than 338 unlikely that Canguilhem would verse into Catholic mysticism of the flesh, as 339 Merleau-Ponty does in the Phenomenology of Perception: "Just as the sacrament 340 not only symbolizes [...] an operation of Grace, but is also the real presence of God 341 [...] in the same way the sensible has not only a motor and vital significance but is a 342 way of being in the world [...] sensation is literally a form of communion."13 I 343 think Canguilhem's advocating of a core Spinozist tenet (we are all parts of Nature, 344 there is no kingdom within a kingdom), his Nietzschean position with regard to life 345 as the production of value(s), and his Darwinian recognition of the role of chance 346 and evolution, to name three basic features of his thought, put him at odds with the 347 above doctrine. This is so, even if, commenting in fact on Merleau-Ponty in a late 348 lecture on Health, Canguilhem reflects with what I think to be a hint of distance, 349 regret or irony on the limitations of a conceptualization of the living body as 350 "inaccessible to others, accessible only to its titular holder" (2008b, p. 476); that is, 351 he has referred to "commentator after commentator" who ascribes superiority to 352 what is given as such, acknowledging the existence of a side of the living body that 353 is "inaccessible to others, accessible only to its titular holder" (476). 354 This sense of privacy, of inaccessible interiority, is a crucial feature of many 355 defenses of what organisms are and how they are different from machines: Leibniz 356 for instance, for whom they differ from ordinary machines in possessing a "deeper 357 source"14; or perhaps Kant when he stated rather confidently, and influentially, that 358 "there will never be a Newton of a blade of grass" in the third Critique of 1790, 359 having already claimed in the so-called "pre-critical" Universal Natural History 360 and Theory of the Heavens of 1755 that "we will sooner understand the formation 361 of all celestial bodies, the cause of their motions, in short, the origin of the entire 362 present arrangement of the world-edifice, than we will come to know distinctly or 12For some philosophical discussion of these various recent models in biology, see Barberousse et al. (2009) and Normandin and Wolfe (2013). 13Merleau-Ponty (1962, p. 212). Novalis already identified the experience and conceptual paradoxes of the sense of touch with "the mystery of transubstantiation" (Novalis 1798/1987, p. 622). This fascination with the flesh as somehow apart from the physical world is present, prior to Merleau-Ponty, in the Husserl of Ideas II, and later, in Didier Anzieu and his notion of the "MoiPeau," and Jean-Luc Nancy, with his "secularized Christian" fascination with embodiment qua incarnation. They seem to repeat verbatim the powerful mystical utterances concerning a body beyond this world, of figures such as the twelfth-century nun Hildegard of Bingen and the thirteenth-century Flemish poet and Beguine, Hadewijch (Dailey 2011). Granted, it is possible to derive other positions from Merleau-Ponty, notably in his earlier work The Structure of Behavior. 14Letter to Hoffmann of September 17, 1699, in Hoffmann (1749, I, pp. 49a-b), cf. De ipsa natura (1698, § 3, GP IV, p. 505), Leibniz (1969, p. 95). 206 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 206/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 363 completely the production of a single herb or of a caterpillar from mechanical 364 grounds."15 This is what Schaeffer meant in the passage I cited above, when he 365 refers to the understanding of embodiment that holds as foundational the "epistemic 366 privilege" of a self-aware consciousness (Schaeffer 2007, p. 118). Of course, not all 367 claims that organisms are categorically different from machines amount to defining 368 this difference in terms of a deeper interiority or selfhood. But increasingly, from 369 the late eighteenth century onwards, and into twentieth-century phenomenology 370 (and its embodied variants), the emphasis is on the latter, as is also manifest in 371 Varela's insistence in his last essays on a "first-person science" (Varela and Shear 372 1999). We might say that the extent to which Canguilhem is committed or not, to 373 the presence of a foundational subjectivity either "in the body" or as an irreducible 374 feature "of the body," is the extent to which he is a phenomenologist. 375 Canguilhem was a self-proclaimed vitalist (although with a degree of irony), a 376 "biochauvinist" in the sense that as a thinker of the normal and the pathological, of 377 a "knowledge of life," as a disciple of Goldstein, he is one of the main figures of 378 what was known as 'biophilosophy' in the mid-twentieth century-a project which 379 differs from present philosophy of biology in a variety of ways (Gayon 2010), 380 notably, that biophilosophy feels that philosophy, sometimes even metaphysics, can 381 dictate its conditions to biology, since living beings have features (value? purpo382 siveness? consciousness?) that remain inaccessible to quantitative science. In 383 contrast, the philosophy of biology is very much a project engaged in conceptual 384 clarification of "emerged" science, which it does not challenge. However, even qua 385 biophilosopher, it bears noting that Canguilhem lacks the hostility to evolutionary 386 thought found e.g. in Goldstein and Varela, just as he lacks the potentially reac387 tionary appeal to return to a lost Aristotelian world (as in Jonas and Grene). 388 Some biophilosophers stand at a greater distance from mainstream science than 389 others. Goldstein, sounding quite close to the ideas Canguilhem was to make 390 famous in The Normal and the Pathological, holds that "an organism that actualizes 391 its essential peculiarities or-which means the same thing-meets its adequate 392 environment and the tasks arising from it, is 'normal'" (Goldstein 1934/1995, 393 p. 325). Perhaps unconsciously paraphrasing Goldstein, Jonas in a late piece 394 describes organisms as "things whose existence is their own achievement. That 395 means that they only exist because of what they are doing," which he then explains 396 as "their activity as such is their being" (Jonas 1992, p. 82). While this is not in line 397 with mainstream biology (whether molecular, evolutionary, developmental, etc.), it 398 is not explicitly anti-naturalist; and it is also a weak form of biochauvinism, in that 399 it is less a substance (a set of empirical features), and more a function or activity 15Kant (1987), § 75, pp. 282–283; Kant (1755), Ak 1, p. 230. For a nice discussion which makes Canguilhem a phenomenologist see Gérard (2010); for an equally compelling reading which seeks to distance Canguilhem from phenomenology, see Sholl (2012) and especially Sholl (ms.). I am closer to Sholl's interpretation-and Canguilhem's rather pointed barbs at the expense of Husserl and in favour of Foucault (e.g. in Canguilhem 1967), should be taken into account here-but it must be recognized that there are elements in Canguilhem which lend themselves to Gérard's reading. 12 Was Canguilhem a Biochauvinist? ... 207 Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 207/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 400 which is being invoked as uniquely organismic. In contrast, Raymond Ruyer's 401 insistence on how the organism transcends the spatial realm, maintaining itself 402 through time due to its "potential," which does not itself belong to the space-time 403 world, is more of a revisionary metaphysics. For Ruyer, organisms possess a unity 404 beyond spatial categories; they are fundamentally historical in character (Ruyer 405 1946, pp. 8, 14, 27, 58, 94). Ruyer appears to be afraid of a universe composed of 406 inanimate matter, with shocks and displacements explainable exhaustively by the 407 laws of mechanics-a universe in which the organism is no longer anything more 408 than a machine: "If you are shocked by what amounts to a generalized 'theory of 409 organism' [...] you had better see clearly that the choice is between this theory and 410 that of a 'generalized molecule'" (Ruyer 1952, p. 166). 411 I have tried to distinguish between a series of views, not identical with one 412 another, in which a valuative term variously called "the organism," "the (lived) 413 body," "Life" and so on is presented as special in different ways, and usually 414 opposed to the rest of physical nature. While Canguilhem shares the intuition that 415 an organism is always "actualizing a potential," in a dynamic relation between a 416 plurality of norms and an environment which is made "one's own" (an Umwelt), he 417 does not oppose modern biology, and is certainly not seeking to "reintroduce the 418 subject into biology," unlike Varela (Weber and Varela 2002, p. 117). He is arguing 419 from properties of existing biological entities-sometimes cells, sometimes mon420 sters or environments, but most often persons, whether considered as agents or as 421 patients. As he says in the Introduction to the Normal and the Pathological, he is 422 not so presumptuous as to claim that he could renew medicine by incorporating a 423 metaphysics into it (Canguilhem 1972, p. 9). I have not tried here to articulate a 424 "Canguilhemian philosophy of medicine" (some have: Trnka 2003); doubtless it 425 would resemble in some important ways, reflection on the importance of a "patient426 centred" medicine, and would pay close attention to the Goldsteinian and 427 Canguilhemian focus on how the organism (or person, or patient) is a creator of 428 norms (of stability, of health, of survival and so on), in a partly constructivist sense. 429 Yet if we wish to take Canguilhem seriously, some of the metaphysics, the bio430 chauvinism, the existential dimension in his thought take us beyond the practical 431 concerns of an empirically focused philosophy of medicine. 432 Perhaps we should distinguish between three basic claims: strong vitalism, with 433 a metaphysical foundation; biochauvinism, which is more of a "spontaneous sci434 entific form" of vitalism, stripped of all or most of its metaphysical commitments 435 but definitely tending towards a holistic, organismic perspective; and Canguilhem's 436 view, which of course he never names, enjoying as he does the play of aporias and 437 the mask of the scholar. We could speak of a non-metaphysical vitalism, or a 438 "naturalized vitalism"16-but then we run into difficulties in accounting for the 439 passages where he speaks of an irreducible, experiential dimension of life; we could 440 say that to the biochauvinistic claims of theoretical biology, he adds an existential 16Thanks to Pierre-Olivier Méthot for this suggestion. For a related idea of a "functional vitalism" (as opposed to the metaphysical variety) see Wolfe (2011a). 208 C.T. Wolfe Layout: T1 Standard Unicode Book ID: 330969_1_En Book ISBN: 978-94-017-9869-3 Chapter No.: 12 Date: 10-4-2015 Time: 3:33 pm Page: 208/212 E d i t o r P r o o f U N C O R R EC TE D PR O O F 441 dimension. Yet Canguilhem doesn't seem to succumb to the temptation of a bot442 tomless interiority, inwardness or privacy and its concomitant transcendence. 443 Somewhere in between the cold appeal of the inorganic, and the (hot?) mesmerism 444 of transubstantiation-at some distance then from the fascination with a kind of 445 transcendence of the flesh found in Merleau-Ponty, Varela or Thompson, where 446 biochauvinism verges on the mystery of transubstantiation-Canguilhem's vitalism, 447 his biochauvinism, his quirky appeals to the "truth of my body" (2008b, p. 475) if not 448 his residual existentialism may hold some lessons for present-day thinking about 449 embodiment, neither obsessively reductionist, nor whimsically holist. 450 Acknowledgments Versions of this paper have been presented at the Workshop on The Normal 451 and the Pathological, University of Warwick, September 2011; Canguilhem's Philosophy of Life, 452 KU Leuven, June 2012. 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