Again, the difficulty is how to justify and support the idea of an a priori epigenesis without contradiction. Of course, biological epigenesis occurs according to a necessary order; there is no improvisation in the development of the embryo. In this sense it is possible to argue for the idea of a priori necessity for epigenetic growth. But since epigenesis is a qualitative, rather than a quantitative, development, it is impossible for it to unfold without having an essential, unexpected dimension, despite it all. This, then, is what makes recourse to the analogy problematic: biological epigenesis is incompatible with the idea of pure development. So why does Kant choose epigenesis as the most faithful image of categorial generation?
“Formation without Preformation”
It’s no help to try to relativize the analogy or minimize its role by claiming that in the end it’s nothing more than a metaphor. Without exception, all the commentators of §27 claim that it is not possible to describe Kant’s recourse to epigenesis as a mere rhetorical device.2 Epigenesis is a model of development that Kant has in mind throughout his work, and it is clear that the use he makes of it is never illustrative. The fact that this model underwent modifications or corrections in the course of his work in no way detracts from its importance. The problem is that it is easier to understand Kant’s engagement with biological epigenetism than with transcendental epigenetism! Paragraph 81 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment is well known for its defense of the biological theory of epigenesis as a system of “generations by production,” brilliantly developed by Blumenbach, in opposition to the “individual preformation” system. Kant writes: “No one has done more for the proof of this theory of epigenesis as well as the establishment of the proper principles of its application [. . .] than Privy Councilor Blumenbach.”3 The support for epigenesis in the third Critique is entirely coherent with the analysis of the organized being as natural end proposed throughout the critique of teleological judgment. And yet epigenesis appears to counter the very idea of the a priori!
Let’s examine this problem further. If the generation of the agreement between the categories and objects of experience finds its analogical expression in epigenesis, then it must be admitted that there is a transcendental equivalent of the tendency which forms the organism in biology. This “formative tendency” is the subject of the famous §65 in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, in which Kant writes:
An organized being is thus not a mere machine, for that has only a motive power, while the organized being possesses in itself a formative force (bildende Kraft), and indeed one that it communicates to the matter, which does not have it (it organizes the latter): thus it has a self-propagating formative force, which cannot be explained through the capacity for movement alone (that is, mechanism).4
If we accept, as we do here, that at the time of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason Kant was already on the way to the definitive concept of epigenesis that he employed in 1790, then we may well consider that the problem presented by §27 is indeed what we can call, following François Duchesneau, the existence of a “transcendental formative drive.”5
Once again, I hear the retort claiming that this force is nothing but another way of describing the “formative spontaneity of the understanding,” which is said to engender by itself the agreement between the rules or pure elements of cognition and the objects of experience, between the a priori and the a posteriori. But this type of response exacerbates the difficulty rather than appeasing it. Indeed, insofar as it is formative, how can this spontaneity avoid seeing itself transformed in return by what it engenders, without following a plan or predestination? How can it escape the subsequent effect of birth, the unpredictable final form of that which was no more than an embryonic bud? How can it not take into consideration the retroactive action of the result on the origin, the metamorphosis of the germ in the germ itself, without entirely depriving the engendered forms of their autonomy?
In other words, how can we think together the a priori necessity that presides over transcendental formation and the role of chance inscribed in the formation of the living being? The initial outline, followed by the repercussion of the a posteriori?
Embryonic Development is Necessarily Unpredictable
In a 1962 essay, Georges Canguilhem shed light on this difficulty in a remarkable fashion. He suggested that epigenesis is “a forming without preformation.”6 By contrast, “contrary to common sense, [preformationism] implies that the germ is already what one day it is destined to become.”7 But, in order to prove the legitimacy of Canguilhem’s thesis and to deny this predeterminism, those who argue in favor of epigenesis must emphasize the role of the unforeseeable at work in all generative becoming. They must demonstrate that the individual who will be born will necessarily be surprising. That this individual cannot be born before tomorrow. If embryonic growth has to respect an order, it is equally true that all life in gestation is “the conquest of its figure, volume, and form.” And this achievement includes a dimension of contingency. If “there is no future for a preformed being,”8 there is at least the unpredictable in epigenetic development.
Referring to Wolff’s most important work, Theoria generationis, Canguilhem writes:
There are typical processes in formatio that are irreducible to any system of prefiguration, whatever hypotheses one may wish it to satisfy: this is the case, for example, in the doubling of a layer, the closing of an organ that was initially open, the soldering of two layers in a tube.9
But “we know not how to engender a tear or a duplication.”10 Epigenesis cannot be thought without its accidents, anomalies, and occasional failures. “There is no single development that can pass as a synopsis of developments.”11 As much as to say, again, that since epigenesis is always simultaneously individualizing and individualized, it cannot be entirely foreseen. As Alain Boyer also comments, “[E]ven if the form of an organ were potentially innate, it would still have to receive empirical, energetic or informational elements in order to develop according to its own logic [. . .].”12
And so we find ourselves back at square one. Doesn’t speaking of a priori epigenesis amount to obliterating this unpredictability or surprise? Can a priori epigenesis be anything other than a simple unfolding of predefined forms? In other words, can a priori epigenesis be truly different from a preformation?
In some respects, the preformationist argument eludes the biological field and appears instead as an unwarranted mathematization of the living being. Embryonic development is conceived on the model of the topological occurrence of forms: formation by deformation continues from the same structure. The development of a preformed structure assumes that the increased size of the parts occurs according to the rules of perfect homeothety and homeomorphy. Preformationism thus substitutes the paradigm of geometric transformation for the mode of organic growth.
In asserting the a priori character of the epigenesis of the relation of the categories to their objects, and by dismissing the aleatory ahead of time, can Kant ultimately escape this reduction of heterogeneity in the developments of form? Must the engendering of the relation between the categories and experience thus occur in the elastic mode of a constant formation-deformation, with each object coming to alter the initial categorial form for a time by stretching it out in order to confirm its structure once it is coupled with it?
Yet, if it is necessary to break with this topological and elastic conception of development caused by preformationism, if we must think a free development of forms, wouldn’t we immediately run into the other side of the skeptics’ thesis, the one that asserts the role of the unexpected and the irreducibility of the a posteriori that are constitutive of epigenesis?
We certainly understand that Kant wants to escape the two traps of innatism and empiricism by showing both that the spontaneity of the understanding derives from no divine decree and that it is this force of free production that does not, however, allow experience – by which we mean the power of the outside – to become mi
xed up in its source.
The problem is that the biological translation of the metaphysical positions also appears to distort the situation. Does epigenesis really have a place in the transcendental deduction? Shouldn’t it be countered and reduced to preformationism so as to save the transcendental from the risk of adventure? Or perhaps, so as to protect it from all preformationism, should we instead emphasize its derived nature? In both cases, it appears that we cannot but admit its fundamental ambiguity.
Readings and Contradictions
As all these readings of §27 indicate, contradictions constantly emerge and appear to be so many a posteriori expressions of an impossibility inherent to Kantianism. It is as if the instability of the transcendental were revealed in the series of exegetical stalemates generated by the analogy. Whatever their guiding principle, project, or purpose, all the readings – even those that argue vigorously against it – lead to a skeptical conclusion that seems to prove Hegel correct in thinking that critical philosophy is the ultimate expression of modern skepticism and that sees the same “style of skepticism” in the Critique of Pure Reason as that which is found in Hume.13
In fact, it is not readily apparent that there are two very distinct camps here: the skeptics and the Kantians. Of course, as we shall see, there are resolutely skeptical readings of epigenesis that immediately wrench it away from the a priori and the transcendental. The neurobiological reading is one of the most striking examples of this. But the skeptical approach also contaminates readings that wish to remain faithful to Kant. Kantian critics who seek to justify the validity of a priori epigenesis constantly come up against the impossibility of establishing the correct measure for the relation of the transcendental and experience. Either they go too far in rejecting experience, arguing that epigenesis in Kant can be reduced again to a certain kind of preformation and claiming that the agreement should be viewed as already existing as a germ that does not transform. Or else they go too far in the role they attribute to experience in the constitution of agreement, claiming that contingency is at work in the a priori one way or another. In each and every case, we end up back with skepticism.
Further Methodological Details
The constitution of the agreement cannot be thought in the mathematical (topological) or mechanical models, but, as Kant says, it must instead be thought in an organic model. Now, if it is true that an organism forms by transforming, rather than by unfolding, then we must accept that the transcendental, too, is endowed with a certain transformability. Not only does it have a formative force, it also has the power of being formed. If the a priori is not innate, then, in a sense, it must be born, it must engage in the process of generative metamorphosis. The fundamental question raised by §27 is, then, the possible mutability of the transcendental.
The challenge is for this mutability of the transcendental not to contradict its a priori nature. The readings of §27 perceive this challenge very clearly, but they do not manage to resolve it, and this is what gives rise to the decision to relinquish Kant. This is entirely understandable. How can this kind of changeability be asserted without immediately disfiguring Kantianism and dragging it down the skeptical path? And yet, how can it not be acknowledged? How can we fail to take seriously the epigenetic analogy and reduce the origin of the agreement to the unfolding of a prior and preformed accord? Is it possible to read Kant without mutilating him one way or another, by giving the transcendental too much or too little as a creative resource? These are the aporetic directions with which we must engage before exploring Kant’s response to the main question put to him by posterity.
At this point in the analysis, it is time to specify the investigative method at work in the arguments that follow. I seek to address the three exegetical directions discussed in the introduction (time, cerebral reason, contingency), starting with the multiple approaches to §27, all of which identify the instability and ambiguity of the transcendental as a symptom and therefore lead slowly but surely towards a relinquishing of Kant. It is important to show that the current situation calling Kantianism into question was prepared for throughout the twentieth century by a series of local and more ambitious interpretations, all of which concluded, one way or another, that the transcendental had failed.
I shall organize these interpretations along two main tracks: the critical track and the skeptical track, even if, as I have just shown, the line between them always tends to blur.
The critical track will also be split. On the one side we will have the readings of epigenesis that conclude with Kant’s preformationism, on the other we will have the more open readings, such as those of Gérard Lebrun in Kant et la fin de la métaphysique14 and Foucault’s masterful analysis in “What Is Enlightenment?,”15 which, as I shall explain, concludes with the need for an experimentation of the transcendental. Following a close analysis of §27, this track will gradually see the motif of epigenesis develop into a reflection on freedom and history.
The second track explores the hypothesis of a biologization of the transcendental as the legacy of Humean thought. The key reading for this approach is Jacques Bouveresse’s article on §27 of the Critique of Pure Reason entitled “Le problème de l’a priori et la conception évolutionniste des lois de la pensée.”16 This argument will be extended through the cognitivist approach to the cerebral origin of the categories of thought. The conclusions produced by this approach claim that the a priori and the transcendental quite simply do not exist. The engendering of the categories of thought is always derived. If epigenesis exists, this can only be within an evolutionary and adaptive conception of truth.
This hypothesis must be fully explored, until the point where we breach the gulf that separates eighteenth-century epigenesis from contemporary epigenetics that claim the incompressible role of outside influences on the development of life. As we have seen, the paradigmatic example of epigenetic development is brain development. Drawing on contemporary descriptions of this development, I shall push the Kantian thesis to its limit: what if, in the end, the agreement of the categories of thought with the real were simply the fruit of biological adaptation, an evolutionary process at the origin of the theory that some neurobiologists call “mental Darwinism”? What would happen to the a priori in the context of adaptive contingency and the assimilation of reason to the brain?
Curiously, once again we shall see that although their arguments conflict, the conclusions resulting from all the readings lead to the same observation: the idea of transcendental epigenesis is indefensible.
If skepticism does turn out to be the uninteriorized contradiction of Kantian philosophy, must we then conclude with Meillassoux that what Kant bequeaths us is perhaps only the need to further explore “Hume’s problem,” to claim the absoluteness of contingency beyond skepticism?
Following these investigations, we shall then return to the three initial orientations: ontological (Heidegger), cognitivist (Changeux), and realist (Meillassoux).
Again, the questions presented in §27 call for nothing less than the meaning of Kantianism as a whole, which is why I take them here as starting points. The figure of epigenesis – irreducible to a simple rhetorical device – in fact determines the fate of the transcendental, the problem that lies at the core of my reading of these readings.
Notes
1. CPR, p. 203, A66/B91. Translation modified. I have translated “Keime und Anlagen” as “germs and predispositions” throughout. This translation follows Phillip R. Sloan, who stresses “the importance of [. . .] the terms Keim, commonly rendered in English translations as ‘seed,’ but which I consider best rendered within its historical context by the term ‘germ,’ and Anlage, usually translated as ‘disposition,’ ‘predisposition,’ ‘aptitude,’ or ‘capacity.’ I have settled on the term ‘predisposition’ as the best contextualized rendition.” “Performing the Categories, Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory and the Biological Roots of Kant’s A Priori,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 40, no. 2, April 2002, pp
. 229–53, p. 232. See also Edgar Landgraf, “The German word ‘Anlagen’ implies talent, aptitude, and, more generally, predispositions, while retaining the meaning of something of concrete design (and in this regard indeed comes close to the modern idea of the gene). ‘Keime’ means germs, seeds, or buds.” “The Education of Humankind: Perfectibility and Discipline in Kant’s Lectures Über Pädagogik,” Goethe Yearbook 14, pp. 39–60, p. 44.
2. As we shall see later in Zöller, “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 72. Cf. also A.C. Genova, “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” Kant-Studien, vol. 65, no. 3, 1974, pp. 259–73. According to Genova, most of the misunderstandings about transcendental idealism derive from a lack of attention to “a very much ignored passage” in which Kant expresses “a clue to the correct understanding.” “I have reasons to believe,” Genova concludes, that “the principle of epigenesis serves as a key to the interpretation of each of Kant’s Critiques as well as their interrelation,” p. 259.
3. CPJ, p. 292.
4. CPJ, p. 246.
5. Duchesneau, “Épigenèse de la raison pure et analogies biologiques,” p. 254.
6. Canguilhem et al., Du Développement à l’évolution au XIXe siècle, p. 6. All translations from this work cited here are mine.
7. Du Développement à l’évolution au XIXe siècle, p. 15.
8. Du Développement à l’évolution au XIXe siècle, p. 44.
9. Du Développement à l’évolution, p. 8.
10. Du Développement à l’évolution, p. 8.
11. Du Développement à l’évolution, p. 20.
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 6