There is, therefore, a first base, in the sense of a natural given without origin: the structure of our mind. Then there is a second natural given, from whence emerges an activity, the epigenetic production of the objective reference. The objective reference is a starting point for “theoretical self-determination.” And yet it is destined neither to exhaust nor to transgress the first base. In other words, epigenesis can produce, but it cannot invent anything.
In §24 of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant states:
[S]ince in us a certain form of sensible intuition a priori is fundamental, which rests on the receptivity of the capacity for representation (sensibility), the understanding, as spontaneity, can determine the manifold of given representations in accord with the synthetic unity of apperception, and thus think a priori synthetic unity of the apperception of the manifold of sensible intuition, as the condition under which all objects of our (human) intuition must necessarily stand, through which then the categories, as mere forms of thought, acquire objective reality [. . .].38
Zöller draws two paradoxical conclusions from this passage. First, he notes that Kant asserts the power and autonomy of the spontaneity of the understanding. The production of the relation to objects should be understood as auto-affection. It results from the intrasubjective process by which the understanding self-determines. In other words, spontaneity affects itself, which corresponds to the production of a pure sensible manifold. Thus, the understanding “can determine the manifold of given representations in accord with the synthetic unity of apperception.”39
But the passage also establishes a limit to this spontaneity, one that acts on the basis of the form of intuition that lies “in us,” in other words, from the innate receptivity of our cognitive power. Thus there is both autonomy (engendering of the objective reference by the understanding) and restriction (our cognitive power, which obviously also includes spontaneity itself, is as it is, while the structure of auto-affection is restricted). There are both original acquisition and appropriation, but the process is constrained even within freedom. What is this called other than an originary preformation?
We then understand what authorizes Zöller, who follows this second approach, to speak of a “minimal preformationism” in Kant. The engendering takes place starting from a matrixial base that retains more than it gives:
[A]lthough the a priori principles of experience are not actually preformed in the understanding, there are nevertheless principal limits to the generation of a priori knowledge, limits that are imposed not qua empirical facts but a priori. [. . .] [T]here is evidence for a minimal preformationism in Kant’s concept of transcendental epigenesis.40
Again, we end up with a paradoxical conclusion. The phrase “system of the epigenesis of pure reason,” understood according to the objective meaning of the genitive, concerns the origin of the objective reference alone and epigenesis is limited by the preformation of the innate stem of the a priori. The understanding is spontaneously productive of the agreement between objects and the categories as they stand. The agreement certainly happens, but this facticity is absolutely pure, without process.
It is important to notice though that the facticity thus introduced into the epistemology of a priori knowledge is not an empirical one. [. . .] Although the categories as such [. . .] are simply given a priori, their necessary and universal reference to possible experience [. . .] is made a priori, namely it is generated through a priori theoretical self-determination. The specific character of the generation process constituting the a priori objective reference of pure reason can be aptly determined as an “epigenesis of pure reason.”41
Thus, preformationism, a key element in the skeptical argument, serves here to support the critical approach so as to save a priori epigenesis from any empiricist – in other words, again, skeptical – contamination.
Notes
1. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 89.
2. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 87.
3. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 85.
4. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 84.
5. Note 4275, AK (XVII: 492): “Crusius erklärt die reale Grundsätze der Vernunft [vor] nach dem systemate praeformationis (aus subjectiven principiis), Locke nach dem influxu physico wie Aristoteles, Plato und Malebranche aus dem intuitu intellectuali, wir nach der epigenesis aus dem Gebrauch der natürlichen Gesetzte der Vernunft.” Notes and Fragments, ed. Paul Guyer, trans. Curtis Bowman, Paul Guyer, and Frederick Rauscher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 124. Translation modified.
6. Cf. also Note 4865, in which Kant writes: “The important fundamental truths of morality and religion are grounded on the natural use of reason [. . .].” Notes and Fragments, p. 197, thereby inducing the idea of an epigenesis of these truths themselves.
7. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 87.
8. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 87.
9. CPR, pp. 220–1, A86/B119.
10. Judy Wubnig, “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason: A Note on the Critique of Pure Reason, B sec. 27, 165–167,” Kant-Studien, vol. 60, no. 2, 1969, pp. 147–52.
11. Wubnig, “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 151.
12. “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 151.
13. “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 151.
14. “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 151.
15. “The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 151.
16. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge, p. 84.
17. Cf. Genova, “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 264.
18. Cf. “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” pp. 269–70 in particular.
19. “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 270.
20. “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” p. 269.
21. “Kant’s Epigenesis of Pure Reason,” pp. 270–1.
22. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 85.
23. Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer, La Déduction transcendantale dans l’œuvre de Kant, 3 vols, Antwerp/Paris/The Hague: De Sikkel/Ernest Leroux/Martinus Nijhoff, 1934–7.
24. See p. 5 above.
25. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, The Doctrine of Right, §10, “How to Acquire Something External,” pp. 47–8.
26. The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 47.
27. The Metaphysics of Morals, p. 47.
28. Zöller says that de Vleeschauwer falsely attributes this term to Kant. See “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” note 51, p. 86.
29. La Déduction transcendantale dans l’œuvre de Kant, Vol. III, p. 270. Cf. Zöller, “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” note 50, p. 86.
30. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 87.
31. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 73.
32. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 73.
33. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 73.
34. CPR, §26, p. 261, B159.
35. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 90.
36. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 88. The Metaphysical Deduction covers all of the Analytic, not just the Analytic of Concepts. Cf. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 89.
37. CPR, p. 254, B145.
38. CPR, p. 256, B150.
39. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 89.
40. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 89.
41. “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” p. 90.
5
GERMS, RACES, SEEDS
Zöller pursues his genetic inquiry by examining the sources of the Kantian concept of epigenesis and its evolution throughout his work. In making this, his third main point, he seeks
to show that despite the modifications this concept undergoes up until its definitive version in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, it retains the preformationist influence to the end.
Four Main Exploratory Tracks
What was Kant’s concept of epigenesis in 1781? What exactly did it involve? In asking these questions that are essential for understanding §27, Zöller proposes a genesis of Kantian epigenesis and concludes that preformationism is present throughout his work.
It is likely that until he discovered Blumenbach’s theory of the formative drive (Bildungstrieb), Kant based his views on Wolff’s Theoria generationis, even though he never makes any explicit reference to the text. There are no grounds for arguing unequivocally that he could have read Blumenbach’s Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte (1780/1) before the Critique of the Power of Judgment, even though commentators think it probable that he was aware of it during the period between the two versions of the first Critique – as the review of Herder’s Ideas seems to attest.1 Consequently, it is difficult to know precisely which view of epigenesis §27 supports.
Fortunately, there is proof of the presence of epigenesis in Kant’s texts prior to 1787. This proof is found in the posthumous work and lecture notes, which, despite the chronological uncertainty of their publication, offer precious clues. Notes 4104, 4275, 4446, 4851, and 4859 develop the idea of “intellectual epigenesis,” another name for the transcendental epigenesis of the origin of the categories.2 On the question of life, the 1763 text The Only Possible Argument in Support of a Demonstration of the Existence of God confirms that Kant was aware of the “epigenetic turn” that Maupertuis and Buffon introduced to biology.3 The concept of epigenesis also appears in the works on the variability of the human species, a central problem that, from around 1775, led Kant to his interest in theories of generation. The main instances appear in three texts on the difference of the human races, the first of which precedes, and the second and third of which follow, the Critique of Pure Reason: Of the Different Races of Human Beings (1775); Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786); and On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy (1788). But, as we shall see, the most important text on this topic, on which Zöller focuses all of his attention, is Kant’s 1785 two-part review of Herder’s 1784 book, Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity.4
There are four principal contexts where the concept of epigenesis is deployed: the origin of the categories; the discussion of Herder’s “vital force”; the question of human races and their variability, starting from a single stem; and the exhibition of the “formative drive” at work in the living being, developed in the Critique of the Power of Judgment.
According to Zöller, a single idea traverses all of these contexts, unifying each occurrence of epigenesis, whether it dates from before or after the first Critique. In his view, this idea supports the thesis of Kantian preformationism: it is the constant affirmation of the existence of germs and original predispositions,5 both of which limit the amplitude and power of epigenesis. We have just examined the extent of this motif in the Transcendental Analytic, which asserts the presence of the “germs” of the categories in the understanding.
One awkward fact is that in §81 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant does indeed identify epigenesis with a system of “generic preformation.” He writes: “[T]he system of generatings as products is called the system of epigenesis. The latter can also be called the system of generic preformation, since the productive capacity of the progenitor is still preformed in accordance with the internally purposive predispositions that were imparted to its stock, and thus the specific form was preformed virtualiter.”6
As we shall see, some commentators do not consider this “virtual preformation” to be the avowal of preformationism at all, and see in it no contradiction with Kant’s declared epigenesist position. Yet the ambiguity of the expression must be acknowledged. Zöller certainly recognizes it. He reminds us that, according to their technical meaning, “[pre]dispositions (Anlagen) are opposed to germs (Keime).”7 The “dispositions [predispositions]” are mere “wrappings” that unfold in a mechanical order, while the “germs” are the conditions of the development of new parts. In other words, predispositions make sense in an economy of preformation, while germs make sense in an economy of epigenesis. Yet it seems that Kant makes frequent use of the two without distinction.8 While we have seen that he differentiates the producta (the life that develops through self-differentiation) from the educta (which are but the unfolding of a first form), he still blurs the line between the two because he does not always rigorously distinguish between them (this is also the case in the passage from the Transcendental Analytic analyzed above). For Zöller, this state of affairs, in the order of natural history, establishes the pre-eminence and essential nature of the first focus: are “productions” not determined as “eductions,” if considered in terms of the undatable and unintelligible stem from which they originate? Doesn’t this stem allow us to consider all germs as predispositions? And again, shouldn’t epigenesis be understood, as it emerges, as a derived source that owes its strength to the subterranean and primary obscurity of the originary source?
As the innate base of a priori knowledge, this focus would then also be the sole stem of the human races, as well as the one that appears in the third Critique in the term “original organization,” the first form, the inaccessible source of life that gives life its reason. Thus, in different places in his work, Kant is said to deploy many versions of a single limit. The challenge is therefore to understand how this limit keeps company with the otherwise explicit rejection of preformationism.
Kant to Herder: The Limits of the Formative Drive
I shall begin the examination of occurrences of epigenesis with the review of Herder’s Ideas, a key element in this debate. Zöller argues that the review implicitly shows what must be viewed as Kant’s “reservations” about epigenesis. It also makes it possible to illustrate the precise relation these reservations have to the transcendental in Kant’s work as a whole.
In his review, Kant pays tribute to the achievement of Herder’s text while firmly resisting the conception of “vital force” elaborated within it. This concept is directly inspired by Blumenbach’s “formative drive.” Indeed, Herder develops his own concept of Bildung (formative education) primarily with reference to Blumenbach’s refutation of preformationism and defense of epigenesis.9
Kant does not mention Blumenbach in his review. Yet it is as if he were offering a first version of the analysis of the “formative drive” that he was to present in §81 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. This version, like the one in the third Critique, presents an apparent attack on Herder’s interpretation.
What is this “formative drive” then? Blumenbach explains as follows:
In all living creatures, from man to maggot and down, from the cedar to the mold, there lies a specific, inborn, effective drive that acts throughout life to take on from the beginning its determinate form, then to maintain it; and if it be destroyed, where possible to repair it. A drive (or tendency or striving, by whatever term one calls it) that is as wholly distinct both from the general properties of the body in general, as from the other forces of the organized body in particular; the one seems to be the first cause of all generation, nutrition and reproduction, which, to fend off all misinterpretation and to distinguish it from the other forces of nature, I here give the name of the Bildungstrieb (nisus formativus).10
The “formative drive” is, then, the organic instinct that gives life its general configuration, allows it to conserve and take care of itself, as well as to reproduce and repair itself. Kant argues that Herder grants it too much force, a force that is independent of any internal predisposition or germ. He writes: “The author does not reckon with germs here but rather with an organic force, in plants as much as animals.”11 This drive without any origin other than its own spontaneity is then characterized by its total freedom in morpholo
gical improvisation. For Herder, this type of freedom defines the epigenetic drive exactly, at work in the constitution of natural forms. It is important to note that in contrast, until 1790, Kant maintained a definition of epigenesis as “generic preformation,” a kind of supervised freedom.
Herder distinguishes two meanings of epigenesis: an old meaning and a contemporary meaning. It is important to mention that to complicate things still further, epigenesis was sometimes used to refer to a type of mechanical growth through the addition of new parts. To differentiate the new meaning from this previous alternate meaning, Herder calls contemporary epigenesis, as presented by Blumenbach, “genesis.” Yet it is true that Herder does not view this “genesis” as proceeding from any “germ.” He rejects preformationism entirely:
No eye has ever seen preformed germs. If one talks of an epigenesis, one does so inappropriately, as if the members grew on from outside. Rather, there is a formation (genesis), an effect of internal forces, for which nature has prepared a matter, that they are supposed to organize (sich zubilden), in which they are supposed to manifest themselves.12
Herder develops his own interpretation of the organic growth caused by “internal forces” that cannot be reduced to mechanical causes. Hence his rejection, following Blumenbach, of the idea of “germs,” which, as we have seen, implies a “wrapping” lying in wait for its pure and simple unwrapping. The unlimited “genetic force” (formative force or epigenesis) is opposed, in its very freedom, on the one hand, to any logic of encasement and, on the other, to occasionalism (equivocal generation).
Even as he agrees with Herder regarding the superiority of the epigenesist theory, Kant still considers it necessary to restrict the unfolding of the formative drive to a given number of forms of possible life. In his review, Kant writes: “[W]ith this the reviewer fully concurs” with Herder, but “only with this reservation”: the organizing cause is “limited by its nature only perhaps to a certain number and degree of differences.”13 Once these have been established, the formative force is “not further free to form yet another type under altered circumstances.” Kant goes on to say we might very well “then call this natural vocation of the forming nature also ‘germs’ (Keime) or ‘original predispositions’ (Anlagen).” In his view, this does not amount to a return to preformationism. Nor is it “thereby regarding the former as primordially implanted machines and buds that unfold themselves only when occasioned [. . .], but merely as limitations, not further explicable, of a self-forming faculty, which latter we can just as little explain or make comprehensible.”14
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 9