Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality

by Catherine Malabou

  We have seen that epigenesis includes the dual dimension of regression and progression, since the embryo’s formation gradually makes it more complex through the addition of new parts that complete pre-existing parts. The epigenetic economy and the hermeneutic economy thus concur, with both of them combining repetition and exploration, recapitulation and invention. It might be objected that all genesis also involves this dual dimension. This is true, but in the case of epigenesis, these dimensions are but one; they fuse together at the point of their shared impact.

  Admittedly, the context in which Ricœur develops his idea of interpretative epigenesis is very different from my own.5 But this difference is not enough to proscribe the comparison with the epigenesis of reason. Why? As we have seen, the challenge of §27 derives from the tension that it incites, rather than soothes, between preformation and transformation. It appears that the figure of epigenesis constantly sets off the conflict it is supposed to settle, the conflict between the vision of a predetermined, preformed categorial engendering and the point of view of a modification of this production by experience after the fact. There’s no way out of this circle. Consequently, instead of trying in vain to break through it by remaining within the strict limits of the Critique of Pure Reason, instead of juxtaposing this text to other parallel texts, and, finally, instead of trying to explain the genesis of epigenesis from its first to its last occurrence, we should ask whether an epigenetic development takes place in Kant’s philosophy and look for the type of hermeneutic strategy that this process requires. In other words, we should ask whether there is a gradual transformation of the transcendental, and thus of the rational itself; whether critical philosophy is organized entirely by the dual prospective and retrospective movement of epigenesis.

  In fact, it turns out that the trajectory of the three Critiques is organized according to the rhythm of this dual dynamic. Present in embryonic form in the first Critique, the idea of the transformability and transformation of the transcendental comes to fruition in the last Critique. This process of completion simultaneously modifies the starting point and retrospectively gives the entire critical undertaking its ultimate form and meaning. The genitive in the phrase “system of the epigenesis of pure reason” must therefore be understood definitively as a subjective genitive: the epigenesis of reason itself.

  What an epigenesis shows, says Ricœur – and this is a particularly important point – is that it “has meaning only in later figures, since the meaning of a given figure is deferred until the appearance of a new figure.”6 This new figure is neither a pure product from outside, nor the revelation of a preformed meaning. The logic of epigenesis, its own dynamic, requires that we seek out and show this place where the transcendental is “both archaic in origin and susceptible of an indefinite creation of meaning.”7 It is not therefore necessary to transgress the circularity of the a priori and the transcendental, which presents the structural framework of the entire rational undertaking from the first Critique, in order to look for its effectiveness outside of it, in experience. Nor is it appropriate to substitute an alternative model such as mental evolutionism in its place. And it is not a matter of revealing its ontological or historical assumptions. Lastly, we cannot, on the other hand, shut it up in the hermetically sealed container of predetermination.

  No. Setting aside the genetic paradigm (I am deliberately playing here on both the hermeneutic and scientific meanings of the word “genetic”) involves considering the idea of the system of the epigenesis of pure reason introduced in §27 as the beginning of an internal growth process which, moving by self-differentiation from one Critique to the next, plays with the forces of its own outside, starting with its creative, formative, and transformative resources. In this way we can define the core of rationality as the mobile middle between constitution and relinquishing of itself: archeology and teleology.

  From the First to the Third Critique: The Intrication of the Transcendental and the Biological

  What is this outside that is internal to critique? The new element which in the course of the critical trajectory will reveal “meaning only in later figures”8 and demonstrate the reconciliation of the biological and the transcendental without granting either one the supremacy of a proper meaning, this element that the figure of epigenesis already introduced covertly in the first Critique and that profoundly transformed the entire system, is life. The meeting of thinking and life is the immanent outside of critique. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant identifies for the first time the specific question that the organized being asks reason, a question whose difficulty the first Critique signals, but which it does not yet try to answer.

  The question that the living being and life in general address reason derives initially from their condition as outsiders. They are neither ideas, nor concepts, nor forms. They do not immediately have any transcendental status. Indeed, they appear to have come from outside. Bernard Bourgeois writes: “The concept of living being, or to put it in Kant’s terms, organized being, organism, is not an a priori or metaphysical concept, is not a fortiori transcendental [. . .].”9 Consequently, the real interpretative difficulty raised by §27 derives from the fact that Kant calls for help from a figure that has absolutely no transcendental meaning to illustrate the exemplary transcendental instances that are, first, the production of the objective reference of the categories, and, second, the architectonic tendency of reason.

  The resolution of this heterogeneity between the transcendental and life is exactly that which, along with the categories and their objective reference, is also subject to epigenesis. Indeed, the structure of relation between the transcendental and life evolves, becomes more complex, and is transformed from the first to the last Critique. The meaning of the epigenesis of and in critical philosophy derives from the long rational maturation of the relation between the transcendental and that which appears to do without it, to resist it: the living organism, which self-forms and has no need for categories. Gradually, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant came to grasp these appearances which, in experience, do not present themselves as objects of experience like any other, and, in fact, do not present themselves as objects at all: the beautiful, and that which interests us the most here, the living being. Long before his twenty-first-century readers, Kant completely exposed the transcendental to the factuality of life. A series of categorial modifications resulted from this contact – epigenetic modifications whose possibility appeared to have been excluded in the first Critique: the specification of causality through the intermediary of purposiveness; the constitution of purposiveness as an autonomous concept; and, above all, as a result of all this, the transformation of the category of necessity.

  Difference in Causality

  To support this interpretation, I’ll begin with the transformation in the meaning of epigenesis between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment. However, its meaning appears to be identical in §27 of the first Critique and §81 of the third. The only difference seems to lie in a different context. In the first, epigenesis acts as an analogy of a priori production, while in the second it is treated according to its own meaning as the mode of growth of living beings. The philosophical debate is the same: in both instances, I repeat, it is about defending epigenesis against equivocal generation and preformationism. In §81, Kant explains that there are two main theories for the production of living beings: “occasionalism” and “prestabilism.” Occasionalism claims that “the supreme world-cause, in accordance with its idea, would immediately provide the organic formation to the matter commingling in every impregnation.”10 Kant rapidly dismisses this thesis, which says that the living is endowed with no formative force at all and is always, on every occasion, created or re-created by God. The alternative between preformation and epigenesis is presented within “prestabilism,” which instead assumes that an “an organic being produces more of its kind and constantly preserves the species itself.”11 Kant writes:


  Now prestabilism can in turn proceed in two ways. Namely, it considers each organic being generated from its own kind as either the educt or the product of the latter. The system of generatings as mere educts is called that of individual preformation or the theory of evolution; the system of generatings as products is called the system of epigenesis.12

  Kant clearly opts for the superiority or “great advantage” of epigenesis over preformation, whose “champions” “excep[t] every individual from the formative force of nature in order to allow it to come immediately from the hand of the creator.”13 Although they try not to, the advocates of preformationism share this approach with the supporters of occasionalism, who “would make impregnation a mere formality, since the supreme intelligent world-cause has decided always to form a fruit immediately with his own hand and to leave to the mother only its development and nourishment.”14

  There is no need to emphasize the similarity of the arguments in favor of epigenesis put forward by Kant in the two Critiques. This is clear and undeniable. The reference to Blumenbach and the formative drive at the end of §81 reinforces the advantage granted to epigenesis over the competing theories of engendering and extends the remarks made in §27.

  But there is a difference, of course. Again, this difference lies not in the dissymmetry of the contexts but rather in what must be called a difference in causality. In the first Critique, the natural lawfulness that it is the mission of epigenesis to figure and validate is the mechanism. The order of nature, generated by the understanding, is the foundation of natural, that is, mechanical necessity. On the other hand, as we know, in the third Critique epigenesis is analyzed within the framework of the “teleological principle,” which assumes “an intentionally acting cause to whose ends nature is subordinated, even in its mechanical laws.”15 But mechanism and teleology are “two entirely different kinds of causality.”16 The challenge is to arrive at their “unification.”17 The revelation of the role and importance of purposiveness – defined as a “special kind of causality”18 – enables movement between the two regimes and effects a dramatic transformation in the categorial order.

  The Order of Nature and Systematic Order: Examining Purposiveness

  In the Critique of Pure Reason, mechanism and teleology are not yet polarized. The single difficulty that is responsible for stalling so many readings of §27 is that, as the third Critique clearly demonstrated, epigenesis is a form of teleological judgment and can in no way be subject to a mechanist explanation.19 In the Critique of Pure Reason, epigenesis certainly has a role in representing a mode of engendering, but a mode of engendering of that which is not normally engendered: the conceptual apparatus of determinism – the identity of the laws of the understanding (categories and principles) and the laws of nature. Since the difference of mechanism and teleology as causal regime is not revealed on its own count, this makes the figure of epigenesis responsible for a symptomatic ambiguity and creates the hiatus that led exegetes to bring epigenesis back to preformation – which is more immediately compatible with mechanism – or else to simply strip it of its transcendental status. In the Critique of Pure Reason, the dual causal pulse of, on the one hand, the archaic or archeological (the fundamental metaphysical principles of nature, as Kant himself said) and, on the other, the teleological is not yet identified.

  “System of the epigenesis of pure reason.” It has been said that this phrase is as much about the understanding as about reason. As much about “nature,” Kant would also say, as about the “order of nature (Naturordnung).” For Kant, “nature” refers to the set of laws and the subsuming of all appearances to these laws, while the “order of nature” describes the tendency of these laws to combine together into a system. The difference between the understanding and reason thus reinforces one that exists between “nature” and the “order of nature.” Nature, in its form, that is, in its a priori lawfulness, is subject entirely to the jurisdiction of the understanding. But this form also tends towards another order, which is the systematic order incumbent on reason: “[I]f we survey the cognitions of our understanding in their entire range, then we find that what reason quite uniquely prescribes and seeks to bring about concerning it is the systematic in cognition, i.e., its interconnection based on one principle.”20

  Kant terms this systematic tendency “purposiveness.” In the Critique of Pure Reason, purposiveness is certainly concerned with living beings, since the regulatory principle that guides the systematic tendency of reason is present as the hierarchical ordering of nature into genera and species. And yet, quite remarkably, the concept of teleology does not appear. Moreover, as Philippe Huneman emphasizes, in the first Critique, purposiveness is “strictly synonymous with science’s demands for systematicity and [. . .] is absolutely not opposed to the explanations that are entirely given by efficient causes, [. . .] thus [it is in keeping with] a description in terms of mechanical determinism in which no given end has an explanatory value.”21

  Recalling the two meanings of order – the rational architectonic and the regulation of appearances by the principle of causality – allows us to emphasize one striking point: in the Critique of Pure Reason, mechanism (necessity) and purposiveness (systematic order) complement one another without any other form of process. The system of pure reason is described as an “end.” Indeed, its privileged figure is the organism. And yet purposiveness does not describe the natural living.

  Certainly, the regulating idea of system is “the unity of the end, to which all parts are related and in the idea of which they are also related to each other.”22 The end here refers both to the goal (Zweck) and to its completion (Ende) – the organized totality (mutual dependence of the parts of the whole) – just as the Critique of the Power of Judgment also claims. Moreover, once again, the three principles of systematic unity are presented in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic as the arranging of nature into genera and species:

  Reason thus prepares the field for the understanding: 1. by a principle of sameness of kind in the manifold under higher genera, 2. by a principle of variety of what is same in kind under lower species; and in order to complete the systematic unity it adds 3. still another law of the affinity of all concepts, which offers a continuous transition from every species to every other through a graduated increase of varieties.23

  Lastly, since the idea of the whole precedes the constitution of the parts, the system must develop according to a law of growth analogous to that of living organisms. In the Architectonic of Pure Reason, Kant in fact states that “[t]he whole is therefore articulated (articulatio) and not heaped together (coacervatio); it can, to be sure, grow internally (per intussusceptionem), but not externally (per appositionem), like an animal body, whose growth does not add a limb but rather makes each limb stronger and fitter for its end without any alternation of proportion.”24 One last passage completes the inscription of the relation between system, purposiveness, and organism in the Architectonic:

  The systems seem to have been formed, like maggots, by a generatio æquivoca, from the mere confluence of aggregated concepts, garbled at first but complete in time, although they all had their schema, as the original germ, in the mere self-development of reason, and on that account are not merely each articulated for themselves in accordance with an idea but are rather all in turn purposively united with each other as members of a whole in a system of human cognition [. . .].25

  The contrast between growth by accumulation or “technical” arrangement and organic growth is already present, and is one of the fundamental aspects of the critique of teleological judgment.26

  We therefore have proof of the close association between purposiveness and the mode of development of organic life. Nevertheless, the systematicity of cognition analyzed in the Critique of Pure Reason leaves no place for biology and is therefore directly situated in the perspective opened by the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science according to which matter “in itself” is without life.27 The first metaphysical fou
ndations of science are the principles of movement, not those of living matter.28 As Huneman writes, “Purposiveness is only a language to say what the natural sciences explain, and provide it with a heuristic; this language is immediately coextensive with the territory of physics.”29 From this perspective, the systematic unity of cognition, as the end of reason, matches the necessity of the mechanism perfectly.

  In the Critique of Pure Reason, life is there without being there. It does not yet put the transcendental to the test. It has not yet emerged as a question. But the figure of epigenesis is nonetheless already inscribed in the text and thereby introduces a gap in it that is not yet mature. This is why the figure of epigenesis is, it must be said for all the reasons mentioned above, well and truly incomprehensible in the context of the Transcendental Analytic. It signals the still summary state of the difference between physics and biology, mechanism and teleology.