Biological Reason
Now, what relation can we establish between the Kantian meaning of the epigenetic development of reason presented above and the contemporary approach to brain development? What relation does it establish between epigenesis and epigenetics? If our emphasis on the Kantian definition of life is correct, it must then be confronted with contemporary biological judgment.
Throughout this analysis, I have faced the difficult question of a biologization of the transcendental. In every instance where it has been a matter of exploring it, the two terms appear to be incompatible. On several occasions, we have in fact seen that the neurobiological approach to the origin of the categories of thought immediately confiscated the motif of epigenesis from philosophy and severed from its transcendental meaning. We noted that the transcendental dissolved in some sense into the evolutionary perspective that supports the theory of brain epigenesis – a dual perspective that is simultaneously ontogenetic and phylogenetic. On the one hand, it is a matter for neurobiologists to explain the individual development of the brain by taking into account the influence of non-genetic factors such as experience and learning. On the other hand, it is a matter of inscribing this very process within the wider framework of a revisited theory of evolution that now takes the view that heredity depends not only on genetic factors, but also on epigenetic factors.10 Yet, as we have already noted, these types of perspectives on adaptation, evolution, and heredity appear to be totally incompatible with any idea of an a priori or transcendental structure. If the agreement of the categories with the objects of experience follows an evolutionary line and transforms according to adaptive imperatives, then the existence of a priori epigenesis cannot be supported.
And yet, clearly, Kant does not use the term “epigenesis” just by chance in §27. This use cannot but bring up the question of the close relation between reason and living organism that unfolds throughout the critical enterprise. In Kant, the organism is not only an object of thought, it also refers its own image in thought. Life is the “as if” of thought, while thought is the “as if” of life. Beyond paralogisms, beyond any attempt at substantialization, there is no doubt that biology is the most relevant field for supporting the investigation into the identity of reason. This is all the more the case given that Kant’s developments in regard to the living being are striking for their present-day relevance. We cannot but be impressed by the way in which his philosophy appears to have anticipated the turn to epigenetics in contemporary biology. Despite the intervening centuries, in his description of “the organization where everything is an end and reciprocally a means,”11 it is entirely possible to see in Kant a prefiguring of the mode of formation of the phenotype by cellular differentiation made possible by epigenetic mechanisms. As Huneman rightly emphasizes, Kant asks the question of how both the whole and the parts can be engendered simultaneously, especially in §66 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. His description announces the “theory of cellular differentiation, which considers the whole organism to ask why, given that all the cells have the same genotype, [it is, for example,] a neuron that is expressed.”12
What then does reason see in living factuality? I have suggested that it sees itself in it. I would like to take another step in this direction by arguing that what neurobiology makes possible today through its increasingly refined description of brain mechanisms and its use of increasingly effective imaging techniques is the actual taking into account, by thought, of its own life. Reason not only sees itself in the mirror of the living being, it also sees its own life: it sees itself living. Now, more than ever, this vision needs the resources of a critique of biological judgment. This is the case not because, in this objective and subjective grasping of thought by itself, the transcendental marks a bar of invisibility (something in thought that must remain hidden away from the discovery of its biological functioning), but rather because the visibility of thought quite simply calls to be not just observed, but, rather, conceptually elaborated. Indeed, the fact that reason sees itself living has effects on reason, thereby provokes thought, calls for critique, and never amounts simply to an observation.
As the heirs of Kant receiving his thought from within the specific state of contemporary philosophy, we can again imagine that he would have been opposed neither to the idea of a neuronal inscription of the activities of thinking and rationality in general, nor to that of an evolutionary process of truth. Here again, he would not necessarily have contested the assimilation of reason to the brain, since, far from being a rigidly programmed organ, the brain is open to the adventure of epigenetics. He would not necessarily have rejected any adaptive view of the transcendental, since he himself accepts a categorial modifiability. The epigenetic development of reason coincides with the modifiable – and modified – form of the transcendental, just as the form of a brain coincides with the modifiable development of its connections.
On the other hand, Kant would not have accepted the unquestioning dogmatism of cognitivism that never interrogates the return effect of the biology of thinking on thought itself. The taking into account of this effect is a task that contemporary philosophy can no longer avoid if it is to escape the new Kampfplatz between idealism and skepticism, which, as I have tried to show, is setting up its stage before our very eyes today.
The Thorny Problem of Analogy
But aren’t I going too far? After all, epigenesis is presented as an analogy in §27. By transforming it into a paradigm, aren’t I wrongfully transgressing the limits of this analogy and, consequently, the limits of reflective judgment? Isn’t it a stretch to claim that today reason sees itself living and that Kant can help us think this state of affairs? Lastly, is it legitimate to postulate the existence of an epigenetic mode of transmission and heritage of philosophy – a mode for which I offer an example here with the reception of Kantian thought via the interplay of readings and interpretative dialogues developed throughout my analysis?
The meaning to be attributed to the analogical status of epigenesis in Kant is a point that was deferred in my approach, and one which I must now explain. I deliberately waited until the end to deal with this question, on which the validity of all my work depends. If it turns out that epigenesis is only an image with nothing other than an exoteric, pedagogic, or illustrative role, then my entire elaboration is meaningless.
The value of the analogy of epigenesis in §27 is signaled by the phrase “as it were (gleichsam)” in “as it were a system of the epigenesis of pure reason.”13 In this paragraph, “analogy” should be understood in its general sense, not in the technical meaning presented during the examination of the principle in the “Analogies of Experience.”14
Here the analogy between epigenesis and the production of the categories does not correspond to either mathematical analogy or philosophical analogy. The four terms of which it is composed are present and can be readily related to one another: epigenesis is to the theory of generation what the production of categories is to transcendental philosophy. At the same time, it is not a matter either of mathematical equality, since the proportion remains undetermined. Analogy should therefore be understood here as a simple case of hypotyposis, that is, the sensible presentation of a concept.
In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant says that this type of sensible presentation has two possible expressions:
either schematic, where to a concept grasped by the understanding [. . .] the corresponding intuition is given a priori; or symbolic, where to a concept which only reason can think, and to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is attributed with which the power of judgment proceeds in a way merely analogous to that which it observes in schematization.15
Epigenesis is not the schema of a category, since it represents the production process of the relation of categories to objects in general, but nor is it the symbol of an idea. It might appear that it is situated somewhere between the two: it can count as an example of the empirical concept of production, but it can a
lso be considered as the schema of the idea of system, a symbolic representation of the whole. In the Architectonic of Pure Reason, Kant writes:
For its execution the idea needs a schema, i.e., an essential manifoldness and order of the parts determined a priori from the principle of the end. A schema that is not outlined in accordance with an idea, i.e. from the chief end of reason, but empirically, in accordance with aims occurring contingently [. . .], yields technical unity, but that which arises only in consequence of an idea (where reason provides the ends a priori and does not await them empirically) grounds architectonic unity.16
As an example of the production or schema of the idea of system, with a pedagogic or symbolic value, epigenesis finds itself between several registers of the sensible presentation. What it is important to emphasize here is that its status as hypotyposis in no way detracts from its logical effectiveness. Indeed, the last lines of the passage cited above state this clearly: an authentic schema of reason “arises” from the idea. It is not forged technically. In other words, it is authorless, automatically produced by the concept or idea of which it is the image. Hypotyposis is not of the order of subjective creation or invention. It refers to the logical process of the sensible translation of concepts (of the understanding or reason) and is not initially an act of free creation. Thus, it does not depend on the good will of the philosopher. The image springs up “in consequence” of the concept and establishes itself as most apt to illustrate it. It therefore has no rhetorical value. Hence, the epigenesis analogy is constitutive, the illustrated expression of the concept that springs up spontaneously from the concept. It is the sensible translation that imposes itself most immediately and most legitimately upon thought as the biological image of categorial production. It would not be relevant to reduce it to its metaphorical meaning, as if it had no objective importance.
Invariance and Reorganization
There is nothing to stop us, therefore, from expanding this motif into a paradigm. A morphological invariance held at the cost of constant redevelopment and micro-reorganizations of the base structure: this is the meaning of the epigenetic paradigm.
Reason shares a dual economy with living organization. As a totality that generates order and stability, reason necessarily pre-exists the elements it orders, just as the “germs” or “predispositions” ensure the invariance of the morphogenesis of the species. The “transcendental faculty” of reason is the “faculty of principles,”17 which proceeds “to comprehend all the actions of the understanding in respect of every object into an absolute whole.”18 This “rational concept of the form of a whole”19 is systematic unity as it first presents itself, a priori, as “the outline (monogramma)” or the “articulated (articulatio)” whole, “a single supreme and inner end” that rules “its affinity and [. . .] its derivation.”20
The unfolding of this systematic program also assumes the malleability – the property of transformation, accommodation, and rectification – of the structure, which is ensured by the growth of new parts. This suppleness is the condition of the equilibrium of the system. Ultimately, my argument is that in Kantian philosophy, the transcendental is that which ensures both the stability and the transformability of the whole.
The question of the foundational solidity of the transcendental thus appears to be false as soon as we stop looking for its supposed “focus,” or hypocenter, and instead consider its specific mobility, namely its value as a passage and conductor between invariance and modification.
This vector role of the transcendental is illuminated specifically in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. As we know, in the last instance, Kant asked what it is that enables the articulation – the contact point – between nature and freedom, without which they would remain separated by “an incalculable gulf.”21 It is important to look for what authorizes “the transition from the manner of thinking in accordance with the principles of the one to that in accordance with the principles of the other.”22 Since it is immediately impossible to observe “the determining grounds of causality in accordance with the concept of freedom”23 in nature, it is therefore necessary to manage to bring the two “into association”24 or to “throw a bridge”25 between them. This is the task of the third Critique, which locates the epicenter of their encounter in purposiveness. Indeed, “the power of judgment provides the mediating concept between the concepts of nature and the concepts of freedom, which makes possible the transition from the purely theoretical to the purely practical [reason].”26 The fact that some appearances only seem to be possible as ends allows us to think about nature “in such a way that the lawfulness of its form is at least in agreement with the possibility of the ends that are to be realized in it in accordance with the laws of freedom.”27 The epigenesis of critical philosophy thus comes to fruition, ultimately, through the development of the concept of purposiveness, through the revelation of the conductor power of the transcendental. It was necessary to stretch the transcendental enough to include in its jurisdiction (the faculty of judgment) that which excludes it (the beautiful and the living being) and to integrate that which does not depend on it in its own economy.28 As we have seen, this extension or development assumes a differentiation of causality, an increased complexity in the concept of purposiveness, and a modification of necessity – in other words, as announced in §27, an epigenesis of categories.
Kant Tomorrow
The perspective of a transcendental in constant negotiation with itself enables Kant’s philosophy to rediscover the fluidity that too many polarized readings have petrified. Drawn between two regimes of temporalization (Heidegger), two logical and biological options (preformationism and the evolutionism of cognition), two understandings of the a priori (formal and historical), ultimately it could appear only as the exhausted expression of finitude.
It is true that it was time to speak out against the contemporary impoverishment of philosophy, condemned for so long to poeticmessianic waiting, ignoring the most serious scientific revolutions of our time. But, as I have sought to demonstrate, the positivist or reductionist temptation is none other than the flipside of the same failure.
Against this, I have not proposed a revivalist attempt to save the integrity of the transcendental or critical rationality. What I have tried to say is as follows. In the Critique of Pure Reason, when discussing the schema of the triangle, Kant asserts that there are realities that “can never exist anywhere except in thought.”29 If we share this view, as I do, then the validity of the transcendental is upheld. Yes, there are realities that exist nowhere but in thought. But we must add immediately that thought is nothing without its reality – both material and objective. By describing epigenesis as a paradigm of rationality, I never forget the scientific meaning and I support the equivalence and interchangeability of its two dimensions, the biological and the philosophical.
Tomorrow, biology will prove that epigenetic modifiability is a more important evolutionary factor than genetics. Tomorrow, the order of precedence between program and its translation will be inverted. As Kant clearly understood, the task initiated by the introduction of the epigenetic motif into the heart of reason is to restore time to the transformation of the a priori.
Today, before tomorrow, a non-existential concept of finitude is dawning. The shadow of the living being, the moment of a new thought.
Notes
1. Weil, “Sens et fait,” p. 104.
2. Weil adds, moreover, that “with the concept of entropy, nor does post-Kantian physics see any logical or material impossibility in it.” “Sens et fait,” p. 104.
3. Huneman, “La place de l’analytique de la biologie,” p. 265.
4. CPJ, §82, p. 296, English translation modified following changes to the French translation.
5. CPJ, §82, p. 296.
6. CPJ, §80, p. 288.
7. CPJ, §82, note, p. 296, English translation modified following changes to the French translation.
8. Moreover, it is surprising that Meillassou
x chose never to speak about the problem of the trace, even though he mobilizes the figure of the fossil and the arche-fossil so strongly. Admittedly, he does specify, “I will call ‘arche-fossil,’ or ‘fossil-matter,’ not just materials indicating the traces of past life, according to the familiar sense of the term ‘fossil,’ but materials indicating the existence of an ancestral reality or event.” After Finitude, p. 10. Nevertheless, it seems difficult, to say the least, to think the one without the other!
9. Weil, “Sens et fait,” p. 105.
10. See the “synthetic” theory of evolution.
11. CPJ, §66, p. 247, English translation modified following changes to the French translation.
12. Huneman, “La place de l’analytique de la biologie,” p. 262.
13. CPR, §27, p. 265, B167.
14. Kant says that an analogy is either mathematical or philosophical. He expands: “In philosophy analogies signify something very different from what they represent in mathematics. In the latter they are formulas that assert the identity of two relations of magnitude, and are always constitutive, so that if two members of the proportion are given the third is also thereby given, i.e., can be constructed. In philosophy, however, analogy is not the identity of two quantitative but of two qualitative relations, where from three given members I can cognize and give a priori only the relation to a fourth number but not this fourth member itself.” CPR, Analogies of Experience, pp. 297–8, A180/B223.
Before Tomorrow- Epigenesis and Rationality Page 28