Kant’s critique of the Leibnizian theory of organisms:
An unnoticed cornerstone for criticism?
Philippe Huneman (Rehseis, CNRS, Paris)
In the Antinomies of reason, there is a short text whose meaning can be grasped only
by determining what is exactly Kant’s target in the critique that he elaborates there
(A525/B553-A528/B556). This target is the Leibnizian conception of organisms as “infinitely
articulated machines”. What is at stake in this critique is thus the presuppositions of such a
conception. Then, reading Kant’s critic may allow us to understand the extent to which the
theory of organised beings in Leibniz is embedded in his own metaphysical commitments.
Thus, reciprocally, such an interpretation will grasp the precise link between questions about
organisms and metaphysical problems, so that we will understand why the critical project is in
itself concerned by the question of defining organisms. In fact, this critique of Leibniz is
important since the leibnizian conception shares many presuppositions and schemes of the
common metaphysical framework of what Kant called dogmatism, and which he critically
addressed in his works after 1764. While Leibniz addressed the question of organised beings
in order to avoid Cartesian mechanism and vitalism (mainly in the form of Stahl’s animism),
Kant’s critique points out that this project could not be fulfilled within Leibniz’s guidelines.
The present paper reconstruct Kant’s critique within this background, and questions its
significance for criticism in general.
After having briefly reminded the Leibnizian conception, I shall present the concept of
those Antinomies of reason, in order to expose the second Antinomy; I will justify that at this
point, the idea of organised beings raises a specific problem, so that, in the course of the
second Antinomy, such issue should be addressed and one has to define some requisites for
any theory of organisms. I end up by stressing the consequences of such an analysis upon the
meaning of the divorce between Kant and Leibniz (and, more generally, classical
metaphysics), and its consequences concerning further Kantian conceptions.
1. Leibniz and organisms
The Cartesian thinking initiated the metaphor of the animal-machine; this meant two
often conflated theses: a. the origin and the functioning of living beings are plainly
understandable by laws of mechanics; b. machines are useful and necessary models to
1
conceive organised phenomena. Leibniz kept the requisite of an absolute lawlikeness of
nature, such that organisms are submitted to mechanism. As he wrote against Stahl,
responding to his Theoria Medica vera (1712): “nothing happens in the bodies that could not
be explained by mechanical, hence intelligible, reasons.”1 The only limit to this explanation is
our present state of understanding; what is then, not mechanically intelligible, is not bodily
phenomena, but the principles of this mechanics itself, since they require an appeal to the
reasons why God created this world (with those natural laws) rather than another possible
world. “All phenomena could be mechanically explained, if we were to understand them
enough; but the very principles of mechanics could not be geometrically explained, since they
hang on more sublime principles, which attest its author’s wisdom concerning order and
perfection in the work.”2
However, he thought that, contrary to the machines made by us, or “artificial
machines”, living creatures are “natural machines”, which means “infinitely organised
machines”. Leibniz formulates it in those words : the machines from nature “e.g, living bodies
(…) have a really infinite number of organs, and are so well designed and in beware of any
accident, that it is not possible to destroy them. A natural machine is still a machine in its
tiniest part, and, moreover, it stays always this same machine as it already was, being only
transformed by the folding it undergoes, and being sometimes extended, sometimes
compressed, and like concentrated when one believes it is lost”, whereas “a machine made by
the art of man is not a machine in any of its part. For example: the tooth of a wheel has parts
or fragments that are no more something artificial [= designed], and do not wear any more the
trace of the machine regarding the use it was intended to.”3 Hence, the difference between
machines and organisms is the difference between finite and infinite organisation, e. g. divine
and human techniques. The whole conception then relies on this thesis expressed in the
Theodicy’s preface, according to which there is an infinite difference of degree (out of nature)
between divine and human understanding 4 . One has to notice, here, that the technical
paradigm through which the living being has to be apprehended, remained constant from
Descartes to Leibniz, albeit the latter criticizes the identification between organisms and
machines. For Descartes, mechanism meant that those natures that we find in animals, have
In Stahl, Opera omnia, vol.III, « Negotium Otiosum », Leibniz’s remarks, §3
Tentemen anagogicum*
3
Système nouveau de la nature et de la communication des substances, §10, ed. Erdmann.
4
« Since this portion of reason, that we possess, is a gift of God, and consists in the natural light that remained
withn the whole corruption ; this portion conforms to the whole, an differs from which is in God only as a drop
of water differs from the ocean, or rather, as finite differs from the infinite.” (“Discourse on the conformity
between faith and reason”, §61)
1
2
2
no special causal powers to account for specific features of organisms, they are the same kinds
and causal powers than in plain nature and in our machines : for example, the fire in the
mammal’s hearts is not another fire than the one in machines and fireplaces 5. But Leibniz
avoids this question of natures : his mechanism means only that the laws according to which
organisms has to be understood are the very same universal laws of nature, so even if hearts
were other substances than fireplaces, they nevertheless obey the same laws and should be
understood in the same ways. To a certain extent then, Leibnizian mechanism is an
epistemological one, and Descartes’ mechanism is rather ontological. However, any
metaphysical critique of their conceptions will have to challenge this technical paradigm
common to epistemological and ontological mechanism, as the case of Kant will confirm it.
The point of Leibniz is that this infiniteness of natural machines accounts for the
feature aforementioned, which has always been taken as constitutive of life, namely: the
faculty of self repairing. Because, being infinite, an organism is build in such a way that if
you alter or withdraw one part, it is still infinitely organised, hence the lesion is not so crucial
since the organism does not lose its identity – and this self-conservation is the basis of the
capacity of self repairing, which is all the more intensive than the creature is less complex, as
we know. And if the alteration is not effective upon a living being, this means that its unity is
an internal one, opposed to the external unity of a technical machine - that is Leibniz’s claim.
The argument in the beginning supposes Leibniz’s criterion for real substances: they
should be defined not by extension (pace Descartes) but by a force, since the essence of the
substance has to account for its accidents6. (Else, we would go against the logical principle of
truth, which for Leibniz says that predicates are inherent to the substance.) But pure extension
can’t account for the accidents happening to the substance. So something akin to soul, a kind
of force, is the essence of substance7. In this context and concerning our question, Leibniz
distinguishes three stages of unity within matter, and contrasts them with living beings.
“through soul or form, there is a real unity which corresponds to what we call me in us ;
which could not take place neither in the machines of art, nor in matter, no matter how much
organised it can be; (matter) that one can only consider, either as an army, or as a herd, or as a
Traité de l’homme, AT, XI, 202.
« The nature of an individual substance or of a complete being consists in having such an achieved notion that
it is sufficient to understand and to have deduced all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is
ascribed. » (Discours de métaphysique, §8)
7
“The very nature of the body does not consist only in extension, namely in quantity, figure and motion, but one
must necessarily admit something that has a relation to souls, and that is commonly called substantial form. »
(Discours de métaphysique, §12)
5
6
3
pond full of fishes, or as a watch composed of springs and wheels.”8 Here, three kinds of
multiplicity occurring to matter are opposed to living beings: two of them (herd, pond) are in
natural matter, two of them are “matter of art” (army, wheel). In any case, the unity is
external, which means both that what is substantial comes from the substance of the
individuals within it, and that the unity of the multiplicity comes from the outside (the pond,
or the shepherd or the army’s commander, or finally the watchmaker). So, “no matter how
matter is organised”, this kind of unity will never be changed. “Any machine supposes some
substance in the pieces from which it is made”: e.g., notwithstanding the complication and
sophistication of a machine, it will share the status of armies or herds in the sense that the
substantiality comes from the substantiality of the pieces; hence, the unity of the whole will
still be provided by some instance outside the whole.
But if an external unity means that some external entity – for example, a designer –
built the machine by putting the parts together, created its unity, then in this case, he is
therefore entitled to destroy this machine by withdrawing parts, and the organisation of such a
machine is thereby destroyable by any external action. The case appears quite different when
it comes to natural machines, because infiniteness of organisation prevents the machine from
being externally altered: if you take away a part, the organization will by definition still be
infinite. Thus, its internal unity, as correlative to its infiniteness of organisation (given that no
external designer can put together an infinite organisation) becomes a source of selfpreservation. That is the reason why, being so constituted in the internal unity of an infinite
organisation, living creatures can be told to have a soul as a self preserving principle, which
was denoted by the “me” in the above quotation. The three concepts of (internal) unity,
(infinite) organisation and soul are strictly correlative and collectively required to define
living beings9. Hence, the salient character of organisms, which is the conservation of form
through the indefinite change of matter, is explained through this correlation between internal
unity and infinite organization: since, in fact, this unity governs an infinity of parts, any
change in the matter of the parts is not likely to modify the organization of the whole.
This ontological articulation of a principle of unity (soul)10 and a kind of organisation
(infinite organisation) allows Leibniz to epistemologically equate knowledge of organisation
of natural machines, and discourse on their souls. There could be no gap between talking of
8
Système nouveau de la nature et de la grâce, p.71*
Concerning the relationship between soul and organised parts see H.L. Koch (1908), §13, « Leibnizens
Auffassung des Organismus »
9
10
On the internal unity that is essential to substance as such and allows Leibniz to dismiss any conception of
things as bundles of properties, see Hacking, 1976, pp.146-148
4
the purposes of animal souls and describing the causes of their organic motions according to
mechanical laws. Leibniz will later express this harmony in the framework of his
Monadology: « Souls act according to the laws of final causes through appetitions, purposes
and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or motions. And the two
realms, the one of the efficient causes and the one of final causes, are harmonic between
them.”11
Then, corresponding to the difference between technique and infinite technique, that
yields the ontological difference between the two kinds of “machines”, there is the difference
between external and internal unity. Those two couples of concepts allow Leibniz to specify
the peculiar ontological character of living beings without giving up the requisite of the
general lawlikeness of nature. It should here be noted that Leibniz can not allow organisms to
be excepted from lawlikeness of nature, since this would destroy any science of nature. In
effect, since organisms do present the highest form of unity and substantiality, Leibniz
somehow appears committed to the radical thesis according to which the very reality is the
organisms. “I restraint corporal or composed substance to the mere livings or organic
machines in nature; what’s left is for me only aggregates of substance, that I call
substantiates; the aggregate is merely an accidental being” 12 Hence, if organisms were not
under a mechanical lawlikeness, there would be no science of nature. This motivates him to
counter the Stahlian notion of organisms, as opposed to mechanical laws, while challenging
the Theoria Medica vera. And this lawlikeness should be somehow accorded in advance to
divine purposes in nature: since the Discourse of metaphysics, Leibniz then recognized that
mechanical intelligibility of whole nature (with no exceptions) went hand in hand with the
purposive character of everything13, since the metaphysical grounding of mechanisms is the
maxims of convenience that rule God’s choice of this world with its particular laws, maxims
entailing purposiveness. Hence, at the level of the plain metaphysics of nature Stahl is
misleading since he opposes as “mechanism” and “organism” two instances of the same thing;
but at the level of the epistemology of organisms, his mistake has to be demonstrated, and a
11
Monadologie, §79.
GP II, 520. The concept of substantiate will receive further elaboration in the late letters to Des Bosses,
nevertheless this work has not been widely known at the times of Kant.
13
« I find that even several effects of nature can be demonstrated in two ways, namely by the consideration of
the efficient cause, and by the consideration of the final cause, for example by using God’s decree to always
produce its effect through the easiest and the most determined ways, as I have shown elsewhere by accounting
for the rules of dioptrics and catoptricts (..) It is wise to notice this in order to conciliate those who expect to
explain mechanically the formation of the first texture of an animal, and all the machinery of the parts, with
those who account for this same structure through the final causes. The one and the other as good, the one and
the other are useful not only to admire the art of the great worker, but also t discover something useful in physics
and in medicine.” (§§21-22)
12
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concept of living beings has to be formulated which accounts for the lawlikeness of living
nature.
In one of the strangest passages of the Critique of pure reason, Kant undertakes a
refutation of this conception. In fact, the Leibnizian idea appeals to the infinite divisibility of
space. For this reason, this conception meets the philosophical problems raised by such a
contention. Kant deals precisely with those problems in the Antithetic of reason. In this
framework, he will get the arguments for rejecting the leibnizian theory of organization. After
situating the context, we will investigate the meaning of this rebuttal, and, above all, the
reason why Kant had to set a room for such very detailed critics in the general argument of
the Transcendental Dialectics.
2. The second Antinomy and the organized beings
a. The context
While the understanding was the “power (Vermögen) of rules”, reason is now the
“power of principles” (A299B356). In other words, the understanding produces the rules
which make experience possible, those a priori synthetic principles that the Transcendental
analytics explicitated. Reason on its side brings towards unity those rules used by the
understanding in order to create unity within the manifold of phenomena (A302). Kant names
“principle” the possibility of such a unity. The principle which says “with a given conditioned
rule, all the conditioning rules are given” is the only principle capable to unify the rules of the
understanding. Reason demands the unconditioned, “all the conditions” being ipso facto
Unconditioned.
In the reasoning aiming at the conditions of a conditioned statement – a “regressive
reasoning” -, one can reach knowledge only whenever we “suppose that at least all the
members of the series on the side of the conditions are given” (A332), which becomes the
principle of reason. The principle of reason hence entails the following tension: in the same
time, the possibility of the reasoning (Vernunftschlüsse) requires presupposing as given the
totality of the conditions in the three perspectives (e.g. categorical, hypothetical and
disjunctive conditions); and this totality can not be given to the intuition (since intuition can’t
access to totalities but only to particulars). The problem is that the Transcendantal Analytics
showed that the conditions of objectivity implied the possibility of being represented in the
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intuition. For this reason, the nature of the “givenness” postulated by such a presupposition of
reason raises a question: subjectively necessary14, is it objectively valid ?
Now, the cosmology – or metaphysical discourse on this totality denoted by the word
“world” - stems from the necessity that “the totality (of the real things), as they fill space and
time, must be represented under the concept of a world” (Fortschritt…, Ak.XX, 287). Within
cosmology, the transcendental dialectics takes the appearance of the antinomies, as it follows
from the structure of the Unconditioned when it comes to this idea of world 15. The basic
consideration is that the relationship between the conditioned and its condition is, in this case,
a regress in a series : series of moments in time that precede one each other, series of parts in
space that fill one another, causal series, series of the dependency between the contingent
item and its conceptual conditions. So, in the cosmological field, there will be four senses of
the Unconditioned, corresponding to those four series, series defined by the four kinds of
categories16. In those cases, the Unconditioned is likely to be conceived in two different ways:
either the whole series is Unconditioned, hence the regress is an infinite one, like in the causal
series conceived by the Spinozists; or the Unconditioned is a member of the series (the last
one), which appears then, unlike all other members of this series, to be without conditions
(A416) 17 . This latter possibility involves a finite world, composed of simple substances,
14
« The transcendental reality (subjective) of the concepts of the pure reason is at least grounded on the fact that
we are led to such ideas by a necessary syllogism of reason » (A339, my emphasis).
15
Concerning the antinomies of reason, Victoria Wike’s book treats the topic extensively and gives a clear
account of the differences between those antinomies as well as between antinomies in the first and the third
Critique. Malzkorn (1999) provides an analysis of the antinomies through a formal reconstruction of Kant’s
arguments, and then a critique of them; Falkenburg (1995) uses the formal apparatus but embeds Kant’s
arguments within a reconstruction of the cosmological stance of its times.
16
Which are, concerning Quantity : integrity of the collection of all phenomena (that is the question of the
beginning and the limit of the world); Quality : absolute integrity of dividing a given whole (that is the question
of the simple entities); Relation : absolute integrity of the origin of a phenomenon (that is the question of the
spontaneity, of the free act as an Unconditioned beginning of a new series of causes); Modality: absolute
integrity of “the dependence of the existence of what changes within the phenomenon” (that is the question of a
necessary being) (A415).
17
For a general commentary one can usefully refer to Kemp-Smith (1948), 480-525. He concludes on a critical
evaluation of the Antinomies which rightly insists on the fact that this chapter can not be self-sufficient, since it
is a natural invitation to the third part of the Dialectics, devoted to the Idea of God (“Ideal of pure reason”),
hence to rational theology. Its ambiguities are mostly (and tentatively?) resolved in this chapter. A historical
survey is available in S.Al Azm (1972), which vindicates the radical thesis that the antinomies are the
philosophical formulation, in a critical framework, of the Leibniz-Clarke debates concerning the nature of matter
and time – debate which, in the end, opposed Leibnizism and Newtonism (see pp.46-85 on the second
Antinomy). However, one can not ignore that this rivalry between Newtonism and Leibnizism concerning the
correct philosophical account of the new physical sciences is the main debate that the critical project was
supposed to overcome. This illuminates the strategic situation of the antinomies within the critical system. Puech
(1990) argues convincingly that the project of the first Critique was a philosophical conciliation between the
Leibnizian framework of the Schuhlmetaphysik, and the Newtonian advancements in the natural sciences, which
yielded new requirements concerning ontology. Grier (2001) gives a clear account of what is an illusion in the
Antinomies.
Among the secondary literature, Kemp-Smith gives a straightforward commentary, while Bennett (1975) tries to
find out and eventually improve the Kantian arguments; one of the main question he addresses, also raised by
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leaving room for free actions and related to a God as its necessary condition; the former
option involves an infinite world of infinitely divisible phenomena, embedded in infinite
causal series, and without any necessary condition18. Now, the two options concerning the
nature of the Unconditioned give birth to one thesis and one antithesis related to each of the
four questions stated above, concerning the integrity of the conditions in a regress.
The basic problem is that “all those questions deal with an object which is not likely to
be given outside our thought, namely: the absolutely Unconditioned of the synthesis of the
phenomena” (A481). Such an idea of “world” can be conceived (as it bears no contradiction)
but this does not entail that it can be known, because it has no relationship with any possible
object. But this status of the idea remains hidden until that one has investigated the principle
of pure reason (e.g. “when a conditioned is given, the whole series of conditions is given”)
and specified whether it concerns the things as merely conceived, or the things given insofar
as that they are experienced, namely, the phenomena. But, the phenomena, being in the
apprehension nothing more than an “empirical synthesis (in space and time)” according to
criticism, are given only within the apprehension. Hence, no conditioned phenomenon brings
with itself the series of its conditions, but such a series takes place only within the regress
from a condition to a condition, which, by effectuating the synthesis, constitutes those
phenomena that are, one after the other, conditions (A499)19.
Walsh (1974), is the meaning and the validity of Kant’s reconstruction of the antithesis. The point is that to
evaluate Kant's solution of the antinomies, one has to assume that the problem is well formulated in this twosides debates, both historically and conceptually, which is not self-evident. But we can here leave aside those
questions concerning the general significance of the antinomies.
18
This alternative opposes, if not precisely Leibniz and Spinoza, but at least the “dogmatic“ metaphysics, and a
kind of sceptical empiricism. In fact, while the Leibnizian character of the “dogmatic” side is easy to identify,
the other side of the alternative has no definite name as a philosophical position, but draws upon elements from
Spinozists metaphysics, Newtonian philosophy of nature and epistemology of the natural sciences as previously
vindicated by Gassendi, by Hobbes or by Boyle. Even Leibniz’s conception of infinite divisibility of space is
requested in the antithesis of the Second antiomy. Anyway, Grier (2001) is right to emphasize the fact that,
especially concerning the second antinomy, since all those positions share certain presuppositions concerning
transcendental realism, their repartition is not likely to match exactly the lines that Kant draws in his text.
19
By emphasizing the fact that the series is only given in the act of regress we are subscribing to what Strawson
named “mix interpretation” of the transcendental idealism in the antinomies, and that he opposed to the so-called
“strong interpretation” (e.g. nothing exists in space and time) and to the so-called “weak interpretation” (e.g.
things do exist in space and time, but some statements such as the sentences in the Antithetic violate the
principle of meaning) (Strawson (1995), 193). According to this mix interpretation, the existing series are “the
series of successive perceptions that correspond to successive advances of our empirical investigations”. Thus,
this interpretation provides “a foundation or a metaphysical support” for the principle of meaning, according to
which a proposition gets a meaning only as related to the conditions of the empirical application of its concepts.
This ground is “the metaphysical fact that, after all, nothing exists really but our representations and
experiences” (Ibid, 195) However, I don’t entirely agree with Strawson, because it seems that we can not in the
same time ascribe reality to the succession of perceptions and refuse it to the series of objects. More exactly,
since the series of objects is constructed within the series of perceptions – and this is entailed by the fact that the
series does not exist outside the regress – then, reciprocally, the solution of the antinomies can not rely
ultimately on a “metaphysical fact” which would be a kind of idealism. The series of objects does exist, and
exists no less than the succession of perceptions: both exist through and as the very act of regress. So, the mix
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b. Bodies in general and their constitution
In any interpretation, concerning the phenomena (e.g. everything that is in space and
time, hence everything that falls under the concept of “world”), the series of conditions is not
given but proposed together with the conditioned – and the task of the reason is therefore to
determine it. (The mistake that yields the in general Antinomies conflates “given” and
“proposed”.) Hence, the series of conditions happens in a regress which is a successive
synthesis, therefore the “in the same time” stated in the principle of pure reason does not
obtain any more. In this case, the principle of pure reason becomes an axiom allowing the
regress in the series of conditions of a given conditioned. It is not a “constitutive principle” of
reason, e.g. a principle which would constitute purely rational objects (=wholes) beyond the
sensible, but a so-called “regulative” principle. By this word, Kant means that this rule
“postulates what should be effected by us in the regress, but does not anticipate what would
be given in the object prior to any regress” (A509). This rule enables us to go from the
conditioned to the Unconditioned through all the conditions subordinated to one another20.
Therefore, to solve the antinomies means to explain how the principle of pure reason can
provide a rule for the four cosmological syntheses which gave birth to the antinomies, in
other words, to explicate “the empirical use of the regulative principle of reason with regard
to all the cosmological ideas” (ib.).21.
In each of the cosmological Antinomies, the regulative principle indicates that “in the
empirical regress, there can be encountered no experience of an absolute boundary, and hence
no experience of a condition as one that is absolutely unconditioned empirically.” (A517)
Now, concerning the cosmological Idea of the “totality of the division of a given whole » which is the Idea of elementary substances composing an entity -, what does this mean? Here,
notice that what is at stake is any composition, be it or not essentially in space 22 It means that
interpretation according to Strawson forgets the status of the regress as an act, status which yields the whole
Kantian solution. Here, the reading of Kant that Vuillemin suggests in Nécessité et contingence, reading which
endorses Kantian intuitionism, seems to give a better account of the Kantian solution to the antinomies, by
reminding that the intuitionist emphasis on the operations of mind may avoid the universal validity of the law of
the excluded third-term.
20
Bennett’s useful commentary here says that a regulative principle does not transcend the experience, because it
extends it in a “quantitative” manner, but not in a “qualitative” way (Kant’s dialectics, §86, 272)
21
However, it is difficult to know what exactly would mean « to apply a regulative principle in a constitutive
way». We follow here Bennett, saying that the mistake here is to believe that the principle is justified by a state
of facts, instead of being a kind of advice that one gives to himself (Bennett (1974), §88, 278)
22
Al Azm (1972, 46) emphazises thus that Kant is concerned here by any kind of substance, be it material or
psychical; hence the issue of the last elements of the decomposition of substance concerns atomism as the
Leibnizian doctrine of monads. Anyway, since between the antithesis and the thesis the relation of matter to time
9
an entity can not be composed by simple parts that a division would ultimately reach, because
this would imply that those parts pre-exist to the empirical regress which finds out the parts,
so that we would “attribute a peculiar existence, prior to the experience, to a simple
phenomenon which can exist only within experience” (Prolegomena…, §52). So the Thesis,
“every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts” (A434), is ruled out by the
correct understanding of the regulative principle. But this does not entail that we subscribe to
the other position, the Antithesis, which says that the bodies are composed of an infinite
number of parts. Some commentators (e.g. Bennett) have noticed that the Antithesis seems
closer to Kant’s critical position and its regulative principle. However, as Grier (2001, 209)
emphasizes, the Antithesis takes the spatial character of the composite, which implies its
infinite divisibility, as an absolute property rather than as a condition of our intuition, and
hence misses the critical point. If we keep on considering this text, this difference is explained
by Kant through considering the status of the division itself.
Concerning the regress in parts of space and time, Kant distinguishes between the
regress in indefinitum and the regress in infinitum. The former applies to the first Antinomy
(limits of the world in space and time), because the condition is always outside the
conditioned, since any part is so to speak environed by a bigger part, and any slice of time has
prior to itself the past periods. Hence, the conditioned is never given within the condition, so
that each time, indefinitely, I must repeat the operation. On the contrary, in the second
antinomy, if I see a body, all its parts are contained within itself: all the conditions are given
within the same limits as the conditioned (A524). The wholes seem composed of parts,
because they are from the beginning perceived or conceived with parts in it. Nevertheless in
this case a whole is “divisible to infinity” but not “consist of infinitely many parts” (ibid),
because whereas the parts are included in the same limits than the whole, the division – which
determines the parts – is not previously included in the first intuition of the whole, but takes
place within this regress from part to parts which “which first makes the series actual” (ibid).
So, the parts are since the beginning contained in an aggregate which forms the whole, but
the series of the parts, within which those are coordinated, is never given, only achieved in
the regress: it is “infinite successively and never is as a whole”. Malzkorn comments by
saying that the totality of the parts is never given as such (1999, 274). But more precisely,
what is never given is the way this totality of parts is intrinsically connected; since precisely
the determinate connection of two parts in a division follows from the determination of the
is at stake, I follow Grier (2001) who argues that this basically is true about the thesis, but the antithesis is
committed to a view of matter realised in space.
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boundaries through the act of dividing. Hence, the regress can not present an “infinite
multiplicity or the taking together (Zusammennehmung derselben) into one whole” (A524),
because the determinate connexion of the parts taken together (which distinguishes the series
from the aggregate) does not pre-exist to the regress. The evidence for that is the simple fact
that, within a same whole, the division could be effectuated in various manners, which would
not be the case if the parts were existing prior to the division23.
Finally, the body is thereby infinitely dividable, but not constituted of an infinite
number of parts. “The latter (= extended whole) is thus divisible to infinity, without, however,
consisting of infinitely many parts.”(A525/B553) 24 For this reason, the antithesis, e.g. the
claim that matter is constituted by an infinity of infinitely small and infinitely divisible parts,
or infinitesimal parts, does not obtain either. Regress, which is the act of synthesis ruled by
the regulative principle of reason that compels us not to stop somewhere in the division, does
not tell us anything about the composition of matter in itself, independently and prior to this
synthesis.
This distinction here rests on the German opposition between teilen, “divide”, and
ausmachen, “constitute”; the German carries the idea that the result of a division is always a
part, hence dividing is decomposing the whole into its parts. This connotation is lost in
English. That’s why for Kant division goes with “decomposition”, because a division picks
out parts so dismantle the composites, but decomposition has to be distinguished from the
constitution or the composition by constitutive parts. The English word “decomposition”
translates Dekomposition, which is quite synonymous with Teilung, but is not the opposite of
a composition into constitutive parts; “constitutive parts” mean that the parts are determined,
hence the identities of the parts and then their boundaries are somehow fixed, hence the
decomposition is no more possible. Guyer and Wood translate Zusammensetzung, which
means “all the parts taken together”, as “composition” (A525)25, but this “composition” does
23
A formal reconstruction of the antinomy is provided by Malzkorn (1999), pp.168-190. He then criticizes
Kant’s solution (270-287)
24
“Body is therefore infinitely divisible, without consisting, however, of infinitely many parts” (Kemp Smith)
Kant wrote : “Dieser ist also ins Unendliche teilbar, ohne doch darum aus unendlich viel Teilen zu bestehen.”
The German contrasts divisible, Teilbar, which emphasizes the potentiality of dividing, with Teile, the parts
themselves that would constitute the thing independently of any disposition of the matter, disposition correlative
to our disposition to divide. The darum means that there could be a deduction, or our tendency to deduce –
deduction which in fact is misleading – a deduction from, precisely the divisibility, which is about the
appearance as relative to our power of knowledge, to the Teile, the parts, considered in themselves. Assuming
this deduction would mean conflating what we can say about appearances, and speculations about things in
themselves. The Antithesis makes this deduction, and then, is on a par with the Thesis, notwithstanding the fact
that it seems less metaphysical, and more respectful of the true structure of space (namely, its divisibility).
25
The sentence refers to the proof of the Thesis : “denn man kann allenfalls wohl zugeben: dass die
Dekomposition im letzteren niemals alle Zusammensetzung wegschaffen Könne, indem alsdann sogar aller
11
not ipso facto give constitutive parts, because it only concerns only the totality of the regions
of space. It does not mean composition as assembly of constitutive parts. The critical point is
precisely that the decomposition that goes along the division gives not the constitutive parts.
Hence in the Antithesis, where we deal with matter in space, this composition would be a real,
concrete one, it concerns the thing as existing, whereas the division and the parts into which
the division decomposes the composite, concerns only the intuition of the whole, or the
mathematical aspect.
c. The organism as infinitely articulated.
It was, in fact, the infinite divisibility of space, which allowed Kant to state his
conclusions, thus those conclusions were about continuous quantities, this continuity being
“bound to the fact of filling a space”. Here, we must state a discrepancy in the second
Antinomy, concerning precisely the spatial character of the composition in both thesis and
antithesis. As Grier (2001) has noted, the meaning of the composition is not exactly the same
in the thesis and the antithesis – and this is the precise point of the antinomy. Whereas the
thesis is concerned by composition in general, assuming that matter is prior to the forms of
intuition, the antithesis contends that matter is submitted to these forms, hence to space and
time – but a space thought uncritically as ontologically absolute. So, matter in the thesis is not
the empirical concept of matter, but a noumenal concept of matter26; on the other hand, the
antithesis proves infinite divisibility and composition of matter as spatial matter. In effect, if
space exists in itself, as the form of the things in itself, division and composition will be the
same thing – this difference cannot be made unless we assume the transcendental ideality of
space. According to Grier, the common ground of thesis and antithesis is the fact that a space
conceived as absolute thing is thought as this compared to what it has to be decided whether
matter is prior or not. This ground could be expressed by saying that both thesis and antithesis
conceive divisibility as identical with composition; they just differ about whether composition
stops on simple parts of not. In effect, in the thesis, the entity – whose matter is supposed
prior to space – is a composite, and the division naturally divides it into the elements of the
Raum, der sonst nichts Selbständiges hat, aufhören würde (welches unmögliches ist)“. Guyer and Wood translate
: „for one can in any case concede that the decomposition of the latter could never do away with all composition,
since then, every space, having nothing else that is elf-subsistent, would cease to be (which is impossible)“. My
point is only to cancel the immediate complementarity between “composition” and “decomposition” and the
subsequent assimilation between constitution and composition, because this would alter Kant’s text.
26
Arguments of the theses do not begin with the empirical concept of matter, but the pure concept of
“composite” (207)
12
composite, hence division and composition are the same. And in the antithesis, the result of
division is precisely those spatial parts that, in turn, constitute the composite supposed to be
essentially in space. Saying that division occurs through regress – which is the critical
position - , hence that constituting parts are not given, means that division and composition
are different.
But now, even if the Thesis could be true of things in itself (indeed, this is not
testable27), this does not matter when it comes to what Kant is concerned with now, e. g. the
appearances of those things, which should occupy space, hence be continuous.
This
consequence is clearly noticed in Metaphysik L1 : “Leibniz thus says : all substances are
monads or simple parts that have power of representation, and appear among all phenomena.
But (…) all appearance is continuous, and no part of the appearance is simple, thus bodies do
not consist of simple parts or monads. However if they are thought through the understanding
the substantial composites consist of simple parts.” (Ak. 28, 208) Hence in any case – whether
it’s about noumenal matter as in the Thesis or spatial matter as in the Antithesis – the
constraints of space imply the Kantian solution: divisibility without infinite composition.
As it is clear from the quotation of the lectures on Metaphysics, Kant’s concern in the
second antinomy seems rather Leibniz’s Monadology, than the composition of space and the
truth of atomism. But more precisely, Kant’s interrogation and critique of Leibniz’s
Monadology inevitably relies on considerations of space and its divisibility. So, in the end,
atomism and Monadology are the target of Kant’s Dialectics, here. This is somehow
legitimate, since monads are a kind of metaphysical atomism, as Leibniz says himself: "there
are only atoms of substance, namely units and absolutely deprived of parts, that are the
sources of actions, and the first absolute principles of the composition of things and like the
last elements of substantial analysis. We could call them metaphysical points : they have
something vital and some kind of perception, and mathematical points are their points of view
to express the universe. »28 Kant’s point is only that this Monadology says nothing about the
empirical world.
Now, if Monads are ruled out, and if all appearances in space, since they are
continuous, are infinitely dividable, what about entities composed of discrete parts? I think
that this last question addressed by Kant in the solution of the second antinomy, which will
concern Leibniz’s doctrine of organisms, arises because of the following reasons. First, even
27
This is clear also in the lectures on Metaphysics : « to speak of simple beings we must go beyond the world of
the sense, but then we have no proof of the objective reality of our concept, for we can give no example.” (Ak.
XXIX, 828)
28
Système nouveau de la nature et de la grâce, p.71*
13
if the antithesis is dismissed, so even if we can’t say that any whole is composed of an infinite
number of parts, is it possible that some composites are composed of an infinite numbers of
parts ? In effect, composition and division are not related in the same way in non continuous
wholes; but continuity was precisely the reason of such solution. Second, even if spatial
composition is as such continuous, some entities are composed of discrete parts, e.g.
machines; those parts can in their turn be either continuous or composed of discrete parts too:
those entities could then be candidates for being these infinite composed entities that are still
possible. Third, the conception of simple part, as used by Kant throughout the Antinomy,
oscillates between the logical meaning of an individual in a set of individuals, and the
mereological meaning of a part in a whole, in a way which is not always explicit to Kant
himself29: now, since the latter meaning has been used in the demonstration of the antinomy,
the former meaning is left. And since discrete entities are set of parts, may be precisely the
second meaning of “parts”, here required, will lead us to another result concerning division.
So, what happens when we try to extend the regulative rule of division to “cover the
multiplicity of parts already detached with certainty in a given whole, constituting a quantum
discretum” (A526). Given the importance of continuity of space in the applicability of this
rule of judgement, one can not easily extend the rule of division to a whole which is already
divided, namely, an “articulated (organised) whole” (ibid). Kant argues that this is indeed
transcendentally impossible, by the following reasoning.
The solution of the antinomy was based on the regress determining the parts, in other
words, before the regress there is not any partition of the phenomenon, “the whole is not in
itself already divided (eingeteilt)”, since what we have is only “a multiplicity of parts
absolutely undetermined in itself”. But what is peculiar to an articulated whole such as any
machine or any organism, is « to be represented in this concept as already divided. » (A527).
An articulated whole is effectively organised, because the articulation, Gliederung, entails
that the division is not arbitrarily drawn: it follows a design, it is thus determined by a
concept. The Kantian notion of articulation is made clear in the Methodology of the Critique
of pure reason, in the context of the characterisation of a systematic science and scientific
development. Kant argues that parts of the sciences are articulated, which means that the
boundaries between them are somehow conceptually and a priori determined. “I understand
by a system, however, the unity of manifold cognitions under one idea. This is the rational
concept of the form of he whole, insofar as through this the domain of the manifold as well as
29
Falkenburg 2000, 237
14
the positions of the parts with respect to each other is determined a priori. The scientific
rational concept, thus, contains the end and the form of the whole which is congruent with it.
The unity of the end, to which all parts are related and in the idea of which they are also
related, allows the absence of any part to be noticed in our knowledge of the rest, and there
can be no contingent addition or undetermined magnitude of perfection that does not have its
boundaries determined a priori. The whole is therefore articulated (articulation) and not
heaped together (coacervatio); it can, to be sure, grow internally (per intus susceptionem) 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 alteration of proportion.”
(A832/B860). So, articulation implies a fixed a priori determination of boundaries; the
reference to animal growth is essential, and in this context means than if an articulated whole
is to grow, this growing will have a specific character opposed to mere aggregation from the
outside. This is Kant’s reformulation of Leibniz’s internal unity. But, articulation seems the
generic concept for both things likely to grow, like animals, and not likely to grow, like
technical artefacts. Consequently, each part in it has an a priori a determined position, and for
this reason, when the articulated whole is called “articulated” or “organised”, “organised”
means any arrangement of parts according to a concept. To this extent, a watch (with its
wheels) as well as a beaver (with its organs) are organised wholes. Now, as we saw it, the
Leibnizian theory of organisms says that the latter of those wholes possesses an infinite
number of parts, each of those being in its turn infinitely organised, e. g. each being made by
parts articulated to one another according to some form (and the same holds for its component
parts, and so on). The position that Kant will criticize is exactly the Leibnizian thesis:
“through the decomposition into parts one always discovers new organs (Kunstteile)” (A526)
30
. Kant will show that this position is not allowed by the solution of the Antinomy, albeit the
regulative principle of reason supports infinite divisions of spatial entities. “To assume that in
every whole that is articulated into members (organized), every part is once again articulated,
and that in such a way, b dismantling the parts to infinity one always encounters new complex
parts – in a word, to assume that the whole is articulated to infinity – this is something that
can not be thought at all, even though the pars of the matter, reached by its decomposition to
infinity, could be articulated.” (A526/B554, my emphasis)
30
The word Kunst means, as we know, art, technique, artificial. In the Einzige Beweissgrund (1763), Kant
already opposed an order immanently stemming from laws of nature, and an order originating in a divine
arrangement of entities with their heterogeneous laws. The latter was called “technical” order, Kunst, in
opposition with the former, a necessary order of the kind of a system. The words Kunstteile here reminds this
theory ; but in the Critique of pure reason, in a way, the finality as technique is rejected, as if the only legitimate
sense of order was the systemic one (on this issue, see Huneman (forthcoming a)**).
15
Indeed, this position is a contradictory one. In effect, if the regress can always divide
the body one more time, this presupposes that the body is not already divided. “For the
infinity of the division of a given appearance in space is grounded solely on the fact that
through this infinity merely its divisibility, i.e. a multiplicity of parts, which is in itself
absolutely indeterminate, is given, but the parts themselves are given and determined only
through the subdivision – in short, on the fact that the whole is not in itself already divided
up.” (ibid) So, the Leibnizian position denies what is the condition of infinite divisibility
through regress, whereas it claims an infinite division of the given organic body. According to
this thesis, one would consider the division as already achieved albeit infinite, since it is
represented in a concept (this point defines precisely what is articulation, Gliederung); and in
the same time one would conceive it as a never-fulfilled series, since one applies here the rule
of regress which means producing an infinite division through the regress itself, the form of
this division being undetermined prior to the regress. So, the leibnizian concept implies
simultaneously, that the whole is already divided, as an organised being, and that the regress
divides it indefinitely, as infinitely organised, because the infiniteness of the division is
produced by the regress alone (according to the regulative principle of pure reason). Hence
the verdict of contradiction: “one contradicts oneself, since this infinite development is
regarded as a series that is never to be completed (as infinite) and yet as one that is completed
when it is taken together (In einer Zusammennehmung als vollendet) ” (A527/B555) Here, the
completeness of the division is a consequence of its a priori character, defining the concept, as
it is clear from the text of the methodology : no supplementary part can be added, because it
would contradict the a priori characterization of the parts. This means that no supplementary
division through the regress can divide the parts provided by the initial division as
articulation. The idea of new parts always to be discovered within the parts through division,
essential in Leibniz’s conception of organisms, proves therefore contradictory: that’s why
Kant have said that this “cannot be thought at all”.(A526/B554) It’s not like an Idea of reason,
a conception that has no reference or testability in experience, but is nevertheless conceivable
and could be used as principle of reason : it is a plain contradiction.
In the end, the mistake involved in the concept of an infinitely organised being relies
on a confusion in the conception of space. What in fact allows me to apply the principle of
regress, is that the phenomenon is continuous, hence, as it fills space, infinitely divisible
exactly like space. “The infinite division indicates only the appearance as quantum
continuum, and is inseparable from the filling of that space.” (A527/B555) In this sense, any
16
appearance, as such, is spatial and hence infinitely divisible; the articulated beings, be they
organisms or machines, are in the same case, so as appearances they are infinitely dividable.
But Kant argues that the division in parts which is determined by a previous idea is not the
same as this division through the regress. As spatial beings, they are not divided in the same
way than they are divided as organisms. So in the second sort of division I am not compelled
to divide in an infinite way. This subtlety accounts for Leibniz’s mistake, because he conflates
the first division, necessarily infinite, with the second, necessarily limited. In effect,
concerning the division of the organised being as such, Kant then writes : “as soon as
something is assumed as a quantum discretum, the multiplicity of units in it is determined;
hence it is always equal to a number” (A527). This number may be huge, but it will in any
case be determined, else we would still have a continuous spatial thing and no more.
Therefore, what is represented, whether I mean it or not, in the concept of an articulated
(organised) whole, is always a determinate number of parts. Since the parts have to be
determined, the number of parts has to be finite. The organisation can extend very deeply:
each visible part may be dividable in a great number of distinct parts, and “only the
experience can settle how far the organization in an articulated body may go” (ibid). The
articulation which is known to be a priori determined, is a posteriori discovered: this is why
we could mistake this organisation as infinite, by thinking that there could be infinitely
smaller parts left within what we have already discovered. But there can be no infinite
composition of parts under the concept of the organized whole. Suppose that the last result of
the division according to the prior concept is found: now, either this part can be divided in
two parts, that are constituting parts, but then the whole comprehends parts that are not
determined by the concept (since the division according to the concept has ended), then the
whole is not an organized whole since indeed there is no concept ruling the division; or this
part can not be divided then the division is finite.
So the number of parts is an empirical question, together with what we would now call
the number of levels of organisation31. However, one can know a priori that, in such a body,
there will be some parts – no matter how small they are – which will not be organised in
themselves. Yet, sometimes, we have no knowledge of the composing parts of an organized
being, and the latest elements reached by the empirical decomposition seem themselves
31
In the contemporary biology, we have an example of this schema, with the decomposition of an animal into
organs, tissues, cells, or of the chromosomes into genes, nucleic acids, nucleotides, etc. The last levels have been
empirically discovered not so long ago
17
organized32. Kant thus writes: “even if it (experience) were certain to attain to no inorganic
parts, such parts must nevertheless ay least lie within possible experience.” (ibid) The
contingent reach and extension of experience – relying on our present cognitive and scientific
abilities – is not the criterion of the end of the decomposition of organized beings, but this end
is prescribed in their concept, as concept of organized beings in space and time, hence as a
special kind of appearances in our possible experience. Hence, even if the current experience
does not contain those limits, they are nonetheless contained in possible experience. The
incompleteness of actual experience, the fact that organic parts are out of our reach, does not
prove any infinite composition of organized beings, but is only a contingent fact.
Thus the case of organized beings is complicated because they are submitted to two
kinds of divisions: as organized beings, there is this composition in organised parts which in
the end should stop by inorganic parts, in a way prescribed by the concept of the articulation.
As appearances in space, they are subject to the transcendental regress from wholes to parts,
which is not concerned by the empirical fact of the limits of division. Hence: “how far the
transcendental division of an appearance in general may reach is not a matter of experience at
all, but it is rather a principle of reason never to take the empirical regress in the composition
of what is extended, in conformity with the nature of this appearance, to be absolutely
complete.” (ibid).
So there are two kinds of incompleteness of division, and Kant argues that we must
not conflate them. The first one is an empirical one: we have divided an organised being, and
the parts that we found are organic ones, so we think that it could be infinitely divided further.
But this is false, since the limits of the division, although not experimented yet, reside in
possible experience – they should lie within it, due to the concept of the organised being. And
there is the incompleteness of the division of this being considered as an appearance in space.
Here, it is a transcendental rule that division should be indefinitely pursued, and to take
empirical regress as radically incomplete, since reason prescribes us the rule of always
continuing the regress from whole to parts concerning extended matter. Conflating those two
incompleteness of division leads precisely to a Leibnizian mistake: organised beings would be
infinitely organised since we cannot but empirically divide them into already organised parts.
The Kantian position on this issue of organisation is a major piece in his debate with
Leibniz. The general leibnizian mistake consists in treating the phenomena as mere objects of
32
In my contemporary example, it is the nucleotides; the Kantian argument says that we know empirically that
the unorganised parts are the nucleotides but we know a priori that there will be unorganised parts
18
our understanding, thus forgetting that as phenomena they must be objects of a possible
experience, and hence fall under the conditions of time and space. By misunderstanding that
organized beings are appearances as far as they are composed of spatial parts, he forgot that
they were hanging on the structure of space. The opposition of continuous and discrete
prevents one to consider as a continuous quantum an articulated whole; but speaking of
infinite divisibility entails continuity within matter, so the idea of “infinite organisation”
illegitimately conflates continuousness and discreteness. Surely, Leibniz thought that
substances do logically precede space, which is nothing more that the “order of their coexistence”, hence his statements concern substances as such. However, what Kant has
established, is that those statements get their meaning- since Leibniz did speak of infinite
divisibility – only insofar as they are about an object in space and time (e.g. a phenomenon),
else one could not even talk about such a divisibility. This was precisely the refutation of the
Thesis, in the Antinomy, showing that, when you think matter as prior to forms of intuition,
your statements are conceivable but not objectively meaningful.
In other words, when one deals with the inability of the Leibnizian thinking to
conceive the original character of the organised beings, one is led, in the end, to the lack of a
difference between substance as a mere conceived entity, and substance as we meet it in
experience, namely as a manifold in time and space. And in this case such a manifold has to
be thought under the regulative rule formulated in the second Antinomy; a consequence of
this rule, is that this empirically accessible manifold is either infinitely dividable but not
composed of an infinite number of parts (it is a continuous phenomenon), or articulated in a
determinate manner (it is a discrete phenomenon), albeit infinitely dividable if considered
only as a spatial entity (and not as an organised entity). In this second case, logical
relationships between determinate parts (the wheels of a watch, the cells of a beaver) are
superimposed to mereological relations of spatial parts. However, Leibniz did conflate those
two dimensions, and conceived the logical determinate parts as result of the infinite division
(rather than the mereological parts).
Briefly said, the Leibnizian doctrine does not teach us anything concerning the
organisms as we meet them in the experience, because it forges only an empty concept of
them. As soon as this concept is applied to experience, all the distinctions just indicated here
have to be made, and the concept is no more valid. Leibniz’s concept of organisms tells what
perhaps could be an organised being for the divine understanding, but not what is to be
labelled organism by us.
19
Throughout this analysis, we see that the phenomenon of life indicates a problem
which put into question the frames of our experience, namely space and time, since providing
an exact account of organisms implies presuppositions concerning those dimensions. In the
section that we commented, the Leibnizian conception of life appears as a test of his
metaphysics of space and time. For this reason, the very idea of criticism, which implies an
investigation of the nature of this framework of any experience, is crucially concerned by
problems about how organisms are to be conceived. The first moment of the ordinary notion
of life, as it is at stake here, is the organization, since our first experience of life confronts us
to a whole whose parts are related in a constant - even heritable - way, allowing those parts to
fulfil some tasks. Those parts thereby are called “organs”, Kunstteile, which meant
instruments in Greek. And Kant’s rebuttal proves now that Leibniz did not give an account of
even this first characteristic of living things, w.
But our result here is the following: to the extent that the problem of organisms is a
test for the refutation of Leibnizism as well as the critical conceptions of space and time, the
negative characterisation of the Leibnizian account of life is not enough, because one would
expect something like a solution of the problem, namely, an account of the specific status of
organised beings. This is not to be found in the first Critique. So, the idea of the third
Critique, which will explicitly address this task, is explicitly prescribed in the agenda of the
criticism since this early critique of Leibniz.
3. Life, organisms and criticism.
Kant’s paragraph on the Leibnizian concept of life then concludes: one can not
understand a phenomenon by conceiving it as infinitely organised. This implies that we can
not formulate an ontology which would divide the world between, on the one hand what we
call machines – finitely organised – and on the other hand what we call organisms – infinitely
organised. And this result holds for the first Critique itself. Truly, the concept of “organised
being” in the Critique of pure reason is not capable of accounting for life, because it provides
no criterion of the difference between machine and organisms – since the only available
criterion provided by a view of life as organisation is the leibnizian one, which has been
dismissed. All the organised beings are articulated, hence finally organised in a determinate,
finite manner, so in this regard technical machines and organisms are homogenous. In the
Dreams of a spiritseers, Kant stated the idea that Stahl, opposing mechanisms and organisms,
was somehow right against the more scientific conceptions by Haller or Boerhaave,
20
committed to a kind of mechanisms (Ak.II, 331). But this sort of feeling was not able to be
conceptually justified: in the first Critique, it’s still not the case.
Now, this idea of “organised beings” is pervasive in Kantian thinking. But - and this
proves essential – when the §65 of the Critique of judgement is entitled “the natural purposes
are the organised beings”, this supposes a shift within the very concept of “organised beings”,
indicated by this sentence: “(a product of nature) as organised and self-organising may be
called a natural purpose.” This means that, in the third Critique, the idea of organisation is
divorced with the idea of articulation. However, this presupposes that previously a criterion
has been given which allows us to distinguish between articulated machine and vital
organisation – a criterion which can not be the infiniteness of organisation. Only then, will
one be able to link “organisation” as articulation of organs and “organisation” as organism in
the phrase “Organisierte Wesens”’. And this paragraph of the Critique of judgment, precisely,
will provide such a criterion – which is the reciprocal causation of parts and parts, and wholes
and parts33.
Retrospectively considered, and situated within the macroevolutionary course of ideas,
this evolution from the Second Antinomy to the third Critique concerning the issue of
organisms, which proves essential for the testing of criticism (and more precisely,
transcendental aesthetics), corresponds to the re-shaping of the life sciences, and particularly
physiology and embryology, in the eighteenth century. Whereas Leibniz, albeit rejecting
Cartesian mechanism, subscribed to a machine-view of organisms (even if it was only an
epistemological stance), later scientists such as Haller in Germany, Bordeu and the vitalists in
France (on the physiological side), or Caspar Wolff in embryology in Germany34, vindicated a
more “immanentistic” view of organism that sought its intelligibility in the identification of its
own properties or forces and their expression (instead of considering the infinite extension of
a machine-mechanistic model)35. To some extent, Kant’s critique of Leibniz in this short text,
and evolution towards a concept of “organism as self-organising” fits quite well this evolution
of concepts and models within life sciences 36 . The diagnostic on Leibniz’s conception of
organisms picks out the negative moment of this conceptual history.
33
On this topic see Zumbach (1984), Zammito (2003), Ginsborg (2001), Huneman (forthcoming a).
Haller (1746, 1755), Bordeu (1751), Wolff (1759, 1764), Blumenbach (1781)
35
In several papers (1999, 1998, etc.), Peter Hans Reill has labeled those tendencies “Enlightenment vitalism”,
and highlighted one of their origin in Buffon’s methodological and historical thinking; this Enlightenment
vitalism for him culminated in Herder. Hence the controversy between Kant and Herder, that Zammito (2001)
analyzed in details, makes salient Kant’s necessity to criticized this trend of thought, by justifying some elements
and dismissing some others (e.g. hylozoism, see below)
36
A wide demonstration of this is given in Huneman (2001, forthcoming b)
34
21
In such a way, Kant’s position in the debate matches Leibniz’s controversy against
vitalism, and particularly Stahl’s vitalism. Whereas Leibniz emphasizes the preestablished
harmony between efficient causes and final causes, hence body and souls, in order to explain
away the stahlian postulation of a particular soul proper to organisms, Kant emphasizes the
fact that no essential kind of matter – characterized by its infinite organisation – is to be found
in organisms. That’s why he insists on the necessary presence of inorganic parts of organisms
in possible experience (if not in current experience). But where Leibniz challenges animism in
the name of natural science and universality of lawlikeness in nature, Kant fights another
threat to natural science, the threat that matter would be by itself alive, and then contradicts
the principle of inertia, which is a necessary principle of physics. He calls this hylozoism, and
will try to eliminate its possibility from our concepts of nature in the Metaphysical
foundations37. However, even if hylozoism is a conceptual possibility present in the various
theories we have mentioned, that focused on the peculiar productivity of living beings,
Leibniz himself paved the way to hylozoism, because if substance is a force, and the monads
a representative power, then everything which exists in nature is somehow alive, as Leibniz
himself had recognized38. But, since we have shown that those two conceptions, the internal
unity of organisms as a soul, and the infinite organisation, are correlative in Leibniz’s
conception, and since Kant has refuted the latter, then, from the critical point of view, the
souls in substances are also refuted, and hylozoism is made impossible. According to the first
critique, in nature (as appearance, of course) there is only inert matter, or some articulated
arrangements of matter, nothing more. Leibniz’s monads, for Kant, are a firm ladder to
hylozoism39, and should therefore be dismissed.
37
For the importance of eliminating hylozoism, see Zammito, (1993), 189-213, from the perspective of the
teleological judgments and the doctrine of organisms, and Westphal (2005), 164-166, 208-221.
38
Cf. the above quotation : “I restraint corporal or composed substance to the mere livings or organic machines
in nature; what’s left is for me only aggregates of substance”
39
The other way of refuting monads is precisely the one which will be used by the third Critique, namely, the
refutation of hylozoism as a kind of spontaneous generation, and the claim of epistemological discontinuity
between organism and inorganic nature. Kant’s argument there relies on the indeducibility of original
organisation of organisms from mechanical configurations of matter, and this assumption is also attributed by
him to Blumenbach. The argument is made in the lectures of metaphysics : “Since we have no other concept of
the interior of other things than what proceeds in ourselves, which are representations and what follows from
them, so (Leibniz) concluded from this that all monads would have representations (the actuality of something is
not also to be assumed when it is possible), and called them powers which represent the universe or living
mirrors of the universe. For if all monads were in the world, one would influence the other, but since they have
nothing but mere representations, each has representations of all monads in the world. But one had to assume
slumbering monads (monads sopita) which, to be sure, have representations but are not conscious of them.
According to him these constitute the class of non-rational animals. But there were various degrees of the
consciousness of the representations – distinct (distincte) – clear (clare) – obscure (obscure). The monads went
from one state to another, from the distinct t the more distinct, until God. This is the so-called continuum of
forms (continuum formarum), according to the analogy of the physical continuum (continui physici), where the
22
Now, what is philosophically at stake here could be termed in one word: “technique”.
Leibniz’s thesis, even if it is epistemologically understood, e.g. in the weak sense of a
statement concerning how to investigate living things, contends that schemes provided by
“technique” are the proper way of understanding the functioning of organisms. The Kantian
rebuttal of this thesis means that technique is not sufficient to account for what is proper to
organisms, even on an epistemological point of view. But in the text that we commented here,
nothing is still proposed in order to fill this insufficiency. However, one of the main features
of living beings left unexplained by technical models is the embryological phenomena,
exemplified by the fact of generation. Nevertheless, from Buffon’s Histoire naturelle to Wolff
(Theoria generationis, 1759) and Blumenbach (Uber Bildungstrieb, 1781), precisely at the
times Kant is moving from pre-critical to critical philosophy, those features are beginning to
become the constituted object of a new scientific field, descriptive embryology, which has
now tools and argument to vindicate for a position, epigeneticism, previously remained
confined in the philosophical and a priori debates on preformism versus epigeneticism40. This
position, in fact, bears precisely some consequences that are urging for a positive conceptual
theorizing of the epistemological resources that it requires, since they emphasize on the ability
of organisms to build themselves, a capacity which is opaque to any technical-modelling
account of organisms. And Kant however, from 1777 to 1789, in three opuscules (Von den
Verschiedenen Menschenrassen, 1777, Uber die Bestimmung…, and Gebrauch der
teleologischer Prinzipien, 1789) will continuously elaborate on those problems41. He will then
write the third Critique in order to philosophically account for those (conceptual) works in
natural sciences, and then he will be about to positively fill the blank left by the rebuttal of
technical model instantiated in the critique of the Leibnizian doctrine in our Second antinomy.
From this perspective, the task of the third Critique concerning organisms is
understandable. There is no distinction between articulated machines and organised beings,
this is the result of the second antinomy; in those two cases, the articulation following an a
priori concept superimposes on an extended appearance a new kind of divisibility, which is an
a priori finite composition. So, when it comes to the organised beings, if it’s not the kind of
composition which distinguishes machines from organised beings (infinite vs. finite: that was
minerals commence the order, through the mosses, lichens, plants, zoophytes through the animal kingdom until
human being. This is nothing more than a dream whose groundlessness Blumenbach has shown.” (Ak. 28.762)
40
On those questions, the context and the preformationism debate along the century, see Roger (1963), Roe
(1980), Reill (1998, 1999), Bowler (1971). On Kant’s position see Sloan (2002); Ingensiep (1990); for a
contrasted account of Kant’s epigeneticism, Zammito (2003), Huneman (forth. a).
41
On Kant’s theories of heredity and generation, among numerous valuable contributions, see Lenoir (1980);
Sloan (1989); Richards (2000).
23
Leibniz’s thesis), then one should look to the status of this concept which determines the
articulation, Elucidating the peculiar epistemological status of this concept, and its
embodiment in matter, in the case of organised beings, will be exactly Kant’s task in the
critique of teleology, because teleological judgement is precisely a judgement involving an a
priori concept at the basis of an organisation.
Conclusion.
Finally, the Leibnizian doctrine of organisms – no matter how precious was the
advances it made upon Cartesian mechanism – reflected the impossibility, within classical
metaphysics, to make room for a concept of self-organisation. Kant, in this part of the Second
Antinomy, thereby established the necessity of a critique of metaphysics in order to provide a
status for vitality and life as such, epistemologically as well as ontologically. The failure of
the Leibnizian doctrine of organisms reveals that there is no room for life in the classical
metaphysics, which means that in the structure of knowledge that corresponded to such a
metaphysics, namely a knowledge whose model is the mathesis universalis, and which is
composed of a philosophia naturalis supposed accessible through mathematical methods
exemplified by geometry, no life science as such can emerge. This explains that, historically,
the grounding of a unified science of life in the beginnings of the XIX century, as it is usually
recognized by various scholars 42 , occurred simultaneously with the end of the classical
metaphysics through Kantianism, and the giving up of an ideal of a mathesis universalis.
Within the structure of knowledge bound to classical metaphysics, the technical
scheme, infinitely expanded by the Leibnizian conception, is in fact only able to grasp life
through physical and mechanical perspectives, added with theological assumptions in order to
elucidate the origins of those infinitely organised machines; but there is no proper
epistemology for the understanding of organisms as immanently arranged. This is mainly due
to the externality of the concept of technique (which entails an external arranger) – reflected
in the concept of Gliederung here criticized by Kant, since in the Gliederung, the determining
concept is external to the composite so that the immanent arrangement of matter in organisms
is not accountable for. Of course, this is what is reached by the insights on the difficulties of
any philosophical account of life sciences in his time that Kant provided in our paragraphs of
the Transcendental dialectics, and it is only negative. No positive condition, positively
42
Barsanti (1995) ; Foucault (1967) ; Hoffmeier (*) challenging Foucault recognize the fact but disagrees on its
radically discontinuous character ; Roger (1963) ; Cross (1981)
24
accounting for what is in the same time emerging in the empirical investigation of life, is
given by the philosopher until the Critique of judgement.
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Translation of Leibniz’s texts are mine.
The author warmly acknowledges a referee for his precious comments and suggestions.
27