Kant's biological vocabulary: from Beweisgrund to the third critique

Abstract

The present study, based on an inventory and classification of the biological lexicon employed by Kant in his writings - inventory and classification that this study will present -, aims to analyze the main concepts detected in this scope, not only by a immanent analysis of the Kantian corpus, but also in the light of philosophical and scientific documentary sources, that were contemporaries to the philosopher's production. In this way, we will highlight [1] components linked to anthropological-embryological analyzes [founded, in particular, in writings of the 70's and 80's], as well as, particularly, elements of the argumentation around the teleology of the organized being [present above all in the second part of the third Critique], [2] embryological analogies and metaphors - coined above all in speculative context - scattered throughout much of the Kantian writings [notably the Reflexionen and Vorlesungsnachschriften], and, not least, [3 ] concepts that, neither being in the doctrinal scope of a philosophical-embryological nature, nor forming analogies or metaphors of such nature, constitute a core part of their own argumentative structures, thus witnessing the widespread use, by transcendental philosophy, of a terminology always identified as of biological origin [very especially, in this case, in the Idea of a Universal History, but also in KrV, Religionsschrift, and in Über Pädagogik]. It will be shown that such a nomenclature, originally associated with the preformist glossary, does not correspond in the philosopher to the adoption of the preformism tout court [or individual preforming], but therein it matches his defense of epigenesis [or generic preforming], which will be confronted with similar positions already held by, among others, Johann Nikolaus Tetens and Johann Georg Sulzer. (AU)