ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to challenge Jon Elster’s dismissal of the organismic analogy. It examines a crucial episode in the history of the analogy he rightly takes to underpin an influential account of functional explanation in social science. This chapter outlines G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of organisms, with a particular focus on his organizational understanding of functions, and spell out some of the metaphysical implications of this theory for both organisms as a whole and their parts. Hegel addresses the nature of organisms in two closely connected places within his system. They are: first, in the context of his theory of “life” and, more specifically, of “the living individual” – that is, Hegel’s term for an organism – presented both in the Science of Logic and in the Encyclopedia Logic; second, in the context of his philosophy of nature. According to Hegel, a “living individual” is distinguished from other kinds of systems by realizing a structure he calls “self-determination.”.
