ABSTRACT
The Critique of Pure Reason addressed the possibility of a science of nature in general. To this extent, the specificity of life was not mentioned there. In a sense, while to be grasped in its a priori principles (in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science), physical science requires considering the concept of “motion” in addition to the synthetic principles of experience set out in the Analytics, one might think that it would suffice to complete these with the a posteriori concept of “life” to obtain a framework that deals with the sciences of life. But this is not the case; hence, one could begin this investigation of Kant’s organism by expressing astonishment at the fact that, instead of a hypothetical metaphysical “First principles of a science of life,” we find a Critique of the Power of Judgment. Such asymmetry signals in advance that the very concept of “life” cannot have the status of “motion”: on the contrary, it demands a critical investigation of its meaning. In Kantian terms, this investigation will lead to a “topical” difference between the concept of life and the concepts of the physical sciences, because “life”—as far as life is about organisms—has its transcendental locus not in the understanding, but in the power of judgement (Urteilskraft).
