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Kant's Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy
Because it laid the foundation for nearly all subsequent epistemologies, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason has overshadowed his other interests in natural history and the life sciences, which scholars have long considered as separate from his rigorous theoretical philosophy—until now. In Kant’s Organicism , Jennifer Mensch draws a crucial link between these spheres by showing how the concept of epigenesis—a radical theory of biological formation—lies at the heart of Kant’s conception of reason.
As Mensch argues, epigenesis was not simply a metaphor for Kant but centrally guided his critical philosophy, especially the relationship between reason and the categories of the understanding. Offsetting a study of Kant’s highly technical theory of cognition with a mixture of intellectual history and biography, she situates the epigenesis of reason within broader investigations into theories of generation, genealogy, and classification, and against later writers and thinkers such as Goethe and Darwin. Distilling vast amounts of research on the scientific literature of the time into a concise and readable book, Mensch offers one of the most refreshing looks not only at Kant’s famous first Critique but at the history of philosophy and the life sciences as well.
As Mensch argues, epigenesis was not simply a metaphor for Kant but centrally guided his critical philosophy, especially the relationship between reason and the categories of the understanding. Offsetting a study of Kant’s highly technical theory of cognition with a mixture of intellectual history and biography, she situates the epigenesis of reason within broader investigations into theories of generation, genealogy, and classification, and against later writers and thinkers such as Goethe and Darwin. Distilling vast amounts of research on the scientific literature of the time into a concise and readable book, Mensch offers one of the most refreshing looks not only at Kant’s famous first Critique but at the history of philosophy and the life sciences as well.
258 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2013
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July 5, 2025
To build the tower of Babel, you need both elements and model, and the desire to reach into heaven, and a God who does not interfere with your actions. Kant searches for those building blocks and makes his cause the cause of itself by reason and a transcendental deduction, the binding element that glues reason such that it becomes its own cause and minimizes God’s reach by using epigenetics rather than organicism. Leibnitz needs Gods and monads while Kant assumes a non-demon-haunted world instead. I know people think of Kant as religious, but as you read his complete works he goes from spirits to God giving morality to humans are all there is.
The graveyard is full of those who think Kant is passe and is irrelevant. He is not. Sure, the world is whistling past Kant, but I don’t. Of all the books of Kant, the one that confuses me in the beginning is his Critique of Judgement. It’s the one I don’t understand until I read it all, then I say “oh, that’s what he was getting at.” He does say in that book “they’ll never be a Newton for a blade of grass,” I’m surprised this author didn’t quote that in this book since its fundamental to her thesis on Kant in as much as epigenetics understanding needed Darwin and Kant, but got slightly distracted by his time period.
Epigenetics, the influence of externalities beyond the DNA itself, and the Organicism, the part is part of the whole within nature, are closely related and Kant was stuck within the world he was thrown into and leveraged his natural geography knowledge to getting at his synthetic and analytical merging through the faculty of understanding through space, time and intuition establishing (for him) the universal, necessary, and certain world with reason by transcendental deduction. The connecting tissue for Kant for transcendental deduction lies with Kant’s understanding of epigenetics.
Imagine a world that is transmitted to us at 30 frames per second and the parts between the frames are never known by us, but we need a starting point of some kind, be it a homunculus or other little people who existed before time and where in the mind of Gods as original models (organicism), but the starting point has to be somewhere or something because existence is real and now and we pretend we see between the frames. Kant has a problem, with reconciling nature with freewill and making reason not the cause of itself yet without a cause outside of itself since we ultimately think we have knowledge of the spaces between the frames, or in other words the thoughts between the thoughts. Heidegger searches for being by reconciling the ontological difference from that which is within us and outside of us. Kant solved the problem with a transcendental deduction.
My mind did go to Hegel and his resolution of reason being its own cause through the ego, the world, and its community as the author was talking about Kants solution, but Kant precedes Hegel and Hegel’s solution takes a dense book with the complexity of the Phenomenology to partially unwind it. As I read Kant, I just gloss over his effects sometimes preceding his cause and enjoy the show for what he is revealing. Hegel also solves the problem within us through in itself, for itself and of itself. Kant's thing and thing-in-itself are phenomena.
I do appreciate books like this one where the author clearly has command of the subject and adds a dimensionality to the topic that I wasn’t aware of. I’ve read the complete works of Kant, but his natural geography lectures weren’t featured in the edition I read.
Kant does stumble into racism and can’t get out of it within his framework, but his epigenetic response to organic situations would have led him away from racism just as they could lead to a partial resolution for establishing reason fundamental to knowledge without appealing to reason. Hume defines reason as that which discovers truth from falsity through our relational experiences and non-contradictory ideas based on those experiences. Our reason needs experience and our experience needs reason for understanding. The double bind forces a resolution, and Kant reconciles Hume with Leibnitz (an idealist) and favors Hume when in doubt.
This author is well worth reading and gives Kant more depth than one could get otherwise on their own. BTW, the footnotes were as fun to read as the text was.
The graveyard is full of those who think Kant is passe and is irrelevant. He is not. Sure, the world is whistling past Kant, but I don’t. Of all the books of Kant, the one that confuses me in the beginning is his Critique of Judgement. It’s the one I don’t understand until I read it all, then I say “oh, that’s what he was getting at.” He does say in that book “they’ll never be a Newton for a blade of grass,” I’m surprised this author didn’t quote that in this book since its fundamental to her thesis on Kant in as much as epigenetics understanding needed Darwin and Kant, but got slightly distracted by his time period.
Epigenetics, the influence of externalities beyond the DNA itself, and the Organicism, the part is part of the whole within nature, are closely related and Kant was stuck within the world he was thrown into and leveraged his natural geography knowledge to getting at his synthetic and analytical merging through the faculty of understanding through space, time and intuition establishing (for him) the universal, necessary, and certain world with reason by transcendental deduction. The connecting tissue for Kant for transcendental deduction lies with Kant’s understanding of epigenetics.
Imagine a world that is transmitted to us at 30 frames per second and the parts between the frames are never known by us, but we need a starting point of some kind, be it a homunculus or other little people who existed before time and where in the mind of Gods as original models (organicism), but the starting point has to be somewhere or something because existence is real and now and we pretend we see between the frames. Kant has a problem, with reconciling nature with freewill and making reason not the cause of itself yet without a cause outside of itself since we ultimately think we have knowledge of the spaces between the frames, or in other words the thoughts between the thoughts. Heidegger searches for being by reconciling the ontological difference from that which is within us and outside of us. Kant solved the problem with a transcendental deduction.
My mind did go to Hegel and his resolution of reason being its own cause through the ego, the world, and its community as the author was talking about Kants solution, but Kant precedes Hegel and Hegel’s solution takes a dense book with the complexity of the Phenomenology to partially unwind it. As I read Kant, I just gloss over his effects sometimes preceding his cause and enjoy the show for what he is revealing. Hegel also solves the problem within us through in itself, for itself and of itself. Kant's thing and thing-in-itself are phenomena.
I do appreciate books like this one where the author clearly has command of the subject and adds a dimensionality to the topic that I wasn’t aware of. I’ve read the complete works of Kant, but his natural geography lectures weren’t featured in the edition I read.
Kant does stumble into racism and can’t get out of it within his framework, but his epigenetic response to organic situations would have led him away from racism just as they could lead to a partial resolution for establishing reason fundamental to knowledge without appealing to reason. Hume defines reason as that which discovers truth from falsity through our relational experiences and non-contradictory ideas based on those experiences. Our reason needs experience and our experience needs reason for understanding. The double bind forces a resolution, and Kant reconciles Hume with Leibnitz (an idealist) and favors Hume when in doubt.
This author is well worth reading and gives Kant more depth than one could get otherwise on their own. BTW, the footnotes were as fun to read as the text was.
Displaying 1 of 1 review