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Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality
Is contemporary continental philosophy making a break with Kant? The structures of knowledge, taken for granted since Kant�s Critique of Pure Reason, are now being called into the finitude of the subject, the phenomenal given, a priori synthesis. Relinquish the such is the imperative of postcritical thinking in the 21st century. Questions that we no longer thought it possible to ask now reemerge with renewed can Kant really maintain the difference between a priori and innate? Can he deduce, rather than impose, the categories, or justify the necessity of nature? Recent research into brain development aggravates these suspicions, which measure transcendental idealism against the thesis of a biological origin for cognitive processes. In her important new book Catherine Malabou lays out Kant�s response to his posterity. True to its subject, the book evolves as an epigenesis – the differentiated growth of the embryo – for, as those who know how to read critical philosophy affirm, this is the very life of the transcendental and contains the promise of its transformation.
- GenresPhilosophy
231 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 6, 2016
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174 people want to read
About the author
Catherine Malabou
54 books130 followersCatherine Malabou (b. 1959) is a French philosopher. She is a professor of philosophy at The European Graduate School / EGS and professor of modern European philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, London. She is known for her work on plasticity, a concept she culled from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which has proved fertile within contemporary economic, political, and social discourses. Widely regarded as one of the most exciting figures in what has been called “The New French Philosophy,” Malabou’s research and writing covers a range of figures and issues, including the work of Hegel, Freud, Heidegger, and Derrida; the relationship between philosophy, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis; and concepts of essence and difference within feminism.
Born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Catherine Malabou began her advanced studies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne before attending the prestigious École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, where, in 1994, she submitted her dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Her thesis was published in 1996 under the title L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, 2005) with a long preface by Derrida, whom she would later co-author La Contre-allée (1999; Counterpath, 2004). Before arriving at Kingston University, Malabou became assistant professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in 1995 and, as a frequent lecturer in the USA, has taught at UC Berkeley, The New School in New York City, New York State University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and, most recently, UC Irvine.
Catherine Malabou’s philosophical work forges new connections and intellectual networks that imaginatively leap across existing synaptic gaps between, for example, continental philosophy and neuroscience; the philosophy of neuroscience and the critique of capitalism; neuroscience and psychoanalysis; and continental and analytic philosophy (notably Kant). As well, her work is explosive and iconoclastic, shattering perceived understandings of Hegel, feminism and gender, and the implications of post-structuralism.
Starting with her 2004 book, Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?, 2009), Catherine Malabou has argued passionately and provocatively for a connection between continental philosophy and empirical neuroscience. She centers her argument on a highly original interpretation of the concept of plasticity, an interpretation that she first uncovered in her reading of Hegel’s dialectic. Plasticity refers to the capacity both to receive form and to give form. Although the concept of plasticity is central to neuroscience, Malabou’s work shows that neuroscientists and lay people often misunderstand the basic plasticity of the brain, succumbing to an ideology that focuses solely on its capacity to receive form, that is, the capacity of the brain to be shaped in and through its experience of the world to the exclusion of its creative, form-giving power. In other words, the reigning ideology that governs both the neuroscientific community and the broader culture substitutes flexibility for plasticity, and flexibility, Malabou warns us, “is plasticity minus its genius.” The emphasis on flexibility also fits all too neatly with the demands of capitalism under neoliberalism, which demands efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and versatility as conditions of employability in a post-Fordist economy. The creative, form-giving power of the brain—its genius—consists in its explosive capacity, a capacity that unleashes new possibilities, and herein also lies the capacity for resistance. In her conclusion, Catherine Malabou writes: “To ask ‘What should we do with our brain?’ is above all to visualize the possibility of saying no to an afflicting economic, political, and mediatic culture that celebrate
Born in Sidi Bel Abbès, Algeria, Catherine Malabou began her advanced studies at the Université Paris-Sorbonne before attending the prestigious École normale supérieure de Fontenay-Saint-Cloud, where, in 1994, she submitted her dissertation on G.W.F. Hegel under the direction of Jacques Derrida. Her thesis was published in 1996 under the title L’avenir de Hegel: Plasticité, temporalité, dialectique (The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality and Dialectic, 2005) with a long preface by Derrida, whom she would later co-author La Contre-allée (1999; Counterpath, 2004). Before arriving at Kingston University, Malabou became assistant professor at the Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in 1995 and, as a frequent lecturer in the USA, has taught at UC Berkeley, The New School in New York City, New York State University at Buffalo, the University of Wisconsin in Madison, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, and, most recently, UC Irvine.
Catherine Malabou’s philosophical work forges new connections and intellectual networks that imaginatively leap across existing synaptic gaps between, for example, continental philosophy and neuroscience; the philosophy of neuroscience and the critique of capitalism; neuroscience and psychoanalysis; and continental and analytic philosophy (notably Kant). As well, her work is explosive and iconoclastic, shattering perceived understandings of Hegel, feminism and gender, and the implications of post-structuralism.
Starting with her 2004 book, Que faire de notre cerveau? (What Should We Do With Our Brain?, 2009), Catherine Malabou has argued passionately and provocatively for a connection between continental philosophy and empirical neuroscience. She centers her argument on a highly original interpretation of the concept of plasticity, an interpretation that she first uncovered in her reading of Hegel’s dialectic. Plasticity refers to the capacity both to receive form and to give form. Although the concept of plasticity is central to neuroscience, Malabou’s work shows that neuroscientists and lay people often misunderstand the basic plasticity of the brain, succumbing to an ideology that focuses solely on its capacity to receive form, that is, the capacity of the brain to be shaped in and through its experience of the world to the exclusion of its creative, form-giving power. In other words, the reigning ideology that governs both the neuroscientific community and the broader culture substitutes flexibility for plasticity, and flexibility, Malabou warns us, “is plasticity minus its genius.” The emphasis on flexibility also fits all too neatly with the demands of capitalism under neoliberalism, which demands efficiency, flexibility, adaptability and versatility as conditions of employability in a post-Fordist economy. The creative, form-giving power of the brain—its genius—consists in its explosive capacity, a capacity that unleashes new possibilities, and herein also lies the capacity for resistance. In her conclusion, Catherine Malabou writes: “To ask ‘What should we do with our brain?’ is above all to visualize the possibility of saying no to an afflicting economic, political, and mediatic culture that celebrate
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 4, 2017
In a line that appears only once among the thousand or so pages in Kant's epoch-defining Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes mention of a 'system of the epigenesis of pure reason'. A single phrase, never repeated. Yet it is upon this line - and the profusion of scholarship it has inspired - that Malabou will hang nothing less than the fate of thought itself, a fate tied irrevocably and irreducibly to the fate of the transcendental. Which means what exactly? Some backstory: for Kant, our very ability to think is tied to the possibility of applying the 'categories' of our understanding to the objects of our experience: no application of categories, no thought. So far, so good. But whence do the categories themselves arise, and what, exactly, guarantees the necessity of their application? Why, a system of the epigenesis of pure reason of course. And what, exactly, is that? Well, it's the effort to answer this question that defines the particular and magnificent adventure undertaken by Malabou's Before Tomorrow.
But why the 'fate of thought'? Isn't that a bit grand? Surely this is Kantian arcana, made for the back-alleys of academic journals and squirrelled-away conferences? Perhaps. But the twist is in the peculiar 'status' of the categories, one strictly specified by Kant to make all the difference: the categories, for Kant, are 'transcendental', which is to say - they cannot be derived from experience; indeed, they condition the possibility of experience to begin with. Now, if you're still with me, here's the kicker: at stake in all of this is the need for Kant to avoid the arbitrariness of the agreement between the categories and its objects. Such an arbitrary agreement would lead right down the rabbit hole of skepticism, in which thought would not reflect, at it were, the true nature of the world. Against this, Kant's whole enterprise will be to insist upon the necessity of the categories and their 'agreement' with objects, of their non-arbitrary and 'non-empirical' status: in short, their transcendental nature. Nothing other than this transcendental necessity defines, after all, the very impetus behind the critical philosophy.
But exactly how to conceptualise this necessity is the question which haunts the Kantian project, and, in Malabou's retelling, has been nothing less than the spindle upon which modern philosophy itself continues to turn. Thus from Kant to Heidegger, Foucault to Meillassoux (who, by the way, gets a right ribbing all throughout this book), Malabou takes it upon herself to chart the destiny of the transcendental though its many modifications, and ultimately, through the many attempts made to 'relinquish' it in one way or another. In the narrative so told, contemporary philosophy today finds itself at a crossroads: to be done with the transcendental, to relinquish it once and for all, or to rethink it so as to defend its legacy and extend it along paths yet unexplored. If it isn't obvious by now, it's this latter route which is chosen by Malabou, who, in taking seriously Kant's brief mention of the 'system of epigenesis of pure reason' in the first Critique, aims to set the transcendental on a new footing, grounded in - of all things - the vivacity of life itself.
Indeed, it's in the recourse to 'life' - life in its properly fleshly, biological register - that Malabou stakes her reading of the transcendental, finding in the 'purposiveness' of the biological the key through which to unlock the enigma of the 'system of the epigenesis...'. While I can only barely scratch the surface of the moves made in support of her particular position, suffice to say that its implications bear upon almost the entire terrain of the classical philosophical landscape - on the relation between necessity and contingency; on the need rethink 'finitude' on the basis of 'life' rather than 'existence' (Malabou's anti-phenomenological dig); on the necessity of rethinking history, time, and meaning on the basis of an 'epigenesis' rather than a 'genesis' (a distinction fleshed out in detail in the book); on the need to re-evaluate the relationship between philosophy and science (an ongoing project of all Malabou's writings); these, of course, and so much more. While it's true that this book itself only lays out the rudiments of what seems to me to be a wider, as-yet-unrealized project (cf. Malabou's recent work on biology and the symbolic), Before Tomorrow nonetheless remains a stunning achievement which demands to be read by anyone with an interest in... well, tomorrow.
But why the 'fate of thought'? Isn't that a bit grand? Surely this is Kantian arcana, made for the back-alleys of academic journals and squirrelled-away conferences? Perhaps. But the twist is in the peculiar 'status' of the categories, one strictly specified by Kant to make all the difference: the categories, for Kant, are 'transcendental', which is to say - they cannot be derived from experience; indeed, they condition the possibility of experience to begin with. Now, if you're still with me, here's the kicker: at stake in all of this is the need for Kant to avoid the arbitrariness of the agreement between the categories and its objects. Such an arbitrary agreement would lead right down the rabbit hole of skepticism, in which thought would not reflect, at it were, the true nature of the world. Against this, Kant's whole enterprise will be to insist upon the necessity of the categories and their 'agreement' with objects, of their non-arbitrary and 'non-empirical' status: in short, their transcendental nature. Nothing other than this transcendental necessity defines, after all, the very impetus behind the critical philosophy.
But exactly how to conceptualise this necessity is the question which haunts the Kantian project, and, in Malabou's retelling, has been nothing less than the spindle upon which modern philosophy itself continues to turn. Thus from Kant to Heidegger, Foucault to Meillassoux (who, by the way, gets a right ribbing all throughout this book), Malabou takes it upon herself to chart the destiny of the transcendental though its many modifications, and ultimately, through the many attempts made to 'relinquish' it in one way or another. In the narrative so told, contemporary philosophy today finds itself at a crossroads: to be done with the transcendental, to relinquish it once and for all, or to rethink it so as to defend its legacy and extend it along paths yet unexplored. If it isn't obvious by now, it's this latter route which is chosen by Malabou, who, in taking seriously Kant's brief mention of the 'system of epigenesis of pure reason' in the first Critique, aims to set the transcendental on a new footing, grounded in - of all things - the vivacity of life itself.
Indeed, it's in the recourse to 'life' - life in its properly fleshly, biological register - that Malabou stakes her reading of the transcendental, finding in the 'purposiveness' of the biological the key through which to unlock the enigma of the 'system of the epigenesis...'. While I can only barely scratch the surface of the moves made in support of her particular position, suffice to say that its implications bear upon almost the entire terrain of the classical philosophical landscape - on the relation between necessity and contingency; on the need rethink 'finitude' on the basis of 'life' rather than 'existence' (Malabou's anti-phenomenological dig); on the necessity of rethinking history, time, and meaning on the basis of an 'epigenesis' rather than a 'genesis' (a distinction fleshed out in detail in the book); on the need to re-evaluate the relationship between philosophy and science (an ongoing project of all Malabou's writings); these, of course, and so much more. While it's true that this book itself only lays out the rudiments of what seems to me to be a wider, as-yet-unrealized project (cf. Malabou's recent work on biology and the symbolic), Before Tomorrow nonetheless remains a stunning achievement which demands to be read by anyone with an interest in... well, tomorrow.
August 4, 2021
5 Stars for her essay on Quentin Meillassoux and the question: "can we relinquish the transcendental?" Malabou is one of the most brilliant philosophers living and working today.
May 10, 2019
An unbelievably dense book, especially if you are unfamiliar with the philosophy of Kant and Heidegger, but an incredibly worthwhile read that I will definitely need to mull over and process before I am able to provide an adequate review. Definitely a worthwhile read, but one which takes a lot of time and a very close and careful reading, just like Malabou preforms of Kantian philosophy.
April 10, 2024
Is Kant's "epigenesis" of the categories just an image, just an analogy? Absolutely not! It has been the denial of the centrality of epigenesis which has made Kant and the a priori appear since Heidegger as "the exhausted expression of finitude". Malabou diagnoses the problem: we don't know what the transcendental means/can mean. We have not lived up to the Third Critique's challenge to let the living being interrogate our image of thought. We have wrongly assumed that the a priori is a deep, sub-terranean, guarantor of solidity, quarantined from experience. Epigenesis on the other hand, the 'automatically produced sensible presentation' of categorial production, points to a surface structure, a point of contact, a conductor.
"The perspective of a transcendental in constant negotiation with itself enables Kant's philosophy to rediscover the fluidity that too many polarized readings have petrified."
"... the transcendental is that which ensures both the stability and the transformability of the whole." The question of the foundational solidity of the transcendental thus appears to be false as soon as we stop looking for its supposed 'focus', or hypocenter, and instead consider its specific mobility, namely its value as a passage and conductor between invariance and modification".
"The perspective of a transcendental in constant negotiation with itself enables Kant's philosophy to rediscover the fluidity that too many polarized readings have petrified."
"... the transcendental is that which ensures both the stability and the transformability of the whole." The question of the foundational solidity of the transcendental thus appears to be false as soon as we stop looking for its supposed 'focus', or hypocenter, and instead consider its specific mobility, namely its value as a passage and conductor between invariance and modification".
January 22, 2026
deixou muita coisa pro final e nao sei se resolveu tudo que precisava... ao mesmo tempo, nao sei pra que tantas paginas no inicio sobre comentaristas do kant
December 7, 2017
Likely will prove to be as important as her Hegel book, by redefining the transcendental through the concept of epigenesis in Kant and epigenetics in current biology and neuroscience. In the process, she puts Meillassoux's anti-Kantianism in its place.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews