Kant on Biology and the Experience of Life

Recent years have seen remarkable advances in the life sciences, including increasing technical capacities to reproduce, manipulate and even replace living nature with the products of human artefact. These developments raise important questions about our understanding of that which we call ‘life’. If, as science suggests, there is in principle no difficulty in engineering the living world in the same way as we build and construct the non-living world, then what is the ground for our distinction between the seemingly so self-sufficient and self-determined living beings and the apparently inert and inactive non-living parts of nature? If the difference between the living and the non-living cannot be based on the distinction between that which escapes and that which is within our control and manipulation, what makes our experience of a blossoming tree so fundamentally different from the experience of a piece of woodwork? In light of the advances of the biological sciences and an increasing interest in the philosophy of biology, Kant’s treatment of the living deserves particular attention. Kant’s account occupies a unique position.