Kant and Schelling on Blumenbach’s formative drive

ABSTRACT

Blumenbach’s epigenetic theory, particularly his concept of the formative drive, was appropriated by both Kant and Schelling. Kant’s third Critique endorsement of Blumenbach’s formative drive shows him to be close to Schelling’s conception of nature, since it is evidence of his distance from an artifactual conception of teleology. Schelling also draws on this concept of the formative drive, making the structures operative in the formative drive the explanatory ground of all natural forces and processes, thereby supplying the unity between the organic and inorganic which, according to Kant’s Critical philosophy, is unattainable for our discursive understanding. In this paper, I will argue for two related conclusions. First, Kant is closer to Schelling in his outlook than he has been interpreted to be, particularly in his conception of reflecting teleological judgment, according to which we must judge organisms as if they internally directed at ends, while using design as a heuristic device. Second, Schelling’s philosophy of nature expands upon Kant’s view of the teleological principle, and in doing so develops a systematically unified view of nature. For Schelling, the organizing principle manifested in the formative drive also unifies all of nature into a single system.

KEYWORDS:

• Kant
• Schelling
• Blumenbach
• teleology
• philosophy of nature

Notes

1 Sloan, “Preforming the Categories,” gives an excellent treatment of the influence of preformationist theories on Kant’s first Critique.

2 In 1781, Blumenbach published Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte, and then in 1789 a related work, titled Über den Bildungstrieb. He insists this latter work should not be confused with his earlier, immature work (see Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb (1789): preface; Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte 4e, 13n), although there is some text shared between the two. In his 1779 Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, he endorses preformationism, but by 1781 he is a proponent of epigenesis.

3 For examples of this form of reigning interpretation, see, e.g. Gambarotto, Vital Forces, 14–26; Goy, “Argument from Design”; Guyer, Kant’s System, 94–5; 294–5; 318; Guyer “Freedom, Happiness and Nature,” 223.

4 Blumenbach’s arguments for the existence of the formative drive consist almost entirely in examples of unformed matter becoming formed into a new sort of organization, whether the regrowth of a tentacle of a polyp, or the formation of an embryo in reproduction. See Blumenbach, Bildungstrieb und Zeugungsgeschäfte (1781); Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte; Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb (1789). See also Richards, Romantic Conception of Life, 207–37, and Zammito, “The Lenoir Thesis Revisited,” for a history of Blumenbach’s views and his interaction with Kant. For an examination of the formative drive (Bildungstrieb) in its scientific context, see McLaughlin “Zum Verhältnis.”

5 Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb (1789), 24–5.

6 Ibid., 25–6.

7 For example, Richards, “A Historical Misunderstanding”, and Richards, Romantic Conception of Life, argue that Kant and Blumenbach understood the status of the formative drive or Bildungstrieb differently: Blumenbach as a force akin to physical forces such as gravity in both status and explanatory power; Kant as a regulative idea which helps us to make sense of the development of organisms, which would otherwise be unintelligible. Blumenbach appears happy with Kant’s third Critique endorsement, despite what could be taken to be irreconcilable differences in their respective conception of the formative drive. As stated above, he compares the formative drive to Newtonian gravity, insofar as it lacks a mechanism and we know it by its effects; Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, 25–6. In the third edition of Blumenbach, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, he calls the formative drive an “eigenthümliche Kraft” – a peculiar force – and again compares it to gravity (p. 14, §11). Such a direct comparison and the designation of “force” does not sit easily with the strict distinction between mechanism and teleology, which both Kant and Schelling are committed to in their use of the term. Gambarotto (Vital Forces, 12–13) argues that Blumenbach, despite the comparison to gravity, nevertheless maintains a strict distinction between organic and inorganic nature; the formative drive is the definitive marker of the organic. The more salient difference between Blumenbach and Kant appears to be the regulative status given to the operation of the formative drive. Richards and Gambarotto both maintain that Blumenbach would not endorse such a qualified status. For more on the mutual influence and possible overlap in perspective between Kant and Blumenbach, see Lenoir “Vital Materialism,” and its critical responses, particularly Richards, “A Historical Misunderstanding,” and Zammito, “The Lenoir Thesis Revisited.” A detailed interpretation of Blumenbach’s work in its own right is outside the scope of this paper.

8 See Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb (1789), 72–4.

9 Kant, Critique of Judgment §66, 5: 376.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid., 377.

12 Kant, Critique of Judgment §61, 5: 360.

13 See especially Guyer, Kant’s System, 98–9: “In order to explain even the possibility of our comprehension of particular things in nature, we have to postulate an intelligent author of nature whose concepts make necessary what appears merely contingent to us.” Also see McLaughlin, Antinomy and Teleology, especially 44, which puts forth a similar view of mechanical indeterminacy and assumed teleological lawfulness.

14 Kant, Critique of Judgment §76, 5: 404.

15 Kant, Critique of Judgment First Introduction, 20: 204.

16 Kant, Critique of Judgment §61, 5: 360.

17 See Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, 90–111 for a detailed account of natural purposiveness as a unity which is contingent with respect to mechanical laws. Ginsborg makes a similar point in “Two Kinds,” 301–2:

It is thus the regularity exhibited by organisms, not just the mere fact that they correspond to a statistically improbable arrangement of matter, which calls for an explanation above and beyond appeal to the powers of matter as such [ … The regularities of organisms] constitute instead a different order of regularity, over and above that exhibited in matter’s conformity to the fundamental laws of moving forces.

18 Kant, Critique of Judgment §64, 5: 370.

19 Kant, Critique of Judgment §75, 5: 398; 5: 400.

20 Kant, Critique of Judgment §65, 5: 374.

21 Kant, Critique of Judgment §64, 5: 370–2.

22 Ginsborg, “Two Kinds,” 281–315, calls this kind of teleology, that which distinguishes organisms from artifacts, the “non-machine-like” character of organisms. See note 16.

23 We can also see these two conceptions at work in Kant, Critique of Judgment §67, in which Kant discusses the system of nature as a whole and its ultimate end. From this section, it is clear that Kant regards internal purposes as necessarily part of some larger system of purposes, until such a system can be grounded on some unconditioned end. Therefore, while organisms have an intrinsic purposive structure, they are also related extrinsically to other purposes, in a system which must be grounded on an unconditioned end. Kant’s account of purposes cannot easily be labeled either extrinsic or intrinsic, but is a nuanced amalgam of these two forms of teleology.

24 Occasionalism is not so much a scientific theory, but rather the idea that God intervenes directly, in this case, in the production of a new life or in the development of the embryo.

25 Kant, Critique of Judgment §81, 5: 423.

26 Kant, Critique of Judgment §81, 5: 424.

27 Blumenbach had sent Kant a copy of his 1789 Über den Bildungstrieb; Kant wrote to thank him after publishing the Critique of Judgment in August of 1790. Richards, “Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb,” offers an account of their mutual misunderstanding; neither would truly endorse the other’s account, due to the differing status that they apply to the Bildungstrieb, and thereby to its relation to mechanism. Here I focus not on the historical views of Blumenbach, but the ways in which the concept of the formative drive is put to similar philosophical use in Kant and Schelling.

28 Kant, Critique of Judgment §81, 5: 424, translation slightly modified.

29 Ginsborg, “Two Kinds,” 281–315, see especially 303: “If we are to regard organisms as natural, we cannot regard them, like artefacts, as arrangements of material parts whose unity is externally imposed.”

30 Kant, Critique of Judgment §81, 5: 423.

31 A full exploration of why we cannot think natural purposiveness together with mechanism as discussed in §§76–7 of the Critique of Judgment is outside the scope of this paper. Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, 130–69, offers a compelling account in terms of the time determinations of the schematized laws of the understanding, which are violated by the final causality of natural purposiveness.

32 “However, the possibility of a living matter (the concept of which contains a contradiction, because lifelessness, inertia, constitutes its essential characteristic) cannot even be conceived” (Kant, Critique of Judgment §73, 5: 394).

33 See, e.g. Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, 74: “These, as I said, are only examples of formative forces in the unorganized realm of nature. Now on to the true formative drive in living creation.”

34 Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, 72–4.

35

[Blumenbach] leaves natural mechanism an indeterminable but at the same time also unmistakable role under this inscrutable principle of an original organization, on account of which he calls the faculty in the matter in an organized body (in distinction from the merely mechanical formative force [Bildungskraft] that is present in all matter) a formative drive (standing, as it were, under the guidance and direction of that former principle). (Kant, Critique of Judgment §81, 5: 424).

36 Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb, 25–6.

37 Kant, Critique of Judgment §70, 5: 387. McLaughlin argues along these lines, see Antinomy and Teleology, 140–4; c.f. Ginsborg, “Two Kinds,” 283–5. For a more extended defense of the view I appeal to here, see Teufel, “What is the Problem?,” 207–9. This interpretation is consistent with the universal scope of this principle in terms of events (any event admits of an explanation in terms of full, mechanical determination), while still maintaining that there may be structure in nature for which such an explanation, even while complete in its own terms, leaves something about the object unexplained.

38 One other major difference involves the fixity of the species and Kant’s opposition to Herder on this particular point, in contrast to Schelling’s much more fluid conception of the relation between different species, and his emphasis on continuity in his classification of animals. See Schelling, World Soul, 68; Gambaretto, Vital Forces, 78–83.

39 Schelling, World Soul, 216–17.

40 Ibid., 217–18.

41 Schelling, Introduction, 41.

42 “In nature, there can be neither pure productivity nor pure product” (Schelling, Introduction, 54).

43 Schelling, Introduction, 41. This unity in duality is an overarching feature of Schelling’s work, which here takes the form of two opposed elements of a unitary, overarching principle. Frank explores this aspect of Schelling’s philosophy in “Reduplikative Identität” and his “Identity and non-identity.” Here, however, the unity is not between identity and difference as such, but is rather a unity between two disparate contending principles: the productive and the limiting.

44 Schelling, Introduction, 54.

45 Schelling is in agreement with Kant here about the self-organizing character of organisms; c.f. Schelling, Ideas, 93–5. Indeed, his project in Schelling, On the World Soul, is to explicate the meaning of this, offer an explanation of these natural powers, and to extend this self-organizing character to all of nature, conceiving it in its entirety as a self-organizing organism. This happens in a different way in inorganic objects as opposed to organic, and Schelling’s project in the philosophy of nature involves specifying the different forms of combination of these two principles and their relation to all types of natural phenomena. What Schelling terms the “positive principle” in On the World Soul is replaced by “productivity” in Schelling, Introduction to the First Outline.

46 Schelling, World Soul, 217.

47 Ibid., 254.

48 Ibid.

49 Following Kielmeyer, Schelling calls organisms “organizations [Organisationen].”

50 Schelling, World Soul, 253–4.

51 Ibid., 216.

52 Ibid., 255. Ostaric, “Concept of Life,” has the main difference between Schelling and Kant on this point that Schelling regards this principle of life, operative in the formative drive, as a “constitutive” or “material” principle (61–2). C.f. Gambarotto, Vital Forces, 63, 80, for a similar view. Such a view, appropriately qualified, is correct: the principle of life is a feature of nature itself (indeed, it appears to be its definitive feature). Yet, it is not “constitutive” in Kant’s sense of the term, because, in Schelling’s philosophy of nature, nature is not constituted by our forms of understanding. Rather, we must describe how our own forms of subjectivity – “the ideal” – are derived from nature as “the real” (Schelling, Introduction, 30–1). The Kantian notion of “constitutive” therefore does not sit well within the context of Schelling’s philosophy of nature.

53 See Schelling, First Outline, 109, in which Schelling contrasts the freedom of the formative drive with mere chance, and makes clear that the formative drive is not contingent in the latter sense:

The formative drive was, in relation each direction, free. This is because all were equally possible, not, however, as if which of these directions it would take in each organism were something that resulted from chance. There had to be an external influence on the organism to determine the organism toward one of these directions.

54 Schelling, World Soul, 254.

55 See Schelling, World Soul, 255: “Certainly, it cannot be said that this principle suspends the dead forces of matter in living bodies.”

56 Schelling, World Soul, 77. Schelling refers to the positive and negative principles also as “forces” (Kräfte) in these passages; e.g. “This positive principle [Prinzip] is the first force [Kraft] of nature” (Schelling, World Soul, 77).

57 Schelling, World Soul, 70.

58 Ibid., 67–9.

59 C.f. Schelling, World Soul, 256: “All functions of life and vegetation stand in such a connection with universal natural changes, that one must search for the common principle of both in one and the same cause.” and Schelling, Introduction, 75: “The difference between organic and inorganic nature is only in nature as object; nature as originally productive hovers above both.”

60

If in organic nature just the universal organism contracts itself, so to speak, then at least the analogues of all those organic forces must appear in universal nature. This would be (1) light, which in universal nature corresponds to the cause of the formative drive in organic nature. (Schelling, First Outline, 219–20).

61 C.f. Schelling, First Outline, 110, 222. See Förster, Twenty-Five Years, 230–40, for a detailed discussion of these stages of development, which Schelling describes as “powers,” “potencies,” or “levels.” This element of Schelling’s philosophy of nature is discussed at length both in Schelling, World Soul, and Schelling, First Outline, and its Introduction. For Schelling’s own summary, see Schelling, Introduction, 71–5. For simplicity, I have refrained from discussing Schelling’s distinction between the inorganic and the chemical, which is explained most thoroughly in Schelling, First Outline and its Introduction.

62 In these early works in the philosophy of nature, he does not appeal to a god. However, his language becomes increasingly theological in the 1800s, but not in such a way that would introduce theological concepts into scientific explanations.

63 Kant, Critique of Judgment §76, 5: 404.

64 Kant speaks this way in §64, calling purposive organization the “contingency of coinciding with a concept” (Kant, Critique of Judgment, 5: 370).

65 The history of biology in its infancy, particularly as it relates to vitalism and teleology in the German tradition, has been the focus of much impressive scholarly activity. Two major works stand out. Richards, Romantic Conception of Life, details how various Romantic ideas, specifically those regarding holism, made their way into biology through the work of Goethe, among others. More recently, Gambarotto, Vital Forces, offers a succinct and helpful history of the major players in these early stages of biological theorizing in Germany, and, in tandem with Richards, successfully argues against a reigning notion of Naturphilosophie as a regrettable “epistemologically aggressive” episode, arguing instead for the advancements of Kielmeyer, Schelling, Oken, and others as having an integral role in the history of biology.

66 I am grateful to the participants of the 2017 NAKS-SGIR joint conference, participants at the March 2017 meeting of EMU at Clark University, and several anonymous referees for their comments on versions of this paper. I am also grateful to participants in the German reading group at Loyola Chicago for their helpful discussions on Schelling’s work and possible translations: Conor Beath, Jean Casellas-Cruzado, Rutger Hakkenberg, Andrew Krema, Kevin Mager, Joshua Mendelsohn, and Kyoungnam Park. If errors remain, they are my own.

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Naomi Fisher

Naomi Fisher is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. She works primarily on Kant and Schelling, focusing on the way that nature, freedom, and reason relate to each other in their respective philosophical systems.