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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

biophilosophy « Previous | |Next »
June 18, 2006

In his Biophilosophy for the 21st Century Eugene Thacker asks a good question; one that bears on some of our postings on Gilles Deleuze. As we come to understand biological research and theory form a central reference point in Gilles Deleuze's philosophy---from his early major work starting from his engagement with Bergson and culminating in Difference and Repetition of 1968, through his collaboration with Felix Guattari on Capitalism and Schizophrenia (especially, A Thousand Plateaus of 1980), to his final work on Leibniz and geophilosophy (The Fold, and with Guattari again in What is Philosophy?). This indicates that Deleuze has framed his account of individuation and agency through an evolving critical engagement with evolutionary thinking.

Thacker asks: 'Is biophilosophy simply the opposite of the philosophy of biology? He answers thus:

Whereas the philosophy of biology is concerned with articulating a concept of 'life' that would describe the essence of life, biophilosophy is concerned with articulating those things that ceaselessly transform life. For biophilosophy, life = multiplicity. Whereas the philosophy of biology proceeds by the derivation of universal characteristics for all life, biophilosophy proceeds by drawing out the network of relations that always take the living outside itself. An extrinsic diagram as opposed to intrinsic characteristics. Whereas the philosophy of biology (especially in the 20th century) is increasingly concerned with reducing life to number (from mechanism to genetics), biophilosophy sees a different kind of number, one that runs through life (a combinatoric, proliferating number, the number of graphs, groups, and sets). Whereas the philosophy of biology renews mechanism in order to purge itself of all vitalism ('vitalism' is one of the curse words of biology...), biophilosophy renews vitalism in order to purge it of all theology (and in this sense number is vitalistic).

Thacker says that biophilosophy implies a critique of all anthropomorphic conceptions of life. But is it possible to think this nonanthropomorphic life? He answers:
Biophilosophy is an approach to nonhuman life, nonorganic life, anonymous life, indefinite life -- what Deleuze calls 'a life.' But the trick is to undo conventional biological thinking from within. Biophilosophy focuses on those modes of biological life that simultaneously escape their being exclusively biological life: microbes, epidemics, endosymbiosis, parasitism, swarms, packs, flocks, a-life, genetic algorithms, biopathways, smart dust, smartmobs, netwars -- there is a whole bestiary that asks us to think the life-multiplicity relation.

What has happened to vitalism? Thacker says that biophilosophy is not and should not be simply another name for self-organization, emergence, or complexity and that biophilosophy is not simply a new vitalism, arguing for the ineffability and irreducibility of life's description. Biophilosophy picks up and reinvigorates the ontological questions left behind by the philosophy of biology. Why 'life'?

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 5:38 PM | | Comments (0)
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