Philippe Huneman, "When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism" (Routledge, 2026)

Central to modern biology and the study of life is the concept of the

organism—roughly, a body with interconnected parts that make specific

contributions to the development and functioning of the whole. There

are competing organism concepts even today, but the 18th century was a

critical period in which thinkers gradually shed prior ideas of life in

terms of a body with a principle of spontaneous motion, a body as a mere

physical mechanism, or a body infused with vital spirits. In When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian approaches to the concept of organism (Routledge, 2026),

Philippe Huneman combines extensive scholarship in the history and

philosophy of biology with Kantian critical philosophy and metaphysics

to trace Kant’s contributions to the emerging organism concept. Huneman

discusses the Critique of the Power of Judgment and other

writings in which Kant developed a view of organisms as natural purposes