Philippe Huneman, "When Metaphysics Meets Biology: Kantian Approaches to the Concept of An Organism" (Routledge, 2026)
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What is the central thesis of Huneman’s book on the concept of the organism?
Welcome to the New Books Network.
Hello, and welcome to New Books and Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. I'm Carrie Figdor, professor of philosophy at the University of Iowa, and I'm co-host of the channel, along with Sarah Tyson and Blaine Neufeld. Together, we bring you conversations with philosophers about their new books and a wide range of areas of contemporary philosophical inquiry. Today's interview is with Philippe Huneman, Director of Research at the Institute of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at CNRS and University of Paris I, Pantheon Sarbonne. His new book, When Metaphysics Meets Biology, Kantian Approaches to the Concept of Organism, is just out from Routledge. 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 ground 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 his new book, Huneman combines extensive scholarship in the history and philosophy of biology with Kantian critical philosophy and metaphysics to trace 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 and in which part-whole reasoning by the faculty of judgment is a condition of the possibility of thinking of organisms at all.
Huneman provides an account of Kant's thinking that is accessible yet promises to bring this neglected aspect of Kant into dialogue. with contemporary Kantian scholarship. Let's turn to the interview. Hello, Philippe Huneman. Welcome to New Books and Philosophy.
Philippe Huneman Hello, Carrie, and thank you for the invitation.
So this is a very, very, very interesting book. Incredible scholarship across, you know, the history of the concept of life and organism that goes from, you know, from a Kantian perspective, but also into contemporary as well as historical evolutionary biology. So it's a It's a very unusual mix of philosophers and scientists, and I hope that we'll be able to do it justice, actually, in the course of, you know, about an hour. So before we get into the book itself, maybe you could say a bit about yourself and how you became a philosopher and how the book came about.
So I guess I was always interested in literature and philosophy. And when I went into higher education, actually, I started to do science. And in the French system, it's very difficult to do humanities and the science at the same time. So I do sciences and I do especially math. That was the only thing I was not so bad at. And then I switched to philosophy because that's what really motivated me. I was very much interested in, well, not really philosophy of science at the beginning, like mostly phenomenology or like German idealism. And so finally I really turned into a philosophy student and I did my PhD in philosophy and And and then I I was a bit I mean, in France, if you want to work on phenomenology at the time, back at the time, it was mostly about history of phenomenology or and I didn't want to do much more history of philosophy or only history of philosophy.
And so and I was still interested in science. And so finally, I started to work on. on what one would call the historical epistemology of biology. So the history of concepts that is motivated by philosophical or epistemological issues that are still relevant now. And as you know, I mean, we have this tradition in France, like led by Bachelard, Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, which shaped what's called now historical epistemology. And so I did my PhD on Kant and the organism. So that's what's also in the book. But I have been working on that topic for decades, actually. And I was really interested first in how people started to shape modern biology and especially with this concept of organism that
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the central thesis of Huneman’s book on the concept of the organism?
0:01–9:19
2
How did Huneman’s early education in science and philosophy shape his research on organisms?
9:19–21:28
3
Why does Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment matter for understanding natural purposes?
21:28–35:09
4
What was the 18th‑century shift from pre‑formation and vitalism to mechanistic explanations of life?
35:09–49:28
5
How does Kant’s notion of purposiveness differ between the Critique of Pure Reason and the third Critique?
49:28–1:02:53
6
In what ways do the Cuvier‑Geoffroy debate and Kantian purposiveness influence modern functional vs. form‑centered biology?
1:02:53–1:11:03
7
What are Huneman’s current projects linking Kantian philosophy to contemporary evolutionary and developmental biology?
1:11:03–1:12:19
Speakers
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