In his preface to Veena Das’ Life and Words, Stanley Cavell notes that the ordinary is that in our language that is, or that we constantly render as, foreign to ourselves – an invocation of the Wittgensteinian image of the philosopher as explorer of a foreign tribe. Professor of Philosophy at Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne, Senior Fellow of Institut Universitaire de France Throughout we will seek to illuminate both the theoretical and practical stakes of grasping the ontological relation between matter and form, life and death, freedom and rationality. We will also engage with some of the most important interpreters of Aristotle in the 20th century (Heidegger, McDowell, Foot, and Korsgaard), as well as with debates in current philosophy of biology. We will pursue these questions of life, freedom, and responsibility by drawing a line from Aristotle via Hegel to Marx.
We will then consider the distinctiveness of rational life in terms of our responsibility for the production and reproduction of our lives, which entails that we are answerable for our metabolism with nature and our relation to other living beings. We will begin by analyzing the ontological distinction between inorganic and organic forms of matter, which in turn will enable us to distinguish between the three possible forms of organic life (vegetative, animal, rational). Ranging from the most elementary forms of organic life to the highest forms of rational agency, the seminar seeks to explore why only living organisms can be free.
This seminar is devoted to the fundamental ontological questions of what it means to be alive and to be free. Six-Week Seminars: The Fundamental Ontology of Life and Freedomīirgit Baldwin Professor of Humanities at Yale University
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