Canguilhem and Continental Philosophy of Biology

lt;b>Charles Wolfe is co-Editor-in-Chief of the History, Philosophy and Tehory of the Life Sciences book series. He is currently affiliated with the Université Toulouse II Jean Jaurès, where he works at the department of Philosophy. Charles Wolfe studied in New York (New School for Social Research), Paris (U. de Paris IV-Sorbonne) and Boston (Boston University), obtaining a PhD on determinism and the mind in the Radical Enlightenment (Locke, Collins, Diderot). He works mainly on early modern and 'Enlightenment' theories of life, in relation to both materialism (La Mettrie, Diderot, etc.), Montpellier vitalism, and the development of biology. Some outcomes of the latter set of interests are: the edited volume 'Monsters and Philosophy' (2005), the special issue of HPLS on the concept of organism (2010), the coedited volumes 'Vitalism and the Scientific Image' (2013) and 'Philosophy of Biology before Biology' (2019) and, reflecting his focus also on early modern life science and empiricism, the coedited volume 'The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge' (2010). Another volume (2014) he edited was on Brain Theory. He is currently at work on a monograph on 18th century vitalism, a jointly edited volume on 19th-20th century vitalism, and other essays on soul, brain, organism and mechanism in early modern natural philosophy; 20th century biophilosophy (Goldstein, Canguilhem) and the problem of embodiment.
Gertrudis Van de Vijver is Full Professor at the department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences of Ghent University. She was awarded her PhD in philosophy from this university in 1988. Since receiving her PhD, she was post-doctoral researcher and research director at Ghent University until she became a professor there in 2000. Her research is mainly on the epistemological implications of issues of complexity, self-organization and teleology in the life sciences, in psychology and in the study of cognition. For this, she developed a transcendental approach to the philosophy of biology, centring on the idea of co-constitution. In addition, she does research on other aspects and implications of transcendental philosophy, and on the connections of psychoanalytic theory with epistemology and philosophy of language.

Giuseppe Bianco is researcher at Cà Foscari University, Venice. He was awarded his PhD in philosophy from Lille3 University and worked in several European and American Universities. His area of interest is 19th and 20th century history of European philosophy and the history of the relation between philosophy, psychology, sociology and medicine. He has worked on the history of concepts, problems, authors, texts, intellectual clusters, chairs, educational systems and, in general, cultural objects that have to do with philosophy. He is the author of Après Bergson (Puf, 2015), he edited books on the history 20th century French philosophy and a monographic issue of the Revue philosophique on Georges Canguilhem (Georges Canguilhem. Les traces du métier). He was part, along with Gertrudis Van de Vijver and Charles T. Wolfe of two research projects dealing with the relation between philosophy and the life-sciences (both funded by the Flanders Research Foundation and based at Ghent University): "Vitalism. A counter-history of biology" (2019-2022) and "Human life? From philosophy of life to philosophical anthropology" (2022-225). He was the recipient of the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual grant for his research project INTERPHIL, "The international congresses and the transnational shaping of philosophy (1900-1948)." The project will start in 2023 and will involve the collaboration between Cà Foscari University and the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM). He is currently writing a book on Gilles Deleuze.

Preface/Foreword/Introduction.- 1. "Unknown material"?.- 2. Georges Canguilhem and mechanism.- 3. Georges Canguilhem and Kant. Biological normativity and the Third Critique.- 4. Knowledge about life or knowledge as life? Canguilhem and Kant on concepts as preserved problems.- 5. Canguilhem and the current debate on the Kantian idea of organism at the Institut d'Histoire et de Philosophie des Sciences et des Techniques.- 6. Neither Brute nor Angel: Ouroboric Thought in Canguilhem, Merleau-Ponty.- 7. Georges Canguilhem and the promise of the flesh.- 8. Marjorie Grene and Georges Canguilhem:  Philosophy and Biology before (and after) the Rise of Philosophy of Biology.- 9. The Multiple Lives Of Marjorie Grene.- 10. Kurt Goldstein's Impact on Georges Canguilhem's Notion of Illness. Some more or less philosophical considerations.- 11. Georges Canguilhem's Rationalist Vitalism.- 12. "Dilettantes of life." Franco-German refractions of anthropogenesis in 20th century thought.- 13. Levels of the Organic and the Social: Marxism and Philosophical Anthropology.- 14. Auto-organizing Life: Canguilhem, Serres and the Groupe des Dix.- 15. A Bergsonian Perspective on Evolution - Mathilde Tahar-Malussena.