Corporeità vivente e alterità nella filosofia dell'organico di Hegel (Leiblichkeit und Andersheit in Hegels Philosophie des Organischen)

The philosophy of nature elaborated by Hegel, in particular his philosophical-scientifical understanding of the organic realm and life, is a different kind of knowledge than vitalism or the empirical, objectivist explanations (Erklären) of life provided by modern natural sciences. In the Phenomenological Introduction of the work, I discuss the question of knowledge about the organic realm. My aim is not to develop a theory of knowledge. Rather, I want to show that such a kind of knowledge (namely, the philosophy of nature) is based on a spiritual interpretation of natural life, which requires a strong scientifical justification (Rechtfertigung) in order to be something more than a naive antropological reduction of nature to spirit. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit provides that justification. Hegel argues convincingly that the spiritual interpretation of life is grounded into the innermost core of science, that is, into the original structure of universal knowledge as such (the pure self-recognition in the absolute being-other). The original structure of knowledge becomes explicit by gaining access to the native realm of truth, as Hegel puts it, namely to the realm of self-consciousness. Therefore, the stance of self-consciousness (Selbstbewusstseinsstandpunkt), or, in other words, the stance of the concept (Standpunkt des Begriffs), offers the right point of view (Gesichtspunkt) to develop a philosophical science and a spiritual interpretation of life. Self-consciousness secures the peculiar perspective of a dialectical understanding of life, which differs from an empirical, objectivist explanation of it. Self-consciousness, indeed, is life made known. It is natural life and, at the same time, beyond it. We need to recall that natural life itself implies understanding and reflection, because it does not consist only in “living life” (ζωή) but rather also in “understanding life” (φῶς). Natural life, indeed, is a threefold organic process (Gestaltungs-, Assimilations-, e Gattungsprozess) which overcomes the division (Entzweiung) in the infinite unity of life (Unendlichkeit). By this process, life can mirror itself and return back to itself from its alienation (Rückkehr in sich aus dem Anderssein). Self-consciousness, in its turn, carries out a twofold understanding of life, as it occurs when consciousness finds itself, namely its own concept, in the otherness of its object (life). This multilayered process of understanding is the only possible justification of the spiritual interpretation of nature, that is, seeing life and the organic realm as a concept manifestating itself in the reality of nature (erscheinender Begriff). In the first and second Chapter I discuss the definition of life as concept manifestating itself, by drawing on two references to Hegel’s Logic (in particular to the last part of the Logic of the Essence and to the Logic of Concept). However, I stick to an interpretation of Logic based on the Philosophy of Nature and on the science of living organisms. The first Chapter examines the first process of the organic realm, namely the process of configuration of an organism (Gestaltungsprozess), and focuses on animal subjectivity, the most sophisticated form of natural life. The animal life is characterized by a double-self structure (Selbst-Selbst). The self of vegetal subjectivity is always estranged from itself (Entäußerung), and does not take part into living individuality, while the animal self is able to return back to itself from its becoming-other (Anderswerden) and being-other. The living body (Leib) is constituted through a process of idealization of the spatio-temporal reality of matter, carried out by the manifestating concept, and provides the original form of alterity of the organism. The animal self experiences its living body as an isomorphic Other, a medium in which it can mirror itself and return back to itself. The self-closure of individuality, namely the internal self-identification and the self-preservation of identity, is thus made possible. The genealogy of living body founded on the structure of double self, sketched up here, overlaps with a genealogy of the constitution of animal psyche. Animal psyche, indeed, is not a pre-estabilished interiority of the individual, but rather the result of the process of internalization sketched above. In the last part of the first Chapter I describe embodiment (Leiblichkeit) through the categories of the dialectic of the concept, which is an interplay beween universality, particularity and singularity. In the second Chapter, I expand further on the issue by addressing the Logic of the Concept. In the first part of the Chapter I carry out a genealogy of the concept moving from the last category of the Logic of the Essence, called “effectual reality” (Wirklichkeit). My aim there is to show that the categories of cause, effect and interaction (Wechselwirkung) do not suffice to explain organisms. We need to move further to the structure of the concept, namely to the process of backward determination and co-constitution of properties. In the second part of the Chapter, I discuss how the concept as such comes to a self-realization (Selbstrealisierung) by moving through different steps of logical Otherness: particularity (Besonderheit), judgment (Urteil) and objectivity (Objektivität). This movement of self-realization of the concept as such anticipates the manifestation and self-realization of the concept in the nature. When the concept moves to the step of internal finality (innere Zweckmäßigkeit), it frees itself from the Otherness of objectivity and achieves its logical fulfilment as idea. Having reached its fulfilment in the realm of logical immanence, the concept can now estrange itself into the existing Otherness of nature – different from the mere Otherness of logic – and show its own power on it. The concept comes thus to a self-realization in the realm of nature. The power of the concept on nature works by subordinating the inorganic realm to the organic realm: the inorganic realm becomes a medium for the realization of the organic realm, which is a goal in itself (Selbstzweck). The subordination of the inorganic to the organic realm enables thus the ontogenetical development of the living body of organisms (in particular of animal organisms). A description of the concept of nature, interpreted as emergence of the organic from the inorganic realm, and not as ontogenesis of the individual, casts light on the true dialectical hierarchy between the two terms: the organic realm is not produced by the inorganic realm, as an empirical and cronological perspective would have it, but rather it founds (Grundlage) the latter, providing its dialectical fulfilment. In a similar way, I argue in the Conclusions of my work that the spirit is the dialectical truth of nature, therefore it has an absolute primacy and lays the foundations of natural life and of the whole nature. Philosophy of Nature, thus, is a genealogy of life, and hence a genealogy of the spirit.