« En dehors de la vérité »: storia, vita e concetto in Georges Canguilhem

This dissertation focuses on the study of the specific articulation, both historical and conceptual, that the interactions between knowledge and life assume in Georges Canguilhem's philosophy. As a matter of fact, his entire work is oriented by the attempt to establish a knowledge of the living being which doesn't betray its vital object/subject. In particular, I address this question (like Canguilhem himself) starting from the constitutive role played by errors, aberrations, and failures, both in life and in knowledge. In this perspective, starting from the examination of both Canguilhem's published works (including the recently published Œuvres complètes) and the unpublished archive material, I outline a path divided into four main sections. First of all, I present an initial problematization (Chapter I) of the notion (which is not self-evident) of "history", used by Canguilhem to approach the medical and biological knowledge of the living being. Then, I analyse (Chapter II) Canguilhem's first articulation of the interaction between knowledge and life, addressing the connections between technique and vital normativity, mainly to the detriment of scientific knowledge. Afterwards, I focus (Chapter III) on Canguilhem's philosophical elaboration of the discoveries of genetics and molecular biology during the 1960s. I argue that this entails a re-connection between scientific knowledge and life, in favour of a conception of scientific knowledge as a vital activity of conceptualisation. In this perspective, I analyse (Chapter IV) Canguilhem's concept of "concept", which is mainly identified with its ability to perpetuate a problem by transcending the specific epistemic configurations that structure its different theoretical solutions. Then, I examine this peculiar functioning within the analysis of the concept of life. In the conclusions, finally, I show how this path leads to a characterization of Canguilhem's philosophy as a practice of thought operating from "outside" the truth of science. Thanks to its peculiar position, this practice of thought can question this same truth, in order to work it differently.