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Performing the Categories: Eighteenth-Century Generation Theory

and the Biological Roots of Kant's A Priori

Phillip R. Sloan

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 40, Number 2, April 2002,

pp. 229-253 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: 10.1353/hph.2002.0038

For additional information about this article

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229E I G H T E E N T H - C E N T U R Y G E N E R A T I O N T H E O R Y

* Phillip R. Sloanis professor, Program of Liberal Studies and Graduate Program in His-

tory and Philosophy of Science, at the University of Notre Dame.

Journal of the History of Philosophy,vol. 40, no. 2(2002) 229253

[229]

Preforming the Categories:

Eighteenth-Century Generation

Theory and the Biological

Roots of Kants A Priori

P H I L L I P R . S L O A N *

SITUATINGKANTSPHILOSOPHICALPROJECTin relation to the natural sciences of his day

has been of concern to several scholars from both the history of science and the

history of philosophy. Historians of philosophy have displayed an expanded aware-

ness of, and interest in, the importance of the scientific context of the period in

which Kant carried out his Copernican revolution. Most commonly among phi-

losophers, this interest has been analyzed in relation to Kants concerns with the

foundations of mechanics, matter theory, and the epistemology of Newtonian

science, with the central text of interest being the Metaphysische Anfangsgrnde.1

On the other hand, historians of philosophy and historians of science, inter-ested in the issues of the third Critique and in the several papers of Kant dealing

with biological and anthropological issues, have emphasized the unified nature

of Kants inquiries into the natural sciences, and the importance of his continued

interest in the life and human sciences alongside his interests in the foundations

of the physical sciences.2 The effort to understand the unity of Kants project in

the sciences from the 1770s through the Opus Posthumumis a project now of inter-est to several Kant scholars.3

I am considerably indebted to my colleague G. Felicitas Munzel for comments on early drafts of

this paper, for several references, and for generous assistance with the translation of critical passages.

I have also profited from very useful comments from John Zammito, Marjorie Grene, Eric Watkins,

the Intellectual History seminar at Notre Dame, and the anonymous reviewers of this paper.1For recent discussions, see papers by Michael Friedman, Eric Watkins, and others in E. Watkins,

ed., Kant and the Sciences(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).2See especially John Zammito, The Genesis of Kants Critique of Judgment (Chicago: University of

Chicago Press, 1992); Peter McLaughlin, Kants Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomyand Teleology(Lewiston: Mellen, 1990); Helmut Mller-Sievers, Self Generation: Biology, Philosophy, andLiterature around 1800(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997).

3See the collection in Watkins, Kant and the Sciences.

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230 J O U R N A L O F T H E H I S T O R Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y 40 :2 A P R I L 2002

My concern in this paper is to extend and deepen the understanding of Kants

encounter with the life sciences of his period, and through this to illuminate theimportance of this context for understanding the formulation of Kants mature

philosophical program. It is my claim that close attention to the interplay of late

eighteenth-century biological thought with Kants philosophical program as it

developed in the 1760s, 70s, and 80s, clarifies several otherwise puzzling dimen-

sions of Kants thought, and illuminates the issue of the foundation and necessity

of the categories and the status of the a priori. I argue that attention to this con-

text supplies a clarification of the much-debated issue surrounding the nativist

dimensions of Kants epistemology.4 It also supplies a novel basis for tracing changes

in Kants mature philosophy, as this underlying theoretical framework seems to

have altered in the late 1780s.

Tosituate these issues, I commence with a passage from the first (1781) edi-

tion of Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft(KrV) that was repeated without alteration

in the second edition of the KrV of 1787. This is the passage at A 66opening the

discussion of the Transcendental Analytic explicating the Analytic of Concepts

(Analytik der Begriffes), where Kant most explicitly addresses the issue of the actual

source or foundation of the categories:

I understand by the analytic of concepts not the analysis of these concepts nor the custom-ary procedure in philosophical investigations, which presents them as concepts, in orderto dissect out their content, and make them distinct, but the still little investigated dissec-tion of the capacity of the Understanding itself, in order thereby to investigate the possibil-ity of a prioriconcepts, seeking them out in the Understanding alone, as their place ofbirth, and analyzing them in their pure general use; this then is the peculiar business of atranscendental philosophy. The remainder is the logical treatment of concepts in philoso-

phy generally. We shall therefore follow the pure concepts up to their first germs andpredispositions in the human understanding, in which they lie prepared, until finally, onthe occasion of experience, they are developed and through exactly the same Understand-ing are displayed in their purity, freed from their attending empirical conditions.5

4On this debate see Lorne Falkenstein, Was Kant a Nativist?,Journal of the Histor y of Ideas51

(1990): 57397; Gnter Zller, From Innate to a priori: Kants Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy,Monist72(1989): 22235; Graciela De Pierris, Kant and Innatism,Pacific Philo-sophical Quarterly68(1987): 285305. Both Falkenstein and De Pierris attempt a purely ahistorical

analysis of the issue and conclude that Kant was not an innatist. The argument of this paper draws theopposite conclusion.

5Ich verstehe unter der Analytik der Begriffe nicht die Analysis derselben, oder das gewhnliche

Verfahren in philosophischen Untersuchungen, Begriffe, die sich darbieten, ihrem Inhalte nach zuzergliedern und zur Deutlichkeit zu bringen, sondern die noch wenig versuchte Zergliederung desVerstandesvermgens selbst, um die Mglichkeit der Begriffe a priori dadurch zu erforschen, dass wirsie im Verstande allein, als ihrem Geburtsorte, aufsuchen und dessen reinen Gebrauch berhauptanalysiren; denn dieses ist das eigentmliche Geschfte einer Transscendental-Philosophie; das brigeist die logische Behandlung der Begriffe in der Philosophie berhaupt. Wir werden also die reinenBegriffe bis zu ihren ersten Keimen und Anlagen im menschlichen Verstande verfolgen, in denen sievorbereitet liegen, bis sie endlich bei Gelegenheit der Erfahrung entwickelt und durch eben denselbenVerstand, von den ihnen anhngenden empirischen Bedingungen befreiet, in ihrer Lauterkeitdargestellt werden.Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A 66(= B 9091), Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Prus-sian Academy Edition (Berlin: Reimer, 1911), III, 834; hereafter cited as AK. Except where noted,translations will be my own. The AKversion has been slightly revised in accordance with the criticalcomparative readings of the A and B editions by Jens Timmermann, ed., Immanuel Kant: Kritik derreinen Vernunft(Hamburg: Meiner, 1998), 143.

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I highlight two issues in this quotation. The first is that we see Kant asserting

that the dissection of the Understanding itself traces the Begriffe to their birth-place (Geburtsorte) within the faculty of the understanding itself, where they are

grounded in what he terms ihren ersten Keimen und Anlagen.Secondly, on the

occasion of experience they are developed, freed from their empirical restric-

tions or limitations, and then displayed in their purity or clarity.

Standard commentaries on this passage have not typically known what to do

with it if they have attended to it at all. Norman Kemp Smith simply remarks that

this passage fail[s] to do justice to Kants real teaching. . . and reveal[s] the per-

sisting influence of the pre-Critical standpoint of the Dissertation [of 1770].6

However, there is no Latin parallel to the language of Keimeand Anlagenin

the Inaugural Dissertationof 1770. Robert Paul Wolff essentially ignores this pas-

sage.7 Erich Adickes argues that this passage does not imply that the categories

are angeborene Begriffe,but only that they exist as potentialities, emphasizing

this meaning of Anlageand ignoring the reference to Keime.8 Giorgio Tonelli,

while more sensitive to the biological reference in this discussion, does not draw

much significance from this passage.9

The language of this passage has a striking resonance, however, with issues

being debated in the medical and biological literature at exactly the time Kant

was writing this passage. These debates, familiar to historians of the life sciences

from the controversies between Pierre de Maupertuis, G. L. L. Buffon, Albrecht

von Haller, John Turberville Needham, Charles Bonnet, and Lazarro Spallanzani

over organic generation in the years between1740and 1780,10 suggest that some

important illumination might be gained by a closer attention to these issues in

relation to Kants discussions.A. C. Genova, J. Wubnig, Gnter Zller, Helmut Mller-Sievers, and Thomas

Haffner have observed these connections to the generation debates previously,11

and in the important article by Zller in particular, the issue of the relationship of

these biological debates to the possible preformationismof Kants epistemol-

ogy has been explored. These scholars have also explored ways in which this bio-

6N. K. Smith, A Commentary on Kants Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed. (New York: HumanitiesPress, 1962), 175.

7Robert Paul Wolff, Kants Theory of Mental Activity(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,1963).

8Kant, Immanuel Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, E. Adickes, ed. (Berlin: Mayer & Mller, 1889),111, n. 2.

9Giorgio Tonelli, Kants Critique of Pure Reason Within the Tradition of Modern Logic, D. H. Chandler,ed. (Zurich: Olms, 1994), 247.

10See for example, Jacques Roger,Les Sciences de la vie dans la pense franaise du xviiie sicle, 3rd ed.(Paris: Michel, 1994). This is available in a partial English edition as The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought, K. R. Benson, ed., R. Ellrich, trans. (Stanford: Stanford University Press,1997).My citations are to the French edition. For more specific development of these issues, see Shirley A.Roe,Matter, Life and Generation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1981). See also Mller-Sievers,Self Generation, ch. 1; and Thomas Haffner, Die Epigenesisanalogie in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft,(unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Saarland, 1997).

11A. C. Genova, Kants Epigenesis of Pure Reason,Kantstudien 65(1974): 25973; J. Wubnig,The Epigenesis of Pure Reason,Kantstudien60(1969): 14752; Gnter Zller, Kant on the Gen-eration of Metaphysical Knowledge, in Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik, H. Oberer and G. Seel, eds.(Wurzburg: Knigshausen & Neumann, 1988), 7190; Mller-Sievers, Self Generation, 457; Haffner,Epigenesisanalogie,chs. 45.

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logical language and thesemetaphors seem to illuminate the meaning of Kants

self-description of his epistemic program in the second edition of the KrV as asystem of the epigenesis of pure reason.My concern is to deepen the under-

standing of Kants encounter with the embryological issues of his day. Attention

to these details will display the specific meaning of Kants statements, and will also

reveal some interesting changes in Kants views that have significant ramifications

for his reflections on larger epistemic, ethical and political questions in his late

essays and writings.

I shall concentrate upon the importance of two terms utilized in the quotation

from the KrV cited above. These are the terms Keim, commonly rendered in En-

glish translations as seed,but which I consider best rendered within its histori-

cal context by the term germ,and Anlage, usually translated as disposition,

predisposition,aptitude,or capacity.I have settled on the term predisposi-

tionas the best contextualized rendition.12 To establish the thesis of this paper, I

will argue that the uses of these terms by Kant in this and other texts cannot be

assumed to be casual or non-technical, or only employed as loose analogies. This

will require situating Kant precisely against the debate that was taking place in the

life sciences of his day.

1 . K A N T A N D E N L I G H T E N M E N T G E N E R A T I O N C O N T R O V E R S I E S

Kants philosophical revolution took placeexactly in the period of a fertile and

complex debate over the generation of organisms, conducted with particular en-

thusiasm in the German-speaking principalities, that served to define the param-

eters of important Enlightenment reflections on the nature of life, the perma-

nence of species, the origins of organic form, and the relation of nature to divinecausation. The analysis of organic generation, one of the classical issues in the

natural philosophy of the organic world, had attained a new prominence in the

eighteenth century through the development of the microscope, which became

an important weapon in these debates.13 Furthermore, organic generation had

become a crucial issue in debates over the adequacy of the mechanical philoso-

phy and it also had important ramifications concerning the relation of the world

to Gods creative action.

After 1660and the failure of published Cartesian solutions, mechanistic solu-

tions to the problem of organic generation typically involved some version of

preformationism.14 Strong preformationist, or following Jacques Roger, strong

pre-existencetheories, all involved the claim that organisms are not truly generated

12Nothing in English captures the full meaning of this term as used in the context of the period.In the sense of relevance to this essay, it is often equivalent to a structuring capacityreminiscent ofthe Aristotelian notion of the eidos. Karl Schmids Wrterbuch zum leichtern Gebrauch der Kantischen Schriften,4th ed. (Jena, 1798; repr. Brussels, 1974), defines Anlage as the form of relationshipsthat constitutea creature, or more technically in moral philosophy as an inner desire of the will toward or away fromthe good. This latter usage draws upon Kants later moral writings. On this see discussion below,section 4, and n. 35.

13On these debates, see Roger, Les Sciences; Roe, Matter, Life and Generation; and C. Correia, TheOvary of Eve: Egg, Sperm, and Preformation(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). On the micro-scopic issues, see my Organic Molecules Revisited,in J. Gayon et al., eds., Buffon 88 (Paris: Vrin,1992), 41538. On the German debates, see Haffner, Epigenesisanalogie,ch. 2.

14See n. 19.

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by causes residing in their parental ancestors in historical time, but have all been

created in their essential properties by God at the creation of the world. Severalvariants of this position were current by the middle of the eighteenth century.

The classic version, first put forth by Malebranche in 1674, envisioned this as a

preformation of the embryo since the beginning of the world in the form of en-

capsulated Russian dolls within the ovaries, or later, following Leeuwenhoek and

Boerhaave, in the spermatozoa. This encasement (embotment) theory, either in itsovistor vermistversions, can be found to be generally paradigmatic by the

1730s, and in one form or another was widely incorporated into the standard

teaching texts of medical curricula.15

Of more direct relevance to this paper are other forms of preformationism

that relied on the preexistence of preformed germs(germes, Keime). In the origi-

nal version of this theory, formulated by Charles Perrault, and owing some debt to

Augustines theory of the rationales seminales, such germs were conceived to have

been divinely created, and then generally dispersed in nature at creation. These

are taken in by organisms with their food, and under proper conditions, includ-

ing the proper nourishment and activation by fertilization, unfolded in the pa-

rental organism.16

All forms of preformationist theory were opposed to the thesis of epigenesis.

Since the term has been used in the secondary literature often without precise

definition, there are at least two meanings of the term in the eighteenth-century

discussions that must be distinguished. One derives from William Harveys first

use of the term in his Observations on Animal Generationof 1651. There it was em-

ployed to denote his neo-Aristotelian theory of the gradual organization of un-

formed matter into a new organism under the action of vital powers. His notionalso implied the serial addition of parts.17 This theory, in a revised form, was re-

vived for the eighteenth century by the University of Halle medical student Caspar

Friedrich Wolff in his medical dissertation of 1759.18 In this treatise, expounding

the results of his careful microscopic investigations of developing plant and ani-

mal structures, Wolff defended an account of embryological development that

begins from an originally structureless matter that was organized by a wesentliche

Kraft(Latin vis essentialis).

A second meaning is that of mechanisticepigenesis, which dated from the

efforts of RenDescartes to explain the formation of the embryo purely from the

assumptions of a particulate conception of matter, contact forces, vortices, and

15The most important of these was Hermann Boerhaaves widely used Institutiones medicinae, 1sted. (Leyden, 1708). The panspermist versions seem to have been confined to more theoretical worksuntil the work of Haller and Bonnet in the 1760s.

16On the origins of germe preformationism, see Roger, Les Sciences, 329ff. Roger traces this toClaude PerraultsDe la mchanique des animaux(1660), in which he argued that divine action createdonly simple seeds (petits graines) dispersed throughout nature that under the proper conditions devel-oped in time. Augustines theory of the rationales seminales, put forth in his On the Literal Interpretation ofGenesis, was a common authority in these early modern expositions of the germ theory.

17W. Harvey,Exercitationes de generatione animalium(London, 1651), Ex. 46.18C. F. Wolff, Theorie generationis(Halle: Hendel, 1759); Theorie von der Generation, German edi-

tion (Berlin: Birnsteil, 1764). Both are reprinted by Olms, 1966; Theorie generationis, 2nd ed. (Halle:Hendel, 1774). On the details of Wolffs system, see Roe, Matter, Life and Generation, ch. 3.

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the three laws of nature. These he deemed capable of bringing about a gradual

formation of the embryo by mechanical principles and the classic Galenic-Hippo-cratic theory of the male and female semina. In this version, there is no reliance

on special vital forces nor on Aristotelian notions of formal causes or substantial

forms. Opposition to epigenesis in the eighteenth century often was based on a

rejection of this mechanistic version. The failure of Descartess theory to con-

vince the embryologists of the late seventeenth century firmly entrenched the

strong preexistence theory as the only solution to the generation problem com-

patible with the metaphysical assumptions of mechanical philosophy.19

The mid-century disputes over these alternatives form the immediate context

for analyzing Kants views on these subjects. These disputes had been generated

by the revival of a modified form of mechanistic epigenesis by Pierre de

Maupertuis and Buffon.20 Buffons extended exposition of this theory was the

most influential, and was developed in detail in the second volume of the Histoire

naturelle gnrale et particulirethat appeared in 1749. This theory relied on theconcept of the molcules organiques, forming the matter of all living beings, whichwere organized into specific structures by the action of the moule intrieure, con-ceived as a micro-force on the analogy of the Newtonian microforces, similar to

those that accounted for the formation of crystals and chemical bonding. The

interaction of the mouleand the molculeswas deemed sufficient by Buffon to ac-count for the organization of the embryo, its subsequent growth, nutrition, and

the perpetuation of the species through time by means of the self-replicating powers

of the moule. Reinforced by a remarkable and controversial set of microscopic

experiments carried out in collaboration with the refugee English priest John

Turberville Needham in 1748, Buffon claimed to have substantiated empiricallythe main predictive consequences of this theory, namely the existence of the first

conglomerates of the organic molecules, in a wide variety of living forms.

The German-speaking world had been given quick access to Buffons views in

the German translation of the Histoire naturelle, which commenced publication in

Hamburg and Leipzig in 1751.21 The second volume of this Allgemeine Historie der

Natur, containing the exposition of Buffons novel theory of generation and the

account of the controversial Buffon-Needham experiments, appeared in 1752

with a preface discussing Buffons generation theory by the professor of theoreti-

cal medicine at the University of Gttingen, Albrecht von Haller. Through Hallers

19Descartess treatise was published as an appendix to the Clerselier translation of his Traitdelhomme(Paris, 1664). On the reactions to Descartes, see Roger, LesSciences, 1203.

20Maupertuiss views were first put forth in his anonymousDissertation physique loccasion du ngreblanc (1744), reissued in revised form as Vnus physique (1745). A revised version of Maupertuisstheory was then offered in the first part of his Systme de la nature (1751), subsequently issued sepa-rately in German in 1754. Kant personally owned a rare German edition of this (Versuch, von der

Bildung der Krper, aus dem Lateinischen. . . bersetzt, von einem Freunde der Naturlehre[Leipzig, 1761]).See Arthur Warda, Kants Bcher(Berlin: Breslauer, 1922), 29. On Maupertuis and eighteenth-centurygeneration theory see M. Terrall, Salon, Academy, and Boudoir: Generation and Desire in MaupertuisScience of Life, Isis87 (1996): 21729and references therein. For purposes of this paper I amignoring some important differences between the theories of Maupertuis and Buffon. Kant seems totreat them both as variants of mechanistic theories of generation.

21A second German edition appeared in Leipzig in 1766, and a new translation from the newParis edition of 1769/70, lacking the Daubenton articles, was translated by F. H. W. Martini (Berlin:Pauli, 177174).

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preface, German readers encountered Buffons biological theories and were im-

mediately embroiled in philosophical and theological controversy.In his preface, repeating in German in revised form a long critical review he

had made in French a year previously,22 Haller commented on the theoretical

issues posed by Buffons theory, particularly the possibility it raised that matter

could be self-organizing and by its own immanent forces perpetuate form and

organization without divine intervention. Haller presented Buffons theory in

opposition to the theory of vorhergebildete Keime, his German rendering of the French

germes prexistans. Haller also drew attention to the larger philosophical problemposed by the generation question. If Buffons purely naturalistic theory was unac-

ceptable, what then is the relation of the generation of organisms to divine action

in the living world? Haller answered this by suggesting that it could be solved by a

theory of natural forces possessed of innate teleological direction that would or-

ganize organic matter.

Through the middle 1750s, Haller continued to support an account of gen-

eration through the action of constructive teleological forces. But in May of 1758

Haller read to the Akademie der Wissenschaften at Gttingen a memoir in which

he announced his rejection of this option, and cited the conclusions of micro-

scopic studies on the development of the chicken embryo that convinced him of

the truth of a modified version of the preformationist position.23 In formulating

this solution, he now relied on a variant of the theory of preexistent germs, hold-

ing that the chicken developed from primordial germs or Keime under the stimu-

lus of fertilization. Hallers conclusions were reinforced by the microscopical in-

vestigations and the theoretical interpretations by his friend and correspondent,

the Swiss microscopist and natural philosopher Charles Bonnet.In his Considerations sur les Corps organiss (1762) and Contemplation de nature

(1764), Bonnet developed a more extended theoretical statement of the germ

theory that had wide impact in the German nations, and applied it to general

issues of psychology and theology.24

It is important for my argument that we do not confuse the Haller-Bonnet

theory of preformed germeswith the earlier theory of the complete preformation

of the embryo in miniature. Neither Haller nor Bonnet endorsed individual pre-

22Albrecht von Haller, Vorrede,Allgemeine Historie der Natur, vol. 2(Hamburg and Leipzig,1752). The substance of Hallers preface appeared first in a separate version in French as Rflexions surle systme de la gnration de M. de Buffon(Geneva: Barrillot et Fils, 1751). Facsimiles of both texts areavailable in Shirley Roe, ed., The Natural Philosophy of Albrecht von Haller(New York: Arno, 1981). Theyare translated in part in J. Lyon and P. R. Sloan, eds., From Natural History to the History of Nature:Readings from Buffon and His Critics(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981).

23See Roe, Matter, Life and Generation, ch. 3, and idem, The Development of Albrecht von HallersViews on Embryology,Journal of the Histor y of Biology8(1975): 16790.

24Bonnets main works were translated into German by the middle of the 1770s. The Contempla-tion de la natureappeared in 1766(Betrachtungen ber die Natur) and the Considerationsappeared in atwo-volume edition (Betrachtungenber die organisirten Krper) in 1775. On German responses to Bonnetsphilosophy in Germany see R. Savioz, La philosophie de Charles Bonnet de Gnve (Paris: Vrin, 1948),3419. Kant certainly would have encountered Bonnets views in the extended exposition of his theo-ries by Johann Tetens in his Philosophische Versuche ber die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwicklung, 2vols.(Leipzig, 1777; repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1979), esp. Versuchen 13and 14. Tetens was one of Kantsprimary sources during the writing of the KrV. See on this Haffner, Epigenesisanalogie,1179.I thankan anonymous reviewer of this paper for drawing the important Tetens connection to my attention.

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formationin this sense. Their germe-preformation was a preformation only of the

primordia of the embryo, pre-existing as germes that unfolded in time. The rela-tion, proportionality, and structuring of these primordia required an ordering

cause that was not a superadded vital power, but nonetheless was not identical to

the germesthemselves. As Haller states this:

It appears very probable to me that the essential parts of the fetus exist formed at all times;not, it is true, in the way that they appear in the adult animal: they are arranged in such afashion that certain prepared causes, hastening the growth of some of these parts, imped-ing that of others, changing positions, rendering visible organs which were formerly di-aphanous, giving consistency to the fluidity and to the mucosity, form in the end an animalwhich is very different from the embryo, and yet in which there is no part that did not existessentially in the embryo. It is thus that I explain development.25

Bonnets version was more strongly preformationist, and verged on a literal pre-

formation of the embryo in the germe. The germs were pre-existent within the

lineage of a species and were brought into specific development under the action

of fertilization. As put forth originally and most explicitly in his long exposition of

the theory in the Considrations of 1762:

The germ carries the original imprint of the species, not individuality. It is in miniature aman, a horse, a bull, etc., but it is not a certainman, a certainhorse, a certainbull, and all thegerms are contemporaneous in the system of evolution [i.e. preformation]. They do notcommunicate their traits to one another, and their characteristics are distinct. Those of thesame species are not perfectly similar. I see nothing identical in Nature, and without re-course to the principle of indiscernibles, it is very clear that all the germs of a single speciesare not developed in the same womb, at the same time, in the same place, in the sameclimate; in short, in the same circumstances. Thus are the causes of varieties. The most

efficacious of these are the seminal fluids.26

This did not imply, Bonnet was careful to assert, that the germ was simply a minia-

ture of an adult organism. A magnified germewould not be recognized as a chicken

because the forms, proportions and situationsof the parts differ in the germ

from what they become in the unfolded adult.27

But if the language of preformed Keimeis widely encountered in the literature

of German embryology and philosophy in the Haller-Bonnet sense after 1760,28

the concept of Anlagein a technical embryological usage is much less common.

The conjunction of these two notions I suggest is a clue to the novelty of Kants

own thoughts on these matters.

Kants awareness of contemporary discussions of embryological matters seems

to date from a very early period in his career, surely related to the fact that he was

using Buffons work as a reference work for his Physical Geography lectures that

commenced in 1756. More immediately, the issue of generation was directly rel-

evant to his early efforts to restate the physico-theological argument in his early

25Albrecht von Haller, Sur la formation du coeur dans le poulet(Lasanne: Bousquet, 1758), vol. 2,186, as trans. in Roe, The Development of Albrecht von Hallers Views on Embryology,1856.

26C. Bonnet, Considrations sur les corps organiss, in Oeuvres dhistoire naturelle et de philosophie(Neuchtel: Faulche, 177983; Landmarks of Science Microfiche), vol. 6, art. 338, 3923. All Bonnetreferences are to this edition.

27Ibid., 461.28For a survey of some of this literature of relevance to Kants own readings, see Haffner, Die

Epigenesisanalogie, chs. 23.

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Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God of 1763. Intended as a treatise using natu-

ral science [Naturwissenschaft] to attain cognition of God,29 it acknowledged thatany effort to derive an empirical argument for Gods existence from the empirical

world, as earlier physico-theologians had argued, would at some point have to

explain how plants and animals come to be. In a section of this treatise dealing

with plant and animal generation, Kant directly commented on two opposing

options: supernatural causation implied by versions of the strong individual pre-

formation (or pre-existence) theories of generation; and that of a more natural-

istic, teleologically directed process capable of generating organic beings by im-

manent natural causes. The latter, we note, was the possibility raised by Haller in

his 1752preface to the Buffon translation. As Kant comments:

Since it would be absurd to regard the first procreation [erste Erzeugung] of a plant or

animal as a mechanical effect of general natural laws [allgemeinen Naturgesetzen], it remains,nonetheless, still a difficult question, which is undecided on the previously cited grounds:namely, whether one and the same individual would be immediately created [gebauet] byGod, and thus be of supernatural origins, and only the propagation [Fortpflanzung], that is,the succession in time, would be entrusted to the unfolding [Auswicklung] of a natural law;or whether an individual plant and animal, of course being of a direct divine origin, never-theless with a capacity inconceivable to us, can generate its like according to an orderlynatural law, and is not simply to be unfolded [auszuwickeln]. Difficulties are indicated onboth sides. It is perhaps impossible to decide which of these [difficulties] would be thegreatest. Here we are only concerned with the preponderance of metaphysical reasons. . . . Theinternal molds [innerlich Formen] of Herr Buffon and the elements of organic matter, whichunite in order to follow their memories [Erinnerungen] by the laws of desire [Begierden] andaversion, according to the opinion of Herr Maupertuis, are either as unintelligible as thething [Sache] itself, or imagined as entirely arbitrary. Without paying attention to such

theories, must one therefore put forth another that is just as arbitrary, namely that all theseindividuals have supernatural origins, because one cannot conceive of their natural formof generation? . . . Consequently, it appears necessary that either in each generation theformation of the fruit is to be ascribed to a divine act, or an ability [ Tauglichkeit] is to begranted to the first divine arrangement of plants and animals to generate their likeness intemporal succession [in der Folge] according to a natural law, not purely by development[entwickeln], but truly by procreation [erzeugen].

My present intention is only to show hereby that one must concede a greater possibility innatural things to generate their succession [ihre Folgen hervorzubringen] according to gen-eral laws than is usually done.30

As we see from this early text, Kant was more than casually aware of the debates

surrounding embryological theory at this early date, and he posed these issues in

terms of an opposition between the epigenetic theories of Buffon and Maupertuison one side, and the reigning strong individual pre-existence theories on the

other.

But Kant is doing more than simply describing a pair of oppositions in this

text. He is also suggesting that a third alternative is required that, on one hand,

retains a teleological understanding of nature, something he saw threatened by

the solutions of Buffon and Maupertuis.31 Organic beings seem to be endowed

29Kant, Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des daseins Gottes, AK2:68.30Ibid.,1145.31Kant seems to have regarded Buffon only to be concerned with efficient and not final causes.

See Kants commentary on Baumgartens Metaphysica, AK17:96.

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with an inherent capacity[Vermgen] enabling them to generate their offspringby genuine secondary causation. His point seems to be clarified in a later portionof the treatise where he lays out the rules for the improved method of physico-

theology.In his third rule he uses for the first time in this treatise the term Anlage

in a technical sense:32

One presumes not only in inorganic, but also in organized Nature a greater necessaryunity than directly meets the eye. Because even in the structure of an animal it is to besupposed that a single predisposition [Anlage]will have a fertile adaptability [Tauglichkeit]for many advantageous results [Folgen], for which we might initially find necessary a plural-ity of special arrangements [Anstalten]. Attention to this is as appropriate to philosophy asto the physico-theological inference.33

Here we see that an Anlageseems to function as a principle that adapts the

structure of an animal to different conditions. It does away with the need to as-

sume special separate adaptations or powers in each part to account for different

circumstantial adaptations.

The important theoretical development I suggest we can then follow in Kants

writings is a developing theoretical unification of a technical sense of Anlagewith

the notion of pre-existent or preformed Keimeto form a theory that seems to be

Kants middle waybetween mechanistic epigenesis and strong preformationism.34

The clear outlines of this appear only in the mid 1770s.35

In 1775Kant published privately a lengthy Prospectus, later appearing in re-

vised form in 1777in a popular periodical, announcing his annual university

summer lectures on physical geography, which were to deal that summer with the

32This is the second usage in his printed writings of this term. The first is in the 1755AllgemeineNaturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels(AK I: 358:30). I have determined these and other word fre-quencies by a computerized search of the Akademie edition in the CD-ROM version, edited by Ber-nard Schrder of the University of Bonn.

33Kant, Beweisgrund, AK 2:126.34The absence of the Keim-Anlagelanguage in the letter to Marcus Herz of February 21, 1772in

his important early discussion of the concept of the categories suggests that Kant developed his views

more deeply on the generation question after this date, and possibly as a solution to the problemposed in the letter to Herz on how the categories could be brought into conformity with things. In thisletter he rejects the thesis of Christian Crusius concerning gewisse eingepflantzte Regeln zu urtheilen

und Begriffe, die Gott schon so wie sie seyn mssen, um mit den Dingen zu Harmoniren, in dieMenschliche Seelen pflantzte,but this comment follows his claim that the categories must still begrounded in der Natur der Seele(AK10: 1256). As I would interpret this letter in relation to the

argument of this paper, the Keim-Anlagetheory, in the unusual way Kant formulates this in 177577,allowed him to solve this problem by claiming that the Keimeare pre-existent and determinate struc-tures within the soul, but they do not stand in a pre-established harmony with objects of experience,and they are only brought into play when activated by experience and the action of Naturanlagen. Thisavoids the problems of the pre-established harmony that he interprets as implied in Crusiuss position.See also Prolegomena, AK4:319n. I thank Eric Watkins for very useful criticisms on this point.

35There are strong similarities in Kants conception of Keimeand that developed by JohannTetens in his exposition of Bonnets germetheory in his Philosophische Versuche ber die menschliche Naturund ihre Entwickelung (Leipzig, 1777; repr. New York: Olms, 1979), esp. Versuch 14, II, 427. In this healso introduces Anlageas the synonym for the French disposition. Since Tetens Philosophische Versuchewas not published until 1777, however, his printed text cannot be assumed to be the source of Kants1775/76comments. I have not pursued this issue in earlier works of Tetens that might have devel-oped some of his views before 1775. There is no correspondence between Kant and Tetens before thisdate in the AK edition.

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geographical distribution of human beings.36 Aspects of these issues were also

elaborated in the anthropology lectures for the winter 1775/76term. These win-ter lectures set out a line of reasoning about issues related to organic generation

that we can follow over the next thirteen years in his writings. They also develop a

context against which the employment of embryological metaphors in Kants tech-

nical philosophy after 1775can be read.

In the 1775summer lectures, Kant turned his attention to the topic of human

races, as distinct from what Linnaeus had designated varieties, the least taxonomic

grouping of similar organisms on the Linnaean hierarchy. In making this distinc-

tion, Kant was developing and deepening some issues that had been raised to

some prominence previously by Buffon. In 1766, Buffon had introduced a tech-

nical distinction between raceand variety into the literature, using the notion of a

raceto characterize permanent historical and geographical lineages of organisms

that still remained within the confines of a single biological species defined by a

single moule intrieure.A race was thereby distinguished from what he consideredto be the merely arbitrary divisions made by classifiers like Linnaeus on the basis

of external character similarity and differences.37 In developing his own reflec-

tions with direct reference to Buffons discussions, Kant accepted the Buffonian

meaning of race,but went beyond him by attributing these permanent lineages

to the possession of Keime und Anlagen, a notion not found in Buffons writings.

Kants novel conjunction of these two concepts bears the earmarks of his own

coherent theoretical solution to the problem, defining an intermediate position

between the options of strong individual preformation of either the encasement

or Haller-Bonnet versions, and the mechanistic epigenesis of Buffon and

Maupertuis, exactly the oppositions he had seen in need of adjudication in his1763essay. As was now common in the pre-existent germ literature influenced by

the Haller-Bonnet interpretations, Keime are for Kant pre-existent germslying

within the human stock that underlie the display of distinct physical properties of

an organism when brought to their unfolding by external causes. But these are

now placed in an intimate relation to Anlagen. The pre-existent Keime underlying

36Kant, Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen zur Ankndigung der Vorlesungen der physischenGeographie im Sommerhalbenjahre 1775in AK 2: 42943. This is the revised form of the prospectus thatappeared in J. J. EngelsDer Philosoph fr die Welt(Leipzig, 1777), II, 12564. My citations are to thisversion. The1777version has been made available for the first time in a complete English translationby J. M. Mikkelsen in R. Bernasconi and T. Lott, eds., The Idea of Race(Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000),822.For clarifying my understanding of some of Kants views in the 177577period surrounding this text,I am indebted to John Zammitos unpublished Policing Polygeneticism in Germany, 1775: Kames,Kant and Blumenbach(personal communication, cited with permission).

37Buffon, De la Dgneration des animaux,Histoire naturelle XIV (1766), in J. Piveteau, ed.,Buffon: Oeuvres philosophiques(Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1954), 407n. This article ap-peared in the Leipzig translation in 1772. The term racehad, to be sure, been used in French before

Buffon, but not in the sense of a semi-permanent historical sublineage within the confines of a singlehistorical biological species governed by a single moule intrieure. Buffon had accounted for the semi-permanent geographical changes within the species by slight changes in the molcules organiquesundervarying climatic influences. On this see my The Idea of Racial Degeneracy in Buffons Histoire naturelle,Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture3(1973): 293321; and idem, Buffon, German Biology, and theHistorical Interpretation of Biological Species,British Journal for the History of Science12(1979): 10953. For historical remarks on the origin of the race concept, see Robert Bernasconi, Who Inventedthe Concept of Race? Kants Role in the Enlightenment Construction of Race,in R. Bernasconi, ed.,Race(Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 1036.

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specific parts pre-determine a range of possible outcomes. The relationship of

these parts to one another, and to their surrounding conditions, however, is de-termined by the Anlagen.

The foundations [Grnde] which lie in the nature of an organic body (plant or animal) fora determinate unfolding [bestimmten Auswickelung] are called germs [Keime] when this un-folding affects specific parts. But when it affects only the size or the relations of the parts toone another, I call them natural predispositions [natrliche Anlagen]. In birds of the samespecies, which happen to live in different climates, lie germs for the unfolding of a newlayer of feathers, if they live in cold climates, which will be surpressed when they reside intemperate [climates]. . . .

Chance or general mechanical laws [allgemeine mechanische Gesetze] cannot bring forth suchadaptations. Thereby we must consider such opportunistic unfolding [Auswickelungen] aspreformed [vorgebildet]. Even then, where nothing purposive is displayed, the bare capac-

ity [Vermgen] to propagate its special acquired character is already demonstration enoughthat a particular germ or natural predisposition [Keime oder natrliche Anlagen] for it hasbeen discovered in organic creation.38

This remarkable passage illuminates several issues in Kants relations to the

biological theories of his contemporaries. He has, on one hand, rejected the solu-

tion of Buffon, who had made the working of a micro-force, the moule intrieure,analogous to Newtonian attractive force, sufficient for the organization and repli-

cation of organic form by its ability to structure generally homogenous organic

molecules into specific forms.39 Instead, he has suggested that a structuring power

or predisposition, acting upon specific determinative and pre-existent germs,

underlies organic development. The result is a combination of preformationism

with environmentalism.

In the winter anthropology lectures of 1775/76, Kant then applied the Keimtheory to moral and racial properties.40 Although known through student tran-

scriptions rather than representing Kants own writings, these lectures display the

specific way in which Kant was utilizing the concepts of Keime and Anlagen in this

same period to deal with broader issues in a form that also appear later in his

ethical writings.41 Human character, both as physiognomy, and also as a moral

property, is closely related to the inborn Keime. Some individuals possess these

inborn principles for moral development, whereas others lack them:

38Kant, Von den verschiedenen . . . ,AK2: 4345. In keeping with the language of the Beweisgrundof 1763, I am translating Auswicklungin the preformationist sense of unfoldingto contrast it withthe more epigeneticEntwicklung that will be translated as development.

39Buffon, Histoire naturelle, vol. 2(1749), in Piveteau, Oeuvres, 244. In his early formulations ofhis generation theory, Buffon distinguished between a conception of ultimate organicgermesthat wereessentially sui generisto each kind of organism, and the conglomerates of these that formed the molculesorganiquesand that were structured by the moule. This distinction disappeared as his reflections on thisissue developed in the 1760s. See De la nature: seconde vue!Histoire naturelle, vol. 13(1765), in

Piveteau, Oeuvres, 389.40In his 1777 version Kant uses the terms Keimor Keimeon nine occasions, and the terms

Anlage,Anlangen,or natrliche Anlangensix times, with four occasions in which they are directly

conjoined (AK 2:434; 435; 436[appears twice]). The winter 1775/76anthropology lectures, basedon the transcriptions of Friedlnder and Prieger, has thirteen uses of Keimor Keimeand nine ofAnlageor Anlagen,with one conjunction of Keimand Anlagen(Die Vorlesung des Wintersemesters1775/76,AK25: 700). For making these determinations, I am deeply indebted to Felicitas Munzel formaking available to me her unpublished translation of these lectures, under preparation for the Cam-bridge series, including an electronic copy.

41See below, section 4.

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Character [Character] is bad [schlect] if it has nothing noble in it; it consists in the inability

to act in accordance with principles [Grundstzen]. The poor [gering] and bad character isan ill [Uebel] which cannot be compensated for. . . . Therefore a bad character can also notbe improved, and even if one had presented him with the whole of morality, he thus ap-proves of everything and adopts nothing. Where there is no germ [Keim], none can beimplanted [herein gebracht]. Where there is an evil [bser] character, there is surely still agerm for character; much good can still be generated [herausgebracht] from it.42

In the later part of these lectures, Kant turned explicitly to embryological issues,

associating them with the development of specific character in different peoples,

and again employed the language of Keimein this technical sense:

Innate to human nature are germs which develop and can achieve the perfection for whichthey are determined. . . . Who[ever] has seen a savage Indian or Greenlander, should heindeed believe that there is a germ innate to this same [being] to become just such a man

in accordance with Parisian fashion . . .? He has, however, the same germs as a civilizedhuman being, only they are not yet developed.43

The continuity of these 1775/76discussions with the passage from A 66of the

first Critique of 1781quoted at the outset of this paper should now be evident.

Furthermore, it indicates that Kants employment of the Keim-Anlage language in

the KrV, and particularly the conjunction of these terms, is not simply non-techni-

cal and casual. To return to this text, Kant asserts that the pure concepts of the

understanding are to be followed to their first Keime und Anlagenin the human

understanding where they lie prepared [vorbereitet] until developed [entwickelt]

on the occasion of experience and through one and the same understanding,

freed from the attending empirical conditions [anhngenden empirischenBedingungen], are displayed in their purity.The language here is almost exactly

as that used in the 1777paper to describe the way in which bird feathers develop

in response to different environmental circumstances. The one novelty is that the

term entwickeltis used in place of the more preformationist auswickelt. Underlying

preformed causal agencies still pre-exist as innate Keim-structures that require the

occasion of experience to bring them into development, a development coordi-

nated by the pre-existent Anlagen.

This subtle position allows us to see how Kant skirts an important difficulty.

Those who have rejected an epistemological preformationist reading of Kant have

interpreted this as a strong preformationism that degrades the a priori elements

of all knowledge to quasi-a priori factors of the constitution of human nature, and

thus plays into the hands of a skepticism that replaces objectivewith subjectivene-

cessity.

44

Kants rejection of this kind of strong epistemological preformationismis a repeated theme in his writings from 1772onward.45 Such a thesis would ren-

der experience only an occasion for the necessary development of the categories

in the same way that the fertilization of the preformed germeby the male brings it

to unfold its pre-existent structure without a more intimate relation of the exter-

nal agency to the unfolding of the structure. On this Kant differs from Bonnets

germetheory. But there is a weaker sense of preformationism that I argue is Kants

42Kant, Vorlesung, AK 25: 651, trans. Munzel, used by permission.43Vorlesung, 694, trans. Munzel.44Zller, Kant on Metaphysical Knowledge,79.45Metaphysical Knowledge,789. See also n. 34.

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own. The pre-existent Keimesupply a determinate and a priori structure to thought

that is both subjectively and objectively necessary, subjective in that the founda-tions of the categories are indeed biologically pre-existent within us, but objective

in that they can manifest their structuring only in causal relation to external con-

ditions, and specifically respond to those conditions.

2 . K A N T A N D E P I G E N E S I S

In 1785Kant for the first time in his published writings employed the embryo-

logical term epigenesis.46 He then utilized it for epistemological purposes in

the revisions to the KrV completed in the spring of 1786.47 Kants introduction of

this technical embryological term is most closely associated with the vitalistic mean-

ing associated with Harvey and Caspar Friederich Wolff we have discussed previ-

ously. Wolffs formulations, the most important in this context, also made no useof the theory of the preformed Keime.48

Kant had been forced to engage this dynamic, vitalistic form of epigenesis in

philosophical depth through the employment of this form of epigenesis by Johann

Herder. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, published at

Riga in 178485, has been shown by John Zammito to have played an important,

if negative, role in the development of Kants thinking that led to the third Cri-

tique. Herder had specifically addressed embryological issues in the first part of

his work, and this discussion evidently forced Kant to examine these issues more

closely exactly in the period between the publication of the first and second edi-

tions of the Critique of Pure Reason.49

In two places in the first part of the Ideen, Herder discussed the embryological

theory of epigenetic development, citing as scientific support the views of Harveyand Wolff. This assumed the organization of the embryo by a sequential structur-

ing of unorganized matter through the action of inherent organische Krfte.50

Whoever for the first time saw the creation of a living being would be astonished! Fromlittle globules between which fluids shoot arises a living point, and from the point is gener-ated a creation of the earth. The heart will soon arise and become visible and althoughfeeble and incomplete, will commence to beat. . . . What would one call this wonder whichhe saw for the first time? He would say it is a living, organic force [lebendige, organischeKraft]; I know not where it comes from, nor what it is in its inner being, but it is, it lives, it

46 This was in a quotation from Herder. See n. 52. Kant had contrasted epigenesis andpreformationism for the first time in the unpublished Reflexionen zur Metaphysikof the 1770s(Reflexionen,4275, 4446[AK 17: 492, 554], 4851, and 4859[AK 18: 8, 12]). See Zller, Kant onMetaphysical Knowledge,824.

47On publication details of the second edition of the KrV, see comments by Benno Erdmann, AK3: 55556.

48I have found no evidence that Kant ever read any of Wolffs works directly, but he had access toan exposition of Wolffs theory of vitalistic epigenesis through Tetens expositions in the PhilosophischeVersuche, Versuch 14, II, 45464; 4947.

49The Prolegomenaof 1783displays a general continuity with the first edition of the KrVon theseissues. The language of Keim and Anlage is only used occasionally in this treatise, still in thepreformationist tradition of his earlier writings, and there is no use of epigenesis.See Prolegomena,

AK3: 274: 36; 353: 237; and 368:10.50Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit(17845) (repr. Berlin and Weimar:

Aufbau-Verlag, 1965), I, 169. All references to Herder are to this edition.

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appropriates from out of the chaos of homogeneous matter organic parts. That is what I

see, that is indisputable.

And this vital force [Lebenskraft] we all have within us: in health and sickness it remains withus, assimilating similar parts, separating out foreign ones, and expels injurious ones; it isexhausted in old age, and lives on in some parts even after death. It is not the rationalcapacity of our soul [Vernunftvermgen unsrer Seele] . . . but it is bound to it with a vital force[Lebenskraft], like all forces [Krfte] of nature are bound together. 51

Through the action of such organizing forces, Herder claimed he could dispense

with the preformed Keime.52 All that was needed is organic matter (organische

Materie) acted upon by dynamic living forces to bring organization into existence.

In another section of the Ideen, Herder then generalized this embryological

theory to form the foundation for an ambitious epigenetic natural philosophy

that relied on a general genetische Kraftthat supervened in the formation of all

organized beings of the world, adapting each to various climates. The genetische

Kraftis mother of all formation [Bildung] on the earth,simply adapting its cre-

ations to various climates.53

The direct challenge Herders claims posed to Kants assumptions, particu-

larly to certain preformationist dimensions of his epistemology, could not be ig-

nored. From Kants critical perspective, Herder demonstrated the excesses to which

unrestrained realistic epistemological assumptions about knowability of the his-

tory of nature (Naturgeschichte) could be taken.54 Kants review of Herder, pub-

lished as a two-part contribution to the Allgemeine Literaturzeitungin February and

November 1785,55 displays his many disagreements with Herders views that

Zammito has analyzed in detail.56 This review was not, however, a blanket rejec-

tion of all of Herders reflections, and on the issue of generation theory, Kantsresponse was more complex:

In the seventh book, third number, [Herder] calls the cause of the climatic differences ofmankind a genetic force. The reviewer can form for himself the meaning of this concept inthe Professors sense. He wants on one hand to reject the system of preformation, and onthe other that of the purely mechanical influence of external causes, as [both being] use-less explanatory grounds, and assumes as the cause an inner Life-principle, which is appro-priately modified according to the variation of external circumstances. This reviewer wouldcompletely agree with him, except there is a proviso. When the inner organizing causewould be by its nature restricted only to perhaps a certain number and degree of variationsin the formation of its creations (according to whose execution it would not also be free to

51Ibid., bk. VII, ch. 4, 2668.52As Kant quotes Herder in a loose paraphrase: Prformirte Keime hat kein Auge gesehen.

Wenn man von einer Epigenesis redet, so spricht man uneigentlich, als ob die Glieder von aussenzuwchsen. Bildung (genesis) ists [sic], eine Wirkung innerer Krfte, denen die Natur eine Massevorbereitet hatte, die sie sich zubilden, in der sie sich sichtbar machen sollten(Recensionen von J. G.Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, pt. 1, AK 8: 50). For Herders actual passagesee Ideen, bk. V, ch. 2, I, 16970.

53Ideen, 266.54On Kants distinction between the description (Naturbeschreibung) and history (Naturgeschichte)

of nature, see his Von den Verschiedenen,AK2:435n; Bestimmung des Begriffs einer Menschenrace(1785), AK 8: 100n, and Ueber den Gebrauch Teleologischer Principien in der Philosophie,AK 8:15984, esp. 1613. I have discussed this distinction in my Buffon, German Biology,esp. 12934.

55Kant, Recension,and Erinnerungen des Recensented der Herderschen Ideen zur Philosophieder Geschichte der Menschheit,AK8: 4366.

56Zammito, Genesis, ch. 8.

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form another type in different circumstances), then one could just as well designate this

natural determination of formative nature germs or original predispositions, without therebyon that account regarding the former as machines and buds (as in the system of preforma-tion) that are originally enclosed from first origins and only on occasion unfold them-selves. Rather they would be bare, not further explicable limitations on a self-structuringcapacity, the latter which we can so little explain or make conceivable.57

In this claim, Kant can be seen to be loosening a strong preformationist sense of

Keime and Anlagen, while not abandoning his commitment to these theoretical

entities. They have assumed the role of limiting structures on the Lebensprincip,

rather than that of self-enclosed essential characters that unfold on the occasion

of experience. These restrictions were considered sufficient to prevent the trans-

formation of species by environmental causes and the other conclusions Herder

had drawn from the pan-vitalism of the genetische Kraft. Kant was clearly position-

ing himself between the pre-existence of germs and Wolffian-Herder epigenesisexactly in the period when he began the revisions of the KrV.

I will focus on the revisions of the first Critique at B 167of the Transcendental

Deduction that have drawn several comments in the literature.58 These can be

read with new illumination. The Herder encounter between the first and second

editions of the KrV also supplies a context in which to read the shift from the

subjectivetone of the Transcendental Deduction in the first edition, to the more

objectivetone of the second edition. In this second version, Kant posed the

problem of how the categories can be determinate on nature, while not being

derived (abzunehmen) from it. It is in the context of this discussion that he em-

ploys the notion of an epigenesisof pure reason, and uses this language to clarify

the way in which the a priori concepts relate to objects of experience with necessity:

Now there are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the con-cepts of their objects can be thought. Either experience makes these concepts possible, orthese concepts make experience possible. The first does not occur with regard to the cat-egories (and also not with regard to the pure sensible intuition); because they are a prioriconcepts, and consequently independent of experience (the assertion of an empirical ori-gin would be a kind of generatio aequivoca). Consequently there remains only the second[option] (as it were a system of the epigenesis of pure reason) [ein System der Epigenesis derreinen Vernunft]: that namely the categories on the side of the Understanding contain thegrounds of the possibility of all experience generally. . . .

57Kant, Erinnerungen,AK8: 623. In des siebenten Buches dritter Nummer nennt er dieUrsache der klimatischen Verschiedenheit der Menschen eine genetische Kraft. Rec. macht sich vonder Bedeutung dieses Ausdrucks im Sinne des Verf. diesen Begriff. Er will einerseits dasEvolutionssystem, andererseits aber auch den blos mechanischen Einfluss usserer Ursachen alsuntaugliche Erluterungsgrnde abweisen und nimmt ein innerlich nach Verschiedenheit der usserenUmstnde sich selbst diesen angemessen modificirendes Lebensprincip als die Ursache derselben an,worin ihm Recensent vllig beitritt, nur mit dem Vorbehalt, dass, wenn die von innen organisirendeUrsache durch ihre Natur etwa nur auf eine gewisse Zahl und Grad von Verschiedenheiten derAusbildung ihres Geschpfs eingeschrnkt wre (nach deren Ausrichtung sie nicht weiter frei wre,um bei vernderten Umstnden nach einem anderen Typus zu bilden), man diese Naturbestimmungder bildenden Natur auch wohl Keime oder ursprngliche Anlagen nennen knnte, ohne darum dieerstern als uranfnglich eingelegte und sich nur gelegentlich auseinander faltende Maschinen undKnospen (wie im Evolutionssystem) anzusehen, sondern wie blosse, weiter nicht erklrlicheEinschrnkungen eines sich selbst bildenden Vermgens, welches letztere wir eben so wenig erklrenoder begreiflich machen knnen.

58See references, n. 11.

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If one wanted to propose between these two forenamed routes still a middle route, namely

that they are neither self-thought first a prioriprinciples of our cognition, nor created fromout of experience, but are subjective predispositions of thought, implanted in us simulta-neously with our existence [subjective, uns mit unserer Existenz zugleich eingepflanzte Anlagen],which have been so disposed by our creator that their employment coincides exactly withthe laws of nature, on which experience would unfold (a kind of preformation-system ofpure reason), then it would be judged that in this opposing middle route, the categorieswould lack the necessity which belongs essentially to their concept. Additionally, on such ahypothesis no purpose [Ende] is foreseen, as far as one might seek the conditions of thepredetermining predispositions of future judgments [Voraussetzung vorbestimmter Anlagenzu knftigen Urteilen trieben mchte].59

As we see in this complex passage, Kant explicitly denies that the categories

are to be conceived as subjective . .. eingepflanzte Anlagenformed in us from cre-

ation, a point we have also seen denied in the Herder review and also denied as

early as 1772in different language in the letter to Marcus Herz.60 But the denialof the subjectivismof the categories needs to be understood against the precise

biological background of these discussions. The sense of subjectivism I suggest

Kant is denying is the thesis of strong individual preformationism of the Keime

and Anlagen in the Bonnet-Haller tradition. His willingness to speak in the Herder

review of these as merely limitations on a self-structuring capacityrather than as

a preformation of specific properties seems to be an important revision in the

foundations of the pre-existent germ theory. In this sense, the categories would

still be a priori, necessary, and limited in number. And they would still be biologi-

cal properties. They are not, however, merely preformed subjective biological

characteristics that would be individually specific and implanted at the creation

by an external deity, as claimed by Bonnet.

The second part of this quotation could be read in two ways. One is that Kant

had now accepted a full-blown epigenetic thesis of some kind that overtly rejected

the theory of preformed Keimeand Anlagen, but this would, if taken in the Herder-

Wolff sense of epigenesis, mean that there would be no a priori structuring of the

course of development, and all developing properties would be only as deter-

mined by a dynamic, plastic, vital force. This would undermine the fixity and

determinate character of the categories and the stability of the species. The other

option, the one I suggest is the preferred reading of this passage, is that Kants

epigenesisis still a strongly limited version of epigenetic theory in line with the

Herder review revisions. For this reason, Kant leaves the language of A 66and its

preformationist appeal to the grounding of the categories on inborn Keime und An-

lagenwithin the human Understanding untouched, and does so with consistency.This reading is confirmed by Kants important essay that followed shortly after

the publication of the second edition of the KrV in the Teutsche Merkurof January

1788on the role of teleological concepts in philosophy. This essay both displays

continuity with the revised KrVand also illustrates the state of his thinking just as

he began the construction of the third Critique. In this discussion, generated by

his controversy over the concept of race with the naturalist Georg Forster,61 Kant

59Kant, KrV, 2nd ed., AK 3:12829.60See note 34above.61 I have discussed this controversy in my Buffon, German Biology,esp. 1314. See also

Bernasconi, Concept of Race,esp. 14ff. The debate was generated by Kants Bestimmung des

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became embroiled in a debate over whether there were just two primordial and

separately created human stocks that subsequently differentiated under climaticinfluencesForsters claimor if there were from the beginning distinct human

lineages, each defined by its specific germs and implanted Anlagenas Kant had

maintained in his race papers of 1775/77and 1785. For Kant these theoretical

entities determined at least four original human races.In this extended discus-

sion, Kant remained firmly committed to his theory of the Keime und Anlagen. The

racial characters are based on implanted purposive primordial Anlagenwithin

the stock (Stamme).62 The populating [Bevlkerung] of the earth has depended onoriginal implanted and developing Keime.63 Kant even claims he derives all

organization of organic beings (from generation [Zeugung]), and of subsequent

form (the species of natural things) according to laws of the gradual develop-

ment [Entwicklung] of original predispositions [Anlagen].64

For this reason, Kant was rejecting the full implications of the new epige-

neticembryology of Wolff and Herder. It also seems that he had not by this date

yet deeply engaged the work of the theoretician of medicine at Gttingen, Johann

Blumenbach, whose important Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, in which he first dis-

cussed the issues of generation theory, had been published in 1779, a work Kant

personally owned and also cites directly in this 1788essay.65

3 . B L U M E N B A C H A N D T H E B I L D U N G S T R I E B

It is important that we recognize that it is evidently the first edition of Blumenbachs

Handbuchder Naturgeschichtewith which Kant seems to have been familiar. This

edition had been composed by Blumenbach while he himself still defended the

Haller-Bonnet theory of preformed Keime. In two passages shortly following theone cited by Kant, Blumenbach had summarized the primary positions on gen-

eration, contrasting the same options that Kant himself had employed in his dis-

cussion of B 167of the KrV, namely generatio aequivoca,preformationor evolution,

Begriffs einer Menschenrassethat appeared in the Berlinische Monatschriftin November 1785(AK 8:91106) in the same month as the second part of the Herder review.

62Kant, Ueber den Gebrauch,AK 8:169. This essay is available for the first time in a completeEnglish translation by J. M. Mikkelsen in Bernasconi, ed., Race, 3756.

63Kant, Ueber den Gebrauch,AK 8: 169.64Ueber,179.

65Ueber,180n. Kant cannot be reading Blumenbach very closely since he refers the reader tothe passage at Vorrede 7of the Handbuch der Naturgeschichte, 1st ed. (Gttingen: Dietrich, 1779).Neither the first nor second (1782) edition of the Vorredecontains numbered paragraphs. Theobvious reference is to paragraph seven in Part One of the first edition of the Handbuch dealing withthe chain of being. Kant also makes reference to the concept of the Bildungstriebin this footnote,indicating that he had some knowledge of Blumenbach s new theory by that date. It is possible, in

spite of the citation to the first edition, that Kant was using the second or third editions of the Handbuchthat do incorporate briefly Blumenbachs new theory of the Bildgunstrieb (pt. 1, paras. 112, 2nd ed.;pt. 1, paras. 101, 3rd. ed.). However, only the first edition of the Handbuch is listed in Wardas catalog

of Kants library (Kants Bcher). On the general relations between Kant and Blumenbach, see TimothyLenoir, Kant, Blumenbach, and Vital Materialism in German Biology,Isis 71(1980): 77108; andPeter McLaughlin, Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb: Zum Verhaltnis von epigenetischer

Embryologie und typologischem Artbegriff,Medizinhistorische Journal17(1982): 35772.

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and epigenesis.66 Furthermore Blumenbach also utilizes in these discussions the

concepts of preformed Keime and Anlagen.67

Between 1779and 1780, however, Blumenbach had dramatically rejected the

theory of the preformed Keime.In 1780he published in the Gttingisches Magazinder Wissenschaft und Litteraturhis long essay Ueber den Bildungstriebthat set

forth his new reflections on the topic. This then appeared as a monograph in

1781,68 and these new themes were incorporated into the revisions of the second

and subsequent editions of the Handbuch der Naturgeschichte. In the Bildungstrieb

essay, Blumenbach described how he had finally been converted to this new theory

by observations he made upon the green hydra and its regenerative powers. The

dramatic new conclusion, printed in italics in the second edition of 1789to em-

phasize its importance, is unequivocal:

No preformed germs [prformirten Keime] exist, but only a special, lifelong, active drive[Trieb], which has been aroused in the previously crude, unshaped generative matter oforganized bodies, in accord with its directionality [Reise] and the place of its determination[Bestimmung], whose determinate form [Gestalt] was received in the beginning, and thenmaintained throughout life. And if it has by chance been mutilated, where possible it isrestored to health.

It is a drive, which accordingly belongs to the Life-forces [Lebenskrften], and is differenti-ated ever so clearly from the remaining species of the life-forces of organized bodies (con-tractility, irritability, sensibility etc.), as from the common physical forces of bodies in gen-eral. The first, most important force to which all generation, nutrition, and reproductionappears to be due, and which can be differentiated from other life-forces, can be desig-nated by the name of formative force [Bildungstrieb] (nisus formativus).69

Kant seems to have been unaware of the details and comprehensive character

of Blumenbachs new reflections on generation theory until 1789 when

Blumenbach sent him a copy of the new second edition of the Bildungstriebmono-

graph that had recently appeared,70 a gift occasioned, it appears, by Blumenbachs

reading of Kants Ueber den Gebrauchessay of January 1788, in which Kant

had again utilized the Keim-Anlage theory and favorably cited Blumenbachs work.

This was in sufficient time to allow Kant to incorporate Blumenbachs new theory

of the Bildungstriebinto the important discussions of his Kritik der Urteilskraft (KU)

of 1790.

The impact of Blumenbachs novel ideas on Kant seems to have been a power-

ful one in several ways. Through the writings of 1788, Kant continued to make

heavy usage of the language of Keime andAnlagento develop his anthropological

notions. But the Bildungstriebessay presented him with a sustained empirical and

66Blumenbach, Handbuch, 1st ed., pt. 2, paras. 113, 1921.67Ibid., pt. 2, para. 14, 21. He uses these concepts to explain the abnormal development of

organisms.68ber den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschfte (Gttingen, 1781).69Blumenbach, Bildungstrieb, 2nd ed. (Gttingen: Dietrich, 1789), 245. An English translation

of this second edition is available as J. Blumenbach, An Essay on Generation, trans. A. Crichton (Lon-don: Cadell, 1792). Due to limited access to the second German edition, I will utilize this translationat some points.

70Kant owned only the second edition of the Bildungstriebessay(Warda, Bcher, 27), sent to himpersonally by Blumenbach. On its receipt, see letter of Kant to Blumenbach, August 5, 1790(AK 11:176).

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theoretical critique by a leading figure in biomedical science of this whole

preformationist foundation. Furthermore, we now find evidence that Kant tookthese revisions of the scientific understructure on which he had built many as-

pects of his philosophical project to heart.

To make any move in the direction of Blumenbachs new anti-preformationist

positions presented, however, an interesting quandary. Kants primary line of de-

fense against Herders dynamic transformist philosophy of nature, and also against

the arguments of Georg Forsters theory of racial origins by gradual transforma-

tion, had depended in both cases on the theory of the preformation of germs, at

least in the modified sense he had come to embrace in the writings of 178588.

This meant that species could not transform; and characteristics of organisms,

including human races, were to some extent fixed in the lineage even though

environmental circumstances were necessary for their development and expres-

sion. As we have seen, the theory of Keimeand Anlagenhad also still been impor-

tant for his deduction of the categories in the first Critique. Categories were defi-

nite, limited in number, a priori, and apodictically necessary. Nothing Kant had

written before 1790suggests that he held otherwise. But now a leading scientific

authority had launched a point-by-point theoretical and empirical attack on the

entire theory of the pre-existent germs in all its main formulationsHallers,

Bonnets, Spallanzanis, and even Blumenbachs own earlier views.

Kants solution to this dilemma seems to be the following: on one hand, he

continued to reject Wolff-Herder epigenesis. In fact, Blumenbach himself had

sharply distinguished his theory of the Bildungstriebfrom Wolffs more general vis

essentialis.71 The Bildungstriebwas a power that was restricted to purposive embryo-

logical formation, and it acted in accord with definite laws. Furthermore, it was aprinciple restricted by Blumenbach to the living domain.72 Consequently for Kant

it could not be used to ground a general speculative theory of the development of

life over time from the inorganic world in the tradition of the despised Herder.

On the other hand, Kant could not ignore Blumenbachs critique of the germ

theory. In the wake of the Blumenbach encounter, what we see is that Kant dra-

matically weakened his appeal to the preformation of germs. This is immediately

evident when we examine the word frequencies of the Kritik der Urteilskraftof 1790.

Even though the second half of this text contains Kants most extensive treatment

of the general issues of biology, including discussion of generation and the possi-

bility of the historical origin of life, the term Keim is not encountered in any of its

congeners. By contrast, he has retained Anlageand Naturanlagein twenty-two cita-

tions. Furthermore, these latter concepts have now taken on a new dynamic role.No longer are they static structural relations of parts. Anlagen have become inner

purposive predispositions[inneren zweckmssigen Anlagen].73 Kant also has nowdeemed his new account of development a theory of epigenesis. Although as we

have seen he had used this language to describe his philosophical system at KrVB

167, the uses of epigenesisin the First and Third Critiques cannot be simply equated.

71See Blumenbach, ber den Bildungstrieb, 2nd. ed. I am using the Crichton translation (268).Blumenbach interpreted Wolffs theory to imply the workings of a generalized power of nutrition thatacted without law or regularity, in contrast to his own Bildungstrieb.

72Essay on Generation, 601.73Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, AK 5: 423.

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In the KrV he still embraced the concept of the preformed germs and epigenetic

development was only permissible within these strictures. In the KUhe now speaksof epigenesis as a system of generic preformation (System der generischen

Prformation).74 But this preformation is of a novel kind. It is a preformation ofAnlagen, now conceived as dynamic, purposive predispositions that function in

relation to the Bildungstrieb.

Furthermore, the Bildungstrieb theory was put forth by Blumenbach as a phe-

nomenological force that acted in lawful ways, and in this respect it was in agree-

ment with Kants interpretation of forces in the Metaphysisches Anfangsgrndeof1786. Furthermore, as a phenomenological force, the introduction of the

Bildungstriebwas not an assertion about powers operating in the noumenal realm,

and in this respect it was epistemologically distinguished from the ontological

realism of the Wolff-Herder vis essentialis. It could not, for this reason, or at least

Kant so interpreted it, serve as a warrant for a speculative philosophy of nature in

the style of Herder:

[Blumenbach] commences all forms of physical explanation of these constructions[Bildungen] [of the embryo] from organized matter. For he correctly declares as repug-nant to reason [the claim] that crude matter has formed itself originally according to me-chanical laws, or that life has originated from the nature of the lifeless, and that mattercould have disposed itself in the form of a self-preserving purposiveness. But at the sametime he leaves to the mechanism of nature under this (for us) inscrutable principle of anoriginal organisation, an indeterminate, but also unmistakable portion, a capacity of mat-ter which is called a Bildungstrieb (to differentiate it from the pure mechanical formativeforce which is generally inherent in it), that is yet subordinate to the higher guidance anddirection of the formative force.75

In a section of the KU that now reads almost as a commentary on Blumenbachssecond edition of ber den Bildungstrieb, Kant summarizes again the classic posi-tions on generation, describing the thesis of generatio aequivoca, the main variants

of preformationism, and the theory of epigenesis.76 But now Kants endorsement

of epigenesis, at least in a restricted form that still accepts the pre-existent An-

lagen, is nearly complete. Reason as well as experience suggests it as the most

74KU, 423.75KU, 424. Von organisirter Materie hebt er [Blumenbach] alle physische Erklrungsart dieser

Bildungen an. Denn dass rohe Materie sich nach mechanischen Gesetzen ursprnglich selbst gebildethabe, dass aus der Natur des Leblosen Leben habe entspringen, und Materie in die Form einer sichselbst erhaltenden Zweckmssigkeit sich von selbst habe fgen knnen, erklrt er mit Recht frvernunftwidrig; lsst aber zugleich dem Naturmechanism unter diesem uns unerforschlichen Principeiner ursprnglichen Organisation einen unbestimmbaren, zugleich doch auch unverkennbarenAnteil, wozu das Vermgen der Materie (zum Unterschiede von der ihr allgemein beiwohnenden,bloss mechanischen Bildungskraft) von ihm in einem organisirten Krper ein (gleichsam unter derhheren Leitung und Anweisung der ersteren stehender) Bildungstrieb genannt wird.The interplaybetween the Bildungstrieband the Bildungskraftin this passage introduces a set of issues concerningKants conception of the relation of the biological and physical domains that I cannot explore in thisessay. On aspects of these complexities, see Hannah Ginsborg, Kant on Understanding Organisms asNatural Purposes,and Paul Guyer, Organisms and the Unity of Science,both in Watkins, Kant and

the Sciences, chs. 112.76KU, pt. 2, para. 80, 81(AK 5: 419). He discusses generatio aequivocaand distinguishes this from

generatio univocaand generatio heteronymain a footnote to section 80. The other concepts are discussedin section 81.

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defensible account.77 His epigenesishad finally become close to, if still to be distin-

guished from, the true epigenesis of Wolff and Herder.78

4 . K E I M E A F T E R 1 7 9 0

If the hypothesis of this paper is accepted, Kant apparently altered around 1790a

fundamental keystone of both his biological and by implication, his epistemologi-

cal theory. If the necessity and a priori character of the categories rested at least in

part on the theory of the pre-existent Keime, the shift in these foundations toward

embryological epigenesis has numerous ramifications if drawn to their conclu-

sions, issues that Kant did not choose to explore in his final works of the post

1790period.79 If the thesis of this paper is to hold, it is necessary to give some

account of the continuation of Keim language in Kants writings after 1790. Al-

though the KUdropped all use of the term Keimand its congeners, there arenonetheless several appeals to pre-existent germsin an embryological sense in

works published after 1790that demand some explanation. These include the

Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunftin two editions (1793, 1794),

the Zum ewigen Frieden(1795), the Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht abgefasst

(1798), the Physische Geographie, and the Ueber Pdagogikof 1803.80 The passagesmost relevant to the thesis of this paper are found in the Religion innerhalb, and

the Anthropologie. In the Religion innerhalbKant makes explicit reference on sev-

eral occasions to an ethical sense grounded on a Keim des Guten, reminiscent of

the discussions of the 1775/76Anthropology lectures, that is considered inborn

in the species.81 The most embryologically specific usage is in the context of a

long note to this text in which he considers the issue of the transmission of origi-

nal sin in relation to the Virgin Birth:

According to the hypothesis of epigenesis, the mother, who comes forth through naturalreproduction from her parents, would be infected with that moral fault, and would trans-mit at least half this to her child by supernatural generation. Consequently, it is necessarythat if this is not to follow, the system of the preexistence of the germs in the parents be

77KU, 424.78KU, 420; also 423.79For example, these

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