Abstract
This paper focuses on the links between Jakob von Uexküll’s theoretical biology and Adolf Portmann’s conception of organic life. Its main purpose is to show that Uexküll and Portmann not only share a view of the living being as an autonomous and holistically organized entity, but also base this view on the seminal idea of the subjectivity of the organism. In other words, the respective holistic principles securing the autonomy of the living being—the Bauplan, for Uexküll; the Innerlichkeit, for Portmann—share an essentially subjective character. Such principles, indeed, express themselves in a centrally directed and formative way; moreover, in organisms endowed with a central nervous system, they also extend their influence on the overt behavioral sphere and on the organism’s capacity to give meaning to the surrounding reality. The conclusion of the article will show how, though starting from this common background, the two authors develop divergent positions on the issue of the anthropological difference. If Portmann emphasizes the special status of the relationship between the human animal and the world, Uexküll tends to see a substantial continuity in the biosemiotic processes through which human and non-human animals constitute their species-specific worlds of experience (Umwelten).
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07 November 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00536-5
Notes
On the relevance of Uexküll’s theory of animal action, see Brentari (2016).
Some portion of Portmann’s critical stance was due to political reasons. As a social democrat, he was unhappy that biologists with personal histories stained by the NSDAP (Lorenz, Remane) regained influence in German biology after WWII (cf. Burkhardt, 2005, p. 348). However, the main point of controversy was a distinct epistemological stance of Portmann, which was counted among “unnecessary philosophical issues” by biologists who subscribed to “objective science” (his close intellectual ally Buytendijk faced similar problems; Gruevska, 2019, p. 345).
Despite its substantial correctness, Cassirer’s definition is limiting if one wants to understand the full scope of Uexküll’s theoretical biology. The teleological action of Nature, in fact, is not limited to organizing morphology, but also includes the physiology, perception, and behavior of organisms. On Cassirer’s reception of Uexküll’s Umweltlehre, cf. Brentari 2020.
At the same time, the Umweltlehre was brought closer to National Socialist thought by authors such as Lothar Gottlieb Tirala (1886–1974), a pupil of Uexküll. For an exhaustive picture of the (indirect) political influence of Uexküll’s Umweltlehre see Stella & Kleisner (2010); Schnödl & Sprenger (2021).
The problem of anthropological difference is usually understood as a research array which opens around the following question: Is there any fundamental difference between humans and animals that is prior to all other differences (Glock 2012; Wendler 2020; Wild 2007)? As we will see in the concluding section, the problem has to be separated into two parts: (i) the relation between the cognitive faculties of individual species, (ii) the hierarchical status of human faculties in relation to those of other organisms.
It is beyond the scope of this article to dwell on the subtleties of Portmann’s original epistemology. In relation to his concept of Innerlichkeit, it must be sufficient to state here that the experiences of animals are accessible to scientific empirical investigation; however, they can only be understood in relation to the human subjective life-world. Without a first-person experience of the world, one could not comprehend the phenomenon of life in any of its instantiations. Thus, Portmann’s epistemological stance is essentially a hermeneutic one: the portraying of animal subjectivity is always related to humans’ relation to their own self (Klouda, 2021; Müller, 1988).
For Portmann (1962, p. 2), “[…] moods […] are a fundamental fact of experience, and their reality rests as much on the organization of sense organs and nerve centers as on the collaboration of substances of various origins [in this context, Portmann often mentions hormones; note by authors].”.
Plessner’s positive affirmation of Portmann’s interpretation of the problem of boundary is clear from the final part of the introduction to the second edition of Levels of Organic Life and the Human (see Plessner, 2019, xxxiv–xxxv; originally published in 1965). In a lengthy citation from Portmann’s essay Die Erscheinung der lebendigen Gestalten im Lichtfelde (later published in Portmann, 1970), Plessner touches on the peculiar ontological background of Portmann’s theory of expression: for him, the surfaces of living organisms have to be primarily understood as manifestations in light and space and are only secondarily directed at other forms of life.
Uexküll’s thought is an unavoidable reference point for the thinkers belonging to classical German anthropology (Scheler, Plessner, Gehlen) and for many philosophers of the twentieth century (Cassirer, Heidegger, Susanne Langer), when they discuss biological and zoological themes. Their interpretation of the Umweltlehre, however, diverges from Uexküll’s position on a central point; for Uexküll, there is no neat opposition between the concepts of Welt and Umwelt, and, above all, between the (alleged) Weltoffenheit of humans and the—equally alleged—Umweltgebundenheit (closure in the Umwelt) of non-human animals. This is not the place to investigate the reasons why these philosophers depart from Uexküll’s original theory. For many, Scheler’s mediation (accompanied by a lack of direct reading of Uexküll’s founding works) is decisive.
The title of the cited essay is “Earth as the Homeland of Life” (Die Erde als Heimat des Lebens).
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Acknowledgements
We wish to thank Andrew G. Christensen for English language editing and Martin Nitsche, Jiří Klouda, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The research for this article was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) project “Adolf Portmann—a pioneer of the eidetic and semiotic approach in the philosophy of the life sciences” (grant number 19-11571S).
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Jaroš, F., Brentari, C. Organisms as subjects: Jakob von Uexküll and Adolf Portmann on the autonomy of living beings and anthropological difference. HPLS 44, 36 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00518-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-022-00518-7