Received: 11 February 2020 Revised: 23 December 2020 Accepted: 23 February 2021

DOI: 10.1111/ejop.12647

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Logical and natural life in Hegel

Anton Kabeshkin

Institut für Philosophie, Universität Potsdam,

Institut für Philosophie, Potsdam, Germany
Correspondence
Anton Kabeshkin, Universität Potsdam,
Institut für Philosophie, Am Neuen Palais
10/11, Haus 11, Raum 2.02, 14469 Potsdam,
Germany.
Email: akabeshkin@gmail.com
Abstract
In this article, I discuss the specific ways in which Hegel's
account of life and organisms advances upon Kant's account
of natural purposes in the third Critique. First of all, I argue
that it is essential for Hegel's account that it contains two
levels. The first level is that of logical life, the discussion of
which does not depend on any empirical knowledge of nat-
ural organisms. I provide my reconstruction of this logical
account of life that answers to the objection made by a
number of Hegel scholars to the effect that Hegel does in
fact rely on empirical knowledge at this place in the logic.
The second level is that of natural organisms themselves. I
argue that it is with the help of this separation of the logical
and natural levels, as well as his doctrine of the impotence
of nature, that Hegel, unlike Kant, (a) is able to claim that
not everything in natural organisms is purposive, and
(b) provide a philosophical, and not merely empirical,
account of the distinction between plants and animals. In
both of these respects, Hegel's position can be seen as a
welcome advance over Kant.

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

Hegel's account of life and its relation to Kant's discussion of natural purposiveness have been increasingly receiving
considerable attention in the last decades.1 In particular, scholars such as James Kreines and Daniel Lindquist have
recently argued that Hegel has not simply dropped the regulative restrictions that Kant had imposed on natural pur-
posiveness but, rather, that he had strong arguments for claiming objective validity for natural teleology.2 Some of

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which
permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no
modifications or adaptations are made.
© 2021 The Authors. European Journal of Philosophy published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Eur J Philos. 2021;1–19. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ejop 1

2 KABESHKIN

the most recent literature also attempts to bring Hegel's views on natural teleology in contact with debates about
functions in contemporary philosophy of biology.3 Finally, scholars discuss whether, and to what extent, biological
organisms are subject to normative evaluation on Hegel's account.4
What has not yet been sufficiently discussed, however, is whether and how Hegel advanced beyond Kant as far
as the details of their respective accounts of life are concerned. I believe that he did, and this paper aims to advance
our understanding of the specifics of Hegel's account of life and of the ways in which he goes beyond Kant. Here I
do not attempt to provide a defense of contemporary relevance of this account; however, this more detailed explo-
ration of it may contribute toward such a defense.
I believe that Hegel has developed the specific content of his account of organisms beyond Kant in at least three
ways.5 First, and this is something that Hegel largely takes up from Schelling, his account includes a sophisticated dis-
cussion of the relationship between the organism and its environment, the topic that is largely absent in Kant.
Although this is a very rich topic, it has received at least some attention in recent literature, and I will not focus on it
here (although my discussion of the assimilation process in the account of the logical life is relevant to this topic).6
The second difference is, I believe, a consequence of Kant's use of theological resources in his reflective account
of the organism on the one hand, and of Hegel's avoidance of this on the other hand. In §§65–66 of the Critique of
Judgment, as well as elsewhere, Kant claims that everything in the organism must be regarded as purposive in a regu-
lative way. I believe that Kant is drawn to accept this view because, on his final account, insofar as we think about
organisms qua organisms, we have to reflectively think of them as created by God. While this judgment (as all judg-
ments about natural purposiveness) is merely reflective, it still seems to be a disadvantage of Kant's account, for
sometimes biologists may want to say, for good reasons, that some features of an organism are not purposive. Hegel,
by contrast, is happy to claim that not everything in natural organisms is purposive, and he has philosophical reasons
to do that, as I will show.
Finally, the third difference between Kant's and Hegel's accounts of natural purposiveness is that Hegel's
account, unlike that of Kant, provides him with conceptual resources to draw useful conceptual distinctions within
the realm of the organic. In particular, Hegel provides a conceptual, and not merely empirical, characterization of the
distinction between plants and animals. This makes his account of living phenomena more fine-grained than that
of Kant.
Both of these last advantages of Hegel's account that I will discuss in more detail below depend on his distinc-
tion between the purely logical and natural life. On my reading, in his logic Hegel purports to develop the concept of
the logical living individual at a highly abstract level, without relying on any facts about biological life, or indeed on
the knowledge of any other empirical phenomena. I present my reconstruction of his chapter on life in the Science of
Logic in Section 2. By contrast to the abstract logical living individual discussed there, natural organisms are spatial,
temporal, and material beings. For Hegel, this means that they are open to contingencies and to the determination
by external causes. As I show in Section 3, it is because of this that Hegel has systematic reasons to claim that not
everything in natural organisms is purposive. Finally, in Section 4, I discuss how, using the logical concept of life as a
standard, Hegel is able to draw the distinction between plants and animals that is based on the degree of their
approximation to this standard.

2 | L I F E I N T H E L O GIC

It has long been doubted or simply denied that a category such as “life” has a rightful place in Hegel's logic. The most
typical objection, and the one relevant for the argument of this paper, is that, in the development of the logical con-
cept of life, Hegel seems to be helping himself to the empirical material taken from biology rather than proceeding
immanently, as he claims he should.7 While not every interpretation of the logic is incompatible with the use of
empirical material in it,8 I believe that Hegel, in accordance with his own claims, may use such material only for illus-
trations and examples. Thus, in what follows I interpret the “Life” chapter of Hegel's Logic in a way that avoids the
KABESHKIN 3

use of the features of biological organisms known from experience in the development of Hegel's reasoning. That is,
I construe Hegel's arguments and transitions in this chapter in such a way that they do not depend on empirical mate-
rial that Hegel uses for illustration. Still, in doing so, I will sometimes use empirical examples, Hegel's own or not, in
order to make my reconstruction more intelligible.
For the same purpose, I should make a few general remarks about the terminology. As I have already mentioned
above, in the Logic Hegel talks about the logical living individual, which for the sake of our discussion can be under-
stood to be something like an abstract counterpart of the concept of natural organism. While the specific relation-
ship between these concepts will be discussed later, it should be noticed that Hegel talks, say, about
“determinations” (Bestimmungen) of the logical living individual which in their turn can be understood to be abstract
counterparts of various features of natural organisms, for example, their organs and systems. Furthermore, Hegel
talks about “processes” that constitute the living individual, and this talk can be puzzling at the purely logical level,
especially considering that Hegel's logic is supposed to be atemporal (the category of time first appears only in natu-
ral philosophy which follows logic in the exposition of Hegel's system). While this puzzle can only be fully solved by
providing a full-fledged interpretation of Hegel's logic, something that I obviously cannot do here, it can be said that
it is not obvious that one cannot make sense of a talk of processes in abstraction from time. For example, mathemati-
cians talk about functions increasing (even, say, monotonically increasing) or series converging; and mathematics is
often thought of as in a sense atemporal. I suggest we should understand Hegel's talk about processes that consti-
tute logical life in a way similar to the way we understand such mathematical expressions.
As I have indicated, I believe that Hegel's development of the concept of life in the Logic does not rely on empiri-
cal material. In a recent article, Englert (2017) has likewise attempted to defend the logical purity of the category of
life. In my view, Englert has cogently argued that reliance on empirical material would compromise the necessity of
the logic, go against Hegel's explicit statements, as well as render the transition from the idea of life to the idea of
cognition unintelligible (Englert, 2017, pp. 64–5). He also correctly notices that the idea in general and the idea of life
in particular, is essentially a process (Englert, 2017, pp. 68, 74). What he does not notice (and he shares this with the
majority of the commentators9) is the specificity of this process which is, as will become clear shortly, crucial.
As a final preliminary remark, I would like to indicate what I see as the point of this abstract logical analysis of
life, at least as far as its significance for Hegel's later discussion of natural organisms is concerned.10 I believe that its
point is roughly this: Hegel first provides the most general and fundamental characterization of life and of the consti-
tution of the living being, and then he attempts to establish what else must be true of something that corresponds to
this characterization. Later, in the philosophy of nature, Hegel will use this logical account of life in order to under-
stand what makes natural organisms, which more or less correspond to the logical characterization of life, peculiar
with respect to inorganic nature. I will say a bit more about this once I present what I take to be Hegel's most general
characterization of life. Let me now proceed to my own reconstruction of the chapter.
Life is the first form of the idea in the Logic.11 Hegel's official definition of the idea is “the unity of the concept
and reality” (see, e.g., GW 12:174), something that by itself does not help us much in understanding what logical life
is.12 We can advance somewhat further if we better understand the characteristic that distinguishes the idea of life
from other forms of idea discussed in Hegel's logic, namely immediacy (GW 12:177; Enz. §216; W 8:373). What does
immediacy mean in this context? While Hegel says a number of things about what immediacy of the idea of life
implies, I believe the following passage from the Philosophy of Nature is particularly helpful: “The immediacy of the
idea of life consists in the fact that the concept does not exist as such in life, its determinate being [Dasein] submits
itself to the manifold conditions and circumstances of the outer nature…” (Enz. §368A; W 9:501). If we omit the ref-
erence to the outer nature (as something that does not belong to the context of the discussion in the logic), the limi-
tation by external objectivity can be used as an explication of what it means for the logical idea of life to be
immediate. As we will see, the relationship between the living individual and its external objectivity is in fact
thematized within the “Life” chapter itself. Although in the logic this external objectivity is not understood spatially
or in other terms that are proper to the philosophy of nature as opposed to logic, I suggest that it is precisely the fact
that the living individual stands against such external objectivity that accounts for the immediacy of life.
4 KABESHKIN

One can object to this reading by pointing out that the idea of cognition (die Idee des Erkennens) is likewise lim-
ited by external objectivity and thus either that it too should be considered immediate, or that this limitation is not
what accounts for the immediacy of life.13 This objection is valid to an extent. I would argue, though, that to the
extent it is valid, the first horn of the dilemma just presented should be chosen and, indeed, is chosen by Hegel. Thus
he characterizes the idea of cognition as immediate in the following passage: “Although it is the free concept that
has itself as its object, it is immediate, and precisely because it is immediate, still the idea in its subjectivity and there-
fore in its finitude in general” (GW 12:198). The idea of cognition in its both forms (as the idea of the true and as the
idea of the good) presupposes external objectivity and is constituted by the drive to overcome this externality and
thus one's own finitude and immediacy. There is still an important difference between the idea of life and the idea of
cognition, though, in that the development of the latter starts with the presupposition that the external world is not
alien to it and is thus cognizable (only the specific content for cognition has to be retrieved, so to say): “Although the
cognizing subject… refers to an external world, it does this in absolute certainty of itself, in order to elevate… this for-
mal truth to the real truth” (GW 12:198).14 By contrast, as far as the idea of life is concerned, the fact that the exter-
nal world is not alien to it is only discovered in the course of its development (as we will see below, in the discussion
of the process of assimilation or Lebensprozess).15 Thus, it is arguably appropriate to stress the immediacy of the idea
of life to a greater extent than that of the idea of cognition.
Keeping this in mind, let us look at Hegel's further discussion of the idea of life. Hegel starts it by pointing out
the purely logical status of the idea of life. In doing so, he contrasts it with natural life, as well as with the life of spirit.
In both of these latter cases, Hegel says, life itself “has… a determination of externality” (GW 12:181), that is, it stands
in relations to various natural forms. The logical idea of life, by contrast, “remains enclosed in the form of the con-
cept” (GW 12:180).
Hegel's first positive characterization of the idea of life is that “[l]ife, considered now more closely in its idea, is
in and for itself absolute universality; the objectivity, which it has in it, is absolutely permeated by the concept, it has
only this concept as its substance” (GW 12:181). This is a slight elaboration of the official definition of the idea as a
unity of the concept and reality (or, here, objectivity). In what follows Hegel points out that this unity of the concept
and the objectivity, and the complete permeation of the latter by the concept, mean that the manifold features (or,
in Hegel's terminology, “determinations”) that life has are all unified by the concept. As an example, Hegel refers to
life insofar as it is instantiated in space and time (with a guarded remark concerning the latter: “if these could already
be mentioned here”; GW 12:181), in which case we would talk, among other things, about the unity of spatially dis-
tinct parts. In the logical context, this is a counterpart of Kant's claim that everything in the organism should be
judged as purposive16; for Hegel, this means that everything in the living individual is posited by its concept. Had
Hegel made this sort of claim about natural organisms, he would have subscribed to the doctrine that everything in
them is purposive. However, as we will see, he only makes such a claim about the logical concept of life.
I believe that Hegel's most important characterization of the idea of life which was largely ignored by many
commentators,17 comes later in the same paragraph:

But simple life is not only omnipresent, but also simply the persistence and the immanent substance of
its objectivity, but as subjective substance it is drive, and indeed the specific drive of the particular dif-
ference, and just as essentially it is the one universal drive of the specific, which brings this specifica-
tion back into unity and preserves it there. (GW 12: 181)

In spite of the somewhat difficult formulations, here it is clear that Hegel indicates two opposing drives as essential
for life: the drive for differentiation and the drive for unification. In other words, it is essential for the living individual
that it differentiates itself into multiple determinations, and that these determinations are integrated (or “brought
back”) into unity. Moreover, the source of these processes of differentiation and unification must be internal to life
itself and not imposed on it from without. Again, this can be easier comprehended if we think of a natural organism
that, in its development, differentiates into various organs and systems whose activity is, however, coordinated with
KABESHKIN 5

each other in such a way that it maintains the functioning of that organism, all of which happens without any need
for some designer external to the organism in question. Another example (also important for Hegel) is the state's dif-
ferentiation into various institutions that are nevertheless coordinated in their functions in such a way that the state
preserves itself and fulfills its functions.18
Let us now consider in some detail how Hegel develops this account of life further. As I have already indicated,
the point of this account is to establish what must be true of something that is constituted in the way the definition
of the idea of life and the characterization above specify. That is, the point is to think through the consequences of
something's being constituted by the double drive of differentiation and integration, while confronting external
world that is initially thought to be indifferent to it. Hegel believes that, from these premises, he can derive a lot
more both about the internal constitution of such a thing and about the way it interacts with the outside world.
To start with, Hegel derives a counterpart of Kant's characterization of the natural purpose, in which every part
(for Hegel, every member19) is both a cause and effect of each other, from his characterization of living individual as
something constituted by the two drives of differentiation and unification. That he does want to make such a deriva-
tion is, I believe, indicated at the beginning of the EL discussion of the idea of life:

The immediate idea is Life. The concept is realized as soul in a living body; the former is the immediate
universality of the externality of the latter, that relates to itself; it is likewise the specification of the liv-
ing body, so that the living body does not have any other distinctions than those that the determina-
tion of the concept expresses in it; finally it is the individuality as infinite negativity – the dialectic of
its externally existing objectivity [seiner auseinanderseienden Objektivität], which is brought back
from the semblance of the independent subsistence into the subjectivity, so that all members are
reciprocally at once means and ends for each other… (Enz. §216; W 8: 373; bold emphasis mine, cur-
sive Hegel's)

Here, Hegel quickly runs through the points that he makes at length in the WL, relating them to his notions of univer-
sality, particularity, and individuality that he develops earlier in the Subjective Logic. We saw that, for Hegel, the idea
of life is a unity of the concept and objectivity. Now, Hegel designates the conceptual side of the idea of life as the
soul, the objective side as the living body or flesh (Leib). As always in the Logic, on my reading, Hegel is not yet talking
about actual material bodies but, rather, about the object at a more abstract level which, in this case, because of its
especially close connection with its concept, is designated as a living body. For the same reason the concept is in this
case designated as the soul. The concept, as Hegel takes himself to have established in the transition to the Subjec-
tive Logic, must contain the moments of universality, particularity, and individuality. The moment of universality cor-
responds to the relation to itself, which in this case is understood as the drive that preserves the unity of the living
individual. The moment of particularity is identified with the drive of the concept to particularize itself. The moment
of individuality, as a unity of both of the other two moments, is identified with the result of the operation of both
drives. In other words, the living individual is a differentiated and yet still integrated or unified living body (in Hegel's
terminology, the living body whose multiple determinations are “brought back into the subjectivity”). The living body
is the product of these two processes working simultaneously.
Now, with the words “so that” [so dass] Hegel indicates that he takes the mutual self-production, and thus the
means-ends relationship, of the members of the living body to follow from this account. Why would he think so?
Hegel does not make it explicit, but I believe that his reasoning can be to some extent reconstructed. It is worthwhile
to do so since this will help us to see the further steps in the development of Hegel's account as resulting from think-
ing through the implications of the fact that the living individual is constituted by the two drives discussed above.
First, from the definition of the idea we know that the living individual, as a manifestation of the idea (specifically,
the idea of life), has both the conceptual and the objective sides to it (which Hegel calls the living body and the soul).
Second, in accordance with the special character of the idea of life, the living body is differentiated and its
6 KABESHKIN

distinctions are integrated, these two drives being manifestations of its conceptual side (“the soul”). From here,
Hegel is supposed to derive the mutual self-production of the members of the living individual. This may go as
follows.
Let us consider some arbitrary individual determination (or a member) of the living body, A. Insofar as the living
body is differentiated, every member is produced as a result of its differentiation. In other words, the living body as a
whole produces, in particular, the member A, and so every member of the living body participates in its production,
that is, A is the purpose for every member of the living body, and they are all the means for the production of A.20
Now, if we consider some other member of the living body, B, the same reasoning applies to it, and so every other
member, including A, is a means for B's production. Thus, any arbitrarily taken member of the living body is both the
purpose for every other member, and the means for their production.21 Thus, what Kant accepted as the definition
of the natural purpose is derived from the more basic characterization of the idea of life in terms of the two opposing
drives and the definition of the idea in general.
So far, Hegel considered the living individual insofar as it is determined or, indeed, produced, by its concept. The
drives discussed above are what constitutes this concept of life and they are produce the living body. Now, the living
body itself merits consideration in its own right. Hegel says that, since it has the concept as its soul, it is structured
by the same moments, universality, particularity, and individuality. Now, Hegel discusses these moments of the living
body which he calls, respectively, sensibility, irritability, and reproduction. These were the terms which were used in
the discussions of the specificity of the living organisms in the late eighteenth—early nineteenth century science, as
well as by Schelling and his followers. Hegel's choice of the terms signals that he at least finds what was said about
organisms using them suggestive and relevant enough to bring them to the mind of the reader at this point.22 How-
ever, we must keep in mind that we should try to find a logical interpretation of these terms so as to counter
Düsing's claim that, with them, Hegel brings in his knowledge of empirical facts about animals.23
Here is what I take to be the most important part in what Hegel says about sensibility, which corresponds to the
moment of universality in the body:

The determinacy exists in this universality as a simple principle; the single external determinacy, a so-
called impression, goes back from its external and manifold determination into this simplicity of the
self-feeling. The sensibility can therefore be considered as the determinate being of the soul existing
in itself [als das Dasein der in sich seienden Seele], since it takes up all externality into itself, but leads
it back into the complete simplicity of the universality which is equal to itself. (GW 12: 184)

At the first glance, it seems that Hegel is violating the confines of the logic here with such terms as “self-feeling” or
“impression”. I believe, though, that we can make sense of this language if we think about the logical living body as
standing in relations to and interacting with other objects (recall that, since the idea of life is immediate, the living
individual has external objectivity standing opposed to it). A comparison with the logical mechanical object as it is
discussed earlier in the Subjective Logic might help us here. For Hegel, the latter is indifferent with respect to any
particular determination it has (in this case, when Hegel talks about “determinations” of mechanical objects, we may
think of properties such as being in motion with a particular velocity as an illustration), and likewise to any new
determination posited by some other mechanical object. The defining characteristic of the mechanical object is pre-
cisely the lack of relations between its determinations, and a fortiori the absence of their unification. By contrast, the
living body is constituted by the double drive for particularization and unification. For the present discussion, it is the
drive for unification (corresponding to the moment of universality, as the moment of sensibility is) that is essential. If
we consider the implications of this constitution for the effects that other objects may have on it, we can conclude
that any effect upon the living individual produced by an outside object gets integrated with its other determinations
or features and is made part of the process of the mutual production of the members of the living individual. I believe
that this is the import of Hegel's discussion of sensibility here. None of this depends on any empirical knowledge
about animals, but only on the fact that the living individual is constituted by the double drive discussed above and
KABESHKIN 7

stands in relation to other objects. However, this account has striking implications for Hegel's account of the way
external influences affect animals in the Philosophy of Nature. Indeed, these implications will be somewhat further
developed in the section on the Lebensprozess in the Logic discussed shortly.
Whereas sensibility corresponds to the moment of universality or unity of the body, irritability corresponds to
particularity or specification. We saw that the discussion of “sensibility” turned out to be an account of the way
external objects affect the living individual. Now, in his discussion of irritability Hegel talks about the outward activ-
ity of that living individual itself: “it [the living individual] determines itself; the self-determination of the living is its
judgment or [its] becoming finite, whereby it relates to the external as to a presupposed objectivity and is in interac-
tion with it” (GW 12:186).
Again, it is initially puzzling that Hegel connects the outward activity of the living individual with its particulariza-
tion. The way to understand this connection was suggested by Daniel Lindquist: the idea is that the members of the
living individual receive their identity and become what they are in virtue of their roles or functions in the individual's
outward activity.24 Hegel has already claimed that the body of the living individual is differentiated into a system of
members which mutually produce each other. However, as far as what he says up to this point goes, none of the
members has any specific function which would differentiate them from other members. Now we learn that it is only
because the living individual is engaged in outward activity that these differences become determinate, that is, its
different members become specific and different from each other. This thought is, appropriately, taken up again in
the next section, in the discussion of the living individual's outward activity:

Now the subject, insofar as in its need it relates to what is external in a determinate way and thereby
is itself something external or a tool, exercises violence over the object. Its determinate character, its
finitude in general falls into the determinate appearance of this relation. (GW 12: 188)

Here, he seems to be saying that the living individual is specified in the process, in which it uses its own externality
or the body as a tool in order to impose its own determinations onto the objects that stand opposed to it (that is, for
a natural organism, to manipulate them or to assimilate them). As Lindquist puts it, it is through such outward activity
that “the members of a living being” are provided “with their determinate content” (Lindquist, 2018, p. 391). In this
way, the abstract character of the living individual as it is considered merely by itself, as just a system of mutually
producing members,25 is sublated. Again, we can think of natural organisms for illustration: legs are what they are
because they serve as means of locomotion, the digestive system is what it is because of its particular role in the
assimilation of materials from the outside world, hands are what they are because of their role in manipulating out-
side objects, and so on.
The third moment of the body is that of individuality which corresponds to reproduction. If my discussion was
on the right track so far, this moment must correspond on the side of the body to the synthesis of the two drives
which produce that body. It is not surprising, then, that Hegel says that it is in reproduction that life is really con-
crete, and sensibility and irritability are only abstract moments (see GW 12:186). I believe that we should understand
this is follows: in every interaction of the living individual with other objects both drives, the drive for differentiation
and the drive for unification, are operative. What happens in every interaction, then, is threefold: (a) the determina-
tion posited by the outside object is taken up and integrated into the whole of the individual (the moment of sensibil-
ity or, as Hegel now calls it, “theoretical reflection” (GW 12:186); (b) the member of the living individual that is
engaged in this interaction receives its identity and is differentiated from other members in accordance with its role
in the interaction (the moment of irritability); (c) the members with their different identities are again integrated with
each other: this is now the “real [reflection], in which the unity of the concept posits itself in its external objectivity as
negative unity, the reproduction” (GW 12:186).
We have just seen that Hegel already started talking about the interaction of the living individual with outside
objects in his discussion of sensibility, irritability, and reproduction. So far, though, he discussed this interaction, so
to say, on the side of the living individual itself, indicating how it constitutes itself through this interaction. Now, in
8 KABESHKIN

the section titled “Der Lebensprozess,” Hegel shifts his focus to the interaction with the totality of the outside objects
as such:

The individual is as a subject at first the concept of the idea of life; its subjective process in itself, in
which it feeds on itself, and the immediate objectivity, which it posits in accordance with its concepts
as its natural means, is mediated through the process, which relates to the completely posited exter-
nality, to the objective totality which stands next to it indifferently. (GW 12: 187)

In this section, there is again much language that makes it look like Hegel is referring to various facts about living
being known to him from experience. Thus, he speaks of the need, pain, and drive to “sublate this otherness and to
give itself that certainty,” that is, the certainty of the nullity of the objectivity that stands against the living individual
(GW 12:187). Now, I have already argued that the immediacy of the idea of life consists precisely in the fact that the
living individual stands opposed to the objectivity that initially seems alien to it. I suggest that the need and pain that
Hegel is talking about here refer precisely to the limitation imposed on the living individual and its constitutive pro-
cesses by that seemingly alien objectivity. The “drive” mentioned here, then, is supposed to overcome this limitation
and thus the immediacy of the idea of life and prepare the transition to the idea of cognition.26 But in order to
understand how this works we need to look at the details of this section.
When Hegel talks about the interaction between the living individual and the objectivity opposed to it, he reiter-
ates some points made earlier which relate to the aspects of the double process of determination and integration.
But he adds new content as well. Thus, he again talks about sensibility, or receiving of the externally posited determi-
nations. We have already seen that such determinations are “taken up” by the living individual and integrated into
its double process. Now Hegel develops this idea further in the following way:

Insofar as the object is at first an indifferent externality with respect to the living, it can act on it
mechanically; but in this way it acts on it not as on something living; insofar as it relates itself to the
living, it acts not as a cause, but rather the object excites it. Since the living is drive, the externality
comes to and into it only insofar as it already in and for itself is in it; the effect on the subject there-
fore consists only in the fact that the subject finds the externality which presents itself to it suitable
[entsprechend]. (GW 12: 187)

The point here is a logical counterpart to the doctrine that Schelling and Hegel himself develop in their philosophies
of nature (mentioned in the introduction above), namely that the effect of the cause on the organism depends not so
much on the character of the cause as on the nature of the organism itself. We already saw in the discussion of sen-
sibility that this follows from the fact that the drive for integration is one of the constitutive moments of the living
individual.
Relatedly, Hegel points out that, because the nonliving objects are indifferent to their determinations, they do
not have the power to resist the activity of the living and to preserve themselves in the face of this activity (the sec-
ond sentence in the quote above already intimates this suitability of the nonliving to the manipulation by the living).
For example, for the mechanical object it is indifferent which particular determinations (or properties) it has, as long
as it can have them. Because of this, there are no mechanical factors which work specifically against the activity of
the living individual; the latter is capable of imposing determinations appropriate to it on mechanical objects,
although, to be sure, its interactions with the latter are constrained by mechanical laws. Similar considerations apply,
mutatis mutandis, to the interactions of the members of the living individual with chemical objects. Thus, the living
individual is capable of acting upon the objectivity that initially stood opposed to it and, so to say, transforming it in
its own image. As a result, the alien objectivity turns out to be not that alien to the living individual after all.
The last part of Hegel's discussion of life is the extremely condensed and cryptic section on the kind or
Gattung.27 Hegel's transition to his account of Gattung28 is based on the previous discussion of the outward activity
KABESHKIN 9

of the living individual, in which it moulds its externality and makes it appropriate for itself, in this sense assimilates it
to itself, and thus reproduces itself through this assimilation of that which is external to it. Now, the very fact that
such assimilation of what was initially considered to be an external objectivity that has nothing to do with the living
individual (as Hegel likes to express it, it was supposed to be indifferent to life) is possible at all is significant. What
the process of assimilation or Lebensprozess shows is that this external objectivity is not that indifferent to life after
all: it is such that it is at least capable of participating in the process of life.29 As Hegel puts it in his difficult idiom, ini-
tially life was considered as something particular, where this particularity “consisted in the diremption, by means of
which life posited the life of individual [das individuelle Leben] and the objectivity that is external to it, as its varieties
[Arten]” (GW 12:189), the varieties that were supposed to be completely distinct from each other. In other words,
life was initially considered to be something absolutely unique or sui generis (in the manner of vitalists, perhaps).
However, the consideration of the process of assimilation has revealed that it involves “this coalescing of the [living]
individual with its objectivity that was initially supposed to be indifferent to it” and this, Hegel continues, shows that
the presupposition of the “indifferent objectivity” should be given up, or that “its [the living individual's] particularity
has been sublated and elevated to universality” (GW 12:189). In other words, Hegel has argued that both the living
individual and the objectivity which is external to it either participate in the process of life and sustain it or are capa-
ble of this. In this sense, life is at least implicit in all of reality, and Hegel expresses this result as the positing of the
“real, universal life” or Gattung (GW 12:189).
So, Hegel's discussion of life started with the presupposition of a single living individual that “separates” itself
against the presupposed “immediate objectivity” that is then assumed to be indifferent to life.30 As we have just
seen, by the end of the discussion of the Lebensprozess, Hegel takes himself to be justified in abandoning this presup-
position: the “objectivity” external to the living individual that was the focus of discussion of the chapter up to this
point is not, after all, something radically opposed or indifferent to it. Now, although this does not show that there
are other living individuals outside of the one that was discussed so far, this does seem to show that multiple living
individuals are possible.31 And if they are possible, then one may also thematize the relation between different living
individuals in the logic.32 The question is, how much can be said about this relation at the level of abstraction proper
to the logic?
On the one hand, Hegel's apparent references to sexual reproduction, seeds, and mortality of living individuals
suggest that he tries to establish the necessity of sexual dimorphism and sexual propagation already at the level of
logical life. This is, of course, one of the features of Hegel's treatment of logical life that has led multiple scholars to
the claim that it depends on biological analogies, or even bluntly integrates empirical material into the progression of
the chapter. As Lindquist, 2020, pp. 432–434) points out, however, this reading is problematic because Hegel does
not actually believe that sexual dimorphism is a necessary feature of the living as such, as can be seen from his
account of plants and simple animals in the Philosophy of Nature, quite aside from the difficulty of deriving it from
the considerations developed so far in the logical account of life. On the other hand, it would also be problematic, if
the relation between living individuals were too generic, such that it would the relation considered earlier in the dis-
cussion of the Lebensprozess.33
On my view, all Hegel should be claiming in the account of the Gattung in the Logic is that the relation between
logical living individuals is or, rather, can be, different in kind from that of assimilation discussed previously.34 In the
relation of assimilation the living individual imposes its own character or kind upon the objects external to it. But dif-
ferent living individuals are, as Hegel points out at the outset of his discussion of the Gattung, identical in kind, and
thus have the same character, to begin with (GW 12:190). This at least opens the possibility that the relation
between them is distinct from that considered earlier in the Lebensprozess, although the specifics should be filled out
later in the philosophy of nature.
If this is correct, then much of what Hegel says in the section is merely an example or an illustration, and not a
part of the logical analysis of the relevant categories. For example, his references to sexual propagation or the seed
must belong to this category, since Hegel cannot be talking about propagation as something that involves a temporal
sequence of individuals, let alone as presupposing sexual dimorphism. On this reading, the characterization of the
10 KABESHKIN

relation between living individuals as (sexual) propagation in the Logic is merely illustrative and forward-looking,
although the thematization of the special sort of relation between living individuals is not.35
Similarly, I believe that mortality of individual life that Hegel refers to at the end of the chapter on life has to be
an anticipation of the account in the philosophy of nature and of the transition to the philosophy of spirit, rather
than an aspect of the logical category of life. Mortality seems to presuppose time, for death is a specific moment in
time at the end of life. However, time enters Hegel's system only at the beginning of the Philosophy of Nature. What
corresponds to mortality in the logic is the finitude of the living individual; in nature it manifests as being limited both
in space and in time.36
Now that we have discussed the account of the logical living individual, we can see how it relates to actual bio-
logical organisms and whether this unusually abstract logical idea of life is of any help in understanding the peculiari-
ties of natural organisms.

3 | P U R P O S I V E N E S S OF N A T U R A L O R G A N I S M S

As I have pointed out in Section 1, Kant has in effect preserved the traditional Aristotelian idea that nature does
nothing in vain, albeit in a regulative form. In §66 of the Critique of Judgment, he claims that “An organized product
of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless,
or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (Kant, 2000, pp. 247–248; 5:376; Kant's bold font, my italics). We
have seen above that, for Hegel, in the logical living individual, all determinations are posited by its concept, and thus
are not contingent. By contrast, Hegel is happy to say that, in natural organisms, there are features that are contin-
gent and not purposive: “Even though a universal type, which nature realizes in the animals, is at the basis, so that
this realization is appropriate to the particularity, nevertheless one must not hold as purposive everything that one
finds in the animal” (Enz. §368Z; W 9:508).
Does Hegel have philosophical, and not merely empirical, grounds for saying this? I believe that such philosophi-
cal grounds can be found in his famous doctrine of the impotence of nature, according to which “the impotence of
nature brings it about that the logical forms are not exhibited purely” in nature (Enz. §24Z; W 8:84). But in order to
understand this doctrine properly we have to look at the most general determination of nature, that of externality.
About nature Hegel claims that it is “the Idea in the form of otherness” and that “externality constitutes the
determination, in which it [the idea] is as nature” (Enz. §247; W 9:24). Hegel identifies this externality of nature with
space (§254). I believe that the spatiality of nature has two important consequences which are not always clearly dis-
tinguished.37 On the one hand, it leads to its forms and determinations existing apart from each other. In other
words, because of the spatiality of natural beings, they have parts that are located outside of each other in space,
can be affected to some extent separately, and are in principle detachable from each other. In this way, while the log-
ical living individual is a logical whole of interrelated and inseparable determinations, the material living organism has
spatially distinct organs that can be detached from each other by some external force, or otherwise differentially
causally influenced from the outside. However, the whole organism in its different aspects, including its distinctive
spatial shape, can still be intelligible from the philosophical standpoint, and indeed with the help of the logical idea
of life.
The second consequence of externality of nature is what Hegel calls the impotence of nature. The features of
natural phenomena that are due to the impotence of nature are not philosophically comprehensible, as Hegel points
out in a number of places.38 Hegel explicitly relates this impotence to externality and contingency, pointing out that
it is because the various properties of natural objects are external to each other that they are exposed to the deter-
mination from outside:

Contingency and determination from outside has its right in the sphere of nature. This contingency is
greatest in the realm of the concrete formations, which however, as things of nature, are only
KABESHKIN 11

immediately concrete. That is, the immediately concrete, is a mass properties, which are outside of
each other and more or less indifferent with respect to each other, with respect to which the simple
subjectivity that exists for itself is precisely because of that likewise indifferent, and which it leaves to
external and thus contingent determination. It is the impotence of nature, to preserve the conceptual
determinations only abstractly and to submit the realization of the particular to the determinability
from outside. (Enz. §250; W 9: 34)

Hegel's favorite example of philosophically incomprehensible features of nature is the variety of biological species,
and in fact in the quotation above Hegel says that it is the “concrete formations” that are the ones most subject to
contingency (biological organisms being the most concrete natural forms).39 One might question why this is the case:
after all, for example, in Hegel's account of mechanics, the states of bodies are initially considered to be exclusively
determined externally, and even though Hegel's fully developed account presented under the title “Absolute
Mechanics” assigns a degree of self-determination even to bodies insofar as they are mechanical, there is certainly
more self-determination at the level of organisms. The answer is, I believe, that Hegel, so to say, sets different stan-
dards for these different levels of nature: for bodies insofar as they are mechanical external determination is the
norm, whereas organisms are assessed by the standard of the logical idea of life, according to which everything in
the living individual is supposed to be purposive. When it then turns out that even in organisms of higher animals, in
spite of their overall purposiveness, there is much that is not purposive, this fact shows that the impotence of nature
has its full reign precisely in the organic realm.
In fact, Kant has a distinction somewhat similar to that of Hegel between the logical life and natural organisms,
namely that between the concept of “Naturzweck” and the organisms as they are given in experience. A comparison
between these two pairs of concepts sheds additional light on the difference between the Kantian and Hegelian
accounts. For Kant, Naturzweck as it is defined in the §65 of the Critique of Judgment is a problematic concept.40 Kant
first provides an analysis of this concept (to be sure, occasioned by our experience of organisms) and then argues
that, while our experience of organisms suggests that they are natural purposes, we can never know whether they
really are, and, more generally, whether there is anything that corresponds to this concept.41 In other words, Kant
provides an analysis of what it is for something to be a Naturzweck, and then claims that while we cannot make sense
of natural organisms without thinking of them as if they are Naturzwecke, we can never know whether they really
are. By contrast, Hegel first provides an account of what it is to be a living individual, argues that this idea is
coherent,42 and then uses this idea as a standard or norm to assess whether, and to what extent, something in the
world corresponds to that it. Because of this, he is free to say that actual organisms, while approximating this stan-
dard, do not fully correspond to it, and thus are not purposive in every feature.
It is important to clarify two further points related to the doctrine of the impotence of nature.43 First, it is clear
that, for Hegel, although he never talks about “the impotence of spirit,” not only nature but also various forms of
Geist (manifested both in human behavior and in social institutions) are permeated by contingency in spite of the fact
that they embody various logical concepts.44 Even states that are characterized as organisms by Hegel in §§267 and
269 of the Philosophy of Right (see W 9:412–4) are not purposive in every feature.45 What is the source of the con-
tingency that adheres to forms of spirit?
There are two possible answers that are not mutually exclusive. First, forms of spirit always have a natural side
to them, since humans are not only self-conscious, social, and cultured but also natural beings, which have various
naturally conditioned desires that motivate them to engage in particularistic behavior. Thus, contingency may enter
spirit through its natural aspects. But second, it might be that spirit has its own independent source of contingency;
the fact that externality of nature explains some contingency does not imply that there is no contingency that is
explained otherwise (although this possible source of contingency was not honored with a special name by Hegel).
Here I cannot pursue this line of thought further, though.
Second, I have argued that Hegel's logical concepts function as a norm, which can be used to assess natural
objects which can embody those concepts more or less fully. How does this picture square with Hegel's critique of
12 KABESHKIN

the Kantian and Fichtean understanding of ideas as something that merely ought to be rather than something that
is? To this it should be first responded that this critique is typically developed in the context of discussions of politi-
cal institutions (as in the preface to the Philosophy of Right and in §6 of the Encyclopedia) and so might be meant to
belong primarily to this context. Still, Hegel seems to say quite generally that the idea is “not something so impotent
that it only ought to be and is not actual” (Enz. §6A; W 8:49). However, the doctrine of impotence of nature asserts
that it is nature that is too impotent to embody ideas fully (because of its externality), not that ideas are too impotent
to be fully realized in nature. Some account of the sense in which ideas are actual is still in order, though, if this
answer is not to look like a mere play on words. Although I cannot pursue this topic at length here, the upshot is that
it is not only the case that we comprehend natural phenomena by comparing them with logical forms, but it is also
the case that their constitution and behavior cohere in ways delineated by relevant logical forms. For example, to the
extent that a natural organism approximates the constitution of the logical living individual, its features are purposive
and explicable by reference to the kind of organism it is. To this extent, the logical idea of life is explanatory with
respect to natural organisms, and not merely something that ought to be.46
In fact, this explanatory potential of the logical idea of life also allows Hegel to say that different living organisms
correspond to the concept of the living individual to a different degree. Moreover, the specific content of that con-
cept makes it possible for him to analyze the differences between different groups of organisms by comparing them
with that concept. In the next section I will discuss how, against his logical background, Hegel makes the conceptual
distinction between plants and animals.

4 | PLANTS AND ANIMALS IN HEGEL

In the section, “Organic Physics” in the Philosophy of Nature Hegel discusses plants and animals as two different
manifestations of the idea of life in nature.47 He seems to think that the core difference between plants and animals
consists in the fact that parts of plants are relatively autonomous individuals in their own right, and in many cases
can well exist on their own. If we recall the most basic characterization of the living individual in terms of the two
drives of differentiation and integration, we can say that in plants the integration of their parts is too weak to be able
to integrate multiple functionally distinct parts that are not able to exist without each other. Because of this, parts of
plants, while numerically distinct from each other, do not functionally differ as much as parts of animals:

In plant, the initially merely immediate subjective vitality, the objective organism and its subjectivity
are still immediately identical. Because of this, the process of articulation and self-preservation of the
vegetable subject consists in coming out of itself and dividing into several individuals, for which the
one whole individual is merely the ground, rather than a subjective unity of members; the part – the
bud, the branch etc. – is also the whole plant. (Enz. §343; W 9: 371)

Since Hegel claims that individual parts of plants are basically self-standing individuals, he concludes that the process
of internal differentiation is not clearly distinguished from the genus-process in plants. That is, the production of
new parts of plants, or growth, is also a production of new individuals of the species to which a given plant belongs:
“The process of the formation and reproduction of singular individuals coincides in this way with the genus-process
and is a perpetual production of new individuals” (Enz. §344; W 9:373). Hegel of course recognizes that many plants
also propagate sexually, but he claims that, for plants, sexual reproduction is something “excessive” or unnecessary,
since plants can also propagate without it:

In plants the genus-process is formal; it is only in the animal organism that it first acquires its true
meaning. While in the genus-process of the animal the kind, as the negative power over the individ-
ual, realizes itself by sacrificing this individual, which it replaces with another one, in the plant the
KABESHKIN 13

positive aspect of this process is already present in the first two processes in that the relation to the
outer world is already a reproduction of the plant itself. Thus this relation coincides with the genus-
process. (Enz. §348Z; W 9: 424)

Thus, although plants exhibit the logical form of life and so are constituted by the three processes constitutive of it,
these processes are not clearly distinguished from each other in plants.48 In this sense, they exhibit the logical form
of life only indistinctly and imperfectly.
Furthermore, Hegel argues that this relatively weak internal differentiation in plants has consequences for their
relation to the outside world, that is, to the second process that constitutes the living individual. Among the things
he discusses in this connection, I want to point out the weaker isolation of the internal environment of a plant from
the external world, which manifests in the generally different ability of plants and animals to maintain stable condi-
tions such as temperature inside of them. I believe that this is supposed to follow from the low degree of internal dif-
ferentiation in the following way. Because of the latter, plants are to a much lower degree able to create an internal
milieu because this would require the difference between the organs that are specialized for interacting with the out-
side world and the distinctively internal organs: “The genus-process as such, which would be the process of internal
organs of the individual with itself, is absent in the plant, precisely because it lacks internal organs and has only mem-
bers which have a relationship toward the outer world” (Enz. §346Z1; W 9:395). By contrast, animals, especially the
higher animals, do have internal milieu as well as organs used for immediate interaction with their environment, and
thus are able to maintain stable conditions inside of them much better.
Hegel believes that, quite generally, animals exhibit the logical form of life much more perfectly than plants.
Their parts (or, rather, members) are much more thoroughly integrated and, relatedly, depend upon each other and
on the whole animal to a much greater extent than the parts of plants, so that they cannot exist on their own once
separated from that whole.49 Hence Hegel endorses the Aristotelian claim that a member of an animal separated
from it stops being what it is:

The animal is the existing idea, insofar as its members are absolutely nothing but moments of the
form, always negate their independence and bring themselves back into the unity which is the reality
of the concept and exists for the concept. If a finger is cut off, it is no longer a finger, but rather it
begins to decay in the chemical process. The produced unity is in the animal for the unity that is in
itself, and this unity in itself is the soul, the concept, that is in the body insofar as the latter is the pro-
cess of idealization. (Enz. §350Z; W 9: 431)

Since members of (at least higher) animals cannot exist on their own, sufficiently differentiated animals have to
reproduce not merely by growing, but by means of the dedicated process. This is why Hegel thinks that for such ani-
mals, unlike for plants, sexual reproduction is essential, and thus the processes of growth and differentiation on the
one hand, and propagation on the other, are clearly distinguished in animals.
Hegel mentions many other features of animals that make them different from plants50: the ability for locomo-
tion, to voice their internal states, animal heat, feeding that is restricted to definite stretches of time and sensation
(Enz. §351; W 9:431-2). Aside from the fact that many of these features are not possessed by many animals, today
there are debates about whether it is appropriate to make a rigid distinction between animals and plants based upon
such features.51 What is interesting about Hegel's discussion, however, is that none of these characteristic features
are basic or simply given for him: they follow from the basic distinction in the level of integration in plants and ani-
mal.52 Here I would like to briefly discuss only sensation, about which Hegel says:

From the fact that in the animal the self is for the self it immediately transpires that it possesses the
complete universality of the subjectivity, the determination of the sensation, which is the differentia
specifica, the absolutely distinguishing characteristic of the animal. The self is ideal, not poured out
14 KABESHKIN

and immersed into the materiality, but rather is active and present in it, but at the same time finding
itself in itself. (Enz. §351Z; W 9: 432)

Here, Hegel connects the animal ability for sensation with “the self,” which in his discussion of animals Hegel uses
rather interchangeably with “the soul.” And as can be seen from the previous quotation, Hegel identifies this animal
soul with the unity that results from the integration of the members of the animal. The idea behind this, I believe,
becomes clear if we recall the discussion of the assimilation process (Lebensprozess) constitutive of the logical life.
There I have suggested that it is because the living individual is constituted by the two drives for integration and dif-
ferentiation that the outside influences get immediately integrated into the unity of the living individual. Now, since
animals approach the logical model of life more than plants in that their level of integration is higher, they are capable
of integrating whatever is “posited” in them by the outside objects to a much greater extent than plants, and this is
what, among other things, accounts for their ability for sensation. Hegel also provides a much more specific discus-
sion of the way these features are realized in animals, including the discussion of nervous system, but I believe that
the above constitutes the conceptual core of Hegel's position.
The above shows that Hegel distinguishes between plants and animals on the basis of his general account of life
as such, without introducing external considerations. To be sure, the fact that there are forms of life that exhibit the
logical structure of life only imperfectly (plants, as well as lower animals, fungi etc.) as well as those which exhibit it
more perfectly is, as far as I can see, simply taken from our experience of nature, and I do not believe that Hegel ever
attempted to provide a priori reasons for this fact. Having taken it up, though, Hegel accounts for this diversity on
the basis of the conceptual resources that are internal to his idea of life itself. By contrast, although Kant may distin-
guish between those apparent Naturzwecke that are also living beings (which possess the faculty of desire), and those
apparent Naturzwecke that are merely Analoga des Lebens (see Kant, 2000, pp. 246; 5:375) because they do not pos-
sess the faculty of desire, this distinction is not made on the basis of his account of Naturzweck itself but, rather, on
the basis of an additional criterion that is not conceptually related to his core account of Naturzweck.53
Hegel's treatment of plants and animals does not directly follow from the discussion in his logic. For example, as
mentioned above, the existence of living beings that embody the logical idea of life to a different degree is simply an
empirical fact that is not deducible a priori. However, Hegel's distinction between the levels of logic and the philoso-
phy of nature allows him to not only acknowledge a considerable degree of contingency in the realm of the organic,
but also to offer a more fine-grained analysis than that possible with the conceptual tools that Kant was able to pro-
vide. Because of this, it is not only Hegel's reasons for the objectivity of internal teleology but also the specific con-
tent of his account of life that can be of interest to Hegel scholars and, potentially, for those who want to learn from
the history of philosophy.54

ORCID
Anton Kabeshkin https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0738-939X

ENDNOTES
1
In addition to the references provided in the following three notes, see Düsing (1986), Dahlstrom (1998), Spahn (2007),
Ferrini (2011), Khurana (2013), Englert (2017), Gentry (2019), Ng (2020), Scholz (2020).
2
See Kreines (2008), Kreines (2015), Lindquist (2018). It should be noted that these authors differ both in what they iden-
tify as the main challenge that Hegel responds to and in their reconstructions of Hegel's response. In this paper, I do not
attempt to settle this disagreement, though.
3
See Cooper (2020) and Maraguat (2020).
4
See Rand (2013), Alznauer (2016), Mills (2020).
5
As will become clear shortly, I take Hegel to make a philosophically significant distinction between the logical concept of
life and the concept of the natural organism. The logical concept of life has systematic significance for Hegel beyond its
bearing on the concept of the natural organism. However, in this paper I focus on the latter, and so I now speak of
KABESHKIN 15

“Hegel's account of organisms” referring to whatever is important for understanding what Hegel says about the concept
of natural organism, including his account of the logical concept of life insofar as it bears on his understanding of natural
organisms (but abstracting from its further possible roles in Hegel's system).
6
Rand (2010) provides a nice discussion of both Schelling's and Hegel's account of the organism's relation to external
stimuli. Kabeshkin (2017) discusses this and related topics in Schelling. Finally, Zuckert (2017) provides an overview of
the account of organic phenomena in Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, where she does identify the organism-environment
relation as a distinctively post-Kantian development in the tradition of German Idealism.
7
Thus, Düsing refers to such features of the idea of life discussed in the logic as sensibility, irritability, reproduction, as
well as the process of assimilation, which all seem to refer to features of biological organisms (see Düsing (1986),
pp. 281–282, 285, 288). Similarly, he interprets the Gattungsprozess as having to do with the sexual encounter of the
two individuals of the same species, which is also hard to interpret purely logically (Düsing, 1986, p. 286). As Düsing
notices, the presence of such features in Hegel's discussion suggests that Hegel has in fact had specifically animals
(indeed, higher animals) in mind when writing the chapter (Düsing, 1986, pp. 281, 287–288). In the main text I will offer
interpretations of these features and processes in a way that avoids appealing to the features of organisms known from
experience.
Other authors who thought that Hegel was led by biological material include Taylor (1975, pp. 332–334) and
McTaggart (1910, pp. 275–277). McTaggart suggests that Hegel illegitimately assumed (a) multiplicity of individuals
which instantiate the idea of life and (b) inadequacy of the living individuals to the idea. I will respond to the first point in
my interpretation of the Gattungsprozess. As to the second point, McTaggart (1910) correctly refers to the fact that, for
Hegel, “Life is the Idea in the form of immediacy,” and then suggests that “he connects the immediacy of Life with the
possibility of an inadequate manifestation” (p. 277). I will explain how I understand the immediacy of the idea of life in
the Logic without reference to empirical material shortly.
8
Thus Lindquist (2018), in his insightful article, has argued that Hegel's account of life in the Logic is supposed to be an
account of the form of thought about biological life specifically (although not dependent upon specific empirical material
from biology). I will have more to say about this below.
9
However, Ferrini (2011, pp. 203–205) briefly discusses this feature of life, with reference to Sell, although not in the
context of the discussion of the logical concept of life specifically. Sell has traced the development of the concept of life
throughout Hegel's works (see now Sell, 2013).
10
The significance of the idea of life for the project of the logic itself is a separate question, about which Ng (2020) has
much important to say.
11
I will talk about “the concept of life” and “the idea of life” interchangeably, although these are distinct technical terms in
Hegel's logic. This distinction is not important for the purposes of this paper.
12
Here and in what follows I will refer to Hegel's works in the main text either by volume and page number of the
historical-critical edition, Hegel (1967), (GW = Gesammelte Werke), or by volume and page number of the Suhrkamp edi-
tion, edited by Karl Michel and Eva Moldenhauer, Hegel (1970), (W=Werke). In the case of Enzyklopädie, I will also indicate
paragraph numbers, adding A for remarks (Anmerkungen) and Z for additions (Zusätze). Translations are mine unless other-
wise indicated.
13
I owe this objection to the anonymous reviewer for this journal.
14
For the idea of the good the purpose is to realize in the world the content that is known to be valid, but here too the
world is from the beginning seen as something that is not alien to this idea and thus as amenable to this realization. Hegel
expresses this by saying that the world that is opposed to this idea is “das Nichtige,” something that cannot oppose its
drive (GW 12:231).
15
Hegel seems to draw the same contrast between these forms of ideas in the lectures on logic from 1831, as far as this
can be discerned from the sometimes difficult to follow transcript of Karl Hegel: “Die höchste Stufe dieses
Außersichseyns ist Leben; der Begriff für sich stellt sich gegenüber oder setzt sich gegenüber voraus die Objektivität, die
Welt, so das Erkennen, der Begriff weiß, daß es keine Wahrheit ist, daß Welt ein Aeußerliches ist, er ist das Erkennen,
dies geht aus von Gewißheit der Vernunft, daß sie ist. Das dritte ist das absolute Erkennen, absolute Wissen, Geist als
solcher” (GW 23.2:796).
16
See, for example, 5:373. I discuss this view of Kant's in Section 3. When citing Kant I provide both references to the stan-
dard English translations (listed in the bibliography) and the pagination of the German Akademie edition. Emphases or
italics are Kant's own unless otherwise specified.
17
Thus, Düsing correctly identifies logical life as a unity of the concept and objectivity, which is true of the idea quite gener-
ally, but does not mention the drives for specification and integration at all. See Düsing (1986), pp. 277–279) Similarly, as
I have already pointed out at the beginning of this section, Englert (2017) correctly points out that “logical life… is process
16 KABESHKIN

all the way down” (p. 74), but does not identify the specific (and, in my view, crucial) character of this process at the stage
of the living individual. See, however, note 9 for references to Ferrini and Sell.
18
See especially §272 of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Philosophy of Right in what follows).
19
“From the side of its externality the organism in a multitude not of parts but of members, which as such (a) have their sub-
sistence only in the whole… (b) Their externality is contrary to the negative unity of the living individuality; the latter is
therefore the drive to posit the abstract moment of the determinacy of the concept as a real difference…” (GW 12:184). I
will discuss the continuation of this passage below.
20
One might object that the fact that the whole living body produces the member A does not imply that every member of
this body participates in this production. This is quite right for natural organisms and, as we shall see, Hegel does not in
fact subscribe to the view that every member of a natural organism is purposive; he may thus deny that every member of
a natural organism participates in the production of every other member of that organism. However, at the abstract logi-
cal level we do not have any reason to exclude any particular member of the logical living body from participating in the
production of its other members, and so, barring such reasons, we must think them all as participating in this activity of
the living body. I thank Rosalind Chaplin for bringing this issue up.
21
In the WL Hegel expresses this as follows: “since this difference is immediate, it is the drive of every separate, specific
moment, to produce itself, and likewise to elevate its particularity to the universality, to sublate the other moments exter-
nal to itself, to produce itself at their cost, but just as much to sublate itself and to make itself into the means for them”
(GW 12:184).
22
I believe that what Hegel says about the relation of everyday language to philosophy applies to his use of scientific termi-
nology in the logic, too: “Die Philosophie hat das Recht, aus der Sprache des gemeinen Lebens, welche für die Welt der
Vorstellungen gemacht ist, solche Ausdrücke zu wählen, welche den Bestimmungen des Begriffs nahezukommen
scheinen… Es muß daher genügen, wenn der Vorstellung bei ihren Ausdrücken, die für philosophische Bestimmungen
gebraucht werden, so etwas Ungefähres von ihrem Unterschiede vorschwebt, wie es bei jenen Ausdrücken der Fall sein
mag, daß man in ihnen Schattierungen der Vorstellung erkennt, welche sich näher auf die entsprechenden Begriffe
beziehen” (GW 12:130).
23
See, again, note 7.
24
Lindquist (2018, p. 391ff.). While I owe this idea to him, we do not share the general approach to the chapter on life or,
indeed, to Hegel's logic as a whole. As I have already indicated before, Lindquist reads Hegel's claim for the purity of logic
in a deflationary way (Lindquist 2018, p. 402ff.)) whereas by developing my interpretation I attempt to do justice to the
non-deflated claims of Hegel. With respect to the matter at hand, Lindquist's point is that Hegel's argument against
Kant's denial of the possibility of our knowledge of natural teleology turns on his rejection of the idea that there is a
unique way to individuate parts of the body. It is against this background that, he suggests, the proper way for individuat-
ing parts of the organisms qua organism is by reference to the functions that those parts perform (Lindquist, 2018,
pp. 386–387). While I certainly agree that Hegel is no atomist, I believe that, for Hegel, the parts of the organism (or, at
the logical level of discussion, determinations of the living individual) are objectively individuated in a by their functions. A
detailed discussion of my differences with Lindquist would go beyond the confines of this paper, however.
25
Or, on my reading, more fundamentally, as a whole that differentiates itself and brings its differences back into a unity.
We can say that the differences actually are different in virtue of their differing roles in interaction with the outside
objects.
26
Of course, the discussion of the Gattungsprozess comes before the transition to the idea of cognition. On my reading,
though, the main work in overcoming the immediacy of life is already done in the section on the Lebensprozess.
27
I thank the anonymous reviewer who criticized my previous, inadequate, reconstruction of Hegel's transition to Gattung,
as well as for making me clarify this new interpretation.
28
I will use both the untranslated “Gattung” and the translation “kind.” I translate Gattungsprozess as the “genus-process”
(thus adopting Miller's translation rather than Petry's somewhat ambiguous “generic process”).
29
At the level of natural phenomena this means that the fact that organisms are capable of assimilating matter and energy
out of their environment shows that physical and chemical objects are in principle capable of sustaining life and of being
its constituents.
30
I take this to be the meaning of the earlier passage that contains the expression “the original judgment of life”
(GW 12:181), from which I took the language of “separation”: “Das ursprüngliche Urteil des Lebens besteht daher darin,
daß es sich als individuelles Subjekt gegen das Objektive abscheidet und, indem es sich als die negative Einheit des Beg-
riffs konstituiert, die Voraussetzung einer unmittelbaren Objektivität macht.” Ng (2020) understands this expression dif-
ferently, but it would be impossible to engage with her wide-ranging and elaborate interpretation of Hegel's account of
life in his logic within the confines of this paper.
KABESHKIN 17

31
In his recent article, Lindquist (2020) has helpfully distinguished three readings of the content of the Gattung section,
which he labels “the Consensus Reading,” “the Change Reading,” and his own “Modal Reading.” On the Consensus Read-
ing (represented, e.g., by Kreines, 2008 and Houlgate, 2005, pp. 170–172), the genus-process has to do with the interac-
tion of multiple living beings of the same kind (Lindquist, 2020, pp. 427–429). On the Change Reading (suggested,
although not fully articulated, in Burbidge, 2007, p. 122 and Wallace, 2011, pp. 251–252), in the section on Gattung
Hegel is concerned with the identity conditions of a living individual over time which, on this reading, are grounded in a
substantial form of an Aristotelian sort related to the species of an individual (Lindquist, 2020, pp. 429–431). On the
Modal Reading, the genus-process articulates different “general sorts of activity” (Lindquist, 2020, p. 431) in which a liv-
ing individual can possibly engage, even if it never does in fact engages in many of them, or “abstract ways in which this
particular kind of living being can be instantiated” (Lindquist, 2020, p. 437). My own reading may be characterized as a
modalized version of the Consensus Reading and, as far as I can see, it escapes the objections against the Consensus
Reading raised by Lindquist (2020, pp. 432–434), since it does not commit Hegel, at this stage in the Logic, to actual exis-
tence of multiple living individuals or to anything as specific as sexual propagation of those individuals (indeed, to any
specific kind of propagation).
32
It should be clarified that, at the logical level, Hegel abstracts from the fact that in nature living organisms belong to vari-
ous species. However, the relation between two living individuals in the logic is a logical prototype of the relation
between two natural organisms of the same species, for only this kind of relation is distinctive. Organisms of different spe-
cies generally constitute external environment for each other, and so this kind of relation is not of a fundamentally new
type in comparison to that discussed in the Lebensprozess.
33
As the anonymous reviewer for this journal has pointed out.
34
I thank Ulrich Schlösser for the discussion that has greatly helped me in articulating the interpretation that follows.
35
Kreines (2008) does not make this distinction between propagation and the thinner characterization of the relation
between living individuals. Gentry (2019) criticizes Kreines (and Pippin) for interpolating material from the philosophy of
nature into logic, which is what the present account aims to avoid. In his book, Kreines (2015) is more careful and pro-
vides the account of the idea in general, and life in particular, merely in terms of “the reciprocal process establishing the
intimate relation of type and token, concept and individual” (p. 204), which seems to be thin enough for logic.
36
On this reading, then, the transition to the idea of cognition should not rely on Hegel's reference to death. I believe that
it is possible to interpret that transition without relying on this reference, but I cannot discuss this topic here.
37
Falkenburg (1987, pp. 150–157), however, makes a similar distinction.
38
“That impotence of nature sets limits to philosophy, and it is the greatest inappropiateness, to demand that the concept
should comprehend such contingencies” (Enz. §250A; W 9:35). See also §270Z; W 9:106.
39
See also the discussion in the §368 and addition to that paragraph.
40
It is problematic both in the weaker sense that we do not know whether there is anything that actually instantiates this
concept and in the stronger sense that it integrates components (being the product of nature and the product of inten-
tional activity) that we are not capable of integrating without reflectively thinking about nature as created by an intelli-
gent being. It is in the latter sense that Kant writes that “Strictly speaking, the organization of nature is therefore not
analogous with any causality that we know” (Kant, 2000, pp. 246; 5:375). I thank Johannes Haag for pressing me on this
point.
41
See McLaughlin (1990, pp. 46–47) and Kreines (2005, p. 275), Kreines (2008), Kreines (2015, pp. 81–85), for arguments
in favor of this reading. Kreines focuses on the weaker sense in which the concept of Naturzweck is problematic (see the
previous note).
42
See note 2 for references to the recent reconstructions of Hegel's anti-Kantian argument for the objectivity of internal
teleology.
43
I thank the anonymous reviewer who raised these issues.
44
For example, in §185 of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel says that both specific desires and needs that are satisfied in the
sphere of what he calls “civil society” and the ways of their satisfaction are contingent (see W 9:341).
45
For example, Hegel speaks about “the bad state” that “merely exists” without fully corresponding to its own concept in
§270Z of the Philosophy of Right (W 9:429).
46
I address this topic somewhat more fully in Kabeshkin (2020).
47
Hegel also has a chapter on the “geological organism”, where he in effect discusses the global environment of life on
Earth, as well as the topics such as the constitution of the mineral kingdom. Fritscher (2002) provides a nice discussion of
the scientific and philosophical context of Hegel's discussion of minerals, especially granite, which clarifies some of the
reasons for including these topics in the “Organic Physics” section.
18 KABESHKIN

48
Hegel mostly speaks about the coincidence of the processes of internal differentiation and propagation in plants, but at
least at one place he points out how the production of the flower bud belongs to all three of the processes at the same
time (Enz. §347Z; W 9:413–4). This is not characteristic of every plant, though.
49
Hegel does notice that animals also differ in the extent to which their bodies are differentiated and integrated. For
instance, he claims that lower animals do not possess a highly differentiated digestive system (Enz. §365A; W 9:482).
50
Although most of these features apply only to some animals.
51
See, for example, Maher (2017) for a recent defense of the thesis that plants have some form of mind and thus do not
radically differ from animals in this respect. For Hegel, plants have sensibility but not minds proper. This can be seen as a
more moderate position than that of contemporary philosophers of biology, who ascribe mind and even consciousness to
plants; yet it does allow for the claim that there is some sort of information processing going on in plants. The question
of whether this more moderate position can be fruitfully developed today awaits further exploration that I cannot
undertake here.
52
There are interesting discussions of the interconnections between the different features of animals and plants in
Hösle (1987) and Wandschneider (1987), where both also offer alternative routes of explanation starting from autotro-
phy/heterotrophy instead of the differences in the degree of integration.
53
Kant relates life to the ability to have states of desire in the remark to the Proposition 3 of the Metaphysical Foundations
of Natural Science (Kant, 2004, pp. 83; 4:544). In the Opus Postumum Kant seems to vacillate on the question of whether
plants are actually alive or merely organized (see van den Berg, 2016, pp. 237–239 for discussion). I thank Johannes Haag
and Karen Koch for making me address this point.
54
In addition to those mentioned earlier specifically, I am greatly indebted to the audiences at Universität Tübingen,
Universität Potsdam and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where I presented earlier versions of this paper.

RE FE R ENC E S
Alznauer, M. (2016). Hegel's Theory of Normativity. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 2, 196–211.
Burbidge, J. (2007). Hegel's systematic contingency. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cooper, A. (2020). Do functions explain? Hegel and the organizational view. Hegel Bulletin, 41, 389–406.
Dahlstrom, D. (1998). Hegel's appropriation of Kant's account of teleology in nature. In S. Houlgate (Ed.), Hegel and the phi-
losophy of nature (pp. 167–188). Albany: State University of New York.
Düsing, K. (1986). Die Idee des Lebens in Hegels Logik. In R.-P. Horstmann & M. J. Petry (Eds.), Hegels Philosophie der Natur:
Beziehungen zwischen empirischer und spekulativer Naturerkenntnis. (pp. 276–289). Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Englert, A. (2017). Life, Logic, and the Pursuit of Purity. Hegel-Studien, 50, 63–95.
Falkenburg, B. (1987). Die Form der Materie: Zur Metaphysik der Natur bei Kant und Hegel. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum.
Ferrini, C. (2011). Hegel's idea of organic life. In S. Houlgate & M. Baur (Eds.), A companion to Hegel. (pp. 203–224). Chichester,
West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Fritscher, B. (2002). Hegel und die Geologie um 1800. In O. Breidbach & D. von Engelhardt (Eds.), Hegel und die
Lebenswissenschaften. (pp. 55–74). Berlin: VWB.
Gentry, G. (2019). The ground of Hegel's logic of life and the unity of reason. In G. Gentry & K. Pollok (Eds.), The imagination
in German idealism and romanticism. (pp. 148–172). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1967). Gesammelte Werke. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1970). In K. M. Michel & E. Moldenhauer (Eds.), Werke in zwanzig Bänden. Theorie Werkausgabe. Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp.
Hösle, V. (1987). Pflanze und Tier. In M. Petry (Ed.), Hegel und die Naturwissenschaften. 13, 377–422. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt:
Fromann-Holzboog.
Houlgate, S. (2005). Freedom, truth and history: An introduction to Hegel's philosophy. London, England: Routledge.
Kabeshkin, A. (2017). Schelling on Understanding Organisms. British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 25, 1180–1201.
Kabeshkin, A. (2020). Hegel on the Impotence of Nature. Hegel Jahrbuch 2019, 1, 300–305.
Kant, I. (2000). In P. Guyer & E. Matthews (Eds.), Critique of the power of judgment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kant, I. (2004). In M. Friedman (Ed.), Metaphysical foundations of natural science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Khurana, T. (Ed.). (2013). The freedom of life: Hegelian perspectives. Berlin: August Verlag.
Kreines, J. (2005). The inexplicability of Kant's Naturzweck: Kant on teleology, explanation and biology. Archiv für Geschichte
der Philosophie, 87, 270–311.
Kreines, J. (2008). The logic of life: Hegel's philosophical defense of teleological explanation of living beings. In F. Beiser (Ed.),
The Cambridge companion to Hegel and nineteenth-century philosophy. (pp. 344–377). Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
KABESHKIN 19

Kreines, J. (2015). Reason in the world: The philosophical appeal of Hegel's metaphysics. Oxford, England: Oxford University
Press.
Lindquist, D. (2018). Hegel's “Idea of Life” and internal purposiveness. Hopos, 8, 376–408.
Lindquist, D. (2020). On origins and species – Hegel on the genus-process. Hegel Bulletin, 41, 426–445.
Maher, C. (2017). Plant minds: A philosophical defense. London, England: Routledge.
Maraguat, E. (2020). Hegel's organizational account of biological functions. Hegel Bulletin, 41, 407–425.
McLaughlin, P. (1990). Kant's critique of teleology in biological explanation: Antinomy and teleology. Lewiston: E. Mellen Press.
McTaggart, J. (1910). A commentary on Hegel's logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, N. G. (2020). Hegel on the normativity of animal life. Hegel Bulletin, 41, 446–464.
Ng, K. (2020). Hegel's concept of life: Self-consciousness, freedom, logic. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Rand, S. (2010). Stimulus-response relations and organic unity in Hegel and Schelling. Internationales Jahrbuch des deutschen
Idealismus, 8, 185–206.
Rand, S. (2013). What's wrong with rex? Hegel on animal defect and individuality. European Journal of Philosophy, 23, 68–86.
Scholz, M. (2020). External teleology and functionalism: Hegel, life science and the organism–environment relation. Hegel
Bulletin, 41, 371–388.
Sell, A. (2013). Der lebendige Begriff: Leben und Logik bei G.W.F. Hegel. Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber.
Spahn, C. (2007). Lebendiger Begriff - Begriffenes Leben: zur Grundlegung der Philosophie des Organischen bei G.W.F. Hegel.
Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann.
Taylor, C. (1975). Hegel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
van den Berg, H. (2016). Kant on proper science: Biology in the critical philosophy and the opus postumum. Dordrecht, the
Netherlands: Springer.
Wallace, R. (2011). Hegel's philosophy of reality, freedom, and god. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wandschneider, D. (1987). Anfänge des Seelischen in der Natur. In M. Petry (Ed.), Hegel und die Naturwissenschaften.
(pp. 443–475). Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Fromann-Holzboog.
Zuckert, R. (2017). Organism and system in German Idealism. In K. Ameriks (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to German Ideal-
ism (2nd ed.) (pp. 271–291). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

How to cite this article: Kabeshkin A. Logical and natural life in Hegel. Eur J Philos. 2021;1–19. https://doi.
org/10.1111/ejop.12647