Téléologie biologique aujourd’hui, entre transcendantal et naturalisme

Résumé En

Kant's Third Critique is a general reference in the contemporary debate in philosophy ofbiology. This debate often restricts the reference to two separated and contradictory aspects.The first reference is the Kantian definition of the organism, that inspired number ofcontemporary philosophers of biology. The second is the fact that Kant seems to confinebiology to a sort of minor science because of the requirement of a teleological judgment.Teleology seems to be incompatible with natural sciences. The crux would be to solve thefamous antinomy, displayed by Kant, between the mechanistic explanation and theteleological explanation. In this paper, we argue that teleology can be seen as a fruitful formof causality for biology in the context of transcendental philosophy. Inspired by theinterpretation of the Third Critique provided by Ernst Cassirer, we propose to solve theambiguous status of teleological causation by taking into account the reflective nature ofcausality in general. By showing the role of regulating principle of causation, in general, andtherefore also of efficient causality in physics, this work ascribes to teleology the status of aspecific transcendental and a priori principle.