Onto -ethologies: Relations between Uexkull, Heidegger, Merleau -Ponty, & Deleuze

"Onto-Ethologies" examines how the biologist Jakob von Uexkull is read by three contemporary continental philosophers, namely Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Gilles Deleuze. While there are a variety of themes considered---such as the concepts of body, world, behavior, and the musical composition of nature---the dissertation is arranged according to each individual thinker. Uexkull's approach within biology was to investigate how animals relate with their surrounding environments (Umwelten), with the underlying implication that in order to understand animal life, their environments must be illuminated as well. As one of the founders of modern ethology, behavior was considered indispensable for understanding the nature of this relation. For Uexkull, the animal is inherently tied to its environment such that together they form an ontological unity. After reviewing some of Uexkull's contributions to biology, this dissertation turns toward the philosophical reception of his thought by three seemingly unlikely sources. Heidegger entertains the benefits and disadvantages of Uexkull's thought for a "comparative examination" between animal life and human existence. The principal concern here is whether or not animals can be defined as "being-in-the-world," a concept that holds specific meaning in his descriptions of Dasein. I proceed to question his position that animals are "poor-in-world," and what ontological implications this might have. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological perspective approaches animal life from a similar position, albeit with different outcomes. I first consider his early work on behavior (in which Uexkull briefly appears) before turning toward his late writings on nature and ontology. Here Uexkull is read as offering a view of the animal as forming a "melody" with its surroundings and in this way begins to approximate Merleau-Ponty's theories of the "flesh" and his "ontological rehabilitation of the sensible." Deleuze raises Uexkull's thought by comparing him with Spinoza, insofar as he sees both of them as offering ethologies of "affect." By considering "affects," Deleuze looks to reinscribe animal life according to how each body can affect and be affected by other bodies. He therefore looks to escape the concept of "organism" altogether in favor of emphasizing new ontological dimensions between bodies, milieus, and territories, as each gives way to a new relation. By looking at the ontological thought of these three philosophers, I argue that Uexkull's approach to biology is remarkably formative to each one.