The problem of life: From mechanism to surprise

I argue for a version of the life-mind continuity thesis following what phenomenologist Hans Jonas calls an "existential interpretation of the biological facts." Rather than relying on goal-oriented activity, or purposiveness, in living things to bridge the gap between life and mind, I focus on non-teleological concepts in contemporary biology and in Darwin. The complete rejection of teleological causes following Darwin's explanation of living things does not necessarily exacerbate the division between life and mind, as it did at the beginning of the scientific revolution; rather, it makes possible a synthesis that lies between "greedy" reductionism and vitalism. A concept of selfness derived from contemporary biology does not necessarily suggest the existence of an unchanging, timeless substance, because it is not grounded in an opposition between the material and the ideal. Instead, it posits the capacity for a surprising kind of 'doubling' or 'self-relating' in matter itself. Understanding freedom as existing within---and not as an exception to---material necessity undermines the conceptual foundation for the alienation of humans from the natural world. The significance of this for political theory is that human ideas and decisions do not have the constitutive power they are sometimes considered to have in political ontologies that begin with the assumption that the creation of a social contract is what frees us from the blind necessity of a state of nature: we do not have the power to create the world 'ex nihilo' with our ideas, and the state need not be understood as analogous to the miraculous moment of God's speaking, or deciding, the world into existence. The world exists and our linguistic capacities are one example among many of 'meaning creation.' The capacity for self-relating that appears in the simplest living things supports an ontology of life as a chemical story writing itself, whose subjects are other stories writing themselves.