New paper (2025): Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back

19 November 2025

New paper (2025): Enactivizing dialectics: from individual to social normativity and back

Abstract. This paper examines the relation between embodiment and sociality within the enactive approach, highlighting the continuity between biological autonomy and social normativity. The central claim is that, while enactivism offers the conceptual resources to address the complexity of social cognition, doing so requires the integration of dialectical tools into the theory of the embodied […]

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New Paper (2025): Marx’s concept of life

6 November 2025

New Paper (2025): Marx’s concept of life

In this paper, Chris Shambaugh presents a coherent view of Marx as the author of an integrated philosophical biology. He argues that between 1842 and 1844, Marx developed a structured and original account of organic, animal, and human life—an account that ultimately grounds the normative force of his early critique of capitalism. For Marx, life-activity […]

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Teleology in Biology: Bergson and evolutionary theory

12 November 2024

Teleology in Biology: Bergson and evolutionary theory

Tahar, Mathilde (2024). Du finalisme en biologie. Bergson et la théorie de l’évolution. Paris: Presses universitaires de France. As Ernst Mayr wrote, “no other ideology has influenced biology more profoundly than teleological thinking” (Mayr 1992, 117). This approach, which interprets phenomena based on their finality (telos), has permeated the history of biology since Aristotle. It […]

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New Paper (2022), J. Rust, Precedent as a path laid down in walking: Grounding intrinsic normativity in a history of response

8 December 2022

New Paper (2022), J. Rust, Precedent as a path laid down in walking: Grounding intrinsic normativity in a history of response

Published open access in Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences Abstract: While developments of a shared intellectual tradition, the enactivist approach and the organizational account proffer importantly different accounts of organismic normativity. Where enactivists tend to follow Hans Jonas, Andres Weber, and Francisco Varela in grounding intrinsic affordance norms in existential concern, organizational theorists such as […]

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