Cognizing Life Conference 2025

Over the past 25 years, the recognition that genetics and Darwinism are not sufficient to fully explain organisms — since only living beings can contain genes and undergo evolution — has led to a renewed philosophical engagement with the question of life. The organism has drawn attention both as an ontological reality and as an epistemological category. This growing interest involves a reconsideration of the ideas of the German Romantics and Idealists — among them Kant, Goethe, Schelling, and Hegel — as well as of twentieth-century organicist thinkers. Whereas Kant and Schelling examined the epistemological preconditions for grasping the organic, Goethe developed a phenomenological method for understanding life. The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner analyzed Goethe’s approach in depth and gave rise to a largely overlooked tradition of empirical research. The conference will explore the challenge of cognizing the organism from historical, ontological, metaphysical, epistemological, and Goethean perspectives.