Hegelian complexity: Understanding the organism (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Martin Heidegger)

Developments in emergence theory and complexity science, when comprehended through the discussion of inner teleology in the post-Kantian philosophical tradition, disclose a possibility for understanding the biotechnological transformation that may mark the end of the era of humanism and the beginning of a "post-humanism." For a variety of reasons partly related to the peculiar circumstances of postwar Germany, the liberal tradition in continental philosophy and theology, especially in Germany, has allied itself with the resistance movement in the contest between logos and techne to define the nature and destiny of humanity. The terms of the debate and even many of its results, however, find their point of origin in some of the key figures of the idealist tradition. Further examination of this history, concentrating on its developing conception of the organism or animal as a reference point in situating the boundaries and position of humanism, reveals a prefigured mediating position that may help us better understand the nature of our time as well as provide a more measured response.; In particular, Hegel's theory of the organism, which combines insights taken from Kant's notion of self-organization and Aristotle's energeia , sets the stage for Heidegger's clash with modernity. The battleground in this conflict between Heidegger's unusual humanism and the forces of anthropotechnology is the realm biopolitics. The resistance movement, whether it promotes a fundamental ontology or communicative ethics, retains an implicit teleology which hierarchically treats the human subject and nature in terms of an ethic of domination that must be resisted. The new perspective arising from complexity science (and its harbinger, cybernetics) reconceptualizes this teleology in ways anticipated by Hegel so that an ethic of cooperation can be understood to emerge in and through the coevolution of logos and techne .