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Kant's Organicism: Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. By Jennifer Mensch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Pp. 246. Cloth $45.00. ISBN 978-0226021980.
For all the subtleties of its argument, the thesis underlying Kant's Organicism is striking for its clarity and the new perspectives it opens into both Kant's precritical work and the conception of his Critique of Pure Reason. Simply put, Mensch's study is devoted to showing how epigenesist models of organic generation dating from the mid- to late eighteenth century "had a significant role to play in Kant's theory of cognition," such that one could even speak of an "epigenesist philosophy of mind" (2).
Rather than limiting her discussion to the years surrounding the first critique, Mensch devotes as much attention to the precritical decades. She offers her readers a thorough review of the debates between preformative and epigenesist theories of reproduction that flourished during that time period, particularly as they relate to theories of species classification, and details Kant's response to them in his essays and academic lectures. The beginning of her study describes the theories of Locke and Buffon in their historical context and concludes with Buffon's attempt to "grasp a living nature, to grasp species across time and, as a consequence, to base the classification of species upon genealogy" (50)-a project that sought the underlying unity of nature, rather than divisions. The narrative then reconsiders this idea from the perspective of Kantian metaphysics. Mensch describes how Kant borrows from the language of life sciences...