What is Life?

The Originality, Irreducibility, and Value of Life
Erscheinungsjahr 1997
ISBN: 978-90-420-0381-1
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 51, 163 Seiten, Format (B × H): 150 mm x 220 mm

Reihe: Value Inquiry Book Series / Central European Value Studies

This book makes four bold claims: 1) life is an ultimate datum, open to philosophical analysis and irreducible to physical reality; hence all materialist-reductionist explanations - most current theories - of life are false. 2) All life presupposes "soul" (entelechy) without which a being would at best fake life. 3) The concept of life is analogous and the most direct access to life in its irreducibility is gained through consciousness; 4) All life possesses an objective and intrinsic value that needs to be respected, human life possesses beyond this an inviolable dignity. Life and personal life are "pure perfections," it being absolutely better to possess (personal) life than not to possess it.
Chapter 1: the metaphysical essence and the many meanings of 'life,' as well as its 'transcendental' character. Chapter 2: the irreducibility of biological life, its amazing empirical and philosophically intelligible essential features, and the ways of knowing them. Chapter 3: the immediate evidence and indubitable givenness of mental, conscious life as well as questions of (brain-) death and immortality. Chapter 4: the inviolable objective dignity of personal life and its self-transcendence; a new theory of the fourfold source of human dignity and rights. Chapter 5 (in dialogue-form): methods and results of philosophy versus those of empirical life-sciences.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Seifert, Josef

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Editorial Foreword by H.G. Callaway. Preface by Robert Ginsberg. Acknowledgements. Introduction. Empirical Knowledge and Philosophy Face to Face with Life: A Fresh Start, 50 Years after Schrödinger. ONE On the Metaphysical Essence and Absolute Irreducibility of Life: The Many Meanings of Life - and a Brief Discourse on Method. 1. Introductory Remarks on the Essence of Life as Bios and Zoee. 2. Being in Itself and Self-Motion as Universal Properties of All Life - The Analogous Meaning of Self-Motion and Freedom. 3. Can Life Be Sufficiently Identified by Means of Self-Motion or Intrinsic Teleology, etc.? On the Character of Life as an Urphenomenon. 4. Life as a Transcendental in the Medieval Sense and as a Pure Perfection. 5. The Fundamentally Different Forms and Phenomena of Life. 6. The Purpose of the Following Chapters. TWO What is Biological Life? The Irreducibility of Vegetative Life (Bios) to Ordered and Chaotic Physical Systems. 1. Irreducibility and Undefinability of Organic Life, yet Possibility of Its Essential Definition through Its Various Marks. 2. The Empirical Marks of Biological Life and Two Scientific Attempts to Define Life through Them. 3. The Essentially Necessary (A Priori) Characteristics of Biological Life Open to Philosophical Knowledge. 4. Essentially Necessary (A Priori) Characteristics of Biological Life in Terms of Chaos Theory and Their Ambiguity. 5. Two Irreducibilities of Organic Life to Material Systems Governed by Chaotic and Non-Chaotic Laws: Irreducibility in Essence and in Fact. 6. How Do We Know Biological Life? THREE The Irreducibility of Mental Life and of Its Subject (Soul) to Ordered and Chaotic Physical Systems. 1. The Immediate and Indubitable Givenness of Conscious Life. 2. Four Arguments for Mental Life Inhering in a Spiritual Substance (Soul). 3. Life and Death: The Unity of Biological and Mental Life in the Human Being. 4. The Death of the Human Being - Radical End of Human Life? On Death and Immortality as Subject of a New Book. FOUR Value and Dignity of Human Life. 1. The Value of Human Life and the Fourfold Root of Its Dignity. 2. The Question About the Value of Human Life against the Background of Today's Intellectual and Political Landscape. 3. What Is Dignity? 4. The Four Roots and Sources of Human Dignity. 5. The Human Being Defined as a Being Capable of Transcending Itself: Human Dignity and Its Immanent and Transcendent Origins. FIVE Dialogues with Scientists. 1. On the Significance of Emphasizing the Many Meanings of Life. 2. The Autonomy of Philosophy and that of Science with Respect to Life. 3. Can We Stand Between or Beyond Reductionism and Anti-Reductionism? 4. The Question of Life as a Transdisciplinary Question. 5. Mental Life Cannot Be Identified with the Brain. 6. Can and Cannot in Philosophical Knowledge. Notes. Bibliography. About the Author. Index.