The word “biology” was first used to describe the scientific study of life in 1802, and as Davide Tarizzo demonstrates in his reconstruction of the genealogy of the concept of life, our understanding of what being alive means is an equally recent invention. Focusing on the histories of philosophy, science, and biopolitics, he contends that biological life is a metaphysical concept, not a scientific one, and that this notion has gradually permeated both European and Anglophone traditions of thought over the past two centuries.
Building on the work undertaken by Foucault in the 1960s and ‘70s, Tarizzo analyzes the slow transformation of eighteenth-century naturalism into a nineteenth-century science of life, exploring the philosophical landscape that engendered biology and precipitated the work of such foundational figures as Georges Cuvier and Charles Darwin.
Tarizzo tracks three interrelated themes: first, that the metaphysics of biological life is
Trade Review
"The translation of Italian philosopher Davide Tarizzo’s Life is a cause for celebration. Tarizzo goes where others haven’t in order to ask the following question: when did we actually become alive? His answer is deeply unsettling. Part political philosophy, part genealogy of aliveness, part faithfully radical account of Darwinian evolution, Tarizzo has written a vertiginous reflection on what it truly means to be ‘savagely’ alive—in other words, biopolitics 2.0. Not to be missed."—Timothy Campbell, Cornell University
"In this outstanding book, the biological paradigm of modern life is traced back, probably for the first time, to its philosophical and metaphysical sources. By connecting Darwin's dangerous idea with those of Kant's and Schelling's, Davide Tarizzo raises the most challenging questions about our future of living beings."—Roberto Esposito, author of Bíos: Biopolitics and Philosophy
Table of ContentsContents
Introduction: A Savage Ontology
1. Modernity: The Threshold of Autonomy
2. Life: Genesis of a Metaphysical Paradigm
3. Us: On the Use and Abuse of Life for History
Translator’s Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
