Jakob von Uexküll

Estonian-German biologist (1864–1944), founder of theoretical biology and biosemiotics, principal scientific source for Merleau-Ponty's 1956–58 Nature courses (Course 1: Animality, Course 2: Animality, the Human Body, Transition to Culture). Uexküll's two key works are Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909) and Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen — Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten (1934, English trans. 1957 A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men). MP draws on Uexküll's Umwelt concept and Uexküll's metaphor "the unfurling of an Umwelt is a melody, a melody that is singing itself" as the cardinal anti-Darwinian, anti-causalist, anti-finalist resource for the new ontology of nature.

Key Points

  • Founder of Umwelt theory: Uexküll's Umwelt — "the milieu that the animal gets for itself" (cited in MP, N 226/172) — is the animal's species-specific perceptual-active world, not a portion of the absolute environment. Each species inhabits its own Umwelt, structured by the species-specific Merkzeichen (perceptual marks) and Wirkzeichen (effector marks) that loop through the Funktionskreis (functional circle).
  • Anti-Darwinian, Goethe-inspired: Uexküll's biology is "an autonomous science inspired by Goethe's conception of knowledge of Nature, and consequently as essentially anti-Darwinian" (Carbone 2004 Ch 3 fn 5, citing N 232/177). The Umwelt concept refuses both causal-mechanistic explanation and finalist teleology.
  • The melody-singing-itself metaphor: Uexküll's most consequential figure for MP. Drawing on the 19th-century embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer, Uexküll states that "the unfurling of an Umwelt is a melody, a melody that is singing itself" (cited MP, N 228/173–74). The metaphor prior to causalism and finalism, prior to the activity-passivity distinction. "[I]n a melody, a reciprocal influence between the first and the last note takes place, and we have to say that the first note is possible only because of the last, and vice versa" (Uexküll, Umwelt und Innenwelt 23–24, cited N 228/174).
  • The Funktionskreis as proto-chiasm: Uexküll's functional-circle structure (organism's Merkorgan → Merkzeichen → Bedeutungsträger → Wirkzeichen → Wirkorgan → world → cycle) is neither causal nor finalist. The reciprocal dependence of organism and Umwelt is what MP later reads as the Ineinander of life and world.
  • Marginal in Anglophone biology, central in continental philosophy: while Uexküll's Anglophone reception in biology has been limited, his concept is central to continental philosophy of biology — picked up by Deleuze (with Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? 1991, 176, "n'est pas une conception finaliste, mais mélodique"), Heidegger (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics 1929/30), Schelling readers (Knight 2024 reads Umwelt as biosemiotic precursor), and Giorgio Agamben (The Open 2002).

Role in Merleau-Ponty's Thought

Uexküll plays four distinct roles in MP's late work:

  1. Source of the Umwelt concept for MP's theory of behavior (already in La Structure du comportement 1942 — see merleau-ponty-2003-nature for the late-career return). MP cites Uexküll's "melody" formulation as early as SC 172/159, drawing it from F. Buytendijk's 1930 article. The 1956–58 Nature courses are MP's sustained engagement.

  2. Source of the melody-singing-itself metaphor, which becomes (via Carbone 2004 Ch 3 and Carbone 2020) the cardinal anti-Platonic resource for the sensible-ideas thesis. MP reads the convergence of Uexküll's metaphor and Proust's description of Vinteuil's musical idea (R 1:349/379–81) as the structural form of the sensible idea: a generality that "shines through" its samples without being above them.

  3. Anti-Darwinian counter-tradition. MP's Nature courses are not anti-scientific but critical-listening; Uexküll's autonomous-biology framework is what allows MP to take a scientifically rigorous position outside the Darwinian-Mendelian synthesis. MP follows Uexküll in refusing both mechanistic-causalism and finalist-vitalism as "concepts of artificialism" (RC 117/151) — "Darwinian thought" being "the artificialist philosophy in its most developed forms" (RC 136/165).

  4. Biosemiotic / Goethean inheritance: MP-via-Uexküll connects to Schelling's Naturphilosophie and to the Goethean conception of nature as morphological-emergent rather than mechanical. Knight 2024 develops this line: Uexküll as the biological mediator of the Schellingian-tautegorical inheritance into MP's late thought.

What MP Adds to Uexküll

MP does not simply adopt Uexküll's biology; MP performs a philosophical-ontological reading on it:

  • Generalization beyond animal Umwelt: Uexküll's Umwelt is species-specific (the tick's world, the dog's world, the human's world). MP generalizes the structure to the "carnal" relation between any embodied perceiver and its world — including, ultimately, to the chiasmic relation of flesh and being. The Umwelt becomes one species of the Ineinander of interanimality.
  • The melody as paradigm of the sensible idea: where Uexküll uses the melody-metaphor as a biological figure for the Funktionskreis, MP-via-Carbone reads it as the structural form of the sensible idea — an ontological-philosophical extension. The Vinteuil-Uexküll convergence (see sensible-ideas §"Three Readings of Vinteuil") is MP's distinctive synthetic move.
  • Critique where appropriate: MP also notes the limits of Uexküll's framework. "[T]he first only takes up the Kantian solution again, the second the intuitions of Schelling…. There is however, something new: the notion of Umwelt" (MP, N 232/177). MP keeps the Umwelt and its melodic temporality but rejects Uexküll's residual Kantian (or Schellingian) encoding of it.

Connections

  • is the source of the Umwelt concept that grounds MP's interanimality and philosophy-of-nature readings (see merleau-ponty-2003-nature)
  • is the source of the melody-singing-itself metaphor on the wiki — see motifs#melody--musical-idea--vinteuil--temporal-gestalt for the corpus-HUB motif treatment
  • is read by Carbone (2004 Ch 3, 2015 Ch 6, 2020 Ch 4) as the cardinal anti-Platonic resource for sensible-ideas
  • is read by Beith (2018) as the source of organism-as-melody / experimental-Platonism (with Ruyer)
  • is read by Knight (2024) as the biosemiotic mediator of Schellingian Naturphilosophie into MP
  • contrasts with Darwin / Darwinian biology (not yet a wiki entity) — Uexküll's autonomous biology is explicitly anti-Darwinian
  • is anchored in Goethe's morphological conception of knowledge of nature (not yet a wiki entity)
  • is read by Deleuze (with Guattari, Qu'est-ce que la philosophie? 1991) as a melodic (not finalist) conception
  • is engaged by Heidegger (Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics 1929/30) — Heidegger's reading of the animal as "poor in world" is partly via Uexküll
  • is the source of the experimental-Platonism conjunction with E. S. Russell and Raymond Ruyer (see experimental-platonism)

Open Questions

  • What is the relation between Uexküll's Goethean inheritance and Schelling's Naturphilosophie? Knight 2024 reads Uexküll as the biosemiotic mediator; whether Uexküll himself read Schelling closely is a question the wiki has not pursued.
  • How does MP-via-Uexküll relate to contemporary biosemiotics? Uexküll's Bedeutungslehre (1940) is foundational for biosemiotics (Hoffmeyer, Sebeok). The wiki has not yet engaged this line.
  • What is the genealogy of the melody-metaphor? Uexküll attributes it to Karl Ernst von Baer (19th-century embryologist); the metaphor's pre-Uexküllian history (von Baer, Goethe?) is not tracked on the wiki.
  • Is Uexküll's anti-Darwinism defensible today? MP follows Uexküll in opposing Darwinism, but contemporary niche-construction theory (Lewontin, Odling-Smee) and developmental systems theory may bring Darwinism closer to Uexküll's framework than MP allows. Defer to a future audit.

Sources

  • merleau-ponty-2003-nature (N) — primary source. Course 1 (1956–57 Animality), pp. 167–224 esp. 226–248: the most sustained MP engagement with Uexküll. Citations of Uexküll's Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909) and Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934). Cardinal melody-metaphor at N 228/173–74.
  • carbone-2004-thinking-of-the-sensible — Ch 3 "Nature: Variations on the Theme," pp. 28–38. The first sustained Carbone reading of the Uexküll-Proust convergence on the wiki. The melody-metaphor's role in the new theory of ideas is articulated here; the Vinteuil-Uexküll convergence is the distinctive synthetic move.
  • carbone-2015-flesh-of-images — Ch 6 (a development of Carbone 2004 Ch 3); also Ch. 5 light-of-the-flesh register engages the Uexküll material indirectly.
  • knight-2024-merleau-ponty-essence-of-nature — Knight reads Uexküll as biosemiotic mediator of Schellingian Naturphilosophie into MP; the cross-tradition middle term.
  • beith-2018-birth-of-sense — Beith reads Uexküll alongside E. S. Russell and Raymond Ruyer for the organism-as-melody / experimental-Platonism thesis.
  • merleau-ponty-2022-possibility-of-philosophy — Course 2 ("Cartesian Ontology and the Ontology of Today") preparatory notes engage the Uexküll-Proust convergence in the literary-aesthetic register.
  • Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (Berlin: Springer, 1909) — the foundational text. Not yet a wiki source page.
  • Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen — Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten (Berlin: Springer, 1934). Italian translation by Paola Manfredi, with introduction by Felice Mondella, Ambiente e comportamento (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1967). English trans. A Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men in Instinctive Behavior (Schiller ed. 1957). Not yet a wiki source page.