Abstract
The spatial concept that, in the first half of twentieth century, emerges from the reflections of Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) distinguishes itself thanks to a particular transformation of Kant’s notion of space as “pure intuition”, which aims to set the transcendental aspect of intuition within a dimension that does not reject the physical-mathematical determinations, but reconfigures them so to make them suitable to express the sense that is assigned to the space in the life of every living being. In this perspective, the metric -quantitative space of extension appears as a special case of a much more fundamental topological space founded on relations that the signs take on objects in relation to different biological subjects, understood not as simple empirical subjects, but as places of establishment of the meanings of experience. Beside the internal or topological relations that belong to each subject, it is possible to identify particular external relations, of intersubjective kind, according to which the relationships of “communication” or “participation” of different subjects, rather than leading to the determination of a common and homogeneous world (Welt), establish “proportional” and comparative links that aim to preserve the identity of each qualitative and subjective environment (Umwelt) . This explains why the meaning of a spatial determination cannot be separated, but rather depends entirely from the temporal determination where the life of every animal happens.
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- 1.
See, in this regard, the pertinent observations of Blumenberg (2013: 268, 270).
- 2.
“Everything real has for the same quality its degree (of resistance or of weight) which, without diminution of the extensive magnitude or amount, can become infinitely smaller until it is transformed into emptiness and disappears. Thus an expansion that fills a space, e.g. warmth, and likewise every other reality (in appearance) can, without in the least leaving the smallest part of this space empty, decrease in degree infinitely, and nonetheless fill the space with this smaller degree just as well as another appearance does with a larger one” (KRV/B 216).
- 3.
“The real”, Heidegger (1984: 218) notices, “is the first quale of the object. The quantitas of the qualitas is the intensity. Every magnitude as quantitas is the unity of a multiplicity; but extensive and intensive magnitude are this in different ways. In extensive magnitudes the unity is always apprehended only on the grounds of, and in the gathering together of, the many immediately-posited parts. In contrast, intensive magnitude is immediately taken as a unity. The multiplicity which belongs to the intensity can be represented in it only in such a way that an intensity of negation down to zero is approached. The multiplicities of this unity do not lie spread out in it in such a way that this spreading yields a unity by adding together the many stretches and pieces. The single multiplicities of the intensive magnitude stem, rather, from the limitation of the unity of a quale; each of them, again, is a quale, they are many unities. Such unities are called degrees. A loud tone, for instance, is not composed of a determined number of these tones, but there is a gradation by degrees from soft to loud. The multiplicities of the unity of an intensity are many unities. The multiplicities of the unity of an extension are single units of a multiplicity. Both intensity and extension, however, permit themselves to be ordered as numerical quantities. But the degrees and steps of intensity do not thereby become a mere aggregate of parts”.
- 4.
Cf. KRV/B 216: “Thus an expansion that fills a space, e.g. warmth, and likewise every other reality (in appearance) can, without in the least leaving the smallest part of this space empty, decrease in degree infinitely, and nonetheless fill the space with this smaller degree just as well as another appearance does with a larger one”.
- 5.
See, in this regard, the remarks of Rieger (2009: 52–55).
- 6.
With regard to this, Klages (1991: 265), remarks that “The identity of the thing that lasts in time requires that the act of grasping takes place in a point temporally unextended. […] This act therefore does not belong to the world of what happens, but it means, in relation to it, an undifferentiated action that is repeated from one time point to another and that, consequently, it can only be numbered. […] In relation to time, everything has the particularity of lasting for the period of its “existence”. Let us represent by a straight line the time period during which a thing exists; our supposition of its uninterrupted duration assumes that we believe to be certain to find, at any point B of this line, that same something that we had found anywhere A.
If you delete these points, we have no more chance of finding, within flowing of time, the identity of a thing […]. We can also say the contrary, namely that finding something is equivalent to refind a place temporally unextended”.
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Guidetti, L. (2017). The Space of the Living Beings. Umwelt and Space in Jakob von Uexküll. In: Catena, M., Masi, F. (eds) The Changing Faces of Space. Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66911-3_1
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