Cognizing Life Conference 2025

Over the last 25 years, the organism, as both an ontological reality and an epistemological category, has been gaining increasing attention. This attention has often included a consideration – or re-consideration – of the views of the German romantics and idealists (Kant, Goethe, Schelling, Hegel, among others) and of 20th century organicists. While Kant and Schelling focused on the epistemological preconditions of cognizing the organic, Goethe developed an empirical method (“delicate empiricism”) to understand life. The Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner discussed Goethe’s method in detail and inspired a little-noticed field of empirical research. The conference will focus on the problem of cognizing the organism from historical, ontological, metaphysical, epistemological and Goethean perspectives.