L’objet de ce travail de thèse est l’analyse des monstruosités biologiques en tant qu’elles posent question quant à la nature même de la vie et quant à la puissance de la raison à pouvoir l’appréhender. En mettant l’accent sur le travail d’Étienne et d’Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, nous nous sommes attachés à montrer en quoi la tératologie parvenait à intégrer les monstres dans des procédures rationnelles – ici celles des sciences biologiques. Mais cette intégration se fait au prix d’un oubli : la dimension nécessairement normative du concept de monstre. Nous nous sommes alors efforcés d’intégrer cette dimension normative et nous avons alors mis au jour la question de savoir ce qu’est la vie en elle-même pour qu’elle soit capable de produire des êtres vivants monstrueux. Cette question nous a amené à élaborer une métaphysique de la vie selon laquelle elle est, en son être même, errance vitale. Penser les monstres revient à devoir penser la vie comme puissance d’écart. / This thesis analyses the concept of biological monstrosity. This concept questions the nature of life and the power of reason. We study the teratology of E. and I. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in order to understand how they are successful to think monsters rationally. But both forget the normative dimension in the concept of monster. We try to take this normative dimension into consideration. What should be life to product monstrous beings ? This question leads to develop a metaphysic of life which puts forward the notion of “vital wandering” (“errance vitale”) and the notion of “variation” (“écart”)

Martin Haloun Normality and Normativity Annotation: The thesis Normality and Normativity is concerned with the problems of the relation of normal and abnormal. The analysis of the expression 'normal' is the introduction of the topic followed by the demonstration that there are multiple meanings of the normal that do not always coincide. During the description of the aspects of norm and normal the fundamental relations between facts and prescriptions will have to be taken into account. The full meaning of the notion normal will be demonstrated on the basis of its relation to the pathological and healthy. A definition of health presented in this thesis, which takes into consideration the specifics of the normal, is based on the works of George Canguilhem and Kurt Goldstein. The crucial moment is the understanding of disease as a reaction of an organism to the limitation of the milieu. An important factor is the introduction of vital normativity that is intrinsic to the living being. This conception opposes the influential conception which identifies the state of health with certain physiological criteria - standards of health - advocated among others by Claude Bernard. At the end of the thesis we will shortly overview the norms as formative aspect in a society. The sociological view of norms that is...