En abordant les problèmes que pose l’apparence animale à la philosophie, ce travail a pour objectif de défendre une approche esthétique du vivant au sein même de la biologie. L’œuvre morphologique d’Adolf Portmann et celle, étho-écologique, de Jakob von Uexküll permettent de poser des questions majeures à l’histoire de la philosophie des sciences en abordant les différentes épistémologies et métaphysiques impliquées par l’étude des formes animales sur une période allant de la modernité à l’époque contemporaine. Afin de sortir du fonctionnalisme néo-darwinien qui oriente les critères d’objectivité aujourd’hui largement partagés par la communauté scientifique, nous avons argumenté en faveur de la nécessité pour la biologie de valoriser une approche empirique de la nature en renouant avec une zoologie trop souvent envisagée comme une discipline obsolète. / Doctorat en Philosophie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This essay explores Swarm Consciousness in relation to the novels Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, Remembering Babylon by David Malouf, and the manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki. Through these novels, Swarm Consciousness can be reimagined in order to challenge the ways insects have previously been considered in literature. Swarm Consciousness is originally a concept from biology that explains the self-organizing systems of social insects such as for example bees or ants. Previously it was believed that these insect societies consisted of a great majority of mindless drones that were governed by a central authority, most commonly envisioned as a queen. However, if we base our vision of Swarm Consciousness on the more recent understanding of insect self-organization it is possible to challenge this rigidly divided traditional perspective into one that instead has the potential to give rise to visions of new and more creative interactions between humans and insects. These interactions are not limited to an in-group, out-group mentality, but Swarm Consciousness can be used to imagine interactions between groups, irrespective of their species identity. Due to this shift towards a more decentralized perspective, it is possible to create a new way of imagining the umwelt, as Jakob von Uexküll would define it, the unique environment, of vastly different creatures. The limits of the umwelt can be breached with the aid of Swarm Consciousness and create new possible forms of interspecies imagination. However, these intimate interactions surpass the individuals involved and create opportunities for glimpsing a wider planetary perspective which gives rise to an increased sense of planetary responsibility. Thus, Swarm Consciousness challenges both how we can think, but also who we can think with and, as a consequence, opens up new ways of perceiving unique and individual worlds, as well as the entire planet.

This thesis firstly aims at discussing the early works of American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972) through the bio-philosophical perspectives developed since the investigations of Estonian Jacob von Uexküll (1864-1944). The study elucidates Uexküll’s research on the web-like forms of life that is the Umwelt of animals and Moore’s creation of poetic environments. Such investigations provide a basis for the analysis of Moore’s animals and environments in dialogue with Martin Heidegger’s (1889-1976) concepts of “poverty in world”, and “animal captivation”. Uexküll’s and Heidegger’s concepts are revised by Italian Giorgio Agamben (1942- ), who proposes that there is an openness in the state of being ontologically captivated, caused by interactional processes occurring within the environment. Subsequently, taking into account these same perspectives, this thesis offers a comparative study of Marianne Moore and Brazilian poet João Cabral de Melo Neto (1920-1999), engaging, respectively, her early poems with his book O Cão Sem Plumas [The Dog without Feathers], written in 1950. From the bio-philosophical perspectives previously discussed, this study focuses on moral and ethical stances addressed towards interpretations of the onto-ethological (Buchanan, 2008) nature of animals. The study analyses how both Moore and Melo Neto convey their ethical reflections and specific moral issues through expressions of nature and animal life, especially when they emphasise contexts of violence, misery and deprivation, either in material or conceptual respects, involved with the ontological and world-forming conditions of both animals and human beings. Therefore, the research will focus on their use of literary devices, such as allegories, and literary genres, such as fables, in order to develop both explicit and implicit dimensions of their poetry, thus providing a deeper understanding of the ontological status of animals and human beings.

Umwelttheoretische Konzepte sind ohne Bilder und Medien nicht denkbar. Der Biologe und Begründer der Umwelttheorie Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) verwendete sie auf vielfältige Weise. Er nutzte chronofotografische Aufnahmen von Meerestieren für seine Forschung, beauftragte Interieurmaler, um sein Konzept subjektiver Umwelten zu vermitteln und entwickelte Diagramme und Schemata – darunter die erste Darstellung eines Funktionskreises –, um die Grundlagen seiner Theorie zu verdeutlichen. Die Dissertation gibt einen Überblick über die vielfältigen Verwendungsformen in Uexkülls gesamtem Werk und setzt darauf aufbauend zwei Schwerpunkte: Erstens im frühen 20. Jahrhundert, als Uexküll im Kontext der Arbeit mit chronofotografischen Verfahren seine zentralen Begriffe entwickelte, sich mit den ästhetischen und erkenntnistheoretischen Schriften Adolf Hildebrands und Immanuel Kants auseinandersetzte und begann, Karl Ernst von Baers Wahrnehmungstheorie zu rezipieren. Zweitens im Spätwerk der 1930er Jahre, als die explizit als Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten untertitelten Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen erschienen. Die Streifzüge fassen Uexkülls Forschung mit einem Schwerpunkt auf der Sichtbarmachung verschiedener Umwelten sowie einer Veranschaulichung umwelttheoretischer Konzepte zusammen. Die Dissertation untersucht die kulturhistorischen Kontexte der Bilder, ihre Bezüge zu Uexkülls experimenteller Forschung sowie zu zentralen Konzepten seiner Theorie wie Umwelt, subjektive Zeiten und Räume, Bedeutung (Semiotik) und Funktionszusammenhang von Organismus und Umwelt (Gefüge). Anhand der Bildpraxis werden neben den originellen und in u. a. der Ökologie, Kybernetik, Psychoanalyse und Philosophie rezipierten Ansätzen auch die weltanschaulichen, normativen und autoritären Dimensionen in Uexkülls Werk herausgearbeitet. / Umwelt theory concepts are inconceivable without images and media. The biologist and founder of Umwelt theory Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) used them in many ways. He used chronophotographic images of marine animals for his research, commissioned interior painters to convey his concept of subjective Umwelten, and developed diagrams and schemes—including the first representation of a functional circle—to clarify the foundations of his theory. This dissertation provides an overview of the diverse uses in Uexküll’s entire oeuvre and, building on this, focuses on two main fields: first, in the early 20th century, when Uexküll developed his central concepts in the context of working with chronophotography, engaged with the aesthetic and epistemological writings of Adolf Hildebrand and Immanuel Kant, and began to receive Karl Ernst von Baer’s theory of perception; and second, in the late 1930s, when the explicitly subtitled “picture book of invisible worlds” Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans) was published. The book summarizes Uexküll’s research with a focus on making different Umwelten visible as well as demonstrating environmental-theoretical concepts. This dissertation examines the cultural-historical contexts of the images as well as their references to Uexküll’s experimental research and to central concepts of his theory such as the Umwelt, subjective times and spaces, meaning (semiotics), and the functional connection of organism and environment (Gefüge). The practice of images is used to highlight not only the original approaches received in ecology, cybernetics, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, among others, but also the ideological, normative, and authoritarian dimensions in Uexküll’s work.