Jakob von Uexküll
For Uexküll, there is no single world shared by all living beings: each animal lives in its own Umwelt, made of the few signs it can perceive and act upon – the tick’s world consists of three.
Placement
Baltic German biologist born in Estonia who held that every animal lives in its own “Umwelt”, a world made up of what it can perceive and act upon – the tick’s world consists of only a few signals.
Key ideas
- Umwelt
- Functional circle
- Biology as a science of meaning
- Kantian biology
Influence
Influenced by 1
Immanuel Kant
influenced by
Uexküll applied Kant’s thesis that the forms of perception belong to the subject to animals, each living in its own Umwelt (Theoretische Biologie, 1920). J. von Uexküll, Theoretische Biologie (1920); Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
Influenced 5
Ernst Cassirer
influenced
Cassirer adopted Uexküll’s functional circle of receptor and effector systems and added a ‘symbolic system’ to define the human being as animal symbolicum (An Essay on Man, 1944). E. Cassirer, An Essay on Man (1944); J. von Uexküll, Theoretische Biologie (1920); SEP “Ernst Cassirer”
Evidence: AI draft
Ernst Cassirer › 1874–1945
Martin Heidegger
influenced
In his lectures of 1929–30 (publ. 1983) Heidegger drew on Uexküll’s environment studies to describe the animal as ‘poor in world’, captivated by its environment, unlike world-forming humans. M. Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (lectures 1929–30; publ. 1983); J. von Uexküll, Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere (1909); Theoretische Biologie (1920)
Evidence: AI draft
Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
influenced
In his lectures on nature (1956–60; publ. 1995) Merleau-Ponty read Uexküll’s Umwelt as a melody: animal behaviour unfolds a theme, not a sum of mechanisms. M. Merleau-Ponty, La Nature. Notes, cours du Collège de France (lectures 1956–60; ed. D. Séglard, 1995); J. von Uexküll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934)
Evidence: AI draft
Maurice Merleau-Ponty › 1908–1961
Gilles Deleuze
influenced ✓
Deleuze took Uexküll’s tick, defined by three affects, as a model of a body known by what it can do (A Thousand Plateaus, 1980; Spinoza. Philosophie pratique, 1981). G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Mille plateaux (1980); G. Deleuze, Spinoza. Philosophie pratique (1981)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Gilles Deleuze › 1925–1995
Giorgio Agamben
influenced
In L’aperto (2002) Agamben used Uexküll’s tick, whose world consists of three carriers of meaning, to ask how the human is separated from the animal. G. Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale (2002); J. von Uexküll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen (1934)
Evidence: AI draft
Giorgio Agamben › b. 1942
Works
Applies Kant’s theory of knowledge to living beings: each organism forms its world according to its own plan, through perceptual and effector signs.
An illustrated “picture book of invisible worlds”: the tick, the fly and the dog each live in their own Umwelt of meaningful signs.
Position
Uexküll took Kant’s idea that the forms of perception belong to the subject and applied it to animals: each organism lives not in one objective environment but in its own Umwelt, built from the few features its receptors register (perceptual world) and its effectors can act on (effector world), joined in a “functional circle”. The tick, waiting for butyric acid, warmth and the touch of hair, became his best-known example. Against Darwinian selection theory and mechanistic biology he set the idea of a “plan” in nature, a vitalist strand most biologists rejected. His concept travelled widely in philosophy: Heidegger discussed it in his lectures of 1929/30 on the animal as “poor in world”, Cassirer adapted the functional circle for his definition of the human being as a symbolic animal, Merleau-Ponty treated it in his lectures on nature, Deleuze and Guattari took up the tick, and Agamben read it in “The Open” (2002). Ethologists such as Konrad Lorenz and, since Thomas Sebeok, biosemiotics regard him as a forerunner. His political views – he rejected democracy, and in November 1933 he signed the professors’ declaration of allegiance to Hitler – are set out under “Context & critique”.
Life & context
Jakob von Uexküll was born on 8 September 1864 on the Keblaste estate in the Governorate of Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire, into a Baltic German noble family. He studied zoology at the University of Dorpat (Tartu) from 1884 to 1889 and then worked at Wilhelm Kühne’s physiological institute in Heidelberg and at the zoological station in Naples, publishing studies on the muscle and nerve physiology of marine animals. Living on private means, he worked for decades without a permanent academic post. In 1909 he published “Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere”, which introduced his concept of the Umwelt. The war and the Estonian land reform cost him his estates; in 1920 he published “Theoretical Biology” and the political essay “Staatsbiologie”. In 1926 the University of Hamburg gave him an Institute for Umwelt Research (Institut für Umweltforschung), which he directed until his retirement and where, with collaborators such as Georg Kriszat, he produced “A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans” (1934). His late “Theory of Meaning” (Bedeutungslehre, 1940) described nature as a composition of meanings. He spent his last years on Capri, where he died on 25 July 1944. His son Thure von Uexküll became one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine in Germany.
Further main works
- Umwelt and Inner World of Animals (Umwelt und Innenwelt der Tiere, 1909)
- Building Blocks for a Biological World View (Bausteine zu einer biologischen Weltanschauung, 1913)
- State Biology (Staatsbiologie, 1920)
- A Theory of Meaning (Bedeutungslehre, 1940)
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