Introduction

Between Ontology and Ethology

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I n 1934, the biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) wrote a small

“picture book” that he whimsically titled A Stroll Through the Environ-
ments of Animals and Humans. While the title certainly captures the casual
attitude that pervades this monograph, it belies the more radical venture
that Uexküll presents in his theorization of animal life. He is interested in
what it is like to be an animal and, as we shall see, it has everything to do
with the reality of the environment. This is not Uexküll’s first attempt at
articulating the meaning of the environment beyond a strictly human per-
spective, but it is by far his most popular to date. In the foreword, Uexküll
appropriately sets the stage:

The best way to begin this stroll is to set out on a sunny day
through a flower-strewn meadow that is humming with insects
and fluttering with butterflies, and build around every animal a
soap bubble [Seifenblase] to represent its own environment [Um-
welt] that is filled with the perceptions accessible to that subject
alone. As soon as we ourselves step into one of these bubbles,
the surrounding meadow [Umgebung] is completely transformed.
Many of its colorful features disappear, others no longer belong
together, new relationships are created. A new world emerges
in each bubble. The reader is invited to traverse these worlds
with us. (SAM, 5)

The invitation is deceptively simple: he claims that we are not heading toward
Copyright 2008. State University of New York Press.

a new science, but merely strolling into unfamiliar, invisible, and previously
unknown worlds. With Uexküll leading the way, we are not undertaking the
usual Sunday stroll. No, it may not be a new science, not nearly so ordinary
and pedantic, but it is indeed something wondrous. New worlds arise before
our eyes, through our sensations, in our imaginations. We are asked to step
out of ourselves and into the strange environments of bees, sea anemones,

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 2 Onto-Ethologies

dogs, ticks, bears, and many others. Uexküll’s illustrator, Georg Kriszat, even
provides some illustrations to help us make the leap.
What concerns Uexküll here, as well as elsewhere in his writings, is
how we can glimpse natural environments as meaningful to the animals
themselves. Rather than conceiving of the world according to the parameters
of our own human understanding—which, historically, has been the more
prevalent approach—Uexküll asks us to rethink how we view the reality
of the world as well as what it means to be an animal. So not only does
he multiply the world into infinite animal environments, he also seeks to
transform our understanding of the animal away from its traditional in-
terpretation as a soulless machine, vacuous object, or dispassionate brute.
Against such positions, Uexküll proposes to understand the “life story” of
each animal according to its own perceptions and actions: “We no longer
regard animals as mere objects, but as subjects whose essential activity
consists of perceiving and acting. We thus unlock the gates that lead to
other realms, for all that a subject perceives becomes his perceptual world
[Merkwelt] and all that he does, his active world [Wirkwelt]. Perceptual and
active worlds together form a closed unit, the Umwelt” (6). As one can
see, there is a good deal of secrecy and mystery involved in this project.
Uexküll wishes to unlock the gates into previously forbidden worlds, all
the while retaining the closed bubble intact. His focus is on the subjective
animal and its unique environment, each giving rise to new relationships
that were previously unappreciated. As with all things otherworldly, this
invitation involves a bit of speculation.
One of the conclusions that he reaches is that insofar as each animal
constructs its own environment out of the midst of its perceptions, actions,
and relationships, “there are, then, purely subjective realities in the Umwelten;
and even the things that exist objectively in the surroundings never appear
there as such” (72). Part of his appeal—aside from introducing even the
most skeptical reader to look at animals and the environment differently—is
that he is on the verge of producing an ontology of the animal from his
ethological observations. “Ethology” will not become a common concept
until Konrad Lorenz later popularizes it, but Uexküll’s biology, as Lorenz
himself notes, is a pioneering study of animal behavior. But it is not only
that. Perhaps it was his lingering interest in philosophical ideas, perhaps it
was just a result of his strolls; either way you look at it, Uexküll also intro-
duces us to a new way of thinking about reality as such. He is not the first,
of course, to suggest that reality is more than one physical world, but he is
one of the first to really push the subjective experience of the animal. The
being of the animal unfolds through its behavior and we catch a glimpse of
this from within its own unique environment, its bubble-like Umwelten.

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 Introduction 3

From out of this Uexküll leaves open an interesting question: what

is the role of the body? Toward the end of his analysis we are told “many
problems await conceptual formulation, while others have not yet developed
beyond the stage of formulating questions. Thus we know nothing so far of the
extent to which the subject’s own body enters into his Umwelt” (73). That
the question of the body has been left unanswered is particularly intriguing
given that, within the tradition of Western philosophy, it is almost always
the case that the body is that which is specifically animalistic. Where mind,
consciousness, rational thought, and spirit have been affiliated with human
life, the opposite has also been true: the body is that which is instinctual,
sensual, mechanical, finite—and animal. It is striking, then, that Uexküll
claims that the animal’s body has not yet received adequate attention within
his discussion of animal environments, for where else has the subjective
reality occurred if not in and through the behavioral body? How does the
body enter into relation with, and creation of, the environment? Similarly,
how does the environment enter into the body of the animal? How does
such a relationship between body and environment force us to rethink both
concepts? It is within this interaction between body and environment that
animal behavior reveals its ontological dimensions.
It may very well be that Uexküll opens many more questions than
he is able to answer. Yet it is clear that the questions emerging from his
project have not gone unheard. Despite his relative anonymity, many have
quietly taken up the loose threads of his thought and applied it to studies
ranging from classic ethology to cognitive neuroscience and from linguistics
to art and philosophy. Not all have turned to him for the same reason, but
each has found in Uexküll’s thought something compelling, whether it is a
lingering problem or hidden insight. Within continental philosophy alone,
he has appeared in many of the more formative thinkers of the twentieth
century, including Martin Heidegger, Ernst Cassirer, Hans-Georg Gadamer,
José Ortega y Gasset, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Georges Can-
guilhem, Gilles Deleuze, and Giorgio Agamben.1 It would be fair to say that
many have taken Uexküll’s stroll.
In calling the present book “Onto-ethologies,” I am consciously situ-
ating this work within a growing field that brings continental philosophy
together with the sciences. Granted, this is a large endeavor, and one that
extends far beyond the pages committed here. However, to reiterate the
telling words of Keith Ansell Pearson, biophilosophy has been a relatively
neglected tradition in contemporary thought. This is not to suggest that
this field is a new one. This would be grossly unfair to the many who have
staked their territory in this very area, and have done so from fairly early
on, such as Marjorie Grene, Hans Jonas, and many others, not to mention

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 4 Onto-Ethologies

a whole French tradition of the life sciences that, as Michel Foucault has
remarked, remained overshadowed by the dominance of phenomenology.2
This is also to say nothing of the close relation between the sciences and
philosophy in centuries past. But whereas continental philosophy is better
known for its engagement with the history of philosophy, the arts, ethics,
politics, and its critiques of metaphysics, it is only recently that a more
concerted emphasis has been placed again on its diverse relations with the
sciences. As an example, we can observe the proliferation in recent years
of studies bearing on biophilosophy, zoontology, geophenomenology, geophi-
losophy, ecophenomenology, animal others, and many others, to say nothing
of the growing field of animal studies itself.3 All of these studies point more
toward a significant direction in our theoretical framework than to some
transitional fad. While we emerge from the critiques of our humanist tradi-
tion, an increasing focus is being paid to how and where we find ourselves
within nature and the world at large. “What does it mean to be human?”
becomes a question of life and the living being. Attention to the status of
human beings need not disappear, of course, but it does become framed by a
broader emphasis on nature and life. What are the relations within nature?
And how do we assess these ontological relations?
Within this midst, I submit my contribution on onto-ethology.4 The
aspiration I have with this study is to examine how three philosophers
(Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze) each entertain the thought of
a single biologist (Uexküll). As noted, many have approached Uexküll’s
thought, but these three in particular have found in him a compelling case
for an ontology of living beings. Similarly, all three have approached dif-
ferent biologists over the course of their writings, but it is with Uexküll’s
ethology that one observes a lasting impression. In every case, ethology
emerges as the significant dimension in framing the being and becoming of
the animal. The animal body is interrelated with its environment through
the process of behavior, so it becomes a question of how to engage the
ontological dimension of this relation. Each therefore discovers something
different in Uexküll as they reveal the wonders that come from relearning
to look at animal environments.
The first chapter presents a general overview of Uexküll’s research
program. Beginning with a brief biographical and historical introduction
to the climate of his biological studies, I will then turn to three areas of
his theoretical biology. First, Uexküll’s theory of life falls within a broad
conception of nature that holds all of life as conforming to a plan. His
early studies in biology lead him to believe that even if nature is neither
teleological nor mechanical, both dominant and competing perspectives on
nature at the time, it nevertheless follows a plan. Examples of this derive
from his embryological and physiological studies, but Uexküll sees evidence
of a plan in how all of nature coheres together like a great symphony. All

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 Introduction 5

the various parts appear to work in harmony with one another, as found,
more specifically, in the relations animals have with their environments.
Coinciding with his Umwelt research, Uexküll is also considered a pioneer
in biosemiotics, the field of study that examines how sign systems are pro-
duced and interpreted within nature. By preparing the basis for a theory of
biological signs, Uexküll becomes his most adventuresome: nature as the
embodiment of significance and the possibility of meaning in life. Some of
the characters of his story will include the tick, spider, fly, bee, flower, and
the unnamed mammal.
The second chapter begins to set the stage for the approach to the
ontological problem of the environment and world. Nowhere is this more
evident than Heidegger’s early investigations into how the world is the
meaningful horizon for human existence. It is in this context that the ques-
tion of the animal is first posed. If human Dasein is defined ontologically
as being-in-the-world, what is the relation that animals have to the world?
Does the world reveal itself to animals as it does within human existence?
In order to arrive at this scenario, Heidegger’s treatment of biology—and his
impressions of notable biologists—is first presented as a means to arrive at
how and why the world is an important factor in understanding the being of
animals. Uexküll’s early writings on animal Umwelten emerge as a favorable
basis to compare his own understanding. The world is thus treated according
to its philosophical etymology, according to the everyday understanding of
being-in-the-world, and finally as a comparative analysis between human
existence and animal life.
The third chapter looks to Heidegger’s writings on animal life, in which
Uexküll figures as representative of both the best and most disappointing
in contemporary biology. Heidegger postulates a trio of theses with respect
to beings and the world: the stone is worldless, the animal poor in world,
and the human world-forming. In the end, we learn that animals do not
exist, so to speak, insofar as they are unable to transcend their captivation
by things. Animals admittedly have relations with things in their midst,
and they do so through the outward extension of their body, but they are
said to lack an access to the things in themselves, to the being of these
beings. In this view, Heidegger postulates animal behavior as restrictive in
comparison to the comportment of human Dasein, which is unbound and
free in its opening of the world. Animal behavior thus indicates an inability
to transcend the peculiar manner of animal being and so too an incapacity
of the animal’s ever relating to an environment. But the body and environ-
ment remain as ontological problems for Heidegger, and Uexküll’s animals
persist throughout his career.
The fourth chapter begins with Merleau-Ponty’s early writings on
behavior. His interest is primarily in how the relation between conscious-
ness and the natural world can suggest a means of overcoming an overly

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 6 Onto-Ethologies

materialist interpretation of the world. Most noteworthy, however, are his

reflections on how behavior, far from coinciding with the mechanist argu-
ment of cause and effect, actually serves to provide a glimpse of the animal
as a totality greater than the sum of its parts. Taking his cue from Uexküll,
Merleau-Ponty depicts the being of the animal as part of a melodic and
rhythmic order whereby the world opens through behavior itself. Merleau-
Ponty returns to Uexküll in his late writings on nature while he is in the
process of reconsidering nature from an ontological point of view in his
theories of the “flesh.” Of particular interest are the themes of the animal
melody, interanimality, and how the animal body inscribes an intercorporeal
Umwelt through behavior. The animal remains a consistent theme over
the course of Merleau-Ponty’s career, and serves an important role in the
development of his own ontology.
The fifth chapter provides a look at how Deleuze, both in his indi-
vidual writings and in his collaborations with Félix Guattari, reads Uexküll
as a Spinozian ethologist. Deleuze’s ontology is imbued with references to
biological life, from Difference and Repetition to his final works. But rather
than concerning himself with the animal–environment relation, he is more
interested in the virtual and intensive processes that create actual beings
and their relations. In Uexküll he discovers an ethologist who counts the
affects of bodies. Deleuze therefore provides a startlingly creative way of
reading Uexküll such that many, if not most, of the previous concepts (body,
environment, behavior, organism, animal) are subjected to reconsideration.
His ontology depicts a new way of seeing animal life as a continual process
of becoming, where bodies are always changing, and entities like the organ-
ism represent not life but life’s imprisonment. Ethology becomes a study of
counting affects, and the result is a shifting landscape of bodies forming new
patterns in the midst of nature.

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