The space of the living beings. Umwelt and space in Jakob von Uexküll

Abstract

The spatial concept that, in the first half of twentieth century, emerges from the reflections of Estonian biologist Jakob von Uexküll (1864–1944) distinguishes itself thanks to a particular transformation of Kant’s notion of space as “pure intuition”, which aims to set the transcendental aspect of intuition within a dimension that does not reject the physical-mathematical determinations, but reconfigures them so to make them suitable to express the sense that is assigned to the space in the life of every living being. In this perspective, the metric-quantitative space of extension appears as a special case of a much more fundamental topological space founded on relations that the signs take on objects in relation to different biological subjects, understood not as simple empirical subjects, but as places of establishment of the meanings of experience. Beside the internal or topological relations that belong to each subject, it is possible to identify particular external relations, of intersubjective kind, according to which the relationships of “communication” or “participation” of different subjects, rather than leading to the determination of a common and homogeneous world (Welt), establish “proportional” and comparative links that aim to preserve the identity of each qualitative and subjective environment (Umwelt). This explains why the meaning of a spatial determination cannot be separated, but rather depends entirely from the temporal determination where the life of every animal happens.