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ENACTING THE CONTINGENCY
CATHERINE MALABOU
BEFORE TOMORROW: EPIGENESIS AND RATIONALITY
Translated by Carolyn Shread. Malden, MA, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016. ISBN 9780745691510

Abstract
This review is an attempt to read the main ideas of Catherine Malabou’s Before Tomorrow: Epigenesis and Rationality, with a particular emphasis made upon the problem of the modifiability of the transcendental one and the rejection of the a priori dimension of subjectivity within scientific and philosophical thought of a materialist orientation. Malabou’s thesis of the epigenesis of pure reason evinces the dynamical dimension of the transcendental one, integrating structural and evolutionary conceptions of reason. Epigenesis secures the stability of the phenomenal world and provides the possibility of a contingent metamorphosis of reason, thereby establishing the economy of the transcendental contingency. Largely, Malabou’s work has many affinities with the recent phenomenological thought, although it makes just a few explicit references to phenomenological philosophers as such.

Key words
Malabou, Kant, transcendental philosophy, epigenesis, contingency, necessity, biology, teleology.

References

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