NINA has developed along two axes.
(1) The first focuses on classical German philosophy and on Hegel in particular. This research aims at exploring Hegel's ideas concerning nature and his conception of the organic and its forms of normativity. For Hegel, the organic domain is where we find natural normativity. Following this Hegelian insight, the project’s working hypothesis is that the organic domain, and contemporary biological theories of organization in particular, remains the most promising arena for the conceptualization of forms of normativity grounded in nature. This is an underexplored area of thought, requiring significant research. This study has enabled (1.1) a historical reconstruction of the sources of Hegel's thought and his notion of organization (1.2) the positioning of Hegel’s thought in relation to biological debates and the historical advent of the notion of "organism” and "organization", and (1.3) the mapping of Hegelian ideas around natural normativity.
(2) The second line of inquiry focused on analysis of contemporary theories of organization. It involved (2.1) isolating their main conceptual tenets, (2.2) identifying how to normativity can be accounted for from an organizational perspective. Contemporary theories of organization originate from the issues in biological explanation and have sought to account for certain phenomena related to the living. They do not primarily aim to explain normative phenomena. However, such theorists themselves recognize that these theories have the potential to explain normativity. This part of the project, which is being conducted alongside philosophers of biology, aims to elaborate an organizational account of normativity and (2.3) connect it with the work done in part (1), showing how contemporary ideas about organization can shed new light on the tradition and vice versa. Finally, it has developed an account of how natural normativity gets to play a role in accounting for higher human forms of normativity.
NINA has thus reconstructed the Hegelian position on organisms and their normativity to assess its contemporary potential by putting it in dialogue with accounts prevalent in the philosophy of biology.
NINA communicated its results from the first research line to the academic community (philosophers, scholars, professor, students, etc.) as well as through other forms of outreach.
