Chapter 4: Nonadaptivity as Inevitability

Abstract

Nonadaptivity as inevitability. Analyzing the manifestations of a person’s vital relationship to the world, we first of all turn to the famous maxim of F. Engels: “To live means to die.” “The negation of life is essentially contained in life itself, so that life can always be understood in relation to its inevitable result, which is continually present in the embryo: death.” The “embryo” of death can, of course, be interpreted as a “goal” (“to die”). But naturally, the author of The Dialectics of Nature was far from a teleological interpretation of death, which he viewed as a result of life, in accordance with Hegel’s distinction between them. If that is so, then from this simple premise there follows an important conclusion for us: The life of the individuum as a totality cannot be represented in the form of progress toward any single original goal; the fundamental support for the postulate of congruity collapses, because the negation of life contained in life itself goes beyond what this postulate can explain.