About Life (forget_about_it). Da lontano sembrano mosche

ABOUT LIFE (FORGET_ABOUT_IT). THEY LOOK LIKE FLIES FROM A DISTANCE Philosophy struggles to determinate and specify the concept of life in its various connotations and meanings. The dichotomy between Zoé and Bios helps in articulating the distinction between a notion of life conceived respectively as something simply lived, as an object, and life as something characterized by a duration, a biography, to which we may ascribe a specific and higher value. These conceptual couples underlie on the one hand the controversial and intensively discussed separation between organic and inorganic world and on the other hand the relationship between animal and human life. In this sense, the human being has to be considered not only as a biological organism, a mere member of a species, but also as an individual, part of a larger context. This seems to widen the horizons of philosophical research towards a deeper investigation on the boundaries between individual and collective, framed both in biological (organism and species) and in socio‐political and cultural dimension (individual and society). Although many reductionist attempts have been made in order to explain specificity of life exclusively through physical, chemical, i.e. non‐living language, hard sciences tend to accept the challenge of a philosophical and anti‐reductionist thought. Is it possible to address the peculiarity of life and the living without violating the legal limits of natural science? How could it be done?