Abstract

It is well known that authors such as Emile Chartier, i.e. Alain, Henri Bergson and Kurt Goldstein impacted importantly on the work of Georges Canguilhem. This paper argues, however, that it is the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche which gave Canguilhem’s work its most distinctive traits. Themes such as the relationship between health and disease, the influence of language on perception and knowledge, or the conception of philosophy as a philosophy of values, are obviously Nietzschean. The paper shows that in Nietzsche as well as in Canguilhem these themes rely on and refer to the research direction of “General Physiology,” which since the 1860s investigated the relation of the organism to its environment with regard to phenomena such as assimilation, nutrition, and orientation. At the same time, the paper shows that Canguilhem’s reliance on Nietzsche remains intact even as General Physiology is being eclipsed by the emergence of Genetics and Molecular Biology, and as the life sciences as a whole reconfigure themselves with respect to the concept of information.