[The subjective teachings of Jacob von Uexküll]

Jacob Johannes Uexküll (1864-1944), during his more than fifty years of scientific work, was especially active in three fields of biology: in physiology; in Umweltlehre, a field founded by him; and in (as he called it) theoretical biology. In my test I concentrate on the third of these domains. I wish to show that the term "subject" forms the central category of theoretical biology. With the term "subject", in my assessment, Uexküll refers to three different designata, whose difference allows one to outline the following planes of thought in his considerations: the metaphysical, the epistemological (philosophical), and the metabiological. In a fourth, epistemic plane, in the domain of direct biological research (Umweltlehre, physiology, evolutionary theory), the term "subject" does not appear explicitly. Although it does not belong to this domain explicitly, it does play a synthetic role there: it organizes the research work and its results. My text is divided into two parts. In the first I sketch all three theoretical domains in Uexküll's perspective along with the representations of the subject to them. In the second I indicate something of the originality of Uexküll's views. Uexküll's achievement lies in removing from the sphere of philosophy the fundamental Kant's formulation of relations between subject and object into the sphere of science. As a result of this endeavor he constructs a new object of scientific inquiry: the Umwelt of a living creature. It is the whole which includes an individual, its behavior and objects of this behavior. The whole is composed according to the idea of autonomous activity of a living creature, i.e. its subjective character, which is carried by Bauplan (Bauplan is the carrier). It becomes objective through activity but it does not adorn a shape of an "objective" form of object but its subjective meaning (Bedeutung). Jacob von Uexküll conception according to which living creatures are subjects (i.e. do not behave according to the objective rules referring to everything but they follow their own, particular rules) implies a general change in the approach of the inquiry into living creatures.