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For a variety of historical and theoretical reasons, little of the work that is now done under the heading of “philosophy of biology” is concerned with the core questions that the life sciences have traditionally posed to philosophers. Those questions pertain to the concepts of “life” and “organism”, which seem to cover the proper object or domain of biology. These concepts are surrounded by metaphysical, epistemological, and moral issues that directly impact one’s approach within the life sciences. Although contemporary philosophy of biology as developed in the Anglo-American world since the 1960s has turned its attention away from these issues, the very mention of which seem to summon the ghosts of vitalism and teleology, philosophers of the life sciences on the Continent have continued to express their interest in them. In doing so, the latter have been extending or reviving an older tradition of philosophy of biology in new ways. At times there were competitor terms for this version of the discipline, such as ‘biophilosophy’ or ‘biological philosophy’ (Gayon 2009, Limoges 2017). These other versions of philosophy of biology often had a pronounced anti-reductionist focus, which will be discussed and evaluated in this volume (with reference to thinkers like Marjorie Grene and Canguilhem, and the Cambridge Theoretical Biology Club: Peterson 2017). Sometimes these projects have a pronounced Kantian focus (Van de Vijver & Demarest eds. 2013, Huneman 2017). The aim of this edited volume is to collect papers on this alternative philosophy of biology that could be called “continental philosophy of biology,” and the variety of positions and solutions that it has spawned. In doing so, it contributes to debates in the history and philosophy of science and the history of philosophy of science, as well as to the craving for ‘history’ and/or ‘theory’ in the theoretical biological disciplines (cf. Noble 2008, Nicholson and Gawne 2015). In addition, however, it also provides inspiration for a broader image of philosophy of biology, in which these traditional issues may have a place. This aspect of a broadening or widening of the narrative of philosophy of biology is in line with a project one of us has been involved in which focuses on the impact of a broadened historical narrative of the constitution of biology, on contemporary discussions (Bognon-Küss and Wolfe 2019), and reflects the impact of more strictly historico-contextualist work on the topic (e.g. Lidgard and Nyhart eds. 2017). The volume will devote specific attention to the work of Georges Canguilhem, which is central to this alternative tradition of “continental philosophy of biology” (and with a focus different than the more common focus on philosophy of medicine: Giroux 2010, Méthot ed. 2020 or more analytically focused collections on biological individuality, e.g. Bouchard and Huneman eds. 2013), although it will invite contributions on other central figures and currents as well. It should serve as a resource both for scholarship on traditions in the philosophy of biology and ‘competitor’ traditions, and for current efforts at conceptual articulation of ‘organism’ concepts, which come with their own packaged historical narratives (typically pitting ‘good’ holism against ‘bad’ reductionism), which may feature Goethe, Goldstein or Uexküll but rarely Canguillhem. Implicitly, Continental philosophy of biology as sketched out in the chapters collected here seeks to respond to the de facto challenge conveyed by mainstream biologists and philosophers of biology since the 1960s (cf. Jacob 1970, Machery 2012), according to which no concept of Life or inquiry into such a concept is necessary or useful for biological thought.