Neuroplasticity, Historicity, and Mediation

The French philosopher Catherine Malabou’s discussion of neuroplasticity reveals the brain’s ability to form connections, make changes, and repair damages. These functions, construing the brain’s historicity as a biological process, also qualify plasticity as mediation between different forms of life. Plasticity thus also offers resistance against socioeconomic reification and capitalist exploitation. Malabou’s neurophilosophy envisions a biological globalism that empowers everyone with the potential to change individual lives and society. I draw on her neurophilosophy to understand the discussion of spirituality and Asian philosophy in German modernism.