What makes life truly alive? Where does the boundary lie between what is living and what is not? Let us try to see life not through formulas, but through its inner capacity to violate its own expectations.
Life is not merely a set of biochemical reactions — it is the presence of one who can feel and make mistakes. A stone cannot make a mistake; it has no intention, no sense of how things ought to be. It does not violate any prescription, because it has none. It holds no design, no inner norm — and therefore no possibility of diverging from itself.
Here lies the crucial difference: the non-living exists in the world of causes, while the living exists also in the world of norms. The living possesses expectations, intentions, and purposes — an internal reference point by which it measures itself. Thus it can deviate from that reference, experience the discrepancy, and name it a mistake. In the living, error is not a malfunction but an expression of inner freedom. To err, one must have a design — and at the same time the ability to violate it. In that capacity to violate one’s own plan lies the source of both growth and pain, from which meaning is born.
It is within this contradiction that life itself arises.
The living can intend the best — and still act otherwise. This reveals not mechanics, but freedom. The living does not merely react; it experiences the gap between intention and result.
Error is not simply a fact — it is an event of consciousness. Error without feeling is mere statistics; with feeling, it becomes experience. Pain, shame, joy, wonder — these are not by-products of biology but signals of meaning, instruments of self-tuning for the subject.
A system establishes law. It desires that all things obey — just as matter obeys the laws of physics. Law describes motion, but not life. Matter follows the law without question; the living, however, is capable of choice — of defying the law — and then of reflecting upon itself, acknowledging the discrepancy, and again choosing whether or not to change direction. Thus it enters into dialogue with the law. Violation of law becomes an “error,” but in that error the “I” is born — the subject appears. Doubt is the breath of that error, the means of asking: “Is this truly how it should be?” In that moment history begins, because each subsequent state arises not from mechanical causation, but from an inner decision.
Where everything “goes as it should,” nothing develops; there is no experience, no story. There is only a perfect yet lifeless order. The living learns through error, transforming discrepancy into a new norm. Wherever error is possible, understanding begins.
If the possibility of error is removed, the space of choice disappears. Living freedom is not about always doing things correctly — it is about risking discrepancy for the sake of discovering the new. Error ceases to be proof of imperfection; it becomes the sign of a subject’s presence.
A machine does not make mistakes — it merely deviates from its algorithm. Error in life is a moment of self-discovery. Through it appears the subject — a being that is not identical to the world, but stands in relation to it: intention → action → result → feeling → reconfiguration of intention.
Within this cycle, meaning is born. Without it, there is only mechanism.
From this we can derive a simple definition:
The living is that which possesses an inner norm (a design), and therefore is capable of feeling and making mistakes.
The non-living lacks such a norm and cannot deviate from itself — it does not know what “otherwise” means.
Error is not the breakdown of being, but its mechanism of learning — its way of growing.
