Quote #3:

Here I agree with Heidegger and Lacan, who say that Aristotle’s socalled biological writings are the key. What Aristotle advances in his description of the structure of a living being, as that which moves itself out of itself is not so much a theory of the world as it is a theory of what we mean when we say this is alive: that is to say, he engages with what preunderstanding we have when we, say, identify something as a living being. It is really in this sense a hermeneutical procedure not an ontological one. It is not a question about what it objectively scientifically means to be alive. It is, rather, a question of how, in our daily lives when we experience something as alive (an animal is alive, a stone is not alive), we apply certain criteria that we already have in ourselves: it’s this hermeneutical approach. In this sense, again maybe behind all these names which I have mentioned, Kant is crucial.

Conversations with Zizek. 27.