KANT AND THE CLAIMS OF THE EMPIRICAL WORLD A Transcendental Reading of the Critique of the Power of Judgment IDO GEIGER Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Published online by Cambridge University Press University Printing House, Cambridge , United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, th Floor, New York, , USA Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, , Australia –, rd Floor, Plot , Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – , India Penang Road, #–/, Visioncrest Commercial, Singapore Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/ : ./ © Ido Geiger This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data : Geiger, Ido, author. : Kant and the claims of the empirical world : a transcendental reading of the Critique of the power of judgment / Ido Geiger. : New York : Cambridge University Press, . | Includes bibliographical references and index. : (print) | (ebook) | (hardback) | (paperback) | (epub) : LCSH: Kant, Immanuel, -. Kritik der Urteilskraft. | Judgment (Logic) | Judgment (Aesthetics) | Aesthetics. | Teleology. : . (print) | (ebook) | –dc LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/ ---- Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Published online by Cambridge University Press Durch die Stadt und durch die Straßen Geht das bunte Tier spazieren; Geht und denkt so vor sich hin: “Stimmt es, dass ich gar nichts bin? Aller sagen, ich bin Keiner, nur ein kleiner Irgendeiner . . . Ob’s mich etwa gar nicht gibt? Bin kein Fisch, kein Pony und auch kein Nilpferd und kein Hund, nicht einmal ein Hundefloh – ooo!” Und das kleine bunte Tier, das sich nicht mehr helfen kann, fängt beinah zu weinen an. Mira Lobe, Das kleine Ich bin Ich Man wäre versucht zu glauben, dieses Gebilde hätte früher irgendeine zweckmäßige Form gehabt und jetzt sei es nur zerbrochen. Dies scheint aber nicht der Fall zu sein; wenigstens findet sich kein Anzeichen dafür; nirgends sind Ansätze oder Bruchstellen zu sehen, die auf etwas Derartiges hinweisen würden; das Ganze erscheint zwar sinnlos, aber in seiner Art abgeschlossen. Näheres läßt sich übrigens nicht darüber sagen, da Odradek außerordentlich beweglich und nicht zu fangen ist. Franz Kafka, Die Sorgen des Hausvaters Published online by Cambridge University Press To Aviv and to Gideon Published online by Cambridge University Press KANT AND THE CLAIMS OF THE EMPIRICAL WORLD Kant announces that the Critique of the Power of Judgment will bring his entire critical enterprise to an end. But it is by no means agreed upon that it in fact does so and, if it does, how. In this book, Ido Geiger argues that a principal concern of the third Critique is completing the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. This includes both Kant’s analysis of natural beauty and his discussion of teleological judgments of organisms and of nature generally. Geiger’s original reading of the third Critique shows that it forms a unified whole – and that it does in fact deliver the final part of Kant’s transcendental undertaking. His book will be valuable to all who are interested in Kant’s theory of the aesthetic and conceptual purposiveness of nature. is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is author of The Founding Act of Modern Ethical Life: Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Moral and Political Philosophy (), and he has published articles on Kant’s and Hegel’s practical philosophy, theoretical philosophy, and aesthetics. Published online by Cambridge University Press Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations page ix xi Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking of the Critique of the Power of Judgment The Charge of Reflective Judgment and the Conceptual and Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature . . . . . Introduction Why a Critique of the Reflective Power of Judgment (Preface)? The Reflective Power of Judgment and the Deduction of Its Transcendental Principle (Introduction, Sections IV and V) The Aesthetic and the Logical Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Sections VI–VIII) Conclusion Organisms, Teleological Judgment and the Methodology of Biology Introduction The Necessity of Teleological Judgments of Organisms The Objective Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature The Concept of Organism as a Regulative Principle of Reflective Judgment . The Methodology of Biology: Observation and Explanation . Conclusion The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment . . . . The Principal Thesis, Its Two Aspects and Main Consequences Method, Scope and Structure I. I. . . Introduction Teleological Judgment: From Organisms to Nature as a Whole (§§–) vii Published online by Cambridge University Press Contents viii . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment . Conclusion Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature . . . . . Introduction Discursivity: The Special Character of Human Understanding Discursivity: Metaphysical and Epistemological Implications Kant’s Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism Conclusion The Significance of Form and the Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature . Introduction . Preliminaries: The Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste; Conceptual and Nonconceptual Readings . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste . Conclusion Conclusion Kant’s Empiricism C. The Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature References Index Published online by Cambridge University Press Acknowledgments I have been working on this book for over a decade, and I have been thinking about the texts and questions it addresses for much longer. During this time, I have discussed these and related matters with, and gained a great deal from, a far greater number of people than I can thank by name (or, frankly, can remember). I am, though, truly grateful for all these exchanges. I feel very fortunate to belong to the committed and demanding circles of Kantian philosophy and scholarship. I do want to thank in name all those who have read the manuscript or some of its chapters and have given their intellectually generous responses to them. I begin by thanking Johannes Haag and Till Hoeppner for organizing a workshop in Potsdam on an early version of Chapter . The workshop was extremely helpful in shaping what became a rather different chapter. I am especially grateful for the participation of Nir Friedman, Hannah Ginsborg, Stefanie Grüne, Thijs Menting, Aviv Reiter and, of course, Johannes and Till. Alix Cohen and Lorenzo Spagnesi organized a workshop in Edinburgh on the first version of the entire manuscript, which was of invaluable help to me. I am immensely grateful to Alix and Lorenzo, Yoon Choi, Andrew Cooper and Antonino Falduto, who commented in detail on chapters and continued to help me revise them after the workshop. For discussions of different chapters or on versions of the whole manuscript and their very helpful comments I thank Angela Breitenbach, Gideon Freudenthal, Peter McLaughlin, Tobias Rosefeldt, Reed Winegar, John Zammito and, once again, Aviv Reiter. I feel very fortunate indeed to belong to such an intellectually stimulating and supportive department. I thank my colleagues, who are also my friends, for reading and discussing various chapters of the book (also for convincing me to scrap one of them). Thank you, Ori Beck, Hagit Benbaji, Shlomo Cohen, Nir Fresco, Andy German, Noam Hoffer (who has recently moved on to Bar-Ilan University), Uri Leibowitz, Yakir Levin, ix Published online by Cambridge University Press x Acknowledgments Yanni Nevo and Noa Shein. I am also deeply grateful to Eli Friedlander, Ofra Rechter and Yaron Senderowicz (all from Tel Aviv University) for their invaluable input, friendship and enduring support. I am deeply indebted to two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press for their exacting criticism and constructive suggestions. I think the book is far better for contending with their detailed comments. I am deeply grateful to Hilary Gaskin for her very helpful suggestions and sure guidance. I gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Minerva Stiftung, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung and the Israel Science Foundation. This research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grants No. / and /). This book is dedicated to two people: to Aviv Reiter, for countless hours (past and hopefully extending well into the future) of talking about the Critique of Judgment and especially for everything I have learned from her and with her about the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment – this is not a spousal dedication; and to Gideon Freudenthal, my teacher and very dear friend, for his unmatchable philosophical example. Chapter , Section originally appeared in different form as “Kant on the Analytic-Synthetic or Mechanistic Model of Causal Explanation,” Kant Yearbook (): –. Chapter , Section .. originally appeared in different form as Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” Kant-Studien (): –. Published online by Cambridge University Press Abbreviations With two exceptions, the numbers following quotes from Kant’s works refer to the volume number and pagination in the standard edition of his works, Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Volumes –), later by the Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (Volume ), and then by the Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (from Volume ). The Critique of Pure Reason is referred to by citing the pagination of the (A) and (B) editions of this work. References to the Heschel Logic, discovered in the s and not included in the Academy Edition, refer to page numbers in the original manuscript; the translation is based on Pinder Tillman’s edition, published by Meiner Verlag. In all cases, the pagination also appears at the margins of the English translations I quote from, namely, the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. I use the following abbreviations and translations: A/B: Anth: BBM: Critique of Pure Reason, edited and translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “Determination of the Concept of a Human Race.” In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, translated by Günter Zöller and Holly Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . xi https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press xii Br: EEKU: IaG: KpV: KU: Log: MAN: MS: NTH: List of Abbreviations Correspondence, edited and translated by Arnulf Zweig. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “First Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment.” In Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited by Paul Guyer, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim.” In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Critique of Practical Reason. In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Critique of the Power of Judgment, edited by Paul Guyer, translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . The Jäsche Logic. In Lectures on Logic, edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. In Theoretical Philosophy after , edited by Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath, translated by Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Metaphysics of Morals. In Practical Philosophy, edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or Essay on the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Whole Universe According to Newtonian Principles.” In Natural Science, edited by Eric Watkins, translated by Olaf Reinhardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press List of Abbreviations OP: PG: Prol: RGV: TG: UD: ÜGTP: V-Anth/Fried: V-Anth/Mron: xiii Opus Postumum, edited by Eckart Förster, translated by Eckart Förster and Michael Rosen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Physical Geography. In Natural Science, edited by Eric Watkins, translated by Olaf Reinhardt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science. In Theoretical Philosophy after , edited by Henry E. Allison and Peter Heath, translated by Gary Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. In Religion and Rational Theology, edited by Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, translated by George di Giovanni. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics.” In Theoretical Philosophy, –, edited and translated by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality. In Theoretical Philosophy, –, edited and translated by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy.” In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, translated by Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Anthropology Friedländer. In Lectures on Anthropology, edited by Allen W. Wood and Robert B. Louden, translated by Robert R. Clewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Anthropology Mrongovius. In Lectures on Anthropology, edited by Allen W. Wood and Robert B. Louden, translated by Robert R. Clewis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press xiv V-Lo/Blomberg: V-Lo/Dohna: V-Lo/Heschel: V-Lo/Wiener: V-Met/Dohna: V-Phys/Danziger: VvRM: List of Abbreviations The Blomberg Logic. In Lectures on Logic, edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . The Dohna-Wundlacken Logic. In Lectures on Logic, edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . The Heschel Logic. In Lectures on Logic, edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . The Vienna Logic. In Lectures on Logic, edited and translated by J. Michael Young. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Metaphysik Dohna. In Lectures on Metaphysics, edited and translated by Karl Ameriks and Steve Naragon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . Vorlesungen Danziger Physik. AA .. “Of the Different Races of Human Beings.” In Anthropology, History and Education, edited by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, translated by Holly Wilson and Günter Zöller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction The Transcendental Undertaking of the Critique of the Power of Judgment I. The Principal Thesis, Its Two Aspects and Main Consequences Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (), the third and last of his critical works, has been recognized as a work of great philosophical import from its first reception, and it continues to draw much attention to this day. It is nevertheless a highly puzzling book, and its interpretation has produced a virtual maze of exegetical controversies. On the one hand, it claims to bring the “entire critical enterprise to an end” (KU :). On the other hand, it appears to address a great diversity of philosophical topics, many of which do not seem to be part of or even related to Kant’s critical project. Its Introduction takes on the task of bridging “the incalculable gulf [unübersehbare Kluft]” (KU :) between nature and freedom as well as the task of completing the account of the transcendental conditions of an empirical experience of nature. The book itself, however, discusses our experiences of the beauty of nature and fine art as well as different experiences of sublimity. It also discusses the teleological manner in which we view organic nature and the natural world more broadly. It ends with a long section devoted to the notion of the highest good. Consequently, many commentators have treated parts of the book – large and small – often very insightfully and effectively – without attempting to relate them directly to a larger, recognizably critical project. This book aims to remedy this situation – though only in part. It is devoted to the defense of a single thesis: The a priori principle of the reflective power of judgment – namely, the assumption of the purposiveness of nature for our cognitive capacities – is, in the full sense of the term, a transcendental condition of a particular empirical experience of nature. The thesis is controversial – even though Kant says very clearly in the Introduction to the book that the Critique of Pure Reason did not present a complete account of the transcendental conditions of our particular empirical experience of nature, and he expressly introduces the assumption of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking the cognitive purposiveness of nature as his response to this very significant deficiency. This markedly critical concern, I will argue, is one principal aim of the book as whole, including both Kant’s analysis of the beauty of nature and his extended discussion of teleological judgment of the organic world and of nature generally. One reason why the thesis, which the books seeks to defend, is controversial might be the fact that its deduction, in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, is unsatisfactory. In Chapter , I will point to two problems with it. The first, far lesser problem is that it assumes that empirical knowledge must take the form of a comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy of empirical concepts – but does not explain why. The second and very significant problem is that Kant creates high expectations by employing the demanding term “deduction” and promising to seek the grounds of the principle of the purposiveness of nature in the “sources of cognition a priori” (KU :). But he appears simply to declare that finding a hierarchical system of empirical laws is a need of the understanding and that although we have no a priori insight into its existence “such a unity must still necessarily be presupposed and assumed” and that specifically “the power of judgment must thus assume it as an a priori principle for its own use” (KU :). The principal concern of the three following chapters will be to argue that completing the deduction of the Introduction is the ultimate end of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. It culminates in a discussion of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding, which explains both why the system of empirical experience and knowledge takes the shape attributed to it and how the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is grounded in the discursivity of our understanding. This, I will claim, is the way the transcendental principle of the purposiveness of nature is grounded in the “sources of cognition a priori.” I will claim first in Chapter and at greater length in Chapter that although the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment offers an argument for the necessity of teleological judgments of organisms, Kant is ultimately interested in the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole: “by means of the example that nature gives in its organic products, one is justified, indeed called upon to expect nothing in nature and its laws but what is purposive in the whole” (KU :–). He constructs an argument from the organism to this conclusion, because it allows him to assimilate characteristic features of a dialectic, specifically the fact that it ensnares ordinary understanding: “No one has doubted the correctness of the fundamental principle that certain things in nature (organized beings) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Principal Thesis, Its Aspects & Main Consequences and their possibility must be judged in accordance with the concept of final causes” (KU :). What is the point of constructing a dialectic with an antinomy of teleological judgment? In the first Critique, Kant simply asserts that there should be and that indeed there is a positive use of the ideas of reason. In the third Critique, he wants to show that making the principle of the purposiveness of nature a transcendental principle of reason for the power of reflective judgment leaves it free of the sort of contradictions that typically beset reason and that it thus has a legitimate and indeed necessary role to play in experience. Though I will claim that Kant’s ultimate concern in the Critique of Teleological Judgment is the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole, I will also claim that his discussion of the methodology of biology is of great philosophical interest. Chapter argues that Kant accepts a very strong premise: All, in fact, speak of certain natural objects as though they were self-organizing or self-producing. He then explains that although we describe certain objects as self-organizing or self-producing and so teleologically, these descriptions take on no commitment to the existence of end-directed natural causality and so take on no ontological commitment to the objective existence of self-organizing or self-producing natural objects. More specifically, I will claim that for Kant all causal explanations are mechanistic and that he develops a unique model for mechanistic explanations of the processes through which organisms produce or organize themselves. I will discuss at some length Kant’s various examples for mechanistic explanations in biology. Teleological judgments of organic nature are not then a threat to the project of the comprehensive mechanistic explanation of the natural world. Chapter will then tackle the considerable exegetical difficulties posed by the antinomy of teleological judgment. Although the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment poses an antinomy between regulative maxims of reflective judgment, it also presents a conflict between would-be constitutive principles of determinative judgment. This fact has led a number of readers to conclude that the latter conflict is the antinomy of teleological judgment and the former is its resolution – Kant’s explicit claims to the contrary notwithstanding. I will argue that posing the conflict between would-be constitutive principles of determinative judgment is also explained by the attempt to assimilate characteristic features of a dialectic, specifically the fact that it ensnares ordinary understanding. Building on the discussion of the distinction between explanation and description in Chapter , I will further claim that the regulative maxims of reflective judgment do not contradict one another, even as they are first presented, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking but in fact essentially complement one another. The maxim of teleology governs the description or observation of organisms as self-organizing beings; the maxim of mechanism directs us to seek to explain their generation and the processes they undergo mechanistically. In Chapter , I will argue that the systematic high points of the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment are the very closely connected arguments that discursivity grounds: () the particular shape Kant attributes to the system of empirical knowledge; () the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature; and () the part-to-whole or mechanistic form of causal explanation. Here are very short summaries of these arguments: () Creatures with a discursive understanding experience and cognize particular sensibly given objects by subsuming them under universal concepts, which contain a finite number of common characteristics or marks. Empirical concepts thus always underdetermine the particular objects subsumed under them, because they do not specify how they might differ from one another. But a discursive understanding must think of these more specific differences too as conceptually articulated, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, of the marks it employs as further analyzable into simpler, more general concepts. So an ideal system of universal concepts would take the form of a complete hierarchical taxonomy: from the most general empirical concepts to ever more specific concepts. This explains the form Kant attributes to the complete system of concepts through which we would cognize the world. () The assumption of such a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts determining the sensibly given is Kant’s way of talking about the real or objective order of nature. Only the complete but unattainable determination of the sensibly given by a complete system of concepts can ground the claims to objectivity made in determinative judgments, which subsume a particular under an empirical concept. I will argue that Kant ultimately thinks of such a system and its concepts as not merely descriptive but as causally informative and thus explanatory as well. The assumption of the comprehensive and causally explanatory conceptual purposiveness of nature thus underwrites any subsumption of a particular under an empirical concept in a determinative judgment. It is a transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge, which follows from the fact that we are discursive creatures in pursuit of objective knowledge. An important consequence of the fact that this transcendental condition of experience is a regulative principle, which guides the on-going process of the empirical investigation of nature, is that for Kant empirical knowledge claims lay claim to being objectively true, but they are always revisable and indeed defeasible. () A further very important argument, closely related to the former, shows that the part-to-whole or mechanistic form of physical explanation – https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Principal Thesis, Its Aspects & Main Consequences widely accepted in the eighteenth century as part of the proper method of scientific inquiry and explanation and very closely associated with the name of Newton – is also grounded in the discursivity of our understanding. Succinctly, in an ideal system of concepts and, specifically, of causally explanatory concepts, the higher concepts are poorer or partial in content and, in this sense, simpler. It is precisely this fact that gives the analytic explication of concepts as well as the explanation of causal wholes their distinct directionality, namely, from complex concept or causal whole upwards to simpler parts. This grounding of the maxim of mechanism in discursivity allows us to vindicate Kant’s claim that it is provided “by the mere understanding a priori.” (KU :) So far I have been speaking as though the purposiveness of nature for our cognitive capacities just is the conceptual purposiveness of nature for our discursive understanding. But Chapter will also defend at some length the claim that the Preface and Introduction to the book give us good reason to think that the problem of the transcendental conditions of experience is addressed fully only in the main body of the work – including not only the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, but the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment as well. In Chapter , I will then turn to the most challenging and controversial part of the third Critique, namely, Kant’s analysis of pure judgments of taste. In this chapter I will argue for the necessity of pure judgments of taste for empirical experience and knowledge. I will claim that reflective judgment should be viewed as employing a two-step process in the pursuit of empirical knowledge: () pure aesthetic judgments preconceptually delineate the sensible manifold into objects, based on the pleasure occasioned by their mere spatial form; this, in turn, makes possible a preconceptual sorting of objects into natural kinds that have in common their mere spatial form; () teleological judgment searches for concepts under which these objects and kinds can be subsumed. The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is thus an essential part of the transcendental account of the conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. I first present evidence in support of the claims that () the object of pure judgments of taste is the spatial form of an object, typically a natural object; and () these forms are the characteristic spatial shapes of natural For my earlier treatment of the Analytic and Dialectic of Teleological Judgment, see Ido Geiger, “Is Teleological Judgment (Still) Necessary? Kant’s Arguments in the Analytic and in the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (): –. The last argument is presented at length in Ido Geiger, “Kant on the Analytic-Synthetic or Mechanistic Model of Causal Explanation,” Kant Yearbook (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking kinds. I present textual evidence for the first claim and emphasize that it makes sense of Kant’s accentuation of the apprehension of forms, the nonconceptual nature of pure judgments of taste and the role of the imagination in such judgments. Evidence for the second claim is drawn from an examination of Kant’s examples of free beauty and by highlighting his discussion of the notion of a normal idea of a species. That the typical object of pure judgments of taste is a spatial form, the archetype of which is an aesthetic normal idea of a species, enables us to explain how Kant can say that natural beauty is nonconceptual but, nevertheless, the expression of aesthetic ideas: Beauty (whether it be beauty of nature or of art) can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the expression. (KU :) The claim further draws support from revealing Kant’s indebtedness to the Idealist tradition in the theory of fine art, for which beautiful nature means the archetypical shapes of natural kinds that reveal aesthetically the order of nature. The high point of Chapter focuses on the fourth moment of the Analytic and the Deduction chapter. The problem they address is explicating the distinct normative profile of pure judgments of taste. They are singular and nonconceptual. Nevertheless, pure aesthetic judgment “solicits assent from everyone” (KU :). Indeed, Kant calls the necessity of pure judgments of taste “exemplary, i.e., a necessity of the assent of all to a judgment that is regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce” (KU :). He calls this presupposition of universal assent the “indeterminate norm of a common sense” (KU :). The answer to this puzzle is the fourth important argument of the book and the most controversial: () The feeling of harmony expressed by aesthetic judgments is to be understood as the promissory feeling that a sensible manifold can be brought under concepts. It is the manifold which does create in us this particular feeling of cognitive purposiveness that makes us subconsciously identify it as an object exemplary of a natural kind in the first place, even before we have found concepts under which to subsume it and its kind. It is thus through aesthetic judgment that objects are first given to us. Furthermore, it is only on the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Principal Thesis, Its Aspects & Main Consequences assumption that the same manifolds will bring about this feeling in all of us that we will be able to make cognitive judgments about the same objects. Pure aesthetic judgments thus underwrite our preconceptual identification of spatial forms as exemplary of objective natural kinds. This is what it means to claim that a pure aesthetic judgment is “regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce.” Succinctly, what Kant is claiming is that it is a necessary condition of cognition that we carve up the manifold given to us in intuition into objects exemplary of natural kinds in the same manner. The assumption of a common sense is, therefore, a necessary condition of objective empirical experience and knowledge. And it is this assumption that grounds the appeal to universal assent, which aesthetic judgments express. The concluding chapter will summarize the main claims of the book, sketching a portrait of Kant the empiricist and attempting to highlight what is of broader philosophical interest in this portrait. As the book presents him, Kant has a keen understanding that empirical knowledge is gradually acquired through a process of revision and refinement. Empirical knowledge is not an epistemic state but a process – not a possession but an ongoing pursuit. This is a direct consequence of making a regulative or guiding assumption a necessary condition of empirical experience and knowledge. In the concluding chapter, I will also suggest that this view of empirical knowledge applies in an interesting and original way to Kant’s conception of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature. Furthermore, as I propose reading Kant, only the complete but unattainable determination of the sensibly given by a complete system of causally explanatory concepts can ground the objectivity and truth science seeks. Empirical truth, too, is ultimately an end we continuously pursue. Our claims to knowledge and our attempts at scientific explanation lay claim to being objectively true. But they are in principle open to revision, refinement or outright rejection. I thus hope that this portrait of Kant will be found of interest to philosophers with a marked empiricist leaning. It is often thought, I believe, that the assumption of the purposiveness of nature for our cognitive capacities cannot be a transcendental condition of experience, precisely because it is a regulative principle of reflective judgment, rather than a constitutive principle of the understanding, which shapes experience by employing determinative judgment. In other words, it is assumed that transcendental conditions of experience must determine and be constitutive of the most general form of experience. But this https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking assumption is deeply misguided and probably driven (at least in part) by the assumption that the account of the transcendental conditions of experience is delivered in full in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason – Kant’s clear proclamations to the contrary notwithstanding. It is without a doubt Kant’s view that the most general form of experience is determined or constituted a priori by our cognitive capacities. But the particular empirical content or details of experience cannot be determined a priori on pain of contradiction. If they are empirical, as Kant surely thinks they are, they must be learned from nature: “reflection on the laws of nature is directed by nature” (KU :). The faculty charged with discovering the empirical order of nature, Kant tells us, is the reflective power of judgment. Its a priori principle governs this search and thus must be a regulative principle, precisely because it governs an ongoing process of investigation and discovery. We learn what the empirical order of nature is through this investigation. The aim of this book is thus to explore Kant’s conception of the transcendental framing presuppositions through which we most fundamentally access and continually investigate the empirical world. Our ability to experience, make claims about and offer explanations of the empirical world makes transcendental claims upon us. It is to the reciprocal relations between these transcendental and empirical claims that Kant and the Claims of the Empirical World is devoted. I. Method, Scope and Structure As I have already said, this book is concerned with the interpretation of Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, with the further aim of uncovering philosophical insights of broader interest. I believe that both the very close connection Kant draws between our discursivity and the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature and his distinct idea of an aesthetic nonconceptual access to the most fundamental order of the empirical world are such insights. Interpreting classic texts with the aim of uncovering valuable philosophical insights is the general method of the vast majority of work in the history of philosophy, and this book is no different. Nevertheless, it is worth saying a few further words about the method, scope and structure of the book. I have put great effort into making the claims of the book as exegetically plausible as I could. A first and simple reason for this is that it seems to me https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Method, Scope and Structure that close textual analysis is an ever more demanding norm in work on Kant’s texts. It is a norm I very much value and hope to meet. Another reason for this effort is that the knot of questions and conflicting answers concerning the main claims of the third Critique is particularly complex. There are no accepted answers to the questions of what are the principal philosophical problems the book addresses and of how they are related to one another. Nor do we have, I think, a good enough answer to the question of how the third Critique brings to completion Kant’s critical undertaking. It is, therefore, to be expected that my interpretative claims will meet with a great many objections from various quarters. This is especially true of the claims of Chapter , which is concerned with the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment – despite its immense influence on philosophical aesthetics, still a most puzzling part of the book. I think, furthermore, that making the interpretation plausible is a condition of gaining a hearing for the philosophical insights to be gleaned from studying Kant’s discussion of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. Is my interpretation perfectly well grounded in the text? No, it isn’t! But I sincerely believe it deserves a hearing. One consequence of this exegetical emphasis is that parts of the book might read like a passage-by-passage commentary. But it is not a commentary. The choice of what to focus on interpretatively is motivated throughout the book by the attempt to reconstruct Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience. Another consequence of the exegetical emphasis of the book is that its chapters are rather long and the book itself is not short. I have, though, tried to make it as clear and accessible as possible so that as a whole it might still count as short by the lights of the Abbé Terrasson – not too short in number of pages to make it too long a read. Closely related to the point concerning the many controversies to which the Critique of the Power of Judgment has given rise and somewhat problematically, I have already gestured at and will refer below at significant junctures to the constraint of offering a unified reading of the book. Such a reading, I claim, must reveal how the book completes Kant’s critical undertaking, rather than offer analyses of the employment of reflective judgment in different realms. The point is problematic because I claim that my interpretation can constitute an important part of such a unified reading. But I do not provide such a complete reading in this book. This is liable to strike many as a lot of hand-waving. This is a charge I cannot answer in a fully satisfactory manner here. But let me say briefly what I think are the principal problems the Critique of the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking Power of Judgment addresses and how answering them completes Kant’s critical project; I will also say briefly how my view differs from another, very prominent attempt to give such an account. I think the principal problems of the book are two: () the problem of bridging the gap between our theoretical and practical worldviews, which results from the facts that we are practically obligated by a rational system of moral laws but must act in a world governed by a system of natural laws; it is presented in Sections I–III and IX of the Introduction and answered in the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment; and () the problem of the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience and knowledge of nature, which is the focus of this book; Sections IV and V of the Introduction pose the question and offer in brief the answer to it; Sections VI–VIII then explain that completing the discussion of this matter requires treating separately and in turn the aesthetic and the logical (or conceptual) purposiveness of nature. The problem of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience is thus the principal (though not the only) concern of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment and of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. Employing the results of these discussions of the Introduction’s second question enables Kant to answer his first question in the Methodology of Teleological Judgment. There he presents the familiar argument to the highest good as the bridge between nature and freedom, but employs physical teleology as a propaedeutic to it. If this is right, then the Introduction does indeed introduce the work that follows it, and its structure mirrors that of the book. These claims also explain how the third Critique completes the critical project: The second problem sets the task of completing the transcendental account of the conditions of experience presented in the Critique of Pure Reason; the first aims to bridge the metaphysical gap between the critical practical and – now complete – theoretical worldviews. Indeed, I think the point of Kant’s surprising insistence in the Introduction to the third Critique that the pursuit of happiness is properly a concern of theoretical rather than practical philosophy is precisely to relocate the argument to the highest good – making it the bridge between nature and freedom rather than the resolution of the predicament of finite practical agency. For my analysis of the Methodology, see Ido Geiger, “Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment,” in The Kantian Mind, edited by Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons (London: Routledge) [forthcoming]. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Method, Scope and Structure But the unity of the text is not complete. The highly influential discussion of fine art plays only a supporting role in the main argument of the book. Introducing the distinction between free and dependent beauty can be understood as a response to the claim that the beauty of many works of art constitutes a counterexample to the account of the Analytic of the Beautiful. Kant’s response is to claim that the Analytic is concerned with free beauty, whereas the beauty of most fine art is concept dependent. Most art presents aesthetically ideas of reason. The representational visual arts and the academic skill of drawing also provide particularly clear examples of an encounter with the beautiful natural forms, which are the concern of Kant’s analysis of natural beauty. Finally, I believe that Kant’s discussion of the sublime is a digression from the main line of argument of the book. The digression might be motivated both by the topical importance of the subject and by the fact that it enables Kant to claim to have offered an exhaustive account of the different types of aesthetic judgments. I acknowledge that the charge of hand-waving is to some extent justified, but I hope to a lesser degree than might first be thought. I happily take on responding to the charge more fully as a debt to be paid in the future. As a general rule, I will leave engagement with the secondary literature to the body of the book. But one such reference belongs here and is required in order to explain in overview how my reading differs from a prominent and very similar attempt to offer the core of a unifying reading of the third Critique. Zuckert’s important, compelling and highly influential Kant on Beauty and Biology takes on the task of offering the main part of an interpretation that presents Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment as a unified work – emphasizing his claim that the work completes his critical endeavor. Our projects are also alike in claiming that () an important concern of the book is completing the account of the For a more detailed account of the relation between natural beauty and the beauty of fine art, see Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” KantStudien (): –. For Kant’s account of human-made functional beauty, see Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Kant on Form, Function and Decoration,” Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics (): –. For detailed discussions of aesthetic ideas of nature, see Aviv Reiter, “Kant on the Aesthetic Ideas of Beautiful Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics (): –. For a detailed discussion of the aesthetic ideas presented in art, see Ido Geiger, “Kant on Aesthetic Ideas, Rational Ideas and the Subject-Matter of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (): –. Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the “Critique of Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking transcendental conditions of an empirical experience of nature; () most of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and the Critique of Teleological Judgment are part of the project of completing the critical undertaking; () establishing a teleological conception of nature is a step toward bridging the gap between nature and freedom; and () the discussions of fine art and the sublime are not central components of the critical project. The projects are even alike in leaving the accounts of fine art and the sublime outside their scope (Zuckert contends with the bridging task of the Methodology in her Conclusion). Despite these and other noteworthy similarities, the accounts are also quite different. Zuckert sets out from the problem of the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience of nature and knowledge of its laws. This part of her interpretation targets the Introduction to the third Critique, supplementing it with an account of Kant’s account of concept formation drawing on the Jäsche Logic. On this matter there is very considerable substantive agreement between us – though significantly, and as I have already mentioned, I take Kant’s account to be completed only at the end of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. Indeed, on my view, completing the deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature is the ultimate aim of this part of the third Critique. More importantly, Zuckert begins by arguing that what she refers to as the principle of purposiveness without a purpose, unity in diversity or lawfulness of the contingent is a transcendental condition of experience. Having done so, she takes natural beauty and biology to be domains in which the principle is instantiated – significantly recognizing that they exemplify particularly high degrees of unity or articulation, which exceed what the Critique of Pure Reason would view as necessary aspects of our experience of nature. My view is that taking the accounts of natural beauty and biology to be such instantiations of the principle of purposiveness or of unity in diversity goes beyond what is strictly required to complete the critical undertaking. The point can be made from the opposite direction: What Zuckert calls the principle of unity in diversity is much broader in application than the principle required in order to complete the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience. I will thus argue, in contrast, that the two parts of the book are part of the transcendental account of the conditions of an empirical experience of nature and of knowledge of its laws. A consequence of this fundamental difference between our views is that I see the book as central to Kant’s philosophy, whereas Zuckert sees it as, in an important sense, concerned with its limits, with the particular or contingent as such. I will have occasion to engage https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press I. Method, Scope and Structure with specific points of Zuckert’s account in the body of the book. These engagements will reveal that despite agreement on some key matters, our views of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment are quite different. I refer quite often in the book to the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique. But I decided not to devote a separate chapter to it. The more circumscribed aim of the book is to understand Kant’s view of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience in the third Critique. I thus refer to the Appendix, where I think it can throw light on what Kant is claiming in the book. Furthermore, I think it is quite clear that Kant’s thinking in the Appendix has not yet taken its final form. So I hope that not including a chapter on the Appendix is a defensible choice. Articulating in detail Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of experience in the third Critique will make possible a comparison with his earlier conception of the matter – another task for the future. A much more complex issue also has to do with the relationship between the Critique of the Power of judgment and the Critique of Pure Reason. As I have already mentioned and will point out below, many readers apparently believe that Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of experience is presented in full in the Doctrine of Elements of the first Critique – many of them think the account is complete by the end of the Transcendental Analytic. Such readers are likely to find many things I say wrong and possibly sometimes outrageously so. Questions I think are raised and answered in the third Critique – they think have already been answered definitively and differently in the first. I thought about how to respond to objections of this sort generally and to specific examples of objections I encountered or saw forthcoming, and I attempted to incorporate a lengthy substantive answer to one such objection into an earlier draft of the book. But I came to think that this type of exchange will be conducted far more fruitfully after the interpretative claims of the book are presented in full. To give an example: Once we see how Kant conceives of the apprehension of spatial forms in pure Interpretations such as Zuckert’s and mine should be distinguished from unifying readings that take the account of the conditions of empirical experience to be complete and consequently focus exclusively on the task of bridging the theoretical and practical worldviews as the key to the unity of the book. For a prominent recent account of this sort, see Ina Goy, Kants Theorie der Biologie: Ein Kommentar. Eine Lesart. Eine Historische Einordnung (Berlin: De Gruyter, ). For my earlier discussion of the Appendix, see Ido Geiger, “Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?” Kant-Studien (): –. The discussion there is at crucial junctures rather speculative and attempts to make sense of Kant’s terse but pregnant pronouncements. In retrospect, I think it is easy to see that what the Appendix wants is an analysis of discursivity and its implications. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press Introduction: The Transcendental Undertaking aesthetic judgments and we understand their role in cognition in the third Critique, we will be able to assess how it stands in relation to the various readings of the doctrine of threefold synthesis of the A-Deduction of the first Critique. This will enable us to decide whether or not Kant remains committed to the doctrine and whether he has further elaborated it. But to assume that Kant remains committed to the doctrine as stated in the A-Deduction throughout the last decade of his intellectual activity and further to commit oneself to a particular reading of it is liable to bias the way we examine the third Critique. And this is obviously highly problematic methodologically. I am asking then readers not to dismiss a claim I attribute to the third Critique, simply because it conflicts with what they think Kant says in the first Critique. This is certainly not at all to say that there are no good reasons for challenging my interpretation. Nor is it to say that they are wrong in their reading of the first Critique. But the point of departure of this entire book is that the Critique of Pure Reason is not Kant’s last word on the all-important topic of the transcendental conditions of experience. This is something Kant himself says very clearly in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. I have read and learned a great deal from many more papers and books than I cite. At crucial junctures, I attempt to respond succinctly to prominent alternatives or to situate my interpretation in relation to others. And I attempt to relate claims I make to those of others throughout the book. But my substantive engagement with the secondary literature is far from complete. At some point it became clear to me that attempting to do so more comprehensively and in more detail would greatly distract from the main claims of the book. Engaging in the many controversies to which the third Critique has given rise too must remain a task for the future. A final point about the order of discussions. With one exception, the book follows the order of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The exception, as I have already indicated, is taking on the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment after the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. The reasons for this are two. Kant presents a deduction of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature in the Introduction, and a principal claim of mine is that the deduction is, in fact, completed in the second half of the book. So it makes sense to complete that discussion before turning to what is the newer and more controversial development in Kant’s thinking. Leaving the discussion to the end also emphasizes these interesting and controversial claims. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.002 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Charge of Reflective Judgment and the Conceptual and Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature . Introduction The Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment is a text of paramount importance for anyone interested in the role that Kant’s conception of the cognitive purposiveness of nature plays in his account of the possibility of a particular empirical experience and knowledge of nature. In the Introduction, Kant poses the question of the conditions of a particular empirical experience of nature. He states clearly that the Critique of Pure Reason did not offer the whole answer to it. To complete the undertaking of the first Critique will require, he tells us, a transcendental investigation of the reflective power of judgment leading to its guiding principle, namely, the a priori transcendental principle of the purposiveness of nature. Kant appears to provide a deduction of this principle in the Introduction. For me too, the Introduction to the third Critique is, of course, of great importance; one section of this chapter will be devoted to a discussion of the problem of the conditions of empirical experience that, I think, Kant poses and the answer he gives to it in Sections IV and V of the Introduction. But my discussion of the Introduction will also have two unusual foci and will attempt to defend two controversial claims: () Less controversially, I will claim that the argument of Sections IV and V of the Introduction is, in very important respects, indeed introductory and, in fact, only finds its completion in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment; Chapters – will defend this claim in detail. () Far more controversially, I will claim that the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment provides a crucial part of Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge; presenting this argument will be the task of Chapter . In this chapter I will present evidence supporting the suggestion that this is a principal task of the first half of the third Critique. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature It is worth emphasizing that the problem of offering a unified reading of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, raised in the Introduction, is reflected in the difficulty of offering a unified reading of its Introduction. Simply put, offering such a reading requires showing that the Introduction is indeed introductory and, moreover, introduces the book that, in fact, follows it. More specifically, I have already suggested that the Introduction poses two main problems, which the book then discusses in detail: () the problem of bridging the gap between our practical and theoretical worldviews, principally discussed in the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment; and () the problem of the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience and knowledge of nature, which is the fundamental (though not the only) concern of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. As I have already mentioned in the Introduction, the latter topic is the focus of this book, but I think that the answer to the first problem employs as an assumption the answer given to the second problem. These claims suggest then what roughly the structure of the third Critique is – though many caveats must be made, and further explanations are clearly required. More importantly for our present concern, they also help to see the Introduction as a unified text. Sections I–III and IX are concerned with the first question. Sections IV and V pose the second question and offer, in brief, the answer to it. Sections VI–VIII explain that a complete discussion of the matter requires treating separately and, in turn, the aesthetic and the logical (or conceptual) purposiveness of nature. Employing the results of these discussions of his second question will then enable Kant to answer his first question in the Methodology of Teleological Judgment. The Introduction thus suggests that it has not given the complete answer to the question of the conditions of empirical experience. Obviously, a lot more needs to be said about these issues. But it is worth stressing again how problematic is the alternative to seeking the sort of unified reading to which I am committed. It means viewing a large part of the Introduction as a complete discussion that is only loosely connected to the book that follows it. On the sort of reading I have in view, the Introduction does indeed introduce the work, and its structure mirrors that of the book. . Why a Critique of the Reflective Power of Judgment (Preface)? Kant might appear to give two different and possibly conflicting answers to the questions of why a critique of the reflective power of judgment is necessary and what its principal task is. The Introduction suggests that a https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Why a Critique of the Reflective Power of Judgment? principal task of the work is completing the account of the transcendental conditions of an empirical experience of nature and that this requires an investigation of the reflective power of judgment, which is charged with seeking the empirical order of nature. But the Preface to the work suggests that writing a critique of the reflective power of judgment is required because the critical project as a whole is concerned with revealing the a priori principles of three faculties of cognition: () The Critique of Pure Reason has as its focus the understanding or “the faculty of cognition, insofar as it contains constitutive principles of cognition a priori” (KU :); () the Critique of Practical Reason contends with “reason, which contains constitutive principles a priori nowhere except strictly with regard to the faculty of desire” (KU :); () it will be the task of the third Critique to present the a priori, though regulative, principles of the power of (reflective) judgment and their relation specifically to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. Indeed, this short answer to the question of the aim of a critique of the power of reflective judgment is often taken to require no further elaboration. The answer seems to find support in Kant’s explicit emphasis on the central importance of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment to the work. Further conjoining this answer with the claim that pure aesthetic judgments are nonconceptual or noncognitive leads to the view that investigating the transcendental conditions of empirical experience cannot be a principal concern of the book as a whole. I think, though, that this answer and the Preface more generally are liable to mislead us because the latter answer is, in fact, implicitly dependent on the former. In other words, a critique examining the feeling of pleasure and displeasure is required because reflective judgment is a faculty of cognition that plays a necessary role in the construction of experience. As is well known, Kant did not initially think that the critical undertaking would require writing three distinct works. The Critique of Practical This point is quite clear in the First Introduction, which first introduces the power of judgment as “the faculty for the subsumption of the particular under the general” (EEKU :), and only then raises the possibility that the faculty “contains a priori principles” (EEKU :) for the feeling of pleasure and displeasure. In the Encyclopedic Introduction (Section XI), Kant says perfectly explicitly: The introduction of the power of judgment into the system of the pure faculties of cognition through concepts rests entirely on its transcendental principle, which is peculiar to it: that nature [in] the specification of the transcendental laws of understanding (principles of its possibility as nature in general), i.e., in the manifold of its empirical laws, proceeds in accordance with the idea of a system of their division for the sake of the possibility of experience as an empirical system. (EEKU :–) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature Reason () has its origin in the revisions leading to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason () (see Letter to Bering; April , ; Br :–). Kant first mentions a critique of taste in the summer of (see Letter to Schütz; June , ; Br :–; see also Letter to Jakob; September (?) , ; Br :–; Letter to Herz; December , ; Br :–). In the longest and most revealing report on the project, Kant dramatically speaks of a discovery. My inner conviction grows, as I discover in working on different topics that not only does my system remain self-consistent but I find also, when sometimes I cannot see the right way to investigate a certain subject, that I need only look back at the general picture of the elements of knowledge, and of the mental powers pertaining to them, in order to discover elucidations [Aufschlüsse zu bekommen] I had not expected. I am now at work on the critique of taste, and I have discovered a new sort of a priori principles, different from those heretofore observed. For there are three faculties of the mind: the faculty of cognition, the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure, and the faculty of desire. In the Critique of Pure (theoretical) Reason, I found a priori principles for the first of these, and in the Critique of Practical Reason, a priori principles for the third. I tried to find them for the second as well, and though I thought it impossible to find such principles, the analysis of the previously mentioned faculties of the human mind allowed me to discover a systematicity [das Systematische], giving me ample material at which to marvel and if possible to explore, material sufficient to last me for the rest of my life. This systematicity put me on the path to recognizing the three parts of philosophy, each of which has its a priori principles, which can be enumerated and for which one can delimit precisely the knowledge that may be based on them: theoretical philosophy, teleology, and practical philosophy, of which the second is, to be sure, the least rich in a priori grounds of determination. I hope to have a manuscript on this completed though not in print by Easter; it will be entitled “Critique of Taste.” (Letter to Reinhold; December and , ; Br :–) As this passage makes clear, it is not the mere fact that we have a faculty of pleasure and displeasure that demands undertaking a critical analysis of it. It is rather the discovery of a “new sort of a priori principles.” Kant here calls them “a priori grounds of determination [Bestimmungsgründen].” The Preface makes the same point by describing the critical project as concerned with the a priori principles of cognition. I have slightly amended the typography. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Why a Critique of the Reflective Power of Judgment? Kant here and elsewhere speaks of cognition (Erkenntnis) as encompassing both the theoretical and the practical realms and more restrictedly to refer either to theoretical or to practical cognition. (He also, of course, calls cognition the sort of a priori philosophical knowledge that the critical enterprise means to provide; in the letter above the knowledge offered by the third Critique is called teleology.) But Kant also says in the Preface and emphasizes in the first sections of the Introduction that with regard to the domains in which these a priori principles of cognition are legislative, the distinction between theoretical or natural philosophy and practical or moral philosophy is exhaustive. Are then the objects of the a priori principles of the faculty of pleasure and displeasure those that belong to the domain of nature or those of the domain of freedom? As Kant emphasizes in the Preface and in the Introduction, the power of judgment does not have its own domain. In the Preface, Kant claims that the power of judgment can be annexed either to the theoretical or to the practical part of philosophy “in case of need” (KU :). In context, the claim is quite opaque. I think (and hope to make the thought plausible in what follows) that what the claim means is that the investigation of the role reflective judgment plays with regard to the possibility of empirical experience belongs to theoretical philosophy. In contrast, the use of its principle to establish rational belief in the highest good as the bridge between nature and freedom is obviously of importance to practical philosophy. If this is right, then a critique of reflective judgment is required, first and foremost because of its necessary contribution to theoretical cognition, for the latter argument is dependent on the results of the former theoretical investigation. Though Kant certainly could have been clearer, this answer is, in fact, suggested by the text of the Preface. First, Kant says very clearly that the understanding is not the only faculty of theoretical cognition. The Critique of Pure Reason, he surprisingly says, was, in fact, concerned only with “the understanding, in accordance with its a priori principles, excluding the power of judgment and reason (as faculties likewise belonging to theoretical cognition)” (KU :). He then goes on to acknowledge the importance of the discussion of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic. But he These claims find confirmation in the introductory section of the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment (§), where Kant asks what place teleology has within theoretical philosophy (cf., KU :). Does it belong to the doctrine of nature or to theology as concerned with the “original ground of the world as the sum total of all objects of experience” (KU :)? He answers that teleology belongs to neither doctrine but rather to the critique of the reflective power of judgment. Nevertheless, the “most important use of it can be made within theology” (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature now suggests (as clearly as Kant might) that the discussion of the contribution of the regulative ideas of reason to theoretical cognition has its proper place in a critique of the power of reflective judgment. Without perfectly explicitly naming the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic (Anhang zur transzendentalen Dialektik), he says that its discussion “could at best have been appended [angehängt] to the theoretical part of philosophy” (KU :). Second, and relatedly, in the passage that ends with the above claim, Kant touches upon what appears to be a decisive argument against taking the discussion of the conditions of empirical experience to be a concern of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and thus possibly the principal concern of the third Critique as a whole. Succinctly, the argument is a conclusion drawn from two claims: () Kant says that in a “critique of the power of judgment the part that contains the aesthetic power of judgment is essential, since this alone contains a principle that the power of judgment lays at the basis of its reflection on nature entirely a priori” (KU :); but () pure aesthetic judgments are nonconceptual or noncognitive; thus, () a discussion of pure aesthetic judgments cannot be an essential part of the investigation of the conditions of empirical cognition. It will be the principal task of Chapter to counter this argument. But for our present concern, it is important to note that in this passage of the Preface Kant speaks of an embarrassment or a quandary. This embarrassment [Verlegenheit] about a principle (whether it be subjective or objective) is found chiefly in those judgings that are called aesthetic . . . And likewise the critical investigation of a principle of the power of judgment in these cases is the most important part of a critique of this faculty. For although by themselves they contribute nothing at all to the cognition of things, still they belong to the faculty of cognition alone, and prove an immediate relation of this faculty to the feeling of pleasure or displeasure in accordance with some a priori principle . . . But in the case of the logical judging of nature, where experience imposes on things a conformity to law that the understanding’s general concept of the sensible is not sufficient to understand or explain, and where the power of judgment can derive from itself a principle for the relation of the thing in nature to the uncognizable supersensible but can only use it with respect to itself for the cognition of nature, there indeed such an a priori principle can and must be applied for the cognition of the beings in the world and at the same time I have slightly amended the translation. Kant writes: “allenfalls dem theoretischen Teile der Philosophie . . . hätte angehängt werden können” (KU :). In the Prolegomena, he says that the first part of the Appendix should be taken as a scholium (Prol :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Why a Critique of the Reflective Power of Judgment? opens up prospects that are advantageous for practical reason; but it has no immediate relation to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, which is precisely what is puzzling [Rätselhafte] in the principle of the power of judgment and what makes a special division for this faculty necessary in the critique, since logical judging in accordance with concepts (from which an immediate inference to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure can never be drawn), together with a critical restriction of it, could always have been appended to the theoretical part of philosophy. (KU :–) Succinctly, the quandary or puzzle is that aesthetic judgments are immediately related to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, but “they contribute nothing at all to the cognition of things.” In contrast, the logical judging of nature in accordance with the principle of reflective judgment has no immediate relation to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, but it “must be applied for the cognition of the beings in the world.” In other words, what obviously has to do with theoretical cognition is not immediately related to the definitive characteristic of the faculty investigated, whereas the aesthetic judgments that are immediately related to the feeling of pleasure appear to play no part in theoretical cognition. Obviously, a lot more needs to be said about these matters. At this point, I am only claiming that the puzzle has a solution. I emphasize the fact that Kant says that both parts of the critique contend with theoretical cognition – he says of aesthetic judgments that “although by themselves they contribute nothing at all to the cognition of things, still they belong to the faculty of cognition alone.” So both the discussion of the aesthetic and the discussion of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature have their proper place within a critique of the reflective power of judgment. Indeed, I emphasize that Kant states clearly that it is precisely this puzzle posed by the principle of reflective judgment that “makes a special division for this faculty necessary in the critique.” In conclusion of this part, I first want to make the relatively weak claim that the Preface gives us some reason to think that the first principal task of the third Critique is completing Kant’s account of the possibility of empirical experience and knowledge. I also want to acknowledge that it raises two challenges: First, the interpretation must explain how precisely the Critique of Teleological Judgment is connected to this undertaking. This will demand an account of the division of labor between the Introduction and the body of the book. It will further demand an answer to the question of why Kant devotes protracted attention to organic phenomena. The second and more formidable challenge will be to explain how an account of nonconceptual pure aesthetic judgment might https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature constitute an essential part of Kant’s account of the transcendental conditions of experience and knowledge. . The Reflective Power of Judgment and the Deduction of Its Transcendental Principle (Introduction, Sections IV and V) There can be no denying the importance of the discussion of Sections IV and V of the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment – provided their concern is posed broadly enough. One way of reading these sections is as exclusively a key to Kant’s view of empirical knowledge and general theory of science. Alternatively, they also put forward a crucial extension of Kant’s investigation of the transcendental conditions of experience. But there is, obviously, a very significant difference between these two alternatives. On the latter alternative, the discussion belongs to the very core of Kant’s theoretical philosophy and demands the attention of anyone interested in his transcendental project; on the former, in contrast, the discussion is of more specific and discretionary interest, noteworthy though it may be. It seems to me that the current state of the debate is askew: A considerable majority of Kantians vote for the former possibility (or would if asked to choose); but the evidence, though complex and not unambiguous, better supports the latter alternative. It is my purpose in this section of the chapter to do what I can to remedy this situation. I will also say something about what I think is the ground of the obscurity of these passages. Succinctly and as I have already suggested above – and will discuss at greater length in the next section of the chapter – it is the fact that the discussion of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience in the Introduction is in two respects truly introductory: It requires the notion of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the discussion of the conceptual purposiveness of nature requires grounding its principle in the discursivity of our understanding, a task Kant carries out only at the end of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. These are two central tasks of the work that follows the Introduction. .. The Reflective Power of Judgment (Introduction, Section IV) The opening paragraph of Section IV of the Introduction is indeed very often quoted. I do not recall encountering, however, a single resolute https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction statement of the great challenge it poses for our understanding of the third Critique. The power of judgment in general is the faculty for thinking of the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the power of judgment, which subsumes the particular under it (even when, as a transcendental power of judgment, it provides the conditions a priori in accordance with which alone anything can be subsumed under that universal), is determining. If, however, only the particular is given, for which the universal is to be found, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting. (KU :) The power of judgment is described as the faculty that allows us to subsume particular sensible objects under universal concepts. It is determinative when we are in possession of the concepts that apply to a given object. Kant implies here that determinative judgment is either transcendental or empirical. In the former case, the concepts of the understanding are the categories, which apply to all objects of experience. In the latter case, the concepts and laws are empirical, and each particular sortal concept applies only to those objects that possess the sensible marks contained in it, and each particular law applies only to the objects and kinds governed by it. The power of judgment is reflective when the task at hand is finding a concept or law under which to subsume a sensibly given particular or kind. As the work unfolds, we learn that reflective judgment is charged with seeking quite a variety of concepts: () Experiences of the mathematical sublime lead us to the concept of the highest vocation of our cognitive faculty and its superiority vis-à-vis the faculty of sensibility; () experiences of the dynamically sublime lead us to the rational concept of our moral freedom and its independence of nature; () judgments of artistic beauty express pleasure in the unending articulation of the content of ideas of reason; and () teleological judgments seek to describe particular processes of organic self-organization as well as to explain them. The problem should be plain for all to see: Pure judgments of taste neither seek nor find universal concepts for their sensible objects. Indeed, I discuss teleological judgment in Chapters and . For discussion of reflective judgments of fine art, explaining what ideas of reason they elaborate, see Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” Kant-Studien (): –; Ido Geiger, “Kant on Aesthetic Ideas, Rational Ideas and the Subject-Matter of Art,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (): –. For discussion of reflective judgments of the beauty of artifacts and the concepts to which they lead (or adhere), see Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Kant on Form, Function and Decoration,” Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature when Kant first introduces the notion of an aesthetic judgment, in Section VII of the Introduction, he says clearly that such a judgment “is not grounded on any available concept of the object and does not furnish one” (KU :). As I have already emphasized above, Kant speaks in the Preface of a quandary: Aesthetic judgments “contribute nothing at all to the cognition of things” (KU :). How then can they have an essential place in the critique of reflective judgment? In a critique of the power of judgment the part that contains the aesthetic power of judgment is essential, since this alone contains a principle that the power of judgment lays at the basis of its reflection on nature entirely a priori, namely that of a formal purposiveness of nature in accordance with its particular (empirical) laws for our faculty of cognition, without which the understanding could not find itself in it . . . (KU :) I emphasize that Kant speaks here of reflection on nature and its empirical laws and of the indispensable role reflective judgment plays in the task of finding our way in nature. The principle that guides reflective judgment in this task, Kant says, lies at the heart of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment; and the critique of aesthetic judgment is indeed essential, because its principle is laid down “at the basis of its reflection on nature entirely a priori.” In the Preface, we saw, Kant speaks of the immediate relation of aesthetic judgments to the faculty of reflective judgment and its a priori principle. The reason why a critique of aesthetic judgment is essential for Kant’s undertaking is then precisely the quandary he describes in the Preface. As I have already said above and will have ample occasion to say below, I think there is an answer to the puzzle concerning the role of an analysis of pure aesthetic judgments in the critique of reflective judgment: Although pure aesthetic judgments are nonconceptual or noncognitive, they nevertheless play a necessary role in our search for the empirical conceptual order of nature. For present purposes, it is of importance simply to note that immediately after describing the reflective power of judgment Kant goes on to discuss this very task: the “reflecting power of judgment . . . is under the obligation of ascending from the particular in nature to the universal” (KU :). It bears underscoring that although judgments of sublimity and judgments of adherent beauty (most judgments of artistic beauty and judgments of the beauty of artifacts) can be thought of as seeking concepts, none are concerned with the conceptual order of empirical nature, nor, strictly speaking, with any sensible natural particular. It is striking that, according to a common understanding of the text, nothing in the first half of the third Critique is directly related to the task of discovering the conceptual order of empirical nature. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction Here is Kant’s statement of the problem left open by the Critique of Pure Reason: But there is such a manifold of forms in nature, as it were so many modifications of the universal transcendental concepts of nature that are left undetermined by those laws that the pure understanding gives a priori, since these pertain only to the possibility of a nature (as object of the senses) in general, that there must nevertheless also be laws for it which, as empirical, may seem to be contingent in accordance with the insight of our understanding, but which, if they are to be called laws (as is also required by the concept of a nature), must be regarded as necessary on a principle of the unity of the manifold, even if that principle is unknown to us. (KU :–) First, Kant does not say what exactly he means by speaking of “forms in nature” or by “modifications of the universal transcendental concepts of nature.” But he seems to mean something like what a thing is. So the claim is that there is a great variety of ways things in nature can be or, simply, a great variety of natural things or objects. In Section V, and in the very same context, Kant speaks simply of “objects of empirical cognition” and of “specifically distinct natures” (KU :). This suggests that the scope of the discussion is empirical cognition quite generally. Second, Kant appears to be saying that if we take into account the categories alone, then beyond the determination as objects of experience quite generally, we find ourselves unable to make any further distinctions between presumably very diverse natural objects (“such a manifold . . . so many modifications”). The fact that Kant goes on to talk about empirical laws might at first seem to narrow down the scope of the discussion. But I think Kant is naturally moving from the transcendental laws of nature to empirical laws, but means also to be speaking about the empirical concepts that allow us to describe the objects and kinds to which these laws apply. Thus, no restriction of the scope of the discussion is meant. Kant is still talking about empirical concepts generally. Restricting the scope of the discussion here would stand in conflict with the fact that we are discussing the power of reflecting judgment generally, which is charged with the search for any empirical concept. Furthermore, the contrast Kant is drawing appears to be the very general and exhaustive one between pure and empirical concepts of experience. The point then is that categories alone give us no insight whatsoever into the empirical order of nature. They apply in just the same way to any object of experience whatsoever and thus possess no capacity for empirical discrimination. Read in this https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature way, the claim echoes an often-quoted passage from the B-Deduction of the first Critique: The pure faculty of understanding does not suffice, however, to prescribe to the appearances through mere categories a priori laws beyond those on which rests a nature in general, as lawfulness of appearances in space and time. Particular laws, because they concern empirically determined appearances, cannot be completely derived from the categories, although they all stand under them. (B) It would be premature to attempt to settle the point here, but it should be emphasized parenthetically that taking Kant to be talking of empirical concepts quite generally as well as to be claiming that the categories alone give us no insight into the empirical order of nature must, in fact, be highly controversial. For these are steps toward adopting the strong reading, which takes Kant’s task to be the completion of the account of the transcendental conditions of experience. In other words, what is at stake in taking Kant to be talking about empirical concepts generally is precisely offering a transcendental reading of the third Critique. I do believe that by the time we reach the end of this section of the chapter, the evidence in support of pursuing this line of investigation will clearly outweigh the alternative. The next step is the claim that empirical laws too – and by implication, as I just suggested, all empirical concepts – are a necessary part of experience. Kant does not say why there must be empirical laws and concepts. Presumably, the thought is that without them what we receive in intuition would be utterly undifferentiated and would clearly fall short of anything that we might think of as experience. Without empirical laws and concepts we would be able to determine the existence neither of similarities and distinctions nor of interactions between things, single or recurring. Presumably, even the simplest experience requires grouping like with like and identifying some rudimentary causal connections between things. For this, Kant appears to be claiming, empirical concepts are needed. To paraphrase Kant’s own famous phrase, “intuitions without empirical concepts are blind.” Kant next turns to the question of what we might think of as the distinct modality of empirical concepts. By saying that empirical laws “may seem to be contingent in accordance with the insight of our understanding,” Kant simply means, I think, that the pure a priori understanding determines the most general transcendental laws of nature, but it determines nothing with regard to the empirical order of nature. Does A resemble B and do Ps cause Qs are empirical questions. Perhaps https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction they do; perhaps they don’t. We must turn to the world and our experience to learn the answers. From the perspective of pure understanding, these matters are perfectly contingent. The point can also be put by saying that pure understanding can provide no insight into these matters. However, Kant goes on to say that laws “must be regarded as necessary.” I claimed that by speaking of laws Kant means to imply empirical concepts quite generally. So the claim is that the use of any empirical concept involves a claim of necessity. If A resembles B, then it is necessary to group them together, and the concept that names things of this kind applies to them necessarily. If Ps cause Qs, then the law that names the causal connection between things of these kinds applies to them necessarily. We might also put the point by saying that the investigation of the empirical order of nature is concerned with objective matters of fact. Kant then introduces, without offering anything like a structured argument, his solution to the problem. He tells us that () the reflecting power of judgment requires an a priori transcendental principle grounding the possibility of the empirical order of nature – a principle that it gives itself; () this order will take the form of a “systematic subordination of empirical principles under one another” (KU :); () the principle directs us to view empirical laws and their systematic order “in terms of the sort of unity they would have if an understanding (even if not ours) had likewise given them for the sake of our faculty of cognition, in order to make possible a system of experience in accordance with particular laws of nature” (KU :); () this just means that “the principle of the power of judgment in regard to the form of things in nature under empirical laws in general is the purposiveness of nature in its multiplicity. I.e., nature is represented through this concept as if an understanding contained the ground of the unity of the manifold of its empirical laws.” (KU :–). These points are made again in Kant’s official deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature and the passage that promises to convince us of its correctness; so I leave the more detailed discussion of them to the next subsection. I thus fully agree that Kant is committed to a necessitation account of laws and kinds (or natures, or real essences). See Eric Watkins, Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –; James Kreines, “Kant on the Laws of Nature: Laws, Necessitation, and the Limitation of Our Knowledge,” European Journal of Philosophy (): –; James Messina, “Kant’s Necessitation Account of Laws and the Nature of Natures,” in Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. This will be a key claim of Chapter . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature .. The Deduction of the Principle of the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section V) The title of Section V states that the principle of the formal purposiveness of nature is a transcendental principle of the power of judgment. To deny that Kant is concerned with the completion of his account of the a priori transcendental conditions of experience requires showing that he is using the term “transcendental” in some weaker sense than we associate with the investigation of the Critique of Pure Reason. In the second edition, Kant says: “I call all cognition transcendental that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori” (B). Section V of the third Critique opens, however, with a clear statement that contradicts the suggestion that the sense of the term is different: A transcendental principle is one through which the universal a priori condition under which alone things can become objects of our cognition at all is represented. (KU :) The evidence that he is using the term in just the sense it has in the first Critique seems to me conclusive: () He goes on to give as an example of a transcendental principle the principle of causality; () he says that to think of objects as standing under the principle of the purposiveness of nature is “only the pure concept of objects of possible experiential cognition in general” (KU :–); () he says that the principle “belongs among the transcendental principles” (KU :); and () he says that without its presupposition “we would have no order of nature in accordance with empirical laws, hence no guideline for an experience of this in all its multiplicity and for research into it” (KU :). This is by no means to deny that a central concern of the text we are considering is to begin to articulate the differences between the categories as determining transcendental conditions of experience, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the principle of the purposiveness of nature, which is a transcendental though regulative principle of reflective judgment. These differences are key to understanding Kant’s conception of empirical experience and knowledge. The principle of the purposiveness of nature, Kant says, tells us how nature ought to be judged; it possesses “logical objective necessity” and thus “requires a transcendental deduction, by means of which the ground [Grund] for judging in this way must be sought in the sources of cognition [Erkenntnißquellen] a priori” (KU :). The paragraph following this https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction claim apparently contains the deduction; the paragraph following it is presented as aiding us “to be convinced of the correctness of this deduction” (KU :). But it seems to me that the two passages are not in any deep way different in content or manner of argumentation, and I will employ the latter to illuminate the former. The very long paragraph that apparently contains the deduction begins by recapitulating once again the results of the transcendental investigation of the first Critique. It discovered the pure concepts of the understanding and their schemata as “grounds of the possibility of an experience” (KU :). Kant gives as an example the category of causality and, emphasizing the role that transcendental determinative judgment plays, its temporal schema of succession. Kant apparently introduces causality simply as an example of a category. Nevertheless, the deduction goes on to employ it, and in doing so it picks up the focus on empirical laws in the previous section of the Introduction – thereby suggesting that it is of particular importance. In the following chapters, I will claim that Kant singles out causality, because the empirical order of nature, which science seeks, is ultimately a system of causal laws. The deduction itself can be presented as consisting of the following three steps: () Determination by the schematized categories alone leaves the variety of objects of experience empirically undetermined. But the understanding, as our faculty of cognition, allows us no access to objects that are not empirically determined. () It is a necessary transcendental assumption or presupposition of our experience of the empirical world and its objects that it forms a comprehensive hierarchical system of empirical (causal) laws. () To represent the empirical world in this way is to represent it as answering the aim or need of our understanding. But this is just to assume that the empirical world is made to be known by or purposive for the understanding as our faculty of cognition. The first response to representing in this way what Kant entitles a deduction might well be incredulity. For so presented, the pivotal move from the problem bequeathed by the first Critique () to the solution offered to it in the third Critique () seems quite unwarranted. I nevertheless think that this is a fair presentation of what the text in fact offers. A closer examination of the passages reveals that there is, in fact, nothing there but a rather detailed explanation of the problem and a pronouncement of its solution. The first claim summarizes this passage: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature Now, however, the objects of empirical cognition are still determined or, as far as one can judge a priori, determinable in so many ways apart from that formal time-condition that specifically distinct natures, besides what they have in common as belonging to nature in general, can still be causes in infinitely many ways; and each of these ways must (in accordance with the concept of a cause in general) have its rule, which is a law, and hence brings necessity with it, although given the constitution and the limits of our faculties of cognition we have no insight at all into this necessity. Thus we must think of there being in nature, with regard to its merely empirical laws, a possibility of infinitely manifold empirical laws, which as far as our insight goes are nevertheless contingent (cannot be cognized a priori); and with regard to them we judge the unity of nature in accordance with empirical laws and the possibility of the unity of experience (as a system in accordance with empirical laws) as contingent. (KU :) As we saw above, the passage preceding this one assumes that objects of experience are determined by the schematized categories only and, specifically, by the category of causality and the temporal schema of succession. Kant now claims that there are infinitely many ways in which different empirical things can be causes. The very plausible thought seems to be that experience is varied and differentiated rather than perfectly uniform. But from the perspective of the categories alone there is no way to set a limit on this variety. For the categories determine nothing with regard to the empirical nature of things. So from this perspective, we must think of experience as “infinitely manifold” and lacking any order – the next paragraph describes such an “infinite multiplicity of empirical laws” (KU :) as the most extreme case for the understanding and its task of seeking order. Kant then reminds us that the notion of causality is the notion of a necessary connection. The question is whether we can have any cognitive access to this variety of singular necessary causal connections. Kant is asking us to think of whether we would be capable of tackling the variety of nature equipped with the schematized categories alone. Can this be done? Kant’s answer is negative: We can have no a priori insight into the specific ways empirical objects are causes. Now it is important to see clearly that paradoxically enough Kant is conjoining here talk of rules or laws with what, from the perspective of the categories alone, must be singular causal connections. For he is talking about an infinite or limitless variety of causal connections as the most extreme case for the understanding and its task of seeking order. But the paradox is intentional. Kant is working his way precisely to claiming that for us nature is not an infinite variety of singular causal connections but a https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction system of universal empirical laws. A little later, Kant says clearly that our understanding requires universal empirical laws and that this requires sorting natural objects into species and genera to which the same causal explanations apply. For it may certainly be thought that . . . the specific diversity of the empirical laws of nature together with their effects could nevertheless be so great that it would be impossible for our understanding to discover in them an order that we can grasp, to divide its products into genera and species in order to use the principles for the explanation and the understanding of one for the explanation and comprehension of the other as well, and to make an interconnected experience out of material that is for us so confused (strictly speaking, only infinitely manifold and not fitted for our power of comprehension). (KU :) Kant’s last claim in the first step of the deduction is baffling: From the perspective of the schematized categories we view the unified system of empirical laws – through which, presumably, we experience the world – as contingent. The claim, I think, is that from the perspective of the schematized categories the unified system of empirical laws is contingent in the sense that we cannot offer an account of it. This raises two questions: () What precisely does Kant mean by speaking of a “system in accordance with empirical laws”? () More importantly for getting a grip on the argument, why does he say that we must view or judge nature as such a system of empirical laws? Getting clear on this question is understanding why the assumption of the systematic conceptual unity of nature is a necessary principle of reflective judgment. The answer to the first question is that Kant has in mind a comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy of empirical concepts and ultimately of empirical causal laws. In the next passage, we just saw, he speaks of species and genera and an interconnected experience that allows us to comprehend and explain nature; pointing once more to the close connection between sorting nature into kinds and causality, he says that the principle is expressed in propositions such as these: . . . that there is in nature a subordination of genera and species that we can grasp; that the latter in turn converge in accordance with a common The very close connection between sorting nature into kinds and our capacity to offer causal explanations that apply to these kinds is a very important theme of this book. It will appear in discussions of the relation between description and explanation in the following chapters. The connection has been emphasized by Kreines, who claims that “insofar as we seek knowledge of the diversity of nature, we generally seek knowledge of particular laws governing interactions between specifically distinct kinds.” Kreines, “Kant on the Laws of Nature,” . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature principle, so that a transition from one to the other and thereby to a higher genus is possible; that since it seems initially unavoidable for our understanding to have to assume as many different kinds of causality as there are specific differences of natural effects, they may nevertheless stand under a small number of principles with the discovery of which we have to occupy ourselves, etc. (KU :; cf. KU :) Frustratingly enough, the second very important question is answered simply by a statement of the second step of the argument: But since such a unity must still necessarily be presupposed and assumed, for otherwise no thoroughgoing interconnection of empirical cognitions into a whole of experience would take place, because the universal laws of nature yield such an interconnection among things with respect to their genera, as things of nature in general, but not specifically, as such and such particular beings in nature, the power of judgment must thus assume it as an a priori principle for its own use that what is contingent for human insight in the particular (empirical) laws of nature nevertheless contains a lawful unity, not fathomable by us but still thinkable, in the combination of its manifold into one experience possible in itself. (KU :–) Kant appears simply to be claiming, first, that experience has the form of a hierarchical systematic whole or unity of empirical laws and, second, that as this system cannot be determined a priori by pure understanding, it must be presupposed as an a priori principle of reflective judgment. Kant tells us neither why experience must take the shape he claims it does nor why its possessing this structure must be made an assumption that serves as the a priori principle guiding reflective judgment. The last move of the argument is terminological. Finding the system of empirical concepts is a need of the understanding. But from its perspective, the existence of such a system is quite contingent. Thus to think of nature as, in fact, answering the need of the understanding is to think of it as purposively structured to meet this need. The assumption of the systematic conceptual unity of nature might also be termed the principle of the cognitive purposiveness of nature. The following point concerning Kant’s conception of purposiveness is worth underscoring. We will return to it in Chapter . Kant says in the quote above that a “thoroughgoing interconnection of empirical cognitions into a whole of experience” is “contingent for human insight” – but it “must still necessarily be presupposed and assumed.” Kant’s emphasis of the modal terms necessity and contingency is driven by a characterization of purposiveness, which he favors in the context of his transcendental investigation. Purposiveness is the (assumption of the) actual yet https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Reflective Power of Judgment & Deduction contingent existence of something that is a necessary requirement of our cognitive capacities. Specifically, to think of there being an empirical order of nature – an order which the understanding necessarily requires but the existence of which is contingent from its perspective alone – is to think of nature as cognitively purposive or as designed to meet the need or requirement of our understanding. The section ends by emphasizing that the principle is not determinative; it is a principle of reflective judgment, which guides our empirical investigation of nature: “however nature may be arranged as far as its universal laws are concerned, we must always seek out its empirical laws in accordance with that principle and the maxims that are grounded on it, because only so far as that takes place can we make progress in experience and acquire cognition by the use of our understanding” (KU :). .. What Is the Deduction of the Principle of the Purposiveness of Nature Missing? I have pointed to two main problems with what Kant quite misleadingly calls a deduction. First, it does not explain why empirical knowledge must take the form of a hierarchical taxonomy (species, genera, etc.) of empirical concepts – ultimately as Kant suggests, and I will claim in the following chapters, a system of causal laws. It is worth saying that this problem has not attracted attention, perhaps because the vision of empirical knowledge Kant presents here is familiar from the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique and other places, notably Kant’s lectures on logic, possibly also because it is not taken to be highly controversial or consequential. It is, furthermore, a picture shared by other philosophers of the day, most notably perhaps Leibniz. The second problem is graver. On the one hand, Kant creates high expectations by employing the term “deduction” – recall his ambivalence Indeed, Kant explicitly identifies his principle of continuity (equivalent to the idea of a hierarchical taxonomy of concepts) with Leibniz’s law of continuity in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic (A/B); see, for example, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, edited and translated by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , . A consequence of Leibniz’s view is the important infinite analysis thesis: The analysis of any empirical concept into its constituent parts is infinite; see, for example, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, edited and translated by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, ), –, –. Zuckert sees clearly the gap in Kant’s argument and supplements it by drawing on the Jäsche Logic account of empirical concepts. Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the “Critique of Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature about using the term in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic (see: A–/B–, A/B); and he specifically promises to seek the grounds of the principle of the purposiveness of nature in the “sources of cognition a priori.” On the other hand, he appears simply to declare that finding a hierarchical system of empirical laws is a need of the understanding and that “such a unity must still necessarily be presupposed and assumed” and specifically that “the power of judgment must thus assume it as an a priori principle for its own use.” I hope it is perfectly clear that in pointing out the weaknesses of the deduction I by no means intend to advocate a dismissive attitude toward it, still less toward the question it is presented as answering. I have already said though that it is not at all uncommon to encounter such an attitude toward Kant’s clear statements that he is complementing the investigation of the first Critique by introducing a further transcendental condition of experience; and the weakness of his argument renders such a response perhaps somewhat more excusable. Another way to contend with Kant’s claims would be to draw on available Kantian resources in order to reconstruct a valid argument to the conclusion he states. Though the ultimate aim of such an approach is obviously very close to mine, my response to the deduction differs from it. I think that the crucial questions raised by the deduction are only answered at the end of the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment. In Chapter , I will argue that Kant’s discussion of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding explains both why the system of empirical experience and knowledge takes the shape Kant attributes to it and how the assumption of the purposiveness of nature is grounded in discursivity. It is only in Kant’s discussion of the discursivity of our understanding then that the principle of the purposiveness of nature is ultimately grounded in the “sources of cognition a priori.” . The Aesthetic and the Logical Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Sections VI–VIII) It is my purpose in this section to argue further that in two quite different senses the deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature is introductory and indeed introduces the principal tasks of the Critique of I think it would be fair to describe in this way my past approach to the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. See Ido Geiger, “Is the Assumption of a Systematic Whole of Empirical Concepts a Necessary Condition of Knowledge?” Kant-Studien (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature Aesthetic Judgment and of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. As we will soon see in more detail, this will raise considerable conceptual and exegetical challenges, which will only be met in full in the chapters devoted to these parts of the text. With regard to the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, the principal problem, we saw, is the following: How can nonconceptual pure aesthetic judgments be related to the discussion of the conditions of experience and knowledge? In Chapter , I will argue that there is an answer to this formidable challenge. It will be my purpose in the present chapter only to point to Kant’s indications that the analysis of pure aesthetic judgments is indeed undertaken as part of the discussion of the conditions of empirical experience. With regard to the Critique of Teleological Judgment, the challenge is twofold: () explaining what the deduction is doing in the Introduction and showing that it finds its ultimate completion in the discussion of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding at the end of the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment; and () explaining why Kant chooses to devote protracted attention to organic phenomena in the Analytic of Teleological Judgment. In Chapters –, I will attempt to answer these questions in full. In this chapter, I will claim that the answers to both questions have to do with relocating the discussion of the conditions of empirical experience from the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique to the critique of reflective judgment. Before turning to these tasks, I will discuss the surprising way in which the Introduction connects the feeling of pleasure to the problem of the conditions of experience. .. The Feeling of Pleasure and the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section VI) In the discussion of the Preface above, I claimed that a critique of the faculty of feeling pleasure and displeasure is required not simply because it is a faculty of the mind but because reflective judgment is a faculty of theoretical cognition, and guidance by its a priori principle is a necessary condition of empirical experience. In other words, I argued that posing the problem of the conditions of empirical experience underwrites the claim that the distinct feeling of pleasure that is characteristic of reflective judgment demands a critique. Section VI of the Introduction confirms this claim. Very significantly, Kant focuses, in Section VI, on the distinct feeling of pleasure we feel when our empirical search for the conceptual order of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature nature is successful. The fact that the structure of experience accords with the categories evokes no pleasure, he says, “because here the understanding proceeds unintentionally, in accordance with its nature” (KU :). In contrast, “the discovered unifiability of two or more empirically heterogeneous laws of nature under a principle that comprehends them both is the ground of a very noticeable pleasure, often indeed of admiration, even of one which does not cease though one is already sufficiently familiar with its object” (KU :). Moreover, though the most fundamental conceptual order of nature appears to evoke in us no pleasurable response, “it must certainly have been there in its time, and only because the most common experience would not be possible without it has it gradually become mixed up with mere cognition and is no longer specially noticed” (KU :). Kant is claiming then that the distinct pleasure evoked by the revelation of the empirical conceptual order of nature is ubiquitous. It is quite remarkable that the introduction of the feeling of pleasure into the discussion emphasizes not the immediate pleasure expressed in pure aesthetic judgments but the pleasure we take in the conceptual order of nature, which is obviously mediated by the understanding. Our first thought might be that we are talking about one and the same pleasure that is accessed in two different ways – mediately and immediately. Indeed, Kant speaks in this section in the singular of the combination of the feeling of pleasure with the purposiveness of nature; and nowhere, as far as I can see, does he claim that the feeling of aesthetic pleasure is qualitatively distinct from the pleasure occasioned by the discovery of the conceptual order of nature. But upon reflection it seems much more plausible to think that the immediacy or mediateness of the pleasure is also an aspect of the experience. Even then, Kant must think that the two pleasures are very closely allied and in an important sense of a kind. In a crucial passage, to which we will return in Chapter , he appears to suggest that the difference between the conceptual and aesthetic pleasures is one of degree or intensity; he says that whereas in cognition generally the imagination and the understanding are brought into accord, in aesthetic pleasure the relation between the faculties is “optimal [zuträglichste] for the animation of both powers of the mind (the one through the other)” (KU :). He also speaks of the pleasure we experience in encountering the systematic unity of empirical laws generally in the last sentence of the paragraph devoted to the deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature in Section V. For the claim that the difference between the pleasure involved in cognition and the pleasure expressed in judgments of taste is quantitative only, see Melissa Zinkin, “Kant and the Pleasure of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature Indeed, in the Analytic of the Beautiful, Kant devotes considerable effort to distinguishing pure aesthetic pleasure from all species of practical pleasure; there he says that aesthetic pleasure in an object is felt “in mere contemplation [in der bloßen Betrachtung]” (KU :). The pleasure (or pleasures) is (are) theoretical or contemplative. However understood, Kant’s emphasis in Section VI on the pleasure we take in discovering the conceptual order of nature certainly supports the claim that posing the problem of the conditions of empirical experience underwrites the claim that the capacity for feeling this pleasure demands a critique. This emphasis, however, also poses once more the question of how pure aesthetic pleasure might be relevant to an investigation of the conditions of empirical experience. The aim of the next section is not to answer this question, but to show that Section VII of the Introduction suggests that it is relevant and contains important clues regarding this puzzling connection. .. The Aesthetic Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section VII) The first very remarkable thing about Section VII of the Introduction is, then, its title and the topic it announces: On the Aesthetic Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature. It is remarkable, once again, simply because it is the first time in the Introduction that Kant says that the purposiveness of nature has an aesthetic aspect. Until this juncture, the purposiveness of nature very clearly referred to the conceptual order of empirical nature, which reflective judgment is charged with seeking. Textually, this moment of disclosure takes the form of an emphatic question: “The question is only whether there is such a representation of purposiveness at all” (KU :). ‘Mere Reflection’,” Inquiry (): . For a succinct description of Zinkin’s paper and a brief response to it, see Chapter , note . Later in the text, Kant calls pure aesthetic pleasure “dry satisfaction [trockenen Wohlgefallen]” (KU :). Section VIII contains a sentence that, read out of context, is liable to mislead many readers. Kant claims that the representation of the conceptual purposiveness of nature, “since it relates the form of the object not to the cognitive faculties of the subject in the apprehension of it but to a determinate cognition of the object under a given concept, has nothing to do with a feeling of pleasure in things but rather with the understanding in judging them” (KU :). Given what he has said in Section VI, he cannot be saying that the conceptual representation of the purposiveness of nature has nothing to do with the feeling of pleasure. He is saying that in contrast to the immediate aesthetic pleasure in things it is an intellectually mediated pleasure in judging things. In the next subsection, I will turn to the question of what things precisely Kant is speaking about here. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature Section VII begins by distinguishing the merely subjective aesthetic aspect of a representation from its objective logical aspect: What is merely subjective in the representation of an object, i.e., what constitutes its relation to the subject, not to the object, is its aesthetic property; but that in it which serves for the determination of the object (for cognition) or can be so used is its logical validity. In the cognition of an object of the senses both relations are present together. In the sensible representation of things outside me the quality of the space in which we intuit them is the merely subjective aspect of my representation of them (through which what they might be as objects in themselves remains undetermined), on account of which relation the object is also thereby thought of merely as appearance; space, however, in spite of its merely subjective quality, is nevertheless an element in the cognition of things as appearances. (KU :–) It is important, first, to note that using the phrase “merely subjective” rather than simply “subjective” is misleading. For the passage clarifies that what is merely subjective in the representation of an object is present in the cognition of an object; and cognition is objective. So what is merely subjective is also present in objective cognition or is an aspect of objective cognition. Second, it will prove very important indeed to get clear on what Kant means by speaking of the “quality of the space” in which we intuit objects of the senses. At this juncture, I claim only that it is most plausible to take him to be referring to the spatial form of objects. The spatial figure or outline of an external object is a subjective aspect of its representation, because space is the subjective a priori form of outer intuition; but it is, nevertheless, an element in the objective cognition of things that exist in space. Similarly and confirming my suggestion, Kant immediately goes on to point out that the sensation of objects is merely subjective, but it also refers to “the material (the real) in them (through which something existing is given), just as space expresses the mere a priori form of the possibility of their intuition” (KU :). Having distinguished the objective from the subjective aspect of the representation of external objects (sensible matter from spatial form), Kant focuses on what is subjective but cannot become an element in cognition: However, the subjective aspect in a representation which cannot become an element of cognition at all is the pleasure or displeasure connected with it; for through this I cognize nothing in the object of the representation, although it can well be the effect of some cognition or other. (KU :) Saying here that the pleasure we are discussing “can well be the effect of some cognition or other” must be a reference to cases in which pleasure is evoked by the conceptual order of nature, discussed in Section VI. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature Kant then introduces the notion of the aesthetic representation of purposiveness: “the purposiveness that precedes the cognition of an object, which is immediately connected with it even without wanting to use the representation of it for a cognition, is the subjective aspect of it that cannot become an element of cognition at all” (KU :). It is worth emphasizing that at this juncture we get no explanation of why employing the notion of purposiveness is appropriate here nor how it might be related to the empirical conceptual order of nature. The paragraph ends (rather artificially) by posing the question quoted above of whether there is such an aesthetic representation of purposiveness. In the next paragraph we get a condensed description of the pure aesthetic pleasure, which will be the main object of investigation of the Analytic of the Beautiful and a first attempt to answer the question of why it might be appropriate to use the notion of aesthetic purposiveness in this context. It is worth quoting in full: If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition without a relation of this to a concept for a determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reflecting power of judgment, insofar as they are in play, and thus merely a subjective formal purposiveness of the object. For that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflecting power of judgment, even if unintentionally, at least comparing them to its faculty for relating intuitions to concepts. Now if in this comparison the imagination (as the faculty of a priori intuitions) is unintentionally brought into accord with the understanding, as the faculty of concepts, through a given representation and a feeling of pleasure is thereby aroused, then the object must be regarded as purposive for the reflecting power of judgment. Such a judgment is an aesthetic judgment on the purposiveness of the object, which is not grounded on any available concept of the object and does not furnish one. That object the form of which (not the material aspect of its representation, as sensation) in mere reflection on it (without any intention of acquiring a concept from it) is judged as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an object – with its representation this pleasure is also judged to be necessarily combined, consequently not merely for the subject who apprehends this form but for everyone who judges at all. The object is then called beautiful; and the faculty for judging through such a pleasure (consequently also with universal validity) is called taste. (KU :–) First of all, I claim that it is still most plausible to take Kant to be saying that it is the spatial form of objects that might evoke aesthetic pleasure. It is https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature most plausible for several related reasons: () In the first paragraph Kant spoke of the “quality of the space” in which we intuit objects of the senses and distinguish what is formal from what is material or real in them; () although it might be claimed that in speaking of “the form of an object of intuition” Kant is employing “form” in some different sense, it is far more plausible to take the distinction between what is formal and what is material in a representation to be exhaustive, as juxtaposing in this passage the form of an object and “the material aspect of its representation, as sensation” suggests; () taking Kant to be talking about the spatial form of an object or representation makes very good sense of his emphasis on the role of intuition and imagination in aesthetic pleasure as well as of his speaking of the mere apprehension of the form of an object; () it also makes very good sense of the nonconceptual nature of aesthetic pleasure; () and it is also in line with the move between the two senses of subjective representation in the first and second paragraphs of the section: the first speaks of the spatial form of an object and the second of the pleasure this form evokes. I will not here offer further defense of the crucial claim that what typically evokes pure aesthetic pleasure is the spatial form of objects. It will be elaborated and defended with all the vigor I can summon in Chapter . Second and relatedly, I claim at this juncture that taking Kant to be talking about the pleasure evoked by the spatial form of objects gives us a first important clue concerning the relation between aesthetic pleasure and empirical cognition. For the spatial form of objects is, to use Kant’s phrase, “an element in the cognition of things as appearances.” This is at best a clue, for Kant emphatically states that aesthetic pleasure has no relation “to a concept for a determinate cognition” – it “is not grounded on any available concept of the object and does not furnish one.” So it is still highly puzzling how aesthetic pleasure might be related to the empirical conceptual order of nature. In other words and recalling the previous paragraph, it is far from clear how aesthetic pleasure “precedes the cognition of an object” and how it might be “immediately connected with it.” Third, this passage is the first of several in which we find some kind of attempt to say why the pleasure we take in the apprehended form of an object is an expression of the “subjective formal purposiveness of the object.” Kant says that the pleasure expresses “its suitability [Angemessenheit] to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reflecting I note here that although this claim is not uncontroversial, it is the view of a significant number of readers; and a number of those who reject it acknowledge that the text often suggests this reading. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature power of judgment, insofar as they are in play.” The faculties in play – “free play” (KU :–) he later tells us – are the imagination and the understanding. So the claim is that the form of an object presented by the imagination is felt somehow to be suitable to the understanding. Later in the Analytic of the Beautiful, Kant speaks of the “mutual subjective correspondence [wechselseitigen subjektiven Übereinstimmung] of the powers of cognition with each other” (KU :), their “mutual agreement [wechselseitige Zusammenstimmung]” (KU :), “the harmony of the faculties of cognition [Harmonie der Erkenntnißvermögen]” (KU :), and of “unison in the play of the powers of the mind” (KU :); a lengthier characterization speaks of “the subjective purposiveness of representations in the mind of the beholder, which indicates a certain purposiveness of the representational state of the subject, and in this an ease in apprehending a given form in the imagination” (KU :). He also clarifies that he calls this interaction free “since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition” (KU :). In this passage we also get a somewhat more helpful if still abstruse and ambiguous characterization of the mental process that brings the imagination and the understanding into aesthetic accord. Kant appears to suggest that reflective judgment is regularly engaged in actively or intentionally seeking a concept under which the form of a representation might be subsumed. If it finds such a concept, it might then establish whether the object also possesses the other characteristic marks of objects that fall under this concept and so whether we can determine what kind of an object it is. But as the passage asserts, reflective judgment also operates unintentionally, which I take to mean in operation though not in pursuit of its distinctive role of finding concepts for apprehended forms. In the former case, the imagination and the understanding are brought into accord by finding in an apprehended object the marks contained in the concept of objects of its kind. In the latter case, the imagination and the understanding are sometimes brought into accord even though no such accord is being sought. It is in these cases that a feeling of aesthetic pleasure is felt. It seems to me that Kant’s talk of the “apprehension of forms” can be understood in at least two ways. First, he might mean that the imagination synthesizes the manifold given in intuition into spatial forms through some internal and predetermined process. It might also be read as suggesting that the imagination blindly tries different possibilities of synthesizing the manifold given in intuition into spatial forms and that some of these are felt to be somehow suitable to the understanding. At this juncture, the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature latter possibility seems the more plausible, for three reasons: () taking the imagination to be determined by some internal process seems very close to taking it to be a faculty of rules; () it would be very misleading to describe such a process of self-determination as unintentional; and () taking the imagination to be blindly trying out various possible ways of synthesizing the manifold is in accord with the fact that the conceptual order of nature is sought rather than somehow internally given. Kant then moves on to discuss at some length the expectation of universal agreement, which is an important characteristic of judgments of beauty. I will have a lot more to say about this important issue as well in Chapter . At this juncture, it is important to emphasize again the fact that it is an aspect of the close (if still highly puzzling) connection between aesthetic judgments and the conditions of empirical experience. Kant says clearly that the expectation of universal agreement is grounded in the “universal though subjective condition of reflecting judgments, namely the purposive correspondence of an object (be it a product of nature or of art) with the relationship of the cognitive faculties among themselves (of the imagination and the understanding) that is required for every empirical cognition” (KU :). Kant does not say that this is a case of an agreement of the faculties that is similar or somehow comparable to the correspondence that occurs in cognition. He speaks of the relationship between the imagination and the understanding that is “required for every cognition.” This is in line with the suggestion examined in the previous section that cognitive pleasure in the empirical order of nature and pure aesthetic pleasure are of a kind. I want to conclude the discussion of this important introductory section by emphasizing two points. First, the introduction of the notion of the aesthetic representation of the purposiveness of nature suggests that what evokes aesthetic pleasure is the spatial form of empirical objects. In Chapter , this claim will be elaborated and amended and will receive considerable support. The second point I would like to pose as a constraint: A reading of the Analytic of the Beautiful should seek to explain how the discussion of pure aesthetic pleasure is related to the problem of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience. It might be claimed that no such connection can exist, precisely because pure judgments of taste are nonconceptual. But I have shown that puzzling though this is, the text strongly supports the claim that there is such a connection. It is supported () by the way pleasure is introduced into the discussion; () by the fact that aesthetic pleasure is called the aesthetic representation of the (conceptual) purposiveness of nature; and () by rather explicit if https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature puzzling assertions. Perhaps the most explicit of these assertions occurs in the next section of the Introduction. There Kant speaks of natural beauty as the subjective formal presentation of the principle of the purposiveness of nature, immediately after saying very clearly that the principle is charged with “providing concepts in the face of this excessive multiplicity in nature (in order to be able to be oriented in it)” (KU :). For methodological reasons then a discussion of the text cannot begin by rejecting the possibility that the analysis of pure judgments of taste is an essential part of Kant’s search for the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience. .. The Logical Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section VIII) As we saw above, the title and body of Section VII of the Introduction puzzlingly suggest that pure judgments of taste are aesthetic, nonconceptual representations of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. But the title of the next section is also quite surprising, particularly if we emphasize again the fact that the purposiveness of nature refers to the conceptual purposiveness of nature. For the title of Section VIII announces its topic to be the logical – read: conceptual – representation of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. What is Kant talking about? The short answer to this question is that in Section VIII Kant introduces teleological judgments of natural ends (or organisms) as particular judgments that represent – or present (darstellen; exhibēre), as Kant also says – the more general regulative principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. In other words, judgments of organisms apply the general principle of the purposiveness of nature to certain natural objects. Section VIII begins by returning to the aesthetic judgments discussed in the previous section. These judgments represent purposiveness according to a “merely subjective ground” (KU :). The ground is the harmonious interaction of the faculties of cognition in pure aesthetic judgments. The logical representation, in contrast, has an “objective ground, as a correspondence of its form with the possibility of the thing itself, in accordance with a concept of it which precedes and contains the ground I will return to the claim that these judgments are regulative in the next chapter. See Chapter , Section .: The Concept of Organism as a Regulative Principle of Reflective Judgment. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature of this form” (KU :). It is important to emphasize that the concept is not an empirical concept that describes what a thing is. It precedes its object, because it is an a priori concept; and it contains the ground of the form of the object, because it is the a priori concept of the purposiveness of nature applied to or employed in judging particular objects. If the concept of an object is given, then the business of the power of judgment in using it for cognition consists in presentation (exhibitio), i.e., in placing a corresponding intuition beside the concept – whether this be done through our own imagination, as in art, when we realize an antecedently conceived concept of an object that is an end for us, or through nature, in its technique (as in the case of organized bodies), when we ascribe to it our concept of an end for judging its product, in which case what is represented is not merely a purposiveness of nature in the form of the thing, but this product of it is represented as a natural end. (KU :–) Natural ends or organisms are regarded as presentations or simply examples of judgments according to the a priori principle of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature. Being an example or an instantiation of a judgment according to a principle of purposiveness is, I submit, the sense of the term “representation” in the titles of Sections VII and VIII. That particular judgments of organisms employ the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature to judge natural ends explains why it isn’t simply redundant to speak of the logical or conceptual representation of the purposiveness of nature. On this is grounded the division of the critique of the power of judgment into that of the aesthetic and teleological power of judgment; by the former is meant the faculty for judging formal purposiveness (also called subjective) through the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, by the latter the faculty for judging the real purposiveness (objective) of nature through understanding and reason. (KU :) That Kant is speaking about teleological judgments of organisms in this section is not controversial. I believe though that focusing on organic phenomena is the origin of significant misconceptions about the aims of the Critique of Teleological Judgment and, consequently, about the aims of the third Critique as a whole. From the perspective of this book, it raises several considerable challenges. In the next subsection I will discuss the facts that focusing on organisms and the claim made in Section VIII that only a critique of aesthetic judgment is essential to a critique of reflective judgment have led quite a number of readers to the conclusion that the second half of the third Critique is not directly related to the transcendental question posed in the Introduction. In the next chapter, I will return to https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Aesthetic & Logical Purposiveness of Nature Section VIII and the question of the precise status of teleological judgments of natural ends or organisms. .. The Interpretative Challenges In this section, I want to lay out the interpretative challenges that the introductory discussions of the aesthetic and logical purposiveness of nature raise. The challenge raised by the discussion of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature is considerable. The task, we saw above, is finding how the discussion of nonconceptual pure judgments of taste is related to the problem of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience. I claimed above that the text of the Introduction strongly supports the claim that there is such a connection. The main charge of Chapter will be to uncover and describe it in detail. I claimed in the previous section that the Critique of Teleological Judgment is crucial for the deduction put forward in the Introduction. For in §, Kant argues that it is the discursivity of our understanding that makes the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature a necessary transcendental principle guiding the empirical investigation of nature. In Chapter , I will discuss this argument in detail and claim that the analysis of what Kant calls in § the discursive peculiarity (Eigentümlichkeit) of the understanding indeed grounds what he speaks of in the Introduction as its aim and need (Absicht, Bedürfnis; see: KU :, –). But the claim that grounding the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a principal task of the Critique of Teleological Judgment must at first appear to be quite controversial and for three related reasons, the latter two of which come up in Section VIII of the Introduction. First, thinking of the architectonic structure of the third Critique, there is surely something odd about taking its Introduction to offer a self-standing answer to the question of the missing transcendental principle of empirical experience. But doing so certainly seems well supported by the fact (quite odd in itself ) that Kant claims he is presenting its deduction in the Introduction. Significantly, the Critique of Teleological Judgment itself contains no deduction. Second, the Analytic of Teleological Judgment directs attention to organic phenomena, first introduced in Section VIII; and indeed, organic phenomena are often taken to See Chapter , Section .: The Objective Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature be the primary concern of both the Analytic and Dialectic of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. From this perspective, the main concern of the second half of the third Critique (setting aside the Methodology) is only obliquely related to the transcendental undertaking of the Introduction. Third, Kant says in Section VIII that only a critique of aesthetic judgment is essential to a critique of reflective judgment, and this might very naturally be taken to suggest that the critique of teleological judgment is not essential to the principal concerns of the work. I have already said quite a bit about the first challenge. I want to concede outright that it is indeed very odd that in the Introduction to his work Kant presents what he declares is a deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature. I think that one reason for this is the evolution of the third Critique from the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason. It makes no sense to take very long to present an idea of key importance at which Kant has already had a go. Had he not, I submit, the deduction of the conceptual purposiveness of nature might have found its proper place in the body of the work. This claim is supported by the fact that at the apex of the Critique of Teleological Judgment Kant returns to the argument. It is only there that he reveals the most fundamental ground of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature – or so I will argue in Chapter . Furthermore, I will claim in Chapter that the aesthetic purposiveness of nature underwrites its logical or conceptual purposiveness. The aesthetic purposiveness of nature thus has logical priority over its conceptual purposiveness, and it makes sense to discuss it first. But it is very hard to understand the cognitive role of the assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature without understanding what it is that it grounds. It is thus very helpful to have a discussion of the conceptual purposiveness of nature in the Introduction. In response to the second point, in Chapters – I will argue that the ultimate end of the discussion of organisms is in fact the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. Kant chooses to present an argument from organic phenomena to this conclusion, because it allows him to construct an antinomy of teleological judgment. Why Kant invests considerable effort in the construction of antinomies of aesthetic and teleological judgment is explained, once again, by the evolution of the work. Very briefly, Kant wants to show that making the principle of the purposiveness of nature a principle of reason for the power of reflective judgment leaves it free of the sort of contradictions that typically beset reason. In the first Critique, Kant simply asserts that there should be and indeed there is a positive use of ideas of reason. But how do we know that https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion this use is free of contradictions and so indeed positive? Setting our minds at ease about this concern, I will claim, is the end of Kant’s construction of antinomies of reflective judgment. As we will see in detail in Chapter , in the case of the antinomy of teleological judgment the construction is quite elaborate and involves considerable difficulties. This point is related to another made above. The fact that the principle of the purposiveness of nature is ultimately grounded in the discursivity of our understanding is precisely what assures us that we can follow it without straying beyond the bounds of sensibility, to which, of course, the discursive understanding is limited. This is the deep significance of making reason’s principle of purposiveness a principle guiding the faculty of reflective judgment – defined as the faculty charged with finding empirical concepts for sensibly given particulars. The above claim is closely related to the response to the third challenge. In Section VIII, Kant is certainly not saying that the discussion of the principle of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature is not an essential part of the third Critique. Indeed, he has already professedly offered a deduction of it. He is claiming that the critique of aesthetic judgment is essential, “since this alone contains a principle that the power of judgment lays at the basis of its reflection on nature entirely a priori” (KU :); I take the emphasis to be the fact that the principle is entirely a priori. But the discussion of the Critique of Teleological Judgment takes as its point of departure organic phenomena, and “no a priori ground at all can be given why there must be objective ends of nature, i.e., things that are possible only as natural ends, indeed not even the possibility of such things is obvious from the concept of a nature as an object of experience in general as well as in particular” (KU :). I will have a lot more to say about Kant’s choice. He himself acknowledges the fact that their contingent existence is a considerable weakness of the argument from organic phenomena. For now, I will say only that it reveals how important it is for him to demonstrate that making the purposiveness of nature a principle of reason for reflective judgment leaves it contradiction-free. I am claiming then that the discussion of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature is essential to the undertaking of the book; furthermore, the discussion of organisms, though of great independent philosophical interest, is in the third Critique subservient to this end. . Conclusion I argued in this chapter that despite what might appear to be evidence to the contrary both the Preface and the Introduction to the third Critique https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Charge of Reflective Judgment & Purposiveness of Nature present the question of the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience of nature as a principal concern of the work as a whole. I also claimed that Kant’s discussion of the problem in the Introduction is indeed introductory and is only completed in the body of the work. This last claim poses considerable challenges, with which the next four chapters will have to contend. In Chapters –, I will argue that Kant’s ultimate concern in the Critique of Teleological Judgment is not the analysis of organic phenomena but the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as whole. I will also argue that the most important elements of the deduction, which Kant claims he presents in the Introduction, are in fact only put forward in the last sections of this part of the book. Only there do we learn why the system of empirical experience and knowledge takes the shape Kant attributes to it and how the assumption of the purposiveness of nature is grounded in the discursive peculiarity of the understanding. In Chapter , I will discuss the crucial role pure judgments of taste play in the search for the empirical order of nature. The challenge here, which Kant acknowledges already in the Preface, is particularly great: How can nonconceptual pure judgments of taste play a necessary role in the search for the empirical conceptual order of nature? https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.003 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment and the Methodology of Biology . Introduction In the last three decades or so, Kant’s analysis of judgments of organic nature in the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment has received significant attention. Squinting and from a safe distance, there appears to be considerable agreement about the general claims the chapter articulates. First, we necessarily judge certain natural things teleologically, things we would call organisms and organic processes and think of as the objects investigated by the biological or life sciences. Second, although these judgments are necessary, they nevertheless pose no threat or no serious threat to the mechanistic conception of nature, to which Kant is firmly committed, because they are not determinative but merely reflective judgments. But what from a distance appears to be broad agreement reveals, on closer scrutiny, a highly significant divergence of views. It is not perfectly clear, first, how Kant establishes the necessity of teleological judgments of organisms. Second, there is no agreement what precisely these judgments mean or what they signify about their objects and so what cognitive gain they afford. More specifically, it is a matter of controversy whether there are teleological explanations of organisms, what precisely they might be and how they might differ from and be reconciled with mechanistic explanations. This chapter will present my answers to these questions. A further question is far less often asked about the Analytic of Teleological Judgment: Why does a book that claims to bring the “entire Kant typically speaks of organized or self-organized beings and organized nature. But he also speaks of “organic products [organischen Produkten]” (KU :, , ), “organic beings [organischer Wesen]” (KU :, , ) and of the “organic technique of nature” (EEKU :) or the “organic [Organisches]” (KU :n). This is just what I will be referring to when speaking, for convenience, of organisms and organic processes. By speaking (somewhat anachronistically) of biology I mean to refer to the scientific study of such beings and processes. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology critical enterprise to an end” (KU :; see also letter to Jakob, September , ; Br :) contain a detailed analysis of teleological judgments of organisms? Why is this analysis of central importance to the critical undertaking? As important and closely related to the critical project as the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science no doubt is, Kant makes no such claims about it – to point out the most obvious comparison. I think it is no coincidence that this question is rarely articulated in such provocative terms. It is a direct consequence of the sort of disjointed reading of the third Critique that sees it as offering analyses of different types of reflective judgments. But on such readings, it is principally, indeed perhaps almost exclusively, the Introduction that is directly concerned with the grand critical project of detailing the transcendental conditions of experience and knowledge. As I said in the Introduction to this book and emphasized in Chapter , I am methodologically committed to rejecting this type of collaged reading – although the book offers only a partial and not a comprehensive alternative to it. Unlike the discovery of “a new sort of a priori principles different from those hitherto observed” (Letter to Reinhold; December and , ; Br :), which sets Kant the task of writing a critique of taste, the problem of the organism is one he recognizes very early on. Emphatic references to the unique standing of organisms are found in the earlier precritical writings (see NTH :; TG :–); and Kant’s first paper on the human races was published in , six years before the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason. But even the later papers on the biological notion of race and teleology (, ) do not so much as hint that a discussion of organisms is indispensable to the critical project. Why then does Kant incorporate a discussion of organisms into the Critique of the Power of Judgment and indeed give it such prominence? In contrast, Zuckert’s unifying account claims that teleological judgments of organisms are particular exhibitions or instantiations of the general reflective principle of the purposiveness of nature. This is not a claim I disagree with. But whereas Zuckert holds that this explains what the analysis of such judgments is doing in a work devoted to completing the critical project, I see the fact as a problem. Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the “Critique of Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), and passim. It is not clear to me why Kant speaks in the letter to Reinhold of principles in the plural. Is he thinking of free judgments of natural beauty and adherent judgments of the beauty of works of art? Is he thinking of judgments of beauty and sublimity? In the First Introduction he says that the critique of taste will be concerned with beauty, whereas judgments of sublimity will require a critique of the feeling of spirit (EEKU :). It seems to me unlikely that he is speaking of teleological judgment, because the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature was recognized as an a priori principle in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, and teleological judgments of organisms are not purely a priori (see KU :–). Nor are they a new discovery for Kant. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Necessity of Teleological Judgments of Organisms My answer to this question will be that Kant’s ultimate aim in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment is to argue for the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole, and he comes to see that constructing an argument from organic life to this conclusion has advantages of which he wants to avail himself. I will lay out these considerations in more detail in the next chapter. But it is worth emphasizing already here that, on my reading, the analysis of organisms is a stepping-stone toward a more general claim concerning the purposiveness of nature as a whole. This chapter and the following two defend then a surprising combination of claims: Kant’s analysis of organisms is a contribution of contemporary and perhaps also lasting value to the philosophy of biology; it is not though the principal philosophical aim of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. This last claim will be addressed properly only in Chapter , but it will be a recurring theme in this chapter and the next. . The Necessity of Teleological Judgments of Organisms The problem which Kant apparently takes on in the Analytic of Teleological Judgment is this: Certain natural objects and processes, which we would call organisms and organic processes, are spoken of as though they were self-producing or self-organizing. And this seems to imply that they are purposive products of their own end-directed agency. But modern science firmly holds that there are no such end-directed agencies in nature. As we commonly put it, the forces of nature are blind. We explain the generation of a material object and the processes governing its interactions with others as the blind effect of the forces governing the objects involved in these interactions. No end governs the generation or characteristic processes of a natural object. To put the point from the complementary perspective, goal-directed agency exists only where there are rational agents, who possess a will and act intentionally to realize an end they conceive. But strictly speaking, such agents as agents are not part of the order of nature. No will, intention or end govern, then, the generation of a natural object or its characteristic processes. Do teleological judgments then have a place within a modern science of the organism? Or must we purge our language of them? Kant takes on the For a similar characterization of Kant’s basic problem, see Luca Illetterati, “Teleological Judgments: Between Technique and Nature,” in Kant’s Theory of Biology, edited by Ina Goy and Eric Watkins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology task of explaining why, though we necessarily employ teleological language to describe organisms and organic processes, this commits us neither to the existence of intentional agencies or forces in nature, nor to the existence of a divine author of nature. In short and put in contemporary terms, he sets out to show that the use of teleological language commits us neither to what we might define as vitalism nor to what we would call creationism. Kant’s terms for these two views are hylozoism and theism (see KU :, , –; see also TG :; MAN :; V-Met/Dohna :). That our use of teleological language to describe organisms poses a problem for the philosophy of science might seem obvious enough. For it is still the occasion of lively debate in contemporary philosophy of biology. I will not attempt to survey this discussion here. It is instructive for our present purposes, however, to consider briefly a highly influential and characteristic contemporary view of the matter, precisely because it attempts to solve Kant’s problem by fiat. Ernst Mayr famously champions the use of the term “teleonomic” to describe goal-directed processes in nature: “A teleonomic process or behavior is one which owes its goaldirectedness to the operation of a program.” Yet despite the fact that “program” is very clearly a term that implies intentional agency, Mayr insists that the “origin of a program is quite irrelevant for the definition. It can be the product of evolution, as are all genetic programs, or it can be the acquired information of an open program, or it can be a man-made device.” Indeed, this clearly stated position seems to be implicit in the language and practices of many working scientists. That the use of teleological or teleonomic language in reference to nature seems to commit us to the existence of unprogrammed programs is, however, precisely the problem with which Kant contends in the Analytic of Teleological For a very illuminating account of how Kant might contribute to the contemporary debate, see Angela Breitenbach, “Teleology in Biology: A Kantian Perspective,” Kant Yearbook (): –. Ernst Mayr, “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological,” in Towards a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), . Mayr, “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological,” –. For the claim that Kant’s concept of natural purpose is or greatly resembles the concept of teleonomy, see Klaus Düsing, “Naturteleologie und Metaphysik bei Kant und Hegel,” in Hegel und die “Kritik der Urteilskraft,” edited by Hans-Friedrich Fulda and Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, ), , , . In the opening paragraph of his book, Lenoir says that “biologists have learned to live with a kind of schizophrenic language, employing terms like ‘selfish genes’ and ‘survival machines’ to describe the behavior of organisms as if they were somehow purposive yet all the while intending that they are highly complicated mechanisms.” Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth Century German Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), ix. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Necessity of Teleological Judgments of Organisms Judgment. In other words, for Kant, it makes all the difference in the world whether a program is human-made, in which case the use of teleological language is perfectly appropriate (if not without its own considerable metaphysical complexities), or whether it is the product of a natural process, in which case it poses a very serious philosophical problem. Having said that, it is my claim that the central argument of the Analytic of Teleological Judgment is simple – in fact, misleadingly simple. Kant begins with the strong and unquestioned assumption that we attribute to certain natural objects the property of self-organization. That we judge them teleologically follows by conceptual analysis. And it is in this rather distinct sense that teleological judgments of organisms are necessary. () We attribute to certain natural objects and processes the property of self-organization. More specifically, we attribute to certain objects and processes properties such as reproduction, growth, interdependence of organs and systems, including regeneration and compensation for malformed organs or systems (see KU :–). () To attribute to an object the property of being organized is to think that “its parts (as far as their existence and their form are concerned) are possible only through their relation to the whole. For the thing itself is an end, and is thus comprehended under a concept or an idea that must determine a priori everything that is to be contained in it” (KU :). But to attribute the property of organization alone to an object is to think of it as “merely a work of art, i.e., the product of a rational cause distinct from the matter (the parts), the causality of which (in the production and combination of the parts) is determined through its idea of a whole that is thereby possible (thus not through nature outside of it)” (KU :). In a self-organizing natural object or process, in contrast, “it is required that its parts reciprocally produce each other, as far as their form and their combination is concerned, and thus produce a whole Ginsborg makes a similar point with regard to the use of the notion of design to explain the use of functional language in biology. See Hannah Ginsborg, “Oughts without Intentions: A Kantian Approach to Biological Functions,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. Cf., Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press () Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology out of their own causality, the concept of which, conversely, is in turn the cause” (KU :). Therefore, we think of self-organizing objects as ends or purposes of nature – that is, teleologically: “An organized product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (KU :). Four remarks are in order. First, the list of typical properties of selforganizing objects and processes given in () – that is, reproduction, growth and interdependence of organs and systems – is not intended to be a complete list of organic properties. Significantly, the argument is not committed to a well-defined and complete biological lexicon. Indeed, Kant emphasizes that his examples identify different things as self-organizing. Specifically, in reproduction it is an organic species that generates or produces itself. Growth is a process through which an individual generates itself. There is a variety of examples of how the parts, organs and systems of an individual organism depend on one another and on the whole and thus can be said to generate each other and the whole of which they are a part. In fact, there might well be other properties that attribute self-organization to an object or process, including, as we will see in detail, processes operative in a race, species or even all organic life. As claim () reveals, to attribute self-organization to something means, first, attributing to the parts a dependence on the idea of a whole; and second, attributing this dependence not to a rational cause distinct from it, but to the natural object or process itself. Much later in the text, Kant describes additional organic properties – namely, the generation of species and adaptability of races (see KU :–). (We will return to these two examples.) These attributes meet the characterization of self-organization. They are not mentioned in the Analytic, presumably because the discussion in these later passages is highly speculative and there would be no agreement among the audience Kant is addressing that they are indeed attributable to organisms. Kant’s focus on only a few uncontroversial examples will prove important in supporting the claim of the next chapter that the analysis of organic phenomena is not his ultimate philosophical end. Second, there is a clear gap in the argument. In () Kant speaks of a number of typical organic properties and so of some degree of selforganization. But in () and () he speaks of every part being an end of the whole and a means as well. Kant appears here to be anticipating his conclusion that the principle of purposiveness is a regulative principle that https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Necessity of Teleological Judgments of Organisms guides our investigation of organisms. We will see below that as a regulative principle guiding investigation it is legitimate and indeed recommendable to take this general approach to organisms. But by anticipating this claim, Kant might be going beyond what anyone who attributes certain capacities of self-organization to organisms would assert, though he claims that it is “well known that the anatomists of plants and animals . . . assume as indispensably necessary the maxim that nothing in such a creature is in vain” (KU :). It is, therefore, important to note that Kant qualifies his statement that every part of an organized being must be thought of as both a means and an end of the whole. He says that it is sufficient that the parts of an organism be connected in some way to the teleological organization of the whole. They might be its mechanistic consequences; for example, they might be grown and formed by it but not serve the whole as means (KU :; see also MS :). Third, implicit in the argument is a significant assumption. Three different ways of conceiving of an object or process are spelled out as different kinds of relations parts have to a whole. We regard objects or processes as: () the effect of blind causality; or () the effect of an external intentional agency; or () self-organizing. The generation and processes of a nonorganic natural whole are explained as the blind effect of the forces governing its parts. An artifact is explained as the product of intentional agency that puts the parts together into a whole so that the forces governing the parts are jointly harnessed to fulfill the end the agent has in mind. We talk of organisms as though their parts have the joint end of contributing to the functioning of the whole of which they themselves are a part. This is an extremely important assumption indeed, and we will return to it in Chapter , where I will attempt to explain why Kant claims that mechanistic explanation necessarily proceeds from parts and their causal properties to wholes. It too can be set aside for the time being, because the assumption seems innocuous in the context of the discussion of organisms. It seems very natural to think of an organic process and what it involves as part, say, of an individual organism as a whole, as well as to think that gaining insight into the working of its processes is explaining what this whole is and how it functions. Indeed, attributing self-organization to something and the problem posed by this attribution seems to imply that understanding it just is discovering how its processes of self-organization work. Furthermore, Kant has a very flexible view of what these part and wholes might be. (We will return to this point too in Chapter .) As just noted, a whole might be an individual organism or its state, a race, a species or even all organic species as a whole. And he seems to think of a https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology part as anything that might be involved in a process of self-production. For example, in the case of growth, part of the process are nutrients an organism “receives from nature outside of itself” (KU :) – so “raw material” (KU :) that is not a physical part of the organism. In the case of sexual reproduction, the relevant organic whole is “not one that is organized in a single body” (KU :). As we will see below, Kant’s writings on the human races attribute a decisive importance to climate and physical environment in processes of species adaptation that lead to the differentiation of the human species into the variety of races. Finally and most importantly for our immediate concerns, the argument speaks of the properties attributed to organisms. As I have presented it, the point of departure of the argument is the way all, in fact, think and speak of organic phenomena. In Kantian terms, the point of departure of the argument is the manner in which we judge certain phenomena. A word of caution is due here. Kant often reverts to the language of objects and speaks simply of natural products and their properties. It will be of great importance for the interpretation I offer that, although Kant often reverts to the language of objects, strictly speaking he is in fact consistently referring to judgments of objects and the properties attributed to them. Succinctly, Kant is offering an analysis of a type of judgment – one all employ; he is not offering an analysis of a type of object. As will be made clear below, there is a significant gap between these two types of analysis. Thus presented, Kant’s argument for the necessity of teleological judgments of organisms is very strong. And clearly, it is very strong because it assumes a great deal at its outset: We judge or attribute to certain objects of nature – namely, organisms – the property of self-organization. The conclusion that we judge or think of organisms teleologically () follows from this premise almost immediately, by analysis of the concept of selforganization (). That something like this two-step inference is part of the argument of the Analytic might not be very controversial. What is controversial, I think, is the claim that this is all the argument Kant offers. The starting point of the argument is the common identification of some objects as self-organizing. It will be my claim that Kant does not argue that we must accept this starting point. He simply assumes all do. This claim is central to Zumbach’s interpretation of the Critique of Teleological Judgment which, in broad outline, is similar to the interpretation developed in the next sections. See Clark Zumbach, “Kant’s Argument for the Autonomy of Biology,” Nature and System (): –; Clark Zumbach, The Transcendent Science: Kant’s Conception of Biological Methodology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Objective Representation of Purposiveness of Nature . The Objective Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature The claim that Kant is offering an analysis of a type of judgment he simply takes for granted we all make rather than an account of a type of object we encounter might seem to contradict what he says in the following passage: Organized beings are thus the only ones in nature which, even if considered in themselves and without a relation to other things, must nevertheless be thought of as possible only as its ends, and which thus first provide objective reality for the concept of an end that is not a practical end but an end of nature, and thereby provide natural science with the basis for a teleology, i.e., a way of judging its objects in accordance with a particular principle the likes of which one would otherwise be absolutely unjustified in introducing at all (since one cannot at all understand the possibility of such a kind of causality a priori). (KU :–) Teleological judgments and the concept of a natural end, Kant says here, have objective reality, and they thereby provide natural science with a basis for teleology. Is it then Kant’s claim that it is simply an objective empirical fact that there are self-organizing natural beings? Is he further claiming that consequently scientists are required to speak of objective purposive causal forces and objective teleological explanations? It bears emphasizing that even in the passage we are considering Kant is, in fact, talking about a way of considering or thinking, or, as he says clearly, a way of judging organisms. What is given objective reality is a type of judgment. He is not saying that our transcendentally unpredictable encounter with organisms gives the concept of natural self-organization objective reality in the way that an empirically surprising encounter with unicorns would give their concept objective reality. What is given objective reality is judgment according to a particular principle. But what is this principle? To get a clearer view, it is first worth recalling the discussion of Section VIII of the Introduction, in the previous chapter, and specifically the passages echoed in the quote we are considering. As we saw there, judgments of natural ends or organisms are introduced as presentations or applications of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature: we Guyer asks: “Is it just an empirical fact, a matter of empirical psychology rather than transcendental psychology, that organisms suggest the idea of purposiveness to us?”; Paul Guyer, “Organisms and the Unity of Science,” in Kant and the Exact Sciences, edited by Eric Watkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . As will be made clear below, it cannot just be an empirical fact. But I do think that the point of departure of the argument is what Kant takes to be an undisputed fact – namely, that we attribute properties of self-organization to certain objects. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology can regard “natural ends as the presentation of the concept of a real (objective) purposiveness” (KU :). We know from the discussion of the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason that the assumption of the systematic unity of nature, the predecessor of the principle of the logical purposiveness of nature, is an idea of reason and that, nevertheless, Kant wants to secure for it “some objective validity” (A/B). But an idea of reason, by its very nature, cannot simply have objective validity because no empirical object can correspond to it. As Kant says in the first Critique, for a principle or idea of reason “no corresponding schema of sensibility can be given, and therefore they can have no object in concreto” (A/B). Whatever course Kant is setting on precisely in the third Critique, it is clear, first, that he is still contending with the complicated question of securing some sort of objective validity for an idea of reason. Note that he is still speaking of the principle of the real or objective purposiveness of nature as involving both the understanding and reason: the “concept of ends and of purposiveness is of course a concept of reason” (EEKU :) – although he now thinks of it as a principle of reason for reflective judgment (see the title of §; see also KU :–). It is clear, furthermore, that his way out of this difficulty is similar in both the Appendix and in the third Critique. In the former, Kant secures for the idea a “regulative use and with this some objective validity” (A/B). In the third Critique, Kant further claims that the principle of the purposiveness of nature in its general use, and in relation to organisms specifically, belongs to a power of judgment that is “merely reflecting and is not determining objects” (KU :) and that the concept of a natural end or organism is not a “constitutive concept of the understanding or of reason, but it can still be a regulative concept for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU :). Thus the use secured for the principle of the purposiveness of nature will not allow us to assert or determine that an object is self-organizing. It will, though, secure for the principle a use that relates it to something real or objective and empirically given. I will try to explain what precisely the regulative status of the principle means and what kind of relation to organic phenomena it secures in the next two sections. . The Concept of Organism as a Regulative Principle of Reflective Judgment I am claiming that the starting point of Kant’s argument in the Analytic of Teleological Judgment is the fact that we attribute self-organization to https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Concept of Organism as a Regulative Principle certain objects of nature. And I am further claiming that Kant does not justify this starting point. To understand Kant’s argument in the Analytic it is decisive, I believe, to see that he is not claiming – indeed, that he cannot be claiming – that we attribute self-organization to organisms because they just are self-organizing. Thus attributing purposiveness to an organism is not like attributing the property of being green to a green object or identifying an object as a piece of jade because it is a green rock of a certain hardness and toughness. Kant holds that we can never be justified in asserting that an object is self-organizing. Self-organization, strictly speaking, is not a property that we can determine an object possesses. We might think of it as an assumption we make about it – though an assumption we cannot, in principle and undeniably, satisfactorily unpack and so affirm as fact. In order to see that this is the view Kant holds, it is helpful to return to the distinction between determinative and reflective judgment. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) is given, then the power of judgment, which subsumes the particular under it (even when, as a transcendental power of judgment, it provides the conditions a priori in accordance with which alone anything can be subsumed under the universal), is determining. If, however, only the particular is given, for which the universal is to be found, then the power of judgment is merely reflecting. (KU :; see also EEKU :) So to begin with, as a reflective judgment, the attribution of self-organization to a natural object means undertaking to search for the concept or universal under which it is subsumed. More concretely, to identify an object as an organism is to take on the task of specifying the details of its processes of self-organization. However, to characterize the attribution of self-organization to an object as taking a reflective stance toward it is not the whole story. For we can take a reflective stance toward say jade and search for further properties and subsets within a representative sample of it. We might then discover that within the sample objects differ somewhat in their hardness and toughness and come to think that the objects we are examining, though similar in appearance, comprise two distinct types of rock. We might decide to call these two types of rock nephrite and jadeite and employ our determinative judgment to assert that objects belong to one or the other group. Thus concepts like jade, jadeite and nephrite figure both in reflective judgments and in determinative judgments. In contrast – and this is the crucial point – an attribution of self-organization can never be a https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology determinative judgment. We cannot, in principle, be justified in asserting or determining that an object is self-organizing. Why is that? One way of getting at the point is to see that for Kant any explication of a concept of self-organization will contain as an analysans a further notion of self-organization. In other words, self-organization cannot be analyzed away. This is not to say that we cannot make progress in the analysis of such concepts and so gain insight into their objects. We can, for example, gain insight into a plant’s processes of growth by discovering how the roots absorb water and minerals from the ground and how the xylem functions in their distribution through the plant. As we will see in more detail in the next section, the insight we can gain into the processes of self-organization of an organism is in principle unlimited. Nevertheless, as far as the puzzling attribution of self-organization is concerned – an attribution that demands analysis – it cannot be explicated in a satisfactory manner, precisely because any such explication will still describe its object as self-organizing. In our example, we will still be describing the roots and xylem as self-organizing parts or organs of the plant. It is this particular aspect of the characterization of self-organization that explains why Kant speaks of it as “infinitely remote from all art” (KU :; see also KU :, , , ). In artifacts, in contrast, organization can be traced back to the idea of an end that is their origin and to parts that are not themselves thought of as organized. It might be objected that this way of explaining Kant’s view of the concept of self-organization reveals that it is very much like his view of any empirical concept. It is, after all, Kant’s view that the content of any empirical concept can always be further specified. This is true, and the point is of great importance. We will discuss it at greater length in Chapter . Nevertheless, there is a difference between Kant’s view of ordinary empirical concepts and concepts of self-organization. Ordinarily, we attribute an empirical concept to an object by distinguishing certain marks that in context are necessary and sufficient to ground its identification. We might identify a rock of a certain color, toughness and hardness as jadeite. Now we know that Kant does not think we can properly define (definieren) any empirical concept, because we cannot give a list of its necessary and sufficient marks or properties; in For similar emphases, see Alix A. Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, ), ; Breitenbach, “Teleology in Biology,” –; Angela Breitenbach, Die Analogie von Vernunft und Natur: Eine Umweltphilosophie nach Kant (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), –; Illetterati, “Teleological Judgments,” , ; cf., , , , . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Concept of Organism as a Regulative Principle other words, we cannot fully specify its content. These properties change in different contexts (for working into an ornament the various colors and shades of a rock might be relevant). And future research might reveal properties previously unknown (the components and structure of the rock). However, we can, in a given context, explicate (explizieren) the content of a concept by specifying its contextually necessary and sufficient marks (see A–/B–; see also V-Lo/Wiener :; V-Lo/ Dohna :). For use in carving or for weapons, the hardness and toughness of a rock might be all that is relevant. It is in such contexts that we can employ determinative judgments to assert that we are working with a sample of jadeite. This we cannot do for concepts of selforganization, precisely because the puzzle they pose cannot be explicated or analyzed away. In the example given above, explaining a plant’s processes of growth by discovering how the roots absorb nutrients from the ground and how the xylem functions in their distribution through the plant describes the roots and xylem as self-organizing parts or organs of the plant. The point might be put this way: The status of concepts of selforganization as ideas of reason can be made clearly visible to all and without relying on the sort of philosophical considerations employed in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and in the Introduction to the third Critique. This is the great advantage they have for the argument Kant is constructing in the Critique of Teleological Judgment. So although it is true that for Kant (on my view) any empirical concept presupposes the assumption of the purposiveness of nature, he comes to think that it is philosophically considerably less demanding to argue for this in the case of self-organization. This is what he appears to be emphasizing in saying, as we saw above, that organized beings are the “only ones in nature which, even if considered in themselves and without a relation to other things, must nevertheless be thought of as possible only as its ends, and which thus first provide objective reality for the concept of an end that is not a practical end but an end of nature” – it is enough to consider them alone in order to provide objective reality to the concept of teleology. Kant attempts to clarify the complex relation the principle of judging the purposiveness of organisms has to experience. The principle, once In contrast, in the first Critique introductory discussion of concepts of pure reason, Kant says: “A plant, an animal, the regular arrangement of the world’s structure (presumably thus also the whole order of nature) – these show clearly that they are possible only according to ideas” (A/ B). Here Kant appears to attribute the same status to organisms and to regularities in the structure of the world. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology again, is stated as follows: “An organized product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well” (KU :). He immediately continues, As far as what occasions it [seiner Veranlassung nach], this principle is of course to be derived from experience [von Erfahrung abzuleiten], that is, experience of the kind that is methodically undertaken and is called observation [Beobachtung]; but the universality and necessity that it asserts of such a purposiveness cannot rest merely on grounds in experience, but must have as its ground some sort of a priori principle, even if it is merely regulative and even if that end lies only in the idea of the one who judges and never in any efficient cause. (KU :) So it is not the case that experience teaches us that everything in an organism is end-directed. No experience can ground the universality and necessity of such an assertion. Indeed, “experience cannot prove the reality of this to us unless it has been preceded by some sophistry that has merely projected the concept of the end into the nature of things but has not derived them from the objects and the experiential cognition of them” (KU :). What experience teaches us is that the observation of organisms or their empirical investigation is guided by an a priori principle. Thus the attribution of self-organization means to be guided in empirical research by the idea that a thing is self-organizing. Teleological judgment is “rightly drawn into our research into nature [Naturforschung], at least problematically, but only in order to bring it under principles of observation and research [Beobachtung und Nachforschung] in analogy with causality according to ends, without presuming to explain [erklären] it” (KU :). The attribution of self-organization then is just taking this reflective or investigative stance toward an organism. This is what Kant means by calling the idea a regulative principle: “One can thus call this principle a maxim for the judging of the inner purposiveness of organized beings” (KU :; see also KU :). As Kant put the point two years earlier, “it is undoubtedly certain that nothing of a purposive nature could ever be found through mere empirical groping without a guiding principle of what to search for; for only methodically conducted experience can be called observing [beobachten]” (ÜGTP :). I have so far tried to explain Kant’s position by explaining what kind of concept self-organization is. The next section will afford, I hope, deeper insight into the matter by examining Kant’s conception of the For the claims that the concept of natural purpose cannot be derived from experience and that it rather guides our investigations of organisms, see Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences, , note . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation methodology of biology and the relation between observing a natural being under the regulative idea that it is self-organizing and offering scientific explanations of its organic processes. . The Methodology of Biology: Observation and Explanation The best way to confirm the claims of the previous section and to understand better and in more detail Kant’s views is to examine his concrete discussions of biological questions. First, it is worth examining his praise of Blumenbach’s contribution to the methodology of biology and his comparison of it to other contemporary alternatives. It is further worth surveying briefly Kant’s own theory of the human races to reveal its methodological underpinnings. Finally, we will turn to Kant’s examination of a contemporary, highly speculative conjecture about the origin of all organic species to determine whether it poses a challenge to the methodology of biology he espouses. These discussions will illuminate the fundamental distinction Kant draws between teleology as a regulative principle for the description or observation of organic phenomena and the mechanistic explanation of the processes that govern them. .. The Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment Before addressing these matters, it is important for the broader concerns of this book to emphasize that the passages to which we are turning lie outside the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment. The very long Appendix to the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, which bears the title Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment (§§–), contends with two topics. The first and much shorter part explains how the principle of teleology is to be employed in empirical research of organic nature (§§–). It is this part that is directly relevant to the concerns of this chapter. The second part presents a partly new argument for the assumption of the highest good and the government of a benevolent God but also repeats and gives pride of place to the familiar argument to the same conclusion (§§–). Kant says quite clearly that this constitutes his answer to the first of the two overarching questions posed in the Introduction to the third Critique: What is the fate of moral agency in the natural world (see KU :–)? This division of the For my analysis of the Methodology, see Ido Geiger, “Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment,” in The Kantian Mind, edited by Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons (London: Routledge) [forthcoming]. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology Methodology is indeed made clear in its introductory section (§). Kant asks there what place teleology has within theoretical philosophy (cf., KU :): Does it belong to the doctrine of nature or to theology as concerned with the “original ground of the world as the sum total of all objects of experience” (KU :)? His answer is that teleology belongs to no doctrine (see also KU :). It belongs rather to the critique of the reflective power of judgment. Nevertheless, he says, the “most important use of it can be made within theology” (KU :) – this is the task of the longer second part of the Methodology; and furthermore, “it can and must provide the method for how nature must be judged in accordance with the principle of final causes” (KU :) – this is the topic of the two sections that follow the introduction. Why is this point important? It is important because it supports the claim that the Analytic is not concerned with offering a complete analysis of our standpoint vis-à-vis biological phenomena. If it were then surely spelling out the implications of the analysis for the methodology of biology would be the centerpiece of the Analytic. I think Kant’s contribution to the analysis of biology and its methodology is of real philosophical value. I nevertheless believe, as I will claim in the next chapter, that the main aim of the Analytic is to employ this analysis to establish the much more general claim that the assumption of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole is a necessary condition of experience and knowledge. This will be my answer to the neglected question formulated in the introduction to this chapter: Why is an analysis of judgments of organic life a central part of a book devoted to completing Kant’s transcendental project? As I said there and in the Introduction to this book, the answer usually (if often implicitly) given to this question is that the Critique of the Power of Judgment is an investigation of the diverse realms in which we find reflective judgment employed. In the Introduction, I took on the methodological commitment of rejecting this disjointed reading of the work. On the reading I am offering, the principal task of the Analytic and Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment is establishing the transcendental necessity of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. Significant parts of this methodology come out in the Dialectic. But the Dialectic’s main concern is clearly the task of showing that the maxims of reflective judgment do not contradict one another but, in fact, complement one another. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation .. Blumenbach’s Formative Drive (Bildungstrieb) (§) Returning to the main concern of this chapter, the problem Kant is contending with in his discussion of organisms is this: On the one hand, modern science is committed to explaining the generation of a whole and the processes governing it as the blind effect of the forces governing the parts involved in these processes. On the other hand, the language biology employs in describing the beings it investigates and the processes governing them seems to imply that they are the effect of and governed by enddirected forces. In other words, biology does not appear to be able to explain mechanistically either how the objects it investigates came into being or the characteristic processes governing them. Kant’s way out of this dilemma is the following. In order to explain any organized state or whole, () begin by identifying certain prior structures of organization – without presuming to be able to give a reductive mechanistic account of their generation; () given these prior structures of organization, attempt to explain mechanistically the organized state or whole. If, therefore, the investigator of nature is not to work entirely in vain, he must, in the judging of things whose concept as natural ends is indubitably established (organized beings), always base them on some original organization, which uses that mechanism itself in order to produce other organized forms or to develop its own into new configurations (which, however, always result from that end and in conformity with it). (KU :) The starting point of any explanation of an organized form or configuration is identifying an original structure of organization. By calling it a mechanism Kant apparently means that () the fact that we identify a structure of organization in nature is taken to be unproblematic in the current explanatory context, and clearly not that it is actually an organized mechanism, and that, () the operative forces governing it are taken to be blind. This is how we would view an existing human-made mechanism that harnesses natural forces. Thus the process through which the further organized forms or configurations in need of explanation are produced engages blind forces and can thus be explained mechanistically. The explanation refers only to a prior organized structure and the blind forces it harnesses. Implicit here is the assumption that explanations can and indeed should be sought for what in one explanatory context is identified as an original structure of organization, for we do not know “how far the The phrase “that mechanism itself” might arguably refer to the “mechanism of nature” mentioned in the previous paragraph. I don’t think this would alter the meaning of the passage. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology mechanical mode of explanation that is possible for us will extend” (KU :). But such explanations will also have to identify some prior original structure of organization. It is assumed then that there are mechanistic explanations of any organic process or structure. But there are no reductive explanations of organic phenomena – that is, explanations that do not begin by identifying “some original organization.” It is this that Kant appears to be emphasizing in saying that employing teleological judgment as a guideline for the observation of organisms renounces the “investigation of their ultimate origin [ersten Ursprung]” (KU :). Thus, Kant insists that all natural explanations are mechanistic and that everything including biological phenomena can in principle be explained mechanistically. But he concedes that no such explanation will eliminate the teleological language employed in the biological sciences. It might be objected that I am speaking of explanation in a rather circumscribed sense. This is in fact right. I am speaking of explanation as an account of a change, specifically, of an organic process or the generation of an organic being. Such an account must identify the cause of the change by subsuming it under an empirical causal law and identifying a particular natural force. I am insisting then that such empirical causal explanations are necessarily mechanistic. They can refer only to blind natural forces. But it might be claimed that we also speak of explaining what a thing is or does – to give the most obvious alternative common sense of the term. In this quite ordinary sense we explain, for example, what the heart or a lever are or do. For the sake of clarity, though, it is important to note that this is not a causal account of a change. Moreover, as we saw above, when Kant himself is being precise he says of just such expressions that they are methodical descriptions. He calls them observation (Beobachtung) and contrasts them with explanation (Erklärung). In this precise sense methodical descriptions or observations set scientists their explanatory tasks. Specifically, teleological observations of organic phenomena set the biological sciences the task of explaining mechanistically organic processes. It is obviously a concession. Kant is apparently attempting to make it somewhat more palatable by alluding briefly to the third antinomy and reminding us that science always begins with an assumption of an initial state; the matter of first beginnings, he says, is one “on which physics always founders” (KU :). But the case of biological phenomena, in contrast to physics, obviously poses the distinct problem of teleological language. Many readers speak of teleological explanations in a variety of senses and add caveats to their use. Although at various places Nuzzo speaks loosely of teleological explanations, she makes clear that through them “we do not come to know anything scientifically.” Angelica Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, ), . Zuckert too uses the term https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation Kant praises Blumenbach (–) and claims that his decisive contribution to theories of epigenesis lies in adopting precisely this methodology. The relevant passage concludes Kant’s principled methodological assessment of three competing contemporary theories of generation. First, according to occasionalism, God “would immediately provide the organic formation to the matter commingling in every impregnation” (KU :). This approach Kant calls hyperphysics, because it attributes no effective causality to nature: “no one who cares anything for philosophy will assume this system” (KU :). Kant then distinguishes two types of preformation theories. According to the theory of individual preformation, all individuals that will ever exist are preformed and contained one within either the sperm (spermism, animalculism) or ovum (ovism) of another. It too thus holds that the form of every individual comes “immediately from the hand of the creator” (KU :). But it makes a great difference whether these forms “arise supernaturally, at the origin or during the course of the world” (KU :). For the former possibility “left something to nature” (KU :). But the theory suffers from decisive weaknesses: () It too is not a wholly naturalistic theory, because the preservation of embryos requires positing a “multitude of supernatural arrangements” (KU :) and because it explains miscarriages as designed to astonish future anatomists; () it is not parsimonious, because many more prefigured beings must exist than are ever developed; () finally, there is powerful empirical counterevidence to it – namely, “the generation of half-breeds” (KU :). For our concerns, the first point is of particular importance: The role “left to but emphasizes that teleological judgments of organisms are not “explanations properly speaking.” Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, . Cohen claims that teleological judgments are hypothetical modes of explanations but that they do not “attain to the level of objectivity required by physical science . . . teleological explanations are not informative.” Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences, . For the claim that for Kant scientific explanations are mechanistic, see Rudolf A. Makkreel, “Regulative and Reflective Uses of Purposiveness in Kant,” Southern Journal of Philosophy (Supplement) (): –. See also Letter to Blumenbach, August , ; Br :–. For a different reading of what draws Kant to Blumenbach, see Cohen, Kant and the Human Sciences, –. For the historical background of Kant’s philosophy of biology, see Shirley A. Roe, Matter, Life, and Generation: Eighteenth-Century Embryology and the Haller-Wolff Debate (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –; Peter McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology (Lewiston: Edwin Mellon Press, ), –; Robert J. Richards, “Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb: A Historical Misunderstanding,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (): –; Siegfried Roth, “Kant und die Biologie seiner Zeit (§§),” in Immanuel Kant: Kritik der Urteilskraft, edited by Otfried Höffe (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology nature” is precisely the blind mechanistic task of merely developing or unfolding an existing form or, as Kant also puts the point, generating “as mere educts” (KU :); conversely, the arrangements faulted for being “supernatural” are precisely end-directed. The theory of individual preformation is then read as aspiring to be mechanistic. But it places organic form outside the realm science investigates, for the form of every individual organism comes “immediately from the hand of the creator.” According to theories of epigenesis or generic preformation, “the productive capacity of the progenitor is still preformed in accordance with internally purposive dispositions that were imparted to its stock” (KU :). This is the first part of Kant’s method – namely, identifying an original structure of organization. This allows such theories to explain the crucial empirical fact of the existence of half-breeds, because they can attribute to the productive capacity of both progenitors’ internally purposive dispositions to impart their distinct forms of organization to their joint progeny. The theory is naturalistic and, indeed, more naturalistic than its competitor “because it considers nature, at least as far as propagation is concerned, as itself producing rather than merely developing” (KU :). This is the second part of the method; the theory is naturalistic, because () it consistently appeals to blind forces rather than end-directed or supernatural causation, and because () it attributes to these forces a greater role than theories of individual preformation, thus allowing science to explain how organized structures or states are produced. No one has done more than Blumenbach, Kant says, “for the proof of this theory of epigenesis as well as the establishment of the proper principles of its application” (KU :). To confirm these claims, let us see precisely how Kant characterizes Blumenbach’s contribution to theories of epigenesis. He begins all physical explanation [physische Erklärungsart] of these formations with organized matter [organisierter Materie]. For he rightly declares it to be contrary to reason that raw matter should originally have formed itself in accordance with mechanical laws, that life should have arisen from the nature of the lifeless, and that matter should have been able to assemble itself into the form of a self-preserving purposiveness by itself; at the same Kant does not explain what precisely he means by saying of epigenesis that there was a need to limit “an excessively presumptuous use of it” (KU :). But the problem must be the attempt to give an account of the very formation of organic life or the attribution of the capacity for organization to the forces acting in organic processes – possibly both. For emphasis on the problematic characterization of forces in theories of epigenesis, see Roth, “Kant und die Biologie seiner Zeit (§§–),” . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation time, however, he leaves natural mechanism an indeterminable but at the same time also unmistakable role under this inscrutable principle [unerforschlichen Prinzip] of an original organization [ursprünglichen Organisation], on account of which he calls the faculty in the matter in an organized body (in distinction from the merely mechanical formative power [Bildungskraft] that is present in all matter) a formative drive [Bildungstrieb] (standing, as it were, under the guidance and direction of the former principle). (KU :) It cannot be stressed enough that despite its name Kant sees the formative drive not as a teleological force or agency, but as a function of an original organization. Furthermore and decisively, it is mechanistic forces that are sought to explain further organization “standing, as it were, under the guidance and direction of the former principle.” I am claiming then that Kant is not contrasting mechanistic and end-directed powers or forces. He is distinguishing the mechanistic forces operative throughout nature from mechanistic forces that operate under a “principle of an original organization.”, “Also this insightful man attributes the formative drive, through which he brought so much light into the doctrine of generations, not to inorganic matter but only to the members of organized beings” (UTPP :n). McLaughlin points out that Blumenbach’s edition of the Handbuch der Naturgeschichte makes the opposite claim. But he deleted this claim from the edition. See Peter McLaughlin, “Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb: Zum Verhältnis von epigenetischer Embryologie und typologischem Artbegriff,” Medizinhistorisches Journal (): –. I think Kant is not contrasting in this passage formative powers and drives. The contrast is between “the merely mechanical formative power that is present in all matter” and the “formative drive.” This non-contrastive use echoes Blumenbach: Ein Trieb, der folglich zu den Lebenskräften gehört, der aber eben so deutlich von den übrigen Arten der Lebenskraft der organisirten Körper (der Contractilität, Irritabilität, Sensilität etc.) als von den allgemeinen physischen Kräften der Körper überhaupt, verschieden ist; der die erste wichtigste Kraft zu aller Zeugung, Ernährung, und Reproduction zu seyn scheint, und den man um ihn von andern Lebenskräften zu unterscheiden, mit dem Namen des Bildungstriebes (nisus formatiuus) bezeichnen kan. (Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Über den Bildungstrieb (Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, ), –.) In his evolutionary speculation and in § of the Analytic, the terms bildende Kraft and Bildungskraft appear to describe the general capacity for self-organization, without explicitly distinguishing between an original organization and the mechanical forces through which further organized forms and structures are produced. Both passages though hint at this distinction: The earlier speaks of an organized being’s “formative power [bildende Kraft]” and specifies that it is a “self-propagating formative power [fortpflanzende bildende Kraft]” (KU :); the latter speaks of the universal mother’s fruitful formative power [Bildungskraft] and adds that the archaeologist of nature “must attribute to this universal mother an organization purposively aimed at all these creatures” (KU :). For an authoritative analysis of Blumenbach’s conception of the formative drive, see McLaughlin, “Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb,” –. While the first point is clear in Blumenbach’s mature conception of the formative drive, the second is more clearly articulated by Kant. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology .. Kant’s Papers on the Human Races Kant alludes to his own biological writings on race in §. The theory he speculatively puts forward in these papers employs the very methodology he champions and for which he applauds Blumenbach. The allusion occurs in the following schematic passage, which contains all the elements discussed in the previous section. Even the alteration to which certain individuals in organized genera [Gattungen] are contingently [zufälligerweise] subjected, where one finds that their altered characteristic is heritable and has been taken up into the generative power, cannot be properly judged as other than an incidental development of a purposive predisposition to the self-preservation of the kind that was originally present in the species [gelegentliche Entwicklung einer in der Spezies ursprünglich vorhandenen zweckmäßigen Anlage zur Selbsterhaltung], because in the thoroughgoing internal purposiveness of an organized being the generating of its own kind is so closely connected with the condition that it incorporate nothing into its generative power that does not belong to one of the undeveloped original predispositions of such a system of ends. (KU :) Note that we have here once again () a single organized species in which we identify a number of alternative adaptive structures – this is the teleologically described explanandum; () a posit of purposive Blumenbach calls the formative drive a force and speaks of its purposiveness; but its formative capacity (or directionality) is in fact a function of the organization of matter. See McLaughlin, “Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb,” –. For further discussion of the relationship between Kant and Blumenbach, see Timothy Lenoir, “Kant, Blumenbach and Vital Materialism in German Biology,” Isis (): –; Lenoir, The Strategy of Life, –; Richards, “Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb,” –. Lenoir, however, does not see that Kant rejects teleological agency. Lenoir, “Kant, Blumenbach and Vital Materialism in German Biology,” , ; Lenoir, The Strategy of Life, . For the claim that Kant rejects vitalism (in the sense I have been using), see Zumbach, “Kant’s Argument for the Autonomy of Biology,” ; Zumbach, The Transcendent Science, –; Hannah Ginsborg, “Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), p. ; Illetterati, “Teleological Judgments,” –; Andrew Cooper, “Kant and Experimental Philosophy,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy (): –. Although McLaughlin characterizes Kant as a vitalist, his conception of a vital force is precisely not one that explains how organic form arises but one that is only operative in organisms. Vitalism, in this sense, does not explain life but accepts it as a given; it thus views the realm of life as irreducible to matter and in this sense as sui generis. See McLaughlin,“Blumenbach und der Bildungstrieb,” –. See: VvRM :–; BBM :–; UTPP :–. For an illuminating discussion of these papers, see McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, –. For the historical background of Kant’s writings on race and Herder reviews and a very different reading of his position in these papers, see John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation predispositions to develop these self-preserving structures – this is the earlier unexplained organized structure; () an incidental or blind triggering of the predisposition – this is the blind mechanistic causation. Examining Kant’s writings on the human races confirms that he is indeed alluding to them in the passage above. The central problem the papers contend with is explaining racial variety – specifically, human racial variety. Kant identifies four human races defined by their skin color: () white; () black; () olive-yellow (Indian); and () copper-red (American or Hun) (see VvRM :, ; ÜGTP :). Kant employs skin color as a criterion because it is the one trait he identifies that can be claimed with certainty to express itself in reproduction in all cases (see BBM :–, ; see also ÜGTP :–). He views this trait and the variety it exhibits as the result of processes of adaptation to different climates. The problem is the following: The different races belong to the same species, for procreation involving members of different races bears fertile progeny – this is Buffon’s criterion for species membership (see VvRM :; see also BBM :; ÜGTP :–). But they are differently organized to contend with different climates. How are we to explain these different adaptations of a single species? It is noteworthy that unlike many of his contemporaries, including Blumenbach himself, Kant does not think of the variety of human races as degenerations of the Caucasian or white race. Kant speculatively posits an original phylum or phyletic species (Stamm, Stammgattung) (see VvRM :; BBM :–), which contains various germs (Keime) and dispositions (Anlage) that are of adaptive value in different climates. Nature, Kant speculates, has taken care “to equip her creature through hidden inner provisions for all kinds of future circumstances, so that it may For this point, see Alix A. Cohen, “Kant on Epigenesis, Monogenesis and Human Nature: The Biological Premises of Anthropology,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (): –. Cohen emphasizes the importance of having the same origin or monogenesis for establishing the unity of the human species and explaining racial variety. See Cohen, “Kant on Epigenesis, Monogenesis and Human Nature,” –. It is worth saying that monogenesis and Buffon’s criterion can very well go hand in hand. Kant indeed says that there can be only one explanation for the unity of the human species: “namely, that they all belong to a single phylum, from which, notwithstanding their differences, they originated, or at least could have originated” (VvRM :). As the last clause suggests and Kant immediately goes on to say, having the same origin would make human beings not merely a single species but a single family as well. He dismisses the alternative of many local creations, because it “needlessly multiplies the number of causes” (VvRM :). As I will emphasize in the conclusion to this chapter, it is very important that the criterion employed for species membership is causal. Although Kant’s focus is the human races, he says that adaptive original dispositions should be posited to explain varieties as well (see UTPP :–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology preserve itself and be suited to the difference of the climate and soil” (VvRM :). It was the physical conditions of the region in which members of the original species found themselves that determined which of the adaptive potentials developed. These conditions also determined which capacities eventually degenerated so that human beings can now no longer adapt to climates in which they newly find themselves (see: VvRM :; BBM :–; ÜGTP :–). The human being was destined for all climates and for every soil; consequently, various germs and natural predispositions had to lie ready in him to be on occasion either unfolded or restrained, so that he would become suited to his place in the world and over the course of the generations would appear to be as it were native to and made for that place. (VvRM :) It is of great importance for our concerns to learn that Kant posits potentially adaptive organizations and that external environmental conditions mechanistically trigger the causal processes through which they are realized. Outer things “can well be occasioning causes but not producing ones [Gelegenheits- aber nicht hervorbringende Ursachen]” (VvRM :). Kant gives the following as nonhuman examples of such adaptations: In birds of the same kind which yet are supposed to live in different climates there lie germs for the unfolding of a new layer of feathers if they live in a cold climate, which, however, are held back if they should reside in a temperate one. Since in a cold country the wheat kernel must be more protected against the humid cold than in a dry or warm climate, there lies in it a previously determined capacity or a natural predisposition to gradually produce a thicker skin. (VvRM :) The clearest example of human racial adaption occurs, Kant suggests, in the black race: For one knows now that the human blood becomes black (as can be seen at the underside of a blood cake) merely by being overloaded with phlogiston. Now already the strong odor of the Negroes, which cannot be helped through any cleanliness, gives cause for conjecturing that their skin removes much phlogiston from the blood and that nature must have organized this skin so that the blood could dephlogistize itself in them through the skin in a far greater measure than happens in us, where that is for the most part the task of the lungs. Yet the true Negroes live in regions in which the air is so phlogistized through thick forests and swamp-covered regions, that it is, according to Lind’s report, deadly peril for the English sailors to navigate up the Gambia River even for one day in order to buy meat there. Thus it was an arrangement very wisely made by Nature to organize their skin such that the blood, since it . . . does not by far sufficiently remove enough phlogiston https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation through the lungs, could dephlogistize itself much more strongly through the skin than is the case with us. It thus had to transport a lot of phlogiston into the ends of the arteries, thereby becoming overloaded with it in this location, that is, under the skin itself, and so shine through black, although it is still red in the interior of the body. Moreover, the different organization of Negro skin from ours is already noticeable through touch. (BBM :; see also ÜGTP :–) It is worth noting that skin color is here merely an effect of an adaptive mechanism of waste disposal; and Kant speculates that this might be the case with the other races as well (see: VvRM :; BBM :–). .. The Evolutionary Speculation (§) In the Methodology of Teleological Judgment we also find a remarkable passage in which Kant formulates a wholly speculative idea concerning the origin of all organic species. He calls it “a daring adventure of reason” (KU : note), for experience reveals no evidence to support it. Nevertheless, he says, “there may be few, even among the sharpest researchers into nature, who have not occasionally entertained it” (KU : note). The agreement of so many genera of animals in a certain common schema, which seems to lie at the basis not only of their skeletal structure but also of the arrangement of their other parts, and by which a remarkable simplicity of basic design has been able to produce such a great variety of species by the shortening of one part and the elongation of another, by the involution of this part and the evolution of another, allows the mind at least a weak ray of hope that something may be accomplished here with the principle of the mechanism of nature, without which there can be no natural science at all. This analogy of forms, insofar as in spite of all the differences it seems to have been generated in accordance with a common prototype, strengthens the suspicion of a real kinship among them in their generation from a common proto-mother, through the gradual approach of one animal genus to the other, from that in which the principle of ends seems best confirmed, namely human beings, down to polyps, and from this even further to mosses and lichens, and finally to the lowest level of nature that we can observe, that of raw matter: from which, and from its forces governed by mechanical laws (like those which are at work in its production of crystals), the entire technique of nature, which is so incomprehensible to us in organized beings that we believe ourselves compelled to conceive of another principle for them, seems to derive. (KU :–) Lovejoy’s influential paper claims to dispel the myth of Kant’s evolutionary speculation. See Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Kant and Evolution,” in Forerunners of Darwin –, edited by Bentley Glass, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology For our purposes, it is particularly important to underscore that Kant does not think that this speculative idea is absurd or in any way at odds with the methodology of biology he champions. Indeed, it must employ it. And yet ultimately he [the archaeologist of nature] must attribute to this universal mother an organization purposively aimed at all these creatures, for otherwise the possibility of the purposive form of the products of the animal and vegetable kingdom cannot be conceived at all. In that case, however, he has merely put off the explanation [den Erklärungsgründ nur weiter aufgeschoben], and cannot presume to have made the generation of those two kingdoms independent from the condition of final causes. (KU :–; see also KU :–) We might speculate that all organisms developed from matter through processes governed by mechanistic forces and that in this way a scientific explanation of these processes can be found. Note that Kant is emphatic here and says that without the principle of the mechanism of nature “there can be no natural science at all.” But this does not contradict the claim that teleological judgment of organic nature is necessary. For we would still have to conceive of the beginning of this evolutionary process as an original organization – thus merely putting off the explanation of organization. In Kant’s words, we would have to attribute to the “universal mother an organization purposively aimed at all these creatures.” The speculative idea does not contradict and, indeed, must employ the methodology Kant advocates. It is noteworthy that Kant himself calls epigenesis a theory of “generic preformation, since the productive capacity of the progenitor is still preformed in accordance with the internally purposive predispositions that were imparted to its stock, and thus the specific form was preformed virtualiter” (KU :). We saw that it is in this sense, according to Kant, that the human races too are preformed. His speculation about the origin of all life in raw matter is also preformationist, though it offers no answer to the very puzzling question of how all organization could be “preformed virtualiter” within the “universal mother.” It will be of importance to the discussion of the next subsection that in all these cases all the organization we encounter in nature is in one way or another preformed. Owsei Temkin and William L. Strauss Jr. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ), –. For the argument that explanations of the origin of self-organizing beings must begin with organized matter, see Hannah Ginsborg, “Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –; Ginsborg, “Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation .. Is Darwin “Newton of the Blade of Grass”? To conclude this section, let us turn to what is very possibly the mostoften-quoted – and often misunderstood – passage of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. In this context, it is worth saying just a few words about the scientific aftermath of Kant’s biological thinking. . . . it is quite certain that we can never adequately come to know the organized beings and their internal possibility in accordance with merely mechanical principles of nature [bloß mechanischen Prinzipien der Natur], let alone explain [erklären] them; and indeed this is so certain that we can boldly say that it would be absurd [ungereimt] for humans even to make such an attempt or to hope that there may yet arise a Newton who could make comprehensible even the generation of a blade of grass according to natural laws that no intention has ordered; rather, we must absolutely deny this insight to human beings. (KU :; see also NTH :) Taken wholly out of context, Kant might seem to be professing here the conviction that in the case of even relatively simple natural organization the scientific search for mechanistic explanations is utterly futile. He might further be taken to suggest a belief in the existence of teleological forces in nature, and for this reason to deny that mechanistic explanations of organisms are conceivable. If this were so, then we might say with Ernst Mayr (and others) that “Darwin had solved Kant’s great puzzle.” The claim of this chapter, on the contrary, was that Kant certainly does not claim that there are teleological forces in nature, and ipso facto cannot claim that for this reason mechanistic explanations of organisms are inconceivable. Moreover, I claimed in this section that Kant thinks that any organized structure can in principle be explained mechanistically. What then does Kant mean by claiming that a “Newton of the blade of grass” is an absurdity? Kant’s statement is not a claim about the future of biology, which stands to be refuted by a momentous scientific discovery. It is a conceptual truth. To identify an object as self-organizing, we saw, is to take on the commitment to answer the question of how it produces itself. This commitment cannot be fulfilled by describing an object as just the Mayr, “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological,” . Kant does not explicate his pronouncement in the passage we are examining. But he does add that we can neither affirm nor deny the existence of “an intentionally acting being as a world-cause (hence as an author) at the basis of what we rightly call natural ends” (KU :); for such a claim lies beyond the reach of human reason. And this clearly means that the fact that we employ teleological language to describe organisms does not commit us to the claim that there are purposes in nature. Kant, we saw, says clearly that this purposiveness “lies only in the idea of the one who judges and never in any efficient cause” (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology contingent product of blind mechanistic causality. For the two ways of identifying objects employ mutually exclusive conceptual tropes – the trope of intentional action and the trope of blind natural causation. The first describes an object as though it were an intended end, thus as a distinct type of unity; the second – as contingent or unintended, and thus as a mere aggregate. The use of the latter trope cannot make the former redundant. We saw above that Kant, in fact, thinks that a mechanistic explanation of the generation of an organism or of an organized state is always possible. But it will always begin by identifying an earlier structure of organization. As Kant says of Blumenbach, “he rightly declares it to be contrary to reason [vernunftwidrig] that raw matter should originally have formed itself in accordance with mechanical laws, that life should have arisen from the nature of the lifeless, and that matter should have been able to assemble itself into the form of a self-preserving purposiveness by itself” (KU :). Succinctly stated, “there can be no investigation in physics about the origin of all organization itself” (ÜGTP :). Even the truth of the daring speculation about the origin of all animal and vegetable species in matter “cannot presume to have made the generation of those two kingdoms independent from the condition of final causes” (KU :). The claim that a Newton of the blade of grass is an absurdity is not a denial of the possibility of mechanistic explanations of organisms. It is the claim that such explanations always begin with some organized structure. What we cannot do is explain the generation of even a blade of grass employing mechanical principles of nature alone – this is why Kant speaks of knowing or explaining organisms “in accordance with merely mechanical principles of nature.” The claim is then a denial of the possibility of a mechanistically reductive explanation. It is precisely in this sense that a Newton of the blade of grass is inconceivable. This does not provide, however, a conclusive answer to the question of whether Darwin is as a matter of fact “Newton of the blade of grass.” Kant’s argument in the Analytic begins with the assumption that we employ concepts of self-organization to characterize organisms. But don’t Darwin’s theory of evolution and the later synthesis of evolutionary theory and modern genetics show that this assumption does not necessarily hold Suppose you ask me what was my end in doing something and I answer that what you saw was as a matter of fact an accident and go on to describe how it occurred. I have not then given the explanation you requested. I redescribed the event for which you sought an explanation and explained this event. You asked for a teleological explanation (a reason) and received a causal mechanistic account (an unintended accident) of a different event. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Methodology of Biology: Observation & Explanation true? Do they not show that we can dispense with teleological language altogether? To begin to answer these questions it must be noted that modern biology has not by any means dispensed with teleological language, even though it has discovered previously unimaginable structures and processes of organization. This is the reason why the question of teleology is still of great interest to contemporary philosophy of biology. That its search for mechanistic explanations has taken biology very far indeed is incontestable. But Kant too, we saw, holds that the characterization of objects as selforganizing commits us to search for the mechanistic forces that serve its processes of organization. His claim, indeed, is that the two – teleological identification and mechanistic explanation – go hand in hand: For where ends are conceived as grounds of the possibility of certain things, there one must also assume means the laws of the operation of which do not of themselves need anything that presupposes an end, which can thus be mechanical yet still be a cause subordinated to intentional effects. (KU :) We can and should be concerned to investigate nature, so far as lies within our capacity, in experience, in its causal connection in accordance with merely mechanical laws: for in these lie the true physical grounds of explanation [wahren physischen Erklärungsgründe], the interconnection of which constitutes scientific cognition of nature [wissenschaftliche Naturkenntniß] through reason. But now we find among the products of nature special and very widely distributed genera, which contain within themselves a combination of efficient causes that we must ground in the concept of an end, even if we wish to employ only experience, i.e., observation [Beobachtung] in accordance with a principle suitable to their inner possibility. (EEKU :) The example Kant goes on to give is also well worth quoting. . . . by saying that the crystalline lens in the eye has the end of reuniting, by means of a second refraction of the light rays, the rays emanating from one point at one point on the retina, one says only that the representation of an end in the causality of nature is conceived in the production of the eye because such an idea serves as a principle for guiding the investigation of the eye as far as the part that has been mentioned is concerned, with regard to the means that one can think up to promote that effect. No cause acting in accordance with the representation of purposes, i.e., no intentionally acting cause, is thereby attributed to nature, which would be a determining teleological judgment and as such transcendent, since it would suggest a causality that lies beyond the bounds of nature. (EEKU :) Once again, we have here the claims that purposiveness figures in the description of an organ “as a principle for guiding the investigation” but that in explanations of how the crystalline lens in the eye arises as an effect no cause “acting in accordance with the representation of purposes, i.e., no intentionally acting cause, is thereby attributed to nature.” https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology In response, the claim might be made that modern biology does not – strictly speaking – attribute to organisms the property of self-organization. The theory of evolution and modern genetics reveal that the appearance of organization is in fact the result of the blind forces of nature. Indeed, they are often taken to show that an explanation of the appearance of organization in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry is possible – in principle, if not in fact. But this rejoinder misses its target. Kant’s argument still holds for those concepts that describe the appearance of selforganization. For Kant never denies – indeed, he very clearly proclaims – that all explanations are mechanistic. Succinctly, Kant’s argument for the necessity of teleological judgment is an argument not about the explanans but about the explanandum. More precisely, it is an argument that turns on our characterization of the explanandum. It targets the form of the concepts we employ as sortals in describing the natural world. But as we saw above, it takes on no correlative ontological commitments about the world. Conversely, to break the hold of Kant’s argument, it would be necessary to purge our language of concepts the internal form of which implies self-organization. This would mean the actual disintegration or dissolution of biology into physics and chemistry. As we saw, Kant places two strictures on any scientific explanation in biology: () A fundamental assumption of the explanation must be the identification of some structure of organization; () the forces sought to explain further organization must be mechanistic – that is, blind rather than purposive. Viewed from this perspective, Darwin’s epochal achievement lies not only in formulating the complementary explanatory mechanistic principles of chance variation and natural selection; in other words, it lies not only in having discovered the right mechanistic principles, for which others had been searching since Newton. For these two principles further reveal that the organization present in nature at any given moment is all the organization biology need assume. More and better organized structures and beings can be the blind effects that arise from what is less or less well organized. This insight finally breaks the staff of preformation theories – all future organization need not be pre-formed. Indeed, perhaps all the organization we need attribute to raw matter is the Cornell succinctly formulates the point: To reject Kant’s argument we would have to “explain away” the organism. John F. Cornell, “Newton of the Grassblade? Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology,” Isis (): . See also McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, . For this important point, see Ginsborg, “Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle,” ; Roth, “Kant und die Biologie seiner Zeit (§§–),” . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion particular organization from which mechanistic laws can produce the first self-replicating – thus, self-organizing – molecule. But it is precisely by identifying this particular state of affairs as capable of producing a selforganizing whole that the state of affairs itself is regarded as preformed virtualiter. Even such an account would not then eliminate teleological judgments of organic phenomena. Indeed, Kant might be taken to offer a characterization of the biological or life sciences. They are the sciences investigating what we describe as selforganizing beings. But this also reveals what might be less than satisfactory when viewed from different philosophical perspectives, both perspectives of some of Kant’s contemporaries and our own. Kant, as I have been claiming, is offering an analysis of a type of judgment he rightly assumes we make. And he is consistent in taking on no ontological commitment to the existence of natural purposes. Viewed from the ontological perspective, Kant does leave the puzzle posed by our use of teleological language unsolved. . Conclusion We can now see better how the claims of this chapter hang together. Kant begins by simply accepting the fact that we describe certain natural objects as self-organizing and so teleologically. Having accepted this, it follows as a conceptual truth that things so described cannot be explained by reference to mechanistic forces alone. But this is by no means an admission of the existence of end-directed forces into the realm of nature. In fact, it is Kant’s commitment to the exclusive reign of blind mechanistic forces over the natural world that raises the problem of natural teleology to begin with. Kant’s solution to the problem of biological explanations is the claim that all such explanations begin by identifying an organized structure or state, from which further organized structures or states are produced by blind mechanistic forces. All natural explanations, including biological explanations, are mechanistic. But biological explanations are not reductive. The concept of self-organization, once introduced, cannot be eliminated. The concept, however, occurs only in descriptions of natural phenomena – never as an explanation. Moreover, so describing a natural being sets Ginsborg too argues for this conclusion; see Ginsborg, “Two Kinds of Mechanical Inexplicability in Kant and Aristotle,” –. For a similar claim, see Breitenbach, “Teleology in Biology,” –, –. For an illuminating contrastive discussion of naturalizing-ontological and analogical conceptions of teleology, see Breitenbach, “Teleology in Biology,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology science the ongoing task of explaining mechanistically its processes of selforganization. Thus the teleological concept of self-organization, though applied to objects given to the senses, visibly wears the marks of an idea of reason. It is worth underscoring that what we have learned about the close connection between the teleological description of organisms and explaining their processes of self-organization is a particular example of an important systematic distinction. In the Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant distinguishes the description of nature from natural or rational science. The former “contains nothing but systematically ordered facts about natural things (and would, in turn, consist of natural description [Naturbeschreibung], as a system of classification for natural things in accordance with their similarities, and natural history [Naturgeschichte], as a systematic presentation of natural things at various times and places)” (MAN :). The latter systematically presents “an interconnection of grounds and consequences” (MAN :), which in turn contains the natural causal laws of the merely observational sciences and sciences properly so-called, which have constructed the a priori principles of a special metaphysics. It is of great importance to understand this distinction and the relations between its terms. Kant is often critical of causally uninformative descriptions of nature, referring to the “school system of the description of nature” (VvRM : note) or to nominal classifications according to merely observational similarities (see BBM :). In contrast, as we saw in this chapter, he himself strongly advocates employing causally informative descriptions, such as Buffon’s criterion for species membership and his own use of skin color as a criterion for racial membership. Furthermore, though natural history, as Kant characterizes it in this text, is descriptive (it is a “presentation [Darstellung] of natural things at various times and places”), its precise aim and indeed the reason for its spatiotemporal focus is to prepare the ground for an investigation of causes and thus for natural or rational science. As Kant writes in his “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” essay (confusingly using the same terms differently), natural description should serve the search for causal accounts or, what he there calls, natural history. Kant argues for the need “to establish a principle in advance which is supposed to guide the investigator of nature even in searching and observing, and especially a principle that would orient observation toward a natural history to be furthered by this procedure, in contrast to a mere description of nature” (ÜGTP :). Indeed, “natural history would only consist in tracing back, as far as the analogy permits, the connection between certain https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion present-day conditions of the things in nature and their causes in earlier times according to the laws of efficient causality” (ÜGTP :; see also: VvRM : note, ; BBM :). Thus Kant’s methodology of biology and the concrete examples we have examined are particularly clear illustrations of productive relations between the description of nature and the scientific goal of seeking causal processes and explanations. I have argued in this chapter that the point of departure of Kant’s argument in the Analytic of Teleological Judgment is a very strong assumption. He simply takes as given the fact that we describe certain phenomena as self-organizing. His argument that teleological judgment is necessary follows from this assumption by straightforward conceptual analysis. I will claim in the next chapter that the overarching aim of the Critique of Teleological Judgment is to argue for the necessity of the assumption of the purposiveness of nature as a whole. On the reading of the Analytic I have presented, Kant appears to work toward this conclusion by simply accepting that we describe certain phenomena as self-organizing. It might be claimed that arguing from the strange combination of a contingent empirical occasion for the employment of a broader a priori principle or idea lays Kant open to misunderstanding and considerable difficulties. This is not a claim I would deny. Indeed, I have suggested and will develop this claim in the next chapter that Kant comes to believe that the argument from judgments of organisms to the assumption of the purposiveness of nature has considerable advantages. Its great advantage, briefly stated, is the very broad agreement that we do indeed judge organisms teleologically. But the argument also suffers from considerable disadvantages. One is the danger of misunderstanding Kant’s subtle position in relation to the precise standing of organisms as objects of It is worth emphasizing that, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, natural history is descriptive but, I am claiming, preparatory to causal accounts – that is, what Kant there calls natural or rational science. As the passage just quoted reveals and other texts confirm, Kant often describes the distinction between description and causal explanation as the distinction between natural description and natural history. For an early example of employing natural history to refer to such explanatory (if sometimes speculative) accounts, see PG :–. This usage is particularly clear in the complete title of Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or Essay on the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Whole Universe According to Newtonian Principles. According to Ginsborg’s reconstruction of Kant’s view, the necessity of judging organisms teleologically follows from their mechanical inexplicability in the sense that they display a unique reciprocal dependence of parts and whole. As I have suggested throughout this chapter, I view things the other way round: Organisms are judged as self-organizing and so teleologically; their reductive mechanistic inexplicability follows from this. See Ginsborg, “Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press Organisms, Teleological Judgment & Methodology experience. No smaller danger is arguing for a transcendental principle from the contingent fact that we judge certain natural objects teleologically. Already in introducing the Critique of Teleological Judgment Kant says, we saw, that “no a priori ground at all can be given why there must be objective ends of nature, i.e., things that are possible only as natural ends, indeed not even the possibility of such things is obvious from the concept of nature as an object of experience in general as well as in particular” (KU :; see also: KU :, –, , ; EEKU :; ÜGTP :–; OP :, ). I will claim in Chapter that the Critique of Teleological Judgment does have an answer to this considerable problem. In the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment, Kant puts forward a second argument for the necessity of teleological judgment. Its point of departure is not our attributions of self-organization but the discursive nature of our cognition. Kant argues that for discursive beings teleological judgment is a necessary condition of any empirical experience and knowledge. In the course of the next chapter, I will also attempt to lay out the advantages Kant thinks the argument from organic phenomena has as well other weaknesses of it. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.004 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment . Introduction The structure and aims of the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment are more complex than first meets the eye. A preliminary overview suggests that the Dialectic poses and aims to resolve the antinomy of reflective judgment, which arises between the universal directive to judge nature mechanistically and the fact that organisms must be judged teleologically. But a closer look reveals that contending with this central concern is a rather complex matter. This is initially indicated by two facts. First, Kant begins the Dialectic with a section announced to be devoted to explaining what an antinomy of reflective judgment is; as a matter of fact though, it explains only why such an antinomy might be possible. As the discussion unfolds, we learn that an antinomy of reflective judgment differs significantly from the antinomies of the Critique of Pure Reason. This fact is obscured, though, by Kant’s assimilation into his discussion of the former important aspects of the latter. Second and very closely related, Kant in fact presents, in the second section of the Dialectic, what appear to be two conflicts: () between subjective maxims of reflective judgment; and () between objective principles of determinative judgment. Kant states clearly that the former is his foremost concern in the Dialectic. But he devotes no fewer than three of its ten sections (§§–) as well as some further passages to the latter conflict. As we will see, the explanation of this peculiarity is closely related to the former matter. A further and related complication has to do with the fact that when Kant gives his most detailed explanation of why we judge teleologically, he is apparently no longer concerned with organisms alone but with empirical judgment quite generally. His analysis of the distinct character of our understanding reveals why nature quite generally is judged as a conceptually purposive whole, and the same analysis also explains why we judge organisms teleologically. This suggests that organisms are a particularly https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment noteworthy example of a more general and highly significant fact: As cognizers with discursive understandings we necessarily view nature generally teleologically or as a conceptually purposive whole. This raises the question of why the analysis of organic phenomena is given such prominence in the Critique of Teleological Judgment. As we will see, the answer to this question is closely intertwined with the former concerns. The aim of this chapter is to unravel the antinomy of teleological judgment and its construction. The next chapter will focus on the argument from discursivity to the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. . Teleological Judgment: From Organisms to Nature as a Whole (§§–) We saw in the previous chapter that the first concern of the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment is an analysis of our attributions of selforganization to natural objects. But already in the last two sections of the Analytic (§§–), Kant reveals that he holds teleological judgment to be of much broader application. Indeed, teleological judgment is applicable to nature as a whole. It is therefore only matter insofar as it is organized that necessarily carries with it the concept of itself as a natural end, since its specific form is at the same time a product of nature. However, this concept necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rule of ends, to which idea all of the mechanism of nature in accordance with principles of reason must now be subordinated (at least in order to test natural appearance by this idea). The principle of reason is appropriate for it only subjectively, i.e., as the maxims that everything in the world is good for something, that nothing in it is in vain; and by means of the example that nature gives in its organic products, one is justified, indeed called upon to expect nothing in nature and its laws but what is purposive in the whole. (KU :–; see also KU :) A number of points that come up in this passage are important. First and potentially misleadingly, Kant speaks in this passage of the “maxims that everything in the world is good for something, that nothing in it is in vain” – and at first glance it might look as though Kant has in mind relations of external purposiveness. But he makes it abundantly clear that what is of interest to him here is the notion of organized matter or judging “a thing to be purposive on account of its internal form” (KU :) and the way it can be extended to guide the investigation of “the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rule of ends, to which idea all of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . From Organisms to Nature as a Whole the mechanism of nature . . . must now be subordinated.” The relation of external purposiveness, in contrast, ultimately “requires the relation of nature to something supersensible” (KU :) and leads the physical investigator of nature into “meddling in someone else’s business (namely, in that of metaphysics)” (KU :–). The important emphasis in the maxims is to everything “in the world” (see also KU :). The maxims are then a “guideline for considering things in nature, in relation to a determining ground that is already given, in accordance with a new, lawful order, and for extending natural science in accordance with another principle, namely that of final causes, yet without harm to the mechanism of nature” (KU :; see also KU :). Indeed, Kant also recommends as scientifically productive to consider things that are “counterpurposive for us” (KU :). The regulative principle of judging nature generally as a purposive whole is a principle of natural science, which guides the search for particular laws of nature. The reason Kant employs ambiguous-sounding maxims must be the fact that in the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment he uses the conception of nature as a comprehensive theoretical system as the first step in an argument for the assumption of the highest practical good and a benevolent God. In the Analytic, he appears to be foreshadowing this later concern and the move from the former conception to the latter. But there, too, he distinguishes clearly the theoretical investigation of nature under the principle of the purposiveness of nature from the practical question of the final end of creation. He says clearly that physical teleology, properly construed, is merely a preparation or propaedeutic for ethicotheology (KU :). Second, Kant offers a compelling argument to support the claim that viewing an object as self-organized matter “necessarily carries with it the concept of itself as a natural end.” But no such argument is introduced here to support the claim that the former concept “necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rule of ends.” It will be a central claim of the next chapter that Kant has a second independent argument for the necessity of viewing nature teleologically. It For this point, see Paul Guyer, “From Nature to Morality: Kant’s New Argument in the ‘Critique of Teleological Judgment’,” in Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom: Selected Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), –; Angela Breitenbach, Die Analogie von Vernunft und Natur: Eine Umweltphilosophie nach Kant (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), –. For my account of this argument, see Ido Geiger, “Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment,” in The Kantian Mind, edited by Sorin Baiasu and Mark Timmons (London: Routledge) [forthcoming]. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment is probably for this reason that he is less concerned with defending the move he is making from judging organisms teleologically to so judging nature as a whole. This last point leads, however, to a third and more complex consideration. I have been claiming that Kant’s ultimate aim in the Critique of Teleological Judgment is to argue for the teleological conception of nature as a whole. And I am now suggesting that he has an independent argument to this conclusion. Why then does he invest such effort in the argument from the organism? This question is made even more pressing when we see clearly that the argument from the organism suffers from three considerable weaknesses: First, as I just noted, Kant offers no compelling argument why accepting his analysis of judgments of organisms necessarily leads to judging teleologically nature generally, and the fact that he has another argument to this conclusion does not explain why he does not simply use it. Second, this move is also a move between two different senses of teleology. An organism is described as self-producing or self-organizing, as “a natural end, since its specific form is at the same time a product of nature” (KU :). But as we will see in more detail below, viewing nature teleologically does not mean viewing it as a natural end or selforganizing whole – and thus as a distinct kind of natural causal whole. It is, rather, to view it as a comprehensive system of empirical laws, or, in other words, to view nature as a conceptually purposive whole, a whole purposive for discursive cognition. This way of regarding nature can be described as viewing it as though it were the product of intentional design and emphatically not as a natural end. It is to regard nature as though it were made to be knowable by us by an intelligent world-author, whose causal agency clearly lies outside nature. Indeed, Kant later acknowledges the fact that the concept is employed in distinct, if related, senses when he refers to the former biological sense as “the strictest sense of the term adduced above” (KU :). The answer to this difficulty has to do, once again, with the second argument for the conceptual purposiveness of nature. Once it is in place, the argument from the organism can be viewed as a specific and particularly compelling instantiation of a more general principle. As I claimed in the last chapter, judgments of organisms are, according to Kant, objective representations of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. The move from the more demanding concept of organism to the broader concept is less than compelling; but the converse move might seem far less problematic, especially if, with Kant, we view the concept of organism as a specific instantiation of a regulative principle of reflective judgment. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment The third difficulty is one to which I have already pointed and indeed a difficulty Kant himself clearly and repeatedly proclaims: . . . no a priori ground at all can be given why there must be objective ends of nature, i.e., things that are possible only as natural ends, indeed not even the possibility of such things is obvious from the concept of nature as an object of experience in general as well as in particular; rather the power of judgment, without containing a principle for this in itself a priori, in order to make use of the concept of ends in behalf of reason, merely contains in some cases that come before it (certain products) the rule by which that transcendental principle has already prepared [vorbereitet] the understanding to apply the concept of an end (at least as far as form is concerned) to nature. (KU :; see also KU :, , –, , ; EEKU :; ÜGTP :–; OP :, ) Succinctly, the fact that we encounter certain natural objects that we describe as self-organizing and thus teleologically is entirely contingent. As I suggested in Chapter , it is precisely Kant’s choice to construct an argument from this contingent fact to the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole that leads him to say that only the discussion of the aesthetic power of judgment is essential to a critique of the power of judgment. For the principle guiding the aesthetic reflection on nature is alone “entirely a priori” (KU :). In contrast, the application of teleological judgment to organisms “belongs to the theoretical part of philosophy” (KU :). Furthermore, according to the passage above and as I have been suggesting, our judgments of organisms reveal rather than ground the a priori transcendental principle of the purposiveness of nature for our cognition. The oddity of the argument from the organism is worth underscoring: It is an argument from a contingent empirical fact to an a priori principle. These difficulties clearly raise the following question: What advantages are there to the argument from the organism? In the next section, I will claim that the argument from the organism allows Kant to assimilate some of the characteristics definitive of an antinomy of theoretical reason into his discussion of teleology and in this way to buttress the transcendental status of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment In the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant says that the antinomies are the inevitable result of a distinct conjunction: () reason’s striving for the unconditioned; and () those categories, “in which https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment the synthesis constitutes a series, and indeed a series of conditions subordinated (not coordinated) one to another for any conditioned” (A/ B). Like the categories that govern subordinating or regressive syntheses, teleological judgment points us back to a first intention-like cause. I suggest that dividing his discussion into an Analytic and Dialectic and presenting in the latter an antinomy of reflective judgment is Kant’s way of reinforcing the claim that, like the categories, the principle of conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of experience. Furthermore, the discussion shows that the principle of purposiveness does not lead into contradiction when employed to guide reflective judgment – this is the significance of emphasizing the fact that we are dealing with a principle of reason for reflective judgment (see again the title of §; see also KU :, ). Kant certainly does not declare that these are his motivations. But there is considerable textual support for these claims. I will claim in this section that it is these motivations that explain quite a bit of the oddness of the first sections of the Dialectic. Specifically, I will claim first that Kant’s focus on the organism and the formulation of a conflict between determinative principles of mechanism and teleology allow him to assimilate into his discussion important characteristics of the antinomies of theoretical reason. I will further claim that the actual antinomy of reflective judgment is constituted by two maxims that do not contradict one another. .. The Dogmatic Conflict between Teleology and Mechanism (§) A first clue why Kant chooses to analyze the concept of organism is the following plain and emphatic assertion: “No one has doubted the correctness of the fundamental principle that certain things in nature (organized beings) and their possibility must be judged in accordance with the concept of final causes” (KU :). It follows then that the interest, which the conflict between the principles of mechanism and teleology commands, is quite general. But far more is at stake here, I believe, than a desire for the broadest audience. It must be remembered how Kant first introduces the antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason. The Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment is also organized into an Analytic and Dialectic. In the last paragraphs of the First Introduction, Kant announces that the two parts of the work he at that point foresees will each contain two books, each with an Analytic and Dialectic (EEKU :). It is worth remarking that these claims hold true of the antinomy of taste as well. I will not, though, discuss it further. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment Here a new phenomenon of human reason shows itself, namely a wholly natural antithetic, for which one does not need to ponder or to lay artificial snares, but rather into which reason falls of itself and even unavoidably; and thus it guards reason against the slumber of an imagined conviction, such as a merely one-sided illusion produces, but at the same time leads reason into the temptation either to surrender itself to a skeptical hopelessness or else to assume an attitude of dogmatic stubbornness, setting its mind rigidly to certain assertions without giving a fair hearing to the grounds for the opposite. Either alternative is the death of a healthy philosophy, though the former might also be called the euthanasia of pure reason. (A/ B–; see also Prol :) An antinomy does not arise between conflicting philosophical propositions. It is a conflict that ensnares ordinary human reason and indeed necessarily. In the third Critique, Kant emphasizes that the perspective of the Analytic is that of physics rather than of metaphysics (KU :–) and later says explicitly that organisms are “the only basis for proof valid for both common understanding as well as for philosophers of the dependence of these things on and their origin in a being that exists outside the world” (KU :–). Furthermore, as the passage above suggests and as Kant says emphatically in the Prolegomena, the antinomy of pure reason “works the most strongly of all to awaken philosophy from its dogmatic slumber, and to prompt it toward the difficult business of the critique of reason itself” (Prol :). The decision to assimilate these important attributes of the antinomies explains a considerable portion of the oddity in the detail and construction of the Dialectic. It explains why, despite announcing clearly that the Dialectic is concerned with an antinomy between maxims of reflective judgment, Kant poses a second dogmatic conflict between would-be constitutive principles of determinative judgment, even though “reason can prove neither the one nor the other of these fundamental principles” (KU :). As we saw in the discussion of the Newton of the grass-blade passage, Kant says clearly that “we cannot make any objective judgment at all, whether affirmative or negative, about the proposition that In a retrospective letter Kant testifies that “the antinomy of reason . . . first aroused me from my dogmatic slumber and drove me to the critique of reason itself, in order to resolve the scandal of the ostensible contradiction of reason with itself” (Letter to Garve, September , ; Br :). For this point, see Ernst Cassirer, Kant’s Life and Thought, translated by James Haden (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, ), –. Kuehn argues that the claim of this letter does not contradict Kant’s famous assertion that it was Hume who awoke him from his dogmatic slumber (see Prol :). Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Conception of ‘Hume’s Problem’,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment there is an intentionally acting being as a world-cause (hence as an author) at the basis of what we rightly call natural ends “ (KU :). The dogmatic conflict between teleology and mechanism arises for those who purport to possess such objective knowledge. It is precisely the conflict into which ordinary understanding falls. Thesis: All generation of material things is possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. Antithesis: Some generation of such things is not possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. (KU :) I suggest then that Kant formulates this conflict between objective, transcendent principles of determinative judgment in § and then proceeds to argue at length that no existing or conceivable dogmatic treatment of the problem of teleology is possible (§§–), precisely because this conflict and the argument against it meet two defining characteristics of an antinomy: () An antinomy is a conflict that arises necessarily for common understanding; () it is resolved by rejecting the dogmatic answers to the problem it poses and adopting the critical perspective. Indeed, the declaration that no one doubts that organisms must be judged teleologically is the opening statement of the critique of the dogmatic accounts of teleology in §§–. I propose to set this discussion aside and note only that it presents four dogmatic accounts of teleology as two contradictory types of approaches to the problem (a realistic and an idealistic approach), within each of which we find two contradictory positions (physical and hyperphysical or metaphysical). In this two-tiered antinomial structure the positions thus “all controvert one another dogmatically [dogmatisch . . . unter einander streitig sind]” (KU :). Later in the text, Kant says explicitly that we could assert the dogmatic antithesis “if we were justified in regarding material things as things in themselves” (KU :). Furthermore and confirming my suggestion above, Kant says explicitly what motivates the dogmatic treatment of the problem of natural purposes. It is precisely the drive to reach the first cause in a series. The truth of the thesis would entail the reducibility of the teleological language we employ to describe organisms, while the truth of the antithesis would be tantamount to asserting that there are teleological forces and explanations. Interestingly, Kant gives what appears to be a more general reason why we cannot endorse either principle; they are transcendent and “we can have no determining principle a priori of the possibility of things in accordance with merely empirical laws of nature” (KU :). I will discuss the way I understand the relation between the regulative maxim of mechanism and the determinative use of mechanistic explanations in the next chapter. See Chapter , Section ..: Mechanism: Determinative Use and Regulative Maxim. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment It must therefore be a certain presentiment of our reason, or a hint as it were given to us by nature, that we could by means of that concept of final causes step beyond nature and even connect it to the highest point in the series of causes if we were to abandon research into nature (even though we have not gotten very far in that), or at least set it aside for a while, and attempt to discover first where that stranger in natural science, namely the concept of natural ends, leads. (KU :) The way to avoid the “contradictorily opposed principles” (KU :) we are led to endorse is to deal with the problem critically: “The dogmatic treatment of a concept is thus that which is lawful for the determining, the critical that which is lawful merely for the reflecting power of judgment” (KU :). But these considerations have an important flip side. Both the antinomy of the reflective power of judgment and its resolution differ from those of the first Critique. The first difference is that the antinomy of reflective judgment is not a conflict of ordinary understanding or reason. As I emphasized in the previous chapter, Kant’s discussion of organisms is an analysis of the way we judge them and not an analysis of what they are objectively. The latter, and not the former, is the dogmatic perspective. Differently put, the Kantian notion of a faculty of judgment is not a dogmatic one. For it is clearly the critical perspective that attributes to us a faculty of judgment that mediates between sensibility and understanding. As we will see in the next chapter, the key section of the Dialectic focuses on the notion of discursivity – namely, conceptual cognition of what is given sensibly. But it is precisely discursive understanding that requires judgment for the subsumption of the sensibly given under its concepts. It is true that Kant calls the antinomy of reflective judgment “a natural and unavoidable illusion” (KU :). But his explicit explanation of why he says this is not that the conflict ensnares ordinary understanding. The reason, rather, is that “each of the two conflicting maxims has its ground in the nature of our cognitive faculties” (KU :). As we will see in detail in the next chapter, Kant grounds both maxims in the discursive nature of our cognition. Allison and Nuzzo also claim that the point of this discussion is to argue that the conflict between the principles of mechanism and teleology can only be resolved within the perspective of the reflective faculty of judgment. See Henry E. Allison, “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” in Essays on Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, a), –; Angelica Nuzzo, Kant and the Unity of Reason (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, ), . For this important point, see Peter McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellon Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment The second closely related difference is of great importance for understanding the principal aims of the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment. Precisely because the conflict is not a dogmatic one, its resolution cannot introduce the critical perspective. As we will see in the next subsection, there is no real conflict between the maxims of mechanism and teleology. What the Dialectic in fact offers then is not a resolution of a conflict. It offers deeper insight into the ground of the maxims of teleology and mechanism in discursivity and a clearer vision of their scope and how generally they fit together. .. The Antinomy of Reflective Judgment: An Antinomy with No Contradiction (§) The suggestions of the previous section must seem rather baroque: On the one hand, Kant presents a real contradiction between determinative principles, which is not an antinomy but nevertheless assimilates two of its defining characteristics; on the other hand, Kant presents an antinomy of reflective judgment that does not possess these characteristics and is not in fact a conflict even as it is first formulated. Nevertheless, the latter claim, to which we now turn, is even more clearly grounded in the text than the former. Kant presents the antinomy of reflective judgment in §: The first maxim of the power of judgment is the thesis: All generation [Alle Erzeugung] of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws. For the claims that the antinomy of teleological judgment presupposes the distinction between things in themselves and appearances and that its resolution is the elucidation of the role of the principle of teleology, see Gary Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, ), –. I thus agree with the methodological suggestion made by Quarfood that we should seek what truth there is both in the approach that takes the antinomy to be the conflict between the constitutive principles and the approach that takes it to arise between the reflective maxims. See Marcel Quarfood, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment: What Is It and How It Is Solved,” in Kant’s Theory of Biology, edited by Ina Goy and Eric Watkins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), –. On his interpretation, the discussion addresses the dialectical illusion of interpreting regulative maxims “as having some determining (or ontological) force” (Quarfood, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” ). The problem I see with this line of interpretation is that it aims to contend with a dialectical illusion after the critical perspective of the regulative maxims has been attained. It is true that an antinomy remains an unavoidable illusion. But after attaining the critical perspective, we are no longer fooled by it: An antinomy is a “natural and unavoidable illusion, which even if one is no longer fooled by it, still deceives though it does not defraud and which thus can be rendered harmless but never destroyed” (A/B–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment The second maxim is the antithesis: Some products (Einige Produkte) of material nature cannot be judged as possible according to merely mechanical laws (judging them requires an entirely different law of causality, namely that of final causes). (KU :) He immediately goes on to present the contradiction between transcendent principles of reason and says emphatically of its principles that “reason can prove neither the one nor the other” (KU :). In this they apparently differ from the antinomies of theoretical reason. This difference is in fact a consequence of attaining the critical perspective, from within which no proof of the dogmatic principles is possible. His next claim is that the maxims of reflective judgment, in contrast to the would-be constitutive principles, do not in fact “contain any contradiction” (KU :). The antinomy of reflective judgment is then clearly and explicitly said to occur between maxims that do not contradict one another. The explication of this claim should be familiar to us. For if I say that I must judge the possibility of all events in material nature and hence all forms, as their products, in accordance with merely mechanical laws, I do not thereby say that they are possible only in accordance with such laws (to the exclusion of any other kind of causality); rather, that only indicates that I should always reflect on them in accordance with the principle of the mere mechanism of nature, and hence research the latter, so far as I can, because if it is not made the basis for research then there can be no proper cognition of nature. Now this is not an obstacle to the second maxim for searching after a principle and reflecting upon it which is quite different from explanation (Erklärung) in accordance with the mechanism of nature, namely the principle of final causes, on the proper occasion, namely in the case of some forms of nature (and, at their instance, even the whole of nature). For reflection in accordance with the first maxim is not thereby suspended, rather one is required to pursue it as far as one can; it is also not thereby said that those forms would not be possible in accordance with the mechanism of nature. (KU :–) Kant actually speaks in the singular: “Was dagegen die zuerst vorgetragene Maxime einer reflektierenden Urteilskraft betrifft . . ..” But I think Quarfood is right to suggest that he is referring to the conjunction of the two maxims. It seems very odd to say that the maxim of mechanism contains no contradiction; and the following (quoted) sentences clearly expound the claim by explaining why the two maxims do not contradict one another. See Quarfood “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” –, note . For different approaches to this difficulty, see: McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, ; Eric Watkins, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” Kant Yearbook (): –. I have very slightly amended the translation. Kant writes: “von der Erklärung nach dem Mechanism der Natur ganz verschieden ist” (KU :.–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment Kant says here explicitly that under the guidance of the principle of mechanism “we must judge the possibility of all events in material nature and hence all forms, as their products.” This is precisely an insistence on the universal scope of mechanistic causal laws as the single explanatory ground of empirical events and their products. If this principle “is not made the basis for research then there can be no proper cognition of nature.” The principle of teleology, on the other hand, is employed in reflection “which is quite different from explanation in accordance with the mechanism of nature.” It is employed to reflect upon “some forms of nature (and, at their instance, even the whole of nature).” This, I suggest, is the principle guiding the description or observation of organisms and, as we will soon see in more detail, nature generally. I argued at length in the last chapter that teleology governs description or observation whereas mechanism governs explanation and that the two do not, therefore, contradict but indeed complement one another. But the objection might be made that quite a bit of the material I employed in the last chapter is drawn from texts that come after the section we are now reading. It is indeed true that some particularly clear formulations occur later in the Dialectic (see §) and in the first sections of the Methodology of Teleological Judgment (see §§–). But recall that Kant says very clearly already in the section introducing the entire Analytic that teleological judgment is “rightly drawn into our research into nature [Naturforschung], at least problematically, but only in order to bring it under principles of observation and research [Beobachtung und Nachforschung] in analogy with causality according to ends, without presuming to explain [erklären] it” (KU :). It is of the greatest importance to underscore that the maxim of mechanism speaks clearly of all generation (Alle Erzeugung), and thus of causality, and that Kant further specifies that we are talking about events and their products. In contrast to the thesis of the antinomy and to both transcendent determinative principles, Kant’s formulation of the maxim of teleology does not mention generation. It does not enjoin attributions of a competing form of causality and causal explanation. There is no contradiction between the maxims precisely for this reason. We should then take Readers who claim that the reflective maxims do contradict or exclude one another either take the maxim of teleology to refer to generation as well or else fail to see the significance of the fact that it does not. For some examples, see G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, edited and translated by George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), ; McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, , –; Allison, “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” ; Watkins, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” ; cf., . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Peculiarity of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment very seriously Kant’s claim, which directly follows the presentation of the antinomy, that its two maxims do not contradict each other. The unusual construction of an antinomy between nonconflicting maxims has misled some interpreters into thinking that the determinative real contradiction is, in fact, the antinomy and that coming to see that the principles of mechanism and teleology are reflective maxims of judgment is its solution. But Kant is explicit that this is not the case and, once again, in the very section devoted to presenting the antinomy. It is worth noting that the interpretation I am offering explains why the mistake is frequently made of taking the antinomy to occur between the determinative principles and to be solved by taking them to be reflective maxims: the former assimilates defining characteristics of an antinomy – namely, a dogmatic conflict of common understanding; and the latter possesses defining properties of a resolution – namely, the critical perspective and no conflict or contradiction. .. Preparation for the Resolution of the Antinomy of Reflective Judgment (§) This raises a further question about the unusual antinomy – namely, whether and how it is resolved. Strikingly and confirming the suggestion that the maxims constituting the antinomy do not in fact conflict, Kant calls the next section Preparation for the Resolution of the Above Antinomy (§). It says nothing concerning a real conflict between the reflective maxims of mechanism and teleology. It begins rather with the claim that we can by no means prove either the thesis or the antithesis of the dogmatic conflict. Kant goes on to say: However, with respect to our cognitive faculty, it is just as indubitably certain that the mere mechanism of nature is also incapable of providing an explanatory ground for the generation of organized beings. It is therefore an entirely correct fundamental principle for the reflecting power of judgment that for the evident connection of things in accordance with final causes we must conceive of a causality different from mechanism, namely that of an (intelligent) world-cause acting in accordance with ends, no matter how rash and indemonstrable that would be for the determining power of judgment. (KU :) An early and noteworthy example of the mistake is Hegel. For my analysis of Hegel’s response to the antinomy, see Ido Geiger, “Purposiveness: Regulative or Realized? Hegel’s Response to Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” Hegel-Jahrbuch (): –. For criticism of the view that takes the determinative conflict to be the antinomy of teleological judgment, see McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, –. And see again note . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment The resolution of the antinomy will not show us how to settle a conflict, a conflict Kant clearly asserts is not there. Rather, this passage suggests (and the suggestion will be confirmed below) that the resolution is learning how the fundamental principle of teleological judgment is grounded in the very nature of our distinct cognitive faculty. What is distinct about our cognitive faculty, we will see, is its discursivity. And what ultimately justifies teleology (and mechanism as well) is learning that it is a fundamental principle of the reflective judgment of a discursive understanding. The claim that the resolution of the antinomy will be achieved by gaining deeper insight into its grounds finds support in its very formulation. The maxim of mechanism is a universal directive and thus arguably a general principle of reflective judgment. Kant indeed says that it is “provided by the mere understanding a priori” (KU :). (I will return to this claim in the last section of the next chapter.) But the maxim of teleology is not a universal directive; it speaks only of some products of material nature. It is indeed “suggested by particular experiences” (KU :); and we saw above that Kant emphasizes that these experiences are themselves contingent. We will thus have to see how it is grounded in a universal principle of reflective judgment. In other words, we will have to see that the maxim guiding our teleological judgments of organisms is only a specific use of the more general principle of the purposiveness of nature. As Kant says, the antinomy can be called a “natural dialectic and unavoidable illusion” only if “each of the two conflicting maxims has its ground in the nature of the cognitive faculties” (KU :). Kant’s final claim in this preparatory section is admittedly, at first sight, baffling, for he appears to claim that there really is no antinomy of reflective judgment: “All appearance of an antinomy between the maxims of that kind of explanation which is genuinely physical (mechanical) and that which is teleological (technical) therefore rests on confusing a fundamental principle of the reflecting with that of the determining power of judgment” (KU :). But I think that what Kant actually means to say is that all appearance of a conflict or contradiction between the maxims of reflective judgment – a conflict of the sort we find in the antinomies of theoretical reason – rests on confusedly taking them to be determinative principles; I further suggest that he is saying that between the maxims of It is this claim specifically that suggests that the resolution of the antinomy is showing it to be no antinomy. For this formulation, see Eckart Förster, “Die Bedeutung von §§ , der Kritik der Urteilskraft für die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie [Teil ],” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (): . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion reflective judgment there is no contradiction or conflict. In any case, he certainly is not claiming that there is a real conflict between the maxims of reflective judgment. It should be noted, finally, that this last passage is followed immediately by the discussion of the dogmatic conflict (§§–). Its results are then drawn in the following section, which affirms that the principle of purposiveness is a critical principle of reason for the reflecting power of judgment (§). Following this discussion and a section that he describes as a digression (§; its last paragraph already belongs though with the next section), Kant comes to discuss the special character (Eigentümlichkeit) of human understanding, which is the focus of the next chapter. . Conclusion The main claims I presented in this chapter are principally exegetical in nature. I claimed that the key to a number of quite puzzling questions concerning the Critique of Teleological Judgment is Kant’s decision to assimilate characteristics of a dialectic into his discussion. The first fact explained by this decision is the construction of an argument from the organism to the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. Though problematic, the argument from the organism allows Kant to discuss the possible views ordinary dogmatic understanding adopts concerning natural teleology and to argue against them – thus showing that the critical perspective alone can successfully contend with the matter. I also claimed that the antinomy of teleological judgment comprises two maxims that do not contradict one another even as they are first formulated. The resolution of this unusual antinomy does not remove a conflict, but will be rather the attainment of deeper insight into the necessity of the maxims and into the way they complement one another. Why did Kant go to such lengths to give his discussion the form characteristic of a dialectic? I suggested that the construction supports his claim that the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of experience. It allows him to show, furthermore, that making it a principle of reason for the power of reflective judgment leaves it free of the contradictions that threaten to assail reason. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.005 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature . Introduction From the perspective of our concerns, we reach the peak of the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment – and indeed of the discussion of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature – in its penultimate section: On the Special Character of the Human Understanding, by Means of which the Concept of a Natural End is Possible for Us (§). Its concluding paragraph declares teleological judgment to be necessary but also insists that it stands in no contradiction to the principle of mechanistic explanation; and it restates the often-quoted assertion, discussed in Chapter , that a Newton of the grass-blade is an absurdity. Kant opens this concluding paragraph by claiming that from the argument it summarizes, “we may also understand what we could otherwise easily suspect but only with difficulty assert as certain and prove, namely, that the principle of a mechanical derivation of purposive products of nature could of course subsist alongside the teleological principle, but could by no means make the latter dispensable” (KU :). It is important to emphasize that Kant describes the argument of § as an apodictic proof and, as I have been claiming, says that it affords deeper insight into what we might otherwise have suspected. This supports the claim of the previous chapter that the resolution of the antinomy consists in gaining deeper insight into the fact that the maxims of reflective judgment are both necessary and do not contradict but, in fact, complement one another. Furthermore, I suggest that Kant’s statement that his discussion constitutes a certain proof also supports the claim I made in Chapter that the Guyer and Matthews sometimes translate Eigentümlichkeit as peculiarity (for example in the titles of §§, ) and sometimes as special character (as in the title of §). The problem is not with the translations themselves. But the inconsistency obscures the fact that the sense of the word employed specifically in the titles of these key sections is almost a technical one. It refers to what is characteristic of aesthetic and of empirical-conceptual judgments respectively. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding deduction of the Introduction finds its completion in the discussion of the discursivity of our understanding. As we will see in the next section, here we learn how the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is grounded in the discursivity of our understanding – this, recall, was one important element missing from the deduction offered in Section V of the Introduction. After discussing some of the metaphysical and epistemological implications of the principle in the following section, the section after it will turn to a discussion of the maxim of mechanism. It will attempt to afford deeper insight into the necessity of the maxim and into how the principles of teleology and mechanism do not contradict one another but, indeed, essentially complement one another. That discussion will also explain why and in what sense precisely a discursive understanding necessarily represents the world as a comprehensive hierarchical system of concepts and ultimately of causal laws – this was the second element missing from the deduction offered in the Introduction. . Discursivity: The Special Character of Human Understanding Before turning to these matters, it is worth examining the final passage of §, which serves as an introduction to §. .. Discursivity: The Introductory Argument (§) Kant gives § the title Remark and dedicates it to what he describes as a digression (originally printed in smaller letters), which serves for elucidation “not for the proof of what has here been expounded” (KU :). The bulk of the Remark is substantively devoted to explaining that our conceptions of the theoretical distinction between possibility and actuality and the practical distinction between the morally obligatory and the naturally occurrent are both consequences of the particular nature of our finite discursive cognition and practical agency. The final, relatively short paragraph of the Remark is clearly, however, an introduction to the following section. It is worth quoting in full: Likewise, as far as the case before us is concerned, it may be conceded that we would find no distinction between a natural mechanism and a technique of nature, i.e., a connection to ends in it, if our understanding were not of the sort that must go from the universal to the particular, and the power of judgment can thus cognize no purposiveness in the particular, and hence make no determining judgments, without having a universal law under which it can subsume the particular. But now since the particular, as such, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature contains something contingent with regard to the universal, but reason nevertheless still requires unity, hence lawfulness, in the connection of particular laws of nature (which lawfulness of the contingent is called purposiveness), and the a priori derivation of the particular laws from the universal, as far as what is contingent in the former is concerned, is impossible through the determination of the concept of the object, thus the concept of the purposiveness of nature in its products is a concept that is necessary for the human power of judgment in regard to nature but does not pertain to the determination of the objects themselves, thus a subjective principle of reason for the power of judgment which, as regulative (not constitutive), is just as necessarily valid for our human power of judgment as if it were an objective principle. (KU :) The first sentence states the thesis: The fact that there is for us a distinction between the teleological and mechanistic viewpoints, or, alternatively, the fact that we view particulars as purposive, is a consequence of the discursivity of our understanding – namely, the fact that for us experience is the subsumption of particulars under concepts or universals. The formulation remarkably suggests that the fact that we judge teleologically is solely a consequence of possessing distinct cognitive capacities and what this fact implies concerning our experience and not any particular fact about the way we judge distinct natural objects. Indeed, the formulation of the thesis suggests (and its explication confirms the suggestion) that Kant is not talking about a distinct set of particulars that we judge teleologically – namely, organisms; he is talking about particulars “as such” or natural objects quite generally. The claim appears then to be that the very subsumption of any particular under a universal in a determinative judgment presupposes in some way an attribution of purposiveness to nature and its objects and that this fact is a consequence of our being discursive cognizers. The thesis thus states that for discursive cognizers the principle of purposiveness is both necessary and of universal scope. The second, very long sentence is supposed to explicate this dramatic claim. Kant uses here the explication of purposiveness as the lawfulness of the contingent (see also KU :–; EEKU :). The idea is that we employ a notion of purposiveness, in one or another of its forms, to For the claim that the argument from discursivity does not depend on our judgment of organisms, see Paul Guyer, “Organisms and the Unity of Science,” in Kant and the Exact Sciences, edited by Eric Watkins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. For the claim that this passage discusses teleological judgments of organisms, see Eckart Förster, “Die Bedeutung von §§ , der Kritik der Urteilskraft für die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie [Teil ],” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding account for what cannot be explained by specifying the natural properties of the parts that constitute an object. So we say of an artifact, say a machine, that its parts are put together in just the way they are because it is the product of human intentional design; the parts are put together in a way that harnesses the joint effect of their natural properties to perform specific tasks. The fact that the parts are put together in just the way they are is contingent from the perspective of their natural properties. There is no natural law explaining why they are found together. This lawfulness or unity – that is, subsuming them under the one concept of a particular machine – is an attribution of a particular form of purposiveness – that is, human intentional agency. In the case of organisms, we describe them as though they organize themselves and thus as though they were the product of their own purposive agency. For Kant, we saw, the forces governing organic processes are all blind, but they always presuppose an original organization for which there is no reductive mechanistic explanation. In this particular case, purposiveness is a regulative principle guiding our empirical investigation of organisms. But why does Kant claim that objects or particulars generally contain something contingent with regard to universals? After all, we subsume a particular under a universal because we identify in it those properties or marks which the concept contains. We determine that a thing is a piece of jade, for example, because it is a green rock of a certain hardness and toughness. All jade has this in common and is thus all of one kind. Where then is the excess unity that requires an account? I will try to give a more satisfactory answer to this all-important question in the third and final subsection of this section. But here is a first attempt to grapple with it, staying close in this and the next subsection to Kant’s own formulations. Concepts generally, according to Kant, necessarily determine that particulars belong to a kind (such as jade) because they possess a finite number of marks such objects share (green rock of a certain hardness and toughness). This means, Kant is claiming, that the objects are underdetermined with respect to the universal and its assertion of unity. They are all determined to be of one kind (unity or lawfulness), even though they might and generally do differ in some of their other properties (contingency). This is true no matter how general or specific the concept employed. This underdetermination is then a fundamental feature of the relation between concepts and particulars, no matter how precisely we specify our more general concepts. Subsuming particulars under a universal is thus attributing unity to partly diverse particulars. Though in part different, they are all determined to be of a single kind. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature Where then does the unity come from? Kant rather obscurely claims that the “a priori derivation of the particular laws from the universal, as far as what is contingent in the former is concerned, is impossible through the determination of the concept of the object.” I take him to be assuming implicitly that the unity must have its origin in an a priori principle of judgment. In other words, he is implicitly generalizing his claim concerning the principle of teleological judgment of organisms that the “universality and necessity that it asserts of such a purposiveness cannot rest merely on grounds in experience, but must have as its ground some sort of a priori principle” (KU :). The assertion of universality or unity in determinative judgments cannot be grounded in finite experience – namely, determinations that are always based on a finite number of shared properties or marks. It must be grounded in an a priori principle of judgment. But the principle cannot be a principle of determinative judgment. The opening assertion of the Dialectic is that determinative judgment is no autonomy and has no principles of its own (see KU :). Recall, furthermore, that the deduction presented in the Introduction emphatically claimed that pure understanding and its general laws and the determinative judgments that serve them (“the determination of the concept of the object”) can offer no insight into the particular laws of nature. Kant concludes by claiming that the principle of the “purposiveness of nature in its products is a concept that is necessary for the human power of judgment in regard to nature” but that it does not “pertain to the determination of the objects themselves.” In other words, it is a “subjective principle of reason for the power of judgment” that we view nature as purposive for our discursive understanding. We view nature as though it were constituted by unities that can be subsumed under universal concepts. Although Kant does not make the point explicit in the passage before us, the last claim is, in fact, tantamount to the claim that we view nature as though it were systematically constituted by unities that can be subsumed under a comprehensive system of universal concepts. In other I will focus on another sense in which experience is finite – that is, that our experience is always of a finite sample of objects – in the discussion of induction below. See Section ..: Empirical Laws of Nature and Induction. Kant makes the point that the universal form of empirical concepts has its origin in us particularly clearly in the Jäsche Logic. He divides concepts into those given (a priori or a posteriori) and those made. Empirically given concepts are called concepts of experience. To this distinction between given and made concepts he adds a note concerning the universality or universal form of concepts: “The form of a concept, as that of a discursive representation, is always made” (Log :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding words, we view the realm of nature as though it were constituted throughout its entire extent by unities that can be subsumed under universal concepts. This is implicit in speaking here not of natural objects but of our view of nature generally. We view nature as though it were a conceptually purposive whole – as though it were made to be fully knowable by creatures with a discursive understanding. This regulative principle is “just as necessarily valid for our human power of judgment as if it were an objective principle.” Without it, recall, we could “make no determining judgments.” .. Discursive vs. Intuitive Understanding: The Principal Argument (§) Turning to describe the claims of § and Kant’s longer explication of the connection between discursivity and purposiveness, we find woven together two lines of thought: First, Kant repeats, in much the same terms, the claims of the introductory argument; second, as a way of illuminating the special character of our discursive understanding, he contrasts it with another conceivable kind of understanding – namely, an intuitive understanding. In this subsection, I will present the argument; and in the next, I will try to make sense of it. I propose summarizing the combination of these two lines of thought as follows: () Creatures with discursive understanding experience and cognize particular sensibly given objects by subsuming them under universal concepts. () Universal concepts underdetermine the particular objects subsumed under them. Containing a finite number of common characteristics or marks, the universal concepts employed in determinative judgments are assertions of unity between diverse particulars. This asserted unity necessarily exceeds experience. () A contrast, intuitive understanding (or completely spontaneous intuition) would not subsume sensibly given particulars under universal concepts. We might think of it as an understanding for which there would be no underdetermination or contingency in the relation between universal concepts and particulars. More precisely, an intuitive understanding would grasp a whole and all its diverse parts together as mutually dependent upon one another. () But from the perspective of a discursive understanding, viewing parts as dependent on the whole of which they are a part is possible only if https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press () Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature we represent the parts as causal effects of the representation of the whole – that is, by representing the whole as a purposive end. Thus our viewing natural objects and nature generally purposively is a consequence of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding. Here are a few characteristic passages from which the first two claims can be drawn. They explain (rather repetitively) the peculiar or contingent character of discursive understanding: This contingency is quite naturally found in the particular, which the power of judgment is to subsume under the universal of the concepts of the understanding; for through the universal of our (human) understanding the particular is not determined, and it is contingent in how many different ways distinct things that nevertheless coincide in a common characteristic [einem gemeinsamen Merkmale] can be presented to our perception [Wahrnehmung]. Our understanding is a faculty of concepts, i.e., a discursive understanding, for which it must of course be contingent what and how different might be the particular that can be given to it in nature and brought under its concepts. (KU :) Our understanding thus has this peculiarity for the power of judgment, that in cognition by means of it the particular is not determined by the universal, and the former therefore cannot be derived from the latter alone; but nevertheless this particular in the manifold of nature should agree with the universal (through concepts and laws), which agreement under such circumstances must be quite contingent and without a determinate principle for the power of judgment. (KU :–) Our understanding, namely, has the property that in its cognition . . . it must go from the analytical universal (of concepts) to the particular (of the given empirical intuition), in which it determines nothing with regard to the manifoldness of the latter, but must expect this determination for the power of judgment from the subsumption of the empirical intuition (when the object is a product of nature) under the concept. (KU :) Note first that Kant speaks most often of cognition in the passages we are examining. But he makes it abundantly clear that he is also talking about our most fundamental grasp of or cognitive access to particulars. In the first quote he speaks explicitly of how we perceive particulars, thus I have corrected a typo in the translation. The original says: “the particular is not determined by the universal, and the latter therefore cannot be derived from the former alone.” Kant writes: “Unser Verstand hat also das Eigene für die Urteilskraft, daß im Erkenntnis durch denselben durch das Allgemeine das Besondere nicht bestimmt wird, und dieses also von jenem allein nicht abgeleitet werden kann” (KU :.–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding indicating that we are talking about how particulars are empirically given to us at the most fundamental conceptual level. He is talking then of the very conditions of experiencing and cognizing particulars. Note further that in the first two quotes Kant says that the particular is not determined by the universal. But it is quite clear that he means to say that the particular is not fully determined by the universal. Taken literally, the first claim would mean that predication is entirely empty, and Kant speaks clearly of “distinct things that nevertheless coincide in a common characteristic” and says that the particular cannot be derived from the universal alone. I further suggest that by calling the universals employed by discursive beings “analytical universals” he means universals that are necessarily analyzed into a finite number of such characteristics or marks; it is for this reason, presumably, that the subsumption of a given empirical intuition under a universal concept “determines nothing with regard to the manifoldness in the latter.” The third claim is found (repeatedly again) directly following the former passages: But since intuition also belongs to cognition, and a faculty of a complete spontaneity of intuition would be a cognitive faculty distinct and completely independent from sensibility, and thus an understanding in the most general sense of the term, one can thus also conceive of an intuitive understanding (negatively, namely merely as not discursive [negativ, nämlich bloß als nicht diskursiven]), which does not go from the universal to the particular and thus to the individual (through concepts), and for which that contingency of the agreement of nature in its products in accordance with particular laws for the understanding, which makes it so difficult for ours to bring the manifold of these to the unity of cognition, is not encountered – a job that our understanding can accomplish only For this sense of the analysis of concepts and the role played by experience, see, for example, this well-known passage: I can first cognize the concept of body analytically through the marks of extension, of impenetrability, of shape, etc., which are all thought in this concept. But now I amplify my cognition and, in looking back to the experience from which I had extracted this concept of body, I find that weight is also always connected with the previous marks. (A/B) For the sense of the term “analytical universal,” see Henry E. Allison, “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” in Essays on Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, a), –. See also: Clark Zumbach, “Kant’s Argument for the Autonomy of Biology,” Nature and System (): ; Clark Zumbach, The Transcendent Science: Kant’s Conception of Biological Methodology (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, ), . Cf.: Peter McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation: Antinomy and Teleology (Lewiston, ME: Edwin Mellon Press, ), ; Peter McLaughlin, “Newtonian Biology and Kant’s Mechanistic Concept of Causality,” in Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, edited by Gerhard Funke (Bonn: Bouvier, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature through the correspondence of natural characteristics [Naturmerkmale] with our faculty of concepts, which is quite contingent, but which an intuitive understanding would not need. (KU :) Nevertheless, in order for us to be able at least to conceive of the possibility of such an agreement of the things of nature with the power of judgment (which we represent as contingent, hence as possible only through an end aimed at it), we must at the same time [müssen wir uns zugleich] conceive of another understanding, in relation to which, and indeed prior to any end attributed to it, we can represent that agreement of natural laws with our power of judgment, which for our understanding is conceivable only through ends as the means of connection, as necessary. (KU :) Now, however, we can also conceive of an understanding which, since it is not discursive like ours but is intuitive, goes from the synthetically universal (of the intuition of a whole as such) to the particular, i.e., from the whole to the parts, in which, therefore, and in whose representation of the whole, there is no contingency in the combination of the parts, in order to make possible a determinate form of the whole, which is needed by our understanding, which must progress from the parts, as universally conceived grounds, to the different possible forms, as consequences, that can be subsumed under it. (KU :) The first passage describes an intuitive understanding as a faculty of a complete spontaneity of intuition that would thus not be dependent on sensibility in any way. This passage, as well as the next, clearly asserts that for an intuitive understanding the unity of universal concepts or laws would not be contingent but necessary. The last passage formulates the same thought by speaking of the relation of whole and part and claiming that for an intuitive understanding part and whole are given together as mutually dependent. This latter formulation is an improvement on the former, because where there is no distinction between the understanding as a faculty of concepts and intuition as a faculty of sensibility there is also no qualitative distinction between universal and particular. It is thus more helpful to think of an intuitive understanding in terms of relations of whole and parts. The fourth and fifth claims are found in one central and long passage: Thus if we would not represent the possibility of the whole as depending upon the parts, as is appropriate for our discursive understanding, but would rather, after the model of the intuitive (archetypical) understanding, represent the possibility of the parts (as far as both their constitution and their combination is concerned) as depending upon the whole, then, given the very same special characteristic of our understanding, this cannot come https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding about by the whole being the ground of the possibility of the connection of the parts (which would be a contradiction in the discursive kind of cognition), but only by the representation of a whole containing the ground of the possibility of its form and of the connection of parts that belongs to that. But now since the whole would in that case be an effect (product) the representation of which would be regarded as the cause of its possibility, but the product of a cause whose determining ground is merely the representation of its effect is called an end, it follows that it is merely a consequence of the particular constitution of our understanding that we represent products of nature as possible only in accordance with another kind of causality than that of the natural laws of matter, namely only in accordance with that of ends and final causes, and that this principle does not pertain to the possibility of such things themselves (even considered as phenomena) in accordance with this sort of generation, but pertains only to the judging of them that is possible for our understanding. (KU :–) It is sometimes thought, I believe, that the argumentative figure of an intuitive understanding is supposed to bear much of the weight of explaining why purposiveness is necessary, but only for creatures who possess a discursive understanding. But there is reason to doubt this assumption. First and generally, Kant holds that the possibility of conceiving of an intuitive understanding follows immediately and with necessity from, or, is a simple negation of, our conception of a discursive understanding. He thus says that in order for us to be able to conceive of the latter possibility “we must at the same time conceive of another understanding” and that we conceive of such an intuitive understanding “negatively, namely merely as not discursive.” But if this is so, then it is hard to see how the argument can depend on it. Second and more concretely, the figure is employed to explicate the connection between discursivity and purposiveness. But the introductory argument in § explained the connection without turning to it; and this explanation is alluded to in the claim quoted above that we represent the agreement of natural objects with our discursive judgment “as contingent, hence as possible only through an end aimed at it.” In other words, using the explication of purposiveness as lawfulness of the As is well known, these passages and the idea of an intuitive understanding had the greatest impact on post-Kantian philosophy. For a broad and very instructive discussion, see Förster, “Die Bedeutung von §§ , der Kritik der Urteilskraft für die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie [Teil ],” –; Eckart Förster, “Die Bedeutung von §§ , der Kritik der Urteilskraft für die Entwicklung der nachkantischen Philosophie [Teil ],” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature contingent in place of () above, would allow us to move from claims () and () of the argument to its conclusion without employing the contrast figure of an intuitive understanding in (). This raises the important question of why Kant thinks the argument he introduces in the last paragraph of § and presents more fully in § possesses the force of a proof. The answer, I suggest once again, is that he has purportedly shown how purposiveness (and, as we will see below, mechanism) has “its ground in the nature of our cognitive faculties” (KU :). It is of the greatest importance to recall that in Section V of the Introduction Kant says that the deduction of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature “requires a transcendental deduction, by means of which the ground [Grund] for judging in this way must be sought in the sources of cognition [Erkenntnißquellen] a priori” (KU :). It is in § that we finally learn that the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is grounded in the discursive peculiarity of our understanding. In the next subsection and in the section devoted to the maxim of mechanism below, we will gain deeper insight into the other question left open by the deduction – namely, the question of why the system of empirical knowledge takes the form of a comprehensive hierarchical system of empirical concept and ultimately of causal laws. In the next subsection we will also contend with a crucial question that has not been addressed satisfactorily here: Why does Kant insist that any subsumption of a particular under a concept is an attribution of unity exceeding the limited content of the concept? Why precisely does any such subsumption implicitly assume the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole? This, of course, is the crux of the matter. Before concluding this section, it is important to point out two complications raised by the long paragraph from which the last quoted passage is taken. First, I said that describing an intuitive understanding as grasping Alternatively, a reconstruction of the argument that takes it to depend substantively on the figure of an intuitive understanding would have to show what the notion contains and explain how the argument depends on it and how this content is justified. I emphasize that I think that on the reconstruction I have suggested the argument does not in fact depend on the figure or step (). Why then is § explicitly said not to offer a proof? The fact that it uses intuitive understanding accords with my claim that employing the figure is not the crucial point. But it also relates peculiarities to our distinct cognitive capacities, which does not accord with my claim that this is the decisive matter. The most plausible answer I can come up with but do not find wholly satisfactory is that Kant takes the arguments of § to be short sketches, in contrast to the more detailed argument of §. This is supported by the fact that the last paragraph of § offers a compact version of the argument of §. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding whole and parts together as mutually dependent (rather than as a universal that fully and with necessity determines the particulars under it) is apt, because for such a cognitive faculty there would be no qualitative distinction between universal concepts of thought and sensible particulars. But when Kant asks how the dependence of parts on a natural whole is conceived by a discursive understanding, he sticks to the part–whole relation and answers that we can only represent such a whole as a natural end. This might give the impression that the argument applies only to our purposive conception of organisms. But as I have been claiming and as the first steps of the argument show clearly, the concept of a natural end is only a particularly forceful example of a much more general principle. We conceive of all natural objects and indeed of nature generally as a systematic whole under the assumption that it is purposive for discursive cognizers. That this is the full scope of the principles of mechanism and purposiveness is made clear by Kant in the penultimate paragraph of §, in which he summarizes the vision of nature he has expounded. . . . that which is necessary in it as object of the senses can be considered in accordance with mechanical laws, while the agreement and unity of the particular laws and corresponding forms, which in regard to the mechanical laws we must judge as contingent, can at the same time be considered in it, as object of reason (indeed the whole of nature as a system) in accordance with teleological laws, and the material world would thus be judged in accordance with two kinds of principles, without the mechanical mode of explanation being excluded by the teleological mode, as if they contradicted each other. (KU :) The second point is of the utmost importance and has to do with what is probably the most neglected and recalcitrant problem of the Dialectic of the Teleological Power of Judgment. In the course of the long central paragraph from which the last quote is drawn, Kant reminds us that in accordance with “the constitution of our understanding, by contrast, a real whole of nature is to be regarded only as the effect of the concurrent moving forces of the parts” (KU :). This, I will argue below, is a version of the maxim of mechanism, which directs us to explain a whole by specifying its parts and the forces (in this formulation, moving forces) governing them. Kant says here very clearly that, like the maxim of teleology or the assumption of the purposiveness of nature more generally, mechanistic judgment is a function of the particular constitution of our understanding. This claim demands careful explication – a task I set aside for the last section of the chapter. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature .. Purposiveness and Empirical Objectivity I want to return here to the crucial question, which is yet to be answered satisfactorily: Why does Kant claim that particulars are underdetermined with respect to the unity attributed by empirical concepts? Why does the use of any empirical concept also presuppose, as Kant suggests in the concluding paragraph of § and in the last passage I quoted (see again KU :, ), the satisfaction of the highest requirement of unity made by reason? To put the question the other way round, Why not take the use of an empirical concept to commit us to no more than the analytic claim that objects falling under it are alike in – and so unified by – sharing the marks contained in it? One thought would be that this is a way of alluding to the distinction between a real or objective unity between particulars and an arbitrary grouping of particulars that happen to share certain marks. This thought finds corroboration in the fact that already in the Introduction to the third Critique Kant claims that empirical laws “must be regarded as necessary” (KU :). In Chapter , I suggested that Kant claims that formulating empirical laws, and by implication employing the concepts required to describe the objects and kinds to which they apply, involves a claim of necessity, because the investigation of the empirical order of nature is concerned with objective matters of fact. Furthermore, the problem of a transition between the general conditions of experience and the conditions of a particular empirical experience is formulated already in the Introduction, as I also noted in Chapter , with special emphasis on the category of causality and the search for empirical causal laws. In other words, the thought is that Kant is concerned – as I have been emphasizing – with sorting nature in a way that tracks causal laws. To be cognitively valuable, our sorting and description of nature must be causally informative and so explanatory. The unity Kant is concerned with would then be the unity of objective universal causal laws. To put the thought we are considering in contemporary terms, Kant is concerned with the causal projectability of empirical predicates. It might further be thought that what is ultimately of interest to science is something that is not itself a set Kreines puts the point well: “consideration of accidental regularities helps to bring out the sense in which natural laws are not regularities; where there is a natural law there is necessitation and absolute or strict universality.” James Kreines, “Kant on the Laws of Nature: Laws, Necessitation, and the Limitation of Our Knowledge,” European Journal of Philosophy (): . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Discursivity of Human Understanding of perceptible marks, but something these marks are to capture – namely, causal forces that are known only from their effects. There is an apparently different way of answering the question of excess unity that is closer to Kant’s own formulations. On the sort of picture Kant has in mind grouping similar particulars under a concept is assuming that () these particulars are all further determinable and can be ordered under more specific concepts; and () the marks employed to group the particulars are further analyzable into simpler, more general concepts. We can picture this as a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts, all of which are only partly determined, and none of which can be fully determined until – at the unattainable ideal – all are. This is the reason why Kant so emphasizes the contingent variety of particulars that share certain marks. I am suggesting that Kant’s vision of a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts leading up to the most general concepts and down to ever more specific concepts is his way of talking about real or objective unity. The thought then is that only the complete determination of our system of concepts can ground the claims to objectivity we make when we subsume a particular under an empirical concept. This is why the assumption of the comprehensive conceptual purposiveness of nature underwrites any subsumption of a particular under an empirical concept. Furthermore, we might add to the picture of a comprehensive system of empirical concepts the thought that the hierarchy of concepts leads up to general causal forces and laws and down to ever more specific complexes explainable in their terms. In other words, we add to Kant’s notion of a system of empirical concepts the thought that ideally this system is to inform us about the causal connections between things in the world. If this is right, then the better textually grounded answer to the question of excess unity given in the former paragraph is essentially the same as the answer given in the paragraph before it. Kant is concerned with the objectivity of For emphasis of this point, see Eric Watkins, “Kant’s Model of Causality: Causal Powers, Laws, and Kant’s Reply to Hume,” Journal of the History of Philosophy (): –. In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant explicitly relates discursivity, the complete determination of objects and the demand for continual specification of concepts: Now the understanding cognizes everything only through concepts; consequently, however far it goes in its divisions, it never cognizes through mere intuition but always yet again through lower concepts. The cognition of appearances in their thoroughgoing determinacy (which is possible only through understanding) demands a ceaselessly continuing specification of its concepts, and a progress to the varieties that always still remain, from which abstraction is made in the concept of the species and even more in that of the genus. (A/ B) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature causal laws. In this way, the assumption of the comprehensive conceptual purposiveness of nature underwrites the universality and strict necessity of empirical causal laws. As it turns out, the transcendental assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is an important component of Kant’s necessitation conception of causal laws and kinds. . . . the concept of cause . . . always requires that something A be of such a kind that something else B follows from it necessarily and in accordance with an absolutely universal rule. (A/B) Kant holds then that employing any empirical universal concept to make a purportedly objective assertion presupposes the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. We view nature as though it were systematically constituted by unities that can be subsumed under a comprehensive system of universal concepts. Significantly, the principle that grounds our claims to empirical objectivity is not itself an objective principle. . . . thus the concept of the purposiveness of nature in its products is a concept that is necessary for the human power of judgment in regard to nature but does not pertain to the determination of the objects themselves, thus a subjective principle of reason for the power of judgment which, as regulative (not constitutive), is just as necessarily valid for our human power of judgment as if it were an objective principle. (KU :) Although the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a subjective principle that does not determine objects, it is, nevertheless, a condition of our particular experience of nature. The assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is then the transcendental bridge Kant draws between, on the one hand, the general conditions of experience and the principle of causality specifically and, on the other hand, the conditions of a particular experience of nature comprising empirical concepts and causal laws. As Kant claims in the Introduction to the third Critique, “the principle of the purposiveness of nature (in the multiplicity of its empirical laws) is a transcendental principle” (KU :). And it is the discussion of the discursivity of our understanding that supplies an element crucially missing from the deduction of the principle in Section V of the Introduction. . Discursivity: Metaphysical and Epistemological Implications In this section, I would like to discuss some closely related metaphysical and epistemological consequences of the claim that the regulative https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Metaphysical & Epistemological Implications assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of cognition and of experience generally. These consequences would repay detailed discussion; I will discuss them here only briefly. .. The Revisability and Defeasibility of Empirical Concepts and Laws of Nature In the previous section, I claimed that the regulative assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of objective experience and cognition. In other words, the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature necessarily shapes the ongoing investigation of the objective empirical world. One immediate implication of this view is that the content of the causal laws we formulate, and by implication our empirical concepts generally, is always subject to revision, and by the same token, our knowledge of the empirical world we experience is always subject to refinement. To philosophers with empiricist leanings this should be a very welcome result. It is, moreover, an interesting and significant component of how we are to supplement Kant’s metaphysical commitment to empirical realism in the first Critique. In the context of his earlier investigation, Kant sometimes describes his empirical realism concerning outer experience as the quite general claim that in space “the real, or the material of all objects of outer intuition is nevertheless really given, independently of all invention” (A) – the indefinite emphasis here is simply on the reality of the material or matter of external experience (see also A, A). More often, Kant speaks, in the first Critique and Prolegomena, somewhat more specifically of the reality of things, bodies or objects (and their properties) in space outside us. According to the third Critique, however, we learn what the particular rule-governed shape of reality is through ongoing This aspect of Kant’s conception of empirical nature is nicely formulated in the following passage: Could Linnaeus have hoped to outline a system of nature if he had had to worry that if he found a stone that he called granite, this might differ in its internal constitution from every other stone which nevertheless looked just like it, and all he could hope to find were always individual things, as it were isolated for the understanding, and never a class of them that could be brought under concepts of genus and species[?] (EEKU :) For the view that, for Kant, our knowledge of the empirical world is essentially revisable, see, for example: Watkins, “Kant’s Model of Causality,” –; Kreines, “Kant on the Laws of Nature,” . There are very many examples of such expressions. See, for example: Bxxxix-xli, A/B, A/ B, A–/B–, B, A/B, B, A; Prol :, –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature empirical investigation. As Kant plainly puts it, the “understanding is of course in possession a priori of universal laws of nature, without which nature could not be an object of experience at all; but still it requires in addition a certain order of nature in its particular rules, which can only be known to it empirically” (KU :). For Kant, the empirical order of nature is revealed through an ongoing process of investigation guided by the assumption that nature constitutes a comprehensive system of empirical causal laws. It might be asked why the third Critique does not lay greater emphasis on this point. Part of the answer might be that already in the first Critique Kant very clearly claims that empirical concepts cannot be defined, but rather serve as designations of objects with which we engage empirically as investigators of nature. One makes use of certain marks only as long as they are sufficient for making distinctions; new observations, however, take some away and add some, and therefore the concept never remains within secure boundaries. And in any case what would be the point of defining such a concept? – since when, e.g., water and its properties are under discussion, one will not stop at what is intended by the word “water” but rather advance to experiments, and the word, with the few marks that are attached to it, is to constitute only a designation and not a concept of the thing; thus the putative definition is nothing other than the determination of the word. (A/B) This passage is quoted very often, but its epistemological import is not usually emphasized. Kant speaks here clearly of observation and experimentation as guiding the ongoing revision of the content of concepts like “water” and “gold.” Another important part of the answer, I believe, is that the revisability of our empirical worldview is not some further thesis of Kant’s empirical philosophy. From the very beginning of the investigation conducted in the third Critique, it is, I think, taken for granted. The characterization of reflective judgment as charged with the search for empirical concepts under a regulative principle guiding an ongoing investigation is already an acknowledgment of the revisability of empirical knowledge. Revisability is there from the get-go, from the very posing of the problem of the possibility of empirical knowledge. It is there even before identifying and justifying the principle guiding reflective judgment. It might, at this juncture, be claimed that if empirical knowledge is always revisable then it must also be defeasible, for a revision required in our conception of empirical nature might be a quite radical one. The revision might require rejecting an empirical causal law (and with it https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Metaphysical & Epistemological Implications possibly the sortal concepts it employs), because we have encountered a great many exceptions to it. This is not a challenge I want to dodge. In the next subsection, I will turn to question of induction. Before turning to this question, however, it is worth saying here that presenting defeasibility as a challenge might be the result of missing a crucial aspect of Kant’s conception of empirical knowledge. For to view empirical knowledge as essentially revisable is to hold that the empirical world can never be known with finality or certainty. From an empiricist perspective, however, defeasibility too is not a challenge but a very welcome result. But there is a weighty and philosophically fertile complication here. As I have presented his view thus far, Kant is committed to the thoroughgoing revisability of our empirical worldview, precisely because the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of any empirical experience. The problem, to put it very briefly, is that this commitment appears to conflict with the permanence or irrevisability of the most fundamental natural order given to us in perception. The most fundamental objects and relations of similarity we perceive do not change with the progress of science – though scientific investigation might lead us to believe that things we perceive as similar are not in fact similar. In other words, to speak, as we saw Kant very often does in the first Critique, of an empirical realism concerning objects requires some sort of account of the permanence or irrevisability of at least the ordinary objects we perceive. So the combination of critical or transcendental idealism and empirical realism at the empirical level (and consequently, perhaps generally) will turn out to present a complex challenge. This will be a major concern that will emerge in the next chapter and one of the most important and original contributions of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment – or so, at least, I will claim in the Conclusion. .. Empirical Laws of Nature and Induction Quite a few readers have seen Kant’s discussions of the assumption of the systematic unity of nature in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature in the third Critique as directly relevant to the topic of induction. Indeed, some have claimed that these discussions are written by Kant as his answer to Hume’s problem of induction. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to say something about this matter; it too would repay more detailed attention. Allison is a prominent example of the former broader connection between the conceptual purposiveness of nature and induction; Walker and Brittan – of the latter. See: Henry E. Allison, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature To see Kant’s notion of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a response to Hume’s problem of induction requires conjoining two discussions. First, Kant famously presents his revolutionary contribution to philosophy as a response to Hume. Hume argues, says Kant in the Prolegomena, that it is impossible to draw the necessary connection between cause and effect “a priori and from concepts” and that consequently it must be “really nothing but a bastard of the imagination” (Prol :). Kant’s response is first to generalize the problem: “I soon found that the concept of the connection of cause and effect is far from being the only concept through which the understanding thinks connections of things a priori; rather, metaphysics consists wholly of such concepts” (Prol :). He then describes himself as proceeding to the highly demanding deduction of these concepts of pure understanding (Prol :). Kant clearly has in mind here the categories of pure understanding (and, by implication, space and time, required to establish the objective validity of the categories). But his answer might be taken more broadly as introducing the notion of a transcendental condition of experience and its deduction as the source of necessary knowledge Hume overlooked: The transcendental conditions of experience are synthetic a priori principles – thus neither analytic connections “from concepts” nor merely habitual associations of the imagination. Second, the deduction of the conceptual purposiveness of nature might indeed be viewed as a response to Hume’s argument that the uniformity of nature can be established neither by reason nor by experience. Here is a clear statement of the problem from the Enquiry: When a man says, I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities conjoined with such secret powers: And when he says, similar sensible qualities will always be conjoined with similar secret powers; he is not guilty of a tautology, nor are these propositions in any respect the same. You say that the one proposition is an inference from the other. But you must confess, that the inference is not intuitive; neither is it demonstrative: Of what nature is it then? To say it is experimental, is begging the question. For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the future will “Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant’s Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume,” in Essays on Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –; Ralph C. S. Walker, “Induction and Transcendental Argument,” in Transcendental Arguments: Problems and Prospects, edited by Robert Stern (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), –; Gordon G. Brittan Jr., Kant’s Theory of Science (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), –. Walker lays great emphasis on the notion of a transcendental argument in his analysis of Kant’s treatment of induction. See Walker, “Induction and Transcendental Argument,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Metaphysical & Epistemological Implications resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion, that the course of nature may change, and that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can give rise to no inference or conclusion. It is impossible, therefore, that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future; since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular; that alone, without some new argument or inference, proves not, that, for the future, it will continue so. Very briefly, the transcendental deduction of the principle of conceptual purposiveness of nature and its grounding in our discursivity can be regarded as precisely the new argument Hume here demands; for it does claim that we necessarily regard nature under the assumption that it is constituted by universal regularities amenable to investigation by our discursive understanding and, specifically, that we so view the notions of causality and force or power. Although it does not constitute an objection to the connection drawn above, the following point is perhaps significant enough to merit attention. Kant does not draw the connection between induction and the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature in the third Critique. In his lectures on logic, in contrast, he explicitly relates induction to the power of judgment. Analogy and induction, he says, are “inferences of the power of judgment” (V-Lo/Dohna :; see also Log :–). He calls them “logical presumptions [Präsumtionen],” says they are “useful and indispensable for the sake of the extending of our cognition by experience” and warns us that “since they give only empirical certainty, we must make use of them with caution and care” (Log :). Errors, he says, “for the most part arise from them” (V-Lo/Heschel ). Why then is induction not mentioned in the third Critique? The answer, I think, is that Kant’s discussion is more fundamental than Hume’s. In order to see this clearly, note first that Hume does not place in question our ability to identify and group together “similar sensible qualities.” His question is whether it is rational to expect similar powers to continue to be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. Kant, in contrast, holds that an account is needed even of our most fundamental employment of universal concepts to group together similar objects. Hume then takes for granted what Kant thinks requires an account. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature It is useful to recall here the distinction, drawn in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, between the logical principles of systematic unity, similarity, variety and continuity and transcendental principles bearing the very same names (see A–/B–, A/B, A/B, A/B). The point there, briefly stated, is that the justification of a transcendental principle underwrites its use as a principle of logic. For Kant, induction is a logical principle; the task of the third Critique is transcendental. That induction belongs, for Kant, to a different level of discussion can also be seen clearly from the fact that he regularly connects it to inferences by analogy. Analogy is an inference “from many determinations and properties, in which things of one kind agree, to the remaining ones, insofar as they belong to the same principle” (Log :; see also V-Lo/Blomberg :; V-Lo/Heschel –; V-Lo/Dohna :–). As we saw in the previous section, the discussion of discursivity stresses that when a universal subsumes under it a particular, “it determines nothing with regard to the manifoldness of the latter” (KU :). As discursive creatures we must think of the particulars subsumed under a concept as a variety rather than as similar in all respects. But these different ways of regarding the particulars subsumed under a concept only apparently conflict. The conflict is removed by attending once again to the fact that they belong to different levels of discussion. The discursivity argument investigates what is entailed by the very subsumption of particulars under concepts. Inferences from analogy presuppose the possession of concepts and knowledge of objects and ask how our knowledge can be extended. I claimed that to see the discussion of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as an answer to Hume requires: () taking Kant’s general response to Hume to be the introduction of the notion of a transcendental condition of experience and its deduction; and () taking the deduction of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature to be a response to Hume’s problem of induction. But strictly speaking, the deduction is not a response to the problem of induction. It does, however, entail a response – though this response does not belong to the level of transcendental inquiry. Finally, it is worth emphasizing that, as we saw above, Kant is well aware of the fact that induction cannot provide us with certainty and does sometimes lead us to error (see also: V-Lo/Blomberg :; V-Lo/ Dohna : ). He nevertheless appears not to treat this as a problem. I claimed above that, from an empiricist perspective, the defeasibility of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism empirical laws can be viewed as an advantage. This though is not, to the best of my knowledge, something Kant ever says. . Kant’s Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism In his seminal work on Kant’s Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, McLaughlin poses with particular sharpness the exegetical challenge of finding a justification for the parts-to-whole or analytic– synthetic conception of physical explanation, which he identifies with Kant’s regulative maxim of mechanism. His own answer is that Kant introduces the necessity of judging a whole as the effect of its parts, their properties and the forces governing them without anything like sufficient support. In fact, he claims, “Kant merely postulates the mechanical peculiarity of our understanding and makes no attempt to explain what it consists in and why it is justified.” He goes on to argue that Kant’s postulate is nevertheless of real epistemological import, for the so-called analytic–synthetic method and its conception of explanation just is the unquestioned methodology of the paradigmatic science of the times: The method of classical modern physics is equated with scientific explanation in general and the latter is equated with knowledge as such. This is anchored in the “constitution” of our understanding, so that this way of thinking seems not to be one that arose in the course of history but to be one that is systematically simply given. Short of finding or reconstructing a Kantian argument supporting the mechanistic conception of explanation, McLaughlin’s answer might very well be the best alternative. It is certainly an interesting and not at all implausible claim from the perspective of the history and philosophy of science. Walker claims that Kant’s response to the problem of induction and his transcendental arguments generally are responses to the skeptic. See Walker, “Induction and Transcendental Argument,” –. McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, . Needless to say, I disagree with McLaughlin’s claim that the peculiarity of our understanding is its mechanistic character. It is, as Kant says clearly, its discursivity, from which, I hope to show, the commitment to mechanistic explanation follows. For this formulation of the exegetical challenge, see Peter McLaughlin, “Mechanical Explanation in the ‘Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment’,” in Kant’s Theory of Biology, edited by Ina Goy and Eric Watkins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), . McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, . In a retrospective remark, McLaughlin says he does not really like the answer given in his book. But he appears still to think it’s the best answer available. See McLaughlin, “Mechanical Explanation in the ‘Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment’,” , note . For discussion of this problem https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature But that there should be an argument justifying the maxim of mechanism, just as there is for the maxim of teleology, is clearly suggested by the claim that both have their “ground in the nature of our cognitive faculties” (KU :) and that the maxim of mechanism is “provided by the mere understanding a priori” (KU :) – claims Kant echoes when he says that we explain parts-to-whole in accordance with “the constitution of our understanding” (KU :). Indeed, that the arguments are related to the transcendental ambitions of the third Critique is implied by the claim that for the reflective power of judgment the maxims are necessary “for the sake of the cognition of natural laws in experience, in order to arrive by their means at concepts, even if these are concepts of reason, if it needs these merely in order to come to know nature as far as its empirical laws are concerned” (KU :–). In this section I hope to show that such an argument can be drawn from the Dialectic. In the course of reconstructing it, I will also offer a detailed account of the second element missing from the deduction of the principle of the purposiveness of nature – namely, an explanation why knowledge must take the shape of a comprehensive and hierarchical taxonomy of causal laws. Before turning to the argument for the maxim of mechanism, we must examine the various senses given by Kant to the term “mechanism” and ask how they are related as well as examine the important dependent terms “part” and “whole.” .. Preliminaries: The Senses of Mechanism Kant uses the term “mechanism” and its cognates throughout his writings in a variety of senses and with different emphases. I think the sense that is of most direct relevance when considering the maxim of mechanism is the parts-to-whole form of explanation. But as we will see, other senses and emphases are also of significance for understanding its justification and full import. and two other attempts to offer an argument for the principle of mechanism, see Angela Breitenbach, “Mechanical Explanation of Nature and Its Limits in Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgment’,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences (): –; Eric Watkins, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” Kant Yearbook (): –. For discussion of the possible senses of the term and different views as to which is referred to in the thesis of the antinomy, see McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, –; Breitenbach, “Mechanical Explanation of Nature and Its Limits,” –; Thomas Teufel, “Wholes that Cause Their Parts: Organic Self-reproduction and the Reality of Biological https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism Kant probably most often speaks of the mechanism of nature in two very closely related senses: () the necessity of natural causal connections; and () the necessity of the particular causal laws governing nature. For example, in the Preface to the second edition of the first Critique, he speaks of the mechanism of nature as following directly from or as equivalent to the principle of causality (Bxxvii). In other places, he appears to assume that this causal determination will take the shape of particular causal laws. Thus, in the second Critique, he says that “all necessity of events in time in accordance with the natural law of causality can be called the mechanism of nature” and immediately goes on to speak in the singular of what appears to be the particular “necessity of the connection of events in a time series as it develops in accordance with natural law” (KpV :; see also EEKU :). In many contexts this difference might appear to be of little or no consequence. But it is, of course, of great importance to our concerns. For our principal interest is precisely the gap between, on the one hand, the principle of causality and what Kant calls in the Introduction to the third Critique the “general analogy of a possible experience in general” (KU :) and, on the other hand, the conditions of a particular experience comprising particular causal laws. Kant frequently employs the term “mechanism” to refer not to natural or natural lawful causal necessitation directly but to draw a derivative contrast. Specifically, he often contrasts natural causation, in the practical context, with self-determination through freedom and, in the theoretical context that is our focus, with the intentional agency and end-directedness that our attributions of self-organization to natural products appear to Teleology,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences (): ; Allison, “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” –; McLaughlin, “Mechanical Explanation,” –; Hannah Ginsborg, “Kant on Understanding Organisms as Natural Purposes,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. I am following McLaughlin’s understanding of the maxim of mechanism as directing us to employ the parts-to-whole or mechanistic form of explanation, because Kant says that () the maxims have their “ground in the nature of the cognitive faculties” (KU :); () the maxim of mechanism is “provided by the mere understanding a priori” (KU :); () we explain parts-towhole in accordance with “the constitution of our understanding” (KU :). But this exegetical question is not decisive for our present concerns. Kant explicitly endorses the parts-to-whole form of explanation and says it is grounded in the nature of our understanding. My principle aim in this section is to reconstruct the argument grounding this claim. There are very many other examples of these uses and those I mention below. For emphasis of the importance of this context for understanding Kant’s discussion of the maxim of mechanism, see Watkins, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” ; Marcel Quarfood, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment: What Is It and How It Is Solved,” in Kant’s Theory of Biology, edited by Ina Goy and Eric Watkins (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature suggest. End-directed intentional agency is nonnatural causal efficacy. These two mutually exclusive species of causality are jointly exhaustive of the notion. The mechanism of nature is thus glossed as “a causal connection for which an understanding does not have to be exclusively assumed as a cause” (KU :; see also EEKU : (quoted below); KU :–, , ). It is this contrast, furthermore, that explains Kant’s quite frequent characterization of natural causal laws as blind (see KU :, , ). In contrast to intentional agency, natural causality operates with no ends in view, or blindly. As we saw in the previous chapter, it is precisely for this reason that Kant faults purportedly scientific theories comprising such causality for being nonnaturalistic (see KU :, ). He emphasizes against hylozoism that the concept of living, that is, selfdetermining and self-moving, matter “contains a contradiction, because lifelessness, inertia, constitutes its essential characteristic” (KU :; see also KU :). Natural (lawful) causal necessitation is externally rather than internally or self-determined and blind rather than end-directed. In the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment, however, Kant also gives the term “mechanism” a different sense; it is this sense, I think, that is the most directly relevant to the discussion of the maxim of mechanism. The maxim states: “All generation [Alle Erzeugung] of material things and their forms must be judged as possible in accordance with merely mechanical laws” (KU :). Now if we consider a material whole, as far as its form is concerned, as a product of the parts and of their forces and their capacity to combine by themselves (including as parts other materials that they add to themselves), we represent a mechanical kind of generation. (KU :) Here mechanistic generation is defined as an account of a whole in terms of its parts and the forces they possess independently of being parts of this Kant’s frequent emphases of the blindness of mechanism and its contrast to free agency are obviously related to uses of the term “mechanism” to refer to the externally predetermined working of a machine (see, for example, EEKU :) or to following a procedure without thought and, in this sense, blindly or not freely (see, for example, A/B). On the sense of mechanism as automatic or thoughtless, see Eduard J. Dijksterhuis, Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes (Berlin: Springer, ), . A sense closely related to the former is of relevance to understanding the term “mechanical arts,” constituted by sets of given rules of practice, and their contrast to the free or liberal arts (see KU §). Kant is referring here to his Second Law of Mechanics (MAN :); he emphasizes the distinction between the inertia of matter and intentional agency (see MAN :). On the significance and limitations of the former contrast, see Dijksterhuis, Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism or that particular whole. I have been claiming that the emphasis on production or generation is, in fact, an emphasis on causal processes. This short passage defines then mechanistic causal accounts or explanations as the explanation of a whole in terms of its parts and the forces governing these parts. I think that this is the sense most immediately relevant to the antinomy of reflective judgment, precisely because it seems to conflict with the apparent dependence of parts on a whole in the case of teleological judgments of organisms. Kant states the problem clearly in the First Introduction: Now since it is entirely contrary to the nature of physical-mechanical causes that the whole should be the cause of the possibility of the causality of the parts, rather the latter must be given first in order for the possibility of a whole to be comprehended from it; since, further, the particular representation of a whole which precedes the possibility of the parts is a mere idea and this, if it is regarded as the ground of causality, is called an end: it is clear that if there are such products of nature, it would be impossible [even] to investigate their character and their cause only in experience (let alone explain them by reason), without representing their form and causality as determined in accordance with a principle of ends. (EEKU :) Succinctly, the problem is that, on the one hand, we are committed to the parts-to-whole mechanistic form of natural explanation; and, on the other hand, we speak of certain natural products as though the whole is “the cause of the possibility of the causality of the parts” and so, in a way, that appears to imply that they are products of end-directed and thus nonnatural activity. This, I think, is just the apparent conflict of the antinomy of reflective judgment. It should be noted, finally, that the characterization of the Dialectic of mechanistic explanation quoted above from § is presented as though it were repeating its formulation in the previous paragraph. But the earlier formulation is, in fact, a specification of the later characterization. In accordance with the constitution of our understanding, by contrast, a real whole of nature is to be regarded only as the effect of the concurrent moving forces of the parts. (KU :; see also KU :, ; EEKU :) Here Kant speaks specifically of moving forces, and this raises the question of whether the narrower or broader characterization is most directly And see again note . I have slightly amended the translation. Kant writes: “es unmöglich sei, ihrer Beschaffenheit und deren Ursache auch nur in die Erfahrung nachzuforschen” (EEKU :.–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature relevant to the discussion. I think the answer is that the broader characterization is most directly relevant to the discussion of organisms, for the apparent dependence of parts on the organic whole is not restricted to moving forces. Kant, I think, is merely alluding here to the view expounded in detail in the Mechanics chapter of the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. According to this view, moving forces are the most fundamental forces governing matter as such; and consequently, the most fundamental explanations of material events refer to moving forces. It is worth underscoring that this last, more specific characterization of mechanistic explanation as proceeding from parts to whole explicitly states that it is a consequence of the “constitution of our understanding.” Our question then is what justifies the regulative maxim of mechanism, which directs us to search for explanations of material wholes as products of their parts and the forces governing them. The answer to the question should reveal, moreover, a close connection between three of the senses of mechanism surveyed above: () causal determination generally; () particular empirical causal laws; and () the general mechanistic model of causal explanation. It will become clearer below that drawing a close connection between these senses of mechanism is of central importance. For arguing that the mechanistic model of causal explanation has its “ground in the nature of our cognitive faculties” (KU :) will demand showing that it is a consequence of Kant’s transcendental investigation of the possibility of a particular empirical experience of nature. Succinctly, the transcendental account explaining the move from () to () will have () as its consequence. .. Preliminaries: The Senses of Part–Whole The second important preliminary point is to clarify what precisely falls for Kant, in this context, under the interdependent terms “part” and “whole.” Our first thought might be that the wholes investigated and explained by scientific theories of physical nature are simply spatially extended bodies, complexes or systems and that the part–whole relation is the But see again Teufel, “Wholes that Cause Their Parts,” . On the sense of mechanism as mechanics or doctrine of motion and the great importance of mathematization, see Dijksterhuis, Die Mechanisierung des Weltbildes, –, –. On the end of reductive explanation into the terms of mechanics, which he calls mechanicism (Mechanizismus), see Gideon Freudenthal, “Kritik und Rehabilitierung des Mechanismus,” Konsequent (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism relation of spatial containment. But upon reflection, it should become clear that identifying the whole and the parts relevant to physical explanation is not a trivial matter. The negative or positive acceleration of a body might be the result of mechanical explosion or of free fall toward another body. In the first case, the whole might be a contiguous material body; in the second – the whole would consist of parts that are not contiguous. Indeed, identifying the whole and its parts might seem to depend on identifying a distinct causal connection. This suggestion is confirmed by examining again Kant’s own examples of biological explanations. We saw in the previous chapters that the problem posed by organisms is that we speak of their generation and the causal processes governing them as though they were end-directed. I claimed there that Kant’s solution to the problem is a distinct conception of biological explanation: () The starting point of any explanation of an organized form or state is identifying an original structure of organization; () the forces operative in processes of self-organization are blind. We also saw in Chapter that Kant has a remarkably flexible view of the wholes and parts involved in organic processes. The whole in need of explanation might be: () an individual organism and its states, such as growth and regeneration (see KU :–); () the procreative processes of reproduction (see KU :, ); () the human species and its races and their adaptation to the environment; () the human species and its rational development, described in the naturalistic-teleological account human history (see IaG :–; KU :–; RGV :); and () conceivably all organic phenomena, discussed in Kant’s evolutionary speculation (see KU :–). Remarkably, although these wholes all in some sense exist materially in space, they are obviously not all simply contiguous spatially extended The thought would indeed follow from a commitment to atomism. But although the analytic– synthetic method dovetails nicely with atomism, the connection is not a necessary one (see Freudenthal, “Kritik und Rehabilitierung des Mechanismus,” ); and Kant is not an atomist (see MAN :–). It is noteworthy that Kant calls the explanation of impenetrability by atoms and the void the “mathematical-mechanical mode of explanation” (MAN :) employed by the “mechanical natural philosophy” (MAN :) and contrasts it to his own dynamical–metaphysical mode of explanation. This particular sense of mechanism derives, Kant says, from the notion of a machine, that is, a “a body (or particle) whose moving force depends on its figure” (MAN :). Zuckert defends this understanding of the part–whole relation, drawn from the conception of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science. See Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the ‘Critique of Judgment’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. Kant emphasizes that the process is natural in IaG : and by speaking of the end of nature in KU :. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature bodies, and this entails that the relations between parts are not all interactions of organs or systems spatially contained in a single body. So although the original structures of organization that figure in the explanans might indeed often be physical parts of an organism (roots and xylem, leaf and stem), this is not always the case. They might not be physical parts of a single organism (sexual reproduction). Turning to the parts that are not organized and play a role in these processes, the environmental factors that trigger the processes of adaptation, discussed in the papers on the human races, are not physical parts of the species, nor are the raw materials involved in nutrition physical parts of organisms (see KU :). Kant emphasizes this last point in his clearest formulation of the principle of mechanism; as we saw above, he says explicitly that the presumably physical parts of a whole must be viewed as “including as parts other materials that they add to themselves” (KU :). Finally, in the naturalistic-teleological account of human rational development Kant introduces a natural force without ascribing it to any particular material or physical structure. The natural inclination that acts as the driving force of our teleological progress as a rational species is “unsociable sociability” (see IaG :–). The point might be made that a natural force, effective in the physical realm, would ultimately have to be ascribed to something physical. This might well be right. But Kant reveals no qualms in speculatively offering what he takes to be a naturalistic account without doing so. The lesson to draw from these examples is, I suggest, that Kant’s view of the wholes and parts that figure in natural explanations is very flexible and indeed goes hand in hand with suggesting a causal explanation for a process or state. I will claim below that this flexibility is no coincidence but in fact a distinct feature of Kant’s view. For the purposes of Chapter , it seemed reasonable to treat Kant’s talk of wholes and parts as unproblematic. The examples all seemed intuitive enough. It certainly seems to make sense to think of an organic process and what it involves as part of an organism, race or species as a whole, as well as to think that gaining insight into the workings of such processes is explaining how these wholes function. Thinking of something McLaughlin holds that Kant is thinking of spatial containment of physical parts. As a counterexample to Kant’s view, he gives organic or social systems that determine their constituents. See McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, –. But Kant’s view of human history suggests that he would have no problem with viewing the state of a society at a given time as one of the forces effecting an individual. For more on the spatial interpretation of part–whole determination relations, see McLaughlin, “Mechanical Explanation,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism as self-organizing and the problem posed by this concept seems to imply that understanding it just is discovering how its various processes of selforganization work. Indeed, the problem the maxim of mechanism poses has been so elusive, precisely because it seems so unquestionable. But if we are to gain deeper insight into it, we must understand why this is so and indeed why, more generally, Kant thinks that causal explanation is for us mechanistic. One answer that has been given to this is that the mechanistic relation of part and whole is a lesson taught by practical mechanics and experience in the construction of machines; Kant himself might be read as emphasizing this fact. Why, then, does teleology usually not constitute a proper part of theoretical natural science, but is instead drawn into theology as a propaedeutic or transition? This is done in order to keep the study of the mechanism of nature restricted to what we can subject to our observation or experiments, so that we could produce it ourselves, like nature, at least as far as the similarity of [its] laws is concerned; for we understand completely only that which we ourselves can make and bring about [machen und zustande bringen kann] in accordance with concepts. (KU :–) It must be noted though that Kant speaks explicitly of observation; and he also speaks of laws similar to those we find in nature, thus implying science might introduce laws speculatively, as long as they are similar in character to those we have observed. So his notion of making must be broad enough to include making or bringing about in thought, possibly speculatively. Second and even more significantly, the aim of this section is certainly not to deny that we rarely question the necessity of the mechanistic conception of explanation or that it is deeply rooted in our practical lives. The aim of this section is to see whether it has a philosophical grounding as well. What we want then is an account of why parts – as well as what parts See McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, –, –. For a very illuminating discussion of the relation between the analytic–synthetic method and practical mechanics, in particular, clocks, their construction and operation as models for scientific explanation, see Gideon Freudenthal, Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton: On the Genesis of the Mechanistic World View, translated by Peter McLaughlin (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, ), –. I have very slightly amended the translation. Kant writes: “wenigstens der Ähnlichkeit der Gesetze nach” (KU :.–). For the emphasis on bringing about in thought, see McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation, , , –. For the limitations of actual mechanisms as models for scientific explanation, see Freudenthal, Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton, –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature precisely – are causally and thus explanatorily simpler or more fundamental than the wholes of which they are a part. .. Discursivity and Part–Whole Relations I claimed above that the thesis of the antinomy of reflective judgment and its emphasis on generation formulates a commitment to mechanistic (parts-to-whole) causality and explanation. As we saw, in the earlier, more specific characterization of mechanistic explanation, he says explicitly that we so explain in accordance with “the constitution of our understanding.” The section in which this claim is made is devoted to the discursive peculiarity of our understanding. But if we are to take seriously the claim that our distinct mode of explanation follows from our discursivity, then the sense of part and whole must, at least initially, be broader than parts causally involved in generating or altering the state of a whole. In this context, it is worth noting that the central passage of §, on which we are now focusing and in which Kant claims that the mechanistic mode of explanation is characteristic of our understanding, begins by speaking of cognition generally and immediately introduces, as an obviously important example, cognition of “the cause of a product” (KU :). So the question we should ask is what is distinct about the way discursive understanding generally conceives of parts and wholes. I am suggesting turning our focus from parts and wholes that are physical to concepts of parts and wholes – and as we will soon see, to concepts as themselves parts and wholes. This shift might seem suspect. Very significantly, however, in the Prize Essay, Kant emphatically says that the Newtonian method of seeking the general explanatory principles behind complex natural phenomena is essentially the same as “true method of metaphysics” (UD :), which begins with inner experience and aims “to seek out those characteristic marks which are certainly to be found in the concept of any general property” (UD :). I hope this claim is enough to give me some leeway to pursue this line of thought. I will return to the obvious question raised by moving from the physical to the conceptual realm in the last subsection. The question, of course, is For the crucial claim that for Kant the method of analysis and synthesis of phenomena, associated with Galileo and Newton, and the analysis and synthesis of concepts, associated with Descartes, are closely related and can indeed be viewed as varieties of a single method, see Brigitte Falkenburg, Kants Kosmologie: Die Wissenschaftliche Revolution der Naturphilosophie im . Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism what ensures us that the structure of our system of concepts is isomorphic to the structure of the world. In the discussion of definitions in the first Critique Transcendental Doctrine of Method, Kant famously claims that a constructed mathematical concept has a definition (Definition); for a philosophical concept, however, we can only offer an exposition (Exposition); whereas analyzing an empirical concept into its marks is an explication (Explikation). For all these Latinate terms, he remarks, German has “nothing more than one word ‘explanation [Erklärung]’” (A/B). So analyzing an empirical concept into its marks is explicating or, more loosely, explaining it. Now Kant often speaks of analysis of the content of an empirical concept into its marks, particularly where the context is empirical cognition. But he also quite often calls a mark (or several marks) a partial representation or partial concept (see, for example: V-Lo/Dohna :, ; Log :–, ) or simply a part of the concept (see, for example: VLo/Wiener :, ; V-Lo/Dohna :, ; Log :). So explicating or explaining the content of a concept is analyzing it into its parts. Kant also puts this point by speaking of a higher or genus concept containing the ground of cognition of a lower or species concept contained under it (see, for example: V-Lo/Dohna :; Log :). But explicating what an empirical concept contains is also explicating what the objects subsumed under it are; analysis of a concept into parts also gives the simpler grounds of cognition of objects: Now the ground always contains the consequences under itself. Accordingly, every universal concept is a ground of cognition for many things, and furnished with a concept, I have a ground of cognition of many things. The concept itself is also contained in the things, however. For it constitutes a part of their representation. (V-Lo/Wiener :) If we apply this understanding to (a concept of ) a causal system or causally generated whole, then analyzing it into (concepts of ) its causally effective parts just is offering a causal account or explanation of it; in Kant’s own words, when we consider a material whole “as a product of the parts and of their forces and their capacity to combine by themselves . . . we represent a mechanical kind of generation” (KU :). It is worth emphasizing again that in all the biological examples we examined above the relevant parts There are again very many other examples of these uses and those I cite below. I am giving only a few examples taken from the discussions of concepts in Kant’s critical period lectures on logic. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature just were those involved in the several partial processes of self-organization of an organic whole. Biological wholes are characterized as self-organizing and thus as a distinct kind of causal whole, and the explanations Kant discusses all detail the simpler causal processes of self-organization of these wholes. It is also important to emphasize again that at this juncture we are simply positing an analysis of wholes into their causally effective parts; we are not asserting that we necessarily conceive of wholes through their causally effective parts. We will return below to the question of the relation between the structure of the system of concepts and the causal structure of the world. To accept then that Kant’s conception of causal explanation is grounded in his understanding of conceptual wholes and their parts and the objects to which they refer just is to accept that causally effective parts are explanatorily simpler than the causal wholes they generate. It might be objected that the above claims show only that Kant’s commitment to mechanistic explanation follows from his understanding of the content of concepts in their systematic relations and their connection to the objects subsumed under them; but this does not explain, so the objection continues, how this understanding of concepts follows from the discursivity of our cognition. It is important to underscore, first, that the relevant features of Kant’s theory of concepts and their relations to objects follow directly from his distinct conception of our discursivity and, second, that the discussion of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding is the high point of the Dialectic of Teleological Judgment. It is in this discussion that we find then the second element missing from the deduction Kant offers in the Introduction the third Critique. That empirical knowledge ideally constitutes a comprehensive hierarchical system of concepts follows from the discursivity of our understanding. As discursive creatures, we can only experience and cognize particular sensibly given objects through concepts, and the content of these concepts is necessarily a finite number of marks that must be taken to be common to a diversity of objects. Here is a clear statement of the thought: From the side of the understanding, human cognition is discursive, i.e., it takes place through representations which take as the ground of cognition that which is common to many things, hence through marks as such. Thus we cognize things through marks and that is called cognizing . . . A mark is that in a thing which constitutes a part of the cognition of it, or – what is the same – a partial representation, insofar as it is considered as ground of cognition of the whole representation. All our concepts are marks, accordingly, and all thought is nothing other than a representing through marks. (Log :) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism It is crucial to see that Kant’s distinct conception of cognition as ideally organized into a comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy of concepts follows from his commitment to the discursive nature of human cognition. Specifically, in such an ideal system the higher concepts have fewer marks; that is, they are poorer or partial in content – and, in this sense, simpler. It is precisely this fact that gives the analytic explication of concepts its distinct directionality – namely, from complex concept or whole upward to simpler parts. The series of subordinate marks terminates a parte ante, or on the side of the grounds, in concepts which cannot be broken up, which cannot be further analyzed on account of their simplicity; a parte post, or in regard to the consequences, it is infinite, because we have a highest genus but no lowest species. (Log :) It follows, furthermore, from the discursive nature of our cognition that the analysis of a concept into its simpler parts is both an explication of its content and an explication of what the objects subsumed under it are. Analysis into parts also gives the simpler grounds of cognition of objects, precisely because as discursive beings we can only experience and cognize particular objects through universals or “representations which take as the ground of cognition that which is common to many things, hence through marks as such.” .. Mechanism: Determinative Use and Regulative Maxim One very important element is missing from the account. The above claims might be summarized by saying that () to claim responsibly that an object belongs to a certain species is to possess a contextually satisfactory analysis of the species concept into its marks or higher partial or genus concepts; and () to claim responsibly that something is a causal system or causally generated whole is to possess a contextually satisfactory analysis of the whole into its causally effective parts and the forces governing them. But this is to speak in the assertoric or determinative mode. The original challenge facing us was justifying mechanism as a regulative maxim. By speaking here of contextually satisfactory analyses I mean to be echoing Kant’s claim in the first Critique Doctrine of Method that we think in an empirical concept sometimes more and at other times less. As Kant there puts it: “One makes use of certain marks only as long as they are sufficient for making distinctions” (A/B; see also V-Lo/Wiener :). Quarfood’s answer to this question is that mechanism “as discussed in the ‘Dialectic’ of the third Critique, is subservient to reflecting judgment’s principle of the purposiveness of nature.” Quarfood, “The Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” , note . See also Teufel, “Wholes that Cause Their Parts,” , note . This seems to suggest the priority of the determinative use over the reflective use. As will become clear, my view is that it is the necessity of the reflective use of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature It should be made perfectly clear that to raise this challenge is by no means to deny that scientific explanations are mechanistic and that science indeed offers explanations in the determinative mode. Kant is explicit about this connection in the introductory section of the Methodology of the Teleological Power of Judgment; natural science and the mechanistic explanation of natural phenomena, he says clearly, “requires determining and not merely reflecting principles in order to provide objective grounds for natural effects” (KU :). He does not, however, distinguish clearly enough, on the one hand, the maxim of mechanism and the directive to seek mechanistic laws and, on the other hand, actually offering laws thus discovered as explanations. That there is a distinction to be made here is evident, for seeking explanations and offering explanations are surely two distinct moments in the work of science. The first is clearly, in Kantian terms, a task for reflective judgment, whereas the second employs determinative judgment. When we offer an explanation, we do not assume a reflective or investigative stance in relation to the world. Explanations are not concerned with what we would like to find out in the future, but employ what we now claim to know. The question we have to answer then is, What justifies mechanism as a necessary regulative maxim? And it is to be hoped that answering this question will also make clear why explanations offered in the determinative mode are mechanistic. To answer this question we might begin by recalling that, on Kant’s account, our attributions of self-organization are never determinative judgments. Self-organization is a regulative principle of reflective judgment. The universality or unity of these attributions, speaking, that is, of an organism as though it were a distinct kind of causal whole, is a regulative assumption. It is precisely the fact that we are making such an the principle that explains its determinative use. This is how Zuckert too seems to see the priority. See Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, . The fact that science does purport to offer explanations, revisable and defeasible though they may be, is the reason why I feel uneasy about Kreines’s emphatic claim that “purely empirical inquiry cannot achieve knowledge of particular laws of nature.” Kreines, “Kant on the Laws of Nature,” . Cf., James Messina, “Kant’s Necessitation Account of Laws and the Nature of Natures,” in Kant and the Laws of Nature, edited by Michela Massimi and Angela Breitenbach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. I wholly accept the point that we can have no empirical knowledge of necessity. But Kreines’s formulation might make us question how science can so much as claim to know and explain. I thus prefer to say that scientific explanations lay claim to knowledge and objective truth, though these claims are revisable and indeed defeasible. This accords with the fact that Kant does speak of knowledge of particular laws. To give only one very prominent example, the often-quoted claim from the first Critique that particular laws cannot be completely derived from the categories, continues: “Experience must be added in order to come to know particular laws at all [um die letztere überhaupt kennen zu lernen]” (B). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism assumption of unity that commits us to corroborating it. But this is just Kant’s commitment to searching for mechanistic analyses of organisms into the distinct partial organic processes governing them. And this analysis cannot, in principle, be completed, precisely because explanations of organic processes always identify a further original structure of organization, which itself is necessarily an assumption and so demands further corroboration through analysis. In the case of organisms, we saw, there are, in principle, no reductive mechanistic explanations. Succinctly, the continuing commitment to search for mechanistic explanatory analyses of organisms is the flip side of the assumptions of unity made in attributions of self-organization. How then does this apply to nature quite generally? On the reconstruction I offered in the discussion of discursivity above, Kant’s claim is that employing any universal concept is assuming a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts leading up to ever more general and down to ever more specific concepts. I further claimed that the ultimate aim of such a comprehensive system of concepts is to inform us about the causal connection in the world. So to employ any universal concept is to assume a comprehensive system of causal laws; it is to assume a system of ever more general causal laws and ever more specific complexes explainable in their terms. It is precisely these assumptions of unity that commit us generally to corroborating them by offering an analysis of the unity we are assuming. Employing any universal concept specifically is assuming that there is an analysis of it into simpler, more general concepts. Applied to a causal system or whole, the commitment is to offering an analysis of the whole into its causally effective parts, to offering, in other words, a mechanistic explanation of the whole. Thus, both the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature as well as the regulative maxim of mechanism follow from the discursive character of our cognition. The general point might be put this way: () An attribution or assumption of unity is an IOU; () searching for mechanistic-like explications or causal explanations of the unity assumed is the commitment to pay the debt it incurs; () the series of explications and causal explanations discovered and offered in the determinative mode are the hard currency of science. It might be answered that when using a particular concept, I might in fact have an analysis of it into its simpler partial concepts and that employing it incurs no debt. And the same might be said of a causal whole, of which I possess an analysis. The reply to this objection comes in two complementary parts. First, on Kant’s view, as we saw above, an ultimately reductive explanation would be given in terms of the most fundamental laws governing the motion of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature matter. If we have no such account, then we are still in debt. But what about what I called above a contextually satisfactory analysis of a whole into its causally effective parts and the forces governing them? The second part of the reply requires spelling out the relations between determinative and reflective judgment generally and between the regulative maxim of mechanism and the determinative use of mechanistic explanations specifically. Kant’s fundamental claim, we saw, is that any determinative use of an empirical concept is underwritten by an assumption of unity and the regulative principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature and thus by reflective judgment. The claim then is that the reflective function of judgment makes possible and, in this sense, has priority over its determinative use. The obverse side of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is the broadly mechanistic-like or parts-to-whole commitment to corroborating the unity assumed by explicating it. In the specific case in which the assumption is of a causal unity, the obverse is the commitment to mechanistic causal explanation. Thus, in the specific case of causal wholes too, the reflective function of judgment makes possible and, in this sense, has priority over the determinative use. And this priority should not surprise us. For surely searching for and finding empirical concepts under which to subsume a particular is a condition of employing these concepts in determinative judgments. That a concept must first be found in order to be used is definitive of empirical concepts. .. Mechanistic Explanation as a Regulative Ideal This is the place to return to the objection raised above and to emphasize an important point regarding the claim that both the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature and the maxim of mechanism are regulative. The objection was that there is an obvious problem with employing a conception of an ideal system of concepts and cognition to defend the way we are directed to explicate and explain the actual objects and causal systems we experience. To put the problem plainly, What guarantees that a causal system – as we in fact conceive of it – can be explained by analysis into its simpler causally effective parts? What if the parts, as we conceive of them, are just not the causally effective parts required for the sort of explanation Kant advocates? It might indeed be claimed that we do, as a matter of fact, conceive of many things through For this important criticism of what he calls mechanism (Mechanismus), see Freudenthal, “Kritik und Rehabilitierung des Mechanismus,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Justification of the Regulative Maxim of Mechanism concepts, the marks of which are not their causally simpler parts. Think here of concepts that contain mainly or only observable or otherwise perceptible marks, as does Linnaeus’s classification of plants according to the number of stamens and pistils they possess. But there is an answer to this objection. Kant’s vision of a comprehensive system of empirical concepts and cognition is not a characterization of the system of concepts we in fact possess, nor of the world that these concepts purport to describe. It is a regulative ideal. It is the directive guiding the ongoing construction of the system of our empirical concepts and cognition. Furthermore, even when Kant speaks of describing nature, as I have been emphasizing, the ultimate end of any such description is being causally informative and thus explanatory. Kant’s vision of a comprehensive system of empirical concepts is the regulative ideal of what he calls in the Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science rational science. It is the ideal of a causally explanatory comprehensive system of cognition. Think here of progressing from Linnaeus’s descriptive classification of plants, constructed for the purpose of identification, to a causally informative evolutionary taxonomy reflecting the phylogeny of organisms. This, indeed, is just the vision of Kant’s own evolutionary speculation and Darwin’s historical achievement. The claim that a principle is a regulative ideal is in some cases a vague plea for leniency, reminding the reader that the principle is not asserting a fact and thus might be entertained without worry. But insisting that Kant’s conception of a causally informative comprehensive system of concepts is a regulative ideal is nothing of the kind. Indeed, it sets science the most demanding task of supplementing causally uninformative descriptions with causally projectible concepts. As we saw in the discussion of revisability above, in cases where the common sortal concepts we employ do not track general causal properties, it directs science to discard and replace them. Kant is not saying that the concepts we employ to talk about objects and systems are all analyzable into their causal parts; he knows well they are not. He is saying that they ought to be. This is the work of science. Several points are worth emphasizing in conclusion of this very long section. I claimed that the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature and the commitment to parts-to-whole mechanistic-like analysis of In Kant’s evolutionary speculation a “certain common schema” or “analogy of forms” – a visible similarity between many genera – is the clue to tracing the “real kinship among them in their generation from a common proto-mother” (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature our empirical concepts and, specifically, mechanistic explanation are two sides of one coin and that both follow from our discursivity. But this is an explanation of how the maxim of mechanism is grounded in the nature of our cognitive capacities – just as Kant claims. This might partly explain why Kant does not more explicitly and emphatically offer a defense of the claim. It is because he sees it as the other side of the assumption of the purposiveness of nature. And the fact that the maxim of mechanism is only justified late in the Dialectic is in accord with the exegetical claim that the antinomy arises while appealing to common understanding and is resolved by gaining deeper insight into the way the maxims are grounded in the peculiarity of our cognitive capacities. This point also allows us to recognize that there is some truth in the interpretation put forward by McLaughlin: Initially, the maxim of mechanism is perhaps to be accepted without argument as common sense. The interpretation also allows us to explain what Kant might mean by saying that the maxim of mechanism is provided “by the mere understanding a priori” (KU :). He cannot be talking about the category of causality, for the passage in which this claim is found is concerned precisely with distinguishing the maxims of the reflective power of judgment from the “universal laws of material nature” (KU :). What Kant apparently means is that the commitment to mechanistic causation and explanation is how causality is specified at the empirical level for cognizers with a discursive understanding. The maxim of mechanism is an a priori principle of discursive understanding. And there is a further point to note about the asymmetry between the two maxims of reflective judgment. As I claimed above, mechanistic explanations are offered in the determinative mode, and in this sense, mechanism is also a principle of the understanding. But the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature and the teleological judgment of organisms have no determinative counterpart. The assumption of the purposiveness of nature is, as Kant says, a principle of reason for the power of reflective judgment. Finally, the discussion in this section built on the claim defended above that the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of experience. Its discussion, thus, very neatly shows that the different senses of mechanism Kant employs are indeed very closely related. For the transcendental argument closes the gap between the general conditions of experience and the determinative principal of causality specifically, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, particular empirical causal laws; and in doing so, the argument reveals why the mechanistic model of explanation is a regulative ideal, to which we are https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion necessarily committed, and why the explanations science in fact offers are mechanistic. . Conclusion In this chapter I presented the substantive core of the discussion of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. I claimed that the discussion of discursivity reveals both why empirical knowledge ideally takes the form of a comprehensive taxonomy of concepts as well as why the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of experience. The discussion thus completes the task of the deduction of the principle undertaken in the Introduction. The principal aim of the Critique of Teleological Judgment is then to establish the transcendental status of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.006 Published online by Cambridge University Press The Significance of Form and the Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature . Introduction In Chapter , I claimed that the most difficult challenge any reading of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment faces is the question of its relation to the problem of empirical experience and knowledge, which Kant presents in the Introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment. As we saw above, Kant claims in the Introduction that although the Critique of Pure Reason accounts for the necessary conditions of experience and knowledge in general, it is not a complete transcendental account of the possibility of a particular empirical experience of objects and knowledge of empirical laws of nature. The forms of intuition and the pure concepts and principles of the understanding are necessary but not sufficient transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. They “yield such an interconnection among things with respect to their genera, as things of nature in general, but not specifically, as such and such particular beings in nature” (KU :; see also: KU :; EEKU :–). To fill this gap the third Critique puts forward, as an additional transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge, “the principle of the purposiveness of nature in its multiplicity” (KU :). In the previous chapter, I defended the claim that the principle of the logical or conceptual purposiveness of nature is indeed a transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge. This interpretation raises a very serious exegetical difficulty. It seems to solve the problem of the conditions of a particular empirical experience without drawing on the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. However, the principle of the purposiveness of nature is not the subject of the Introduction to the third Critique and of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment alone. As we saw in Chapter , Kant introduces the problem of empirical knowledge in Section IV of the published Introduction and introduces the principle of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Introduction the purposiveness of nature as its solution in Section V. It is only in Sections VII and VIII that he distinguishes the aesthetic from the logical or conceptual aspect of the principle. This fact and others detailed in Chapter suggest that the analysis of aesthetic judgment is part of Kant’s discussion of the purposiveness of nature and the transcendental conditions of empirical experience. What makes this exegetical problem especially interesting philosophically is the fact that the argument of the Critique of Teleological Judgment might indeed be taken to answer alone the problem of empirical knowledge Kant poses. Philosophers, who share Kant’s view that we experience the world through concepts or language, might find compelling the argument that their view commits them to some sort of transcendental assumption regarding the conceptual purposiveness of nature. However, they would not thereby commit themselves to any corresponding aesthetic condition of empirical experience. Indeed, the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique seems to suggest that the assumption of the systematic conceptual unity of nature is the single missing transcendental condition of empirical experience. I will argue in this chapter that a primary concern of the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment is to present the aesthetic aspect of the principle of the purposiveness of nature and explain the role aesthetic judgment plays in empirical experience and knowledge. Indeed, according to the interpretation I will present here, the two parts of the third Critique – discussing, respectively, aesthetic and logicalconceptual purposiveness – correspond to the first Critique division of the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements into the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Logic. Both are primarily concerned with the transcendental conditions of experience: the first part of the third Critique – with an aesthetic condition; the second – with a conceptual condition. In other words, the first half of the third Critique is called the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment not primarily because we are dealing with the faculty of feeling pleasure but because it contends with the spatial conditions of experience. Other interpretations argue that aesthetic judgments are exercises of reflective judgment and are, therefore, related to a capacity necessary for In contrast, Guyer expressly dismisses the fact that Kant introduces the principle of aesthetic judgment as the “Aesthetic Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature” (KU :). See Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature empirical cognition. More specifically, they claim that aesthetic judgments employ the same capacities necessary for the process of acquiring empirical concepts described in the Introduction. In contrast, the interpretation I will here defend allots the aesthetic power of judgment an actual role in the mental process leading to empirical cognition – even though, as Kant says perfectly clearly, a pure aesthetic judgment “is not grounded on any available concept of the object and does not furnish one” (KU :). As I have been emphasizing, one very important feature of the interpretation I will put forward in this chapter and in the book more generally is that it takes the third Critique to be a single unified work: The Introduction presents its principal questions; the body of the work mainly presents answers to them. It is worth saying at the outset of this chapter that although I think the interpretation I will be putting forward has a substantial textual basis, Kant’s view is not as clearly articulated as we would wish. Furthermore, it is not nearly as well worked-out as it should be. I will try to be clear about what I think is attributable to Kant and where I am filling in what his account leaves either unarticulated or undeveloped. I nevertheless aim to stay, in this chapter, relatively close to the text. As we will see in the Conclusion, there may be good reasons to weaken considerably the claim that pure aesthetic judgments play an actual role in the process leading to cognition, while also drawing very valuable lessons from Kant’s view. But this discussion I leave for the Conclusion, which aims to assess the philosophical value of the position presented in the book and in this chapter in particular. . Preliminaries: The Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste; Conceptual and Nonconceptual Readings The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is a maze of interpretative controversies. It is certainly not my intention to avoid all of them. But I would like to limit the controversies in which I do entangle myself to a more or less manageable number. In this section, consequently, I will offer only a very brief introductory presentation of Kant’s analysis of pure judgments of taste and their four moments, without tackling the many exegetical difficulties that his discussion raises. I will further survey, briefly, three interpretative approaches to the Analytic, specifically to the controversy over the question of whether pure judgments of taste are nonconceptual or involve concepts. The next sections will develop a nonconceptual reading of pure judgments of taste and focus on the notions of the form of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste beautiful natural objects, the cognitive significance of natural beauty and the distinct normativity of pure judgments of taste. .. The Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste Kant’s analysis of pure judgments of taste in the Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment is, of course, very well known. Organized according to the fourfold division of the table of categories, Kant analyzes pure judgments of taste into four very closely related moments. The first moment announces that pure judgments of taste are not attributions of a property or set of properties to an object. They report a distinct pleasurable feeling experienced by a subject in view of an object. Kant describes this pleasurable feeling as an animated self-sustaining absorption in a representation which he thinks of as the “feeling of life” (KU :; see also: KU :; EEKU :–) and as the harmonious free play of the imagination and the understanding (KU :–) or the feeling of their mutual subjective correspondence or agreement (KU :, ). He emphatically claims that pure judgments of taste express no interest in the existence of their object. He thereby underscores the claim that pure judgments of taste are reports of an inner experience of a subject and not claims about an object. He further establishes thereby that it is a pleasure different from those of the practical faculty of desire – that is, pleasure in what is agreeable and what we find good, whether prudentially or morally (KU :–). As there are no other sorts of practical interest, aesthetic pleasure must be “merely contemplative” (KU :; see also KU :) and related to our theoretical capacities. Kant concludes the discussion of the second moment of pure judgments of taste with the following claim: “That is beautiful which pleases universally without a concept” (KU :). There are two important elements to this assertion. First, although this is a hotly disputed matter, which we will examine in the next subsection, Kant seems to say emphatically and often that pure judgments of taste are not conceptually grounded. Moreover, For a similar emphasis see Rachel Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology: An Interpretation of the “Critique of Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. As we saw in Chapter , Section VI of the Introduction to the third Critique suggests that pure aesthetic pleasure and the pleasure we experience in discovering the conceptual order of nature are very closely allied and in an important sense of a kind; more on this below. See Section ..: The Feeling of Pleasure and the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section VI). Cf., Ralf Meerbote, “Reflection on Beauty,” in Essays in Kant’s Aesthetics, edited by Ted Cohen and Paul Guyer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature whatever conceptual grasp we have of objects, it is (so to speak) held in abeyance when we judge purely aesthetically. In pure aesthetic judgments we disregard what the object we are judging is or, as Kant later puts it, “what sort of thing it is supposed to be” (KU :). It is thus not important whether we know what the object we are judging is (presumably, we usually do), as this knowledge plays no role in pure judgments of taste. Second, he explains at the beginning of the discussion that from the disinterestedness of pure judgments of taste it follows that beauty is represented as the object of universal satisfaction. The thinking here is clear: As no subjective interests influence pure judgments of taste, the mental faculties involved in such judgments are taken to operate in a similar manner in all subjects. Nevertheless, and as we will see in what follows, this line of thought poses an important constraint: pure judgments of taste must not only involve mental faculties all subjects share but must also be related to an actual mental function that can be taken to operate in the same way in all subjects. Thus judgments of taste are aesthetic and subjective, but their claim to universal assent gives them the appearance of objective cognitive judgments. Judgments of taste “must be combined with a claim to subjective universality” (KU :). That the working of the mind expressed in pure judgments of taste is taken to be common to all subjects also explains why their analysis might be of interest to transcendental philosophy (KU :). The third moment reads: “Beauty is the form of the purposiveness of an object, insofar as it is perceived in it without representation of an end.” (KU :). What was earlier described as a feeling of harmony between the faculties of imagination and understanding is here described as the feeling that a manifold apprehended in intuition is purposive for the understanding. Although our conceptual grasp of objects is set aside or held in abeyance in pure judgments of taste, their object is felt to be fit for cognition. The apprehended representation carries, we might say, a promise of meaningfulness: concepts can be found for it. Cohen perceptively notes that Kant addresses the possibility of knowing but disregarding what the object is already in the first section of the Analytic: “even if the given representations were to be rational but related in a judgment solely to the subject (its feeling), then they are to that extent always aesthetic” (KU :). Alix Cohen, “Kant on Beauty and Cognition: The Aesthetic Dimension of Cognition,” in Thinking about Science and Reflecting on Art: Bringing Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Science Together, edited by Otávio Bueno, George Darby, Steven French and Dean Rickles (London: Routledge, ), –. The point is clear in Kant’s remark about the botanist who “knows what sort of thing a flower is supposed to be” but “pays no attention [nimmt . . . keine Rücksicht] to this natural end if he judges the flower by means of taste” (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste What precisely Kant means here by form is by no means a matter of general agreement. It will be a central claim of the interpretation I will present in this chapter that Kant is speaking simply of the spatial shape of an apprehended manifold. Indeed, as Section VIII of the Introduction suggests and as Kant says very clearly in the second part of the third Critique, beauty in nature is “ascribed to objects only in relation to reflection on their outer intuition, thus only to the form of the surface” (KU :). Pure aesthetic judgments then express the feeling that a spatial form apprehended in intuition is cognitively purposive. Finally, the fourth moment focuses on the distinct modality of pure aesthetic judgments. Though they are subjective and there are no objective arguments regarding them, we nevertheless feel others ought to agree with us: “whoever declares something to be beautiful wishes that everyone should approve of the object in question and similarly declare it to be beautiful” (KU :), or, as Kant also puts the point, one “solicits assent from everyone” (KU :). .. Pure Judgments of Taste: Conceptual or Nonconceptual? There is considerable disagreement about the nature of the mental interaction that occasions pure aesthetic pleasure. Kant says that we feel this distinct pleasure when our understanding and imagination are in a state of harmonious free play and self-sustaining animation. But what precisely is this state? Most readers, it seems, understand Kant to be saying that it is a feeling of a harmony or fit between the understanding and the imagination, although no concept is employed by the understanding, which the apprehended manifold in intuition might be said to fit. It is sometimes characterized further as a precognitive state in which all the conditions necessary for cognition are met, except for the actual subsumption of a sensible manifold under a concept. Other readers take Kant to be claiming I have slightly amended the translation. Kant speaks in the singular: “der Form der Oberfläche.” The emphasis on spatial shape is also particularly clear where Kant contrasts aesthetic pleasure with the pleasure we find in the usefulness of a spatial shape for calculating a geometrical area. In such cases, he says, “the satisfaction does not rest immediately on the view of the shape” (KU :) – clearly suggesting that the satisfaction in aesthetic pleasure does rest immediately on the spatial shape. In discussing the intellectual interest in the beauty of nature, in which “not only the form of its product but also its existence pleases,” he speaks clearly of the “beautiful shape [Gestalt] of a wildflower, a bird, an insect, etc.” (KU :). A few examples reveal that pure aesthetic pleasure is sometimes occasioned by spatiotemporal form. I will discuss these examples separately below and explain why they appear not to be of importance for the cognitive task of the delineation and sorting of objects, as Kant conceives of it. See Section ..: Spatiotemporal Forms, Pure Tones and Colors. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature that aesthetic pleasure in natural objects is a state in which the understanding surveys a sensible manifold under a variety of concepts that might be applied to it, without determining the manifold by means of any of these particular concepts. The understanding proposes, so to speak, a variety of ways to conceive of a sensible manifold, but it does not fix on any one way. A third approach suggests that in aesthetic judgments an object is determined by the concepts required to identify it as the kind of thing it is, yet we feel that it offers more unity or coherence than the application of these concepts demands. It is this special gratuitous unity that is the cause of aesthetic pleasure. The latter two interpretations, however, find but scant support in Kant’s text. Indeed, the latter so-called metacognitive reading seems to find no texts that expressly support it. The second, so-called multicognitive interpretation seems to depend on but a few ambiguous claims. Kant does say that in judgments of taste the apprehension of the form of a given object “agrees with the presentation of a concept of the understanding (though which concept be undetermined)” (EEKU :–). This might perhaps be read as the claim that concepts play a part in this interaction, though not determinatively. But the passage does not expressly Seel claims that in aesthetic judgments the transition from a form produced by the imagination to a concept of the understanding is repeated without subsuming and thus fixing the form in imagination. Gerhard Seel, “Über den Grund der Lust an schönen Gegenständen. Kritische Fragen an die Ästhetik Kants,” in Kant: Analysen, Probleme, Kritik, Band III, edited by Hariolf Oberer and Gerhard Seel (Würzberg: Königshausen & Neumann, ), –. Rush claims that in aesthetic judgment we perceive a “manifold as having one among many potential possible characters. That is, it is a state in which it is implicitly registered that what is perceived is one way, but that does not foreclose, and indeed it rests upon, other ways it might be subject to synthesis.” Fred L. Rush, Jr., “The Harmony of the Faculties,” Kant-Studien (): . According to Friedlander, aesthetic judgments take note of the kind of object upon which we are reflecting. They take place in “the space of meaning opened by the subject in being responsive to the object. Though such responsiveness implies a devotion to the details of the experience, opening this space of meaning must be distinguished from ascertaining the actual properties of the object under consideration.” Eli Friedlander, “Meaning and Aesthetic Judgment in Kant,” Philosophical Topics (): –. For a helpful overview and criticism of the former two approaches, which he calls the precognitive and multicognitive readings, and a presentation of the third, metacognitive interpretation see Paul Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” in Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, edited by Rebecca Kukla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. It bears emphasizing that in contrast to the former view Guyer does not understand the reponse to unity or coherence “to consist in a play among alternative cognitions or conceptualizations of the object.” Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” . This is acknowledged by Guyer. See Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” . There are several other similarly ambiguous formulations: “The satisfaction in the beautiful must depend upon reflection on an object that leads to some sort of concept (it is indeterminate which)” (KU :); the “powers of the cognition that are set into play by this representation are hereby in a free play, since no determinate concept restricts them to a particular rule of cognition” (KU :); the interaction of our faculties in aesthetic judgment is purposive “with regard to cognition in general, but without being restricted to a particular cognition” (KU :); see also EEKU :. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Four Moments of Pure Judgments of Taste assert that a variety of concepts is found to fit an object and that we take aesthetic pleasure in freely flitting between these possibilities. It can surely be read differently. More importantly, both these readings contradict an explicit and indeed central Kantian claim – namely, the second moment of pure judgments of taste: “That is beautiful which pleases universally without a concept” (KU :). Indeed, this claim is made so often in the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment that it is hardly necessary to offer detailed textual support for it. It is a cornerstone of Kant’s conception of pure judgments of taste. From the perspective that I have been emphasizing, there is also a glaring and very significant problem with the first, nonconceptual or precognitive interpretation – as it presently stands: It offers no account of how aesthetic judgment might be part of Kant’s account of the conditions of empirical knowledge. Put in the terms Kant’s readers sometimes employ, it just isn’t clear what it might mean to say that all the conditions necessary for cognition are met except for the actual subsumption of a sensible manifold under a concept. What are these conditions? Why posit their existence? Indeed, it is precisely the fact that aesthetic judgments are neither grounded in concepts nor do they furnish concepts that seems to imply that their analysis can have no bearing on the question of empirical experience. Aesthetic pleasure involves the same faculties that take part in cognitive judgments – namely, the understanding and the imagination, as well as what is described as an accord or fit between them. But according to the extant precognitive views, aesthetic judgment does not reveal a necessary condition of experience. Contradicting the presentation of the Introduction to the third Critique, the analysis of aesthetic judgment is not a part of Kant’s transcendental project. We seem to be facing a dilemma: One reason why readers might want to defend the multicognitive view is to allow the Analytic of the Beautiful to apply to the sort of aesthetic pleasure we take in works of fine art. And Guyer explicitly asserts that “only the metacognitive interpretation of the harmony of the faculties can make sense without paradox of Kant’s recognition of adherent beauty and artistic beauty” as involving concepts. Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” . It is my view that pure judgments of taste principally apply to natural objects and that their analysis is the main concern of the Analytic of the Beautiful. I also think that the notion of adherent beauty is introduced in order to explain the beauty of functional objects and most works of fine art. I don’t think the four moments of the Analytic apply straightforwardly to works of art. For discussion see: Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Kant on Form, Function and Decoration,” Proceedings of the European Society of Aesthetics (): –; Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” Kant-Studien (): –. For the heterodox view that aesthetic pleasure can enhance cognition see Cohen, “Kant on Beauty and Cognition,” –. Cohen’s account is very different from mine and seems not to be concerned with the very conditions of experience and knowledge. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature Aesthetic judgment is nonconceptual; and yet experience for Kant is necessarily conceptual, for “intuitions without concepts are blind” (A/B). How then can aesthetic judgment be a condition of empirical experience? I will return to this pivotal question shortly and argue that aesthetic judgment is indeed nonconceptual and, nevertheless, a condition of empirical experience. . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds In this section I aim to defend two important claims, the second of which is a specification of the first: () the object of pure judgments of taste is the spatial form of an object, typically the form of a natural object; and () these beautiful natural forms are the characteristic forms of natural kinds. The first claim is not uncontroversial, although quite a few readers endorse it. I expect the second to meet with great resistance. Nevertheless, I believe it is Kant’s view and the key to solving the great puzzle of the For a comparable formulation of the problem see Dieter Henrich, “Kant’s Explanation of Aesthetic Judgment,” in Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World: Studies in Kant (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, ), –. Henrich holds that what aesthetic judgments respond to is the “unity and the precision of the arrangement of a perceived manifold in space and time” and what makes perceiving these forms a source of pleasure is the fact that they fit the “conditions of a possible conceptualization in general.” Henrich, “Kant’s Explanation of Aesthetic Judgment,”, . What these general conditions are Henrich does not say. Indeed, he does not explain why we should think that there are such conditions, which, he makes clear, are less general than the categories and more general than the conditions of employing particular empirical concepts. It bears emphasizing that they clearly are not actively conditions of cognition. Positing such conditions thus enables Henrich to explain the close relation of aesthetic judgment to cognition, without making them conditions of cognition. For comparable criticism see Hannah Ginsborg, “Lawfulness without a Law: Kant on the Free Play of Imagination and Understanding,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . For the claim that form means spatial or spatiotemporal form see, among others: Walter Biemel, Die Bedeutung von Kants Begründung der Ästhetik für die Philosophie der Kunst (Köln: Kölner Universitäts-Verlag, ), –; D. W. Gotshalk, “Form and Expression in Kant’s Aesthetics,” British Journal of Aesthetics (): ; Theodore E. Uehling Jr., The Notion of Form in Kant’s “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” (The Hague: Mouton, ), –; Mark L. Johnson, “Kant’s Unified Theory of Beauty,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (): –; Ruth Lorand, “Free and Dependent Beauty: A Puzzling Issue,” British Journal of Aesthetics (): ; Klaus Düsing, “Beauty as the Transition from Nature to Freedom in Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgement’,” Noûs (): ; Robert Wicks, “Dependent Beauty as the Appreciation of Teleological Style,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (): , ; Robert Hanna, “Kant and Nonconceptual Content,” European Journal of Philosophy (): , note ; Ido Geiger, “Transcendental Idealism in the Third Critique,” in Kant’s Idealism: New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine, edited by Dennis Schulting and Jacco Verburgt (Dordrecht: Springer, ), –; Aviv Reiter and Ido Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” –; Aviv Reiter, “Kant on the Aesthetic Ideas of Beautiful Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds role played by the analysis of pure judgments of taste in his account of the transcendental conditions of empirical experience and knowledge. Briefly stated: The pleasure evoked by a spatial form underwrites the nonconceptual delineation of a natural object from the manifold of intuition; and these natural forms allow for a first non-conceptual sorting of natural objects, which underwrites our conceptual grasp of natural kinds. It would be far more accurate to speak of proto-objects and proto-kinds to emphasize the fact that what I am referring to as objects and kinds are not subsumed under concepts. I will nevertheless speak of objects and kinds, simply for the sake of convenience. By speaking of natural kinds I mean initially things that are visibly similar, but also reveal upon examination similarities that are not immediately visible, specifically things that alike obey characteristic laws of nature. The members of these groups are alike in such processes as formation, growth, reproduction or motion-pattern and many others. More generally, in similar circumstances they behave or react in a similar manner. In other words, I mean things that are causally alike, but also look alike – specifically, alike in their spatial form. The guiding idea I am attributing to Kant then is that our pleasurable response to certain spatial forms of natural objects affords a first glimpse of where the causal joints of nature are located. Similarity in spatial form is our first clue where a natural kind is to be found. One reason for using the term “natural kind” is textual. We are discussing the investigation of the empirical order of nature; and Kant typically speaks of the natural order in terms of a comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy. Furthermore and as we will see in what follows, he speaks explicitly of natural species. Not surprisingly, his paradigmatic examples are biological species such as plant and animal kinds, although as we will see he also gives noteworthy examples of mineral kinds. Talk of natural kinds obviously suggests to contemporary readers an essentialist stance Fricke acknowledges that Kant suggests this understanding, but she claims that the form of purposiveness must refer to conceptual form. Christel Fricke, “Kants Theorie der schönen Form,” in Akten des Siebenten Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, II.., edited by Gerhard Funke (Bonn: Bouvier, ), –. Allison, too, acknowledges that some passages clearly suggest this understanding but thinks they are exceptions and that this conception is not required even where Kant thinks it is. Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), , –. See also: John H. Zammito, The Genesis of Kant’s “Critique of Judgment” (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, ), –; Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, –, –. For further discussion of what he thinks of as the formalist strand in Kant’s thought and the tension in which it stands to the doctrine of the harmony of the faculties see Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature toward the empirical world and its scientific inquiry. But this is a welcome connotation, for, as I have already emphasized more than once, Kant is concerned with discovering the objective order of nature. He is committed to a necessitation account of kinds, or, as some readers emphasize, of natures, or real essences. We also know what, for Kant, belonging to a natural kind must properly consist in. It is simply obeying the same causal laws or possessing the same causal powers. My initial brief explication of the connection between natural beauty and the empirical order of nature obviously raises many exegetical questions and suggests a variety of objections. In the last subsection of this section I will qualify my preliminary claims in more than one way. Some of these qualifications will help offer a more precise understanding of what for now, for the sake of simplicity, I am referring to as natural kinds. One problem, however, is particularly glaring and worth underscoring here. It is the obviously problematic association of the visible property of spatial form with the causal properties properly definitive of a kind. I will say something about this problem, too, in the final subsection of the section. It will be a recurring theme at various points in this chapter and will be discussed at greater length in the Conclusion. It is, though, worth remarking already here that it is an instance of the tension, discussed in previous chapters, between the description of nature and the goal of revealing explanatory causal laws. .. The Beauty of Natural Objects In Chapter , I claimed that Section VII of the Introduction, charged with presenting the notion of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature, reveals that the object of pure judgments of taste is the spatial shape of objects. To recapitulate the main pertinent claims of the discussion: () It makes good sense to take the “quality of the space” (KU :) in which we intuit objects of outer sense to refer to their spatial form, because such spatial outlines are a subjective aspect of their representation; this also allows us to distinguish two senses of subjectivity: the spatial form of an object and the pleasure this form evokes. () Space is the subjective a priori form of outer intuition, but it is nevertheless an element in the objective cognition of things that exist in space; it thus makes sense of the claims that the object of pure aesthetic judgments “precedes the cognition of an object” and is See Chapter , Section ..: The Aesthetic Representation of the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction, Section VII). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds “immediately connected with it” (KU :) and that aesthetic pleasure is “the effect of some cognition or other” (KU :). () Kant appears to draw an exhaustive distinction regarding the representation of objects of experience between “the material (the real) in them” and space as “the mere a priori form of the possibility of their intuition” (KU :). () This understanding makes good sense of the emphasis on the role of intuition and imagination in aesthetic pleasure as well as of speaking of the mere apprehension of the form of an object (more on apprehension later) and the key emphasis on the nonconceptual nature of aesthetic pleasure. I have already quoted above, moreover, Kant’s very clear statement in the Critique of Teleological Judgment: “Beauty in nature . . . is ascribed to objects only in relation to reflection on their outer intuition, thus only to the form of the surface” (KU :). It might be thought surprising that Kant does not discuss the matter at or close to the beginning of his analysis of pure judgments of taste. I don’t think it is. There are indeed two reasons for this merely apparent neglect. First, as I have just claimed, Kant takes himself to have stated clearly that spatial forms are the objects of pure judgments of taste in Section VII of the Introduction. Indeed, the fact that he doesn’t offer such an explication in the opening sections of the Analytic of the Beautiful can be taken to support this claim. Second, the view that the spatial shape characteristic of natural kinds is the proper object of the beauty we find in nature is a very prevalent view. I will return to this very important point below. After the Introduction, the next clear supports for the sense of the term “form” are found in the third moment of the Analytic. It is telling that the discussions do not introduce a new claim. They occur where Kant is contending with competing accounts of beauty. (I will discuss the second of these in the next subsection.) In §§–, Kant claims that pure judgments of taste are independent of charm and emotion and illustrates his claim. He responds, more specifically, to the opinion that the beauty of an object can be heightened by charm. In responding, he turns to products of art, presumably because in these cases charm is added to and so can be clearly distinguished from form. In painting and sculpture, indeed in all the pictorial arts, in architecture and horticulture, insofar as they are fine arts, the drawing is what is essential, in which what constitutes the ground of all arrangements for taste is not what gratifies in sensation but merely what pleases through its form. The colors that illuminate the outline [Abriß] belong to charm; they can of course enliven the object in itself for sensation, but they cannot make it worthy of being intuited and beautiful, rather, they are often even considerably https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature restricted by what is required by beautiful form, and even where charm is permitted it is ennobled only through the former. (KU :) Clearly, though, drawing is employed to present the three-dimensional form or outline (as Kant says) of objects. Kant goes on to speak of the shape (Gestalt) of objects and says emphatically that drawing is “the proper object of the pure judgment of taste” (KU :). It is important to see clearly that although Kant is illustrating his point through works of fine art, he is not concerned here with judgments of the beauty of such works, which is adherent or concept-dependent rather than free or nonconceptual (more on this below), but with the forms presented in or by such works. It bears saying that understanding form to mean the spatial contour of objects has the virtue of being both a predominant Kantian usage as well as a clearly defined sense of the term. Further evidence that Kant is targeting spatial form appears in contexts which reveal that he typically and paradigmatically has the spatial form of natural kinds in mind. The next subsection presents these discussions. .. The Beauty of Natural Kinds I believe that the exegetical key to understanding the role pure judgments of beauty play in cognition is to see that the beautiful form of objects typically and paradigmatically refers to the shapes characteristic of natural kinds. By saying that the objects of pure judgments of taste are paradigmatically the forms of natural kinds, I mean to be claiming that this is the reason Kant investigates pure judgments of taste. They are the connection to the transcendental question of the conditions of a particular empirical experience of nature. The first thing to note when examining the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment to shore up the connection between pure aesthetic judgments and natural kinds is just how many of Kant’s examples support it. What I am calling natural kinds are by far the most common examples of objects of pure judgments of taste. Kant’s most prevalent examples of such objects are flowers and other biological kinds. His specific examples include the rose (KU :) and the tulip (KU : note); he speaks of wildflowers (KU :) and most often of flowers in general (KU :, , , , ). Indeed, some of these loci seem all but explicitly to claim that all I am here setting aside the arts that present a play of shapes (mime, dance), which obviously require the presentation of shape, as well as those that present a play of sensations in time (music). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds flowers are beautiful. “Flowers,” Kant says, “are free natural beauties” (KU :), and he continues to say that the botanist – who can presumably classify most any flower – does not attend to their attributes in judging flowers aesthetically. Animal kinds are also very common examples: “Many birds (the parrot, the hummingbird, the bird of paradise) and a host of marine crustaceans are beauties in themselves” (KU :); but he also speaks, generally again, of a bird or insect as beautiful (KU :) as well as of seashells (KU :). It cannot be stressed enough that although Kant lays great emphasis on the fact that judgments of taste are singular, he nevertheless selfconsciously employs general terms to present his examples. To put the same point differently and perhaps provocatively, Kant’s text contains no examples of objects of pure judgments of taste; strictly speaking, all his examples are what he refers to as aesthetically grounded logical judgments, that is, pure aesthetic judgments that have been transformed through comparison into concepts: In regard to logical quantity all judgments of taste are singular judgments. For since I must immediately hold the object up to my feeling of pleasure and displeasure, and yet not through concepts, it cannot have the quantity of an objectively generally valid judgment, although if the singular representation of the object of the judgment of taste in accordance with the conditions that determine the latter is transformed into a concept through comparison, then a logically universal judgment can arise from it: e.g., by means of a judgment of taste I declare the rose that I am gazing at to be beautiful. By contrast, the judgment that arises from the comparison of many singular ones, that roses in general are beautiful, is no longer pronounced merely as an aesthetic judgment, but as an aesthetically grounded logical judgment. (KU :; see also KU :) None of Kant’s examples in the text resemble “the rose that I am gazing at.” They all arise from “the comparison of many singular ones.” The object of comparison, I am claiming, is their spatial form. Kant is then saying that each ordinary or typical specimen of the general kinds he mentions is singly beautiful. In two striking and often overlooked discussions, Kant says quite clearly that typically the object of pure judgments of taste is the characteristic shape of natural kinds. The context of the first of these is somewhat complex to unravel; the second is located at the very end of the Critique In the Metaphysics of Morals, he speaks broadly of “the indescribable beauty of plants” (MS :). In the deduction of pure aesthetic judgments, Kant employs the singular demonstrative adjective: “This flower is beautiful” (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature of Aesthetic Judgment and perhaps for this reason has drawn relatively little attention. The second of these discussions is found in §. Its task is to argue that the purposiveness of the beautiful objects of nature is not to be ascribed to a real, that is, intentional, end of nature, but is a regulative ideal directing our minds. More importantly for our present concern, Kant also says in this passage, all but explicitly, that natural kinds quite generally are beautiful in form. He begins by pointing to the beauty of the “flowers, the blossoms, indeed the shape of whole plants; the delicacy of animal formations of all sorts of species” and to the beauty of pheasants, crustaceans, insects “right down to the commonest flowers” (KU :). He then moves on to discuss inorganic matter. Here he does not merely mention striking examples of the beauty of solids that have crystallized – for example, freezing water, lead sulfide, ferric oxide, calcium carbonate and crystals found in geodes (KU :–). Significantly, he claims that solids generally assume “upon solidification a determinate shape or fabric (figure or texture) [Gestalt oder Gewebe (Figur oder Textur)] which, where there is a specific difference in the matter, is different, but if the matter is the same is exactly the same” (KU :). Responding to the objection that the beauty of such solids is not in all cases externally apprehensible, he claims that “internally all materials that were fluid only because of heat and which through cooling have become solid reveal, when broken, a determinate texture, and thus make it possible to judge that if their own weight or contact with air had not prevented it, they would also have displayed their specifically proper shape [spezifisch eigentümliche Gestalt] externally” (KU :); and he asserts that the difference between the forms of snowflakes depends on “the difference of the particular mixture of air” (KU :). Kant is clearly proclaiming that all inorganic solid kinds have a “specifically proper shape.” The beautiful forms of the organic world, animal and For detailed discussion of the former passages and their central importance for Kant’s theories of the beauty of functional objects and fine art see: Reiter and Geiger, “Kant on Form, Function and Decoration,” –; Reiter and Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” –; Reiter, “Kant on the Aesthetic Ideas of Beautiful Nature.” For an important discussion of the latter passages see Reinhard Brandt, “Die Schönheit der Kristalle und das Spiel der Erkenntniskräfte,” in Autographen, Dokumente und Berichte: zu Edition, Amtsgeschäften und Werk Immanuel Kants, edited by Reinhard Brandt and Werner Stark (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, ), –. See note . In the Metaphysics of Morals, he speaks generally of “beautiful crystal formations” (MS :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds vegetable, as well as the forms of solid matter, suggest how the kingdom of nature might be cut at the joints. The first discussion is found in the third moment of the Analytic. It is even more explicit about the relation between the typical shape of natural species and pure judgments of taste. Furthermore, it contains a most important reference to the cognitive role of pure judgments of taste, which is the topic of the next section. Just as §§–, discussed above, claim that pure judgments of taste are independent of charm and emotion, § claims that such judgments are independent of perfection. The central claim is clear: To say of something that it is perfect is to say that it possesses inner objective purposiveness, and such purposiveness can only be cognized through concepts – thus contradicting the second moment of the analysis of pure judgments of taste; put simply, to say of something that it is perfect requires knowing “what sort of thing it is supposed to be” (KU :). So much is clear; §§– then offer a significant concession to the aesthetics of perfection. There are indeed judgments of beauty that presuppose concepts and so notions of perfection. Pure judgments of taste are indeed nonconceptual; adherent judgments of taste presuppose concepts. But the beauty of a human being (and in this species that of a man, a woman, or a child), the beauty of a horse, of a building (such as a church, a palace, an arsenal, or a garden-house) presuppose a concept of the end that determines what the thing should be, hence a concept of its perfection, and is thus merely adherent beauty. (KU :) More specifically, the problem is that of the beauty of artifacts: () functional objects designed to serve a determinate end, such as a functional building or the horse as an animal bred to fulfill certain human functions; () works of fine art, created to express sensibly ideas of reason, and specifically works created to express the ideal of beauty, that is, the “visible For our purposes, it is particularly important to note Brandt’s view of natural beauty as holding the promise of conceptual order. The beauty of crystals is especially significant, he stresses, because it reveals that the promise is not limited to the organic but extends to blind mechanical nature. Brandt, “Die Schönheit der Kristalle und das Spiel der Erkenntniskräfte,” –. Kant is clearly responding in these sections to competing analyses of beauty: “And yet charms are not only often included with beauty . . . but are even passed off as beauties in themselves” (KU :); “Now here there may arise many objections, pretending that charm is not merely a necessary ingredient of beauty, but even entirely sufficient by itself to be called beautiful” (KU :); “As for the opinion that the beauty that is attributed to the object on account of its form may well be heightened by charm, this is a common error” (KU :); “an objective inner purposiveness, i.e., perfection, already comes closer to the predicate of beauty, and has therefore been held to be identical with beauty even by philosophers of repute, though with the proviso if it is thought confusedly” (KU :). See also KU :. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature expression of moral ideas, which inwardly govern human beings” (KU :). Such works of fine art depict the human figure and visage and through them sensibly represent the rational idea of humanity and its moral vocation. But there are two elements involved here: first, the aesthetic normal idea, which is an individual intuition (of the imagination) that represents the standard for judging it as a thing belonging to a particular species of animal; second, the idea of reason, which makes the ends of humanity insofar as they cannot be sensibly represented into the principle for the judging of its figure, through which, as their effect in appearance, the former are revealed. (KU :) The aesthetic normal idea of a species is the standard or characteristic spatial shape of its members. It is the shape we would get if we were “to superimpose one image on another and by means of the congruence of several of the same kind to arrive at a mean that can serve them all as a common measure. . . . One could get the same result mechanically if one measured all thousand men, added up their heights, widths (and girths) and then divided the sum by a thousand” (KU :). The average spatial shape of a thousand men is the “stature for a beautiful man” (KU :). The discussion strongly suggests that species quite generally have such normal ideas. In pure judgments of taste, I am claiming, we typically and paradigmatically respond to spatial forms, the archetype of which is an aesthetic normal idea of a species. The normal idea . . . is the image for the whole species, hovering among all the particular variously diverging intuitions of the individuals, which nature used as the archetype underlying her productions in the same species, but does not seem to have fully achieved in any individual. (KU :–) Obviously, the beauty of a human being need not appear in works of fine art. But Kant is apparently thinking of artistic representations of such beauty. His focus is exemplary products of taste (KU :). For detailed discussion of this passage and its significance for Kant’s theory of fine art see Ido Geiger, “Kant on Aesthetic Ideas, Rational Ideas and the Subject-Matter of Art”, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (): –. Daston and Gallison elaborate in detail and carefully document the striving to present archetypal images representative of natural kinds in the eighteenth century. For their discussion of the scientific and aesthetic ideal of “truth-to-nature” and its importance for the illustrations of the atlases of the observational sciences, see Lorraine Daston and Peter Gallison, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books, ), –. I quote one passage only from this chapter: The naturalists and illustrators of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not, however, self-deceived or hypocritical, preaching fidelity to nature while practicing manipulation in the service of preconceived notions. They deemed the crafting – they would have called it “perfecting” – of images to be their scientific duty rather than a guilty distortion, and they practiced it openly. The nature they sought to portray was not always visible to the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds By saying that in pure judgments of taste we typically respond to spatial forms, the archetype of which is an aesthetic normal idea of a species, I don’t mean that we respond to them as (approximations of ) normal ideas. This would make the judgment conceptual. What we respond to are “particular intuitions of individuals.” It is Kant’s analysis that asserts that hovering among them and expressed by them is the normal idea of the species to which they belong. Indeed, it is precisely the claim that the typical object of pure judgments of taste are spatial forms – the archetype of which is an aesthetic normal idea of a species – that enables us to explain how Kant can say later in the text that natural beauty is nonconceptual but, nevertheless, the expression of aesthetic ideas: Beauty (whether it be beauty of nature or of art) can in general be called the expression of aesthetic ideas: only in beautiful art this idea must be occasioned by a concept of the object, but in beautiful nature the mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be, is sufficient for arousing and communicating the idea of which that object is considered as the expression. (KU :) The normal idea of a species is an aesthetic idea that is not “occasioned by a concept.” It is aroused and communicated by “mere reflection on a given intuition, without a concept of what the object ought to be.” eye, and almost never to be discovered in the individual specimen. In their opinion, only lax naturalists permitted their artists to draw exactly what they saw. Seeing was an act as much of integrative memory and discernment as of immediate perception; an image was as much an emblem of a whole class of objects as a portrait of any one of them. Seeing – and, above all, drawing – was simultaneously an act of aesthetic appreciation, selection, and accentuation. These images were made to serve the ideal of truth – and often beauty along with truth – not that of objectivity, which did not yet exist. (Daston and Gallison, Objectivity, .) This is not to deny that painters and their audiences can knowingly consult the normal idea of a species and ask whether an individual is correctly depicted. But Kant says that in such contexts the drawing “does not please because of beauty, but merely because it does not contradict any condition under which alone a thing of this species can be beautiful” (KU :). What would make it beautiful, of course, is if it contributed to the successful depiction of a rational idea – the second element in the quote above (see KU :). Cf. Andrew Chignell, “Kant on the Normativity of Taste: The Role of Aesthetic Ideas,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy (): –. For a detailed discussion of aesthetic ideas that reads them all as counterparts of ideas of reason, see Rudolf Lüthe, “Kants Lehre von den ästhetischen Ideen,” Kant-Studien (): –. For an authoritative and historically informed account of the notion of aesthetic ideas of beautiful nature, see Reiter, “Kant on the Aesthetic Ideas of Beautiful Nature,” British Journal of Aesthetics (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature It will prove of the greatest importance for our concerns that Kant suggests in his discussion that the capacity to form in mind such normal ideas of species precedes and indeed makes possible our conceptual grasp of these species. I will return to this very important point in the next section. Obviously, a lot more needs to be said about the role of pure aesthetic judgments in Kant’s theory of cognition. I will return to this central question in the next section. Before doing so, I would like to address three issues: () I will relate our discussion to the important notion of empirical schemata; () I will offer one more, very important piece of evidence that Kant is analyzing our response to the shape of natural kinds; and () I will address objections to the claims made in this section; this will lead to several significant qualifications and refinements of the claim that in pure judgments of taste we respond to the characteristic forms of natural kinds. .. The Forms of Natural Kind as Empirical Schemata In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique, Kant is undecided whether the argument he presents qualifies as a transcendental deduction of the principle of the systematic conceptual unity of nature. His qualms appear to stem from the fact that he cannot directly relate the principle to the sensibly given and thus secure its objective validity. The problem is clearest where Kant gives the principle an “analogue of a schema of sensibility.” The passage is worth quoting here in full. The understanding constitutes an object for reason, just as sensibility does for the understanding. To make systematic the unity of all possible empirical actions of the understanding is a business of reason, just as the understanding connects the manifold of appearances through concepts and brings it under empirical laws. The actions of the understanding, however, apart from the schemata of sensibility, are undetermined; likewise the unity of reason is also in itself undetermined in regard to the conditions under which, and to the degree to which, the understanding should combine its concepts systematically. Yet although no schema can be found in intuition for the thoroughgoing systematic unity of all concepts of the understanding, an analogue of such a schema can and must be given, which is the idea of the maximum of division and unification of the understanding’s cognition in one principle. For that which is greatest and most complete may be kept determinately in mind, because all restricting conditions, which give indeterminate manifolds, are omitted. Thus the idea of reason is an analogue of a schema of sensibility, but with this difference, that the application of concepts of the understanding to the schema of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds reason is not likewise a cognition of the object itself (as in the application of the categories to their sensible schemata), but only a rule or principle of the systematic unity of all use of the understanding. (A–/B–) From the very beginning of the Transcendental Dialectic to its Appendix, Kant lays great emphasis on the analogy between two relations: the relation of the understanding to sensibility; and the relation of reason to the understanding. Empirical concepts unify manifolds given in intuition. An idea of reason directs us to unify a variety of concepts into a systematic whole. As Kant stresses in the passage before us, there is also a significant difference between these relations. The application of concepts to sensibility is directed by schemata, and, as Kant says in the Schematism chapter, schemata are mediating representations – they are “intellectual on the one hand and sensible on the other” (A/B). Both reason and understanding, however, are intellectual or conceptual capacities. Thus, the “analogue of a schema of sensibility” has no sensible aspect. The “idea of a maximum of division and unification of the understanding’s cognition in one principle” is purely intellectual or conceptual. It gives us no determinate directions how to apply it to the sensibly given; it is “only a rule or principle of the systematic unity of all use of the understanding.” In other words, the problem is precisely that in the Appendix there is no sensible correlate to the idea of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. From our current vantage point, we can also see why the Appendix seems condemned to ambiguity. On the one hand, Kant clearly wants to award the principle of the systematic unity of nature transcendental status, and this means that it must be a condition of the application even of our simplest, most fundamental empirical concepts. On the other hand, reason is described as a second-order faculty; its business is to make “systematic the unity of all possible empirical actions of the understanding.” But it is hard to see how, at the most fundamental level of experience, it can carry out its unifying charge, precisely because it seems to presuppose the actions of the understanding. We can, though, understand how it can seek to unify and extend our current knowledge. But this suggests that it is not a transcendental condition of experience. According to the reading presented in this chapter, it is precisely the main task of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment to answer these problems. Consequently, it throws light on the ambiguity of the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic and on its relation to the third Critique. It is noteworthy that, in the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments, Kant himself suggests the connection to the question of empirical schematism. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature He claims that in pure aesthetic judgments the imagination “schematizes without a concept” (KU :). The principle of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature is the sensible correlate of the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. It gives us a fundamental division of intuition into objects and kinds. In other words, it supplies the sensible or aesthetic aspect that was missing from the “analogue of a schema of sensibility.” At this juncture, it is worth recalling Kant’s brief but suggestive reference to empirical schematism in the first Critique. This schematism of our understanding with regard to appearances and their mere form is a hidden art in the depths of the human soul [eine verborgene Kunst in den Tiefen der menschlichen Seele], whose true operations we can divine from nature and lay unveiled before our eyes only with difficulty. We can say only this much: the image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination, the schema of sensible concepts (such as figures in space) is a product and as it were a monogram [Monogramm] of pure a priori imagination, through which and in accordance with which the images first become possible, but which must be connected with the concept, to which they are in themselves never fully congruent, always only by means of the schema that they designate [bezeichnen]. (A–/B–) In the First Introduction, in contrast, Kant says that the principle of reflection does not operate schematically (EEKU :). However, he seems to be drawing the contrast between reflective judgment and its search for empirical concepts, on the one hand, and the schemata of the categories and determinative judgment, on the other hand. He means then that the relation between empirical concepts and intuition is not determinative. For another discussion that associates only pure concepts of the understanding with the notion of schemata, see KU :–. For Kant’s use of the notion of schematism in the concrete moral sphere, see MS :–. Later in the first Critique, Kant mentions monograms again. They are “creatures of imagination . . ., as it were, monograms, individual traits, though not determined through any assignable rule, constituting more a wavering sketch [Zeichnung], as it were, which mediates between various appearances, than a determinate image, such as what painters and physiognomists say they have in their heads, and is supposed to be an incommunicable silhouette [Schattenbild] of their products or even of their critical judgments” (A/B). For the claim that Kant has in mind not spatial shapes but “a holistic representation of a concept made sensible, i.e. a representation of how the various marks of that concept manifest in a unified sensible way,” see Samantha Matherne, “Kant and the Art of Schematism,” Kantian Review (): . See also Samantha Matherne, “Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception,” Ergo (): –. Matherne suggests translating the last word in the passage with “delineate” rather than designate. See Matherne, “Images and Kant’s Theory of Perception,” , note . In contrast, Williams claims that for Kant empirical schemata are spatiotemporal forms. She explains their importance for the task of ordering nature taxonomically and compellingly relates this task to eighteenth-century scientific practice. See again note . Williams does not, though, connect pure aesthetic judgment with empirical schemata, though she does appreciate the importance of the notion of the normal idea of a species. See Jessica J. Williams, “‘The Image of a Four-Footed Animal in General’: Kant on Empirical Schemata and the System of Nature,” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds Kant appears to have this discussion in mind when he describes the common ground of the unanimity we expect in pure judgments of taste as “deeply buried [tief verborgenen] in all human beings” (KU :; see also KU :) and as a secret of nature (KU :). I am suggesting that unveiling these hidden operations of our minds is the primary task of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Remarkably, Kant’s example of an empirical schema in the Schematism chapter is the spatial shape of a dog. If this is right, then the Schematism chapter of the first Critique deals with transcendental schemata (A–/B–), whereas the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment views natural objects judged aesthetically as presentations of particular empirical schemata. Whereas the categorial schemata are transcendental time determinations (A/B), the schemata of natural kinds are spatial. This, of course, makes good sense. Kant’s claim in the first Critique is that as the form of inner intuition time alone is a formal condition of any representation, inner or outer, and so can serve as the formal condition of the universal application of the categories. But we are now discussing the actual experience of what is given to us empirically in outer sense. Empirical schemata must be spatial. Conversely put, the application of the categories is undetermined with regard to what is actually given to us in outer sense. This is a way of posing the central concern of Kant’s project in the third Critique – namely, completing the task of articulating the transcendental conditions of a particular empirical experience of the world. It is worth pointing out here another interesting reference to the first Critique. In the B Deduction, Kant describes figurative synthesis (synthesis speciosa) as proceeding in accordance with the categories and as the “first application (and at the same time the ground of all others) to objects of the intuition that is possible for us” (B). In the First Introduction, Kant describes aesthetic judgment as figurative and says that “the technique of nature with regard to such forms can also be so called (technica speciosa)” (EEKU :). In speaking of “the shape of a four-footed animal in general without being restricted to any single particular shape” (A/B), I think Kant means the general shape of the particular four-footed animal dog and not the shape of any quadruped. It is true that he is insisting on the generality of a schema as “a general procedure of the imagination” (A/B) and contrasts it with the particularity of an image. But it would make no more sense to claim that we apply the concept dog by employing the schema of a quadruped than to hold that the rule for constructing polygons is the schema of the concept triangle. This is not to deny that there is a schema for the concept quadruped (see again KU :). Erdmann suggests inserting “such” to read: “The concept dog signifies a rule whereby my imagination can trace the shape of such a four-footed animal in a general way.” In his well-known discussion of the empirical doctrine of the soul, Kant is perhaps alluding to the lack of empirical sensibly determined schemata for representations of inner sense when he says that “the manifold of inner observation can be separated only by mere division in thought” (MAN :). Cf., A/B-A/B. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature On this reading then the analogy between the discussions of the transcendental conditions of experience in the first Critique and third Critique is complete. Just as the first has a Transcendental Aesthetic and a Transcendental Logic, so the third has a Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment and a Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment. The first member of each pair contends with sensibility; the second – with the understanding and the conceptual conditions of experience. Both texts now specify how our faculty of concepts shapes what is given to us aesthetically. The first Critique does this in the Schematism chapter. In the third Critique, reflective judgment is directed by a single principle with two presentations or aspects, sensible and discursive. The first tells us to apply the idea of conceptual purposiveness or systematic unity to intuition. Pure judgments of taste are responses to the empirical schemata that first make possible this quest. I conclude this discussion by underscoring an important shift that occurs in the third Critique in comparison to the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, namely, making the idea of the purposiveness of nature a principle of reason for reflective judgment (see again the title of §; see also KU :, ). In the Appendix, the objects of reason are the concepts and claims of the understanding. It is for this reason that the principle of reason can have no sensible schema. But judgment is the faculty that mediates between understanding and intuition, and its principle can and indeed must have both a sensible and an intellectual aspect. .. Beautiful Natural Forms: The Idealist Tradition in the Theory of Visual Art In the next subsection I will attempt to contend with several objections that should be raised against the claims made above. But one objection invites a more detailed response here. It can be formulated as the following question: Where would Kant have gotten the idea that the objects of judgments of natural beauty are the spatial forms characteristic of natural It is noteworthy that Kant uses the expression the “transcendental aesthetic of the power of judgment” (KU :). In the First Introduction, he says: “the aesthetic of the reflecting power of judgment will occupy one part of the critique of this faculty, just as the logic of the same faculty, under the name of teleology, will constitute its other part” (EEKU :). Cf., Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, . In stark contrast, Zuckert claims that the “principle of purposiveness cannot . . . be schematized.” Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds kinds? The short answer to this question is that this is the predominant view of the Idealist tradition in the theory of visual art. A separate paper would be needed to establish the claim more fully. To give but a very quick sketch of it, I turn to two pivotal thinkers from Kant’s more immediate past, who formulated most clearly the idea that Kant incorporates into his account of natural beauty. I am claiming that judgments of natural beauty typically and paradigmatically respond to spatial forms or three-dimensional outlines that are characteristic of natural kinds. The idealized representation of natural beauties of this sort is precisely the task Winckelmann attributes to works of visual art. In his History of the Art of Antiquity (), in a section significantly titled Ideal Beauty, he writes the following: Nevertheless, the nature and build of the most beautiful bodies is rarely without fault, and they have forms or parts that can be found or imagined more perfectly in other bodies. Accordingly, this experience led these wise artists to proceed like a skilled gardener, who grafts different shoots of a noble species onto one stem. And as the bee gathers from many flowers, so their concept of beauty was not limited to the individual attributes of a single beauty – as are at times the conceptions of ancient and modern poets, and of most artists of the present day. Rather, these artists sought to combine beauty from many beautiful bodies. Winckelmann goes on to tell the story of Zeuxis, “who selected the most beautiful parts of five beautiful women of Kroton for his painting of Juno.” We also find reference to this well-known story, told by Cicero and Pliny the elder, in the writings of Bellori. Panofsky attributes to This subsection is an adaptation of a parallel one in Reiter and Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” –. I am very deeply indebted to Aviv Reiter’s work on this tradition. See Aviv Reiter, The End and Historicity of the Fine Arts: From the Idealist Theory of the Renaissance to the Formation of a Systematic-Historical Conception in Hegel’s Philosophy of Art, Ph.D. dissertation, Tel-Aviv University, ; Reiter, “Kant on the Aesthetic Ideas of Beautiful Nature.” Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, translated by Harry Francis Mallgrave (Los-Angeles, CA: Getty Research Institute, ), . Kant names Winckelmann in this context. See V-Anth/Mron :. For the important claim that Kant is following Winckelmann’s Idealist understanding of form, see Biemel, Die Bedeutung von Kants Begründung der Ästhetik für die Philosophie der Kunst, , note ; Düsing, “Beauty as the Transition from Nature to Freedom in Kant’s ‘Critique of Judgement’,” . Winckelmann, History of the Art of Antiquity, . See: Marcus Tullius Cicero, On Invention. The Best Kind of Orator. Topics, translated by H. M. Hubbell (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), –; Pliny, Natural History, translated by H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), Book , §; Giovanni Pietro Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Alice Sedgwick Wohl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), . The picture of Helen by Zeuxis, without the story of its models, is also mentioned by Valerius Maximus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch and Aelian. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature Bellori the explicit and systematic formulation of the conception of beauty taken for granted by Renaissance theorists and indeed claims that it was through The Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors, and Architects () that the notion of the ideal of beauty entered French and German art criticism. Bellori writes: That supreme and eternal intellect, the author of nature, looking deeply within himself as he fashioned his marvelous works, established the first forms, called Ideas, in such a way that each species was an expression of that first Idea, thereby forming the wondrous context of created things. . . . [T]he sublunar bodies . . . are subject to change and ugliness and even though nature intends always to make its effects excellent, nevertheless, owing to the inequality of matter, forms are altered, and human beauty in particular is confounded, as we see in the innumerable deformities and disproportions that there are in us. For this reason noble painters and sculptors, imitating that first maker, also form in their minds an example of higher beauty, and by contemplating that, they emend nature without fault of color or of line. . . . The Idea of the painter and of the sculptor is that perfect and excellent example in the mind whose imagined form, when imitated, the things that appear before our eyes resemble . . . Thus the Idea constitutes the perfection of natural beauty and unites the truth with the verisimilitude of things that appear before the eye, always aspiring to the best and to the marvelous, so that it not only rivals but becomes superior to nature, revealing its works to us elegant and finished, whereas nature is not wont to display them to us perfect in every part. The forms that Winckelmann calls “Ideal Beauty” and Bellori calls “Ideas” and describes as the perfection of natural beauty are, according to Kant, the archetypes of the objects of pure judgments of natural beauty. Kant’s term for these idealized forms is aesthetic normal ideas of species. It is, moreover, perfectly clear that he is familiar with this tradition and its classical sources. He cites the very examples that are repeatedly referred to in the tradition. It is the image for the whole species, hovering among all the particular and variously diverging intuitions of the individuals, which nature used as the Erwin Panofsky, Idea: A Concept in Art Theory, translated by Joseph J. S. Peake (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ), –. Bellori, The Lives of the Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects, –. In his response to Goethe’s drawing of a “symbolic plant,” Schiller famously says: “That is not an observation from experience. That is an idea.” To which Goethe replies: “Then I may rejoice that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with my own eyes.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Fortunate Encounter,” in Scientific Studies, edited and translated by Douglas Miller (New York: Suhrkamp, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds archetype underlying her productions in the same species, but does not seem to have fully achieved in any individual. . . . It is, as was said of Polycletus’s famous Doryphorous, the rule (and Myron’s cow could be used in the same way in its species). For that very reason it cannot contain anything specifically characteristic, for then it would not be the normal idea for the species. (KU :–) Kant’s conception of natural beauty draws significantly on the predominant Idealist tradition in the theory of visual art. .. Objections, Replies and Refinements I expect (based on past experience) that the claim that the spatial forms characteristic of natural kinds are what Kant primarily has in mind in the Analytic of the Beautiful will meet with considerable resistance. In what follows, I articulate objections to this claim and attempt to answer them. Some of the replies lead to significant refinements of the claims made above. In formulating these replies furthermore, I draw on Kant’s text where it contains a response to an objection. But in some cases, the answers are, in part or whole, mine. Before considering these objections, however, I will respond to two more general problems that Kant’s analysis of beauty is often thought to face. I think it is a virtue of the interpretation I am proposing that it has the resources to respond to these problems. The Problem of the Ubiquity of Beauty Kant is sometimes thought to be committed to the very implausible view that every object of a cognitive judgment can be, if we only manage to judge it disinterestedly, the object of a pure aesthetic judgment. Indeed, this is a problem all nonconceptual readings of pure aesthetic judgments might appear to face, just because the nonconceptual nature of the judgments seems to preclude any manner of distinguishing between different objects. In other words, it is a challenge to explain how some but not other things are found beautiful by a judgment that does not distinguish between those things conceptually. On the view I am attributing to Kant, however, it is objects that possess what we might think of as a significant form that are found to be beautiful – paradigmatically objects whose spatial form is characteristic Kant may well have Pliny the Elder in mind here, who mentions both Polycletus’s Doryphorous or Canon and Myron’s cow. Pliny, Natural History, Book , §§–. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature of a natural kind. This answer explains why Kant claims that nature has spread beauty “extravagantly everywhere” (KU :). But it does not commit him to the claim that all objects are beautiful, because the form of many objects is not characteristic of a natural kind. Many objects clearly cannot give rise to aesthetic pleasure on the interpretation I am presenting. Many objects, for example, are too small or too large for us to perceive (though they might be discovered to be beautiful with the aid of a microscope or astrophotography). There are also concrete perceivable objects that do not share a common spatial form but are alike in significant ways (sand or gravel from the same kind of rock). There are composite objects (a pile of rocks or leaves) and very abstract objects (a biological kingdom or domain), as well as objects that cannot be observed and the existence of which is indirectly or theoretically inferred (quarks, black holes). There are also very many objects that do belong to a natural kind distinguished by a typical spatial form that do not display this form (halfeaten rotting apples, wilted flowers, crushed acorns). It is typically a form characteristic of a natural kind that is the object of pure judgments of taste. It is these objects that paradigmatically evoke the feeling of the aesthetic harmony of the faculties. But this response might seem to land us in in even deeper trouble: How can it be claimed that the analysis of pure aesthetic judgments is part of the transcendental account of the conditions of empirical experience while denying that all objects of experience can be found aesthetically pleasing? This issue will be a recurring theme in this chapter and a major topic of the Conclusion. But let me suggest briefly here how Kant might respond to this question. Pure judgments of taste, he might claim, offer a first partial delineation of nature into objects, which in turn makes possible a first provisional sorting of nature into kinds. Pure judgments of taste are nevertheless a necessary condition of experience generally, because in the order of discovery they in effect serve as our first fallible and revisable hypothesis where the joints of nature are located. Some of these hypotheses might ultimately have to be rejected; other joints will be discovered later by conceptually guided empirical research. But in both cases, empirical investigation sets out from and so depends upon these first hypotheses. This response though is not one we find in Kant’s text. For a comparable formulation of the problem see Miles Rind, “Can Kant’s Deduction of Judgments of Taste Be Saved?,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds Kant Appears Not to Present a Conception of Ugliness Kant mentions ugliness only once in Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. The context is the very important claim that the things presented in beautiful works of art need not be beautiful: “Beautiful art displays its excellence precisely by describing beautifully things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing [häßlich oder mißfällig]” (KU :). Although Kant speaks here of nature, the example he goes on to give are not objects considered to be natural but rather examples of what he must consider to be objects of adherent judgments of taste: “The furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the like can, as harmful things [Schädlichkeiten], be very beautifully described, indeed even represented in painting” (KU :). It bears emphasizing that the examples are of harmful things rather than ugly ones. If the examples are indeed meant to be displeasing rather than ugly, then we are not given a single example of an ugly natural object. On the interpretation I am proposing, it is clear why there is neither a discussion nor examples of ugly natural objects. Objects, the form of which does not evoke in us the pleasurable feeling that they are cognitively significant, need not arouse in us any displeasure. They would simply fail to attract our continuing attention. But they would not repulse us. Admittedly, if this is right then Kant’s many references in the book to displeasure are highly misleading. This problem might appear to be closely related to the previous one. One obvious explanation of the fact that Kant does not discuss ugliness might be that he thinks that all objects viewed disinterestedly can evoke in us pure aesthetic pleasure. I do not think this is the right explanation. In Anthropology Friedländer Kant says: It is said of the human being: he is handsome [when] well formed. This refers partly to the form of the entire figure of the body, partly to the form of the face. Thus one also says: the human being is ugly. However “ugly [häßlich]” is derived from “to hate [hassen].” But if it is derived from there, one cannot thus say, that such a face or figure of the body, which deviates from the true proportion, is ugly; it may not at all be hated because of this. In order to be ugly, something contradicting morality must lie in the face: guile, malice, spite, recalcitrance, crudeness, only that is ugly in the case of the human being. The unproportionate form of the body and the face may not however be ugly because of it. (V-Anth/Fried :) For the claim that pure aesthetic judgments are either positive or neutral and textual support for the existence of this third possibility, see Paul Guyer, “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly,” in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. Guyer’s reasoning though differs from mine and depends on his endorsement of the metacognitive reading of pure judgments of taste. See note . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature Counterexamples, Generality, Circularity Not all of Kant’s examples of objects of pure judgments of taste are shapes typical of natural kinds or even natural objects. Moreover, it seems likely or at least possible that things Kant would think of as real natural kinds cannot be distinguished by their common spatial form; and some things that do share a common form are not what he would think of as real natural kinds. In responding to these objections it is important to avoid the circular stipulation that all and only natural kinds share a common form. It is true that a much smaller group of Kant’s examples comprises not biological kinds but spatial forms designed by human beings: “free designs [freie Zeichnungen], lines aimlessly intertwined in each other under the name of foliage [Laubwerks]” (KU :); “designs à la grecque, foliage for borders or on wallpaper” (KU :); “curlicues and light but regular lines” (KU :). However, I am not attributing to Kant the claim that only forms characteristic of natural kinds are objects of pure judgments of taste. I am attributing to him the claim that forms characteristic of natural kinds are the typical and paradigmatic objects of pure judgments of taste. The close alliance of pure judgments of taste and nature is clear in places where Kant speaks of them in summary (see, for example: KU :– [several times]; [twice], [quoted above]). Moreover, I am not claiming we should read Kant as claiming that all natural kinds share a common form. Specifically, gas and liquid kinds as such do not possess typical observable spatial forms. Nor should we take him to claim that a common form is in all cases an indication that we are contending with a natural kind. The best way to understand Kant, I suggest again, is as claiming that sorting natural objects according to their spatial shapes affords a first conjecture where some of the joints of nature are to be found. But this first sorting is hypothetical, open to confirmation, revision or outright rejection; it also requires supplementing by conceptually guided empirical research. These points are of central importance and, as I will claim, a great virtue of Kant’s theory as I suggest elaborating it. I will return to these points below. As the examples just quoted show, decorative arts produce free beauty. There are several other examples of free beauty that are not natural. Kant also mentions the English taste in gardens as an example of free beauty (KU :). He further suggests that the beauty of musical fantasies and music without text more generally are free (KU :), presumably because their appreciation does not presuppose a concept of “what the thing is supposed to be.” I will say something more about the possibility of judging beautiful the color of a gas or liquid below. See Section ..: Spatiotemporal Forms, Pure Tones and Colors. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Beautiful Forms: Natural Objects; Natural Kinds Some of Kant’s Examples Refer Not to Natural Kinds but to Their Parts; Other Examples Are More General Than What We Would Think of as a Natural Kind Kant does speak of the beauty of the “flowers, the blossoms, indeed the shape of whole plants” (KU :) as well as of bird feathers (KU :), indicating that both an object and a part of it can be found beautiful. He also speaks of schemata or forms common to many genera (see KU :). But this is not a threat to the idea that aesthetic judgment underwrites our fundamental sorting of nature into objects and kinds. So the term “natural kind” should be taken to be used somewhat loosely and to refer not only to kinds but also to things like the characteristic shape of a leaf or blossom – which do indeed serve to identify a kind – as well as to the shape typical of a genus or family, where they share a characteristic form. There Are Concepts That Correspond to the Spatial Outlines Characteristic of Natural Kinds Specifically, the spatial shapes that occasion pure aesthetic pleasure can be conceptualized perhaps by employing mathematical languages or simply by speaking of the property of having that shape. So on the account I have described, pure judgments of taste would be conceptual rather than nonconceptual – Kant’s repeated claims to the contrary. It is perhaps trivially true that concepts can be found for every spatial shape. Indeed, we usually (perhaps always) do possess concepts that we know apply to the objects of pure judgments of taste. The point is precisely that they need not be found and we need not apply the concepts we do possess to apprehend them, because the forms of intuition and the understanding are two distinct stems of cognition. On Kant’s view, I am claiming, we can apprehend spatial shapes without the conceptual involvement of the understanding. (Of course, the understanding is involved in aesthetic judgment through its coordinate response to the imagination.) This is what I mean by saying that in pure aesthetic judgments our conceptual grasp of an object is held in abeyance. It is, moreover, clear that when judging the form of say a rose to be beautiful, I don’t possess its complex mathematical conceptualization; and as Kant stresses that pure judgments of taste are singular, I am not responding to it as the bearer of a property potentially shared by many others – that would make it an aesthetically grounded logical judgment. Kant, indeed, insists that simple geometric shapes are not beautiful, precisely because in such cases we cannot but subsume them under concepts. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature Now geometrically regular shapes – a circle, a square, a cube, etc. – are commonly adduced by critics of taste as the simplest and most indubitable examples of beauty; and yet they are called regular precisely because they cannot be represented except by being regarded as mere presentations of a determinate concept, which prescribes the rule for that shape (in accordance with which it is alone possible). Thus one of the two must be wrong: either the judgment of the critics that attributes beauty to such shapes, or ours, which finds purposiveness without a concept to be necessary for beauty. (KU :) Kant Claims That Pure Judgments of Taste Are Nonconceptual. Doesn’t This Imply That Beautiful Natural Forms Fall under No Cognitively or Conceptually Significant Category? I don’t think it does. On the contrary, interpreting Kant in this way would force us to choose between two unattractive possibilities: either () any form whatsoever might be found beautiful; or () only some forms are found to be beautiful, but there is nothing further to say about what distinguishes them from forms that are not found to be beautiful. The former alternative was discussed at the beginning of this subsection. The problem with the latter is that it renders inexplicable Kant’s claim that judgments of beauty are expressions of harmony between the imagination and the understanding. For what possible role might the understanding – the faculty of concepts – play in the interaction? Some connection between aesthetic and cognitive judgments is required in order to make sense of the involvement of the understanding in aesthetic pleasure. A pure judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment: “it is neither grounded on concepts nor aimed at them” (KU :). Nevertheless, it expresses “pleasure in the harmony of the faculties of cognition” (KU :). On my view, the harmony of the faculties is the promissory feeling that a sensible manifold can be brought under concepts; it is the feeling that a spatial form is cognitively significant. In contrast, Guyer claims that it is Kant’s view that the objects of pure judgments of taste “must be identified by means of particular empirical concepts” and uses as examples “concepts such as ‘triangle’ or ‘plate’, ‘hummingbird’ or ‘painting.’” Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” , . Guyer further argues that Kant cannot have thought that the categories are applied to the objects of pure judgments of taste without at the same time applying empirical concepts to them. Guyer, “The Harmony of the Faculties Revisited,” . But my claim is that pure aesthetic judgment is a condition of the application of the categories as well as of empirical concepts. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste Some Attributions of Beauty Are Made Where No Distinct Spatial Shape Is Found; We Speak, for Example, of a Beautiful Vista This may well be true. But Kant explicitly distinguishes beautiful objects from beautiful views of objects. The former are his principal concern. The latter, he says (surprisingly perhaps), are not beautiful, although they do possess charm. Further, beautiful objects are to be distinguished from beautiful views of objects (which on account of the distance can often no longer be distinctly cognized). In the latter, taste seems to fasten not so much on what the imagination apprehends in this field as on what gives it occasion to invent, i.e., on what are strictly speaking the fantasies with which the mind entertains itself while it is being continuously aroused by the manifold which strikes the eye, as for instance in looking at the changing shapes of a fire in a hearth or of a rippling brook, neither of which are beauties, but both of which carry with them a charm for the imagination, because they sustain its free play. (KU :) It is worth emphasizing that Kant says that in beautiful views objects cannot be apprehended or cognized distinctly. This confirms that for him free beauty is attributed to objects. . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste The aim of this section is to discuss the cognitive function of pure judgments of taste. It should by now be clear that, on my reading of it, the analysis of pure aesthetic judgments is an account of the most fundamental delineation of the empirical manifold of intuition into objects. At the most fundamental level (more on this very important qualification below), the spatial forms that occasion aesthetic pleasure are taken to present us with empirical objects. These spatial forms make possible, furthermore, a first sorting of natural objects into kinds – thus enabling the search for concepts that apply to these objects and kinds. As I remarked above, it would be cumbersome, but in fact much more accurate, to speak here of proto-objects and proto-kinds to emphasize the fact that what I am calling objects and kinds, in this context, are not subsumed under concepts. The first subsection will contend with the delineation of the manifold into objects by focusing on the notion of nonconceptual aesthetic apprehension. The focus of the second will be on the aesthetic sorting of nature into kinds and the notion of a normal idea of a species. Though both subsections discuss notions central to Kant’s published text, they also rely https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature to a considerable degree on the First Introduction. The third and fourth subsections then focus on the second and fourth moments of the Analytic; they attempt to reveal the cognitive role of pure aesthetic judgments by reconstructing Kant’s argument grounding their claim to universal assent. The fifth subsection addresses briefly some skeptical concerns that Kant’s account of the normative status of pure judgments of taste might raise. The final subsection will discuss the case of beautiful spatiotemporal forms, specifically sounds and colors. .. The Aesthetic Apprehension or Preconceptual Delineation of Empirical Objects The Critique of Aesthetic Judgment lays great emphasis on the notion of apprehension – and specifically on the aesthetic or nonconceptual apprehension of objects in pure judgments of taste. In the First Introduction, Kant describes the role apprehension plays in determinative empirical judgment. It might be claimed that any serious discussion of the notion of apprehension in Kant should return to the threefold synthesis of the A edition of the first Critique. But there is quite a variety of understandings of this difficult chapter. Furthermore, it seems that whatever interpretation of it we endorse, there is very good reason to take the third Critique to offer either a significant amendment to the earlier text or else to be developing a novel notion of aesthetic nonconceptual apprehension. The following remarks about the threefold synthesis should nevertheless be made: () Very many interpreters assume Kant remains committed to the doctrine throughout his philosophical career. An editorial note in the Guyer and Wood translation (note , p. ) refers as evidence of this to a Reflexion from (see R :–, esp. ). I don’t see decisive evidence there. The reference is apparently to this paragraph: To the empirical cognition (of experience) there belongs: . Intuition, i.e., representation through which an object is given, . a concept, through which this is thought, . composition of the manifold of intuition, . unity in the consciousness of it. () Hanna claims that the first two stages of the threefold synthesis constitute Kant’s account of empirical, nonconceptual content. Very significantly for our concerns, he claims that the products of these two acts of synthesis are forms, patterns and shapes. See: Hanna, “Kant and Nonconceptual Content,” . He also describes it, drawing on Kitcher, as delineating the boundaries of objects. See: Robert Hanna, Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. See also Patricia Kitcher, Kant’s Transcendental Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. Obviously, the discussion of the threefold synthesis makes no mention of aesthetic pleasure. () Guyer claims that the manifolds that evoke aesthetic pleasure have undergone the first two steps of the threefold synthesis, the synthesis of apprehension in intuition and the synthesis of reproduction in the imagination, but not the third, the synthesis of recognition in a concept. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, –. This explains the close connection to cognition, without making aesthetic judgments themselves cognitions. Aesthetically pleasing manifolds are somehow synthesized without a concept. See also note . For criticism, see Ginsborg, “Lawfulness without a Law,” ; Hannah Ginsborg, “Thinking the Particular as Contained https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste To every empirical concept, namely, there belong three actions of the selfactive [selbsttätigen] faculty of cognition: . the apprehension [Auffassung] (apprehensio) of the manifold of intuition; . the comprehension, i.e., the synthetic unity of the consciousness of this manifold in the concept of an object (apperceptio comprehensiva); . the presentation (exhibitio) of the object corresponding to this concept in intuition. For the first action imagination is required, for the second understanding, for the third the power of judgment, which, if it is an empirical concept that is at issue, would be the determining power of judgment. (EEKU :) Now it is often thought that the distinction between apprehension and comprehension is merely notional and refers to two aspects of a single act that are interdependent and never occur alone. They certainly are inseparable aspects of cognition: Determinative judgments present in intuition an actual object corresponding to an empirical concept. But the analysis of pure judgments of taste clearly constitutes a noteworthy exception to this generalization: In pure aesthetic judgments the imagination apprehends a manifold of intuition without being determined conceptually by the understanding. If, then, the form of a given object in empirical intuition is so constituted that the apprehension [Auffassung] of its manifold in the imagination under the Universal,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. () Ginsborg suggests that the first two stages of the threefold synthesis can be read as an account of our most fundamental acquisition of empirical concepts. On the reading that I am proposing, the activity of reproductive synthesis, like the association of ideas for Hume is simply something that we are naturally disposed to do. It is a natural psychological fact about human beings that, if shown a certain number of trees, they will develop a disposition such that the perception of one tree will tend to call to mind other previously perceived trees. What makes the corresponding associations rulegoverned is not that they are guided by a specific, antecedently grasped rule, but rather the fact that we take them to have normative significance. The associations are rule-governed because in carrying them out I take myself to be doing not only what I am disposed to do, but also what I (and everyone else) ought to do. That is, I take my actual associations, blindly habitual though they are, to manifest conformity to a normative standard applicable to everyone. The rule-governedness of my associations is thus a function of my taking them to be rule-governed, which is in turn a function of my taking my natural dispositions as exemplifying a universally valid norm. (Ginsborg, “Thinking the Particular as Contained under the Universal,” ) As Ginsborg emphasizes, the distinct normative aspect she attributes to Kant’s account draws on his analysis of pure judgments of taste: “the idea that our imaginative activity can be, and be recognized by us, as rule-governed, without our having any awareness of the relevant rules prior to engaging in that activity . . . is not explicitly articulated by Kant, but I take it to be a consequence of the account of aesthetic experience which he gives in the Critique of Judgment.” Hannah Ginsborg, “Empirical Concepts and the Content of Experience,” European Journal of Philosophy (): . For my detailed response to Ginsborg see Geiger, “Aesthetic Normativity and the Acquisition of Empirical Concepts,” Con-Textos Kantianos (): –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature agrees with the presentation of a concept of the understanding (though which concept be undetermined), then in the mere reflection understanding and imagination mutually agree for the advancement of their business, and the object will be perceived as purposive merely for the power of judgment, hence the purposiveness will be considered as merely subjective; for which, further, no determinate concept of the object at all is required nor is one thereby generated, and the judgment itself is not a cognitive judgment. – Such a judgment is called an aesthetic judgment of reflection. (EEKU :–) Kant is claiming, I suggest, that aesthetic judgments of reflection apprehend forms that are felt to make their objects generally fit to be subsumed under empirical concepts – this is the “advancement of their business” and what Kant means by an agreement with the presentation of an undetermined concept. They do this without being determined by the understanding and its concepts. Indeed, Kant is even more emphatic about the nonconceptual nature of pure judgments of taste in the published Introduction. In Chapter , we examined in detail Section VII of the Introduction and the passage corresponding to the one just quoted. If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension (apprehensio) of the form of an object of intuition without a relation of this to a concept for a determinate cognition, then the representation is thereby related not to the object, but solely to the subject, and the pleasure can express nothing but its suitability to the cognitive faculties that are in play in the reflecting power of judgment, insofar as they are in play, and thus merely a subjective formal purposiveness of the object. For that apprehension of forms in the imagination can never take place without the reflecting power of judgment, even if unintentionally, at least comparing them to its faculty for relating intuitions to concepts. Now if in this comparison the imagination (as the faculty of a priori intuitions) is unintentionally brought into accord with the understanding, as the faculty of concepts, through a given representation and a feeling of pleasure is thereby aroused, then the object must be regarded as purposive for the reflecting power of judgment. Such a judgment is an aesthetic judgment on the purposiveness of the object, which is not grounded on any available concept of the object and does not furnish one. That object the form of which (not the material aspect of its representation, as sensation) in mere reflection on it (without any intention of acquiring a concept from it) is judged as the ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an object – with its representation this pleasure is also judged to be necessarily combined, consequently not merely for the subject who apprehends this form but for everyone who judges at all. The object is then called beautiful; and the faculty for judging through such a pleasure (consequently also with universal validity) is called taste. (KU :–) https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste Now this characterization of pure aesthetic pleasure as presenting us with objects that are felt to be fit for subsumption under empirical concepts is not really controversial. It is merely a characterization of the feeling of pleasure Kant describes as the harmonious free play of the imagination and the understanding and as the feeling of their mutual correspondence or agreement. But the claim I am attributing to Kant is much stronger and surely is controversial: I am suggesting that the analysis of pure aesthetic pleasure is an account of how, at the most fundamental level, we are presented with empirical objects. It is the pleasure we take in a particular spatial form that grounds, at the most fundamental level, the delineation of the manifold given to us in intuition into objects. In the First Introduction Kant is somewhat clearer about the connection of nonconceptual aesthetic judgment and cognition. A merely reflecting judgment about a given individual object, however, can be aesthetic if (before its comparison with others is seen), the power of judgment, which has no concept ready for the given intuition, holds the imagination (merely in the apprehension [Auffassung] of the object) together with the understanding (in the presentation of a concept in general) and perceives a relation of the two faculties of cognition which constitutes the subjective, merely sensitive condition of the objective use of the power of judgment in general (namely the agreement of the faculties with each other). (EEKU :–) The claim that aesthetic judgment precedes the comparison of like objects is important. For it suggests that aesthetic judgment precedes the search for empirical concepts that apply to an apprehended form. Note that Kant says that judgment “has no concept ready for the given intuition.” No less important is the claim that aesthetic judgment is the “merely sensitive condition of the objective use of the power of judgment in general.” It is pure aesthetic pleasure, I am claiming, that guides the apprehension or preconceptual delineation of the sensible manifold into objects and makes possible the comparisons, which the search for universal empirical concepts requires. (We will return to the notion of comparison in the next subsection.) Now this claim must seem highly surprising. Aesthetic judgments involve the very faculties necessary for cognition – namely, imagination and understanding. But as we saw above, it seems evident that aesthetic judgments themselves can play no part in cognition. We might Henrich comes close to making just this claim but rejects it. See Henrich, “Kant’s Explanation of Aesthetic Judgment,” –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature characterize this view as taking aesthetic pleasure to be an epiphenomenon involving the very faculties necessary for cognition, although not itself a necessary condition of cognition. This very common view is assumed to be a necessary consequence of Kant’s often-repeated claims that aesthetic judgments are not conceptual and thus not cognitions. But Kant says clearly that the aesthetic pleasure in the apprehension of an object accompanies a procedure that judgment “must also exercise for the sake of the most common experience.” Without having any purpose or fundamental principle for a guide, this pleasure accompanies the common apprehension of an object by the imagination, as a faculty of intuition, in relation to the understanding, as a faculty of concepts, by means of a procedure of the power of judgment, which it must also exercise for the sake of the most common experience: only in the latter case it is compelled to do so for the sake of an empirical objective concept, while in the former case (in the aesthetic judging) it is merely for the sake of perceiving the suitability of the representation for the harmonious (subjectively purposive) occupation of both cognitive faculties in their freedom, i.e., to sense the representational state with pleasure. (KU :) In stark contrast to the view that aesthetic judgments play no part in cognition, I am claiming that by delineating the manifold given in intuition into objects, aesthetic judgments ground (either directly or indirectly – I will return to this important distinction below) every cognitive judgment – even though they are not conceptual and thus not themselves cognitions. .. The Normal Ideas of Species and Natural Kind Concepts I have been claiming that Kant’s analysis of pure judgment of taste is, in fact, an account of our most fundamental delineation of the sensible manifold into objects. What I now want to focus on are two closely related points: () the aesthetic delineation of the manifold into objects makes possible a preconceptual sorting of objects according to their mere form; and () this preconceptual sorting of objects into kinds is a transcendental aesthetic condition of the search for empirical concepts. Guyer formulates the thought clearly and succinctly: “Since it is the use of a concept that ordinarily guarantees the unification of a manifold, unification without a concept could obviously be regarded as the contingent and unexpected fulfillment of our aim in knowledge . . .” Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste In the published text of the third Critique, this condition of the acquisition of empirical concepts is most clearly referred to in the discussion of the notion of the normal idea of a species, examined in the previous section. It is worth quoting again Kant’s characterization of the notion: It is the image for the whole species, hovering among all the particular variously diverging intuitions of the individuals, which nature used as the archetype underlying her productions in the same species, but does not seem to have fully achieved in any individual. (KU :–) Kant’s elaboration of the mental process of the formation of these aesthetic ideas begins by contrasting the imagination’s capacity to recall for concepts, even after a long time, their sensible signs or marks with what the imagination can apparently achieve without the guidance of concepts. It should be noted that the imagination does not only know how to recall for us occasionally signs [Zeichen] of concepts, even after a long time, in a way that is entirely incomprehensible to us; it also knows how to reproduce the image and shape [das Bild und die Gestalt] of an object out of an immense number of objects of different kinds, or even of one and the same kind; indeed, when the mind is set on making comparisons, it even knows how, by all accounts actually if not consciously, as it were to superimpose one image on another and by means of the congruence of several of the same kind to arrive at a mean that can serve them all as a common measure. (KU :–) The important emphasis, I suggest, is that the imagination is not working under the conceptual guidance of the understanding. It does not create normal ideas for a conceptually sorted kind. Rather, it operates on its own. Kant goes on to say that the imagination operates “by means of a dynamic effect, which arises from the repeated apprehension of such figures on the organ of inner sense” (KU :). Note that he is speaking only of the imagination and its capacity for apprehension – thus apparently stressing that the activity here is properly that of the imagination. By speaking of a dynamic effect, he furthermore appears to be saying that the imagination is here productive and composes something new (see Anth : note). I suggest that it is experiences of the beauty of natural objects – “the repeated apprehension of such figures on the organ of inner sense” – that makes possible the compositions of normal ideas of species. In the Anthropology, Kant describes the former as the reproductive or recollective power of the imagination, “which brings back to the mind an empirical intuition that it had previously” (Anth :). It is noteworthy that for the Idealist tradition, discussed in the last section, the conceptual grasp of the species does indeed precede the envisioning and fashioning of its aesthetic ideal. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature Someone has seen a thousand grown men. Now if he would judge what should be estimated as their comparatively normal size, then (in my opinion) the imagination allows a great number of images (perhaps all thousand) to be superimposed on one another, and, if I may here apply the analogy of optical presentation, in the space where the greatest number of them coincide and within the outline of the place that is illuminated by the most concentrated colors, there the average size becomes recognizable, which is in both height and breadth equidistant from the most extreme boundaries of the largest and smallest statures; and this is the stature for a beautiful man. (KU :) Kant is not claiming then that we arrive at normal ideas by an empirical process of abstraction, which presupposes a conceptual sorting of objects that belong to a species or kind. He says clearly that the normal idea “represents the standard for judging it as a thing belonging to a particular species of animal” (KU :). He might well have the classic tale of Zeuxis in mind and the concrete presentation of such an idea, described in the previous section, when he says that the normal idea “must take its elements for the figure of an animal of a particular species from experience” (KU :). But he immediately goes on to qualify this claim: . . . the greatest purposiveness in the construction of the figure [Gestalt], which would be suitable as a universal standard for the aesthetic judging of every individual of this species, the image which has as it were intentionally grounded the technique of nature, to which only the species as a whole but not any separate individual is adequate, lies merely in the idea of the one who does the judging, which, however, with its proportions, can be represented fully in concreto as an aesthetic idea in a model image. (KU :) Crucially for our concerns, Kant suggests that it is such normal ideas and the mental process of comparison it presupposes that make possible the empirical judgment of nature. As we just saw, he speaks of the normal idea as “the standard for judging it as a thing belonging to a particular species of animal” and as the “universal standard for the aesthetic judging of every individual of this species.” Our capacity to apprehend the characteristic shape of a species is a condition of our possession of concepts for this species: This normal idea is not derived from the proportions taken from experience, as determinate rules; rather, it is in accordance with it that rules for judging first become possible. (KU :–) Kant subsequently claims that the normal idea “is by no means the entire archetype of beauty in this species, but only the form that constitutes the indispensable condition of all beauty, and so https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste It is worth turning here to a very important passage, in which Kant explicitly connects the aesthetic sorting of objects according to their form with the process of empirical concept formation. Turning to the First Introduction once again, Kant distinguishes the “multiplicity and diversity of . . . laws” from the “natural forms corresponding to them” (EEKU :) – a distinction he also describes by speaking of empirical laws and “specific forms matching these, which however through their comparison with others are also generically corresponding forms [generisch übereinstimmende Formen]” (EEKU :). Indeed, in characterizing what he calls there the principle of reflection he seems briefly to distinguish its aesthetic and conceptual tasks: The principle of reflection on given objects of nature is that for all things in nature empirically determinate concepts can be found, which is to say the same as that in all of its products one can always presuppose a form that is possible for general laws cognizable by us. For if we did not presuppose this and did not ground our treatment of empirical representations on this principle, then all reflection would become arbitrary and blind [bloß aufs Geratewohl und blind], and hence would be undertaken without any wellgrounded expectation of its agreement with nature. (EEKU :–) Note that Kant speaks here of a “form that is possible for general laws cognizable by us” – suggesting that we seek general laws for objects that have in common their mere form. If we did not presuppose this first aesthetic sorting of nature, then anything at all might be a potential object merely the correctness in the presentation of the species” and that it “does not please because of beauty, but merely because it does not contradict any condition under which alone a thing of this species can be beautiful” (KU :). This might seem to contradict the claim that the spatial shape typical of a natural kind is what evokes the pleasure expressed in pure judgments of taste. But Kant is discussing here judgments of the adherent beauty of art and is claiming that the correct presentation of the form of a kind, or drawing correctly, is only a condition of artistic beauty in works of representational visual art. For much more on this issue, see: Aviv Reiter, “Kant and Hegel on the End and Means of Fine Art: From an A-Historical to a Historical Conception of Art,” Hegel Jahrbuch (): –; Reiter and Geiger, “Natural Beauty, Fine Art and the Relation between Them,” –. Baum quotes this passage, but does not identify the aesthetic aspect of the principle. See Manfred Baum, “Kants Prinzip der Zweckmäßigkeit und Hegels Realisierung des Begriffs,” in Hegel und die ‘Kritik der Urteilskraft’, edited by Hans-Friedrich Fulda and Rolf-Peter Horstmann (Stuttgart: KlettCotta, ), . See also Zuckert, Kant on Beauty and Biology, . Allison takes the mention of form to gloss rather than specify the principle that “for all things in nature empirically determinate concepts can be found.” See Henry E. Allison, , “Reflective Judgment and the Application of Logic to Nature: Kant’s Deduction of the Principle of Purposiveness as an Answer to Hume,” in Essays on Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . Ginsborg appears to take the emphasis on form to refer to the very possibility of applying concepts to objects. See Hannah Ginsborg, “Reflective Judgment and Taste,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature of the process of comparison through which we seek empirical concepts. We would have no clue what objects we are to compare – this, I am suggesting, is the meaning of the claim that “all reflection would become arbitrary and blind.” In the note clarifying this passage Kant makes the decisive claim that the principle of reflection is not a principle of mere logic, which teaches us that we can compare objects and thus form concepts. It is a synthetic transcendental assumption, which is a condition of applying this principle of logic to nature. On first glance, this principle does not look at all like a synthetic and transcendental proposition, but seems rather to be tautological and to belong to mere logic. For the latter teaches how one can compare a given representation with others, and, by extracting what it has in common with others, as a characteristic for general use, form a concept. But about whether for each object nature has many others to put forth as objects of comparison, which have much in common with the first in their form, it teaches us nothing; rather, this condition of the possibility of the application of logic to nature is a principle of the representation of nature as a system for our power of judgment, in which the manifold, divided into genera and species, makes it possible to bring all the natural forms that are forthcoming to concepts (of greater or lesser generality) through comparison. Now of course pure understanding already teaches (but also through synthetic principles) how to think of all things in nature as contained in a transcendental system in accordance with a priori concepts (the categories); only the (reflecting) power of judgment, which also seeks concepts for empirical representations, as such, must further assume for this purpose that nature in its boundless multiplicity has hit upon a division of itself into genera and species that makes it possible for our power of judgment to find consensus in the comparison of natural forms and to arrive at empirical concepts, and their interconnection with each other, through ascent to more general but still empirical concepts; i.e., the power of judgment presupposes a system of nature which is also in accordance with empirical laws and does so a priori, consequently by means of a transcendental principle. (EEKU –, note) The logical process of the formation of concepts, alluded to in this passage, comprises three steps: comparison, reflection and abstraction (see, for It is very interesting to note that in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic of the first Critique Kant might be taken to allude to the idea of a preconceptual sorting of genera according to their form when he says: “If among the appearances offering themselves to us there were such a great variety – I will not say of form (for they might be similar to one another in that) but of content . . . then the logical law of genera would not obtain at all” (A/B). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste example: V-Lo/Wiener :; Log :–). But logic, Kant says, does not answer the question of “whether for each object nature has many others to put forth as objects of comparison, which have in common with the first their form.” This precisely is the role of the merely formal division of the manifold into species and genera. It “makes it possible for our power of judgment to find consensus in the comparison of natural forms and to arrive at empirical concepts.” The assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature is then the assumption of the existence of aesthetically significant forms. Sorting nature into objects which share these forms is a condition of the search for concepts under which to subsume these objects and kinds. The assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature is a necessary transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge. I think that the First Introduction offers very strong support indeed for the interpretation I am defending. It is, of course, problematic that the text is not part of the published work. In the next subsections, we will return to the Analytic of the Beautiful and the clearest support found for the interpretation in the published text of the third Critique. .. The Claim of Pure of Judgments of Taste to Universal Assent (§§–) Kant is clearest about the transcendental onus of the Analytic in the second moment. It is important, however, to see that whereas the second moment takes on this task and characterizes it in general terms, it is the fourth moment that fully discharges it. The detailed analysis of the argument of the fourth moment, in the next subsection, is therefore the focal point of this section. Kant lays great emphasis on the unique quantitative profile of pure judgments of taste: In terms of their “logical quantity all judgments of taste are singular” (KU :); but they carry “an aesthetic quantity of universality, i.e., validity for everyone” (KU :). It is this surprising combination that commands the attention of the transcendental philosopher: Readers often quote this account of concept formation and take it to be a complete account of the formation of empirical concepts. For the claim that it is not, see: Ginsborg, “Thinking the Particular as Contained under the Universal,” –; Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, –. Henrich expressly denies the claim I am defending: “the operation or set of operations through which a world of given objects is disclosed to us and which gives all perceptions of objects in this world their distinctive formal constitution cannot be the same process on which, in whatever way, the aesthetic judgment is based.” Henrich, “Kant’s Explanation of Aesthetic Judgment,” . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature This particular determination of the universality of an aesthetic judgment that can be found in a judgment of taste is something remarkable, not indeed for the logician, but certainly for the transcendental philosopher, the discovery of the origin of which calls for no little effort on his part, but which also reveals a property of our faculty of cognition that without this analysis would have remained unknown. (KU :) Now Kant offers an explanation of the universality of judgments of taste already in the first paragraph of the second moment. The title of § is, “The beautiful is that which, without concepts, is represented as the object of a universal satisfaction” (KU :). It opens with the following clarification: This definition of the beautiful can be deduced from the previous explanation of it as an object of satisfaction without any interest. For one cannot judge that about which he is aware that the satisfaction in it is without any interest in his own case in any way except that it must contain a ground of satisfaction for everyone. For since it is not grounded in any inclination of the subject (nor in any other underlying interest), but rather the person making the judgment feels himself completely free with regard to the satisfaction that he devotes to the object, he cannot discover as grounds of the satisfaction any private conditions, pertaining to his subject alone, and must therefore regard it as grounded in those that he can also presuppose in everyone else; consequently he must believe himself to have grounds for expecting a similar pleasure of everyone. (KU :) The argument might appear to be self-standing, even though the universality or necessity of pure judgments of taste is not the stated concern of the second moment but of the fourth moment. I want to suggest, however, that it is only the beginning or a general sketch of an argument. To see why, consider the following question: My awareness that the pleasure I feel in view of an object is disinterested reveals that it is not grounded in something particular about me. This leads me to expect that others, too, can respond in like manner. But what reason do I have to expect that others will respond in like manner to the same objects? Why not think that the imagination and the understanding can be brought into harmonious accord in anyone, but that different objects occasion pleasure in different subjects, or that it is more or less arbitrary which objects bring our faculties into accord? The question is obviously closely connected to the point I made in the previous section, namely, that we need some sort of account of which objects bring our faculties into accord. We don’t want to claim that all do; and it is highly problematic to say that only some do without offering any account of which do. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste In other words, I want to suggest that Kant’s complete thought here is that as pure aesthetic judgments involve no private subjective relation to their objects, we can take the functioning of the cognitive faculties involved in them to be the same in all subjects. But we need further clarification concerning the nature of this function. Ultimately, we want to be able to explain what reason we have for thinking that there is such a function attributable to all cognitive subjects as such and that it responds in a similar manner to the same objects. I suggest that it is the discovery of this function or “property of our faculty of cognition” that “calls for no little effort.” In §, Kant gives us the clearest indication where this task is discharged. It is in his discussion of the distinct normative and modal standing of pure judgments of taste – which is the topic of the fourth moment of the Analytic, a topic to which Kant returns in the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments. Both the necessity of pure judgments of taste (the focus of the fourth moment) and their a priori standing (the focus of the Deduction) are referred to in the following passage: When we call something beautiful, the pleasure that we feel is expected of everyone else in the judgment of taste as necessary, just as if it were to be regarded as a property of the object that is determined in it in accordance with concepts; but beauty is nothing by itself, without relation to the feeling of the subject. However, we must reserve the discussion of this question until we have answered another: how and whether aesthetic judgments a priori are possible. (KU :) We will return to the fourth moment and the Deduction in the next subsection. It is important first to discuss § itself at greater length for it contains, Kant says, “the key to the critique of taste” (KU :). More precisely, the key to the critique of taste is answering the question formulated in its title: “whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes the judging of the object or the latter precedes the former” (KU :). Longuenesse too claims that the disinterestedness of aesthetic judgments does not alone explain their appeal to universal agreement. See Béatrice Longuenesse, “Kant’s Leading Thread in the Analytic of the Beautiful,” in Aesthetics and Cognition in Kant’s Critical Philosophy, edited by Rebecca Kukla (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. Zinkin writes: “The question one ought to ask Kant of the ‘pleasure of reflection’ is ‘what function does it serve?’” See Melissa Zinkin, “Kant and the Pleasure of ‘Mere Reflection’,” Inquiry (): . For a succinct description of Zinkin’s paper and a brief response to it see note . It is further worth pointing out that Kant claims that pure judgments of taste postulate the idea of a universal voice and says that it will be investigated later (KU :). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature This section has occasioned considerable controversy. This is, to a great extent I believe, the result of the ambiguous and misleading formulation of the question it aims to answer. The section itself suggests that the question is not ultimately one of temporal order but of explanatory priority or grounding. Indeed, it is only in the case of the answer Kant rejects that it makes sense to speak of temporal priority. It is, furthermore, only in this case that it is appropriate to distinguish between a feeling and an act of judgment; for, in Kant’s view, the aesthetically pleasurable mental state he is analyzing is itself an act of judgment. It is not controversial that Kant claims that the pleasure he calls agreeableness has merely private validity and thus cannot possibly ground the claim pure judgments of taste make to universal assent. It is clear then that he is championing the second of the possibilities stated in the title of the section. Here is a simple formulation of this alternative: To declare an object to be beautiful and to request the assent of others to it is to give expression to a pleasurable mental state that can be assumed to occur in all subjects. It is in this sense that the nature of the mental state or judgment grounds the claim to universal assent of the pleasure. So it is not the case that there is first a judgment and then a pleasure. Rather, the claim to the universal communicability of the pleasure made in an overt judgment of taste is revealed to be a grounded in a property of the distinct pleasurable mental state itself: “Thus it is the universal capacity for the communication of the state of mind in the given representation which, as the subjective condition of the judgment of taste, must serve as its ground and have the pleasure in the object as a consequence” (KU :). Admittedly, reading Kant in this way requires considerable exegetical juggling: () “the judging of the object” in the title refers, in the first option, to the overt judgment of taste and its request for universal assent or “the universal communicability . . . attributed in the judgment of taste to the representation of the object”; () in the second option, “the judging of the object” refers to the mental state: “the universal capacity for the communication of the state of mind in the given representation”; and () the “pleasure in the object” that is said to be the consequence of the mental state and its capacity for universal communication is again the request for universal assent made in an overt judgment of taste. For some very prominent discussions, see: Hannah Ginsborg, “On the Key to Kant’s Critique of Taste,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –; Ginsborg, “Reflective Judgment and Taste,” –; Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste, –; Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, –. A little later, Kant again speaks misleadingly and says that “this merely subjective (aesthetic) judging of the object, or of the representation through which the object is given, precedes the pleasure in it, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste For our concerns, what is most important in this section is the claim that now follows: Nothing, however, can be universally communicated except cognition and representation so far as it belongs to cognition. For only so far is the latter objective, and only thereby does it have a universal point of relation with which everyone’s faculty of representation is compelled to agree. Now if the determining ground of the judgment on this universal communicability of the representation is to be conceived of merely subjectively, namely without a concept of the object, it can be nothing other than the state of mind that is encountered in the relation of the powers of representation to each other insofar as they relate a given representation to cognition in general. (KU :) Pure judgments of taste are clearly not cognitive judgments. But they do not merely involve the faculties employed in cognition in some other way. Kant says that they “belong to cognition” – they are mental states in which a given representation is related to “cognition in general.” The most important clue regarding the connection between pure aesthetic judgment and cognition is Kant’s repeated characterization of the pleasurable mental representation as one through which an object is given, in order for there to be cognition of it: Now there belongs to a representation by which an object is given, in order for there to be cognition of it in general, imagination for the composition of the manifold of intuition and understanding for the unity of the concept that unifies the representations. This state of a free play of the faculties of cognition with a representation through which an object is given must be able to be universally communicated, because cognition, as a determination of the object with which given representations (in whatever subject it may be) should agree, is the only kind of representation that is valid for everyone. (KU :) and is the ground of this pleasure in the harmony of the faculties of cognition” (KU :). I am suggesting that he should be read as saying that the communicability of the subjective mental state is the explanatory ground of the distinct pleasure we feel in this very mental state of the harmony of the faculties. This seems to find confirmation in the next passage, in which Kant apparently speaks of a distinct pleasure that accompanies a universally communicable mental state: “being able to communicate one’s state of mind, even if only with regard to the faculties of cognition, carries a pleasure with it [eine Lust bei sich führen]” (KU :). It is true that the context in which this claim occurs is his denial that this connection can be established by empirical psychology. But this is not a denial of the characterization of the connection. Kant speaks of a representation through or by which an object is given no fewer than fifteen times in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (see: KU : [twice in this passage and one further use], , , , , , , [twice], , [three times]; see also: EEKU :, ). In the Introduction, Kant says: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature I emphasize that Kant states here that aesthetic judgments must be universally communicable, because cognition “is valid for everyone.” Indeed, in clear opposition to the thought that aesthetic pleasure merely involves the same faculties employed in cognition, Kant says here clearly that cognition itself is “the only kind of representation that is valid for everyone.” The simplest way of understanding the thought Kant is expressing here is, I suggest, that in making aesthetic judgments we expect universal agreement, because they present us with the spatial form of objects and, in this way, underwrite our capacity to experience, investigate empirically and ultimately make cognitive judgments about the very same objects. Pure aesthetic judgments are thus a condition of objective, universally valid cognitive judgments. I believe that this is the fact brought to light by transcendental analysis and to which Kant refers by stating that the “discovery of the origin” of the universality of pure judgments of taste “reveals a property of our faculty of cognition that without this analysis would have remained unknown” (KU :). .. The Normativity of Pure Aesthetic Judgments and the Sensus Communis (§§–) In this subsection I want to focus on the distinct normative status of pure judgments of taste, a focus Kant himself suggests. Kant characterizes the activity of the imagination as “free lawfulness” (KU :) and emphasizes that we are here contending with the imagination “taken not as reproductive, as subjected to the laws of association, but as productive and selfactive (as the authoress of voluntary [willkürlicher] forms of possible intuitions” (KU :). The task of the fourth moment is to explain how the self-active or free – that is, not concept or law-governed – activity of the imagination is grounded in the lawful application of concepts by the understanding. Kant does not, of course, claim that the free activity of the imagination and its harmony with the understanding is normative in The fundamental transcendental principle . . . for representing a purposiveness of nature in subjective relation to our faculty of cognition in the form of a thing as a principle for judging it . . . leaves it to the aesthetic power of judgment to make out, in taste, the suitability of the thing (of its form) to our cognitive faculties (insofar as these decide not through correspondence with concepts but through feeling). (KU :) I will discuss different accounts of the relation between pure judgments of taste and cognitive judgment in the next subsection. See note . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste the same sense that the conceptual employment of the power of judgment is normative. Indeed, his efforts are directed at offering an analysis of the peculiar normative status of aesthetic judgments. The task, in other words, is to show how the aesthetic nonconceptual normativity of pure judgments of taste is grounded in the conceptual normativity of cognitive judgments. This is the explicit topic of the fourth moment of the Analytic, which analyses the modality of judgments of taste and its ground, a topic to which Kant returns later in the Deduction. Kant calls the necessity of pure judgments of taste “exemplary, i.e., a necessity of the assent of all to a judgment that is regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce” (KU :). An objective cognitive judgment can be thought of as demanding universal assent: If the concepts comprising my judgment are employed correctly, then I can demand the agreement of others to it; for its unconditional necessity is demonstrable from the rules that determine the correct application of these concepts. Objective cognitive judgments are thus, in this precise sense, apodictic. In contrast, the “should [Sollen] in aesthetic judgments of taste is . . . pronounced only conditionally” (KU :); the aesthetic judgment “solicits assent from everyone [wirbt um jedes andern Beistimmung]” (KU :). But this assent cannot be grounded in concepts. The judgment is “regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce.” Nevertheless, the assent of others is presupposed by us. This presupposition Kant calls the “indeterminate norm of a common sense” (KU :). The question of how to interpret Kant’s thinking in the fourth moment has been given very different answers. For our purposes, it is most useful to present the difficulty as posing the dilemma that has been leading us through this chapter. On the one hand, Kant grounds the particular normative claim of pure aesthetic judgments for universal assent in the universal communicability of objective cognitive judgments. On the other hand, it is clearly important not to make aesthetic judgments into cognitive judgments, thus contradicting the claim of the second moment: aesthetic judgments are not conceptual. So the task is to understand how the distinct normative claim of aesthetic judgments can be grounded in the communicability of cognitive judgments, without making them Allison argues that the fourth moment adds nothing to the content of aesthetic judgments. It introduces the notion of a common sense as unifying the first three moments. See Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, –, –. It should be clear that I do not at all agree. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature dependent on concepts. The task, more specifically, is to show how the universal assent solicited by nonconceptual aesthetic judgments can be grounded in the demand for universal assent and universal communicability definitive of objective cognitive judgments. Meerbote suggests that aesthetic judgments respond to “orderliness or orderability (both spatial and temporal) and lawfulness (categorizability). The Transcendental Aesthetic establishes the former; the Transcendental Deduction, the latter.” Meerbote, “Reflection on Beauty,” . Presumably, however, in cognitive judgments too “orderliness or orderability . . . and lawfulness” are present. An aesthetic judgment then seems to be a component of (or step toward) any cognitive judgment regarding a sense-perceptible object. Furthermore, it is hard to see what the claim that aesthetic judgments are not determinate and are lawful without a law amounts to on this reading, for employing the categories to synthesize a sensible manifold is surely a determinate, law-governed use of judgment. It bears emphasizing that Meerbote does not acknowledge the central problem that the forms of intuition and the categories are not sufficient conditions of the order and lawfulness of particular sense-perceptible objects. See Meerbote, “Reflection on Beauty,”, –. Fricke presents two alternative interpretations that together pose a dilemma: () Kant cannot ground the assumption of an aesthetic common sense on the universal communicability of cognitive judgment, because objects need not occasion aesthetic pleasure to be determined by concepts; () Kant can ground the assumption of an objective common sense guiding the subsumption of intuitions under concepts on the universal communicability of cognitive judgments, but this is no justification of the claim to universal assent of pure judgments of taste. Her way of avoiding the dilemma ultimately returns to the disinterestedness of pure judgments of taste. Christel Fricke, Kants Theorie des reinen Geschmacksurteils (Berlin: de Gruyter, ), –. But the argument that disinterested judgments can with right claim universal assent assumes that all share the faculties involved in them: “he cannot discover as grounds of the satisfaction any private conditions, pertaining to his subject alone, and must therefore regard it as grounded in those that he can also presuppose in everyone else” (KU :). The argument of § aims precisely to establish that we can indeed presuppose all share an aesthetic common sense. It bears emphasizing that on Fricke’s reading the fourth moment seems to be redundant, for its central claim was already established in the first moment. Allison escapes the dilemma by loosening the connection between cognition and aesthetic judgment. The particular harmony of the faculties that aesthetic judgments express is not a condition of cognition, though cognition too presupposes a fit between the imagination and the understanding. This, in turn, enables him to claim that not all objects are beautiful. See Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste, –. What I think remains unclear is why, under ideal conditions, should the same objects evoke the free play of the faculties in all of us. In other words, loosening the relation between cognition and aesthetic judgments undermines the claim of the latter to universal assent. Ameriks’s way out of the difficulty is to claim that although all cognitions presuppose a fit between the imagination and the understanding, there are particular objects which bring about the most harmonic fit between them. Thus, the harmony of the faculties “occurs as simply a special species (namely as the most ‘harmonic’ one) of a proportion that must always exist in some form in any cognition.” See Karl Ameriks, “How to Save Kant’s Deduction of Taste as Objective?” in Interpreting Kant’s “Critiques” (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ), . In response we should note that the claim to universality of aesthetic judgments is thus grounded in the existence of “some form” of proportion and not in the existence of the most harmonic proportion. Even if different objects evoked the harmony of the faculties in different people, they would still be able to communicate about them as long as the ordinary fit presupposed by cognition is evoked. To communicate about a tulip we need to have the same concept of a tulip and apply it correctly. But why would we need to agree that it is beautiful? It is further noteworthy that Ameriks defends the claim that aesthetic judgments are objective; that is, they respond to formal properties of objects. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste For our purposes the first discussion of the idea of a common sense in the fourth moment, especially in §, is of the greatest significance. For its argument grounds in most detail the distinct normative claim of aesthetic judgments in the normative claim of cognitive judgments. The argument has the familiar form of a regress on conditions: () the possibility of objective cognition and judgment and their communicability is assumed; () it is shown to have as a condition the universality or necessity of pure judgments of taste or the assumption of an aesthetic common sense. Here is the text of § in its entirety (the numbering and breaks are mine): () Cognitions and judgments must, together with the conviction that accompanies them, be able to be universally communicated, for otherwise they would have no correspondence with the object: they would all be a merely subjective play of the powers of representation, just as skepticism insists. () But if cognitions are to be able to be communicated, then the mental state, i.e., the disposition of the cognitive powers for a cognition in general, and indeed that proportion which is suitable for making a cognition out of a representation (whereby an object is given to us) must be capable of being universally communicated; for without this, as the subjective condition of cognizing, the cognition, as an effect, could not arise. And this actually happens every time when, by means of the senses, a given object brings the imagination into activity for the synthesis of the manifold, while the imagination brings the understanding into activity for the unification of the manifold into concepts. See Ameriks, “How to Save Kant’s Deduction of Taste as Objective?,” –. Cf., Meerbote, “Reflection on Beauty,” –; and see again note . Although her focus is not the fourth moment, Zinkin takes on the task of showing that pure judgments of taste are necessarily related to empirical experience. On her account, the pleasure expressed in pure judgments of taste is the pleasure in attending to or focusing upon the various aspects of a manifold. This attention is a precondition of the process of concept formation and thus necessarily related to experience. See Zinkin, “Kant and the Pleasure of ‘Mere Reflection’,” –. There is much that I find persuasive in her account. Indeed, I think something like it must be part of the account of the connection between aesthetic judgment and empirical experience. But I think the account is incomplete, because: () it seems to assume that the manifold given in sensibility is already somehow delineated into particular manifolds to which we attend in pure judgments of taste; () the account of concept formation wants the transcendental assumption that underwrites it. For this last point, see again Section ..: The Normal Ideas of Species and Natural Kind Concepts. Furthermore, her response to the problem of the ubiquity of beauty is vulnerable to a serious objection. On her account, we find beautiful those “purposive forms in which there is much that is obscure” and so “require lengthy reflection.” See Zinkin, “Kant and the Pleasure of ‘Mere Reflection’,” . But obscurity (whatever precisely aesthetically apprehended obscurity might be) and the length of reflection required to clarify it don’t seem to me to align with beauty. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature () But this disposition of the cognitive powers has a different proportion depending on the difference of the objects that are given. Nevertheless, there must be one in which this inner relationship is optimal for the animation of both powers of the mind (the one through the other) with respect to cognition (of given objects) in general; and this disposition cannot be determined except through the feeling (not by concepts). () Now since this disposition itself must be capable of being universally communicated, hence also the feeling of it (in the case of a given representation), but since the universal communicability of a feeling presupposes a common sense, the latter must be able to be assumed with good reason, and indeed without appeal to psychological observations, but rather as the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our cognition, which is assumed in every logic and every principle of cognitions that is not skeptical. (KU :–) The first step is obvious enough. Making cognitive claims about an object, for example, to claim that this is a bird of paradise, presupposes that there is a correct way of subsuming externally given sensible manifolds under this concept. If I have rightly applied the concept to an object given in sensibility, then others ought to agree with me. I can then with right demand their assent. Objective cognitive claims and the conviction accompanying them are therefore communicable. The second step claims that every cognition presupposes a certain mental process and, specifically, a fit between a concept of the understanding and a manifold of intuition represented by the imagination. To claim that this is a bird of paradise a manifold represented by the imagination must exhibit the characteristic marks contained in the concept of such a bird. This fit between the faculties in making cognitive judgments is clearly a condition of communication. It is, Kant emphasizes, the subjective condition of cognizing and so of communicating our objective cognitions. The state is subjective in the sense that it is the state of the mental faculties of the subject – significantly, of the subject in making objective judgments. Later in the text, Kant describes again this relation of the mental faculties, speaking of agreement and flowing together rather than proportion: The aptitude of human beings for communicating their thoughts also requires a relation between the imagination and the understanding in order to associate intuitions with concepts and concepts in turn with intuitions, which flow together into a cognition; but in that case the agreement of the two powers of the mind is lawful, under the constraint of determinate concepts. (KU :–) As the next step in the argument makes very clear, this subjective condition of communication is a feeling. And as we saw in Chapter , Kant associates https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste cognitive judgments generally, and the discovery of the conceptual order in particular, with a feeling of pleasure. The third step asserts clearly that not every object brings our faculties into optimal fit, agreement or greatest mutual animation, which aesthetic judgments express. It is only certain manifolds that bring about this distinctly powerful feeling of harmony. The claim that different objects evoke feelings of different proportions or strengths suggests perhaps a process in which different sensible forms are presented by the imagination to the understanding; and the power of judgment senses the strength of the feelings the interaction evokes. However interpreted though, it is crucial to see that it is pure aesthetic judgments that express these distinctly powerful feelings of harmony and seek universal assent to them. They are not expressions of the less-powerful – though still pleasurable – feelings of the fit between the imagination and the understanding, which is characteristic of cognitive judgments generally. What is puzzling, of course, is that it is the latter cognitive judgments that do rightfully demand universal assent. How then is the universal assent that cognitive judgments demand dependent upon aesthetic judgments? My suggestion, as is by now clear, is that the feeling of harmony expressed by aesthetic judgments is to be understood as the promissory feeling that a sensible manifold can be brought under concepts. It is the manifold which does create in us this particular feeling of cognitive purposiveness that makes us subconsciously identify it as an object exemplary of a natural kind in the first place, even without the employment of See Chapter , Section ..: The Feeling of Pleasure and the Purposiveness of Nature (Introduction VI). For the distinction between the harmony in cognitive judgments – which the passage just cited refers to as lawful agreement – and the free harmony of aesthetic judgments, see Rush, “The Harmony of the Faculties,” –. In the General Remark on the first Section of the Analytic, which follows §, Kant describes the process as one in which the imagination is “productive and self-active (as the authoress of voluntary [willkürlicher] forms of possible intuitions)” (KU :). By speaking of voluntary forms, the translators obviously do not mean to suggest a process of free choice – for no rule or principle guides the self-active imagination. Speaking of arbitrary or random forms would also be appropriate. Kant might then be thinking of the mental process as one in which various arbitrary syntheses of the imagination are put before the understanding, possibly unintentionally (see KU :). Some evoke a particularly strong feeling of their mutual animation. In §, which we examined in the previous subsection, Kant speaks of aesthetic pleasure as the “wellproportioned disposition that we require for all cognition” (KU :). In the section we are examining, he speaks of the pleasure we take in a beautiful object as an effect of “that proportion [Proportion] which is suitable for making cognition out of a representation (whereby an object is given to us)” (KU :). Later he says that “the proportion of these cognitive faculties that is required for taste is also requisite for the common and healthy understanding that one may presuppose in everyone” (KU :–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature concepts under which it and its kind might be subsumed. It is thus through pure aesthetic judgment that objects are first given to us. Finally, it is only on the assumption that the same manifolds will bring about this feeling in all of us that we will be able to make cognitive judgments about the same objects. More precisely, pure aesthetic judgments underwrite our first preconceptual identification of spatial forms as exemplary of natural kinds. This, I suggest, is what Kant means by the claim that a pure aesthetic judgment is “regarded as an example of a universal rule that one cannot produce.” Succinctly, what Kant is claiming is that it is a necessary condition of cognition that we carve up the manifold given to us in intuition into objects exemplary of natural kinds in the same manner. The assumption of a common sense is therefore a necessary condition of empirical experience and knowledge. And it is this assumption that grounds the appeal to universal assent which aesthetic judgments express. It bears emphasizing once again that this is not all to say that all empirical objects, if judged disinterestedly, can evoke in us pure aesthetic pleasure. As I claimed in the previous section, there are many obvious examples of objects that cannot evoke such pleasure – for example, very large or small objects, composites or fragments of natural kinds, abstract or theoretical objects and more. There might also be objects that are alike in their causal interactions but do not share a common form. I suggest reading Kant as claiming that the identification of such objects would be indirectly dependent on our first common sorting of nature into natural kinds that have in common their spatial form. This is what I meant in claiming in the first subsection of this section that aesthetic judgments ground cognitive judgments either directly or indirectly. As I said in the last subsection of the previous section, pure judgments of taste offer a first partial delineation of nature into objects, making possible a first provisional or hypothetical sorting of nature into kinds. Some of these hypotheses will ultimately be rejected; other objects and kinds will be discovered later by conceptually guided empirical research. Empirical investigation generally, however, sets out from and in this sense depends upon these first hypotheses. Kant discusses again the normativity of pure judgments of taste in what might be called the Deduction of Pure Aesthetic Judgments chapter of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (§§–). Indeed, the claim that we take on our common aesthetic judgments as grounds of conceptual norms For an explanation why these sections might be referred to as the third chapter of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, see the editorial note to the Guyer and Matthews translation (note , –). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste is the heart of the deduction. In the last paragraph of the fourth moment, Kant gives us an important clue in what such a deduction consists. The argument of the Analytic, he says, establishes that the “indeterminate norm of a common sense really is presupposed by us” (KU :). What it claims to leave an open question, presumably to be answered in the Deduction chapter, is whether the principle is constitutive of the possibility of experience or whether it is regulative. In the short section devoted to the actual deduction, Kant claims that in pure aesthetic judgments the power of judgment is directed to the “subjective conditions of the use of the power of judgment in general . . . and thus to the subjective element that one can presuppose in all human beings (as requisite for possible cognition in general)” (KU :). In other words, in pure aesthetic judgments we are attending to the subjective – that is, aesthetic, working of judgment necessary for cognition. The deduction thus tracks back aesthetic judgments to the fundamental activity of judgment that is necessary for empirical cognition. It is thus “a legitimation of its presumption” (KU :; see also KU :). For this reason, we must assume that the activity is common to all: “the correspondence of a representation with these conditions of the power of judgment must be able to be assumed to be valid for everyone a priori” (KU :). As Kant stresses in the Remark appended to the deduction, there is no need here to prove the objective reality of aesthetic judgments, because in these judgments we are attending only to the subjective aspect of the work of judgment and not to the assumption of “nature as a sum of objects of taste a priori” (KU :). The question of the conceptual employment of reflective judgment is a task left to the Critique of Teleological Judgment. The assumption of a common sense is not a constitutive principle of nature. We take on our aesthetic judgments as the grounds of our common search for empirical laws. It is thus a regulative principle necessary for empirical cognition. Before concluding this subsection, I want to say straightforwardly that if the interpretation I offered here is right, then Kant certainly could have Kant obviously thinks the principle is regulative. But he expresses himself in surprising terms: the indeterminate norm of a common sense is “yet to be acquired” (KU :); a judgment of taste, “with its expectation of a universal assent, is in fact only a demand of reason to produce such a unanimity in the manner of sensing” (KU :); it “signifies only the possibility of coming to agreement about this” (KU :). But he says nothing about a process of acquiring a common sense and thereby reaching unanimity. Perhaps he is concerned that he has not sufficiently clarified the norm’s regulative status and so speaks of a process of acquisition, analogous to our ongoing search for the empirical order of nature. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature formulated his claims much more clearly. Whether or not the interpretation gets Kant right, I will claim in the Conclusion that the view is of real philosophical interest. .. Aesthetic Normativity: Skeptical Challenges There might appear to be two skeptical questions that can be raised here – the first, objective; the second, intersubjective – that tellingly are not raised by Kant. The first challenge asks what guarantees that my pure judgments of taste carve up the manifold into objects and offer a rudimentary sorting of them in a manner that corresponds to the objective order of nature. In the last chapter, I claimed that for Kant the objectivity of empirical cognition is grounded in the search for a comprehensive system of empirical causal laws. What (if anything), it might be asked, guarantees that pure aesthetic judgments in fact offer the first step in such a continuingly productive empirical investigation? The second question that might be raised here is: What (if anything) guarantees that others will find the same spatial Gestalts beautiful that I do and that consequently we will all carve up the manifold and sort objects in a similar manner and so pursue together the task of investigating the objective order of nature? On the basis of the purported fact that we have knowledge of the empirical world and communicate it to others Kant, I think, simply assumes that we all sense the same joints when we carve up the spatial manifold and that our aesthetic delineation and sorting have in general proven to be productive for joint empirical research. Kant seems to be untroubled by the fallibility of our knowledge claims or fundamental aesthetic sorting of nature; and he shows no trace of concern that different groups of people will delineate the manifold differently and that, consequently, their empirical ontology and their languages will be incommensurable. As Kant says, a common sense is “the necessary condition of the universal communicability of our cognition, which is assumed in every logic and every principle of cognitions that is not skeptical.” Obviously, and as Kant himself notes (see KU :), not all non-skeptical views presuppose the same notion of a common sense that he defends; his claim then is not an argument for his conception, but rather a dismissal of Many passages in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment contend with the tension between the claim that judgments of taste are universal and the fact that people often disagree in their judgments. Kant’s general strategy in this matter is to emphasize the difficulty of making pure judgments of taste. Ultimately, disagreements are consequences of a failure to set aside our interests in the objects we judge. See, for example: KU :, , , –. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste skeptical doubts. More precisely and as I claimed in the previous chapter, Kant should not be read as aiming to deliver proofs of the objective validity of our infallible empirical knowledge claims. He is best thought of as holding that our empirical knowledge lays claim to being objectively valid even though it is revisable and fallible. This is not at all to deny that lurking behind these claims are skeptical doubts about the reliability of our aesthetic delineation and sorting as well as a distinct form of other-minds skepticism. Both are of philosophical interest. One point made in my replies to possible objections to the claim that the paradigmatic objects of pure aesthetic judgments are approximations of natural kinds is worth repeating here – although it is not a claim Kant ever makes. We need not assume that pure judgments of taste infallibly track natural kinds; nor must we assume that all natural kinds have a distinct spatial form and can be aesthetically tracked. All we need assume is that sorting natural objects according to their spatial shapes affords a first conjecture where some of the joints of nature are to be found. But each such first sorting is hypothetical and open to confirmation, revision or outright rejection. Once again, I think that Kant is best read as endorsing the view that empirical knowledge claims are revisable and fallible. Indeed, I suggested in the previous chapter that the fact that empirical knowledge claims are revisable and fallible can be viewed as an epistemological virtue of Kant’s theory. The same holds true of their aesthetic grounds taken as clues in our cognitive investigation of nature. I will say more about the fact that in a very important sense aesthetic judgments are irrevisable in the Conclusion. I will claim that this indeed, too, is a great virtue of Kant’s theory of perception. One more thought about the interesting possibility of incommensurate aesthetic judgments – that is, the possibility that different people will carve up the manifold differently and that consequently their conceptual schemes will be incommensurable. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, and the possibility of incommensurate aesthetic judgments seems therefore to be undeniable. And if we think of systems of concepts which take these diverse judgments as their ontological grounds as merely descriptive, this seems to lead to incommensurable conceptual schemes with an equal claim to objectivity – hence to ontological and epistemological incommensurability. In the previous chapter, I claimed, however, that for Kant the I think Ginsborg’s account of experience, inspired by Kant, also has this consequence. See Hannah Ginsborg, “Aesthetic Judgment and Perceptual Normativity,” in The Normativity of Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature objectivity of empirical knowledge claims is best thought of as grounded not in discovering relations of observable similarity but in the continuing search for causal laws. The interesting question to consider here is whether this weighty constraint effectively blocks the possibility of incommensurable conceptions of the causal connections that hold in the empirical world. If it does, then Kant preserves an important characteristic of the way in which we ordinarily think about objective truth – namely, as exclusive. A final thought. I have been claiming that for Kant the aesthetic sorting of nature is a condition of the search for empirical concepts and causal laws in particular. This suggests the skeptical scenario of a world unlike ours, in which spatial form is not even a moderately reliable clue to the causal properties of objects. In such a world, the search for causal laws would be, as Kant says in the First Introduction, “arbitrary and blind, and hence would be undertaken without any well-grounded expectation of its agreement with nature” (EEKU :–). It would not perhaps be impossible. But it would be extremely difficult. .. Spatiotemporal Forms, Pure Tones and Colors Throughout this chapter, I have spoken about the beauty of spatial forms. This emphasis is justified both by Kant’s rather clear claims about the object of pure judgments of taste as well as by the bulk of his examples. It might well though raise the question of whether Kant thinks we might find a spatiotemporal form or pattern beautiful. Are there any such examples? The answer is affirmative. Kant appears to hold that pure tones are examples of spatiotemporal forms we find beautiful; and he entertains the possibility that the case of colors might be analogous to that of sound. If one assumes, with Euler, that the colors are vibrations (pulsus) of the air immediately following one another, just as tones are vibrations of the air disturbed by sound, and, what is most important, that the mind does not merely perceive, by sense, their effect on the animation of the organ, but also, through reflection, perceives the regular play of the impressions (hence the form in the combination of different representations) (about which I have very little doubt), then colors and tones would not be mere sensations, but would already be a formal determination of the unity of a manifold of them, and in that case could also be counted as beauties in themselves. (KU :) The phrase “about which I have very little doubt [woran ich doch gar nicht zweifle]” follows the third edition (). The first and second editions (, ) have “which I very much doubt [woran https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . The Cognitive Function of Pure Judgments of Taste In order to assert that pure colors and tones are beautiful we would have to accept two claims: First, we would have to endorse a physical theory that describes tones and colors as regular vibrations in a medium. Second, we would have to claim that our feeling of pleasure is not merely the immediate subjective effect of the vibrations on our sense organs, but a result of reflection upon the objective spatiotemporal pattern or form we perceive. The first assumption, regarding sound, had been accepted very widely (though not without exception) since antiquity (see KU :). With regard to light, the assumption finds support in Euler’s periodic pulse theory of light and color that assumes a perfect analogy with sound. Later in the third Critique, Kant gives one argument against the second assumption – namely, the great rapidity of the vibrations might suggest that the “division of time by means of them is not noticed and drawn into the judging, hence that in the case of colors and tones there is associated only agreeableness, not beauty of their composition” (KU :–). On the other hand, he adds, two facts support the contrary conclusion: First, we note an alteration in quality between two colors or two tones and not merely a change in degree of sensation, and these alterations serve for making objective distinctions; second, people who cannot distinguish colors or tones but nevertheless are of acute sight or hearing. These facts suggest that we should regard our pleasure in tones and colors “as the effect of a judging of the form in the play of many sensations” (KU :). So although Kant presents both possibilities in the passage under discussion, he appears to lean toward the latter. He endorses it in the Anthropology, where he says that the senses of touch, hearing and sight “lead the subject ich doch gar sehr zweifle].” This is usually taken to correct a misprint. Förster though claims that this is a consequence of Kant’s rejection of Euler’s mechanical theory of the ether and his replacing it with a dynamical theory. Eckart Förster, Kant’s Final Synthesis: An Essay on the “Opus Postumum” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), –. It seems, however, that the phrase in fact refers only to the latter of the conditions having to do with the theory of sight and not with the former assumption concerning Euler’s physical theory of light. If both conditions were meant, then the phrase would probably not appear in parenthesis after the second and its reference to both would be made explicit. Furthermore, introducing a condition which you very much doubt would invite a conjunction clearly suggesting contrast (aber, jedoch) rather than affirmation (doch). For Euler’s account of sound, see Leonhard Euler, Letters to a German Princess on Different Subjects of Physics and Philosophy, translated by Henry Hunt (London: H. Murray, ), Vol I, Letter . See Euler, Letters to a German Princess on Different Subjects of Physics and Philosophy, Vol I, Letters –. For an emphatic statement of the analogy, see Euler, Letters to a German Princess on Different Subjects of Physics and Philosophy, Vol I, Letter . For accounts of Euler’s evolving work on a periodic pulse theory of light, see: Casper Hakfoort, Optics in the Age of Euler: Conceptions of the Nature of Light – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ); Kurt Møller Pedersen, “Leonhard Euler’s Wave Theory of Light,” Perspectives on Science (): –. The analogy is endorsed in the Danziger Physik of (V-Phys/Danziger ., :). For Kant’s elaboration of this example, see Letter to Hellwag, January , ; Br :. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature through reflection to cognition of the object as a thing outside ourselves” (Anth :; see also KU :). Kant insists that colors and tones might be beautiful “only insofar as both are pure, which is a determination that already concerns form” (KU :); and he contrasts simple and mixed colors, claiming that only the latter are beautiful (KU :–). This seems to suggest that he thinks that only a small number of colors and tones are rightly said to be beautiful; and the suggestion is supported by the claims that a “mere color, e.g., the green of a lawn, a mere tone (in distinction from sound and noise), say that of a violin, is declared by most people to be beautiful in itself, although both seem to have as their ground merely the matter of the representations, namely mere sensation, and on that account deserve to be called only agreeable” (KU :). In this context, it is worth emphasizing that although Euler often speaks of five, six or seven simple colors, he in fact holds that any intermediate regular pulse formation is simple, though we may not have names for all. And Kant echoes the thought that beauty is a function of regularity in saying that in pure tones and colors “uniformity is not disturbed and interrupted by any foreign sensation” (KU :). Pure colors and tones are then examples of beautiful spatiotemporal forms. I have relegated discussion of them to the end of the chapter for two interlocking reasons. First, the formal properties of pure colors and tones are, on the view Kant seems to endorse, their only properties. So they can only serve as clues for a possible way of sorting nature into objects and kinds, where they are properties of objects. Second, Kant appears not to consider spatiotemporal properties alone – of liquids or gases, for example – or a conjunction of formal properties such as shape and color for preconceptually picking out objects and natural kinds. I think that it would not though be inconsistent with his line of reasoning to give an example of a characteristic spatial shape of a kind and of its color or typical pattern of coloring (accepting a much wider array of colors than Kant appears to), like those of a monarch butterfly, or even perhaps of the color alone of a See Euler, Letters to a German Princess on Different Subjects of Physics and Philosophy, Vol I, Letter . For the claim that by composite pulses Euler means irregular pulses, see Hakfoort, Optics in the Age of Euler, . One possible exception to the claim that Kant doesn’t consider the conjunction of shape and color is the reference to “the beauty of flowers, of bird feathers, and seashells . . . in terms of both their shape and their color” (KU :). But it isn’t clear that he means to speak of the conjunction of shape and color. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion liquid or gas, or of a conjunction of spatial shape and spatiotemporal pattern of movement, such as the particular gait of a giraffe. . Conclusion I have argued at some length in this chapter that Kant’s analysis of pure judgments of taste constitutes a central component of his undertaking to complete the account of the transcendental conditions of empirical knowledge. The analysis of pure aesthetic judgments, I claimed, is an account of the delineation of the manifold into would-be objects and of the first preconceptual sorting of them according to their spatial form. I have claimed that pure aesthetic judgments thus underwrite the search for the empirical conceptual order of nature. Unlike the important discussion of the transcendental assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature, the account of the assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature is utterly new. Its analysis will also very probably prove to be the most controversial part of this book. I want to acknowledge that there remains some tension in the view I have attributed to Kant. On the one hand, I claimed that pure aesthetic judgments are a condition of the investigation of the conceptual order of nature. On the other hand, Kant says that we feel aesthetic pleasure when the imagination is “unintentionally brought into accord with the understanding” (KU :) and that we experience pleasure in the form of an object “without any intention of acquiring a concept from it” (KU :). This seems to leave some distance between pure aesthetic judgment and the investigation of the conceptual order of nature. At the very least, Kant’s view needs elaboration on this point. The critical reader might claim that acknowledging this distance or lack simply means the failure of the task taken on by this chapter – namely, showing how precisely pure aesthetic judgment might be a transcendental condition of empirical experience and knowledge of nature. I hope I have presented enough support for my reading to keep readers from dismissing it yet. But I will not attempt to resolve the tension here. Rather, I will suggest in the Conclusion how it might be resolved, possibly by somewhat loosening the connection between aesthetic judgment and cognition – without altogether dismissing it. The principal reason for not dismissing the reading presented in this chapter yet is that there is an interesting philosophical lesson to learn from it – or so I will claim in the Conclusion. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Significance of Form & Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature In the Conclusion then, I aim to discuss further and from a somewhat broader perspective Kant’s conception of our fundamental connection to the empirical world, which seems to be unique in the philosophical landscape. On the reading I have proposed, Kant does not side with the out-and-out conceptualist, who holds that even our most fundamental perception of things is conceptually structured. The analysis of pure aesthetic judgment reveals that the most fundamental apprehension of objects exemplary of natural kinds precedes our search for concepts that describe them and their properties. This is not at all to deny that, for Kant, our encounters with what is given to us sensibly are ordinarily conceptually structured. It is precisely this that makes pure aesthetic judgment so difficult a task to achieve. But he rejects the claim that pure aesthetic apprehension is conceptually structured. Significantly, Kant sees clearly that this fundamental aesthetic sorting has no cognitive ground. Rather, it is the assumption of a common sense that serves as the ground of conceptual norms, without being itself conceptually or normatively grounded. But we can assume normative responsibility for it. We can take on the responsibility of seeking concepts under which to subsume these objects, ultimately seeking concepts that describe their causal powers. Thus, the appeal of aesthetic judgments to universal assent is not grounded in a norm. It is the appeal to take on our common aesthetic judgments as grounds of conceptual norms. I will have more to say about the philosophical significance of this view in the Conclusion. But it is worth articulating the following thought here. The examination of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature revealed that all empirical concepts are, strictly speaking, hypotheses. On Kant’s view, the contents of any empirical concept or claim are revisable. Indeed, empirical concepts or claims might ultimately be rejected. As I suggested above, the assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature for our cognitive capacities shares this hypothetical character. We might at some point discover that a form that evoked in us pure aesthetic pleasure is not, as a matter of fact, the form of a single coherent object. One half of what we implicitly took to be a single object might get up and walk away – a familiar scene in science fiction movies. We might discover that an originally aesthetically delineated natural kind in fact comprises two very different kinds. We might even discover that such an aesthetic sorting is of no scientific use, because the objects it lumps together, though similar in form, are causally very different. The important difference is that there is a sense in which aesthetic judgments are not revisable. We will continue to find the same forms beautiful (if we manage https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press . Conclusion to judge them disinterestedly), no matter what we discover about the objects whose forms they are. In this sense, our most fundamental relation to the empirical world is irrevisable. This distinct fact, I will claim in the next chapter, captures a fundamental fact about perception: Though we may reject the cognitive import of what we perceive, there is a very obvious sense in which some fundamental perceptions are just not revisable. Before concluding this chapter and turning to the final task, it is worth emphasizing a highly significant implication of the view I have presented. Though Kant never draws this conclusion explicitly, a consequence of his view seems to be that pure aesthetic judgment logically precedes not only the application of empirical concepts to objects. It logically precedes the application of the categories too. For clearly the categories must be applied to objects. And I have claimed that it is pure aesthetic judgment that gives us objects. It thus precedes the conceptual work of the understanding. This is indeed a very important consequence of the interpretation I have presented. For Kant is generally thought to hold that any experience presupposes the conceptual activity of the understanding. What we should now say is that all experience presupposes both the activity of the imagination and the involvement of the understanding – but not necessarily its conceptual activity. All cognition and ordinarily perception too presuppose the work of the imagination and the conceptual work of the understanding. But the pure aesthetic apprehension or perception of objects presupposes the work of the imagination and the nonconceptual harmony it brings about in its relation to the understanding. Kant’s theory of the mind would thus rightly be held to recognize the existence of nonconceptual mental contents in pure aesthetic perception. This fact will be a major concern of the Conclusion. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.007 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism In this concluding chapter, I aim to summarize the interpretation I have presented of the transcendental undertaking of the Critique of the Power of Judgment. I will discuss first and more briefly the conceptual purposiveness of nature, as I have already had the opportunity to highlight the main points and draw the implications of Kant’s view in Chapters –. I will spend somewhat more time drawing out what I find of most significance in the interpretation of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature, discussed in Chapter . In doing so, I will also take a step beyond the interpretation of the text. C. The Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature The Critique of the Power of Judgment is often thought of has having two great topics: beauty and biology. In Chapters –, I claimed that the ultimate aim of the discussion of organic phenomena is, in fact, to claim that teleological judgment applies to nature generally. The ultimate aim of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, I claimed, is to establish that the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a transcendental condition of experience. It follows from the discursive peculiarity of our understanding. C.. Teleology and Biology In Chapters and , I defended an unusual combination of exegetical claims. Although the interpretation I offered is admittedly baroque in style, I actually think it makes good sense of the text and its several peculiarities. Specifically, it makes sense of the fact that Kant analyzes our teleological judgments of organisms in a book that he proclaims is devoted to completing his critical undertaking; and it makes sense of the often-noted oddity of presenting two sets of apparent conflicts in the Dialectic of https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature Teleological Judgment: () a real contradiction between objective principles of determinative judgment, which is not the central concern or indeed perspective of the Dialectic; () two subjective maxims of reflective judgment, which Kant says clearly are his foremost concern, but between which no contradiction arises. I claimed that Kant’s analysis of our teleological judgments of organic phenomena ultimately aims to establish the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. Though problematic in several respects, the argument from the organism to this conclusion and the presentation of a dogmatic conflict between teleology and mechanism allow Kant to assimilate characteristic features of a dialectic, specifically the following: () the fact that it ensnares ordinary understanding; and () the claims that dogmatic treatments of the problem lead to contradiction; and () that it is only from the critical perspective that teleology can be dealt with adequately. I suggested that the aim of doing so was to show that, as a transcendental principle of reason for the power of reflective judgment, the principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is free of the sort of contradictions that beset reason. This supports the claim that the principle has a legitimate and indeed necessary role to play in experience. I also claimed that the antinomy of teleological judgment comprises two maxims that do not contradict one another. The Dialectic does not then remove a conflict; it affords deeper insight into the necessity of the reflective maxims of teleology and mechanism and into the way they complement one another. Setting aside these considerations, I claimed that Kant’s discussion of our teleological judgments in biology is nevertheless of great interest. The problem Kant addresses concerns the language biology employs in describing the beings it investigates. The language seems to imply that these beings are the effect of and governed by end-directed forces. But modern science is firmly committed to explaining the generation of a whole and the processes governing it as the blind effect of the forces governing the parts involved in these processes. Kant’s way out of this dilemma is to distinguish sharply the description of nature and its causal explanation. Teleology, he claims, belongs exclusively to the description of organisms, emphatically not to explanations of their generation or to the processes that characterize them. Kant thus denies the existence of teleological natural forces and causal laws. Explanations are mechanistic and refer exclusively to blind causal laws. On Kant’s view then our employment of teleological language poses no threat to the commitment to explain mechanistically all natural events and processes. The distinction between the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism description of nature and its explanation is an important theme which runs through the book. I also spent some time discussing Kant’s model for mechanistic explanations in biology. According to this model, in order to explain any organized state or whole we begin by identifying certain prior structures of organization; and given these prior structures of organization, we aim to explain mechanistically the organized state or whole. The model reveals why Kant holds that teleological language is ineliminable. This is precisely what he means by asserting that a “Newton of the blade of grass” is an absurdity. Kant does not hold that organisms and organic processes cannot be explained mechanistically – quite the contrary. What he does claim is that there are no reductive mechanistic accounts of organic phenomena, precisely because mechanistic explanations of organic processes always begin by identifying a prior structure of organization. I also discussed examples of such explanations – specifically, Kant’s account of the variety of human races and his bold evolutionary speculation. C.. Discursivity and the Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature On the interpretation presented in this book, the high point of the Critique of Teleological Judgment is the grounding of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature in the discursivity of our understanding. Indeed, I argued in Chapter that the deduction of the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature, offered in the Introduction to the third Critique, is completed only in the discussion of the discursive peculiarity of our understanding at the end of the Critique of Teleological Judgment. In Chapter , I made explicit the way in which Kant’s theory of concepts and their relations to objects follow directly from his conception of our discursivity – this was one element I claimed is missing from the deduction presented in the Introduction to the book. As discursive creatures, we can only experience and cognize particular sensibly given objects through concepts. The content of these concepts is necessarily a finite number of marks that must be taken to be common to a diversity of objects. Kant’s distinct conception of cognition as ideally organized into a comprehensive hierarchical taxonomy of concepts thus follows from his commitment to the discursive nature of human cognition. In such an ideal system, the higher concepts have fewer marks; that is, they are poorer, partial and, in this sense, simpler in content; the lower are increasingly richer and more complex. It is through such an infinitely articulated https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism understanding that supplies the elements crucially missing from the deduction of the principle in Section V of the Introduction. I laid emphasis on the fact that, for Kant, the investigation of nature is an ongoing task. Empirical knowledge is continuously subject to critical scrutiny and refinement and possibly to radical revision. This is the deep significance of claiming that a transcendental condition of empirical experience is a regulative principle. It is a principle governing the ongoing task of investigating nature. I suggested that the revisability and defeasibility of empirical knowledge claims is a feature of Kant’s philosophy that should be found attractive by philosophers inclined toward empiricism. Finally, I claimed that the view I attributed to Kant is part of his systematic conception of the transcendental conditions of experience and knowledge. But I hope it is of more than exegetical significance. For the thought that we are discursive creatures who experience the world and come to know it through concepts or language is still defended, or at least taken seriously, by contemporary philosophers such as Wittgenstein, Sellars and McDowell, as well as their followers and interlocutors. It seems to me that conceptualists about experience might find that they are also committed to something not unlike Kant’s assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature – without thereby committing themselves to his comprehensive conception of the aesthetic and conceptual transcendental conditions of experience. If they also take on board a commitment to a necessitation account of kinds and causal laws, theirs might be a view interestingly like the one I attributed to Kant. C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature In the previous section, I described briefly what I think is of philosophical importance in Kant’s discussion of biology and in the argument for the assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature. I claimed that the argument is part of Kant’s complete account of the transcendental conditions of our empirical experience and knowledge of nature. I also suggested that the view might be of broader interest for philosophers with empiricist leanings who, like Kant, are conceptualists about empirical experience and, furthermore, emphasize the central importance of necessitating causal laws for gaining scientific knowledge of nature. In this concluding section, I will describe what I think is of broader philosophical importance in Kant’s argument for the assumption of the aesthetic purposiveness of nature. Interestingly, these features of his view have to do with considerations that are usually taken to be challenges to https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature conceptualism about experience. Getting at what is of contemporary importance in Kant’s view will require a somewhat lengthier discussion. In order to see the contemporary relevance of the view quite a bit of Kantian baggage will have to be discarded. I thus begin with the very dramatic act of proposing to discard a central and highly intriguing part of Kant’s view, namely, that it is our experience of beauty that accounts for the most fundamental preconceptual delineation of the manifold into objects and kinds. Kant might be right about the connection. Contemporary philosophers would want empirical proof of this. If there is a way of confirming the claim empirically, this would be a case of astonishing insight on Kant’s behalf – and I am not one to dismiss such a possibility. But even if Kant is right and there is a connection between aesthetic pleasure and cognition, there might be reason to think the connection is somewhat looser than Kant might appear to be claiming; alternatively, a final clarification is due about the way Kant sees the connection between aesthetic pleasure and the search for the conceptual order of nature. A way of getting at the point is to return to a claim with which I ended the previous chapter: There remains some tension between taking aesthetic pleasure to be the first step in or condition of discovering the order of nature, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, claiming that we feel aesthetic pleasure when the imagination is “unintentionally brought into accord with the understanding” (KU :) and that we experience pleasure in the form of an object “without any intention of acquiring a concept from it” (KU :). A way of resolving the tension would be to begin with what at the most fundamental level we would subconsciously identify as an object possessing significant form. It is these objects that we would pick out were we imaginarily first setting out to investigate nature; and we would naturally take their forms as first clues as to what objects possess common properties beyond their form. Our experiences of natural beauty can be thought of as making conscious such moments – but, in cases of aesthetic judgment, our attention remains focused on the object and goes no further. So pure aesthetic judgments would be very closely allied to what we imaginarily conceive of as the first step in or condition of the search for empirical knowledge, without themselves being the first step in that search. Indeed, it might make sense to think of aesthetic pleasure as an experience that presupposes possessing empirical knowledge of nature (as Kant clearly does) and as a disinterested and protracted return to those moments of naturally focusing on an object and its form. The experience of pure aesthetic pleasure would in this way reveal to us a condition of empirical experience and knowledge, without itself being the condition. In short, to https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism get at what is philosophically significant in Kant’s view, I propose reading him as revealing that a condition of the search for empirical knowledge of nature is a preconceptual identification of would-be objects and a rudimentary preconceptual sorting of them into would-be kinds. It is easily seen that this condition, on the face of it, exerts pressure against conceptualism. The second Kantian doctrine I propose to leave behind is the tenet that space and time are the subjective transcendental forms of receptivity and with it the Kantian distinction between the aesthetic transcendental and empirical aspects of our psychology. To insist on the indispensability of these foundational Kantian ideas would put a great, possibly unbridgeable distance between Kant and contemporary naturalistic views about experience. Bracketing the matter also allows us to discard Kant’s exclusive focus on spatial form and adopt, instead, an empirically oriented approach to perception that might acknowledge its importance but recognize the importance of other fundamental sensible properties such as say color and whatever other deliverances of our sense modalities are discovered to be involved in our perception of the most fundamental order of nature. In other words, what sensible properties are involved in the most fundamental delineation of the sensibly given into objects and kinds is a question for empirical psychology. I propose that the modified conception of the aesthetic condition of empirical experience and knowledge has three important features: () It is an account of the acquisition of our most fundamental empirical concepts of observation, according to which the acquisition of these concepts does not presuppose that conceptual capacities are already in play in the process and indeed presupposed by any experience. () It is also an account of what I shall call the obduracy or givenness of perception – namely, the fact that what we most fundamentally perceive are unchanging simple objects and their salient sensible properties and that experience of these objects and properties is in one important sense the ground of our knowledge of the world. () Although the aesthetic condition of experience is nonconceptual, Kant’s view, nevertheless, does not fall prey to the so-called “myth of the given,” namely, viewing our most fundamental perception of the empirical world as a natural-causal connection and so as unable to serve as the rational ground of our empirical knowledge of nature. C.. Avoiding the “Myth of the Given” In the next paragraphs, I will describe briefly and without much argument the philosophical concern described as the “myth of the given.” In the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature following subsections, I will claim that Kant’s analysis of pure judgments of taste and their necessary contribution to empirical experience is a noncircular account of the acquisition of empirical concepts which, at the same time, explains the obduracy of perception. It is remarkable that although Kant is a conceptualist about cognitive experience, the account recognizes a distinct kind of nonconceptual experience and content – namely, aesthetic experience. On Kant’s view, as I propose reading him, our cognitive experience of nature is underwritten by aesthetic experience – and aesthetic experience is not conceptual. The account nevertheless does not, I will claim, fall prey to the myth of the given. Interestingly then, Kant offers us a way of avoiding the myth of the given that is not committed to a thoroughgoing conceptualism about all experience. What is myth of the given and why should it be avoided? The locus classicus is, of course, Sellars’s seminal paper “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind.” But it is difficult to clip short and accessible answers to these questions from his very dense text. (We will return to it below.) For our purposes, it is useful to turn to McDowell’s well-known answer to these questions. It begins with the thought that the space of empirical knowledge and thought quite generally is constituted by rational relations – this is what Sellars calls the “space of reason.” But once we view the relations of empirical thought and knowledge (say relations between judgments or beliefs) as rational relations, we face the threat that our thinking about the world nowhere makes contact with its object. The myth of the given is a response to this concern. The putatively reassuring idea is that empirical justifications have an ultimate foundation in impingements on the conceptual realm from outside. So the space of reasons is made out to be more extensive than the space of concepts. Suppose we are tracing the ground, the justification, for a belief or a judgment. The idea is that when we have exhausted all the available moves within the space of concepts, all the available moves from one conceptually organized item to another, there is still one more step we can take: namely, pointing to something that is simply received in experience. When thinking specifically of how our most fundamental observational concepts are acquired and come to have content and so make possible using them in justifiable or knowledgeable judgments, we are led to the following idea: John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism The idea is that if concepts are even partly constituted by the fact that judgments in which they figure are grounded in the Given, then the associated conceptual capacities must be acquired from confrontations with suitable bits of the Given: that is, occasions when pointing to an ultimate warrant would have been feasible. But in any ordinary impingement on our sensibility, it would have to be a manifold Given that is presented to us. So in order to form an observational concept, a subject would have to abstract the right element in the presented multiplicity. But the response and the idea, McDowell claims, are deeply inadequate: The idea of the Given is the idea that the space of reasons, the space of justifications and warrants, extends more widely than the conceptual sphere. The extra extent of the space of reasons is supposed to allow it to incorporate non-conceptual impacts from outside the realm of thought. But we cannot really understand the relations in virtue of which a judgment is warranted except as relations within the space of concepts: relations such as implication and probabilification, which hold between potential exercises of conceptual capacities. The attempt to extend the scope of justificatory relations outside the conceptual sphere cannot do what it is supposed to do. For the sake of this concluding chapter, I will accept the force of this line of thinking, although there is a great deal more to say about it – both for and against it. As I said above, the aim of this section of the conclusion is to ask how this thought can be combined with two further desiderata: () offering a noncircular account of concept acquisition; () accounting for the obduracy of our fundamental experience. My claim is that Kant’s account of the contribution of aesthetic judgment to cognition meets them without yielding to the myth of the given. C.. The Acquisition of Empirical Concepts To begin to see the great interest of Kant’s conception of our most fundamental acquisition of concepts it is very useful to turn to Kant’s empiricist predecessors. According to the view we find in Locke, Berkeley and (according to most readers) Hume, universal concepts are constructed from particular ideas by attending to some features different particulars share and disregarding other features peculiar to them. But the account is circular: It attributes to us the capacity to recognize common, general John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), . John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature features; and it attributes to us the capacity to distinguish those features that make up the content of the universal concepts we employ from those that do not. Significantly, the same problem arises for Kant, if the oftenquoted Jäsche Logic account of concept formation, which I mentioned in Chapter , is taken to be his complete answer to the question. According to the reading I presented in Chapter , Kant holds that pure aesthetic judgments delineate spatial forms; and furthermore, he holds that we can recognize the same form in other objects. In this way, pure aesthetic judgments serve for a first sorting of objects according to mere shape. Presumably, Kant would not deny that we can register comparable similarities of other sensible properties such as color. And anyway, I suggested we should loosen the Kantian distinction between the formal and the material aesthetic and allow for sorting according to sensible properties generally. How, in this looser account, does our most fundamental capacity to delineate objects and sort them according to their fundamental observable similarities fall short of being a conceptual sorting of nature into kinds – thus presupposing what is apparently a conceptual capacity to recognize common general features? In what way is Kant’s view different from that of his empiricist predecessors? Alternatively, if it is simply a brute natural fact that we delineate the manifold and sort in certain ways, how can these mental functions serve to provide us with rational norms? I want to suggest that even for the more relaxed Kantian view we are considering our fundamental sorting is not in itself conceptually normative. Nor is it a brute natural fact about us of the kind we share with animals, or a distinct natural feeling that accompanies an otherwise natural mental function. Kant says clearly that aesthetic pleasure is not natural – precisely not something we share with animals, though he emphasizes the fact that it is in part grounded in our animal nature: “beauty is valid only for human beings, i.e., animal but also rational beings, but not merely as the latter (e.g., spirits), rather as beings who are at the same time animal” (KU :). What is missing in order to make the delineation and sorting conceptually normative, I propose, is taking upon ourselves the rational responsibility for the operations of our mind. This means, among other things, that these proposed fundamental norms are not immune to rational criticism. We have the responsibility of testing them empirically. We accept them provisionally and take upon ourselves the rational responsibility to revise or even reject them – if that is required. See Chapter , Section ..: The Normal Ideas of Species and Natural Kind Concepts. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism Of decisive importance, on the Kantian view I am proposing, is the question of whether any further generalizations, crucially, any causal generalizations apply to a proposed kind. Putting the point skeptically (as Kant does not), on the account as I suggest reading it, we might ultimately claim that what our senses most fundamentally present to us as similar are not in fact similar, or, more precisely and decisively, not similar in any way beyond being merely observationally similar. This is the way I am suggesting we gloss the distinction between aesthetic and conceptual normativity. In other words, our first aesthetic sorting is not yet integrated into the sort of systematic and causally informative body of knowledge, which Kant envisions as our end in cognition. Suppose sorting certain like-shaped and similarly colored and patterned objects is causally just uninformative. They would then be precisely the “grues” and “sphubes” of discussions of empirical conceptualization. In Chapter , I claimed that Kant thinks that the idea of the complete determination of what is given to us sensibly, by a comprehensive system of empirical explanatory concepts, grounds the claims made by empirical determinative judgments to being objectively true. So for Kant, objects that are merely observationally similar are not objectively similar. In other words, to claim that observationally similar objects are objectively similar is to claim that they would fit into the comprehensive system of concepts that fully describes the natural world and its laws. To put the same point in yet another way, I claimed in Chapter that the assumption of a common sense underwrites our search for the conceptual order of nature. The reconstruction of the regressive argument of § put the point the other way round. It claimed that the normative claim of aesthetic judgments is in this way grounded in the normative claim of cognitive judgments, for only if we delineate the manifold into objects and sort them into kinds in the same way are objective conceptual norms possible. But the regressive argument assumes that objective conceptual norms are possible. Putting the point about the integration of observational kinds into a system of knowledge in this way brings to mind a very important and highly pertinent passage from Sellars. Sellars clearly wants to affirm that experience rests on observation and that these observations, like empirical knowledge generally, can be revised or rejected. See Chapter , Section ..: The Normativity of Pure Aesthetic Judgments and the Sensus Communis (§§–). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature There is clearly some point to the picture of human knowledge as resting on a level of propositions – observation reports – which do not rest on other propositions in the same way as other propositions rest on them. On the other hand, I do wish to insist that the metaphor of “foundation” is misleading in that it keeps us from seeing that if there is a logical dimension on which other empirical propositions rest on observation reports, there is another logical dimension in which the latter rest on the former. Above all, the picture is misleading because of its static character: One seems forced to choose between the picture of an elephant which rests on a tortoise (What supports the tortoise?) and the picture of the great Hegelian serpent of knowledge with its tail in its mouth (Where does it begin?). Neither will do. For empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once. To put the point skeptically, the worry is that no further empirical propositions might rest on our fundamental observations and, conversely, that there would be no sense in which the observations rest on such further empirical propositions. Put non-skeptically, I think Kant gets right the precise status of our most fundamental observations. They are proposals or hypotheses; their normative status, content and truth ultimately depend on what they turn out to ground. Put slightly differently, our fundamental observations of similarity are not rationally normative independently of revealing further similarities – crucially for Kant, similarities in causal properties. Insisting on this means that, on Kant’s account, even our most fundamental observations of similarity can be put in jeopardy and corrected, if and when this is required. For the “bald naturalist,” these fundamental observations are facts about us and are thus immune to correction. But it should be definitive of empirical norms that they must not be immune to revision and possibly even rejection. Recall here the important passage from the Introduction to the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, discussed in Chapter . Systematically ordered our fundamental observations would constitute part of a historical doctrine of nature. But they would not qualify as rational natural science. As I claimed in Chapter , Kant is presumably assuming that the historical doctrine of nature and natural history specifically employ for classification those similarities that can also serve for Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), §, –. See Chapter , Section .: Conclusion. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism constructing a system in accordance with causal similarities. On the skeptical scenario we are considering, however, this would not hold true. The systematized descriptions or observations would be cognitively barren – in no way part of the self-correcting enterprise of a rational science of nature (in Kant’s sense) or of the logical space of reason (to use the Sellarsian phrase). For Kant, there is an important sense according to which it is not perception that ties us to the empirical world. What in fact ties us to the empirical world is the ongoing and self-correcting investigation of nature as a whole – just as Sellars insists. To the claim that delineating objects and sorting them in the way we do is just a natural disposition of ours, a fact about the functioning of our cognitive system, the Kantian reply would be that the natural disposition to see just these objects and similarities cannot itself be epistemically or rationally normative. Kant can be read as making the conceptual point that a natural fact cannot be a norm. In this too he would be foreshadowing Sellars, who emphasizes that the myth of the given takes facts to be norms and that it is therefore “a mistake of a piece with the so-called ‘naturalistic fallacy’ in ethics.” To become rationally normative we must take the deliverances of our natural dispositions to constitute hypotheses, to be corroborated or refined – possibly even rejected – by further empirical investigation. For in this way, we take on rational responsibility for our dispositions and so integrate them into the self-correcting enterprise of discovering the empirical order of nature. For Kant, our most fundamental aesthetic experience of the world is not conceptual or rational. It can, nevertheless, serve as the ground of conceptual norms and can thus be brought under our rational responsibility. I thus believe that Kant’s insistence on the subjectivity and distinct normative status of pure judgments of taste is of real philosophical significance. C.. The Obduracy or Givenness of Perception In this short subsection of my concluding chapter, I set out from the thought that what we most fundamentally perceive as objects and salient relations of similarity is unchanging. No matter what we later find out about these objects and relations, we still see them as coherent objects and as similar to certain others. In short, what we most fundamentally see as objects and kinds is immune to rational criticism or is cognitively Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ), §, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature impenetrable. This I will refer to as the obduracy or givenness of perception. And the point I want to make is that Kant’s account of pure aesthetic judgments and their relation to cognition can account for the obduracy of perception, while also avoiding the myth of the given. By speaking of the obduracy of perception, I don’t mean to say that we cannot learn to perceive an object where in the past we did not, nor do I claim that our capacity for seeing similarities cannot be honed and greatly improved. I mean to claim only that at least part of what is most fundamentally given to us in perception is unchanging. It is this thought that supports the familiar empiricist idea that perception is the common and stable ground of our knowledge of the world. The question is whether the claim that what we most fundamentally experience are certain invariable simple sensible objects and relations of similarity can be reconciled with conceptualism about experience or perception. Why think it cannot? If the fundamental content of empirical experience is in principle invariable, then it seems that it cannot be conceptual. For revisability or openness to revision is a mark of the empirically conceptual. Kant’s holistic conception of empirical knowledge and its essential openness to revision seems to preclude an account of the obduracy of perception; for if all empirical concepts are essentially revisable, then there is no part of our system of concepts that is in principle stable. This raises the question of whether claiming that our most fundamental hold on the empirical world is nonconceptual is ipso facto succumbing to the myth of the given. I will claim that in Kant’s unique case it is not. Kant shows us how to account for the invariability of the fundamental ground of experience, while at the same time avoiding the myth of the given. I suggest that Kant can be read as contending with this knot by claiming that our most fundamental hold on empirical objects and a rudimentary sorting of these objects is nonconceptual. On the interpretation of the Analytic of the Beautiful presented in the previous chapter, pure judgments of taste nonconceptually delineate the sensible manifold into objects and allow a sorting of them into natural kinds that have in common their (aesthetically pleasing) spatial form alone. Indeed, I claimed that the great discovery that led Kant to write a third Critique, which includes an analysis of pure judgments of taste, was coming to believe that such judgments underwrite our empirical investigation of nature. Now Kant nowhere says that his analysis has the virtue of accounting for the obduracy of our most fundamental taking in of the empirical order. But he does make a logically very closely related point, namely, that we cannot offer demonstrations https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press Conclusion: Kant’s Empiricism that might compel others to agree with our judgments of taste (see KU :). The important point, conversely, is that at this fundamental level no rational argument will bring us to stop viewing what appear to be objects as objects, nor to stop seeing certain objects as similar – no matter what empirical evidence we acquire regarding them. What Kant thinks of as an aesthetically pleasing spatial form would continue to please us aesthetically, even if we again and again learn upon touching it that it is comprised of two empirically distinct objects joined seamlessly or that it is causally quite unlike other similarly shaped objects. Precisely because pure aesthetic judgments are not conceptual, reasons cannot be given for them – nor indeed against them. The analysis of pure judgments of taste as nonconceptual accounts then for the givenness or obduracy of perception. But they are not conceptual; and so the obduracy of the most fundamental order of nature, as Kant conceives of it, does not contradict the claim that revisability is the mark of the empirically conceptual. At the same time, the view does not succumb to the myth of the given. As I said above, taking rational responsibility for what our senses present to us as objects and similarities comes with the commitment to refine, revise or even reject what we observe, if there are reasons to do this. This is why it is so important to distinguish what is most fundamentally presented to us aesthetically from a first conceptual empirical ordering of nature. Viewed in the latter way, the order is hypothetical. We are not epistemically bound by it. Quite the contrary, we take on the responsibility of testing it through ongoing empirical research and to revise it, if that proves necessary. In this way Kant meets the Sellarsian dictum that pronounces that “science is rational . . . because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once.” Kant avoids then this way of succumbing to the myth of given. I have focused in this concluding section on two virtues of Kant’s analysis of the role pure judgments of taste play in empirical experience. Kant offers us a noncircular account of concept acquisition – that is, an account that does not assume we already possess concepts through which we perceive or experience the world. According to Kant, we have the capacity to focus upon significant spatial forms that does not require conceptualizing them, but does allow for a first preconceptual sorting of natural objects according to their form. This, in turn, allows us to seek further resemblances between the objects of these kinds; in the best case, they allow us to discover similarities in causal properties. It is the discovery of such further similarities that counts as beginning to discover the https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Conceptual Purposiveness of Nature system of concepts that the empirical world would ideally be given to us in whole. I further tried to explicate Kant’s claim that the employment of any empirical concept presupposes the comprehensive conceptual purposiveness of nature – this was the second, crucial argument missing from the deduction. Kant’s assumption of empirical determination by a comprehensive hierarchy of concepts, leading up to the most general concepts and down to ever more specific concepts, is his way of talking about real or objective unity. The thought is that only the complete determination of the sensibly given by a comprehensive system of concepts would ground in full the claims to objectivity and truth we make when we subsume a particular under an empirical concept. In other words, Kant thinks of truth and objectivity both locally and holistically: () locally, as the correspondence of a concept with a particular object or state of affairs given in sensibility; () holistically, as ideally cohering in a comprehensive system of conceptual determinations. Kant holds then that employing any empirical universal concept to make a purportedly objectively true assertion presupposes the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. We view nature as though it were systematically constituted by unities that can be subsumed under a comprehensive system of universal concepts. This is why the assumption of the comprehensive conceptual purposiveness of nature underwrites any subsumption of a particular under an empirical concept. I further suggested that we should add to the picture of a comprehensive system of empirical concepts the thought that the hierarchy of concepts leads up to general causal forces and laws and down to ever more specific complexes explainable in their terms. Ideally, our empirical concepts are to inform us about the causal connections between things in the world. Kant is thus concerned with the objectivity of kinds, causal laws and causal explanations. Thought of in this way, the assumption of the comprehensive conceptual purposiveness of nature underwrites the universality and strict necessity of empirical causal laws. The principle of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is a subjective regulative principle. It does not determine objects. But it is nevertheless a condition of our particular experience of nature. The regulative assumption of the conceptual purposiveness of nature is the transcendental bridge Kant draws between the general conditions of experience and the principle of causality specifically, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the conditions of a particular experience of nature comprising empirical concepts and causal laws. It is thus the discussion of the discursivity of our https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press C. The Aesthetic Purposiveness of Nature conceptual order of nature as part of the ongoing investigation of science. This investigation is characterized by a continual refinement of our concepts. I have argued that an essential aspect of Kant’s conception of empirical knowledge is the thought that empirical rationality must be committed to such a process of continual refinement and correction. I have also argued that viewing the most fundamental order of nature as given purely aesthetically has the virtue of accounting for the obduracy of this order – the fact that at the most fundamental level we simply see certain spatial forms as objects and as similar to certain others, whether or not they in fact turn out to be coherent objects and significantly similar to others that look like them. Kant’s account of the obduracy of perception does not conflict with the essential revisability of all empirical concepts, precisely because he does not view this experience and the order it reveals as conceptual. In this way, Kant’s account of the obduracy of perception avoids the myth of the given. As it turns out, we don’t have to be conceptualists in our account of the most fundamental encounter with the empirical world to avoid the myth of the given. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.008 Published online by Cambridge University Press References Allison, Henry E. 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The Transcendent Science: Kant’s Conception of Biological Methodology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, . https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.009 Published online by Cambridge University Press Index aesthetic ideas, , , , Allison, Henry E., , , , , , , , , , – Ameriks, Karl, animal cognition, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, , antinomy/antinomies in the Critique of Pure Reason, , , –, , of taste, , of teleological judgment, , –, –, , , , , apprehension of forms in pure judgments of taste, , –, , –, –. See threefold synthesis art, –, , –, , , decorative arts, Idealist theories of, , –, Banham, Gary, Baum, Manfred, beauty of artifacts, –, beautiful views, free and dependent, , , , , , –, ideal of, problem of ubiquity of, – Bellori, Giovanni Pietro, – Berkeley, George, Biemel, Walter, , Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, , – Brandt, Reinhard, – Breitenbach, Angela, , , , , Brittan, Gordon G. Jr., Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, , Canon. See Polycletus’s Doryphorous Cassirer, Ernst, causal laws as blind/mechanistic, , , , and empirical objectivity, –, , , , . See revisability and defeasibility of concepts/laws/knowledge empirical order of nature ultimately a system of, , , , , , , gap between transcendental principle of causality and, , , , , , and natural history/description, , . See explanation and description/observation necessitation view of, , , , , , – and ongoing process of investigation, , –, , , . See revisability and defeasibility of empirical concepts/laws/ knowledge and scientific explanation, –, , , , , –, Chignell, Andrew, Cicero, Marcus Tullius, Cohen, Alix A., , , , common sense (sensus communis), , , –, , Cooper, Andrew, Cornell, John F., Critique of Practical Reason, , Critique of Pure Reason, , , , , –, –, –, –, , , , , –, –, , –, –, , –, –, , –, Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, , , –, , , , , , , , , , , Darwin, Charles, , –, Daston, Lorraine, – Descartes, René, Determination of the Concept of a Human Race, –, , – https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press Index Dijksterhuis, Eduard. J., , disinterestedness of pure judgments of taste, , –, , , , , , , Dream of a Sprit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics, , Düsing, Klaus, , , Euler, Leonhard, – explanation. See causal laws in biology, not reductive, , –, , and description/observation, –, , , part-to-whole or mechanistic, , , , –, part-to-whole or mechanistic in biology, – and purposiveness, Falkenburg, Brigitte, Förster, Eckart, , , , Freudenthal, Gideon, , , , Fricke, Christel, , Friedlander, Eli, Galileo, Galilei, Gallison, Peter, – Geiger, Ido, , , , , , , , , –, , , , Ginsborg, Hannah, , , , , , , , , , , Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Gotshalk, D. W., Goy, Ina, gulf between nature and freedom, , . See highest good as bridge between nature and freedom Guyer, Paul, , , , , , , , , , Hakfoort, Casper, – Hanna, Robert, , harmony (coordination, agreement) of imagination and understanding different interpretations of, –. See understanding, functioning of in pure judgments of taste Hegel, G. W. F., , –, , Henrich, Dieter, , , highest good as bridge between nature and freedom, , . See gulf between nature and freedom Hume, David, , , , –, , , Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, Illetterati, Luca, , , imagination. See threefold synthesis and empirical schematism, functioning in forming normal ideas of species, functioning in pure judgments of taste, , –, , functioning in reproducing marks for concepts, and nonconceptuality of pure judgments of taste, , , . See apprehension of forms in pure judgments of taste and understanding, in accord in cognitive judgments, , and understanding, in accord in pure judgments of taste, , , , –, , , Inquiry Concerning the Distinctness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morality, Johnson, Mark L., Kant’s Correspondence, , , , , Kitcher, Patricia, Kreines, James, , , , , Kuehn, Manfred, Lectures on Anthropology, Friedländer, Lectures on Anthropology, Mrongovius, Lectures on Logic, Blomberg, Lectures on Logic, Dohna-Wundlacken, , –, Lectures on Logic, Heschel, Lectures on Logic, Wiener, , , , Lectures on Metaphysics, Dohna, Lectures on Physics, Danziger, Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, Lenoir, Timothy, , Linnaeus, Carl, , Locke, John, Logic, Jäsche, , , –, Longuenesse, Béatrice, Lorand, Ruth, Lovejoy, Arthur O., Lüthe, Rudolf, Makkreel, Rudolf A., Matherne, Samantha, Mayr, Ernst, , McDowell, John, , – McLaughlin, Peter, , –, , , –, , –, –, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press Index Meerbote, Ralf, , – Messina, James, , Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, , –, , , Metaphysics of Morals, , –, Møller Pedersen, Kurt, music, , Myron’s cow, Newton, Isaac, , , Newton of the blade of grass, –, , , Nuzzo, Angelica, , Of the Different Races of Human Beings, –, – On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy, , , , , –, Opus Postumum, , Panofsky, Erwin, Physical Geography, pleasure intellectual (in discovering the empirical order of nature), – intellectual, of a kind with pure aesthetic pleasure, pure aesthetic, different from practical pleasures, , requiring a critique as a higher cognitive faculty, –, , Pliny, , Polycletus’s Doryphorous, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, , , , Quarfood, Marcel, –, , reason “space of reason”, –, transcendental principle of, for the power of judgment, , , , , , , , , . See antinomy/antinomies, in the Critique of Pure Reason, See Critique of Pure Reason, Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic Reiter, Aviv, , , –, , , , Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, revisability and defeasibility of empirical concepts/laws/knowledge, , –, , , , . See causal laws and ongoing process of investigation and obduracy of perception, – and pure judgments of taste, , , Richards, Robert J., , Rind, Miles, Roe, Shirley A., Roth, Siegfried, –, Rush, Fred L. Jr., , schematism, –, , empirical, –, Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von, Seel, Gerhard, Sellars, Wilfrid, , , , spatiotemporal forms, , , , , – sublime, , –, –, Terrasson, Jean, Abbé, Teufel, Thomas, , , threefold synthesis, –, – Uehling, Theodore E., Jr., ugliness, no conception of, – understanding common/ordinary, –, –, , , , . See antinomy/antinomies functioning of, in pure judgments of taste, –. See imagination and understanding, in accord in pure judgments of taste not the only faculty of theoretical cognition, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, , , Walker, Ralph C. S., –, Watkins, Eric, , –, , , – Wicks, Robert, Williams, Jessica J., Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, – Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Zammito, John H., , Zeuxis, , Zinkin, Melissa, , , Zuckert, Rachel, , , , , , , , , , , , Zumbach, Clark, , , https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108992565.010 Published online by Cambridge University Press
