Kant's doctrine of teleology

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PART TWO. Exposition of the Doctrine of Teleology

1. The Things That Require Teleological Explanation.

(1). Organic Nature.

(2); Collective Nature Viewed in Relation to Man Under Moral Laws.

II. Our Mental Need of the Teleological Principle and the Legitimate Use That Can be Made of It.

III. The Theoretic Limitation and the Moral Validity of the Teleological Assumptions.

PART THREE. An Appreciation and a Criticism of the Doctrine as Elaborated

by the Author.

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Preface

Kant's Doctrine of Teleology was selected as the subject of this Dissertation partly because of my own interest in the problem, and partly because it is a phase of the Kantian philosophy that has been neglected by English students. The Critique of Judgment was introduced into France soon after its publication in Berlin, and was quite favorably received. In 1796 the entire work was translated into French by Imhoff. A revival of interest in art called forth a French version by Keratry and YVeyland in 1823; and a third translation was made by Barni, in 1846. But the entire work was not made accessible to English readers until twenty years ago.

In English Commentaries on the Critical Philosophy very little space is devoted to the Critique of Judgment in comparison with the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason, while scarcely anything is given on the second part of it, which deals directly with this problem. The most thorough discussion of the subject in any English work is that given by Caird in the second volume of his Critical Philosophy of Kant. There is also a very valuable Dissertation on The Sources and Development of Kanfs Doctrine of Teleology by Professor J. H. Tufts, of the University of Chicago. The main object of Professor Tufts was to bring to the attention of English students some valuable historical material which at that time (1892) had just been published in Germany by Reicke, in the "Lose Blaetter aus Kant's Nachlass." The author shows ,some of the connecting links in teleological thinking, especially as St effected Kant ; but he does not attempt to give an account of the doctrine itself as it is developed by Kant. For this reason I have made this Dissertation primarily an Exposition of the doctrine as elaborated by Kant in the second part of the Critique of Judgment, which is his special treatment of the problem and his final word on the subject.

In Part One I give a brief account of the place of the Critique of Judgment in Kant's system, setting forth, as I believe, the fact that the last Critique shaped itself in his mind gradually, through influences brought to bear upon him from without as well as through pressure from within bis own system. In Part Two I give an exposition of the doctrine as elaborated by Kant himself. My exposition I based on Hartenstein's text. Because of the embarrassing mixture of the material and the fatiguing repetition of the same thought in slightly different language and in altogether different connections throughout the text, I thought it best to disregard the author's divisions altogether. The usual division into Analytic, Dialectic, etc., is due to a mere fancy of the author; and it confuses rather than aids the student. I have arranged the material under the three heads indicated in Part Two of the table of contents because this best expresses the real order of the development. I have selected and arranged the material so as to show what must be explained teleologically; why it must be thus explained; and the validity of such explanation. I have endeavored to give, as clearly as possible, Kant's own arguments, indicating the sections from which the arguments are taken. The references are to sections rather than to pages, because the sections are the same in all versions, German, French, or English, while the pages differ in the different versions. In Part Three I offer a few words by way of an appreciation and a criticism, showing how, in my judgment, Kant might have carried his assumptions to more positive conclusions.

My use of secondary sources I have indicated in the Bibliography and the notes. But I wish to express my special indebtedness to Professor Edgar A. Singer, and Professor Lewis W. Flaccus, of the University of Pennsylvania, under whom I pursued my studies of Kant; and also my gratitude to Professor William Romaine Newbold, of the department of Ancient Fhilosophy, who first inspired me with a love for philosophy.

Part One The Place Of The Ckitique Of Judgment In Kant's System

THE PLACE OF THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT IN KANT'S SYSTEM.

It is evident from what Kant himself says that the Critique of Judgment was not included in the original plan of his critical investigations. The idea of a third Critique was introduced gradually, but quite naturally, as the earnest little man advanced in his honest efforts after exact knowledge. In a letter written to Herz, in 1772, he give ( s the ground-plan of a work which he had in mind at that time. He says: "I am planning a work under the title: the limits of sensibility and reason. The work will consist of two parts: a theoretical and practical. The first falls into two sections: first phenomenology in general, and second, the nature and methods of metaphysics. The second likewise falls into two parts: first the general principles of (feeling) and desire, and second the foundations of morality."a In this plan the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason are clearly foreshadowed, but there is no evidence that Kant had in mind, at this early date, a third Critique.

In the Critique^ of Pure and Practical Reason Kant felt, for the time being, that he had covered the whole field of philosophy that could be investigated by means of definite a priori principles. All other possible realms of investigation fall within the sphere of merely empirical and contingent principles, and must, therefore, be excluded from the legitimate scope of pure philosophy. Natural science and all technically practical rules derived therefrom are only corollaries to pure philosophy and must not be exalted into an equality with it. Up to the time of the publication of the first two Critiques Kant had recognized only two definite a priori laws or principles, viz., causation, by means of which the understanding legislates for nature, and freedom, by means of which reason legislates a Briefe, H. Vol. VIII.

for morality. All other rules are merely precepts and not universal law,s or necessary principles.

A further evidence that the Critique of Judgment was not in the mind of Kant from the beginning is a note appended to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1781, in which he criticises Baumgarten for his attempt to base a critical study of the Beautiful on principles of pure reason. Kant declares such an attempt to be fruitless, because the rules in question "are purely empirical and must not be taken for a priori principles by which our judgments of taste may be guided." It is quite clear from this statement that he recognizes only the two a priori principles of causation and freedom. But between the appearance of the first and second edition^ of the Critique of Pure Reason his view,s on this matter had undergone some modification. In the second edition, published m 1787, we find the confident phrase "are in their sources purely empirical," changed to the less positive form: "are in their main sources empirical." In a letter to Reinhold, written soon after the publication of the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, statements are made which indicate a complete change of view. In this letter he says that in his critical studies he has been led to recognize a new department of critical philosophy; and thijS new department is nothing other than the field which Baumgarten had investigated, and which Kant had criticised, six years before, as not belonging to pure philosophy. He says further, in this letter to Reinhold, that he has been led to recognize another kind of a priori principle different from those stated in the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason. This new a priori principle i,s one legislating through the feelings.

It may not be possible to say with certainty by what means Kant was led on beyond the position taken in the first two Critiques. It is quite likely, however, that the factors in the case were twofold. There was an external and also an internal influence at work. He was influenced by the new interest awakened in the field of psychology, and also by the contradiction between the concept of nature and the concept of freedom as he himself had elaborated them.

The wave of individualism which spread over Europe after the middle of the Eighteenth Century produced a considerable amount of psychological literature in which the feelings were assigned an independent mental function and given a place along side of the intellect and the will. Baumgarten and Meyer, Sul- /.er and Mendelssohn, in their aesthetical studies, and Tetens, in his work on psychology, laid unusual emphasis upon the pleasure-pain faculty, and thus brought into prominence the feeling life, which philosophy had neglected since the days of Plato and Aristotle. Into this new field Kant entered with his keen analytical powers of mind. With Mendelssohn and Tetens he recognizes three separate mental faculties, viz., the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the will. But these men had failed to show that this feeling faculty legislates in any way a priority as Kant had previously shown the understanding and the will to do. And Kant himself, for a time, failed to see in what way thi,s faculty legislates a priori. But while engaged in a Critique of Taste, he tells us, he discovered a priori principles for this faculty also, and thus has come to recognize three legitimate departments of pure philosophy, viz., Theoretic Philosophy, Practical Philosophy, and Teleology. In his correspondence with Reinhold he expresses the desire to devote his remaining days to the elucidation of the problems in this new field. The feelings, like the will, must be rescued from all empirical and contingent elements.

But there was also a potent influence from another source which urged Kant on beyond the results of the first two Critique^. He was led to the writing of the third Critique by a need which was left unsatisfied in his former works. There was a yawning gap between the concept of nature as established in the Critique of Pure Reason, and the concept of freedom as elaborated in the Critique of Practical Reason. There was wanting a satisfactory principle of meditation in the .system.

The matter which first attracted his attention was the problem of pure knowledge, its conditions, its limitations, and its proper objects. This was the problem of the Critique of Pure Reason, where the conclusion was reached that nature as phenomenon is the only object of which we can hope to acquire exact knowledge. But while wrestling with the problem of Pure Reason he recognized the fact that there is a field besides natural phenomena which must be included in a complete philosophy. A philosophy which aims at completeness must include the practical as well as the theoretical. That the practical was included in his original plan is clearly indicated in his letter to Herz. The subject matter of these two Critiques and the method of treatment was shaping itself in his mind from 1772 to the time of their publication a decade or so later.

But these two Critiques resulted in a sharp antithesis between the phenomenal and the noumenal, or between nature and freedom. There was a great gulf between the two distinct worlds treated in these two works. And man, as a creature with an understanding and a will, is a citizen of these two worlds. On the one hand he is under the law of necessity and on the other he is under the 'law of freedom. His knowledge is of phenomena connected by necessary laws; but he wills the good in freedom. His understanding is sensibly conditioned, but his will, as a faculty which gives the law to itself, is unconditioned. On the one hand he is conscious of himself as object and on the other as subject. Thus his consciousness, or the world within, becomes divided no less than the world without; and between this divided self there is, as yet, no satisfactory relation established. In these two Critiques Kant had separately emphasized the deduction of knowledge and of faith, of the speculative and the practical consciousness, until the unity of consciousness itself was lost.

To say, as some have done, that Kant was not aware of this contradiction in his system is to disregard his own words, for a statement made in the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment clearly shows the province and function of each of the former Critiques, and also the contradictory character of the principles which they elaborate. He says : "The understanding legislates a priori for nature as an object of sense: Reason legislates a priori for freedom and its peculiar causality. The realm of the natural concept under the one legislation, and that of the concept of freedom under the other are entirely removed from all mutual influence. The concept of freedom determines nothing in respect of the theoretical cognition of nature; and the natural concept determines nothing in respect of the practical laws of freedom. So far then it is not possible to throw a bridge from the one realm to the other/* a Legislation by the understanding is valid only for cognition; and legislation by the reason is valid only for the will. The province of the one is nature; and the province of the other is morality and the religious life.

But this, as Hegel has pointed out, would degrade freedom into an abstract, barren, contentless non-entity. To save freedom from this degradation it must in some way be made to realize itself in the world of sense. There must be a possible relation between nature and freedom. And Kant was well aware of this for he says: "Now although an immeasurable gulf is thus fixed between the realm of nature and the realm of freedom so that no transition from the first to the second is possible, yet the second is meant to have an influence upon the first. The concept of freedom is meant to realize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity of its form, at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purpose to be effected in it according to the laws of freedom."^ In the second part of the Critique of Practical Reason the gap which is opened in the Analytic is bridged over by the concept of freedom reaching down out of its supersensible realm and actualizing in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws. Thus nature and freedom are connected in a purely practical way.

But this strained and formal way of effecting a union between nature and freedom in the Dialectic of the Practical Reason does not solve the problem. The consciousness is still divided. There is still no bridge over the gap which divides our consciousness of self as object and self as subject. Kant

a Intro, to the Critique of Judgment, section IX. b Intro to the Critique of Judgment, section II.

was aware of the need of a more positive mediating principle to bridge over the gulf and unite the divided inner world. And the consciousness of this need, together with the discoveries made in his studies of the feelings, led him to write the third Critique which becomes the coping stone of his critical arch.

Bosenquet clearly indicates the place and function of the Critique of Judgment in the following concise words: "In his life-long labors for the reorganization of philosophy, Kant may be said to have aimed at three cardinal points. First, he desired to justify the conception of a natural order; secondly, the conception of a moral order; and thirdly, the conception of the compatibility between the natural and the moral order. The first of these problems formed the substance of the Critique of Pure Reason; the second was treated in the Critique of Practical Reason; and the third necessarily arose out of the relation between the other two. * * * And although the formal compatibility of nature and freedom had been established by Kant, as he believed, in the negative demarcation between that which the first two Critiques expounded, it was inevitable that he should subsequently be led on to suggest some more positive combination. This attempt was made in the Critique of the Powers of Judgment/'^

It is quite evident that the results of the Critiques of Pure and Practical Reason left the need of a more positive combination of the concept of nature and freedom than the mere formal one declared in the Dialectic of the Practical Reason. This more positive combination he ultimately finds in the new phase of the principle of design as elaborated in the Critique of Judgment. In his critical study of the feelings, to which he was attracted by the newly awakened interest in psychology, he discovers the a priori principle of design by means of which, first in a mere formal way, and afterwards also in an objective way, he brings about a union between sense and understanding, and between nature and freedom, in a theoretic way and thus in advance of the purely practical a History of Aesthetics, p. 256.

point of view in the second Critique. It is by means of the feelings that we first discover a harmony between our consciousness of objects and our consciousness of self. It is by means of the feelings also that we first discover a harmony between the different powers which divide the phenomena of self consciousness from each other. "We can feel what we can neither know nor will." We feel a union between ourselves as object and subject the hidden ground of which the understanding cannot fathom. If then we wish to find the unity of our self-consciousness, or the unity of the two worlds of our experience, in a theoretic way different from the pure practical point of view established in the Critique of Practical Reason, it is clear that we must carry our critical investigations into this realm of the feelings. This is the position Kant had come to at the time that he was writing to Reinhold. Thus he was gradually, but quite naturally, led to the critical study of the feelings, the psychological faculty intermediate (between knowing and willing, to which the judgment, as the middle term between understanding and reason, corresponds. The correspondence between the intermediating function of the judgment and the intermediating function of the feelings is what led him to give the name Critique of Judgment to his last great work.

Although we may feel that Kant's deduction of design as an a priori principle of judgment is superficial, he was nevertheless sincere in his conviction that the judgment has an a priori principle by means of which it legislates in a certain territory of our critical investigations. As freedom is an a priori principle of reason as an automatic mental faculty, so the idea of design, or purposiveness, is an a priori principle of the judgment as an automatic mental faculty. "Judgment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule, the principle, the law) be given, the judgment which subsumes the particular under it is determinant. But if only the particular is given for which a universal must be found, the judgment is only reflective."a

a Intro, to the Critique of Judgment, sec. IV.

Now the judgment as reflective has the autonomy like reason to give to itself the principle under which the discordant particulars of our experience may be subsumed. And it is ju,st this task of finding a universal under which the manifold particulars of our experience must be subordinated that becomes the real problem of this new department of philosophy. A universal must be found under which the manifold particulars of our experience mu,st be viewed, or nature cannot be made intelligible to ourselves. A principle must be found by means of which nature can be reduced to the unity of our intelligence. And since the particular forms of nature, for which a universal must be found, are so manifold and so varied, the reflective judgment, which must ascend from these particulars of our experience to the universal in nature, require^, on this account, a principle which it cannot borrow from experience, and hence to establish the possibility of a systematic subordination of these varied particulars, under a universal intelligible to ourselves, the judgment as reflective, must give a law from and to itself; and this principle or law can be none other than that of design. ^ "Since no use of the cognitive faculties can be permitted without priciples, the reflective judgment must, in such cases, serve as a principle to itself."a By the aid of this principle nature is regarded by us as if it,s particular laws were not isolated and disparate, but connected and in relation, deriving their unity under seeming diversity from an Intelligence which is at the source of nature. It is only by the assumption of such a principle that we can make nature, in certain of its aspects, intelligible to ourselves. The task of the teleologica'l judgment then is to trace the nature of reason beyond its own use in metaphysics into the general principles of systematizing a history of nature. We must view nature as if it were designed for our understanding.

This design, or purposiveness, however, may be merely formal and subjective, or objective and real. In some cases the purposiveness resides only in the felt harmony of the form of

C. of J., sec. 69.

the object with our cognitive faculties. In the case of a beautiful object, for example, we judge the form of the object to be purposive in relation to our perception of it, but cannot discover any purposiveness that is served by the object. In this case the purposiveness is only formal and not real. It is purposive only in reference to us as subject. We are not permitted to say, in this case, that nature is purposive, but only that nature awakens in us the harmonious play of our faculties and we then feel the purposiveness. It is a "purposiveness without purpose." In some other cases, however, in an organism for example, the form of the object is judged to harmonize with a purpose in view of its existence. In this case we judge that the existence and the form of the object are adapted to an end. We judge the object to be purposive because of its internal form, and not merely because of the relation of its form to our perception of it. This kind of purposiveness is objective and real. In the former kind of purposiveness we employ the aesthetic judgment; i. e., we immediately feel a harmony between the form of the object and our cognitive faculties. The sense of the beautiful is this feeling of harmony between ourselves and objects. In the latter case we employ the teleological judgment; i. e., we judge that the object is an end in itself apart from our cognition of it. The Critique of Judgment, therefore, is divided into Two Parts : I, The Critique of Taste, or the Philosophy of the Beautiful and the sublime; and II, The Critique of Teleology, or the Application of the Idea of Design to Nature.

But it is again quite evident that the whole of the Critique of Judgment in this two-fold division in which we now have it was not within the scope of Kant's plan when he wrote to Reinhold saying that he was engaged on a new Critique. His psychological interest in the feelings, which had been neglected in his former works, led him to a critical study of Taste. But a Critique of Taste was all that he had in mind at this time. It was while engaged on this Critique of Taste that he discovered the idea of purposiveness (in the formal sense noted above) and its a priori character. In our cognition of an object there is always felt a discord between ourselves and the object. There is something in the object which evades our cognitive faculties as though it were not meant for us, and this is painful The result is a feeling of dualism between ourselves and nature. In the Practical Reason, likewise, we never get beyond the negative character of feeling. The effect of the ideal consciousness upon feeling is always in the first instance negative. "Moral feeling is the shrinking awe of nature before spirit." "Before the moral law our mortal nature doth tremble like a guilty thing surprised." It is in the purely aesthetic feelings that we, for the first time, get beyond this negative aspect to a higher positive. In the perception of a beautiful object there is immediately felt a harmony between ourselves and the object, and this feeling is one of pleasure. In our sense of the beautiful the spirit greets the object and the object readily responds.

At this point he discovers, for the first time, a reason to postulate a union between the phenomenal and the noumenal. In the feeling of pleasure in the perception of the Beautiful he discovers the needed principle of mediation between the sensible and the intelligible. It is true that the category of time, in a sense, mediates between the sensible and the intelligible. Already in the Transcendal Aesthetic and Analytic the question arose as to how reason could act upon the data of sensibility. By what means does reason lay hold of sensible intuitions and make notions of them? Time, which is half intuition and half category, serves as the natural intermediary between sensible intuitions and concepts. But this schematism is strained and lacks the spontaniety and imrnediateness which we feel in the perception of the Beautiful. The ch^sm between sense and understanding remains in spite of the mediating function of time. But our experience of an object of beauty is of such a nature that we must feel, or judge, the object as if it were intended for us. The feeling of foreignness or remoteness, which we experience in the cognition of objects, vanishes. This then is the deduction of this new phase of purposiveness. But this felt purposiveness is only formal and subjective. There is no purpose in the object that we can discover, — nothing that the object serves. It is purposive only in reference to our perception of it. This Critique of Taste, or Philosophy of the Beautiful, is all that Kant had in mind at the time he wrote to Reinhold in 1788-89.

Stadler, in his excellent work on Kant's Teleologie, thinks that Kant might well have ended his critical investigations at this point. In fact Stadler intimates that he would better have ended his critical labors here, because the second part of the Critique of Judgment adds nothing to the value of his system as a whole. Most of us, no doubt, disagree with Stadler on thi,s point; but regardless of whether or not Kant should have stopped here, there are two reasons why he did not. There was again something within his system and again a pressure from without that was urging him on to the further application of this newly discovered principle.

About the time that he was writing to Reinhold, setting forth the plans of hi^s Critique of Taste, there appeared a rather severe criticism by Forster on the use of the teleologie principle in Kant's former works. This criticism called forth a treatise by Kant on : The Need of the Teleological Principle in Philosophy. In this treatise he reiterates that everything in natural science must be explained mechanically, but points out that this very principle implies its own limitation in that it requires that we use only such grounds of explanation as can be verified by experience. If things that we cannot experience as, for example, certain characteristics of organisms, or nature as a whole, are to be explained at all we must admit some principle that will supplement mechanism. This reply to Forster points the way beyond the mere formal application of the idea of design in the realm of the Beautiful.

But there was also something in the very nature of this formal purposiveness, which he had discovered, that led him on to make still further use of it. Caird has well said: "As soon as he had admitted that the consciousness of an object, even in subjective feeling, can be positively connected with our ideal consciousness, and so with the pure consciousness of self, he was naturally led to reconsider his whole theory of the connection of the consciousness of an object with the consciousness of self as stated in the Critique of Pure Reason."a He was now led to consider the connection of nature and freedom in a theoretic way, and thus in advance of the purely practical point of view in the Critique of Practical Reason, or the mere formal presentation of it in the Critique of Taste. From the feeling of the union of the object with the subject in our ,sense of the Beautiful he passes on to the thinking of it, or to the conscious recognition of the two as united in one principle. This led him quite naturally to the application of the teleological judgment to objects themselves. Hence when the book appeared, three years after he had written to Reinhold, it was not merely a Critique of Taste, but a Critique of the powers of Judgment in the subjective and objective sense noted above.