Kant and the other of necessity - contingency

Abstract

Kant’s critical philosophy is, as is well known, based on the question of the possibility of synthetic judgments a priori. This goes hand in hand with the validity claims of judgments in cognition, morality, law, aesthetics and other philosophical areas that can be shown to be necessary. The degree of necessity differs depending on the context. Central to Kant’s epistemology is the objectively necessary validity of causal judgments, which he grounded anew and in distinction to the subjectively necessary judgments that he attributed to David Hume’s causal theory. Necessity, a priori validity of pure or, for the most part, non-pure synthetic judgements a priori in the context of experience are inconceivable without their other, empiricism and contingency. Contingency plays a less marginal role in Kant’s epistemology in the Critique of Pure Reason, than it might seem at first glance. Contingency is of obvious importance in Kant’s teleology, which he elaborates in the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgement. Nature is characterized by infinite variety and an infinite number of empirical laws, and therefore contingency is predominant for human cognition. With the (apparent) antinomy of teleological judgement, the reciprocal relationship between (necessary) causal mechanism and finality as teleological expediency Kant shows that the two principles are indispensable for knowledge and observation of nature, even if they each have their own tasks.