Kant’s conception of life and the limits of a discursive intellect

Abstract

ABSTRACT Kant’s account of natural teleology has recently garnered significant interest, though there is little consensus regarding either Kant’s aim or whether this account coheres with the rest of his critical project. I argue that Kant’s position on natural teleology is only intelligible against the backdrop of his account of conceptual synthesis in the B-Edition of the Transcendental Deduction, in the Critique of Pure Reason, and, more generally, his account of ‘transcendental logic’. Viewed in this light, I argue that we must see Kant as committed to the seemingly implausible claim that there can be no objective ground for the distinction between the living and the non-living, and that, consequently, there could be no possible occasion for the—even regulative—deployment of natural teleological judgment. I argue, further, that this suggests that Kant’s discussion of natural teleology plays a far more significant role in his larger critical project than is commonly understood.