Symbolic art of the highest Artist: natural purposes in Kant’s third Critique

Abstract

An interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s _Critique of the Power of Judgment_ is presented as a coherent whole rather than a collection of disconnected parts. I argue that Kant interprets natural beauty and the purposiveness of living things as symbols of the prowess and goodness of a supreme artist. These symbols support us in our pursuit of moral ends but are not the justification of that pursuit. All cognition of the inexplicable creative intelligence of the supreme artist is symbolic. We are subjectively certain that our moral vocation is the final purpose of nature. My reading proceeds in reverse order from the theological considerations of the _Methodology of the teleological judgment_ which derives a rational theology that is supported by (but not dependent on) physicotheology, via the _Critique of teleological judgement_ which analyzes the inexplicable artistry of living things as illustrations of the technique of the highest artist, via the _Critique of aesthetic judgment_ which sets up analogies between human and divine art, to the two introductions. The antinomy of teleological judgment is a cognitive illusion of the peculiar constitution (_intellectus ectypus_) of our cognitive faculties that explains wholes from parts: we must both conceive of living things as possible in accordance with efficient causes but we cannot conceive of them as possible except through final causes. In particular, it is the internal purposiveness of living things that is beyond our comprehension. If we had an _intellectus archetypus_, that explains parts from wholes, then we would not be subject to this cognitive illusion. The power of judgment adjudicates between reason, which is exalted by the sublime, and the understanding, which is humbled by the purposiveness of living things.