Towards moral teleology — a comparative study of Kant and Zhu Xi

Abstract

Kant’s coining of «reflective judgment» in the third Critique by a conceptual clarification of the third higher cognitive faculty has long been criticized as redundant for his philosophical system and deemed a typical Kantian architectonic failure. Zhu Xi’s vital development of the doctrine «gewu» in his commentary on The Great Learning has been attacked for centuries for committing a hermeneutic fallacy. I argue that a comparative study shows that both conceptions steered a metaphysical transition towards «the supersensible» in each philosophy, leading to a similar construction of moral teleology. Zhu Xi’s «li» is comparable to Kant’s «purpose» as a moral teleological property. The Neo-Confucian li-qi dichotomy provides a counterpart of the Kantian double causality. Nevertheless, Neo-Confucian moral teleology does not rely on a Kantian-type rationalistic deduction concerning the idea of highest good (as final purpose) nor on the so-called intellectual intuition. Gewu looks outwards for the moral coherence between humans and things, while Kant ultimately rejects the natural world for the sake of moral certainty in terms of freedom and identifies what is unique within us.