What Is the Problem of Teleology in Kant's Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment?

Abstract

In his teleological antinomy in the Dialectic of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, Kant presents two competing views of the explanatory power of causal mechanism for a science of origins. Kant expresses both the positive (thesis) view and the negative (antithesis) view in the guise of merely “regulative principles for the reflecting power of judgment”. The regulativity of these principles is usually taken to entail: i. Kant’s demotion of causal mechanism to an explanatory principle of heuristic, merely “subjectively necessary” status; ii. the possibility of “mechanically inexplicable” phenomena in nature. I argue that neither consequence ensues. Kant—in both thesis and antithesis of his teleological antinomy—is as firmly committed to the universal necessity of judging natural origins mechanistically as he ever was and would be. Accordingly, Kant is fully committed to the “mechanical explicability” of all causal processes (including organic processes) in nature. At issue in the antinomy is, instead, the universal sufficiency of judging natural origins mechanistically.