The Teleology of Reason: A Study of the Structure of Kant's Critical Philosophy (Kantstudien-Ergänzungshefte)

This work argues that teleological motives lie at the heart of Kant’s critical philosophy and that a precise analysis of teleological structures can both illuminate the basic strategy of its fundamental arguments and provide a key to understanding its unity. It thus aims, through an examination of each of Kant’s major writings, to provide a detailed interpretation of his claim that philosophy in the true sense must consist of a __teleologia rationis humanae.__The author argues that Kant’s critical philosophy forged a new link between traditional teleological concepts and the basic structure of rationality, one that would later inform the dynamic conception of reason at the heart of German Idealism. The process by which this was accomplished began with Kant’s development of a uniquely teleological conception of systematic unity already in the precritical period. The individual chapters of this work attempt to show how Kant adapted and refined this conception of systematic unity so that it came to form the structural basis for the critical philosophy. The Teleology of Reason: A Study of the Structure of Kant’s Critical Philosophy 4 Preface 8 Contents 10 Abbreviations and the Use of Translations 16 Part I: Preliminary Investigations 18 1 Motivations 20 Introduction 20 §. 1. Preliminary Sketch of the Telic Structure of Kant’s System of Philosophy 21 §. 1.1. The Teleology of Theoretical Reason 22 §. 1.2. The Teleology of Pure Practical Reason 26 §. 1.3. The Doctrine of Wisdom as the End of the System of Philosophy 30 §. 1.4. Teleology and the Transcendental Possibility of the Kantian System of Philosophy 32 §. 1.5. The Unity of Reason 37 §. 2. The Teleological Tradition Before and After Kant 41 §. 2.1. Teleology in the Philosophies of Kant’s German Predecessors 47 §. 2.2. The Legacy of Kant’s Teleology of Reason in Fichte 50 §. 3. Current Views on the Role of Teleology in Kant’s Critical Philosophy 59 §. 3.1. Reactions to the Popular View 64 §. 3.2. Teleology in special studies of Kant’s philosophy 68 Conclusion 73 2 Teleology: Rudiments of a Theory 74 Introduction 74 Teleology: Not Reducible to a Pattern of Behavior 77 Two Examples of this Tendency in Studies of the History of Philosophy: Bennett and Couturat 81 §. 1. Teleological Inferences: From Pattern to Purpose 85 §. 1.1. Teleological and Non-Teleological Inferences 89 §. 1.2. Traditional Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence 92 §. 1.3. Concluding Reflections 97 §. 2. Teleological Explanations: From Purpose to Pattern 98 §. 2.1. Maupertuis and the Universal Teleology of Nature 105 §. 2.2. Purposes as Laws of Behavior 112 §. 2.3. Skepticism Regarding Explanation 114 §. 2.4. Teleological Explanations: Concluding Reflections 116 §. 3. The Essential and Inessential Characteristics of Teleological Entities 120 Part II: The Teleology of Human Knowledge 126 Introduction to Part II 128 3 The Historical Roots of Kant’s Concept of Experience 130 Introduction 130 §. 1. Wolff’s Ontological Logic and the “acumen pervidendi universalia in singularibus” 134 §. 1.1. Wolff’s Logic of Experience 136 §. 1.2. The Wolffian Roots of Kant’s Categories 140 §. 1.3. The Skill of Perceiving the Universal in the Particular 143 §. 1.4. Wolff and Kant on the Possibility of Experience 144 §. 2. Adolph Friedrich Hoffmann and Christian August Crusius 147 §. 2.1. The Logic of Experience According to Hoffmann and Crusius 154 §. 2.2. The Possibility of Experience and the Limits of Human Knowledge 158 §. 3. Anticipating Kant’s Account of Experience 160 Conclusion: The Nature of Kant’s Advance 164 4 Teleology in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic 165 Introduction 165 §. 1. The Problem of the “Critique”: How are Synthetic Judgments a priori Possible? 166 §. 1.1. The Need for Synthetic Judgments a priori and the Structure of Knowledge 169 §. 1.2. Preliminary Outline of the Argument of the Transcendental Aesthetic and Analytic 178 §. 2. Space and Time as Grounds of the Formal Perfection of Sensible Objects 184 §. 2.1. The Objective Formal Perfection of Space 188 §. 2.2. The Transcendental Aesthetic: Comments on the Text 192 §. 3. The Transcendental Analytic 194 §. 3.1. The Metaphysical Deduction 195 §. 3.2. The Transcendental Deduction 198 §. 3.3. The Deduction in the B-edition 202 §. 4. Summary 213 5 Teleology in the Transcendental Dialectic 218 Introduction 218 §. 1. The Relation of the Analytic to the Dialectic 222 §. 2. The Ideas of Pure Reason 229 §. 3. The Regulative Principles of Pure Reason 241 §. 4. The Transcendental Death of Physico-Theology 252 Conclusion 255 General Conclusion to Part II 256 Part III: The Teleology of Freedom 258 Introduction to Part III 260 6 The Teleology of Freedom: The Structure of Moral Self-Consciousness in the Analytic 265 Introduction 265 §. 1. Three Types of Freedom 271 §. 2. Our Three Wills 278 §. 3. Moral Self-Consciousness 293 §. 4. The To-and-Fro Structure of Moral Self-Consciousness in the GMS 295 §. 5. The To-and-Fro Structure of Moral Self-Consciousness in the KpV 302 Conclusion 307 7 Kant on Rational Faith as an Expression of Autonomy 309 Introduction 309 §. 1. Problems and Previous Interpretations 312 §. 1.1. Beck’s Interpretation 313 §. 1.2. Wood’s Interpretation 317 §. 1.2.1. A First Difficulty with Wood’s Interpretation 318 §. 1.2.2. A Second Difficulty with Wood’s Interpretation 319 §. 1.2.3. A Third Difficulty with Wood’s Interpretation 321 §. 1.2.4. A Fourth Difficulty with Woods Interpretation 322 §. 2. Kant’s Argument 327 §. 2.1. Virtue as Moral Strength of Character 328 §. 2.2. How Rational Belief in God’s Existence Increases the Moral Incentive 332 §. 2.3. Textual Analysis 336 §. 2.3.1. The Highest Good in KpV 336 §. 2.3.2. The Highest Good in the KrV 344 §. 2.3.3. The Highest Good in the KU 345 §. 2.3.4. The Highest Good in TP 346 Summary of the Argument of this Section 347 §. 3. Practical-Dogmatic Metaphysics 348 Conclusion 352 Excursus: The Life of Reason 354 Introduction 354 §. 1. From Morality to Life: Three Conditions of the Possibility of the Realization of a Moral World 356 §. 2. Pure Aesthetic Pleasure as a Feeling of Life 362 §. 2.1. Kant’s Constitutive Concept of Life 364 §. 2.2. The Historical Roots of Kant’s Concept of Life 365 §. 2.3. Pure Aesthetic Pleasure as a Feeling of Life: How the Constitutive Concept of Life is Generalized to Include the Feeling of Beauty 370 Conclusion 374 8 The Teleological Unity of Reason and Kant’s Idea of Philosophy 377 Introduction 377 §. 1. The Unity of Reason 379 §. 1.1. The Unity of Reason: First Reconstruction 383 §. 1.2. Regulative and Constitutive Principles 391 §. 1.3. The Unity of Reason: Second Reconstruction 397 §. 2. Kant’s Concept of Philosophy 404 §. 2.1. Philosophy “in sensu scholastico” and “in sensu cosmico” 407 §. 2.2. Unity of Reason and the History of Philosophy 410 Conclusion 413 Brief Outline of Kant’s Conception of Teleology 415 Bibliography 421 I. Translations Consulted 421 II. Primary Sources 421 III. Secondary Sources 427 Register 442

This work argues that teleological motives lie at the heart of Kant’s critical philosophy and that a precise analysis of teleological structures can both illuminate the basic strategy of its fundamental arguments and provide a key to understanding its unity. It thus aims, through an examination of each of Kant’s major writings, to provide a detailed interpretation of his claim that philosophy in the true sense must consist of a teleologia rationis humanae.
The author argues that Kant’s critical philosophy forged a new link between traditional teleological concepts and the basic structure of rationality, one that would later inform the dynamic conception of reason at the heart of German Idealism. The process by which this was accomplished began with Kant’s development of a uniquely teleological conception of systematic unity already in the precritical period. The individual chapters of this work attempt to show how Kant adapted and refined this conception of systematic unity so that it came to form the structural basis for the critical philosophy.

In der Reihe werden herausragende monographische Untersuchungen und Sammelbnde zu allen Aspekten der Philosophie Kants verffentlicht, ebenso zum systematischen Verhltnis seiner Philosophie zu anderen philosophischen Anstzen in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Verffentlicht werden Studien, die einen innovativen Charakter haben und ausdrckliche Desiderate der Forschung erfllen. Die Publikationen reprsentieren damit den aktuellsten Stand der Forschung. This work argues that teleological motives lie at the heart of Kant's critical philosophy and that a precise analysis of teleological structures can both illuminate the basic strategy of its fundamental arguments and provide a key to understanding its unity. It thus provides, through an examination of Kant's major writings, a detailed interpretation of his claim that philosophy in the true sense must consist of a teleologia rationis humanae.